La Rochelle's Road

by Moir, Tanya

  Perhaps that is why Monsieur La Rochelle did not remain to admire the view of the winter sea from his chilly wooden cottage. I wonder what grows now in his garden?

  Forgive me if I ramble. I fear I am forgetting how to talk to people. Write soon, my dear, for your letters become my only conversation.

  Your loving friend,

  Hester

  Eleven

  Letitia is not convinced the woman is really there. She recognises her face, which, in itself, seems hopeful: it is the clam woman, from George’s potato farm. But why she should be here, poking under the rocks beneath the clothesline, Letitia cannot imagine. It seems to her most unlikely.

  ‘Look,’ she says, cautiously.

  Hester looks up from the scrubbing board. Surprise stills her hands. ‘Who on earth is that?’

  Letitia is silent. She is finding, on reflection, that a real Maori woman in the garden is more frightening than an imaginary one. She wishes, now, that she hadn’t mentioned it.

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Shhh.’ Letitia steps back from the doorway. ‘She might not see us.’

  Hester looks cross. But Letitia can see she is frightened, too. Her daughter does as she is told.

  From their hiding place in the washhouse, the women cannot make out what their visitor is doing. She appears to be looking for something in the ground. It seems she finds it, for she is still a while, head bent to her task. A trace of sound comes back to them on the wind, mixed up with the surf — some kind of a song, or a spell, or a prayer.

  The woman remains there beneath the clothesline for some time, during which it occurs to Letitia that she is mad. Might she, perhaps, be digging for clams? Or potatoes, in the wrong garden?

  At last, she rises. Her feet, they see, are bare, despite the chill of the winter day. She moves, quite silently, towards the washhouse. Letitia holds her breath; she can feel herself shrinking, melting down into the earth beneath her feet. The woman is almost at the door before she seems to notice them, and stops. A wariness comes into her face. Letitia sees their presence register, a cloud across those dark eyes; for an instant, they throw back at her the image of two pale women, insubstantial as mayfly wings, lost souls, ragged and far from home.

  The woman turns aside. She walks past them to the creek. She washes her hands in its flow, three times, and leaves without looking back. Her long stride takes her swiftly up to the road, and she is gone.

  Hester lets out her breath. ‘Did you see it?’

  Letitia nods, slowly. She is thinking of wild beasts, and open cages, soft feet and savage eyes. It is different when there are no bars.

  Hester is stroking her own white skin, as if she fears the moko may have been contagious. Letitia’s eyes follow her daughter’s fingers. Hester has a nasty spot, but her chin is otherwise unblemished.

  ‘Think how it must have hurt,’ Hester says. ‘The lower lip. Imagine.’

  Letitia shivers. She would rather not. She nods at the tub. ‘The water,’ she says, ‘will be getting cold.’

  But Hester is no longer beside her. Now it is her daughter she watches, hunting about under the clothesline.

  Twelve

  The tattooed woman has hidden feathers. The smoky mauve of wood pigeon, which Hester knows so well; others, long and white, soft and brown, which she does not. They are held in a carved wooden box, which has been wrapped first in cloth, then oilskin, and tucked into a flax basket, a smaller version of those in which Tommy brings up the potatoes every week.

  Hester digs a little deeper. Beneath the feathers is a figure carved in jade, wrapped in a white silk scarf. There is a label on the scarf. It reads Cavill & Cadenot, 57 Jermyn Street. Hester thinks the box is rather pretty, but the jade figure is grotesque. Its round eyes and heart-shaped mouth leer up at her; its protruding tongue is large, and disturbing. She puts it away quickly.

  For a moment, she thinks that is all the box contains. But then she sees that she is looking not at its base, but at a parcel, flat and rectangular. As soon as she holds it, Hester knows it is a book. The woman has gone to some trouble to wrap it. A piece of oilskin, weathered and stained, forms a sort of envelope around it, beneath which is a leather cover, also watermarked, and grimy. Stamped on this in flaky gilt are the letters E. L. R.

  Carefully, Hester takes the book out of the packet. Behind it is a sheaf of papers; another falls from between its leaves. On one side is a receipt for ‘Gentleman’s walking boots, £3—’; on the reverse is a sketch of a naked woman. Ripples radiate from her thighs, as if she stands in a pool of water. Hester stares at the woman’s breasts. She feels her face grow hot. There is an intimacy to these lines, a softness; she is spying on a caress.

  She opens the book.

  In the margin of this entry is a heavy, diagonal scrawl in the same hand. ‘Stop this’, it says.

  Hester turns to the first page. ‘Journal of Etienne La Rochelle’, she reads, 1852. A confident, elegant hand, damaged only here and there by water. No simple French settler, then, La Rochelle the fool, but a gentleman of some means, and one who writes in English. An American, perhaps, from the frozen north, or the swamps of Louisiana? Or the son of an émigré, like Lucy’s erstwhile admirer the Comte de Mortagne, of whose pedigree Mrs Fitzjohn was so proud, before she was apprised of its lack of income. In any case, a man accustomed to strange horizons.

  Hester puts everything back just as it was. Oilskin packet, horrid carving, feathers, box, wrapped in the flax bag, tucked in the hollow under the red-stained rock. She looks carefully at her handiwork. Nothing seems out of place. It is just as well hidden now as it was before.

  ‘A box full of feathers,’ she tells Letitia. ‘Feathers and bones.’ She does not know why she adds this last. But feathers do not seem enough. She waits, cheeks burning, for her mother to expose her lie.

  But Letitia seems quite satisfied. ‘Best leave it alone.’ She is concentrating on the wringer; she does not look at Hester. ‘Some custom of theirs, no doubt.’

  Unnoticed, Hester studies her mother’s face. She feels no relief at Letitia’s lack of curiosity. Instead there is a swell of nervousness, the dull rise and fall of an old unease.

  Later, she takes the volume of Massey from the parlour shelf. A dry yellow film of dust rests on top of its pages. It is exactly the right size. Hester slips it into her apron pocket, and goes to bring in the washing.

  Thirteen

  Hester waits for her parents’ candle to be extinguished, the attic floorboards to grow dark, before she opens the stolen journal. The first entry is dated February 2nd. It reads:

  Hester turns over several pages detailing the preparation of Etienne La Rochelle’s supplies of dried fern root and shellfish, and his purchases of blankets, boots and powder, flour, sugar and tea, with little interest. The entry she is looking for comes three weeks later:

  Hester pauses. She looks quickly around the attic. A rat in the corner meets her eye. She is otherwise unobserved. She reads on.

  Hester shivers. Outside her window, the snow on the hills glows white under the stars. She tries to imagine walking naked through the sharp, wet scrub. She pulls her shawl more tightly around her, and thinks she would rather have to dry her clothes.

  A folded paper slips from between the journal’s pages. Hester opens it. It is a sketch of mountains, with a river below. She can see that the peaks must be high, for they are jagged, and cut by a line of snow. Still, they seem smaller, somehow, than the hills in her painting. There is no little white house to give them scale. These mountains are sedate, and unrapacious; he provides nothing on which they might prey.

  Fourteen

  A powerful scent of English violets is rising from Letitia’s bedroom floor. She tries to coax the precious liquid back into its broken bottle. But it is no use. The last of her London luxuries is gone, dripping through the cracks in the boards, swallowed up by the dirt below. Nothing is left but an oily stain, to be scrubbed at till her back hurts and her knuckles split.

 
It cannot be replaced.

  Letitia remembers, quite clearly, the day she bought it, can see herself standing there, in the little apothecary shop on Clapham High Street. She was wearing violet, that was why: a silk of Mrs Fitzjohn’s, not more than two seasons old. She had on hat and gloves, and was called ‘madam’. The perfume suited madam beautifully. Letitia’s eyes lose focus. She wants to smell like madam again.

  She dabs her wet fingers into the soft places below her ears. She is smearing herself with dust from the floor, and blood from the cut she has not yet noticed on her hand. It, too, will have to be scrubbed off.

  Why had they left the doors open again?

  Then again, she reasons, the verminous bird might just as well have come in through the window. It certainly got out that way, and speedily enough. As Letitia watches, a brown feather drifts from the sash cord to settle in the sunshine on the floor.

  Stiffly, she gets up from her knees, walks outside, and retrieves her hairbrush from the weeds in which it has landed. A little grey down clings to its bristles, but the pewter is undamaged.

  At her feet, unseen, the weka retreats, foiled again of its shiny prize.

  Fifteen

  It is the bitch’s apathy that gets to Daniel. They are trying to find her, soft blind bodies squirming in the long grass beside the shed. Their cries are shrill, their pink mouths open in half-formed barks, embryonic growls, before each is silenced by the shovel. The bitch is tied to the fence. She lies still as a cadaver.

  Beneath the shed, Alan Jones’ daughter crouches, passing the pups out, one by one, to her father.

  ‘That the lot?’

  The little girl hesitates. ‘Maybe we could let her keep just one.’

  Jones sighs. ‘She won’t work if she’s got a pup, and I’m not wasting food on pets. Give it here.’

  Slowly, she places the puppy outside on the grass. It gives a tiny yelp, and begins to crawl towards the scent of its still-warm brothers. Jones raises the shovel.

  ‘No,’ says Daniel.

  Jones looks up. The two men stare, bewildered, at each other.

  ‘You say something?’ snaps Jones. ‘What? You come for your boss’s pay?’

  ‘I’ll take it. The puppy.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘I need a dog.’

  ‘Well, get it somewhere else, mate. I’m not going to raise one for you.’

  ‘I’ll take it now.’

  ‘Are you soft in the head?’ Jones shakes his own in disgust. ‘Can’t you see it’s too young to leave its mother?’

  An unfamiliar sentence forms unbidden in Daniel’s mind. ‘What’s it to you?’ he offers.

  Jones snorts. ‘Nothing.’ His shoulders slacken. ‘Go on then. Take it, if you want.’

  Inside Daniel’s jacket, the puppy kneads at his chest with needle-sharp claws.

  ‘You soft cunt,’ says Roy.

  ‘You won’t be able to raise it,’ says Frank. ‘You’d’ve been kinder to let him kill it.’

  Daniel and Robbie are silent. As they reach the turn into La Rochelle’s Road, the Halloran boy draws in beside them.

  ‘Try goat’s milk.’ It is the first time Matthew Halloran has spoken all day. He has a bruise under his eye, and a cut on his lip. No one has asked how he came by them. ‘Dip your finger in and let him suck it.’

  The bush path to the Hallorans’ hut looms in the darkness. Matthew lowers his head, and quickens his stride.

  Sixteen

  June 2nd, 1867

  Dear Lucy,

  Since last I wrote, we have gained a new member of our family — a puppy! She is called Portia, for she comes to us through an act of mercy. She was about to be despatched by her mother’s owner when Father rescued her. He would say nothing about it, but I had the story from Robbie;— I will spare you the details, for they are quite gruesome. Such brutality is common here, where every creature, however innocent, must earn its keep with interest, or else perish.

  Robbie and I have raised Portia on goat’s milk, which she learned to suck first from our dipped fingers, and then from a piece of rag. Despite this, she is thriving! Her eyes have opened and her little belly is quite fat. We expect she will make a fine specimen indeed when she is grown, though quite what she will look like, we have little means of guessing;— apart from her colouring, of course, which is most definitely black and tan and white. Her mother was a collie, we believe, but her ancestry is otherwise most uncertain.

  Mother hopes that she will help to keep unwanted visitors away. Of these, we have an abundance, their number of legs ranging from two to eight, although the two-legged have recently been most troublesome. For once, I do not refer to our neighbours, but the native wood hens, who are always sneaking in to carry off what they can;— first it was our seed potatoes, then the carving knife. Last week one of Robbie’s boots quite vanished. Mother has even caught one in her bedroom, where, in its efforts to evade her, it ran across her dressing table and spilled the last of her perfume all over the floor.

  Poor Mother was quite inconsolable for several days;— you will remember how she always loved the scent of violets. There are none here, you see. It did not help that in an attempt to cheer her I suggested we plant the daffodil bulbs we brought with us from Grandpa’s garden;— for when we reached them out, we found the rats had chewed them all to ruin.

  Of course, your daffodils, and the bluebells too, will have come and gone already;— can you imagine how strange it is to contemplate a spring without them?

  Your friend,

  Hester

  Seventeen

  A heavy, blue-black bruise of a sky lies low to the south and west. But for now the day is still and warm. Robbie leans on his shovel and watches the slow smoke from the Richardsons’ fire drifting down the road to settle over the water.

  The woman appears through the smoke, her footsteps noiseless. If she notices the men working on the fence line, she does not give them any sign.

  Robbie stares. That face again. Even without the tattoo, he could not have forgotten it — has not, since the day down at George’s farm. Its lines remind him of a Roman statue. But this Venus has stepped from stone, parted her lips, and might, at any moment, bare her fangs.

  Robbie is filled with an urge, not yet a desire, to make her stop and pay him notice. He looks away.

  Beside him, Matthew Halloran watches with sympathetic interest. ‘You know her?’

  Robbie shakes his head.

  ‘That’s Hine. Lives with Old Man Karupoti, down at the Bay.’ They watch her back, the long black slide of hair swaying above her thighs. ‘They say she’s touched.’

  ‘Touched?’ laughs Jean Delacroix. ‘Certainly she is, by more than she can count!’

  Matthew scowls. He bends his head quickly to his work, but Robbie can see his cheeks are red with anger.

  ‘You been there, have you, Johnno?’ grins Roy.

  ‘Not me! I have better things to do with my money. But there is no shortage of those who have.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ says Frank. ‘Be mad not to.’

  ‘Keep your change and put out your candle,’ says Roy. ‘Every cunt’s the same in the dark.’

  Robbie is sure the woman has heard. He waits for his father to speak up. But Daniel has turned his head away.

  ‘C’mon, Peterson,’ says Matthew softly. ‘Get on with it. Them holes ain’t going to dig them-fucking-selves.’

  Robbie applies his shovel to the post hole. Behind him, a dark wall of rain advances up the bay.

  Eighteen

  Hester watches the coming storm, the rolling boil of it, low and black on the horizon, pulling in on the tide. Between it and her, the ocean is blue, and the sun is warm on her face. The washing, surely, is safe for now. She goes back to her reading.

  The guttering clatters overhead, and a slim black beak peers down at her. Hester nods to it. ‘Bellbird,’ she informs it.

  Hester looks up, through La Rochelle’s eyes, at the hills around her. He
re and there, great trees of the old forest still cling to crag and gully, tipped with sunlight, rooted in ancient magic.

  Hester sees the horizon has crept closer, the black storm wall grown higher. It stretches away from east to west, beyond her sight. But there is sunlight above it still, on the tops of the clouds, and she thinks perhaps it may pass over.

  A cold wind snatches the page from Hester’s grasp. The washing billows and snaps. She looks up, into rushing darkness. Fat drops of rain land on her face.

  She hurries the journal away, and runs to the clothesline. Around her, shirts and petticoats flap like things possessed. She catches hold of a tablecloth, bundles it to her chest, and reaches for its peg. Below, the ocean runs white before the storm. The whitecaps are flying towards her, the wind snatching their spray up into the sky. Hester’s fingers pause on the clothes peg. She feels the smooth wood, and the force of the air and the sting of the rain, and the guttural howl of the sea. The world is rising around her. She waits for it to come.

  ‘Hester!’ Her mother shouts in her ear. ‘Hurry up and get those things inside!’

  Between them, they get the washing down and dash for the cottage. With some struggle, Letitia closes the kitchen door in the face of the gale.