Текст книги "The Luminaries"

Автор книги: Eleanor Catton

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Charlie Frost was looking at Ah Sook curiously. ‘Why did you say that, Mr. Sook?’ he said. ‘Why did you say that you knew a secret about Crosbie Wells?’

Ah Sook turned his gaze on Frost and appraised him. ‘Crosbie Wells strike big in Dunstan,’ he said. ‘Many very big nugget. Very lucky man.’

Nilssen turned. ‘Crosbie Wells made a strike?’

Mannering had also looked up. ‘What?’ he said. ‘A strike? How much?’

‘In Dunstan,’ Sook Yongsheng said again, still gazing at Frost. ‘Very lucky man. Big bonanza. Very rich.’

Nilssen stepped forward—which rather annoyed Frost, for he had been the one to introduce this new line of questioning, after all. But Nilssen and Mannering both seemed to have forgotten that Frost was there.

‘How long ago?’ Nilssen demanded. ‘When?’

‘Two.’ Ah Sook held up two fingers.

‘Two years ago!’ said Mannering.

‘How much? How much colour?’ said Nilssen.

‘Many thousand.’

‘How much—four?’ Nilssen held up four fingers. ‘Four thousand?’

Ah Sook shrugged; he did not know.

‘How do you know this, Mr. Sook?’ said Frost. ‘How do you know that Mr. Wells struck a ’bounder at Dunstan?’

‘I ask escort,’ said Ah Sook.

‘Didn’t trust the bank!’ said Mannering. ‘What do you think of that, Charlie? Didn’t trust the bank!’

‘Which escort—Gilligan’s? Or Gracewood and Spears?’ said Nilssen.

‘Gracewood and Spears.’

‘So Crosbie Wells made a strike at Dunstan, and then hired Gracewood and Spears to ship the bonanza from the field?’ said Frost.

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. ‘Very good.’

‘Then Wells was sitting on a fortune—all along!’ said Nilssen, shaking his head. ‘The money was his very own! None of us believed it.’

Mannering pointed at Ah Quee. ‘What about him?’ he said. ‘He knew about this?’

‘No,’ said Ah Sook.

Mannering exploded with irritation. ‘Then why in hell does any of it matter? This is his work, remember—his work, in Crosbie’s cottage! Smelted by Johnny Quee’s own hand!’

‘Perhaps Crosbie Wells was in league with him,’ said Frost.

‘Was that it?’ said Nilssen. He pointed at Ah Quee, and said, ‘Was he in league with Crosbie Wells?’

‘He not know Crosbie Wells,’ said Ah Sook.

‘Oh, for the love of Christ,’ said Mannering.

Harald Nilssen was looking from one Chinese face to the other—searchingly, as if their countenances might betray some evidence of their collusion. Nilssen was very suspicious of Chinese men, having never known one personally; his were the kind of beliefs that did not depend upon empirical fact, and indeed, were often flatly disproved by it, though no disproof was ever enough to change his mind. He had decided, long ago, that Chinese men were duplicitous, and so they would be, whatever disproof he might encounter. Gazing at Ah Quee now, Nilssen recalled the theory of conspiracy that Joseph Pritchard had put to him earlier that afternoon: ‘If we are being framed, then perhaps he is, too.’

‘Someone else is behind this,’ he said. ‘There’s someone else involved.’

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook.

‘Who?’ said Nilssen, eagerly.

‘You won’t get a grain of sense out of him,’ said Mannering. ‘It’s not worth your breath, I’m telling you.’

But the hatter did reply, and his answer surprised every man in the room. ‘Te Rau Tauwhare,’ he said.

VENUS IN CAPRICORN

In which the widow shares her philosophy of fortune; Gascoigne’s hopes are dashed; and we learn something new about Crosbie Wells.

Upon quitting the Gridiron, Aubert Gascoigne had crossed directly to the Wayfarer Hotel—so identified by a painted sign which hung on two short chains from a protruding spar. The sign boasted no words at all, but showed, instead, the painted silhouette of a man walking, his chin held high, his elbows cocked, and a Dick Whittington bundle on his shoulder. From the jaunty cut of the silhouette, it would not be unreasonable to assume that this was a male-only lodging house; indeed, the establishment as a whole seemed to suggest a marked absence of the feminine, as communicated by the brass spittoon on the veranda, the lean-to privy in the alley, and the deficiency of drapes. But in fact these were the tokens of thrift rather than of regulation: the Wayfarer Hotel did not discriminate between the sexes, having made a firm policy of asking no questions of its lodgers, promising them nothing, and charging them only the very smallest of tariffs for their nightly board. Under these conditions, one was naturally prepared to put up with a very great deal—or so Mrs. Lydia Wells, current resident, had reasoned, having no small genius for thrift.

Lydia Wells always seemed to arrange herself in postures of luxury, so that she might be startled out of them, laughing, when someone approached. In the parlour of the Wayfarer Hotel Gascoigne discovered her stretched out on the sofa with her slipper dangling free from her toe, one arm flung wide, and her head thrown back against a pillow; she was clasping a pocket-sized novel in her other hand, quite as if the book were an accessory to a faint. Her rouged cheeks and titillated aspect had been manufactured in the moments prior to Gascoigne’s entrance, though the latter did not know it. They suggested to him, as was the woman’s intention, that the narrative in which she had been engrossed was a very licentious one.

When Gascoigne rapped upon the doorframe (as a courtesy only, for the door was open) Lydia Wells roused herself, opened her eyes wide, and gave a tinkling laugh. She closed the book with a snap—but then tossed it onto the ottoman, so that its cover and title were in the man’s full view.

Gascoigne bowed. Rising from the bow, he let his gaze linger upon her, relishing the sight—for Lydia Wells was a woman of ample beauty, and a pleasure to behold. She was perhaps forty years of age, though she might have been a mature-seeming thirty, or a youthful fifty; the precise figure she would not disclose. She had entered that indeterminate period of middle age that always seems to call attention to its own indeterminacy, for when Lydia was girlish, that girlishness was made all the more visible by the fact of her age, and when she was wise, her wisdom was all the more impressive for having been produced in one so young. There was a vixen-like quality to her features: her eyes slanted slightly and her nose curved upward in a way that called to mind some alert and inquisitive creature. Her lips were full; her teeth, when she showed them, were delicately shaped, and spaced evenly. Her hair was a bright copper, that colour called ‘red’ by men and ‘auburn’ by women, that darkens with movement, like a flame. Currently it was pulled back into a chignon made of braids, an elaborate contour that covered both the nape and the crown of Lydia’s head. She was wearing a striped gown made of grey silk—a sombre hue, and yet it could not quite be called a mourning dress, just as Lydia’s expression could neither be called the expression of a woman, nor really, the expression of a girl. The dress sported a high buttoned collar, a ruffled bustle, and puffed leg-o’-mutton sleeves, ballooning shapes which served to accent Lydia’s ample bosom, and diminish her waist. At the ends of these enormous sleeves, her hands—clasped together now, to convey her rapture at the sight of Gascoigne standing in the doorway—seemed very small and very fragile, like the hands of a doll.

‘Monsieur Gascoigne,’ she said, relishing the name, drawing it out. ‘But you are alone!’

‘I convey regrets,’ Gascoigne said.

‘You convey regrets—and cause them, deeply.’ Lydia looked him up and down. ‘Let me guess: a headache?’

Gascoigne shook his head, and recounted as briefly as he was able the tale of Anna’s gun misfiring in her hand. He told the truth. Lydia made noises of alarm, and pressed him with questions, which he answered thoroughly, but with a deep exhaustion that showed as a tremor in his throat. At last she took pity on him, and offered him a chair and a drink, both of which he accepted readily, and with relief.

‘I only have gin, I’m afraid,’ she said.

‘Gin-and-water will do fine.’ Gascoigne sat down in the armchair nearest the sofa.

‘It’s putrid stuff,’ said Lydia, with relish. ‘You’ll have to grin and bear it. I ought to have brought a case of something with me from Dunedin—foolish, in hindsight. I’ve not yet found a dram of decent liquor in this town.’

‘Anna keeps a bottle of Spanish brandy in her room.’

‘Spanish?’ Lydia looked interested.

‘Jerez de la Frontera,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Andalusia.’

‘I am sure that I would adore Spanish brandy,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘I wonder how she came by the bottle.’

‘I am sorry that she could not be here to tell you herself,’ Gascoigne said, rather automatically—but as Lydia eased her foot back into her slipper, lifting her skirts to show the stockinged plumpness of her calves, Gascoigne reflected that he was not, in fact, particularly sorry.

‘Yes: we would have had the most delicious time together,’ said Lydia. ‘But the expedition is easily postponed, and I love to look forward to an outing. Unless you would like to come shopping in Anna’s place? Perhaps you cherish a passion for women’s hats!’

‘I could feign a passion,’ said Gascoigne, and Lydia laughed again.

‘Passion,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘is not to be feigned.’ She rose from the sofa and went to the sideboard, where a plain bottle and three glasses were set out on a wooden tray. ‘I’m not surprised, you know,’ she added, turning two of the glasses right side up, and leaving the third upended.

‘You mean—about the pistol? You’re not surprised she tried to take her life again?’

‘Oh heavens, no—not that.’ Lydia paused, the bottle in her hand. ‘I am not surprised to see you here alone.’

Gascoigne flushed. ‘I did as you asked,’ he said. ‘I did not give your name; I told her it was a surprise. Going with a woman to look at hats, I said. She was pleased by the idea. She would have come. It was only this business with the pistol. She was shaken by it—and she wasn’t in a fit state, afterwards.’

He felt that he was gabbling. What a fine woman she was—the widow Wells! How smartly the ruffled bustle curved away from her!

‘You have been ever so kind to humour my silliness,’ said Lydia Wells, soothing him. ‘I tell you: when a woman approaches my age, she likes to play the fairy godmother, once in a while. She likes to wave her wand about, and make magic, for the betterment of younger girls. No, no—I knew that you had not spoiled my surprise. I simply had a premonition that Anna would not come. I have premonitions, Aubert.’

She brought Gascoigne his glass, carrying with her the sharp-and-cloudy scent of fresh-cut lemons—for she had bleached her skin and nails with lemon juice that morning.

‘I did not break your confidence, as I swore I would not,’ Gascoigne repeated. He wanted, for some obscure reason, her continued approbation.

‘Of course,’ Lydia agreed. ‘Of course! You wouldn’t have!’

‘But I am sure that if she had known that it was you—’

‘She would have rallied—in a heartbeat!’

‘She would have rallied.’

(This conviction, rather weakly echoed, was formed on Lydia’s assurance, repeatedly made, that she and Anna had once been the best of friends. It was on the strength of this assurance that Gascoigne had agreed to engineer Lydia’s ‘surprise’, whereby the two women would reunite, and renew their intimacy at once—an offer that was an atypical one for Gascoigne. It was rare for him to perform tasks for others that they might just as well have done themselves, and social manoeuvring of any kind generally made him uncomfortable: he preferred to be manoeuvred than to move. But Gascoigne was, as will now be fairly evident, somewhat in love with Lydia Wells—a foolishness that was powerful enough to drive him not only to act against his inclinations, but also, to alter them.)

‘Poor Anna Wetherell,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘That girl is the very picture of ill luck.’

‘Governor Shepard thinks that she has lost her mind.’

‘Gov. Shepard!’ said Lydia Wells, and laughed gaily. ‘Well, on that subject he is a veritable expert. Perhaps he’s right.’

Gascoigne had no real opinion about Governor Shepard, whom he did not really know, or his lunatic wife, whom he did not know at all. His thoughts turned back to Anna. He was already regretting the sharp tone he had taken with her just now, in her room at the Gridiron Hotel. Gascoigne could never stay vexed for long: even the shortest of intermissions was always sufficient to engender self-reproach. ‘Poor Anna,’ he agreed aloud. ‘You are right: she is a wretched picture. She cannot make rent, and her landlord is to cast her out. But she will not violate her code of mourning by returning to the streets. She will not disrespect the memory of her poor late child—and so, you see, she is in a bind. A wretched picture.’

Gascoigne spoke with admiration and pity.

Lydia leaped up. ‘Oh, but she must come live with me—she must!’ she cried, speaking as if she had been impressing this notion upon Gascoigne for some time, instead of having only just proposed it. ‘She can sleep in my bed, as a sister—perhaps she has a sister, somewhere far away; perhaps she misses her. Oh, Aubert, she must. Do be the one to beg her.’

‘Would she want it, do you think?’

‘Poor Anna adores me,’ Lydia said firmly. ‘We are the closest of friends. We are as two doves—or we were, at least, in Dunedin last year. But time and distance is nothing in the face of true affinity: we shall find each other once again. We must arrange it. You must make her come.’

‘Your generosity is most admirable—but also, perhaps, excessive,’ said Gascoigne, smiling indulgently at her. ‘You know Anna’s trade. She would bring that trade with her, you know, if only by way of her sullied reputation. Besides, she has no money.’

‘Oh, tosh: there’s always money to be made, upon a goldfield,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘She can work for me. I long for a maid. For a companion, as the ladies say. In three weeks the diggers will forget she’d ever been a whore! You won’t change my mind, Aubert—you won’t! I can be very mulish, when I have set my mind on something, and I have set my mind on this.’

‘Well.’ Gascoigne looked down at his glass, feeling weary. ‘Shall I walk back across the thoroughfare—to ask her?’

She purred. ‘You shall do nothing unless you perfectly desire it. I will go myself. I’ll go tonight.’

‘But then there will be no surprise,’ said Gascoigne. ‘You were so looking forward to your surprise.’

Lydia pressed his sleeve. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘The poor dear has been surprised enough. It’s high time she was given reason to relax; high time she was cared for. I shall take her under my wing. I shall spoil her!’

‘Are you this good to all your charges?’ Gascoigne said, smiling. ‘I have a vision of you: the lady with the lamp, moving from bedside to bedside, ministering kindness—’

‘It is well you spoke that word,’ Lydia said.

‘Kindness?’

‘No: vision. Oh, Aubert, I am bursting with news.’

‘News about the estate?’ Gascoigne said. ‘So soon!’

Gascoigne did not rightly understand the state of relations between Lydia Wells and her late husband, Crosbie. It was strange to him that the two had lived so many hundreds of miles apart—Lydia in Dunedin, and Crosbie in the depths of the Arahura Valley, a place that Lydia Wells never once visited, until now, nearly two weeks after the event of her husband’s death. It was only for very superficial reasons of propriety that Gascoigne had not questioned Lydia directly about her marriage—for he was curious, and Lydia did not appear to be grieving in any visible sense. She became vague and foolish whenever Crosbie’s name was mentioned.

But Lydia was shaking her head. ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with that! You must ask me what I have been doing since I saw you last—what I have been doing this very morning, in fact. I have been aching for you to ask. I cannot believe that you haven’t asked.’

‘Tell me, do.’

Lydia sat erect, and opened her grey eyes very wide, so that they sparkled. ‘I have bought an hotel,’ she said.

‘An hotel!’ Gascoigne said, marvelling. ‘Which hotel?’

‘This one.’

‘This—?’

‘You think me capricious!’ She clapped her hands together.

‘I think you enterprising, and brave, and very beautiful,’ said Gascoigne. ‘And a thousand other things. Tell me why you have bought this whole hotel.’

‘I intend to convert the place!’ Lydia said. ‘You know I am a worldly woman: I owned a business in Dunedin for almost ten years, and in Sydney before that. I am quite the entrepreneur, Aubert! You have not yet seen me in my element. You will think me very enterprising, when you do.’

Gascoigne looked about him. ‘What conversions will you make?’

‘We come at last to my “vision”,’ Lydia said. She leaned forward. ‘Did you see the séance advertised in this morning’s paper—with the date and location yet to be confirmed?’

‘Oh, come—no!’

Lydia raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh come no what?’

‘Table-turning and spirits?’ Gascoigne smiled. ‘A séance is an amusing foolishness—but it is not a business! You ought not to try to profit from a parlour trick! Folk get very angry when they suppose they are being cheated out of honest pay. And besides,’ he added, ‘the Church is disapproving.’

‘You speak as if the art were not an art! As if the whole business were nothing more than a swindle,’ said Lydia Wells—who was made very bored by the disapproval of the Church. ‘The realm of the paranormal is not a trick, Aubert. The ether is not a cheat.’

‘Now, come,’ Gascoigne said again. ‘This is entertainment you’re speaking of, not prophecy: let’s not go talking about realms.’

‘So you are a cynic!’ She pretended to be disappointed. ‘I would never have picked that—disillusioned, maybe; disbelieving, maybe; but tender underneath.’

‘If I am a cynic, I am a discerning cynic,’ Gascoigne said loftily. ‘I have been to several séances, Mrs. Wells; if I dismiss them as foolish superstition, I do not do it out of hand.’

She hesitated—and then her plump hand shot out, and pressed his sleeve.

‘But I am being uncourteous: the subject is of some fascination to you,’ Gascoigne said, remembering himself.

‘It’s not that.’ She stroked the fabric of his cuff a moment, and then withdrew her hand just as quickly. ‘You are not to call me Mrs. Wells—not for very much longer.’

Gascoigne bowed his head. ‘You wish to be addressed now by your maiden name?’ he asked, thinking privately that if this was true, it was a very improper wish indeed.

‘No, no.’ Lydia bit her lip, and then leaned in close and whispered, ‘I am to be married.’

‘Married?’

‘Yes—as soon as I dare; but it is a secret.’

‘A secret—from me?’

‘From everyone.’

‘I am not to know the name of your beloved?’

‘No: not you, nor anyone. It is my clandestine love affair,’ Lydia said. She giggled. ‘Look at me—like a girl of thirteen years, preparing to elope! I dare not even wear his ring—though it is a fine one: a Dunstan ruby, set in a band of Dunstan gold.’

‘I suppose I ought to offer my congratulations,’ Gascoigne said—cordially enough, but with a new reservation, for his hopes had been somewhat dashed by this news.

He felt that a shaft of possibility had closed: a light had been extinguished; a door had slammed. Virtually since he first laid eyes upon the woman, Gascoigne had fantasised that Lydia Wells might one day become his lover. He had conjured her in his cottage, had seen her shaking out her russet locks at his bedside, had watched her stoking his range in the morning, wrapped in a flannel robe; he had imagined the heady days of their early courtship, the construction of the house that they would share together, the passing years. Gascoigne dreamed all of this without shame or embarrassment, and even without conscious awareness that his mind was straying so. It had seemed, simply, natural: she was a widow, and he was a widower. They were both strangers in an unfamiliar town, and they had struck up a cordial acquaintance. It was not so very unlikely, that they might fall in love.

But now that he knew that Lydia Wells was betrothed, Gascoigne was forced to relinquish his fantasy—and to relinquish his fantasy, he had to acknowledge it, and see it for the foolishness it was. At first he felt sorry for himself, but as soon as he turned his mind upon this sorrow, he found that its shallowness amused him.

‘I am happiness itself,’ the widow said.

Gascoigne smiled. ‘What am I to call you, then, if I cannot call you Mrs. Wells?’

‘Oh, Aubert,’ said the widow. ‘We are the very best of friends. You do not have to ask. Of course, you must call me Lydia.’

(We will briefly interject with the correction that Aubert Gascoigne and Lydia Wells were not at all the very best of friends: in fact, they had known each other only three days. Gascoigne had first encountered the widow on Thursday afternoon, when the latter arrived at the Magistrate’s Court to inquire after her late husband’s fortune—a fortune that had already been found, and banked, by other men. Gascoigne filed Mrs. Wells’s request to have the sale of the cottage revoked, and over the course of this transaction, the pair fell to talking. The widow returned to the courthouse again on Friday morning, and Gascoigne, emboldened by the evident interest with which she appeared to regard him, begged to escort her to luncheon. She accepted this invitation with a coquettish astonishment, and Gascoigne, holding her parasol, accompanied her across the thoroughfare to Maxwell’s dining hall, where he ordered two plates of barley soup, the whitest bread on offer, and a small carafe of dry sherry—and then seated her in pride of place, next to the window.

It quickly transpired that Lydia Wells and Aubert Gascoigne had much to talk about, and much in common. Mrs. Wells was very curious to learn all that had happened since her late husband’s passing, a subject that naturally led Gascoigne to Anna Wetherell, and her strange brush with death in the Kaniere-road. Lydia Wells was further astonished by this—for, as she explained, Anna Wetherell was known to her. The girl had stayed some weeks at her lodging house in Dunedin, before she struck out to make her living on the Hokitika fields the previous year, and over this period the pair had become very close. It was at this point in the conversation that Lydia devised her ‘surprise’. Directly after their luncheon was cleared away, she dispatched Gascoigne to the Gridiron, where he informed Anna Wetherell that she was to be treated to a mystery shopping expedition the following afternoon, at two o’clock.)

‘If you have a fiancé—and a new enterprise,’ said Gascoigne now, ‘then perhaps I am right to hope that your sojourn in Hokitika will not be a short one?’

‘One is always right to hope,’ said Lydia Wells—who had a fine store of rhetorical set pieces just like this one, and liked to pause dramatically after uttering them.

‘Am I right to guess that your investment was made with the help of your fiancé? Perhaps he is a magnate of some kind!’

But the widow laughed. ‘Aubert,’ she said, ‘you will not draw me out!’

‘I rather thought you expected me to try.’

‘Yes—but only to try,’ the widow said. ‘Not to succeed!’

‘I fancy that is a feminine motif,’ Gascoigne said dryly.

‘Perhaps,’ the widow returned, with a little laugh. ‘But we are a discriminating sex—and I fancy that you would not have it any other way.’

What followed was a rather saccharine exchange of compliments, a game in which both the widow and the widower found themselves extremely well matched. Rather than transcribe this sentimental interchange, we will choose to talk above it, and instead describe in better detail what otherwise might be mistaken for a profound weakness in character on the Frenchman’s part.

Gascoigne was enraptured by Lydia Wells, and much admiring of the refined flamboyance of that woman’s speech and manner—but he had not put his faith in her. He had not betrayed Anna Wetherell’s confidence, and in his narration of the latter’s story to Lydia, he had made no mention of the gold that had been discovered in Anna’s orange dress the previous week, which was now wrapped in a flour sack and stowed beneath his bed. Gascoigne had also described the events of the 14th of January as if he believed that Anna had, indeed, attempted to take her life—sensing that, until a better explanation could be reached, it was prudent not to call attention to the evening’s many mysteries. He knew very well that Anna had no notion of where on earth those midnight hours had gone—or, to phrase the matter a different way, of who on earth had stolen them—and he did not wish to place her in any kind of danger. Gascoigne therefore adhered to the ‘official’ story, which was that Anna was a would-be suicide, found insensate and wretched on the side of the road. He had adopted this perspective when discussing the event with other men, and it required no great effort to maintain it here.

That Gascoigne was enraptured by Lydia Wells, and not instantly suspicious of her many caprices, is a point we cannot so easily defend. We do observe that the attraction had been formed before he even knew Lydia’s reason for inquiring at the Courthouse; it had been formed, in fact, before the widow even spoke her name. But now Gascoigne knew that Lydia bore a very mysterious relation to her late husband; now he knew that the mysterious fortune that had been discovered in the dead man’s cottage was currently in dispute. He knew that he ought not to trust her—and he knew that when he was with her, a pure and liquid adoration filled the chambers of his heart. Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own. Lydia’s was a rare and old-world glamour—and Gascoigne knew it, just as if the fact had been logically proved. He knew that her sleekly feline features had been lifted, intact, from an older, better age. He knew that the shape of her wrist and ankle were without compare, and that her voice—

But our point has already been made; we ought to return to the scene at hand.

Gascoigne had set down his glass. ‘I think,’ he was saying, ‘that it is well you are to be married. You are far too charming to be a widow.’

‘But perhaps,’ said Lydia Wells, ‘perhaps I am far too charming to be another man’s wife?’

‘Not at all,’ Gascoigne returned. ‘You are exactly as charming as another man’s wife ought to be: it is only thanks to the likes of you that men get married at all. You make the idea of marriage seem very tolerable.’

‘Aubert,’ she said. ‘You flatterer.’

‘I should like to flatter you further, by inviting you to speak upon the subject of your expertise, that I so inadvertently depreciated just now,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Come, Lydia: tell me about spirits, and about the forces of the ether, and I shall try my very best to be naïve and hopeful, and not sceptical in the slightest.’

How very lovely she was, with the muted light of the afternoon falling over her shoulder like a veil! How gorgeously the shadow filled that notch beneath her lip!

‘Firstly,’ said Lydia Wells, drawing herself up, ‘you are mistaken to think that common folk will not pay to have their fortunes told. Men get very superstitious when the stakes are high, and a goldfield is a place of great risk and great reward. Diggers will always pay good money for a tip—why, the word “fortune” is on their lips almost every day! They’ll try their luck at anything, if they think it might give them an edge upon the field. What is a speculator, anyway, but a gypsy wearing different clothes?’

Gascoigne laughed. ‘I doubt many speculators would appreciate that comparison,’ he said, ‘but, yes, I take your point, Miss Lydia: men are always happy to pay for advice. But will they trust in the efficacy of your advice—the practical efficacy, I mean? I fear it will be an extraordinary pressure—for you will have to bear up beneath the burden of proof! How will you ensure you won’t lead any one of them astray?’

‘What a terrifically dreary question,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘You doubt my affinity to my subject, I suppose.’

Gascoigne did; but he chose to dissemble for the sake of politeness. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said, ‘but I am ignorant of it. I am intrigued.’

‘I have owned a gambling house for a decade,’ the widow said. ‘My gambling wheel has stopped upon the jackpot only once in all that time, and that was because the pin jammed in the pivot, on account of grit. I had the wheel weighted in such a way that the prize nearest the jackpot always fell against the arrow. As a secondary precaution, the pegs on either side of the number were greased. The arrow always slid past, at the final moment—but so barely, and so tantalisingly, that the men could not help but clamber up and throw down their shillings for another spin.’

‘Why, Miss Lydia,’ said Gascoigne, ‘that is devilishly unfair!’

‘Not at all,’ said Lydia.

‘Of course it is!’ said Gascoigne. ‘It’s cheating!’

‘Answer me this,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Do you call a grocer a cheat, for placing the choicest apples at the back of the cart, so the blemished fruits will get chosen first?’

‘It hardly compares,’ said Gascoigne.

‘Tosh: it compares perfectly,’ said the widow. ‘The grocer is making sure of his income: for if he placed the choicest apples in front, the blemished fruits would not be bought until they had gone over to mould, and they would have to be discarded. He ensures a steady income for himself by encouraging each one of his customers to settle for a piece of fruit that is slightly—ever so slightly—defective. I must also make sure of my income, if I am to remain in business, and I do it in exactly this same way. When a gambler goes home with only a small reward—say five pounds—and a sense that he came within a hair’s breadth of a perfectly enormous fortune, it is as if he has gone home with a blemished apple. He has a modest reward, a pleasant memory of a very fine evening, and the sense of having just fallen short of something absolutely extraordinary. He’s happy—more or less. And so am I.’

Gascoigne laughed again. ‘But gambling is a vice,’ he said. ‘A blemished apple is not a vice. Forgive me: I do not mean to be dreary, but it seems that your example—like your gambling wheel—is heavily weighted to favour your own position.’