by Moir, Tanya
May 13th — the ‘Matoaka’ sails.
Five
Hester puts La Rochelle’s journal next to her own, in the bottom of her necessary case. She imagines she will read it, sometimes — on winter nights, perhaps, with a coal fire warming her thick-draped room, and the foxes barking out on the common. She will look through it like a kaleidoscope, to brightness, and clear, clean colour. It will be her memento. After all, it is a part, now, of her story.
But the journal’s presence there disturbs her. It nibbles, mouse-like, at the edges of her mind, already straining to contain the weight of her great secret. It distracts her from her list-making, her inventories of soap and undergarments, light and heavy clothes. In the middle of the night, she thinks not of the final yards of green-striped flannel she has hidden under the kanuka root, or Daniel’s last bottle of ink, which now sits empty, but the sin of the stolen journal. She blames it for the lack of sleep which is making her clumsy, so that when Mary asks if she will see Robbie again, she nearly says, yes, he is coming on Monday.
On Sunday, she tucks Letitia’s sewing-box under the tree, and decides to put the journal back.
It is not supposed to return to England. La Rochelle left his papers here, behind him, with good reason. A discarded first draft of himself, which no amount of editing could redeem. It belongs just where the woman has put it, at the end of his road, and the edge of the sea he crossed to leave it.
Hester looks down at her mother’s box. She can feel the first spots of rain. In that moment she almost hates La Rochelle, for walking away, for leaving so much behind him. If he had not, she would not be standing here. None of this would have happened. She looks back, over the cottage, over the sea, where a few dark patches of rain drift, lost and listless, but already moving on.
There are more rocks than she had thought under the clothesline. She is sure that Mary has shifted them about; it takes a while, a nervous minute of spiders and dust, before she finds the one with the red stain.
She holds Etienne La Rochelle’s scarf briefly to her face, but the scent of him is gone. She touches the jade figure. She runs her finger around its curves, sees the force of its circularity, and the light that lives in the stone, like the green of the sea below the cliffs when the day is sunny and still. It warms in her hand. She stifles an urge to slip it into her pocket.
She puts La Rochelle’s papers back, where they are supposed to be, safely wrapped and hidden. They will remain there, the things that he discovered, and did not. The things he saw. She slides them back, under the rock. She thinks that she will miss him.
The next morning, she looks around the parlour that once was La Rochelle’s study, so dim now without the light coming up from the sea. She has put Massey’s poetry back on the shelf. Its long exile has gone quite as unnoticed as that of Candide, which was once beside it, but is never likely to be returned. Hester smiles ruefully, and tells herself it is unwise to lend strange men optimism.
She closes the door behind her. In the kitchen, Mary is singing her baking song. Hester opens the front door quietly, careful not to let it bang in the wind, and slips out into the scrub.
Six
They walk up into the wind, a nor’easter barrelling down from the saddle, the air whipping by so fast they can barely breathe it. It sucks the spit from Robbie’s open mouth, and snatches at his balance. Hester’s dresses flap like wild things in their baskets, bent on escaping back down La Rochelle’s Road.
The headland offers no shelter. Whichever way the road turns, the gale is in their faces. A bad day, Robbie thinks, to choose for such an errand.
He is on edge, nerves battered and spirit fraying. He knows that in the Bay below the air will be still, the sun warm and the glassy green water languid. The tide is low. Hine will no doubt be wading out to gather paua. He thinks of the curves of her feet in the water, the press of her weight on the sand. She moves like music across his mind, a long, lilting notation. He has no wish at all to be here on this blasted, blighted road.
Now Hester is trailing behind him. She is less of a match for the wind. He can see she is struggling with her basket; she cannot get the knack of carrying it across her shoulders. Robbie pauses, waiting for her to catch him up.
The road, as ever, is empty. It is past mid-morning, and their father must be many miles from home. Still, Robbie is afraid of being caught here, like a rabbit stranded on open ground. The thought of meeting Daniel makes him want to shrink into the clay.
He closes his eyes. He thinks, again, of Hine.
Hester stops beside him. Her hair has almost completely escaped, and her bonnet flails behind her. She puts down her basket while she catches her breath, resting it on the toes of her boots, so as not to get the clothes inside it dirty. She smiles at him stoically; they do not waste words on the wind. Robbie watches her turn her head to look back down on the cottage.
He sees that her colour is all whipped up, her pale skin stung to redness. She struggles, one-handed, to push the hair back from her eyes. He thinks how small and strange she has gotten, this ruddy bird of a girl in all the wrong clothes, with her skirt flapping out like a sail and the ocean huge behind her.
The wind gusts harder. Robbie reaches out, catches Hester by the elbow, steadies her. He helps her, again, to balance the basket across her back. ‘Keep right up behind me,’ he shouts, close to her ear. ‘Be easier there. Less wind.’
They are carrying nothing that does not belong to his sister. But still he feels like a thief, inching up towards this sullen judge of a sky. He wishes they could have taken the cliff track down to the Bay, that it was not blowing so hard, and that Hester did not have so many wide and heavy things. He wishes she had married Frank. He wishes that all this were done, and over. He hears, for a second, a small boy’s voice. What would your mother say?
He thinks of all that is gone from his life. He cannot make Hester stay.
Hester touches the back of his arm, and points. At the top of the road, coming up from the Bay, is the Delacroixes’ wagon. It moves on quickly, the gale at the bullocks’ backs, and soon disappears behind the rocks of the saddle.
‘Do you think they saw us?’ shouts Hester.
Robbie shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Besides, he thinks, what would they see? Two fools on a spur between sea and sky, walking into the wind.
Seven
Hester watches the surf churn in off a lumpy white horizon. It seems important to name its colours, this final turn of the tide in Karupoti Bay. She knows it is silver and grey and more; but she has not La Rochelle’s subtle palette.
‘Hold on,’ says George.
She clutches the necessary case tighter to her chest, tries to brace her weight among the baskets of potatoes.
‘Put that down!’ shouts Robbie. ‘Hold on to the sides!’
‘Heave!’ George orders.
Hester feels the weight of the men hit the boat, the drag of the keel on the sand. Around her the long oars rattle in their locks; the ocean looms larger and louder, the waves rising below her hands. There is a lurch, almost too much for Hester’s grip, a flurry of spray and leaping men, and then they are floating free.
Where she sits, it is hard to look back at the bay. It is there, in the corners of her eyes, receding with every oar stroke. But she feels something stretch between it and her, like the force of a gaze; as if someone is watching. She half expects to hear her name coming over the roar of the surf, feel the hand of fury upon her shoulder.
Just where do you think you’re going?
She twists around as much as she can. The beach, of course, is empty. There is no sign of her father or anyone else, just the smoke from Hine’s fire.
The whaleboat is travelling fast now, the men pulling east with the tide. On the far side of the bay, high above, she sees first the line of La Rochelle’s Road, and then the dark faces of the cliffs that make its sudden ending. It is strange to be looking up at them from below; she has never seen them from the w
ater. They rise like stone walls out of the surge of the sea, a buttress against the open ocean, here where the land begins.
La Rochelle wanted to paint them; and perhaps he has. Hester wonders what he felt, when he looked at them for the last time.
The boat pulls north, around the head, and into a chunky swell. Somewhere out here, many fathoms below, this same sea rocks Letitia’s bones. Her mother will not see oak woods and foxes again, or take tea on a lawn that runs down to the Thames. The knowledge rises, hard in Hester’s throat. Only she will travel on.
Above the cliffs, she thinks she can see the roof of the cottage. Mary, perhaps, is under it now, surprised by the empty silence. She will see that none of the chores have been done, and is probably cross already. Hester imagines her biting her cheeks as she opens the note. It is short, but it will take her a while; Mary is a slow reader. When she has it at last, Hester thinks she will smile, and cannot really blame her.
Daniel, of course, is another matter.
Hester turns her head away. She does not wish to consider her father. He is not, after all, alone or lost. He is left to his choices, behind her. She has watched him lace his boots for the very last time, he quite oblivious to the significance of the occasion. It is unlikely she will see him again. When she thinks of this she feels light, blown free on the breeze, with nothing to stop or save her.
George orders up the sail, and they tack west, hugging the coast before the run across Pigeon Bay. Behind them, Karupoti Head rises up, blocking out the Bay, and La Rochelle’s Road is gone.
She should feel afraid, out here on this sea in such a small boat. But Hester does not. She can hear George behind her, humming under his breath as they climb each swell; away to her left she can just make out the red roofs of Pigeon Bay. She thinks of Una Monroe, landed already, perhaps, in happier times, and growing another orange tree. It is strange to think of her house still there, going on without her.
The sea is flattening as the sun climbs, the day settling into a faultless autumn calm. Hester tries to remember what she had thought, watching this sharp brown coast go by on the ferry that brought her to Pigeon Bay. It must have seemed exotic. But she cannot recall those first impressions. The character of the land is known to her now. They are old acquaintances; she cannot consider its face as she would a stranger’s.
She wonders how long it will take her to forget it. She thinks this light has etched its lines in her mind; even if she closes her eyes, she can still see it. But it is too much, surely, to hold inside oneself. Not through the low grey days and narrow skies. In a London drawing room, it will fade.
When they enter Port Lyttelton at last, they pass below the hull of the Matoaka, loading at the wharf beneath Norwich Quay. The old ship looks just as Hester remembers, huge and solid, a reassuring piece of England, unperturbed by a world of foreign seas. Hester looks up at the portholes, imagining for herself the opposite view.
There is a swarm of men on the wharf, more than she has seen in the last two years put together. The din of their industry echoes around the hills, bouncing off the water. Further up, above the docks, she can see the mouth of the new tunnel.
She had not thought to find the port so large, and busy. She remembers it sleepy and mild and warm, like a seaside resort. A little like Broadstairs, is that not what she said? Certainly nothing like London.
Eight
Robbie watches the sea-light shift on the white ceiling of the shipping agents’ office. The building is new and pleasant enough, shut off from the noise of the docks outside by thick glass windows. But the watery light lends it a lazy, subaqueous gloom. He feels displaced, cut off from the world, like a specimen in a tank.
He wishes the day was over, and he was on his way home. Out there, over Adderley Head, he can feel Karupoti Bay, pulling him back, as surely as the tide.
Beside him, Hester shifts and coughs. She is edgy, wound up as tight as wire. He wonders if she is changing her mind. He thinks of asking if she is certain. But he cannot; there is an inevitability to their presence here, suspended in this slow and sea-filled room, which prevents him. In any case, he tells himself, she can hardly go back to Father now, any more than he can. Robbie tries to imagine how it would feel to be leaving. Empty, he thinks, like a hole. He does not wish to chase the feeling further.
Through the window, he can see men loading bales of the Sutherlands’ seed aboard an American clipper. He wonders where this exiled grass of the hills will end up growing.
‘Miss Peterson?’
The agent smiles at them. He carries the letter from Lucy’s captain in his hand. In less than five minutes, it is done, their business concluded.
‘Board her as soon as you please,’ he says and he shakes Hester’s hand. ‘Give my best to London.’
Outside, in the noise and rush of the wharf, Robbie and Hester stand and watch the Matoaka in silence.
‘Well,’ says Hester at last.
‘Yes,’ says Robbie. Their words hang oddly. These, he thinks, are among the last things they will hear each other say. ‘I’ll help you get your things.’
The few boxes he has made for Hester’s clothes fit all too easily into the first-class cabin. Robbie looks around, paces it out. It is bigger than the whare. For the first time, he feels a twinge of envy.
‘Got it all to yourself this time,’ he smiles, and then stops. There is a pause. He can see that Hester, too, is thinking of all those who are missing.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be comfortable in here,’ he offers, stoutly.
She places her necessary case on the little table. ‘Yes.’ They both stare at it for a while. The case is a little battered now, he sees, but Hester’s initials are still clear on its lid. He can remember the day Lucy gave it to her, how she spent an hour going through it, taking out and putting back each brush and bottle. She insisted it was a Nécessaire du Voyage, and that he was not to touch it. He remembers himself, too, looking on, fascinated by each thing’s perfect fit, his fingers twitching. It is hard to believe he was ever so young.
‘Here.’ He fumbles in his pocket, pulls out five shillings. ‘You’ll need to buy things.’
She has to reach up to kiss his cheek. A soft, sad touch, inadequate and shy. Robbie closes his eyes and remembers his mother. He thinks that tomorrow he will be alone.
Just off the steamer dock, George and the crew are waiting. Robbie can see George checking his notebook, and Tommy lying back flat underneath his oar, face up to the afternoon sun. Robbie waves. The boys sit up, and pull in to the iron ladder.
‘E,’ says George as Robbie drops down into the boat. ‘All done?’
Robbie takes up the last oar and nods. The old man puts both hands on his shoulders, a warm weight that travels through him.
‘Good man. Let’s get home now.’
They pull away from the clamour of the port, out into the windy hush of the ocean. In the stern, George begins the time-song, and the boys take up the chant. He tia, he tia, he tia. A slow green sea slides past them, split by the whaleboat’s keel. Robbie bends his back to the rhythm, and the old words of the tuki waka make their now-familiar shapes in his mind.
Nine
Hester makes up her bunk. She smoothes it, and then sits down. She looks, again, around the cabin. For the first time she can remember, there is nothing she has to do. She draws up her knees and smiles.
She thinks that for eighty days it will be like this. More hours than there is work, and a choice as to how she shall fill them. She thinks she may nap in the afternoon, and read in bed for as long as she pleases. In fact, she may suffer from headaches, and never get up at all, except to eat meals prepared by others. She leans back, and closes her eyes.
The noise of the wharf grows louder. The ship shudders and lists as the bales are loaded into her hold, and the watersiders shout curses and warnings. There are sirens and whistles and clattering wheels, the stamp and bleat of livestock; there is a monstrous roar that slowly reasserts itself in her min
d as the sound of an incoming train. Above and beyond, there is another once-familiar sound, the hum and buzz of a city.
Hester sits up. She has hours yet before the ship will stand off. She should walk while she can; there will, after all, be plenty of time for sleeping. Now she has money, she can buy candles. And perhaps there will be a bookshop.
She picks her way up into the town through the Matoaka’s incoming cargo, the dust of wheat and the stink of wool, the sweating men and rolling wagons. She crosses the railway lines, and the Quay. She makes a left turn, and smiles to see she is walking up London Street. Behind her, she hears the sound of a bell, and a gentleman rides by on a bicycle, waving proudly to the people who stop and stare. A group of young ladies applauds; beside her, a sailor mutters, ‘tosser’.
Hester moves with the flow of the crowd. She feels invisible. No one scans her face, or raises an eyebrow at her dress, or looks as though they would like to enquire as to the nature of her business. She looks with impunity through shopfront glass at calfskin boots, a gold pocketwatch, a painted box full of Cuban cigars, for she could be anyone, here, today. She hears a woman say, ‘Not here, Henry. Wait till we’re in Paris.’
It bears her along, this tide of strangers. She feels she is drifting, passing time between one life and the next. She could unpin her bonnet and throw off her gloves, she could smoke a cigar, she could take strong drink with a sailor. No one would ever know. She will never see these faces again. She has no name here.
Next to the new stone bank there are tables of books on the street. Behind them, a sign proclaims Hillyers Stationers to be Canterbury’s finest purveyor of ‘Maps, Charts, Travel Stationery, & Books’. In the window, in an ornate frame, a plump and rather gloomy-looking Maori girl sits, modestly cloaked, beside a stream. In front of her is displayed a copy of Grimshaw, Bagshaw & Bradshaw’s Comic Guide to Dunedin.