Magpie Hall

by Rachael King

  The curtains ruffle, then part. A young man slips out, eyes cast to the floor, and bows.

  Is Mr McDonald ready for us? Henry asks.

  Yes, sir. That is, he says you should come in and wait. He says the young lady might be interested in something.

  The boy disappears again behind the curtain.

  But it’s changed so, says Dora. Henry takes her hand. Is this your doing? she asks.

  I wanted you to experience your tattoos the way you would if you were living in London. In a proper parlour, not in some grubby shop. McDonald was most accommodating once I offered to pay for the refurbishment. Shall we?

  He holds the curtain aside for her and she steps into the back room.

  McDonald is working — they have come upon him tattooing someone. But it isn’t a sailor, as she might have expected — it’s a woman. A woman sitting on a straight chair with one arm resting on its back, her cheek against her wrist. Her other hand holds a cigarette. She looks up lazily as Dora enters and their eyes lock. She wears only bloomers and a chemise, the latter opened at the back so that her shoulders and upper chest are bare, like her arms. McDonald is bent over her back, a look of intense concentration on his face as he works. The woman draws deeply on her cigarette and blows the smoke in a stream above her, never once taking her gaze off Dora. Her face is immobile, but Dora can see that the eyes are laughing at her.

  She is the most beautiful creature Dora has ever seen. If she forgot herself for the moment she would think she had stumbled into another world. The woman’s hair is the colour of treacle and her lips are naturally dark and rose-coloured. Her chest and arms are covered with tattoos, not desultory images collected one by one like Henry’s, but jostling against each other so there is no sign of the original creaminess of her skin. Her legs, impossibly long and muscular, are stretched forward, the bloomers hitched up to her thighs, and these too are the canvas for ribbons and butterflies and flowers and figures. It is as if she has on another outfit under her clothing. Dora is drawn further into the room, towards the woman, towards the swirling, tumbling, vibrant patterns; she wants to fall into them. Then she feels a hand on her arm pulling her back.

  For Christ’s sake, man, says her husband. What do you mean exposing my wife to this?

  McDonald stops working and looks up.

  I thought she might like to see another lady getting tattooed. His face is calm, betraying nothing, neither regret nor insolence.

  Come, Dora, says Henry. We will wait outside.

  Dora wants to protest, to say that she doesn’t mind. She wants to go forward and touch this woman’s skin, to talk to her, but she follows him anyway. She can feel the blood boiling beneath his skin.

  Henry, dear —

  He raises his hand, palm towards her. When he speaks, his voice is low and deceptively calm.

  The nerve of the man, after all I have done for him. To suggest that you have anything in common with that … that woman, that carnival attraction.

  But I am nothing like that woman. We know that. I didn’t mind seeing her, not really. I thought her very … interesting.

  She doesn’t say what she is really thinking, that the sight of the woman’s long tattooed limbs actually filled her with something like desire, whether for the woman, or to be like her, she is not sure.

  They wait in silence for a few minutes, and Dora feels the anger leaving Henry. Finally the boy emerges again, followed closely by the woman, who is now dressed. She wears gloves and her dress is high-necked with a lace collar. She looks perfectly respectable, apart from her boots, which are grimy and worn. Her hat is a little too gaudy to be elegant, with a fake bunch of grapes adorning it, and bright silk flowers.

  Dora wants to say something to her, but the words catch in her throat. Henry stares at the ground, but as the woman moves towards the door, Dora sees him glance up, and she thinks she sees a look like hunger in his eye.

  In the doorway, the woman turns.

  I am sure we will meet again, she says, looking first at Henry, then at Dora. She drops into the slightest of curtseys. Then she is gone, and the tinkling of the bell on the door is the only sign that she was there.

  That woman, Dora says to McDonald as he bends over her wrist, working on a snake in green and gold. Is she the one you told us about earlier?

  Lucy, the tattooer says. That’s her. Quite the beauty, don’t you think? Quirk Brothers is coming back this way soon. You should take in a show. It’s — he pauses to search for a word, and when it comes she realises he is trying to speak her language, the language of the drawing room, not of the port. It’s diverting, he says.

  Dora says nothing but sinks back into silence, concentrating on distilling the pain of the needles. She is so much more comfortable this time; now she reclines on a chaise longue, with her arm resting on a small table beside it.

  Henry has allowed McDonald’s apprentice to tattoo him, a small picture of a spider on his leg, and so far the boy is making good progress; husband and wife lie side by side and now and again take each other’s free hands. Dora feels a current pass between them — the shared experience creates something that sparks and crackles like electricity. McDonald feels it too — she knows he does. He shifts and sighs in his seat, glancing at their interlocked fingers. If he thinks them strange he says nothing — it is not his place after all; Henry pays him handsomely for his discretion.

  They can’t take their eyes off each other in the carriage that takes them back into town, to their hotel: Dora feels his gaze burning through her clothing. Henry urges the coachman to drive faster, but this road is perilous over the hills, with tight corners and sheer drops to the crashing ocean below. But all Dora sees out the window is a boundless black, with nothing between them and the great southern icelands but night.

  When they finally arrive in town and let themselves into their hotel room, they make love again and again until morning comes, when, finally, they sleep.

  One was a curiosity; two were an affirmation. Now she finds herself craving more. She has become addicted to the prick and sting of the needle. She loves the tattoos she has but they are not enough; there will always be a perfect design in the perfect place — she just hasn’t found it yet.

  Is this what you meant? she asks her husband. About collecting?

  He concurs.

  It is not just the tattoo itself she yearns for; it is the whole ritual — the way they dress in plain clothes and board the train from town as the light drains from the sky, or order a carriage and drive over sharp hills that slide steeply down into the port. As they walk through the filthy streets of the port they see furtive figures, some with spider-bite eyes as they emerge from the opium dens, or hear the lusty songs of sailors as they spill from the public bar. Henry and Dora have learnt to fade into the shadows, to pass by unnoticed.

  Finally they enter the parlour, where McDonald’s assistant has tea and cigarettes waiting for them, and they recline on silk pillows.

  She no longer has any difficulty choosing the images she wants. She selects treasures from Henry’s cabinet and has them tattooed on her body. It is her way of feeling valuable to him, and he encourages her, whispering about the day that he might lose everything and what cannot be taken away from them.

  A conch shell from a Pacific island; a clutch of tern and kestrel eggs, speckled like quartz and swathed in cotton, which she unwraps like bonbons; a delicate hummingbird. All these things are transported with care to the port, where McDonald sketches them expertly onto paper, then transfers them to Dora’s skin while Henry watches. With every tattoo she feels herself growing closer to him, engraving herself onto his life, his future, his past. Although they do not speak of it, they both know that the tattooed lady they happened upon in McDonald’s studio was not an aberration but an inspiration.

  She has banished her maid from assisting her unless she is covered up. It is not that she is ashamed of her decoration — on the contrary, the thought of the tattoos beneath her clothing thrills her
— it is that they are something private between herself and Henry. Once they move to London she might relax more, allow a glimpse of ink from beneath a glove or a sleeve, but not here. The people in their society would not understand.

  As for Henry’s collection, she is beginning to know it as if it were her own. He has had a special room built beneath the tower, reached by a discreet door that looks as if it belongs to a cupboard. It houses glass cases and specially built shelves to accommodate treasures of all sizes and shapes. It is separate from his taxidermy workroom, where he stores many of his less exotic animals, and where he mounts the birds he catches, some of which he keeps, others of which he sends to England or to Herz at the museum. A magpie with wings outstretched looks down on the room from a high shelf. Henry is generous with his collection, but his special cabinet is not for sharing with anybody but his wife. Dora thinks she might go blind if she spends too much time in there, staring at the ‘mermaid’ he fooled her with; a stool made from an elephant’s foot; glass jars three deep, with sea creatures so grotesque she can’t look past the front layer. The one time she found the courage, Henry stopped her, telling her she would find more joy in his objects of beauty. And there is much beauty here, of course — the shells and the eggs and the figurines handmade by some distant culture. The butterflies. The tropical parrots and hummingbirds, the birds native to New Zealand. She is dazzled every time she walks in, but she enters only at Henry’s invitation.

  He disappears regularly with his schoolmaster friend Mr East, up into the hill country for days on end, but she doesn’t begrudge him, not when she sees the look on his face as he presents her with the prize he has coveted: the bones of the extinct moa. If she gets lonely when he is away, she only has to imagine the adventures they will have together. She also takes the opportunity to go with her father to town, where she visits her friend Kate Johnson, attends the opera and the theatre.

  There is just one thing that detracts from her happy life. The subject of children has arisen only once between them. As they lay in bed and Henry traced ticklish circles over the hummingbird on her belly, describing the jungle he caught it in and how much she would love it when he took her there, she had to ask him.

  But what of our children? What will happen to them when we are away?

  He stopped caressing her and put his arm behind his head.

  Children. He sighed. Children, my dear, will complicate things.

  She sat up. Are you saying to me that you don’t want children? She had never even considered that marriage could come without offspring; that her duty as a wife was not tied to that of a mother.

  I am just saying that we should be very careful. And until we have finished our travels, it would be … expedient to be childless.

  But my poor father! He is longing for a grandson.

  He took her hand. It cannot be helped, he said.

  That was the end of the conversation and she has not felt that she can bring it up again. Instead she has washed herself carefully every time they make love, and prayed that he will not be disappointed in her. There is no more she can do.

  The farm, Henry tells her, is thriving. He employs staff for every aspect of production and management, and only when she rides around the property does she see any of it: he never brings the work into the house, and the workers live far up the hill in specially built stone cottages. Life continues as it always has in the area, through autumn into winter, which freezes the very air of the new house, and out the other side into spring and summer. She longs for the day when Henry agrees it is time to leave it all behind. Only their trips to the port bring her any real excitement, and when Henry announces that he is to take an extended expedition to the North Island in search of the rapidly disappearing huia bird, she despairs of finding any amusement while he is gone.

  Take me with you, she says.

  Not this time, he says. Maybe next.

  She slips, like a ship, into a dark fog. With Henry gone for so long the house is a prison. It echoes with her footsteps as she paces its rooms. He promised, she thinks. He promised that he would rescue her from her mundane life and yet here she is, still here, while he is not, while he travels and has adventures without her. She could tolerate it when his trips were so close to home; after all, she has ridden into the surrounding hills herself before, with her father, when she was younger. But she has never been to the North Island, and although it is not as appealing to her as Africa, or Peru, she would nonetheless like to see it for herself, to see Henry stalking the huia and catching it. If he has fallen back on his promise so soon, what is there to stop him leaving her stranded here while he travels halfway around the world?

  She is not home alone for long, but the mood struggles to lift itself. As the carriage slides into town, past parks bright with blooms, she can almost allow the colours to lighten her, before they are gone again. When Kate greets her outside the house, she immediately notices Dora’s grey face and thinks something is terribly wrong.

  You will think it nothing, says Dora, so please, don’t question me. I dare say I will be fine after a night out. It is the house, she says, it is too big and cold to be there alone. And so far from town. I am happy to see you.

  She forces a smile and kisses her friend on the cheek.

  She doesn’t know what compels her to visit the circus. Everybody knows that circuses are not considered respectable, despite their popularity, and managing to persuade Kate to accompany her can only be considered a miracle. Perhaps it is her mood, a certain sense of nihilism that drives her to tempt danger. Or perhaps she is just hoping to see Lucy, the tattooed lady, again.

  Dora and Kate huddle together as they move through the throng. There are all sorts here: flower girls clutching irises and daffodils in one arm and holding out a hopeful hand; hawkers thrusting ill-made or shabby wares in their faces; harassed-looking women with hordes of ragged children, running shrieking circles around each other; gentleman with gaudy women, clearly not their wives, on their arms, who avert their eyes as Dora passes; and one or two respectable-looking couples, no doubt drawn by their curiosity but not looking entirely comfortable.

  The great tent stands in the middle of the park like a beacon, beckoning people with its rainbow flags snapping in the breeze. And snaking up to the big top, the paths filled with excited customers.

  They collect their tickets and enter the tent. As soon as they are inside, Dora is hit with the smell of animal dung and damp earth, and the air is moist with human bodies. A man holding a cane taps her on the shoulder and beckons to her. With a glance at Kate she follows him and they are led to the front row and shown a seat with a ‘reserved’ sign on it. She doesn’t know whether to be flattered or disturbed; she feels as if they have been put on show.

  The benches are hard and uncomfortable, and her buttocks soon begin to lose their feeling. The floor of the circus ring is dying grass, cut to pieces by animal hooves, mixed in with mud and sawdust and excrement, but even in its disappointing state it promises excitement.

  I cannot believe we are here, says Kate, looking around her at the chattering crowd, the children who can barely contain their exuberance. I always wanted to go to the circus as a child, but my mother would not let me. I think she was frightened I might run off with it!

  I’m glad you are enjoying yourself, says Dora, reassured; if her friend is comfortable here, then she should be as well.

  Finally the show begins. At first a series of flea-bitten and melancholy animals are brought out and prodded for the audience’s pleasure, including a bear that walks upright and shifts from foot to foot in a grotesque imitation of a dance, while a man drags it around by a chain fixed to its collar. Dora feels loathing towards the audience who cheer disproportionately to the quality of entertainment provided.

  But the acrobats take her breath away. They soar on trapezes above her, in glittering costumes, blazing like shooting stars. Their bodies bend and corkscrew as they punch themselves through the air. When the tightrope walker st
umbles Dora leaps to her feet, heart hammering in her chest, but he recovers with ease and she sits down, feeling something like disappointment, for she suspects it is all part of the act. As they take their bows, no longer celestial beings, she watches the acrobats’ smooth muscled limbs flex, and the make-up on their faces ripple with rivulets of sweat. There are four of them, surely dark-haired brothers, for with their faces painted and their identical costumes, they look like the same man, replicated for the audience by some stroke of magic or trick of the light. They give a shout in a language she does not recognise, hail the audience, then sprint out of the ring into the shadows and she applauds until her palms sting.

  The equestrians also do not disappoint. The couple are billed as brother and sister, although Dora suspects this is not true — it is more likely an invention to keep the woman’s respectability as she is dressed in limb-freeing attire and is being handled liberally by the man. The two leap between bareback mounts, sometimes with the woman sitting on the man’s shoulders, only a thin piece of cotton between her thighs and his face. The horses prance and preen for the audience and as a finale the riders sit astride them, juggling knives.

  I don’t think I can stand it, Kate confides in her. My poor heart!

  Then the lamps are dimmed and a lone figure walks into the ring, swathed in a cloak. The ringmaster calls for silence from the audience, and they quickly quiet down.

  Ladies and gentlemen! he calls. Allow me to introduce you to a very special young lady with a tragic tale to tell. Captured by the natives when she was only a girl, she was forced to live with them and endure one of the their most sacred customs — the tattoo!