The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  Gascoigne was silent. He had not yet finished his cigarette, but he dropped it, crushed the ember with the heel of his shoe, and lit another. Anna sat down again. She placed her hands upon the fabric of her dress, laid out upon the table. She began to stroke it. Gascoigne looked at the rafters, and Anna at the gold.

  It was very unlike her to burst out in such a way. Anna’s nature was watchful and receptive rather than declamatory, and she rarely spoke about herself. Her profession demanded modesty of the strictest sort, paradoxical though that sounded. She was obliged to behave sweetly, and with sympathy, even when sympathy was not owing, and sweetness was not deserved. The men with whom she plied her trade were rarely curious about her. If they spoke at all, they spoke about other women—the sweethearts they had lost, the wives they had abandoned, their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, their wards. They sought these women when they looked at Anna, but only partly, for they also sought themselves: she was a reflected darkness, just as she was a borrowed light. Her wretchedness was, she knew, extremely reassuring.

  Anna reached out a finger to stroke one of the golden nuggets in the pile. She knew that she ought to thank Gascoigne in the conventional way, for paying her bail: he had taken a risk, in telling a falsehood to the gaoler, keeping her secret, and inviting her back to his home. She sensed that Gascoigne was expecting something. He was fidgeting strangely. His questions were abrupt and even rude—a sure sign that he was distracted by the hope of a reward—and when she spoke he glared at her, quickly, and then glanced away, as if her answers annoyed him very much. Anna picked up the nugget and rolled it around in her palm. Its surface was bubbled, even knot-holed, as if the metal had been partly melted in a forge.

  ‘It appears to me,’ Gascoigne said presently, ‘that someone was waiting for you to smoke that pipe last night. They waited until you were unconscious, and then sewed this gold into your dress.’

  She frowned—not at Gascoigne, but at the lump in her hand. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell? And just how much was he willing to pay?’

  ‘Listen, though,’ Anna said, ignoring the question. ‘You’re saying that someone took this dress off me, sewed in all this dust so carefully, and then laced me back up—filled with gold—only to leave me in the middle of the road?’

  ‘It does sound improbable,’ Gascoigne agreed. He changed his tack. ‘Well then: answer me this. How long have you had that garment?’

  ‘Since the spring,’ Anna said. ‘I bought it salvage, from a vendor on Tancred-street.’

  ‘How many others do you own?’

  ‘Five—no; four,’ said Anna. ‘But the others aren’t for whoring. This is my whoring gown—on account of its colour, you see. I had a separate frock for lying-in—but that was ruined, when—when the baby died.’

  There was a moment of quiet between them.

  ‘Was it sewed in all at once?’ Gascoigne said presently. ‘Or over a period? I suppose there’s no way to tell.’

  Anna did not respond. After a moment Gascoigne glanced up, and met her gaze.

  ‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell?’ he asked again—and this time Anna could not ignore the question.

  ‘I was with a man named Staines,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I do not know this man,’ Gascoigne said. ‘He was with you at the opium den?’

  ‘No!’ Anna said, sounding shocked. ‘I wasn’t at the den. I was at his house. In his—bed. I left in the night to take a pipe. That’s the last thing I remember.’

  ‘You left his house?’

  ‘Yes—and came back to the Gridiron, where I have my lodging,’ Anna said. ‘It was a strange night, and I was feeling odd. I wanted a pipe. I remember lighting it. The next thing I remember, I was in gaol, and there was daylight.’

  She gave a shiver, and suddenly clutched her arms across her body. She spoke, Gascoigne thought, with an exhilarated fatigue, the kind that comes after the first blush of love, when the self has lost its mooring, and, half-drowning, succumbs to a fearful tide. But addiction was not love; it could not be love. Gascoigne could not romanticise the purple shadows underneath her eyes, her wasted limbs, the dreamy disorientation with which she spoke; but even so, he thought, it was uncanny that the opium’s ruin could mirror love’s raptures with such fidelity.

  ‘I see,’ he said aloud. ‘So you left the man sleeping?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘He was asleep when I left—yes.’

  ‘And you were wearing this dress.’ He pointed at the orange tatters between them.

  ‘It’s my work dress,’ Anna said. ‘It’s the one I always wear.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘When I’m working,’ Anna said.

  Gascoigne did not reply, but narrowed his eyes very slightly, and pressed his lips together, to signify there was a question in his mind that he could not ask with decency. Anna sighed. She decided that she would not express her gratitude in the conventional way; she would repay the sum of her bail in coin, and in the morning.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘It’s just as I told you. We fell asleep, I woke up, I wanted a pipe, I left his house, I went home, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’

  ‘Did you notice anything strange about your own rooms when you returned? Anything that might show that someone had been there, for example?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘The door was locked, same as always. I opened it with my key, I walked in, I closed the door, I sat down, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’

  It wearied her to recapitulate—and she would become still wearier in the days to come, once it transpired that Emery Staines had disappeared in the night, and had not been seen since, by anyone. Upon this point Anna Wetherell would be examined, and cross-examined, and scorned, and disbelieved; she would repeat her story until it ceased to be familiar, and she began to doubt herself.

  Gascoigne did not know Staines, having arrived in Hokitika himself only very recently, but watching Anna now, he felt suddenly intensely curious about the man.

  ‘Could Mr. Staines have wished you harm?’ he said.

  ‘No!’ she said at once.

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said quietly. ‘As much as—’

  But she did not complete the comparison.

  ‘He is a lover?’ Gascoigne said, after a pause.

  Anna blushed. ‘He is the richest man in Hokitika,’ she said. ‘If you have not heard of him yet, you will presently. Emery Staines. He owns most things around town.’

  Again Gascoigne’s gaze drifted to the gleaming pile of gold on the table—but pointedly this time: to the richest man in Hokitika, this would seem, surely, like a very small pile. ‘He is a lover?’ he repeated. ‘Or a client?’

  Anna paused. ‘A client,’ she said at last, and in a smaller voice. Gascoigne inclined his head respectfully, as if Anna had just informed him that the man had passed away. She rushed on: ‘He’s a prospector. That’s how he made his wealth. But he hails from New South Wales, as I do. In fact we were on the same ship across the Tasman, when we first arrived: the Fortunate Wind.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Well, then. If he is rich, perhaps this gold is his.’

  ‘No,’ Anna said, alarmed. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t lie to you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t—’

  ‘Wouldn’t use you as a beast of burden, to traffic this gold without your knowing?’

  ‘Traffic it where?’ said Anna. ‘I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere.’

  Gascoigne paused to drag upon his cigarette. Then he said, ‘You left his bed in the night—did you not?’

  ‘I meant to return,’ Anna said. ‘And sleep it off.’

  ‘You left without his knowledge, I think.’

  ‘But I meant to return.’

  ‘And despite the fact—perhaps—that he had contracted you to r
emain until the morning.’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Anna said, ‘I only meant to be gone a little while.’

  ‘But then you lost consciousness,’ Gascoigne said.

  ‘Perhaps I fainted.’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  Anna chewed her lip. ‘Oh, it doesn’t make sense!’ she exclaimed after a moment. ‘The gold doesn’t make sense; the opium doesn’t make sense. Why would I end up there? Out cold, quite alone, and halfway to Arahura!’

  ‘Surely much of what happens when you are under the effects of opium does not make sense.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘But I would be happy to defer to you on that point,’ Gascoigne said, ‘having never touched the drug myself.’

  The kettle began to whistle. Gascoigne stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, wrapped his hand in a scrap of serge, and lifted it down from the range. As he poured the water over the tea leaves he said, ‘What about your chink? He touched the opium, did he not?’

  Anna rubbed her face—as a tired infant rubs its face: clumsily. ‘I didn’t see Ah Sook last night,’ she said. ‘I told you, I took a pipe at home.’

  ‘A pipe filled with his opium!’ Gascoigne set the kettle on a rack above the range.

  ‘Yes—I suppose,’ Anna said. ‘But you might just as well call it Joseph Pritchard’s.’

  Gascoigne sat down again. ‘Mr. Staines must be wondering what has happened to you, seeing as you left his bed so abruptly in the night, and did not return. Though I notice he did not come to make your bail today—neither he nor your employer.’

  He spoke loudly, meaning to rouse Anna out of her fatigue; when he set out the saucers, he set Anna’s down with a clatter, and pushed it across the table so it scraped.

  ‘That’s my business,’ Anna said. ‘I shall go and make my apologies, as soon as—’

  ‘As soon as we are decided what to do with this pile,’ Gascoigne finished for her. ‘Yes: you ought to do that.’

  Gascoigne’s mood had changed again: suddenly, he was extremely vexed. No clear explanation had yet presented itself to him as to why Anna’s dress had been filled with gold, or how she had ended up unconscious, or indeed whether these two events were connected in any way. He was vexed that he could not understand it—and so, to appease his own ill humour, he became scornful, an attitude that afforded him at least the semblance of control.

  ‘How much is this worth?’ said Anna now, moving to touch the pile again. ‘As an estimate, I mean. I don’t have an eye for such things.’

  Gascoigne crushed the stub of his cigarette on his saucer. ‘I think the question you ought to be asking, my dear,’ he said, ‘is not how much; it is who, and why. Whose gold is that? Whose claim did it come from? And where was it bound?’

  They agreed, that first night, to hide the pile away. They agreed that if anyone asked Anna why she had exchanged her habitual gown for this new, more sombre one, she would reply, quite honestly, that she had wished to enter a belated period of mourning for the death of her unborn child, and she had procured the garment from a trunk that had washed up on the Hokitika spit. All of this was true. If anyone asked to see the old gown, or inquired as to where it was stored, then Anna was to inform Gascoigne immediately—for that person no doubt had knowledge of the gold that had been hidden in her flounces, and would therefore know about the gold’s origin—and perhaps also its intended destination, wherever that was.

  With this strategy having been decided, Gascoigne then emptied his tartan biscuit tin, and together they swept the gold into it, wrapped the tin in a blanket, and placed the entire bundle in a flour sack that Gascoigne tied with string. He requested, until they had further intelligence, that the sack be stowed at his quarters, beneath his bed. At first Anna was doubtful, but he persuaded her that the pile would be safest with him: he never entertained visitors, his cabin was locked during the day, and nobody had the slightest reason to think that he was harbouring a pile—after all, he was new in town, and had neither enemies nor friends.

  The following fortnight seemed to pass in a blur. Anna returned to Staines’s house to find that he had vanished completely; days later, she learned about the death of Crosbie Wells, and discovered that that event had also taken place during the hours of her unconsciousness. Soon after that she heard that an enormous fortune, the origins of which had yet to be determined, had been discovered hidden on Crosbie Wells’s estate, which had since been purchased by the hotelier, Edgar Clinch—acting proprietor of the Gridiron Hotel, which was owned by Emery Staines, and the current residence of Anna herself.

  Gascoigne had not spoken with Anna directly about any of these events, for she refused to be drawn on the subject of Emery Staines, and had nothing at all to say about Crosbie Wells, save that she had never known him. Gascoigne sensed that she was grieving Staines’s disappearance, but he could not gauge whether she believed him to be alive or dead. In deference to her feelings Gascoigne dropped the subject altogether; when they spoke, they spoke of other things. From her high window on the upper floor of the Gridiron Hotel Anna watched the diggers struggle up and down Revell-street, through the rain. She kept to her room, and wore Agathe Gascoigne’s black dress every day. No man inquired about Anna’s change of costume; no man made any kind of intimation to suggest that he knew about the gold that had been hidden in her corset, now safely stowed under Gascoigne’s bed. The responsible party was reluctant, for whatever reason, to come forward and show his hand.

  On the day after Crosbie Wells’s burial, Anna was tried for attempted suicide at the petty court, as Gascoigne had predicted she would be. She refused to plead, and in the end was fined a sum of five pounds for her attempted felony—and then scolded roundly, for having wasted the Magistrate’s time.

  All this was running through Gascoigne’s mind as he stood in the Gridiron Hotel with Anna Wetherell clasped against his chest, tracing the eyelets of her corset, up her back. He had held Agathe in this way—exactly in this way, exactly so, with one hand splayed beneath her shoulder blade, the other cupping the ball of her shoulder, Agathe with her forearms against his chest, always—having raised her arms to shield herself at the moment of enclosure. How strange that he recalled her, now. One could know a thousand women, Gascoigne thought; one could take a different girl every night for years and years—but sooner or later, the new lovers would do little more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever turning back.

  Anna was still trembling from the shock of the misfire. Gascoigne waited until her breathing was steady—some three or four minutes after Pritchard’s tread retreated down the stairs—and then at last, when he felt her body regain some of its strength, he murmured, ‘What on earth got into you?’

  But Anna only shook her head, burrowing against him.

  ‘Was it a blank? A false cartridge?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Perhaps you and the chemist—perhaps you devised something together.’

  That roused her; she pushed away from him with the heels of her hands, and said, in a voice full of disgust, ‘With Pritchard?’

  It pleased Gascoigne to see her brighten, even in anger. ‘Well, then: what was he wanting you for?’ he said.

  Anna almost told him the truth—but felt a sudden shame. Gascoigne had been so kind to her, this past fortnight, and she could not bear to tell him where the opium had gone. Just yesterday he had expressed happiness that she had ended her enslavement to the pipe: he had marvelled at her strength, and praised the clearness of her eyes, and admired her. She had not had the heart to disabuse him then, and she did not now.

  ‘Old Jo Pritchard,’ she said, looking away. ‘He was lonely, that was all.’

  Gascoigne pulled out his cigarette case, and found that he was trembling too. ‘Have you any brandy left?’ he said. ‘I would like to sit a moment, if you don’t mind. I need to ga
ther myself.’

  He laid the spent pistol carefully on the whatnot beside Anna’s bed.

  ‘Things keep happening to you,’ he said. ‘Things you can’t explain. Things nobody seems to be able to explain. I’m not sure …’

  But he trailed off. Anna went to the armoire to fetch the brandy, and Gascoigne sat down upon the bed to light his cigarette—and just for a moment they were fixed in a tableau, the kind rendered on a plate, and sold at a fair as an historical impression: he with his wrists on his knees, his head bowed, his cigarette dangling from his knuckles—she with her hand on her hip, her weight upon one leg, pouring him a measure. But they were not lovers, and it was not their room.

  Gascoigne took another deep draught of his cigarette, and closed his eyes.

  Meaning to cheer him, Anna said, ‘I am very much looking forward to my surprise, Mr. Gascoigne.’

  For she had not lied to Joseph Pritchard, when she informed him she had an appointment—going with a lady, to look at hats. Gascoigne had arranged a private consultation with a lady of fashion; apparently he had paid for the consultation himself, though he had insisted that the details of the arrangement, and the identity of the lady, remain a surprise. Anna had never been asked to wait for a surprise before, and the prospect had filled her with both elation and dread; she had thanked the Frenchman very prettily, however, for his consideration.

  When Gascoigne did not respond, Anna tried to press him further. ‘Is your woman downstairs, waiting?’

  Gascoigne emerged from his reverie at last. He sighed. ‘No: I am to fetch you and bring you to her. She’s in the private parlour at the Wayfarer—but she can wait ten minutes; she has waited ten minutes already.’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘Your hats can wait.’

  ‘What are you not sure of?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just said, “I’m not sure”, but you didn’t finish your sentence.’

  They had adopted an easy tone with one another, this past fortnight, as so often happens after a shared ordeal—though Anna still called him Mr. Gascoigne, and never Aubert. Gascoigne had not pressed her to use the more informal designation, for he rather liked shows of propriety, and it flattered him to hear his family name pronounced.