Текст книги "The Luminaries"

Автор книги: Eleanor Catton

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Текущая страница: 46 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

THE HOUSE OF MANY WISHES

In which Lydia Wells is as good as her word; Anna Wetherell receives an unexpected visitor; and we learn the truth about Elizabeth Mackay.

The face that number 35, Cumberland-street presented to the thoroughfare was oddly blank: pale clapboard siding; a mullioned shop-window, papered over with butcher’s paper; a pair of curtained sash windows on the floor above. The establishments on either side—Number 37 was a bootmaker’s, and number 33, a shipping agency—had been built very close, masking any sense, from the street, of interior proportion. Walking past it, one might even have presumed the building to be unoccupied, for there were no signs or legends above the doorway, nothing on the porch, and no card in the plate above the knocker.

Mrs. Wells opened the front door with her own key. She led Anna down the silent passage to the rear of the house, where a narrow staircase led to the floor above. On the upstairs landing, which was as clean and blank as its counterpart below, she produced a second key from her reticule, unlocked a second door, and, smiling, gestured for Anna to step inside.

A more worldly soul than Anna might have formed an immediate conclusion from the scene that greeted her: the heavy lace curtains; the redundant upholstery; the heady scent of liquor and perfume; the beaded portiere, currently tied back against the doorframe to show the dimly lit bedchamber beyond. But Anna was not worldly, and if she was surprised to encounter a scene of such sweet-smelling, cushioned luxury at a boarding house for girls, she did not express it aloud. On the walk from the quay to Cumberland-street Mrs. Wells had exhibited a great range of refined tastes and particular opinions, and by the time they reached their destination Anna felt more than happy to defer to them—her own opinions seeming, all of a sudden, very pale and feeble by contrast.

‘You see that I take very good care of my girls,’ said her hostess. Anna replied that the room was exceedingly handsome, and at this encouragement Mrs. Wells proposed a turn of it, directing Anna’s attention, as they walked, to several ingenuities of decoration and placement, so that her compliments might be hitherto more specifically bestowed.

Anna’s chest had been delivered as promised, and was installed already at the foot of the bed—a signal that she took to mean the bed was intended to be hers. It had a handsome headboard, the wooden frame of which was all but obscured behind a great mound of white pillows, stacked in piles of three, and it was much broader and higher than the cot in which she habitually slept, at home. She wondered whether she would be required to share a bed with someone else: it seemed much too big for one person. Opposite the bed stood a high-sided copper bath, draped with towels, and beside it, a heavy bell-pull with a tasselled end. Mrs. Wells pulled this now, and from somewhere on the floor below there came a muted jingle. When the maid appeared, Mrs. Wells ordered hot water to be sent up from the kitchen, and a plate of luncheon to follow it. The maid hardly glanced at Anna, who was very grateful to be ignored, and relieved when the maid left to heat the water on the kitchen stove.

As soon as she was gone Lydia Wells turned to Anna, smiled again, and begged to take her leave.

‘I have appointments uptown which I must keep; but I shall be back in time for supper, and will expect us to take it together. You may ask Lucy for whatever you desire in the world. If she can find it, it will be found. Stay in the tub as long as you like, and use anything on the washstand that strikes your fancy. I insist that you make yourself entirely at home.’

Anna Wetherell did just that. She washed her hair with a lavender-scented lotion, and scrubbed every inch of her body with store-bought soap, and stayed in the water for the better part of an hour. After she had dressed again—turning her stockings inside-out to show their cleaner side—she spent a long time at the looking glass, fixing her hair. There were several bottles of perfume on the washstand: she sniffed all of them, returned to the first, and dabbed a little on her wrists and beneath her ears.

The maid had left a cold luncheon on the table below the window, the plate covered with a piece of cloth. Anna lifted the cloth aside, and saw a mound of ham, shaved very nicely, a thick slice of pease pudding, evidently fried, a yellow scone spread with butter and jam, and two pickled eggs. She sat, seized the knife and fork laid out for her, and fell upon it—relishing the flavours, after so many tasteless meals at sea.

Once the plate was clean, she sat wondering for some minutes whether she ought to ring the bell for the service to be cleared away: would it be more imperious to ring, or not to ring? Eventually she decided not to. She got up from the table and went to the window, where she drew the curtains, and, feeling very contented, stood awhile to watch the traffic in the street. The clock had struck three before she heard any sound from the floor below: sudden voices in the passage, and then footsteps mounting the stairs, and then a brisk two-knuckled knock at the door.

She had barely time to rise before the door was flung open, and in strode a tall, very dirty man, dressed in yellow moleskin trousers and a faded coat. When he saw Anna, he came up short.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Beg your pardon.’

‘Good afternoon,’ Anna said.

‘You one of Lydia’s girls?’

‘Yes.’

‘New girl?’

‘I arrived today.’

‘You and I both,’ said the man. He had sandy hair and a slightly grizzled look. ‘Good afternoon to you.’

‘Can I help you?’

He grinned at this. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for the mistress. Is she about?’

‘She has appointments uptown.’

‘What time will she be back?’

‘She said by suppertime,’ Anna said.

‘Well: have you any appointments, before then?’

‘No,’ Anna said.

‘Good,’ the man said. ‘Mind if I reserve the next dance?’

Anna did not know what to say to this. ‘I’m not sure if I ought to receive company when Mrs. Wells is out.’

‘Mrs. Wells,’ said the man, and laughed. ‘Sounds almost respectable, when you put it like that.’ He reached back and closed the door behind him. ‘Crosbie’s my name. What’s yours?’

‘Miss Anna Wetherell,’ said Anna, with increasing alarm.

He was already moving to the sideboard. ‘Care for a drop of something, Miss Anna Wetherell?’

‘No, thank you.’

He picked up a bottle and tilted it at her. ‘No because you don’t have a taste for liquor, or no because you’re being polite?’

‘I only just arrived.’

‘You’ve told me so once already, my girl, and anyway, that doesn’t answer the question I asked.’

‘I wouldn’t want to take advantage of Mrs. Wells’s hospitality,’ said Anna, with a slight emphasis of disapproval—as though to communicate that he ought not to, either.

Crosbie uncorked the bottle, sniffed, and recorked it. ‘Oh, there’s no such thing as hospitality,’ he said, returning the bottle to the tray, and selecting another. ‘You’ll be billed for everything you touch in this room, and quick as thieves. You mark my words.’

‘No,’ Anna said. ‘It’s all been paid for. And Mrs. Wells has been wonderfully hospitable. I’m staying at her personal request.’

He was amused by this. ‘Oh yes? Nearest and dearest, are you? Old friends?’

Anna frowned. ‘We met at the quay this afternoon.’

‘Just by accident, I suppose.’

‘Yes. There was a young woman—a Miss Mackay—who didn’t make the sailing. Her cousin’s cousin. When Miss Mackay didn’t show, Mrs. Wells invited me in place of her. The room and board is all paid in advance.’

‘Oho,’ said the man, pouring out a glassful of liquor.

‘Have you just returned from the fields?’ said Anna, stalling for time.

‘I have,’ said the man. ‘Up in the high country. Arrived back this morning.’ He drank, expelled a breath, and then said, ‘No. It’s not right if I don’t tell you. You’ve been euchred.’

‘I’ve been what?’

‘Euchred.’

‘I don’t know what that means, Mr. Crosbie.’

He smiled at her mistake, but did not correct her. ‘There’s always a Miss Mackay,’ he explained. ‘It’s a line she spins. So you believe her, and you follow her home, and before you know it, you’re beholden. Aren’t you, now? She’s given you a fine meal and a hot bath and nothing but the milk of kindness, and what have you given her? Oh’—he wagged his finger—‘but there will be something, Miss Anna Wetherell. There will be something that you can give.’ He seemed to perceive Anna’s anxiety, for he added, in a gentler tone, ‘Here’s something you ought to know. There’s no charity in a gold town. If it looks like charity, look again.’

‘Oh,’ said Anna.

He drained his glass and set it down. ‘Are you partial to a drink or not?’

‘Not today, thank you.’

He reached into his pocket, withdrew something, and then held up a closed fist. ‘Can you guess what I’m holding?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Go on. Have a guess.’

‘A coin?’

‘Better than a coin. Guess again.’

‘I can’t think,’ she said, in panic.

He opened his fist to reveal a nugget of gold around the size and shape of a chestnut, laughed again at her expression, and then tossed it to her. She caught it in the heels of her hands. ‘That’s enough in gold to buy every last bottle on this tray, with pounds left over,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, if you’ll keep me company until the mistress comes back. How about it? You’ll have a heads-up on those debts, when they start mounting.’

‘I’ve never touched a piece of gold,’ Anna said, turning it over. It was heavier than she had imagined it would be, and more elemental. It seemed to turn dull in her hands.

‘Come here,’ said Crosbie. He took the brandy bottle to the little sofa, sat down, and patted the space beside him. ‘Share a drink with a fellow, my girl. I’ve been walking for two weeks, and I’m thirsty as hell, and I want something nice to look at. Come here. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Mrs. Lydia Wells.’

CRUX

In which two verdicts are delivered, and the justice fits the sentence to the crime.

Te Rau Tauwhare had not been invited to testify at either trial. He had watched the day’s proceedings from the rear of the courtroom, his expression sombre, his back against the wall. When Justice Kemp called for a final recess, giving the order for all the day’s witnesses to be remanded in custody, Tauwhare left the courthouse with the rest. Outside he saw the armoured carriage, waiting to transport the felons back to the gaol, and went to greet the duty sergeant, who was standing by.

‘Hello, Mr. Tauwhare,’ the sergeant said.

‘Hello.’

‘How’s your friend Staines doing, then? Kicking up his heels in there?’

‘Yes,’ said Tauwhare.

‘I popped my head in. Couldn’t hear much. Good show, is it?’

‘Very good,’ Tauwhare said.

‘Gov. Shepard got a rap on the knuckles this morning, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘I would have liked to have seen that,’ the sergeant said.

Just then the rear door of the courthouse opened and the bailiff appeared in the doorway. ‘Drake!’ he called.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant, standing tall.

‘Justice wants Francis Carver escorted to Seaview,’ the bailiff said. ‘Special orders. You’re to take him up the hill, and then come straight back again.’

Drake ran to open the doors of the carriage. ‘Only Carver?’

‘Only Carver,’ the bailiff said. ‘Mind you’re back in time for the verdict. Straight up to Seaview, and straight back again.’

‘Can do.’

‘Quick about it—he’s coming now.’

Francis Carver was brought out into the yard, and bundled into the carriage. His hands had been cuffed behind him. Inside the carriage, Drake produced a second set of cuffs from his belt, and used these to cuff Carver’s linked wrists to a clew that had been fixed to the wall behind the driver’s seat.

‘That’s not going anywhere,’ he said cheerfully, rattling the clew to prove his point. ‘There’s an inch of iron between you and the world, Mr. Carver. Hoo! What have you done, that they don’t trust you with all the rest? Last I checked, you were a bloody witness; next minute, you’re in irons!’

Carver said nothing.

‘One hour,’ the bailiff said, and returned inside.

Drake jumped out of the carriage and closed the doors. ‘Hi, Mr. Tauwhare,’ he said, as he set the latch. ‘Care for a dash up the hill and back? You’ll be down in time for the verdict.’

Tauwhare hesitated.

‘What do you say?’ the sergeant said. ‘Beautiful day for a ride—and we’ll pick up bit of speed, coming down.’

Still Tauwhare hesitated. He was staring at the latch upon the carriage door.

‘How about it?’

‘No,’ Tauwhare said at last.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Drake, shrugging. He clambered up onto the driver’s seat, picked up the reins, and urged the horses; the carriage rattled away.

‘Mr. Emery Staines. You plead guilty to having falsified the records of the Aurora goldmine in order to avoid share payments owing to Mr. Francis Carver, at a value of fifty percent net profit per annum, and to avoid a bonus payment owing to John Long Quee, at an undisclosed value. You plead guilty to having embezzled a great quantity of raw gold, found by John Long Quee upon the Aurora, which has since been valued at £4096. You admit that you thieved this gold from the Aurora and buried it in the Arahura Valley, with the purpose of concealment. You also plead guilty to dereliction, stating that you have been incapacitated for the past two months by excessive and prolonged consumption of opium.’

The justice laid his papers aside, and folded his hands together.

‘Your counsel, Mr. Staines,’ he said, ‘has done a very good job of painting Mr. Carver in a poor light this afternoon. Notwithstanding his performance, however, the fact remains that provocation to break the law is not licence to break the law: your poor opinion of Mr. Carver does not give you the right to determine what he does, or does not, deserve.

‘You did not witness the assault against Miss Wetherell first-hand, and nor, it seems, did anybody else; therefore you cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether Mr. Carver truly was the author of that assault, or indeed, if an assault took place at all. Of course the loss of any child is a tragedy, and tragedy cannot be mitigated by circumstance; but in adjudicating your crime, Mr. Staines, we must put aside the tragic nature of the event, and consider it purely as a provocation—an indirect provocation, I should say—for your having committed the rather more cold-blooded crimes of embezzlement and fraud, in retaliation. Yes, you had provocation to dislike Mr. Carver, to resent Mr. Carver, even to despise him; but I feel that I state a very obvious point when I say that you might have brought your grievance to the attention of the Hokitika police, and saved us all a great deal of bother.

‘Your guilty plea does you credit. I also acknowledge that you have shown courtesy and humility in your responses this morning. All this suggests contrition, and deference to the proper execution of the law. Your charges, however, show a selfish disregard for contractual obligation, a capricious and decadent temperament, and a dereliction of duty, not only to your claims, but to your fellow men. Your poor opinion of Mr. Carver, however justified that opinion might be, has led you to take the law into your own hands on more than one occasion, and in more than one respect. In light of this I consider that it will do you a great deal of good to put away your grand philosophy for a time, and learn to walk in another man’s shoes.

‘Mr. Carver has been a shareholder of the Aurora for nine months. He has fulfilled his contractual obligation to you, and he has been ill rewarded. Emery Staines, I hereby sentence you to nine months’ servitude, with labour.’

Staines’s face betrayed nothing at all. ‘Yes, sir.’

The justice turned to Anna.

‘Miss Anna Wetherell,’ he said. ‘You have pleaded not guilty to all charges brought to bear against you, and in a civilised court we hold to the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty. I am sensible of the fact that aspersions cast by Mr. Moody upon Governor Shepard are aspersions only; however they have been duly recorded by this court, and may be productive in the future, pending investigations made upon Governor Shepard and others. In the meantime, I do not see that there is sufficient evidence to prove your guilt. You are acquitted of all charges. You shall be released from gaol, effective instant. I trust that from here you will continue on the righteous path to sobriety, chastity, and other virtues of a civilised kind; needless to say that I never wish to see you in this courtroom again, on any charge, least of all a charge of public intoxication and disorderly behaviour. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ He turned to the barristers’ bench. ‘Now,’ he said heavily, but before he got any further, there came the sound of shouting in the street, and a terrible crash, and the high whinny of panicked horses—and then a terrible thump on the courthouse door, as though someone had thrown their bodily weight against it.

‘What’s going on?’ said the justice, frowning.

Moody had started up: he heard shouting from the porch, and a great clatter.

‘Open the door, someone. See what’s happening,’ the justice said.

The door was thrown open.

‘Sergeant Drake,’ exclaimed the justice. ‘What is it?’

The sergeant’s eyes were wild. ‘It’s Carver!’ he cried.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead!’

‘What?’

‘Some point between here and Seaview—someone must have opened the doors—and I never noticed. I was driving. I opened the doors to unload him—and there he was—and he’s dead!’

Moody whipped about, half expecting that Mrs. Carver might have fallen into a faint; but she had not. She was looking at Drake, white-faced. Quickly, Moody scanned the faces around her. All the witnesses had been remanded during the recess, including those who had testified in the morning: none of them had left the Courthouse. Shepard was there—and Lauderback—and Frost—and Löwenthal, and Clinch, and Mannering, and Quee, and Nilssen, and Pritchard, and Balfour, and Gascoigne, and Devlin. Who was missing?

‘He’s right outside!’ cried Drake, throwing out his arm. ‘His body—I came right back—I couldn’t—it wasn’t—’

The justice raised his voice above the commotion. ‘He took his own life?’

‘Hardly,’ cried Drake, his voice cracking into a sob. ‘Hardly!’

The crowd began crushing through the doors, past him.

‘Sergeant Drake,’ shouted the justice. ‘How in all heaven did Francis Carver die?’

Drake was now lost in the crowd. His voice floated up: ‘Somebody bashed his head in!’

The justice’s face had turned purple. ‘Who?’ he roared. ‘Who did it?’

‘I’m telling you I don’t know!’

There came a terrible shriek from the street, and then shouting; the courthouse emptied. Mrs. Carver, watching the last of the crowd fight its way through the doorway, brought her hands up to her mouth.

COMBUST

In which Mrs. Wells receives a false impression, and Francis Carver relays important news.

While Anna Wetherell entertained ‘Mr. Crosbie’ at the House of Many Wishes on Cumberland-street, Lydia Wells was doing some entertaining of her own. It was her habit, in the afternoons, to take her almanacs and star charts to the Hawthorn Hotel upon George-street, where she set up shop in a corner of the dining room, and offered to tell the fortunes of diggers and travellers newly arrived. Her sole customer, that afternoon, had been a golden-haired boy in a felt cap who, as it turned out, had also arrived on the steamer Fortunate Wind. He was a voluble subject, and seemed both delighted and fascinated by Mrs. Wells’s affinity for the arcane; his enthusiasm was flattering, and inclined her to be generous with her prognostications. By the time his natal chart was drawn, his past and present canvassed, and his future foretold, it was coming on four o’clock.

She looked up to see Francis Carver striding across the dining room towards her.

‘Edward,’ she said, to the golden-haired boy, ‘be a darling, would you, and ask the waiter to wrap up a pie with a hot-water crust? Tell him to put it on my account; I’ll take it home for my dinner.’

The boy obliged.

‘I’ve just had some good news,’ said Carver, when the boy was gone.

‘What is it?’

‘Lauderback’s on his way.’

‘Ah,’ said Lydia Wells.

‘He must have seen the shipping receipt from Danforth at long last. I hear from Billy Bruce that he’s bought his passage on the Active, sailing out of Akaroa. He arrives on the twelfth of May, and he sends an advance message that Godspeed is not to depart until then.’

‘Three weeks away.’

‘We’ve got him, Greenway. Like a fish in a trap, we’ve got him.’

‘Poor Mr. Lauderback,’ said Mrs. Wells, vaguely.

‘You might step over to the naval club this week and make an offer to the boys. A free night of craps, or double the jackpot, or a girl with every spin of the wheel. Something to tempt Raxworthy away from the ship that night, so that I can get a chance to get at Lauderback alone.’

‘I will go to the club in the morning,’ said Mrs. Wells. She began to tidy her books and charts away. ‘Poor Mr. Lauderback,’ she said again.

‘He made his own bed,’ said Carver, watching her.

‘Yes, he did; but you and I warmed the sheets for him.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for a coward,’ said Carver. ‘Least of all a coward with money to spare.’

‘I pity him.’

‘Why? Because of the bastard? I’d sooner feel sorry for the bastard. Lauderback’s had nothing but good luck from start to finish. He’s a made man.’

‘He is; and yet he is pitiable,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘He is so ashamed, Francis. Of Crosbie, of his father, of himself. I cannot help but feel pity for a man who is ashamed.’

‘No chance of Wells turning up unexpectedly, is there?’

‘You talk as if he and I were intimates,’ snapped Mrs. Wells. ‘I can’t answer for him; I certainly can’t control his every move.’

‘How long since he was last in town?’

‘Months.’

‘Does he write before he comes home?’

‘Good Lord,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘No, he doesn’t write.’

‘Is there any way you can make sure he keeps away? It wouldn’t do for him to come face to face with Lauderback—not at the eleventh hour.’

‘A drink will always tempt him—whatever the hour.’

Carver grinned. ‘Send him a mixed crate in the post? Set him up with a tally at the Diggers Arms?’

‘That, in fact, is a rather good idea.’ She saw the boy coming back from the kitchens with the pie wrapped in paper, and rose from the table. ‘I must be getting back now. I shall call on you tomorrow.’

‘I’ll be waiting,’ Carver said.

‘Thank you, Edward,’ said Mrs. Wells to the boy, taking the pie. ‘And goodbye. I could wish good fortune upon you, but that would be a waste of a wish, would it not?’

The boy laughed.

Carver was smiling too. ‘Did you tell his fortune, then?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘He is to become excessively rich.’

‘Is he, now? Like all the rest?’

‘Not like all the rest,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Exceptionally rich. Goodbye, Francis.’

‘I’ll be seeing you,’ said Carver.

‘Goodbye, Mrs. Wells,’ said the boy.

She swept from the room, and the two men gazed after her. When she was gone Carver tilted his head at the boy. ‘Your name’s Edward?’

‘Actually—no, it isn’t,’ said the boy, looking a little shamefaced. ‘I made the choice to travel incognito, as you might say. My father always told me, when it comes to whores and fortune tellers, never give your real name.’

Carver nodded. ‘That’s sense.’

‘I don’t know about the whores part,’ the boy went on. ‘It grieves me to think of my father using them—I feel a kind of repugnance about it, out of loyalty to my mother, I suppose. But I like the telling fortunes part. It was rather a thrill, to use another man’s name. It made me feel invisible, somehow. Or doubled—as though I had split myself in two.’

Carver glanced at him, and then, after a moment, put out his hand. ‘Francis Carver’s my name.’

‘Emery Staines,’ said the boy.