by Moir, Tanya
A sound grows around her, a silk-shod patter, eager and soft. Rain wraps around the cottage. She hears her father cry out in his sleep, and Mary’s voice, soothing, reminding. It doesn’t matter. The harvest is in.
Hester watches the rain fall on the mown grass like a welcoming gift, a gentle benediction. The cloud comes in behind it, and the sky fades down to night.
Two weeks later, Jean Delacroix’s cattle dot the field, glossy black and white on green, like bulky garden sculptures.
In the pantry, Hester goes through her mother’s cookbook. She thinks she will make a cake, to honour their second Christmas on La Rochelle’s Road. She learns that almost all cakes require eggs, of which they have none, since the hen has gone off the lay. She could bake a ‘common cake’, if she left out the seeds and fruit. It sounds a lot like bread, and not particularly festive. But with goat-butter icing and a sprig of rata on top, she thinks it will do nicely.
Mary comes back from the Delacroixes’ with rum on her breath, three pullets, and a rooster in a bag. It is Christmas Eve. The next morning, she wrings the neck of the old white hen and roasts it for their dinner. Hester finds it stringy, but rather good.
The afternoon turns cold. They light the fire in the parlour. Hester reads a book. She thinks that Robbie might come, but he does not. Mary gets out her sewing. Daniel looks over his ledgers, drinks a small brandy, and falls asleep in his chair.
On Boxing Day, they rise early. The wind is already up. They walk across their one green field, and return to cutting scrub.
Twenty-Two
Down on the flat below, George Karupoti’s potato fields rest in the Sunday sun. The heat of the valley rises to meet Hester on the cliff path, a lazy, bone-easing warmth, closing around her like a bath. Her spine loosens, and her shoulders begin to swing free.
Around her, the bush is soundless. A fat green sea is rolling slowly into the bay, and above the beach the hot air dances. The tide is creeping in. As she nears the stream, she can hear the hiss of the waves moving up the sand.
She walks out of the trees, into the shimmering light. For a moment, she thinks it has tricked her, that the shifting air has stirred a memory of the past out of the sand. For in front of her, not twenty feet away, are La Rochelle and his lover.
They are naked in each other’s arms, laughing, in a pool so clear its waters do little to conceal them. Hester stares, as she would at a play, while the blood rises to her cheeks. He looks just as she had imagined him, finely built, with his pale skin colouring to gold, and brown hair curling down to his shoulders. And soft. There is something soft about him, something sweet and tender.
He is holding his woman very gently, as if he, too, believes her to be a trick of the light, which might vanish at any moment. Indeed, even as Hester thinks this, Hine slips from his grasp, down into the water. She pulls him under with a splash, and the apparition is gone. Stillness returns to the bay. Hester breathes out.
The lovers resurface together, closer, still laughing, and Hester understands that her vision is real. She takes a step backwards, as quietly as she can. In her hurry to avert her eyes from the woman’s breasts, they fall instead upon the face of Hine’s lover. The man who is not La Rochelle pushes the wet hair back from his face. Hester sees it is Robbie.
Their eyes meet. For a long second, they stare at each other across the sand. To Hester’s dismay, it fails to swallow either of them. She drops her eyes.
‘Hester,’ says Robbie at last, with some attempt at cheer. He moves for ward, in front of Hine, shielding a modesty that is all too clearly lacking.
Hester takes another step back. ‘I’m sorry.’
It is the only thing she can think of to say. She shakes her head. It is they, of course, who should be sorry. It is they who should feel ashamed. She glances up quickly at Robbie, and suspects he is not, very much, and Hine even less so.
‘Hester,’ he says again, very gently, and moves towards her, out of the water. ‘Wait.’
But Hester has seen quite enough of his gentleness for one day, and much more besides, which she does not wish to think of. She does not want him anywhere near her. She moves back a little more, towards the safety of the trees. Robbie is only waist-deep now. Hester shudders and holds up her hand.
Robbie looks at her face, then down at himself. He spreads his hands wide, helpless. Then, to Hester’s disbelief, he begins to laugh.
Hester turns her back, and walks quickly away. Her cheeks are hot to the point of pain; she feels she cannot put a great enough distance between her and the creek. Once she is safe in the trees, her walk becomes a stumbling half-jog, and she makes the top of the cliff path in record time. A brisk easterly is blowing there, but it fails to dislodge the pictures clinging to her mind.
Quite apart from anything else, she tells herself, her brother is only a boy, and the woman is old enough to be his mother. It is entirely disgusting. She shudders again, but the image will not depart. She knows that if she examines it, Robbie will not look like a boy, nor Hine resemble anyone’s mother.
In the kitchen, Mary gives her a sharp look. ‘You’re back early,’ she says. ‘Was Robbie not there?’
‘No,’ says Hester.
‘You see old George?’
‘No.’ Hester straightens the front of her dress. ‘They were out. I didn’t see anyone.’
‘Ah,’ says Mary. ‘No news, then.’ She waves a fly away from the leg of pork she is boning. Hester makes a move for the door, but the conversation is not over. ‘Some are saying your brother’s taken the blanket now. You see anything like that?’
Hester stares at her. She knows that ‘some’ means Sarah Delacroix, whom Mary has visited this morning. But what the theft of bedclothes has to do with Sarah, or anyone else, she has no idea. ‘No,’ she says, tentatively.
‘Aye,’ Mary narrows her eyes, ‘right enough. It’s as I told them. Rob’s doing some work for George, is all. And there’s none can know any different, unless they been down there themselves, poking round where they’ve got no call to, sticking their noses in Maori business.’
Hester blushes.
‘A woman her age!’ Mary continues, half to herself. ‘If it’s mothering he’s after, he’ll get little enough of it there.’ She pauses, watching the blowfly circle and land, and reaches for the tea towel. ‘But beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.’
Hester examines this interesting piece of logic in silence. The tea towel cracks. Mary brushes the dead fly from the table, shakes the cloth, and wipes her knife with it.
‘Oh!’ she says, wagging the knife at Hester. ‘I nearly forgot to tell you. Who do you think was up at Sarah’s?’
‘Who?’
‘Frank!’
Mary stops to observe the effect of the name on Hester, who feels slightly ill, but is determined not to show it. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘How is he?’
‘Right full of himself! He’ll be a dad any day now, so he says. You’d think they’d be keeping the date to themselves, what with being married so soon. But not our Frank — he wouldn’t shut up about it.’ Mary laughs. ‘I gave my advice to the wrong girl, eh?’
Hester attempts a smile, but is unable to find this funny.
When at last she makes the safety of the attic, she throws down her bonnet, and lies on her bed. She thinks she is the only person in the world still ignorant of the secret around which everyone else’s lives seem to revolve. Even Frank knows more than she does. And her little brother, whom she cannot see has any right to such knowledge at all.
It occurs to her then she may die an old maid. She may never learn the truth of this thing; she may have only the promise of La Rochelle’s words, and the disappointment of Frank. It seems too cruel. And tonight, she cannot enjoy even La Rochelle’s words, mixed up as they now are with pictures of Robbie. Hester stares at the roof, and thinks she could cry with frustration. She closes her eyes. She thinks of swimming naked, the sun on her bare shoulders. All that silky water, moving over her skin.
Twenty-Three
Daniel stares at the envelope on the kitchen table. It is creamy and plump, and bears, beneath sweaty fingerprints, a water mark, and his daughter’s name in a dashing cursive. He weighs the extravagance in his hand.
‘What’s this?’
He holds it out to Hester, who takes it gingerly, though she has been watching the envelope in his hand as intently as a dog awaiting its bone.
‘It’s from your mate down at Pigeon Bay,’ says Mary.
Hester frowns. ‘Mrs Monroe, do you mean?’
‘Aye. I got it from Sarah this morning — the old bat gave it to her when she was down last week.’
‘Last week?’
‘You’re lucky to get it at all,’ snaps Mary. ‘We’re not your footmen.’
‘Who is Mrs Monroe?’ asks Daniel.
‘That Scots biddy over the road from the store,’ says Mary. ‘You know, the one they all call the Duchess.’
Daniel watches Hester slip the envelope into her pocket; she has not, he notes, said thank you. He thinks, picturing the scattered houses of Pigeon Bay. He remembers a picket fence in need of repair, a white tablecloth spread in the shade of apple trees. The clink of fine bone china, and Roy’s sneer. ‘Oh I say, anyone for tea? Who does she think she is, Lady fucking Grey?’
A blistering day, the sun like a kick in the head. A blue and white tea set, Wedgwood no doubt, its gold rims glinting in leafy sunlight. The flash of sugar tongs. The silvery ting of little cake forks. The dust from the road sticking to his teeth and the sweat on his forehead.
‘Alright for some,’ Johnny Winslett had said beside him, and Daniel had shovelled clay and thought, yes, it was. But not for others.
His daughter is heading for the door, the unopened letter still in her pocket.
‘What does she want?’ he demands.
Hester’s shoulders drop. She hesitates, and Daniel feels it begin, the slow burn of his temper. She does not meet his eye. But she returns at last to the table, slits open the heavy envelope and draws out a matching note.
‘Well?’
He watches her jaw tense, the blink of irritation. Then she looks up, her little pinched face turned suddenly soft, and says, ‘It’s an invitation.’
Her voice is light and quick, a tone he had forgotten she possessed. It reminds him of Letitia.
‘She is expecting a party from New South Wales next Saturday,’ Hester continues, ‘and she hopes that I might dine with them on Sunday …’
Mary sniffs loudly. ‘She should send to the pa,’ she says over her shoulder, still stirring the stew, ‘if it’s a native welcome she wants for her guests. Fancy asking you to go all that way for a load of strangers.’
Hester ignores this. ‘And that I might be her guest for at least three nights, and longer if that should please me …’
Mary snorts with laughter. ‘If it should please you? Of course, we have nothing to do with our days up here but what pleases us, eh? We just sit around eating cake, and sipping tea.’ She shakes her head. ‘As if you can just go off for days at a time! Her sort haven’t the least idea of working.’
The look his daughter gives Mary makes Daniel’s fingers twitch.
‘I may go, may I not, Father?’
It is Lucy Fitzjohn all over again, thinks Daniel. No good comes of keeping the company of those richer and idler than oneself; it leads only to disappointment. Or worse. To risk, and loss. The blind alley of aspiration, the dead end at which a man can turn and find himself alone.
Hester has drawn herself up very straight in her chair, full of haughty expectation. He does not doubt that Roy and the boys would be quick to find her an ugly name.
‘You can’t be spared,’ he says.
She stares at him in disbelief. He is reminded, again, of Letitia. ‘But—’ she begins.
Daniel shakes his head. ‘You have no place with those people.’
Hester mutters something inaudible.
‘What?’ he asks her sharply.
‘But she gave us the walnuts.’
Daniel does not see the relevance of this. He shakes his head again. ‘Help Mary with the supper.’
Twenty-Four
On the night of Una Monroe’s dinner, Hester stares at darkness, and listens to the wind. It is a little before nine o’clock, and already the house is silent. She should think of something else; but her mind is full of the pure light of white wax candles, the music of voices, of laughter and silk and wallpaper, and a room that does not howl, and smell of pigeon fat.
She wonders if they have finished eating. There would have been more than one course, she is sure. A soup, perhaps. Almost certainly fish from the bay; and no pigeon or pork, but a good roast mutton. Maybe even beef. If she closes her eyes, she can see candlelight move in the claret jug, the rich red glow like a stained glass window.
There is no moon tonight. Hester pulls up her quilt against the draught. It is too late, and too far — no amount of anger or cunning can get her to Una Monroe’s table now. But while she waits for sleep, she can put herself in that dining room, for a time, if she chooses. In a magenta silk, why not, with her skin smooth and white, and snakes of hair piled up on top of her head with a skill she has never mastered.
Her bare shoulders are not chilled; the room is wholly warm, and bright with lamps as well as candles. The dashing Captain Jacobs sits to her right. But she is talking to the man on her left, the young gentleman from New South Wales, for surely there must be one. He is listening to her intently. Hester finds it unnecessary to invent her actual words; it is enough to know they are fascinating. The gentleman is far more handsome than Mr Richardson. His face is kind, and she thinks he might have an artist’s hands.
Yes — he is a painter. Of the wealthier sort, with lands in England and New South Wales, and his own ship to sail between them. He remarks on the beauty of her eyes, and asks if she will sit for him tomorrow.
After dinner, they dance, for Una Monroe’s house has grown large, and come to contain a ballroom. Outside its French windows waits an unseasonably warm and orange-scented darkness.
Hester’s thoughts slow. She is on the edge of sleep when the painter takes her in his arms, and his body hardens and changes, until he is not a gentleman at all, but Matthew Halloran, and the garden grows wild, and beneath her skin is a rough red blanket. Her hands clutch it tightly, and it carries her into a dream she forgets before morning, in which her hair is undone, and it does not matter what she says, or what she is wearing.
She wakes reluctantly, to a thin, cold morning, and is disappointed to find herself in her own bed. She imagines herself in fresh-laundered sheets, behind one of Una Monroe’s dormer windows. She tells herself there will be other invitations. She has a vision of a sleigh bed with a view of the sea, and the sense of a ship that has sailed.
Part
Five
One
Hester spreads them out before her, the last three sheets of Etienne La Rochelle’s papers. She is come to the end of the tale at last. But there is little enough here, it seems, for her to savour.
The torn back page of the Lyttelton Times. A sheet of notepaper on which is written ‘Dearest Juliana’, and no more. The beginning of a sketch, abandoned — a single sweep of ink that could be the line of the ridge, or a woman sleeping. That is all.
On the newspaper, below a small engraving of a ship, he has circled a notice:
‘TO SAIL ON MONDAY, the 5th April, the “DUKE OF PORTLAND” for Nelson, Wellington & PLYMOUTH. Apply to A.J. Alport, Agent.’ Hester imagines him, seated in his study, pen in hand. The closed circle of decision, quick as a surgeon’s knife. And afterwards? And then?
Did they part slowly, amid tears and boxes, recriminations and long goodbyes? Or did he simply put down his pen and go, leave his woman sleeping, before he changed his mind?
She sees him looking up, through his long, foolhardy windows, on a day like today, with the autumn swirling up from the south and patches of sun on the lumpy sea tha
t are pale and milky cold as melted icebergs. On such a morning, she thinks, it would be possible to leave.
And Hine? Does she wake and yawn and stretch and, finding herself alone, go about her usual business for a day, or ten, before she starts to wonder if her lover is returning? How long before she tires of his empty house and melts away, down to the Bay?
Perhaps she gathers up all his goods, leaves laden with pots and blankets, comes back time and again to clear the cottage of all that is useful. Or perhaps she too goes quickly, lightly and alone, straight-backed, barefooted, gathering nothing but his papers, the record of their time, the dry leaves of their shared journey. Here on La Rochelle’s Road, at that journey’s end, she lays them to their rest.
Hester does not think the woman would wait long, watching the winter come up through the glass, while La Rochelle sails northward.
And there he is, on the deck of the Duke of Portland. He is free and clear and set for home, the sun on his face, the breath of the Southern Ocean growing faint on his neck. Under liquid skies he slips his colonial skin. In the warmth of the Tropics, the ache of solitude fades, its hum in the hollows of his bones drowned out by the dining salon’s chatter. By the time they sight Plymouth, he is the man he used to be.
Juliana, surely, is there to meet him. She does not call out, but Hester can see her waiting on the quay, a fragile figure, ivory and rose. They do not embrace, of course. He raises her glove to his lips, feels the strangeness of silk between his mouth and her flesh. He remembers delicacy.
He travels through flat green tidy fields to his little Hampshire forest, and is complete. In the company of friends, he is his old self. He sees the shape of it in the space they have left for him; it fits him well, if not exactly.
The southerly must still rise in his dreams, and the Pacific rattle his stone-set windows. There must be wild and empty landscapes painted under gaslight. But after a time he will move on, to closer subjects.