by Lily Hammond
No. The world had an Eliza-shaped place in it now. The world was inside Eliza and she was inside the world. She was a woman now. Childish things were in the past. She was a woman, and she knew what she wanted of the world.
She wanted a camera. She wanted to take pictures, to capture the things she saw – this light, for example, the liquid drape of it over her wrist. She wanted to put her pictures on walls so that she could talk to people, to say, this is what I saw when I looked.
There was a commotion downstairs, and Eliza shook herself, then left her room and went down to the kitchen, where she picked up a knife and bent to the task of peeling potatoes for their dinner.
She’d almost thought that the sun would never set. Then she was sure that Maxine would never go to her room and go to sleep. Waiting, Eliza wondered if she should just leave now anyway – Maxine wouldn’t see her if she was very quiet, creeping down the stairs and out the door.
Thinking that, Eliza put her stockings and shoes on and pulled on her coat too. It would be cool, she knew, walking around the road by the water. She wondered what the water would look like under the bowl of the night sky. What colour would it be? On the boat, the water had been dark like ink at night, unless there was a moon, in which case it was streaked with silver fire.
There was a moon tonight. Standing in her room, the house creaking and settling around her, Eliza could feel the argent light of the moon as though it flowed in her veins in the place of her blood. She imagined it there, thick and silver, like mercury. It made her feel even more strong, it made her feel invincible. She was remade, she decided.
Her hand didn’t tremble at all when she reached for the doorknob. Outside her room, there was a thin strip of light under Ruth’s bedroom door and Eliza stared at it. Why was Ruth awake? she wanted to know. Maxine was awake too. She’d heard her bumping around downstairs. Both were awake. One upstairs, one downstairs. Eliza thought of Ruth’s sadness. She hoped that Maxine would do something about it soon. She wished that Maxine would do something about it now, would come up the stairs and go in to be with Ruth, so that she could tiptoe past the line of yellow under the door and go on downstairs.
Her case bumped against the doorway and she froze, listening. She might not be able to speak, but there was nothing wrong with her ears, and she heard Maxine again, moving around. The door to Maxine’s study opened, and Maxine came out, walking to the kitchen.
Eliza eased her door shut and returned to sit on her bed, the case on the floor by her feet. She would wait until Maxine came upstairs and there was the creak of the bed in the room next to hers that Maxine and Ruth shared. She sighed without a sound.
Maxine had come to Eliza the previous afternoon, when she was in the garden picking flowers. She had a bouquet of red roses she was going to put inside for Ruth, somewhere she would see them, somewhere she would see the sun touching their petals as though in love with the deep silk of them.
Eliza had shaded her eyes with a hand and watched Maxine pick her way through the garden towards her. She wanted to speak about the Greymouth, she was sure.
‘It’s a very good opportunity,’ Maxine said, not really looking at Eliza’s face. ‘Jobs are scarce these days. They’re hard times, right now. You’re very lucky Ruth was able to pull some strings and get you a position.’
Eliza listened with only half her attention. She wasn’t going so there was no point paying much mind to Maxine’s words. Instead, she looked at Maxine, wishing she could ask her what she was going to do about Ruth’s sadness. That’s what Maxine should be bothering with, not trying to take Eliza places she wasn’t going to go. She had no intention of being a laundress anymore. She’d never asked to be one in the first place. Her mother had just taken her along and shown her what to do. But Eliza wasn’t a child anymore.
Maxine’s expression changed, and Eliza straightened, dropping her hand with the roses to her side, alert to the look suddenly on Maxine’s face, and the words coming out of her mouth. The expression and the words didn’t match, Eliza thought, and that was interesting. If she had a camera, she decided, she’d take a picture of Maxine right this minute; then she’d be able to show Maxine how she looked, and Maxine would know it didn’t match what she was saying.
She was saying that she would be coming on the train with Eliza. That she would see Eliza settled in Greymouth, then was going farther up the line, to a place that was a word Eliza had never heard before. It was just a strange jangle of sounds, but she guessed it was a place. If the Greymouth was a place, a town with a boarding house and a hospital and a laundry, this this other word was a place too, one where Maxine was going.
Eliza blinked, thinking hard. It must be to do with Ruth’s sadness, she decided. Otherwise, why would Maxine look so oddly about going to a place? She didn’t have to go work in a laundry there, get her hands rubbed raw and sore with hot water and caustic soda. She hoped it was something to do with Ruth and whatever made Ruth hunch over and hug her flat belly as though she were missing some essential part of herself.
There were steps on the stairs, finally, and Eliza held her breath, one hand pressed against her chest, and then got up and went over to the door, turning her ear toward the wood, the better to hear. The footsteps, heavy, weary, stopped on the landing, and Eliza knew without looking that they were hesitating in front of the door with the strip of yellow light under it. Then Maxine opened the bedroom door, and a moment later Eliza heard it close again. She breathed a sigh and turned, leaned against her door, and closed her eyes.
She slipped off her shoes. They were heavy, would make heavy footsteps, and she didn’t want that. She wanted to be light, fleet, slip out of the house like a shadow.
That’s what she did, case in one hand, shoes in the other, out her bedroom door, flying down the stairs, avoiding the one third from the bottom that creaked like it was in pain. She went right past the front door, which opened directly under Maxine and Ruth’s bedroom, and scuttled down the hallway to the kitchen, making her way in the darkness, the waxing light from the moon cutting her way with its steel light.
Through the wash house. Out into the night, where she stopped on the threshold and lifted her face to the sky. She could smell the garden and shivered in delight under her coat. It smelled different at night, she thought. Gazing around, it looked different too. A secret garden. She hugged the sight and scent to herself, then bent and put her shoes on, tying the thick laces before picking her way around the edge of the garden, keeping away from the front entrance, and from the gravel of the driveway as well. She walked down to the road on the grass, face turned away from the house already, looking towards the harbour.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The moon, high and fat overhead, gave him an animal cast and Eliza shied away from his leering look.
‘C’mon pretty girl,’ he said, baring his teeth in a feral smile. ‘You’re looking for a good time, out so late.’ He said it as though he’d decided it was true.
Eliza shook her head, made to walk past. He smelled of beer and tobacco, and unwashed shirts. She tucked her head down so that she wouldn’t have to look at him and stepped to the side. The main road was just ahead, she could see the welcome pools of light from its streetlamps. From there, she would just have to keep walking towards the harbour – easily done. Clemency had driven her there enough now for Eliza to know the way, well enough to find the road that curved to the left and meandered along beside the water. She thought the walk might take all night.
But the man stepped to the side at the same time as she did. ‘Whoops,’ he said, and laughed. She went to side-step him again, and he moved at the same time.
‘Look at us,’ he said, leaning in close enough for his stinking breath to billow hot against her cheek. ‘Dancing, we are. You like to dance?’
Before she could shake her head and turn away, he had grabbed her, one meaty hand around her waist, pulling her close up against himself so that she could feel the sharp bite of his belt against her stomach wh
ere her coat was open.
She felt more than that too, beneath his belt, poking against her, and she squirmed, sudden panic turning her mind whiter than the moon.
‘Ah,’ he breathed against her ear. ‘You little beauty, you do like to dance, don’t ya?’ He moved his hips, grinding himself against her. He clamped his other hand flat against her back, moving the first downwards, to cup and squeeze her bottom. Somehow, his hand was under her coat, hot through the flimsy cotton of her dress and drawers. She arched her back, urgently struggling to get away, her stomach dropping, churning. She thought she might throw up.
There were voices not far away, and Eliza heard them dimly. She dropped her case and reached out a hand toward them, spreading her fingers wide, as though trying to pluck the people out of the night that they might come to her rescue. She heard someone laugh.
‘Don’t worry, lass,’ the man said, and he whirled her around, slamming her against a wall. Her head hit the bricks and bounced off, and her mouth filled with blood where she bit her tongue. It flooded her throat with its metallic taste, and she coughed, retching.
‘Now there, stop struggling, will ya.’ The man growled at her, pushing his way inside her coat. He grasped a breast. ‘Cor, this is nice. Thought you might be a bit bony, but not everywhere, eh gorgeous?’ He snorted and stuck his head in against Eliza’s neck, sniffing at her skin as his other hand groped for the hem of her skirt, found it, and wrenched it upwards.
‘Stop struggling,’ he repeated. ‘My money’s as good as the next fellas and girls like you can’t afford to be choosy.’ He pulled his hips back and fumbled with the closure on his trousers.
Eliza opened her mouth and screamed, but nothing came out but a whistling, panicked breath. He was still pressing her back to the wall, one hand on her breast, his face against her neck but she could feel him scrabbling around inside his pants, and then his other hand was tugging at her drawers, fingernails scraping against the tender skin of her thigh, and then her bloomers were loose, and she knew he had pulled the buttons right off.
This was nothing like the way Clemency had touched her, and Eliza struggled again, squirming away from him, the brick scraping the back of her head again. She knew what he was after, this foul-smelling man. She had seen the other women when she was walking down the street, standing there whistling at the men, cupping their breasts and lifting them as though offering them to the men that stopped and talked to them, standing right up close, hands wandering while they negotiated.
Eliza knew some women laid with men for money. Her mother had told her this, as a warning to work hard, to get up and go to the hospital laundry even when Eliza wanted to lie in bed instead. They had come to this strange country because her mother didn’t want them to end up in the workhouse or on the street.
Her mother needn’t have told her though. Eliza had learnt first-hand that she could trade her body for money, if she so pleased. She’d never pleased, had fought off the neighbourhood boys who had groped laughingly at her, offering the coins from their pockets in exchange for poking their poles inside her. She’d pushed them away and run then, every time, hearing their laughter as she escaped, knowing they thought it was all she was worth because she couldn’t talk.
Twisting, she managed to land a sharp elbow in the man’s gut and his breath went oomph in her ear. But he loosened his grip on her, just a little. Just enough, and she squirmed away from him again, slamming the heel of her hand into his face this time. He fell back, his hand no longer attempting to burrow down under her clothes and going to his nose instead.
‘Bitch,’ he said, and it was strangely conversational as he fell back from her, almost querulous. ‘You’ve made my nose bleed.’
Eliza didn’t care. She was glad. She tried to run from him, tripped off the kerb and went sprawling onto the road as her bloomers with their buttons missing tangled around her knees. She scooted back, trying desperately to draw them up, trying to get to her feet, trying to get away.
He stared at her, and his eyes were wide over the hand holding his nose. Then he stalked over to her and kicked her, planting his boot into her side.
‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Fuck off. There are a dozen more where you came from – and they’re not too good to take my money.’ He dropped his hand, which was black with blood in the moonlight, and sniffed loudly, then spat, hawking a mouthful of blood onto Eliza. It landed on her skirt with a dull splat. She scrambled to her feet.
The man made a sharp move towards her, and Eliza didn’t wait to see what he was going to do, she turned and ran, her breath harsh and frightened in her own ears, a hand clutching at her clothes, holding them up.
Someone laughed at her as she ran past, sending up a whooping bray into the night. Eliza ran toward the streetlights, her heart thumping against her ribs.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The telephone rang. Clemency looked out into the hallway in surprise, then stood up.
‘Excuse me, please,’ she said to Libby, and walked out of the breakfast room to answer the machine.
‘Port Chalmers 152,’ she said, holding the heavy handset to her ear.
‘Clemency? That you?’
She recognised the voice. ‘Maxine. What’s wrong? You sound like you’ve been running.’
There was an explosion of breath over the telephone line. ‘I’ve been looking all over the blasted place.’
Standing in her hallway, Clemency lifted her head at the first patters of rain against the window at the end of the passage. She’d hoped the day would be fine; train journeys were so dreary when the weather was poor.
She turned her attention back to Maxine. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Can’t find Eliza, damnit,’ Maxine said. ‘You haven’t stolen her away again, have you?’
Clemency frowned down at the telephone set. ‘I have not,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen her or spoken to her. And why would I when we’re due to leave in two hours?’
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. ‘Well, the kid’s not here.’
‘Well, she’s not here either,’ Clemency said, rubbing at her arm with the hand that wasn’t holding the telephone receiver. ‘Are you sure she hasn’t just gone for a walk somewhere?’
‘With Eliza, I’m not sure of anything,’ Maxine told her. ‘She’s in a world of her own, that girl. Anyway, she appears to have gone walkabout this morning, and I just wondered if you’d swooped down and picked her up again.’
‘No,’ Clemency said. ‘Not me.’ She glanced out the window again, heart sinking as the wind picked up and splattered the rain against the glass.
‘All right,’ Maxine said on a sigh. ‘Well, it’s a problem.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m glad you’ve been keeping away from her.’ Her voice was lower, almost whispering.
Clemency leaned against the wall and thought of Eliza, of her bright, inquisitive gaze, her questing fingers, and she shivered. ‘It’s not that I’m so much keeping away from her,’ she found herself saying, ‘as you’re sending her away.’
‘And good thing too,’ Maxine grumbled. ‘She’s barely any help around the house, wandering around in a dream all the time. Yesterday, do you know what she did?’
Clemency suppressed a smile. ‘What did she do?’ Maxine and Eliza were like oil and water, she thought.
‘Only filled the house with bloody flowers.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Humph. I sent the kid out to thin the beans and she comes back with arms full of flowers, spends the next two hours arranging them all over the house. Looks like there’s been a funeral here or something.’
‘Or a wedding,’ Clemency said. ‘I think it sounds lovely.’
‘The roses looked good enough on the bushes.’
Clemency didn’t reply. In the dining room, Libby sidled away from the door and regained her seat, ears burning. What had Clemency meant by it’s not that I’m so much keeping away from her as you’re sending her away? She sat at the table looking at the cru
mbs on her plate, brow furrowed, thinking about it. Was Clemency talking about the mystery woman she’d said she’d been seeing?
That was the only thing that made sense to Libby, but why would whoever Clemency was talking to be sending this person away? She picked up her coffee, aggravated that it didn’t seem to make any sense. She contemplated asking Clemency about it, but so far her overtures in that direction had been rebuffed.
And it hadn’t felt important, either, since here she was, staying in Clemency’s house, sitting across the breakfast table from her. Libby sipped at the coffee, one ear still perked towards the hallway where Clemency was still at the telephone.
Libby had been told at the hotel the day before that there was a telephone call for her, and she’d followed the bellhop downstairs, curiosity burning. It wouldn’t be her grandmother calling her – her grandmother wasn’t the slightest bit interested in Libby’s arrival in the city and showed no inclination toward another visit from her granddaughter.
So, when Libby had picked up the receiver and spoken into it, she’d been expecting the caller to be Clemency. She knew few other people in the city, as yet.
What she hadn’t expected was the offer Clemency had telephoned to make, and she’d listened to it in growing excitement, a warm flush spreading up across her chest and neck and over her cheeks. Yes, she agreed, she’d love to take up Clemency’s offer. Clemency was being very generous.
When she’d hung up the receiver, she’d touched her palms to her cheeks, feeling the burning heat there, and the jumping elation inside her. She would be staying at Clemency’s house. The woman was coming to pick her up in only an hour. Libby could barely believe her luck. Yes, Clemency was going away for a while, and so wouldn’t actually be in the house while she was there, but still. She knew it was the kind gesture of a friend, but perhaps it could be more?