The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  Lauderback frowned. ‘Who—the girl in the road? The whore? No: not since that evening. Though I did hear that she revived. You think I ought to have paid a call upon her. That’s why you asked.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Balfour.

  ‘A man of my station cannot afford—’

  ‘Oh, no; you can’t afford—of course—’

  ‘Which brings us back to the sermon, I suppose,’ Lauderback said, in a newly reflective tone. ‘That was the clerk’s precise point. Until certain measures are in place—almshouses and so forth, convents—then who’s accountable in a situation like that? Who’s responsible for a girl like her—someone who has no one—in a place like this?’

  This was intended as a rhetorical question, but Balfour, to keep the conversation moving, answered it. ‘No one’s accountable,’ he said.

  ‘No one!’ Lauderback looked surprised. ‘Where’s the Christian spirit in you?’

  ‘Anna tried to take her life—to end her life, you know! No one’s accountable for that except herself.’

  ‘You call her Anna!’ Lauderback said reprovingly. ‘You are on first-name terms with the girl; I’d say you have a share of responsibility in caring for her!’

  ‘First-name terms didn’t light her pipe.’

  ‘You would shut your door to her—because she is an inebriate?’

  ‘I’m not shutting any doors. If I’d found her in the thoroughfare I’d have done just as you did. Exactly as you did.’

  ‘Saved her life?’

  ‘Turned her in!’

  Lauderback waved this correction aside. ‘But then what?’ he said. ‘A night in the gaol-house—and then what? Who’s there to protect her, when she lights her pipe all over again?’

  ‘No one can protect a soul against themselves—against their own hand, you know!’ Balfour was vexed. He did not enjoy discussions of this kind; really, he thought, it was only marginally better than the relative merits of ship-rigged and square. (But then Lauderback had been a poor conversationalist this fortnight past: despotic in tone, by turns evasive and demanding. Balfour had chalked it up to nerves.)

  ‘Spiritual comfort, that’s what he means—spiritual protection,’ put in Jock Smith, meaning to be helpful, but Lauderback silenced him with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Forget suicide—that’s a separate argument, and a morbid one,’ he said. ‘Who’s there to give her a chance, Thomas? That’s my question. Who’s there to give that sorry girl one clean shot at a different kind of a life?’

  Balfour shrugged. ‘Some folk are dealt a bad hand. But you can’t rely on another person’s conscience to live the life you want to live. You make do with what you’re given; you struggle on.’

  In which remark the shipping agent showed his uncharitable bias, the obstinacy that hung as a weighted counterpoint beneath the lively indulgence of his outward air—for, like most enterprising souls, he held his freedoms very chary, and desired that all others would do the same.

  Lauderback sat back and appraised Balfour down the length of his nose. ‘She’s a whore,’ he said. ‘That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? She’s just a whore.’

  ‘Don’t mistake me: I’ve got nothing against whores,’ Balfour said. ‘But I don’t like almshouses, and I don’t like convents. They’re dreary places.’

  ‘You are provoking me, surely!’ Lauderback said. ‘Welfare is the very proof of civilisation—it is its finest proof, indeed! If we are to civilise this place—if we are to build roads and bridges—if we are to lay a foundation for the future in this country—’

  ‘Then we may as well give our road builders something to warm their beds at night,’ Balfour finished for him. ‘It’s hard work, shovelling stones.’

  Jock and Augustus laughed at this, but Lauderback did not smile.

  ‘A whore is a moral affliction, Thomas; you must call a thing by its name,’ he said. ‘You must insist upon a standard, if you stand at a frontier!’ (This last was a direct quote from his most recent electoral address.) ‘A whore is a moral affliction. That’s the end of it. A bad drain for good wealth.’

  ‘And your remedy,’ Balfour returned, ‘is a good drain for good wealth, but it’s a drain all the same, and money’s money. Leave off the almshouses, and let’s not go turning any of our girls into nuns. That would be a d—ned shame, when they are so outnumbered as it is.’

  Lauderback snorted. ‘Outnumbered and outfoxed, I see,’ he said.

  ‘Responsibility for whores!’ said Balfour. He shook his head. ‘They’ll have a seat in Parliament next.’

  Augustus Smith made a rude joke in response to this, and they all laughed.

  When their laughter had subsided Lauderback said, ‘Let’s not talk in this vein any longer. We have discussed that day from all corners and all sides—it makes me tired.’ He indicated with a circular sweep of his hand that he wished to return to their previous conversation. ‘With respect to the ship rig. My argument is simply that how one conceives of the advantages depends entirely on where one stands. Jock holds his perspective as a former able seaman; I hold mine as a ship owner and a gentleman. In my mind, I see the sail-plan; in his, he sees tar and oakum, and the breeze.’

  Jock Smith responded to this jibe conventionally, but with good cheer, and the argument was revived.

  Thomas Balfour’s irritation was revived just as quickly. He felt that he had spoken wittily on the subject of asylum—Lauderback had praised his rejoinder!—and he wished to persist with that topic of conversation, in order that he might seize the opportunity to do so again. He did not have anything witty to say about the ship rig, and its advantages—and neither, he thought sulkily, did Jock, nor Augustus, nor Lauderback himself. But it was Lauderback’s custom to begin and end conversations at whim, changing the subject simply because he had tired of a certain issue, or because his authority had been trumped by another man’s. Thrice already that morning the politician had protested the introduction of a new theme, returning always to his imperious patter about ships. Every time Balfour began to speak of local news, the politician declared himself sick to death of useless brooding about the hermit and the whore—when in fact, Balfour thought with annoyance, they hadn’t discussed either event in any real detail, and certainly not from all corners and all sides.

  This internal expression of feeling followed a pattern, though an unacknowledged one. Balfour’s admiration of Lauderback was so vaulting that he preferred to deprecate himself than to criticise Lauderback, even privately, when the two men disagreed—but deprecation always waits to be disputed, and, if the disputation does not come, becomes petulance. Over the past fortnight Balfour had kept his silence on the subject of Lauderback’s encounter with the dead man, Crosbie Wells, though the circumstances of the hermit’s death held a considerable amount of curiosity for him; he had not discussed Anna Wetherell, the whore in the road, at all. He had acted according to Lauderback’s wishes, and had waited for his own to be acknowledged in turn—an event that required a degree more solicitude than Lauderback possessed, and so had yet to come to pass. But Balfour could not see this deficiency in the man he so admired; instead he waited, became quietly impatient, and began to sulk.

  (We shall add, in conciliatory tones, that his sulking was of a very superficial sort: at a single kind word from Lauderback, his good humour would be restored.)

  Balfour pushed his chair a little further away from the table, wishing in a childish way to make his boredom obvious to his host, and cast his gaze over the room.

  The dining room was nearly empty, owing to the uncommon hour of their meal, and through the serving-hatch Balfour could see that the cook had taken off his apron and was sitting with both elbows on the table, playing at solitaire. Before the hearth sat a large-eared boy who was sucking on a stick of jerky. He had evidently been posted there to keep an eye upon the clothes-irons, which were warming in a rack above the coals, for every half-minute or so he wet his finger and held it close to the trestle to test the heat. At the
table nearest theirs sat a clergyman—a freckled fellow, none too handsome, with a snub nose and a droop to his lower lip, like a simple child’s. He had taken his breakfast alone; he was now drinking coffee and reading a pamphlet—no doubt rehearsing the sermon he would deliver the following day, Balfour thought, for he nodded slowly as he read, as a man keeping tempo with a silent address.

  The large-eared boy wet his finger again, and held it close; the clergyman turned a page; the cook squared a playing card with the edge of the chopping block. Balfour fiddled with his fork. Finally Lauderback paused in his diatribe to take a draught of wine, and Balfour seized his chance to interject.

  ‘Speaking of barques,’ he said (they had been speaking of brigantines), ‘I’ve seen your Godspeed over the bar a fair few times, this past year. She’s yours, isn’t she—Godspeed?’

  But to his surprise, this remark was met with silence. Lauderback only bowed his head, as if Balfour had put to him an issue of the gravest philosophical import, and he desired to meditate alone upon the question.

  ‘Hell of an outfit, she is,’ Balfour added. ‘Marvellous.’

  The aides exchanged a glance.

  ‘Surely that brings home our point, Mr. L,’ said Augustus Smith finally, breaking the spell. ‘Even a barque handles better than a brigantine; she does it with half the crew and half the fuss. He can’t deny that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lauderback said, rousing himself. He turned to Jock. ‘You can’t deny that.’

  Jock was chewing; he grinned through his mouthful. ‘I will deny it. Give me half the weight in rigging over half the crew—there’s your fuss. I’d take speed over handling any day.’

  ‘How about a compromise?’ said Augustus. ‘Barquentine.’

  Jock shook his head. ‘I’ll say it again: three masts is one too many.’

  ‘More speed than a barque, though.’ Augustus touched Lauderback’s elbow. ‘What about your Flight of Fancy? She was fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast, was she not?’

  Balfour had not intuited the aides’ objective—to divert the conversation away from the subject he had introduced—and he thought that perhaps the politician had not heard him correctly. He raised his voice and tried again. ‘Your Godspeed—as I say. She’s a regular, these parts. Hell of an outfit. I’ve seen her over the bar a fair few times. Seems to me she’s got both speed and handling. My word, she’s a marvellous craft.’

  Alistair Lauderback sighed. He threw his head back and squinted up at the rafters, and a foolish smile trembled on his lips—the smile of a man who is unused to embarrassment, Balfour realised later. (He had never, before that morning, heard Lauderback confess a weakness of any kind.)

  At last Lauderback said, still squinting upward, ‘That barque is no longer in my possession.’ His voice was strained, as though his smile had made it thinner.

  ‘That so!’ Balfour said, surprised. ‘Made a swap, did you—something bigger?’

  ‘No: I sold her, outright.’

  ‘For gold?’

  Lauderback paused, and then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘That so!’ Balfour said again. ‘Just like that—you sold her. Who’s buying?’

  ‘Her master.’

  ‘Hoo,’ said Balfour, exhaling cheerfully. ‘Can’t envy you there. We have heard some stories about that man around here.’

  Lauderback did not reply. Still smiling, he studied the exposed beams of the ceiling, the cracks between the floorboards of the rooms above.

  ‘Yes,’ Balfour repeated, sitting back, and tucking his thumbs beneath his lapels. ‘We have heard some stories around here. Francis Carver! Not a man I’d care to cross, all right.’

  Lauderback looked down in surprise. ‘Carver?’ he said, frowning. ‘You mean Wells.’

  ‘Master of the Godspeed?’

  ‘Yes—unless he sold it on.’

  ‘Burly fellow—dark brows, dark hair, broken nose?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lauderback. ‘Francis Wells.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean to contradict you flat,’ Balfour said, blinking, ‘but that man’s name is Carver. Perhaps you’re confusing him with the old fellow who—’

  ‘No,’ Lauderback said.

  ‘The hermit—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who died—the man you came across, two weeks ago,’ Balfour said, persisting. ‘The dead man. His name was Wells, you know. Crosbie Wells.’

  ‘No,’ Lauderback said, for the third time. He raised his voice slightly. ‘I am not mistaking the name. Wells was the name on the papers, when I signed the barque across. It was always Wells.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Can’t understand it,’ Balfour said at last. ‘Only I do hope you didn’t get stiffed. Strange coincidence, isn’t it—Frank Wells, Crosbie Wells.’

  Lauderback hesitated. ‘Not quite a coincidence,’ he said carefully. ‘They were brothers, I thought.’

  Balfour gave a shout of laughter. ‘Crosbie Wells and Frank Carver, brothers? Can’t imagine anything more unlikely. Only by marriage, surely!’

  Lauderback’s foolish smile returned. He began stabbing with his finger at a crumb.

  ‘But who told you that?’ Balfour added, when the other did not speak.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lauderback.

  ‘Carver mentioned something—when he signed the papers?’

  ‘Maybe that was it.’

  ‘Well! If you say so … but to look at them, I’d never have believed it,’ Balfour said. ‘One so tall and striking, the other such a wastrel—such a runt—!’

  Lauderback quivered; his hand made a compulsive movement on the table, as if to reach and grasp. ‘Crosbie Wells was a wastrel?’

  Balfour waved his hand. ‘You saw him dead.’

  ‘But only dead—never living,’ said Lauderback. ‘Strange thing: you can’t tell what a fellow really looks like, you know, without animation. Without his soul.’

  ‘Oh,’ Balfour said. He contemplated that idea.

  ‘A dead man looks created,’ Lauderback continued. ‘As a sculpture looks created. It makes you marvel at the work of the design; makes you think of the designer. The skin is smooth. Fine. Like wax, like marble—but not like either: it doesn’t hold the light, as a wax figure does, and it doesn’t reflect it, like stone. Has a matte finish, as a painter would say. No shine.’ Suddenly Lauderback seemed very embarrassed. He rounded off by demanding, rather rudely, ‘Have you ever seen a man fresh dead?’

  Balfour tried to make light of it (‘Dangerous question to ask—on a goldfield—’) but the politician was waiting for an answer, and at length he had to concede that he had not.

  ‘Shouldn’t have said “seen”,’ Lauderback added, to himself. ‘Should have said “bore witness”.’

  Augustus Smith said, ‘Jock put his hand on the fellow’s neck—didn’t you, Jock?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Jock.

  ‘When we first came in,’ said Augustus.

  ‘Meant to rouse him,’ said Jock. ‘Didn’t know that he had already passed. He might have been sleeping. But here’s the thing: his collar was damp. With sweat, you see—it hadn’t yet dried on him. We figured he couldn’t have been more than half an hour dead.’

  He would have said more, but Lauderback made a sharp movement with his chin, to silence him.

  ‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said. ‘Signed his name Wells!’

  ‘We must be thinking of different men,’ said Lauderback.

  ‘Carver has a scar on his cheek, right here. White in colour. Shaped like—like a sickle.’

  Lauderback pursed his lips, then shook his head. ‘I don’t recall a scar.’

  ‘But he was dark-haired? Thick-set? Brutish, you might say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said again. ‘Why would a man change his name? And brothers! Frank Carver—and Crosbie Wells!’

  Lauderback’s mouth was working beneath his moustache, as if he was chewing on his lip. In quite a diffe
rent voice he said, ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Crosbie Wells? Not a bit,’ said Balfour. He settled back in his chair, pleased to be asked a direct question. ‘He was building a sawmill, way out in the Arahura—well, you saw the cottage; you’ve been there. He’d done his shipping through me—equipment and so forth—so I knew him to look at him. Rest his soul. Had a Maori fellow for a mate. They were in on the mill together.’

  ‘Did he strike you—as a kind of a man?’

  ‘As what kind of a man?’

  ‘Any kind.’ Lauderback’s hand twitched again. Flushing, he amended his question: ‘I mean to say: how did he strike you?’

  ‘No complaints,’ Balfour said. ‘Kept his business to his business, you know. From his talk I’d call him London-born.’ He paused, and then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Course, they’re saying all sorts about him, now that he’s gone.’

  Again Lauderback did not respond. He was being very strange, Balfour thought; the man was tongue-tied, even red-faced. It was as if he wanted Balfour both to answer some very specific question and to cease talking altogether. The two aides seemed to have lost interest—Jock was pushing a piece of liver around his plate, and Augustus’s head was turned away; he was watching the rain beat at the window.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Balfour considered them. The two men were as satellites to Lauderback. They slept on bolsters in his room, accompanied him everywhere, and seemed at all times to speak and act in plural, as if they shared a single identity between them, as well as a name. Until that morning Balfour had thought them pleasant chaps, convivial and quick-witted; he had thought their devotion to Lauderback a fine thing, though their constant presence had occasionally worn his nerves rather thin. But now? He looked from one to the other, and realised that he wasn’t sure.

  Lauderback had hardly spoken a word to Balfour about the final chapter of his journey over the Alps, two weeks prior. Most of what Balfour knew about the night of his arrival had come from the West Coast Times, which had published an abridged version of the account Lauderback had given, in writing, to the law. Lauderback was not suspected of having played any part in the deaths, one attempted, the other actual: the coroner’s report removed any doubt that Crosbie Wells had died of purely natural causes, and the physician was able to prove that the opium by which Anna Wetherell had nearly perished was her own. But Balfour wondered, now, whether the paper’s account had been the truth.