The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  Wells drained his coffee and set his cup down with a clatter. ‘I need the key to the safe,’ he announced.

  It seemed to Anna that Mrs. Wells stiffened slightly. She did not look at her husband, but concentrated on buttering her toast; after a moment, she said, ‘Why is that?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? I want to look at my dust.’

  ‘We had agreed to wait until a more prudent time to sell,’ said Mrs. Wells.

  ‘I’m not selling anything. I just want to take stock of my affairs, that’s all. Go through my papers.’

  ‘I’d hardly call them “papers”,’ said Mrs. Wells, laughing slightly.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Oh—you make it sound so grand, that’s all.’

  ‘My miner’s right. That’s a paper.’

  ‘What need could you possibly have for your miner’s right?’

  He was scowling. ‘What is this—a royal inquisition?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘It’s what they are,’ said Wells. ‘Papers. And there’s a letter in there I’d like to read over.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘You must have read that thing a thousand times, Crosbie. Even I know its every phrasing by heart! “Dear Boy—you do not know me—”’

  Wells brought his fist down on the table, causing all of the crockery to jump. ‘Shut your mouth,’ he said.

  ‘Crosbie!’ said Mrs. Wells, in shock.

  ‘There’s sport and then there’s sporting,’ said Wells. ‘You just crossed over.’

  For a moment, it seemed as though Mrs. Wells were about to make a retort, but she thought better of it. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, regaining composure. ‘Forgive me,’ she said.

  ‘Forgiveness doesn’t cut it. I want the key.’

  She tried to laugh again. ‘Really, Crosbie; today is not the day. Not with the naval party this evening—and so much to organise. Let us put it off until to-morrow. We can sit down together, you and me—’

  ‘I’m not putting it off until to-morrow,’ said Wells. ‘Give me the key.’

  She rose from the table. ‘I’m afraid you’ve heard my final word on the matter,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Excuse me—I’m afraid you haven’t heard mine,’ said Wells. He pushed his chair back from the table and rose also. ‘Where is it—on your necklace?’

  She edged around the table away from him. ‘In actual fact, it is in a safe box at the bank,’ she said. ‘I don’t keep a copy at home. If you wait just a—’

  ‘Rot,’ said Wells. ‘It’s on your necklace.’

  She took another step away from him, seeming, for the first time, alarmed. ‘Please, Crosbie; don’t cause a scene.’

  He advanced upon her. ‘Give it.’

  She tried to smile, but her mouth trembled. ‘Crosbie,’ she said again, ‘be reasonable. We have—’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘You are causing a scene.’

  ‘I’ll cause a bigger scene than this. Give it up.’

  She tried to make for the door, but he was too fast: his hands shot out, and grabbed her. She twisted her body away—and for a moment they struggled—and then Wells, scrabbling with one hand at her bodice, found what he was looking for: a thin silver chain, from which a fat silver key was dangling. He wrenched it out, gathering the key in his fist, and tried to snap the chain. It tore at her neck, and would not break: she cried out. He tried again, more sharply. She was beating his chest with her fists. Grunting, he fought to restrain her, still with the chain wrapped around his fist. He tore at her neck again. ‘Crosbie,’ she gasped, ‘Crosbie.’ At last it broke, and the key was in his hand; she gave a sob. At once he turned, panting slightly, and went to the safe. He fitted the key into the lock, rattling the handle several times before the mechanism clicked, and then the heavy door swung open.

  The safe was empty.

  ‘Where’s my money?’ said Crosbie Wells.

  Mrs. Wells swayed, her hands cupped around her neck. Her eyes were filled with tears. ‘If you calm down just a moment,’ she said, ‘I can explain.’

  ‘Who needs calming?’ said Wells. ‘I asked a simple question, that’s all. Where’s my bonanza?’

  ‘Now, Crosbie, listen,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘I can get it back—the bonanza. I only put it away for a while. Somewhere safe. I can get it back for you, but not until to-morrow. All right? Tonight there are a great many distinguished gentlemen coming to the house, and I haven’t the time to—to go to—to where I’ve hidden it. There’s just too much to do.’

  ‘Where are my papers?’ said Wells. ‘My miner’s right. My birth certificate. The letter from my father.’

  ‘They’re with the bonanza.’

  ‘Are they, now. And where is that?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why not, Mrs. Wells?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she said.

  ‘I would imagine it is.’

  ‘I can get them back for you.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘To-morrow. After the party.’

  ‘Why not today? Why not this morning?’

  ‘You can stop hectoring me,’ she said, flaring up. ‘I simply can’t manage it today. You’ll have to wait until to-morrow.’

  ‘You’re asking for time,’ said Wells. ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Crosbie, the party,’ she said.

  Wells looked at her for a long moment. Then he crossed the room and pulled sharply upon the bell-rope. The maid Lucy appeared within moments.

  ‘Lucy,’ said Wells, ‘go on down to George-street and pick me up a copy of today’s Otago Witness. Mrs. Wells appears to have burned our copy, by mistake.’

  GOLD

  In which Francis Carver receives a message, and Staines is left alone.

  The fit of whimsical good humour that had prompted Emery Staines, on the afternoon of his arrival in Dunedin, to commission a natal chart from Mrs. Lydia Wells, medium, spiritist, had been only intensified by the forecast itself, which, being uniformly providential, had put him in such high spirits that he felt inclined to celebrate. He had awoken the next morning with a terrible headache and a guilty sensation of indebtedness; upon applying to the hotelier he discovered, to his alarm, that he was in debt to the house to the tune of eight pounds, having put up a fortnight’s stipend on a game of brag, only to lose every penny of it, and five pounds more. The circumstances under which he had become so grossly indebted were somewhat hazy in his memory, and he begged the hotelier for a cup of coffee on credit so that he might sit awhile and consider how best to proceed. This request was granted, and he was still sitting at the bar some three quarters of an hour later when Francis Carver appeared, sponsorship papers in hand.

  Carver made his offer in plain speech and without preamble. He would provide enough capital to furnish Staines with a miner’s right, a swag, and a ticket to the nearest payable goldfield; he added, casually, that he would also be happy to pay any debts that Staines might have incurred in Dunedin since his arrival the previous day. In return, Staines would agree to sign over half-shares of his first claim, with dividends in perpetuity, and this income would be routed back to Carver’s account in Dunedin by private mail.

  Emery Staines knew at once that he had been played for a fool. He remembered enough of the early hours of the previous evening to know that Carver had been excessively solicitous of him, ensuring that his bets were always matched, his company was always lively, and his glass was always filled. He also had the shadowy sense that the gambling debt had been imposed upon him in some way, for his weakness for cards was of a very ordinary, cheerful sort, and he had never before thrown away such a large sum of money in a single evening. But he was amused that he had been swindled so soon after his adventure began, and his amusement led him to feel a kind of affection for Carver, as one feels affection for a crafty opponent in chess. He decided to chalk the whole business up to experience, and accepted Carver’s terms of sponsorship with characteristic go
od humour; but he resolved, privately, to be more vigilant in the future. To have been bested once was diverting, but he swore that he would not be bested a second time.

  Staines was not a terribly good judge of character. He loved to be enchanted, and so was very often drawn to persons whose manner was suggestive of tragedy, romance, or myth. If he suspected that there was a strain of something very dastardly in Carver, he conceived of that quality only in the most fanciful, piratical sense; had he pursued this impression, he would have found only that it delighted him. Carver was more than twenty years Staines’s senior, and was as brawny and dark as Staines was slight and fair. He held himself in the manner of one ready to inflict damage at any moment, spoke gruffly, and very rarely smiled. Staines thought him wonderful.

  Once the contract had been signed, Carver’s manner became gruffer still. Otago, he said, was past its prime as a goldfield. Staines would do much better to make for the new-built town of Hokitika in the West, where, as rumour had it, a man could make his fortune in a single day. The Hokitika landing was notoriously treacherous, however, and two steamers had been wrecked already upon the bar: for this reason Carver insisted that Staines make the passage to the West Coast under sail rather than under steam. If Staines would consent to accompany him firstly to the customhouse, secondly to the outfitter’s on Princes-street, and thirdly to the Reserve Bank, their arrangement could be finalised by noon. Staines did consent, and within three hours he was in possession of a miner’s right, a swag, and a ticket to Hokitika upon the schooner Blanche, which was not due to depart Port Chalmers until the morning of the 13th of May.

  Over the two weeks that followed Staines and Carver saw a great deal of one another. Carver had a month of shore leave while the barque upon which he worked was refitted and recaulked; he took his lodging, as Staines also did, at the Hawthorn Hotel on George-street. They very often breakfasted together, and occasionally Staines accompanied Carver in his chores and appointments around the city, chattering all the while. Carver did not discourage this, and although he communicated little beyond a repressed and constant anxiety, Staines flattered himself that his company was a gratifying and much-needed diversion.

  Emery Staines knew very well that he created a singular impression in the minds of all those whom he met. This knowledge had become, over time, an expectation, as a consequence of which, his singularity had become even more pronounced. His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see.

  His disposition to be sunny was, it seemed, unshakeable; however this attitude had not been formed in consultation with any moral code. In general his beliefs were intuitively rather than scrupulously held, and he was not selective in choosing his society—feeling, in his intuitive way, that it was the duty of every thinking man to expose himself to a great range of characters, situations, and points of view. He had read extensively, and although he favoured the Romantics above all others, and never tired of discussing the properties of the sublime, he was by no means a strict disciple of that school, or indeed, of any school at all. A solitary, unsupervised childhood, spent for the most part in his father’s library, had prepared Emery Staines for a great many possible lives without ever preferring one. He might just as soon be found in morning dress debating Cicero and Seneca as in boots and woollen trousers, ascending a mountain in search of a view, and in both cases he was bound to be enjoying himself a great deal.

  On his twenty-first birthday, he was asked where he wished to go in the world, to which he immediately responded ‘Otago’—knowing that the rushes in Victoria had abated, and having long been enamoured of the idea of the prospector’s life, which he conceived of in terms quixotic and alchemical. He saw the metal shining, unseen, undiscovered, upon some lonely beach of some uncharted land; he saw the moon rising full and yellow over the open sea; he saw himself riding on horseback through the shallows of a creek, and sleeping on the bare earth, and running water through a wooden cradle, and twining digger’s dough around a stick to bake above the embers of a fire. What a fine thing it would be, he thought, to be able to say that one’s fortune was older than all the ages of men and history; to say that one had chanced upon it, had plucked it from the earth with one’s own bare hands.

  His request was granted: passage was duly bought upon the steamer Fortunate Wind, bound for Port Chalmers. On the day of his departure his father advised him to keep his wits about him, to practise kindness, and to come home once he had seen enough of the world to know his place in it. Foreign travel, he said, was the very best of educations, and it was a gentleman’s duty to see and understand the world. Once they had shaken hands, he presented young Staines with an envelope of paper money, advised him not to spend it all at once, and bid him good morning, quite as if the boy were simply stepping out for a stroll, and would be back in time for dinner.

  ‘What does he do for a living?’ said Carver.

  ‘He’s a magistrate,’ said Staines.

  ‘A good one?’

  The boy sighed, throwing his head back a little. ‘Oh … yes, I suppose he is good. How do I paint a picture of my father? He is a reading man, and he is well regarded in his profession, but he has a queer sense of things. For example: he tells me my inheritance comprises only his fiddle and his shaving razor—saying that if a man is to make his way in the world, all he needs is a good shave and the means to make some music. I believe he’s written it into his will like that, and portioned everything else to my mother. He’s a little peculiar.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Carver.

  They were breakfasting together at the Hawthorn Hotel for the very last time. The next morning, the schooner Blanche was scheduled to depart for Hokitika, with the barque Godspeed, newly caulked and fitted, bound for Melbourne some hours later.

  ‘Do you know,’ Staines added, as he tapped his egg, ‘that is the first time since my landing in Dunedin that somebody has asked me what my father does for a living; but I have been asked where I shall make my fortune no less than a dozen times, and I have been offered all kinds of sponsorship, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked what I mean to do with my pile, once I have amassed a competence! What a curious phrase that is—a “competence”. It seems to sell the notion awfully short.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carver, his eyes on the Otago Witness.

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ said Staines.

  ‘What?’ said Carver, without looking up.

  ‘Only that you’ve been reading the shipping news for the past ten minutes,’ said Staines, ‘and you’ve hardly touched your breakfast.’

  ‘I’m not waiting for anyone,’ said Carver. He turned a page of the paper and began to read the goldfields correspondence.

  They lapsed into silence for a time. Carver kept his eyes upon the paper; Staines finished his egg. Just as Staines was about to rise from the table and excuse himself, the front door opened, and a penny postman walked in. ‘Mr. Francis Carver,’ he called.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Carver, raising his hand.

  He tore open the envelope and scanned the paper briefly. Staines could see, through the thinness of the paper, that the letter was composed of only one line of script.

  ‘I do hope it’s not bad news,’ he said.

  Carver did not move for a long moment; then he crushed the paper in his hand and tossed it sideways into the fire. He reached into his pocket for a penny, and once the postman had scurried away, he turned to Staines and said, ‘What would you say to a
gold sovereign?’

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever addressed one before,’ said Staines.

  Carver stared at him.

  ‘Do you need help?’ Staines said.

  ‘Yes. Come with me.’

  Staines followed his sponsor up the stairs. He waited while Carver unlocked the door to his private quarters, and then stepped into the room after him. He had never set foot in Carver’s room before. It was much larger than his own, but similarly furnished. It still held the musty, bodily smell of sleep: Carver’s bedclothes were twisted in the centre of the mattress. In the centre of the room was an iron-strapped chest. Pasted to the lid was a yellow bill of lading:

  BEARER ALISTAIR LAUDERBACK

  SHIPPER DANFORTH SHIPPING

  CARRIER GODSPEED

  ‘I need you to watch over this,’ said Carver.

  ‘What’s inside it?’

  ‘Don’t you mind what’s inside it. I just need you to watch over it, until I come back. Two hours, maybe. Three hours. I’ve got some business up town. There’d be a sovereign in it for you.’

  Staines raised his eyebrows. ‘A whole sovereign—to watch a chest for three hours? Whatever for?’

  ‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ said Carver. ‘I don’t forget a favour.’

  ‘It must be terribly valuable,’ said Staines.

  ‘To me it is,’ said Carver. ‘Do you want the job?’

  ‘Well—all right,’ said Staines, smiling. ‘As a favour. I’d be glad.’

  ‘You’d best have a pistol,’ said Carver, going to the bureau.

  Staines was so astonished he laughed. ‘A pistol?’ he said.

  Carver found a single-loading revolver, snapped open the breech, and peered into it. Then he nodded, snapped it back together, and passed it to Staines.

  ‘Should I expect to use this?’ said Staines, turning it over.

  ‘No,’ said Carver. ‘Just wave it about, if anyone walks in.’