by Moir, Tanya
Hester smiles. For all she knows, Etienne La Rochelle is currently much celebrated, in fashionable circles, as a painter of dogs and children. If he thinks at all of his south-seas adventure, it is as nothing more than a footnote to his life, a tall tale to tell at his club.
What she holds is not the end of La Rochelle’s story.
Hester walks outside. Behind the house, the wind is blowing up from the sea, thin sunlight cold on the drying sheets, and the whitecaps rolling in. Out there, halfway to the horizon, a ship moves northward, and away.
Two
Hester wakes to fog. It draws a neat circle below the house, making a dreary island of their patch of grass. But already the sun is beginning to climb through it.
By the time she and Mary reach the turning down to Pigeon Bay, the fog is no longer grey, but white and shining, lit from clear blue skies above. Inside it, the light is soft. Hester can see nothing but the rise and fall of the road, which is hushed and gilded, and could lead anywhere, or nowhere. Her boots scratch across a thick silence, which after a time she comes to understand is the absence of wind.
As they drop down into the folds of the valley, gaps in the fog make vignettes of familiar objects, their context lost, like studies in a sketchbook: wind-bent scrub; a stream under thorn and nettle; the picked-over bones of a totara bleaching in English grass.
A hawk sits on a fencepost, so close that Hester can admire its yellow eyes, the braced arcs of its talons. They watch each other cautiously, offering no quarter.
‘Cheeky bloody thing.’
Mary picks up a rock, but her aim is off. The hawk glares at them, unmoved. Mary walks on.
‘Will you hurry up now, girl? We haven’t got all day.’
Around a bend in the road, they come out into a bright, clear morning. Below them, the sun glints on a sea so flat it seems they might almost walk across it, skip like pebbles to the pale horizon, where the shadows of mountains hang between it and the sky. To the east, it is wide open, the Pacific Hester knows. To the west, the curve of Pegasus Bay sweeps in to meet the hidden plains. Before her, on the edge of sight, the high peaks step, jagged, down to the ocean. They are, thinks Hester, the last things a northbound ship would see.
Her foot slides on loose rock, and Mary clicks her tongue. Hester feels, in the small of her back, the effort of staying upright. She turns her attention to the road, until it eases out onto the flats, and runs broad and easy towards the sea, where the Lyttelton steamer is coming in, just rounding a schooner drifting at anchor in the bay. As they near the seawall, she can just make out the schooner’s name: the Lydia May.
Una Monroe’s fence glows with a new coat of white paint. In the garden, her daughter sits in a wicker armchair beneath the fruit trees. A book lies open over her belly, which is as round as the apples above her head. She has her hand upon the cover, and her eyes are closed. Katie plays at her feet.
Hester looks away, and continues walking. As she passes, Rex erupts from Katie’s arms, pink ribbons flying in his wake, and hurls himself at the fence.
‘Oh, look! It’s Miss Peterson. Miss Peterson!’
Hester stops. Lydia Jacobs raises herself from the chair and makes her way to the gate.
‘Mother will be so disappointed she missed you. Do be quiet, Rex! She was hoping to see you before we left. She wanted to say goodbye.’
Hester stares at her. Behind Mrs Jacobs, she can see that the verandah is piled with boxes.
‘You’re leaving?’
‘We sail tomorrow, if this weather holds.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Oh,’ says Mrs Jacobs airily, ‘California somewhere, we think. My husband was very taken with the climate there.’ She smiles. ‘Mother has an idea she would like to be warmer.’
Katie scoops up a struggling Rex. ‘I’m going to be an American,’ she says.
Hester looks past the fruit trees to the house, where a little bougainvillea still blooms around the dormer windows. She can think of nothing to say. Mary sniffs loudly, and pinches the back of her arm.
‘I have to go to the inn. Meet me there, when you’re done at the store.’ She nods to Mrs Jacobs. ‘Have a nice trip,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ Hester says. ‘Yes, do. Good luck.’ She shakes herself, and smiles. ‘I must go. Please tell Mrs Monroe that I said goodbye.’
At the end of the road, the Lydia May turns slowly on the tide. In the doorway of the store, Hester looks over her shoulder at the ship that will take Una Monroe and her growing family wherever they wish to go. It is hard to imagine a world so wide, and easy. She closes the door behind her.
There is a new woman behind the counter. She gives Hester a neat, professional smile. ‘Just arrived, love? Where you from then?’
Hester looks down at the backs of her sunburned hands, the fraying cuffs so far from fashion. ‘La Rochelle’s Road,’ she says.
‘Oh yes? Where’d that be now? The Continent somewhere?’
‘Up past the Delacroixes’.’ Hester blushes. ‘Near Karupoti Bay.’
‘Round here, you mean?’ The woman tilts her head to one side, perplexed. ‘The Della … oh, La Row-chelle’s Road, you mean, love! Sorry, I didn’t get you.’ She nods slowly to herself. ‘You’ll be the Peterson girl, then. Don’t tell me — Esther, is it?’
‘Yes,’ says Hester.
‘That’s right … It’s your dad works for old Barrington, and your mum who — oh!’ She looks briefly embarrassed. ‘Terrible things they can be, them fevers.’
Hester smiles quickly and stares at the scales on the counter. Too slowly, the woman adds a scoop of tea. The bell above the shop door rings.
‘Hester!’ snaps Mary. ‘Are you not done yet?’
‘My fault!’ The woman grins at Hester. ‘We been chatting.’
‘Aye, well. We’ve a long road home.’ Mary lets the door swing, and the little bell chimes furiously as it rattles home behind her.
Three
Hester is looking for ink. Today, there is none in her father’s well for her to siphon. She finds brand-new bottles of black and red in his drawer, but these she dare not open. She listens for approaching footsteps, but hears only her own heartbeat. Quickly, she looks through each compartment of the little bureau, careful to put the papers back just as she found them. No half-used bottles sit behind them.
The bottom drawer is locked. It is unlikely to contain any ink. Still, Hester goes back to the third compartment from the left, where she now knows her father has hidden the key. She glances up at the clock. Mary is out at the Delacroixes; she will surely be some time.
The drawer opens an inch, then jams. Hester slides in her hand, and frees a packet caught up in the rails. The drawer is piled full of them, bulky bundles of envelopes tied up with string, and thrown in any old how. It is most unlike her father. She pulls one out, and turns it over.
Mrs Letitia Peterson, she reads, beneath the string. It is her grandmother’s hand. Hester feels a thump in her chest, like the world ticking over, and slowing down. She closes her eyes. She puts the letters back down and rests her hands in her lap. The lump in her throat begins to subside. She unties the string.
There is her mother’s name, over and over, in so many familiar hands. And then, there is her own. Hester looks down at Lucy’s looping script, the extravagant L and R of La Rochelle’s Road. She remembers lines of those Ls, marching across long afternoons in Russell Square, with the leaves of the plane trees green outside and the summer banging fat and slow on the thick glass window.
She does not touch the letter at first. Then, carefully, she picks it up, and puts it in her pocket. There is another beneath it.
Hester glances at the clock again. It is nearly three. She reties her mother’s letters, and puts them beside the drawer. Her fingers work quickly at the string of the next bundle.
It takes her almost half an hour. At first she tries to keep count of the letters, but there are too many. She has no time to be shocked; she concentrates on th
e hunt for that well-known hand, on the race to make good the unknotted strings. She listens for steps in the hallway, the sound of an opening door. As she relocks the drawer, she feels nothing but triumph, and relief.
The front door opens, and Hester jumps. She hears Mary’s boots walk past the parlour door into the kitchen.
‘Hester!’
She slips out into the hallway. ‘Yes?’
‘I thought I told you to mind the fire.’
‘Sorry.’ Hester’s voice is light. Her indignation will have to wait for another, more private time.
Her father gets home just after dark. He says nothing to her. Hester ladles stew onto his plate and clears the table without meeting his eye. It is not until he has gone to bed that she unclenches her jaw, and rubs the tightness from her forehead.
The dirty flame of the slush-light hisses and spits in the attic draughts. She wraps her shawl around her shoulders. In a stuttering, pigeon-scented gloom, she begins to open Lucy’s letters, cold fingers slitting their way into that once-familiar world.
There is Charles the spaniel, Mittens the kitchen cat. There is clever brother Edward, a barrister at last. There are nights of theatre, rounds of cards. There is a new serial by Mr Dickens. There are visits to the poor, another workhouse scandal. There is a magenta dress, trimmed in satin, with long, puffed sleeves.
There is a little sadness, claims of loneliness, and fear. There is concern for the state of the mails. There are homebound packet ships presumed wrecked at sea. There is only the slightest hint of reprimand in the enquiries as to Hester’s health, and that of her mother.
As the months pass, Lucy’s world becomes less vivid; it begins to slip from Hester’s grasp. There is the slow lessening of detail, the stretching of undocumented time. There are new acquaintances. There is a Captain Wynton. His family owns a shipping line. Lucy finds him charming.
There is a long gap between letters.
In October, there is an engagement, and a house in Richmond, with a grand staircase and forty-seven rooms. There is Paris, and a trousseau. There are hopes that Hester, too, is happy. There are words thinning towards goodbye.
Hester holds the final letter in both hands. She considers, again, its lively direction, sure this is the last time she will see her name in Lucy’s hand. She turns the envelope, weighing it, studying the rough scars of its journey. It is bulkier than the last; she wonders if it might contain a wedding invitation.
She puts it down. She thinks that she should sleep.
The envelope will not leave her mind. Miss Peterson, La Rochelle’s Road. Another ending.
Hester picks up the letter and rips it open. It is dated December 6th. From the beginning, it has a very different tone. Daniel, it seems, has written at last to Lucy’s father. They are shocked, so very shocked, to learn of Mrs Peterson’s passing — Lucy hardly knows what to say — she has not seen Mr Peterson’s letter, but Lucy’s father has hinted — could it be that Canterbury does not suit Hester quite as she had hoped?
Hester looks up into the black-edged tallow flame. Perhaps not, dear Lucy. But then, perhaps the world is not a cloth to be tailored to us.
A morepork hoots; in the shadows of the attic, the mice shift nervously. Beyond them, she can hear the sea. She wonders what her father told the Fitzjohns of Letitia’s ‘passing’. She turns the page.
Lucy’s words rush on. Hester can almost see her hurrying, dashing the eager lines across the paper.
If I am right, then might I not prevail upon you, dearest Hester, to return to us? Nothing would give greater pleasure to me, and of course to my dear Wynton, than to have you as my Companion in my new home. He means to deny me nothing, he says! In all truth, Hester, I think there are few better men than my good Captain.
I hope I do not ask too much;— indeed it seems to me that nothing could be better, or more simple! I enclose a letter from Wynton, which, if you will but show it to the agent in Port Lyttelton, will ensure your passage home on whichever of his family’s vessels you should choose.
Oh Hester, please do come, and quickly! I cannot say how much I miss you. Just think what fun we shall have together in Richmond! And in your dear company I shall be able to bear anything;— even the long months I must spend each year a Widow of the Sea.
The slush-light snickers and dies. Hester sits, stone still, in the blackened room, holding the page in her hand. In the room below, Daniel begins to snore.
There is a tightness in her chest. For the first time in many months, she finds there is fear in the darkness, as if a hole has been opened in the night. She circles it cautiously, this sudden way out, this vertiginous escape. She feels weightless, seasick. She feels like dreams of falling.
Hester puts the letter under her pillow and fights for sleep against the rising moon. When it comes at last it is fitful and slight, full of the shifting shades of dreams in which she is not falling, but hiding, naked in the alleyways of Clapham, her dresses all left behind her, forgotten, on La Rochelle’s Road.
Four
Mary is sifting mouse droppings from the dregs of last month’s flour. She upends the sack, gives it a final shake. A mouse drops to the table. Disoriented, it remains there. Hester watches it, floured and trembling, its eyes blinking in the unexpected light.
‘I’m going to visit Robbie.’
Mary does not look up from the mouse. ‘Hand me the skillet,’ she says.
Robbie stares at Hester as if she is quite stupid. ‘What on earth would you go back for?’
‘It’s a great opportunity.’
‘For what?’
Hester looks around at Robbie’s camp. She sees his hand in the cut of the whare’s stout door, the new thatch above a careful stack of driftwood. Such a simple affair. The whole thing might be taken in a single wave and rebuilt by the next high tide.
‘Do you never think …’ she begins, but does not finish. The answer is there, on Robbie’s face, in the neatness of his little space between the dunes. Nothing here is more than it needs to be. She wonders if Hine is there, inside.
‘Think what?’
Hester shrugs. ‘Oh, about how you’ll end up. You know. The future.’
‘No.’
There is silence. Beyond the dunes a placid sea breaks gently, and an oystercatcher calls. After a time, Robbie adds, ‘I don’t see why anything should change.’
‘You’ll get older.’
‘So?’
‘You might want different things. You might want,’ Hester squints up at the sun, ‘something more.’
Robbie shakes his head. ‘That’s what you want, is it? More?’
‘I don’t want things to be so hard.’
‘You should have married Frank, then.’
Hester is quiet. Her face flushes. She strokes the ears of Portia’s half-grown pup, and it settles its nose in her lap. She can feel Robbie still watching her.
‘You can’t go back, you know.’ He frowns, searching for words. ‘We’re too big for that old life now. We won’t fit into it any more.’
‘People do go back.’
‘What people?’
‘La Rochelle.’
Robbie smiles, and shakes his head at her, as if she were a child. They sit together through another silence.
‘I’d better get home,’ says Hester.
Robbie stands up. ‘I’ll walk with you up to George’s.’
By the time they reach the farm, a fine rain is drifting in off the hills.
‘Stay for a bit,’ says George. ‘Wait it out. It’ll be past us in a minute.’
‘Hester,’ says Robbie, as the old man boils the kettle, ‘is going back to England.’
‘Is she?’ George does not pause in his work. ‘Well now. Can’t say as I blame her.’
Hester stares at her hands, and says nothing. Beside her, on the table, George’s newspaper rests face down. On the back page, she recognises the little figure of the ship, and below it, a familiar name. A name of dying robins, flying fish. A name of
ice and promise. ‘The “MATOAKA” to sail MAY 13th for LONDON.’ And there, in the last line, another name she knows — that of Captain Wynton’s agents.
George sets her tea down on the page. ‘Let me know,’ he says, ‘if you want a lift to Lyttelton. I go over once a week with the spuds, this time of year.’
‘Thank you,’ says Hester softly.
He and Robbie are drinking from battered tin mugs. But he has given her a china cup and saucer, fragile as a small bird’s bones, patterned with English roses. She holds it delicately, between thumb and forefinger, and stares out over its gold rim at the fading rain.
She arrives home just before her father.
‘Lucky,’ says Mary. She has the skillet in her hand again, though it is full of bacon this time.
The three of them eat quickly, and in silence. Hester boils water, and watches Daniel doze over his tea. She builds speeches in her mind, treacherous structures, all foundering upon the one flawed keystone. Father, I have heard from Lucy.
Daniel opens his eyes, sees her staring. Hester raises her chin.
Father, I have heard from Lucy. It is a great opportunity for me.
‘What is it?’ he snaps.
‘The water’s ready for your wash.’
He stretches his shoulders, forces himself awake. ‘Where’s Mary?’
‘Gone to bed.’
Daniel rubs his face and sniffs. ‘Mind you get some sleep yourself tonight. No reading up there all night, and then complaining that you’re tired. You need to be helping Mary out, not sitting around with your nose in a book.’
Hester sets her jaw. ‘Yes, Father.’
‘I don’t want to hear that you haven’t been doing your part.’
‘No, Father.’
In the attic, Hester does as she is told. She puts on her nightgown, brushes her hair and puts out her light. There is, after all, nothing left to read but her own thoughts, which are as easily considered in the dark. She has written just one thing in her journal tonight: