All I See Is You

by Lily Hammond

  With a sigh, Clemency looked down at her coffee, then up at the woman who was the closest thing to a mother she’d ever know. Riley was right – she deserved frankness from Clemency.

  ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her to go, you’re right. This is me being almost purely selfish. I want her around. She’s the first woman I’ve met in too long who has stirred my interest and my passions.’ She paused and closed her eyes for a moment, took a sip of coffee, and then raised her head again. ‘There’s something about her, Riley, and everyone needs to look properly at her and not just dismiss her as half-witted because she cannot speak.’

  The breeze gusted suddenly, and above Clemency, the trees rattled their branches as if in agreement. Swallowing, Clemency cradled her coffee cup in her hands and continued.

  ‘She’s smart as a whip, Riley. And so curious about everything. If you saw the way she looks at things – not just glances, but really looks – you’d know she has so much potential.’ Clemency paused, realising something that made stomach flip in sudden excitement. When she spoke again her mouth was dry and the words tripped in a hurried tumult out of her mouth.

  ‘I told Maxine on the spur of the moment that Eliza could be my assistant – but you know what? I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to teach her to use a camera.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think she will come up with fascinating images. She notices things, Riley. She really sees things. Probably because she can’t speak, and because she’s seen so little, I don’t know – but I do know the way she looks at things is rare and special.’ She paused for breath. ‘And I’m not going to let her go back to the drudgery of working in a laundry and barely seeing the light of day.’ A slow dawning smile curved her lips. ‘I want to give her the gift of the world. I want to give her a way to communicate.’

  Riley stared at Clemency for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘So sleeping with the girl has nothing much to do with it?’

  Clemency grinned. ‘It has a great deal to do with it, and we both know that. I said she stirred my passions as well as my interest, did I not?’

  ‘You sound awfully taken by her.’

  Clemency thought about it before answering. ‘I am,’ she said slowly, at last. She pressed a hand to her heart. ‘She touches me – here.’

  They looked at each other and the moment stretched between them. The sun inched higher over the garden and its golden warmth wrapped around the lime trees, whose fruit smelled suddenly glorious on the breeze.

  ‘You’d be as well off taking her to the hospital,’ Riley declared. She accepted the situation, had known in her heart that it would more than likely come to this – and here they were. She glanced toward the house, where Libby Armstrong was still asleep in one of the guest bedrooms – or at least, Riley prayed she was asleep, and that Clemency and the girl had had the good grace to be quiet in their love-making. She narrowed her eyes at Clemency. Everything about her said she’d spent the night doing whatever it was that two women did together. Riley imagined it was near enough to what a man and a woman did when they lay together, and she was familiar enough with that, from the years she’d kept Clemency’s own father’s bed warm.

  ‘Giving her a way to express herself is all well and good – and I think it’s a worthy thing, in all – but be practical too.’ Riley gave Clemency a pointed look, ignoring how Clemency’s hair stuck up on end. ‘Find out why she cannot speak. Has she even ever seen a doctor about it?’

  Clemency stood stock still. She thought she would probably have come to the same idea, but she was furiously glad Riley had thought of it so soon. Leaning over, she kissed Riley’s soft cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I will call Elspeth straight away. She will know who Eliza should see and may even look her over herself.’

  Riley watched the animation on Clemency’s face and sighed. Clemency was right – this was the first time in too long she had been taken in this way. In any way, really. And truthfully, they couldn’t all be concerned over Clemency’s deepening loneliness, then refuse to be glad when she met someone who relieved it. Even if only temporarily.

  ‘That will be good, then,’ she said, and made to go towards the house, then stopped to rest a hand on Clemency’s shoulder for a moment. ‘But for goodness sakes, Clemency, do something about your hair before Libby sees you.’

  Clemency had meant to take a tray with coffee into Eliza’s room, and with Riley’s words ringing in her ears, she still did so, but tried for a little more discretion that she’d probably have done five minutes before.

  Eliza beamed at her from the bed, holding the sheet up to cover her breasts. Clemency put the tray down on a little table by the window and looked at her, narrowing her eyes in assessment, then breaking out in a grin as her heart leapt at the sight of Eliza there, all bright eyes and hair and creamy skin.

  ‘You look none the worse for your fever,’ Clemency said. ‘How is your side this morning? I’m afraid I might have got a little carried away during the night and not treated you with due care.’ She kept her voice low, acutely aware of Libby in the next room, and hoping that Libby hadn’t been woken during the night by any sounds of lovemaking from the room next door. Her skin burned dully at the thought.

  Eliza dropped the sheet tucked under her arms and twisted so that she could look at the bruise. She pressed exploratory fingers to it and winced. It hurt.

  Clemency came and sat on the bed and looked at the bruise that radiated up and over Eliza’s ribs. Just the sight of it made her clench her fists in anger. ‘I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did this,’ she hissed. ‘Does it hurt too much? I’ll get some more arnica cream from Riley for it after we’ve had coffee. Riley makes her own, and it does wonders.’

  Eliza lifted her gaze and nodded at Clemency, then leaned forward and picked up Clemency’s hand, bringing it up to her mouth and grazing the knuckles with her lips.

  They looked at each other wordlessly for a long moment, smiling, their bodies alive with a leaping, rushing pleasure, and both simply marvelling over the other.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Maxine looked down at the infant and shook her head. Not because he wasn’t perfect – he was. Not because he also wasn’t absolutely beautiful – he was that too. He stared back at her with his four-month-old gaze that looked to her like it held the wisdom of a hundred years instead, and his face blurred. She lifted a hand and swiped away the tears, only to find more took their place, and a moment later they streamed down her face.

  ‘He’s a sweet little p̅ep̅e, that one,’ Aunty Hinemoa said, stamping her feet in the sun. They were having a good summer this year, and in the rivers the salmon were running, and the lake was full with trout twice the length of her hand. It was a good year all right, despite The Depression. She sniffed, pitying those who didn’t live by the river. ‘And you go on and cry, Whina,’ she said. ‘You go on and cry. Every p̅ep̅e should be blessed with their mother’s tears.’

  That made Maxine cry all the harder, and she wished Ruth were here with her. She’d made a mistake, she realised, keeping this from Ruth. She cleared her throat and spoke through the curtain of tears, while in her arms, the little boy goggled at her with his wide brown eyes and gripped her finger as though staking his claim to her already.

  ‘I should have brought Ruth,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, Whina,’ Aunty Hinemoa said, using Maxine’s second name, Whina, which translated in English to ‘helper’. Maxine never heard her Maori name without thinking how prescient her mother had been in bestowing it upon her. Or did, she wondered sometimes, a name align the person to it? She’d never quite decided.

  ‘She will be at home worrying,’ Maxine said. ‘I need to tell her.’ She thought perhaps she ought to take one of the ponies to town later that afternoon, go into the local hotel there, and use their telephone.

  Hinemoa patted her great niece on the shoulder. The girl worried too much, she thought. Probably came from h
er p̅akeh̅a father, although he’d been a good man, had made Maxine’s mother, M̅akerete, happy. But he’d been a city man, and cities bred worry, she thought.

  ‘You have room for him?’ she asked, nodding her chin at the infant. ‘Your big house – it isn’t too crowded?’ She knew about the women Whina took in, along with her wife, and thought of it with satisfaction. The little one would be going to a good place. Ruth and Whina had good hearts, and that was the most necessary thing, she knew, after a long lifetime of experience. Lead with your heart – that’s what she taught the little ones that ran around there. Most of them were cheeky little buggers, but most all of them were good kids too, big-hearted.

  ‘You’ll grow him right,’ she said, patting Whina on the arm this time. ‘His mother insists on him being a city man, says she’s done with the dirt and the endless river, river, river.’ Hinemoa cackled with laugher, knowing something the young woman going to the city to study to be a doctor hadn’t had time to work out yet – river, river, river was all there was in the end. The great flow of life. You could fight it, but it always swept you along and at the very end – tipped you out into the sea.

  ‘He’ll have everything he needs, Auntie,’ Maxine whispered, lowering her lips to the baby and kissing his forehead as if making a promise. She was making a promise. One she’d die before breaking.

  ‘He needs a full belly, a clean nappy, and lots of laughter,’ Hinemoa said. ‘You make sure and sing him the old songs, though, Whina, and tell him the old stories.’ She peered out of her wrinkled face at the young woman. ‘You remember them, don’t you?’

  Maxine nodded. ‘I do,’ she whispered. ‘And we’ll bring him back here every summer, just like Mum brought me here when I was a kid.’

  Hinemoa nodded with satisfaction. ‘That’ll do,’ she said and nodded again. ‘You’ll do.’

  Later, leaning against the wall in the brown shadows of the hotel, the heavy telephone receiver pressed to her ear, Maxine was still trembling as she listened to the deep burr burr on the line.

  ‘Hello?’ It was a child’s voice, and Maxine breathed deeply.

  ‘Hello yourself, Martin,’ she said.

  ‘Maxine!’ he shouted, then the telephone went clunk and Maxine heard Martin’s yell. ‘It’s Maxine! She’s calling on the telephone.’

  Maxine waited with her heart high up in her throat, listening to the ripple of voices that met young Martin’s announcement, then finally the voice came on the line that she’d been waiting for.

  ‘Maxine?’

  ‘Ruth,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Immediately, there was alarm in Ruth’s voice. ‘What for? What’s wrong?’

  Maxine could have kicked herself. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m saying sorry because I should have brought you with me here.’

  ‘You know I couldn’t come anyway, love. There’s too much to do here.’

  Standing in an alcove off the public bar, the yeasty smell of beer in her nose, Maxine shook her head, even though Ruth couldn’t see her.

  ‘Of course you could have. We both used that as an excuse.’

  There was silence on the other end and Maxine’s hand grew sweaty against the handset.

  ‘What’s going on, Maxine?’ Ruth asked slowly.

  ‘I didn’t know if it was really going to happen,’ Maxine said. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I didn’t want to get our hopes up – but it turns out it really is going to go through…’

  ‘Maxine.’ Ruth’s voice pulled her up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And you’re babbling.’

  She was. She was babbling, relief welling up through her, making her knees weak. She sagged against the wall. ‘Ruth,’ she said. Then tried again. ‘Ruth, Auntie want us to take in a p̅ep̅e – a baby.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘What?’ Ruth asked, the word little more than a whisper of a breath.

  Maxine sucked in a lungful of air. She was going to stride through to the bar after this conversation was over, she didn’t care one whit that it was a public bar, and she was going to buy a pint of beer and a cigar and she was going to sit at a table and drink one and smoke the other.

  ‘There’s a young woman here, Hahana, who wants to come study medicine.’ Maxine made herself breathe more slowly. ‘She got into medical school, but she has a baby, and they won’t let her come if she keeps the baby. Hahana wants us to have him.’

  More silence on the other end of the telephone line, then Ruth’s voice, shocked, hesitant, questioning, hopeful. ‘She wants us to have him?’

  ‘Adopt him. You know it’s common for babies to be brought up by extended family members,’ Maxine said. ‘Hahana wants us to adopt him. That way she can visit him while she is studying.’ Maxine paused and licked her lips. ‘Auntie Hinemoa has given her blessing.’ She closed her eyes and listened to Ruth’s breathing for a moment. Ruth, whom she loved more than life itself. Ruth for whom she would steal down the stars from the sky if she could. Ruth, who wanted a baby more than anything. She swallowed.

  ‘He’s four months old, Ruth, and the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. And he’s ours, if we can take him.’

  Ruth’s hand was numb where she held the telephone. Her ear was numb too, she thought, where she had the handset pressed against it. In fact, she decided, she might be a little numb all over. The telephone receiver was too heavy suddenly, and she let it drop to the telephone table.

  A little posse of women had gathered near the stairs, as though they knew something big was happening. They stared at Ruth, eyes wide and worried. Patty stepped forward.

  ‘Ruth,’ she said. ‘Are you all right? You look very pale all of a sudden.’

  Ruth’s legs were numb, and they weren’t going to hold her weight anymore.

  Patty scrambled the last steps and caught her as she slithered boneless to sit on the floor, staring at Patty with huge, round eyes.

  Barbara picked up the telephone receiver. ‘Maxine?’ she asked. ‘That you? What did you say to Ruth? She’s sitting on the floor in shock.’ She stared down at Ruth as she spoke. She’d never seen the woman so white.

  Ruth lifted a hand and pressed it to her cheek. Feeling was returning and she breathed again, lips twitching into a sudden smile. She looked at Patty, squatting next to her on the floor, an arm around Ruth’s back, her face big with worry. She turned her head and looked up at Barbara.

  ‘Ask her what his name is,’ she said, nodding her head at the telephone.

  Barbara looked down at her, then moved the receiver in front of her mouth. ‘Maxine,’ she said, holding it with both hands. ‘Ruth says to ask what his name is.’

  In the small, cool hotel, Maxine grinned at her wavering reflection in the glass of a framed photograph on the other side of the hallway. She opened her mouth, told Barbara the name, then gently hung up the telephone and walked through to the bar.

  Where she ordered a pint of their best beer and persuaded the proprietor to sell her his finest cigar.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Libby hoped to leave without seeing anyone, even though that felt an awful lot like sneaking off with her tail between her legs. She sighed, picking up her cases and looking out into the hallway. It was empty. She grimaced. The truth was – she was slinking away like a beaten dog. The thought made her miserable.

  More miserable. Her footsteps tapped along the runner and down the stairs. At least the sun was out, she decided. Dunedin had miserable weather – she never knew what the day was going to be like. The city played its weather like they were emotions, storming one moment, serenely sunny the next. She would sympathise, except like all displays of emotions, they were easier to handle when they were your own, not someone else’s.

  These were her thoughts as she spied the front door and freedom. She even had her hand on the knob before she was discovered.

  ‘Libby, wait,’ Clemency said.

  Libby didn’t want to wait,
and drew the heavy door open to a spill of sunlight creeping in under the porch and reaching for the doorway. It was so early, she thought. She hoped it wasn’t too early for the bus.

  ‘Let me drive you,’ Clemency said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  Libby looked up at Clemency, her brows knotting together. It was the least she could do, really. And even that would be too little.

  ‘I’d rather take the bus, thank you,’ she said, her voice stiff, even to her own ears. Damn Clemency and that stupid girl Eliza! What did Clemency see in her? Some distorted sense of pity? Responsibility? Libby tried to be socially responsible, dropping a few coins into the Salvation Army collector’s buckets, for instance, but she knew where to draw the line.

  Clemency put her hand on Libby’s arm and they both looked at it there, the silence heavy and awkward between them. Clemency broke it first, removing her hand.

  ‘Libby,’ she said softly. ‘I really am sorry.’ She tried to meet Libby’s eyes, but they darted away from her as Libby turned to look outside. ‘I know you had things you wanted. I’m sorry I can’t give them to you.’

  Libby’s mouth twisted and she swallowed down the lump of disappointment and pain that rose from her chest. She shook her head. ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘To be in this position.’ She dipped her head for a moment, then stepped out into the rising sun and finally looked back at Clemency. ‘I sometimes think that loneliness is the most virulent disease we can suffer from.’ Her mouth smiled, but her eyes were tired, disillusioned.

  Clemency shook her head. ‘You can’t let it make you bitter,’ she said, not bothering to refute what Libby had said. She knew it was true. ‘Don’t get bitter, Libby.’

  Turning, Libby gazed out over the sloping lawn, the early sun turning the grass yellow. The house had a spectacular view, she thought. Really, she would have loved to be mistress of a property such as this. It would have been a dream come true. And why shouldn’t she have dreamed? And why shouldn’t it have come true? After all, she thought, apparently dreams come true for ragged do-nothing girls off the street.