Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries

Francis Carver was riding inland on the Kaniere-road when he spotted a familiar figure on the roadside. He reined in, dismounted his horse, and approached her, perceiving that her walk was unsteady and her face, very flushed. She was smiling.

‘He got away,’ she mumbled. ‘I helped him.’

Carver came closer. He put his finger beneath her chin, and tilted her face. ‘Who?’

‘Crosbie.’

Carver stiffened at once. ‘Wells,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

She hiccupped; suddenly she looked frightened.

‘Where?’ He pulled back and slapped her, hard, across the face. ‘Answer me. Is he here?’

‘No!’

‘In Otago? Canterbury? Where?’

In desperation, she turned to run. Carver caught her by the shoulder, jerked her back—but just then there came the clap of gunshot, nearby—

‘Whoa,’ Carver shouted, spinning away—

And the horse shied up—

In which Anna Wetherell tells a falsehood to protect Crosbie Wells, attempting, in this belated act of loyalty, to atone for an earlier betrayal, the partial memory of which shifts and recedes, uncertainly, for her mind has been thrice fogged, once by smoke, a second time by violence, and lastly by the opiate administered by the physician Dr. Gillies, preparatory to a most unhappy procedure, during which Anna sobbed, and groaned, and clawed herself, becoming so distressed that Dr. Gillies was obliged to ask for help in restraining her, and Löwenthal, ordinarily a man of some fortitude in times of injury or upheaval, wept freely as he pried her hands away.

When Anna opened her eyes Löwenthal was standing over her, a white cloth in one hand, a jar of laudanum in the other; beside him stood Edgar Clinch, white-faced.

‘She’s awake,’ said Clinch.

‘Anna,’ Löwenthal said. ‘Anna. Dear heart.’

‘Mnh,’ she said.

‘Tell us what happened. Tell us who it was.’

‘Carver,’ she said thickly.

‘Yes?’ said Löwenthal, leaning in.

She must not betray Crosbie Wells. She had sworn not to betray him. She must not mention his name.

‘Carver …’ she said again, her mind focusing, unfocusing.

‘Yes?’

‘… Was the father,’ Anna said.

In which Emery Staines, learning of Anna’s assault from Benjamin Löwenthal, saddles up at once and rides for the Arahura Valley, his jaw set, his eyes pricking tears, these being the external tokens of an emotional disturbance for which he does not, over the course of the journey north, admit true cause, much less attempt to articulate, inasmuch as any powerful emotion can be immediately articulated or understood by the sufferer, who, in this case, had been so distressed by Löwenthal’s frank account of the injuries sustained, and by the blood that soaked his printer’s apron from chest to hip, that he forgot both his wallet and his hat at the stables, and as he rode out, almost charged down Harald Nilssen as the latter exited Tiegreen’s Hardware with a paper sack beneath his arm.

Wells opened his door. There upon the threshold, doubled over, was Emery Staines.

‘The baby’s gone,’ he sobbed. ‘Your baby’s gone.’

Wells helped him inside, and listened to the story. Then he fetched a bottle of brandy, poured them each a glassful, downed it, poured them each another, downed it, poured them a third.

When the bottle was empty Staines said, ‘I’ll give her half. I’ll share it with her. I’ve a fortune—secret—buried in the ground. I’ll dig it up.’

Wells stared at him. After a time he said, ‘How much is half?’

‘Why,’ mumbled Staines, ‘I’d guess perhaps two thousand.’ He put his head down upon the table, and closed his eyes.

Wells fetched down a tin box from his shelf, opened it, and withdrew a clean sheet of paper and a reservoir pen. He wrote:

On this 11th day of October 1865 a sum of two thousand pounds is to be given to MISS ANNA WETHERELL, formerly of New South Wales, by MR. EMERY STAINES, formerly of New South Wales, as witnessed by MR. CROSBIE WELLS, presiding .

‘There,’ said Wells. He signed his name, and pushed the sheet to Staines. ‘Sign.’

But the boy was asleep.

In which Anna Wetherell, lost to meditation, tallies her obligations, a project that gives rise to such disconsolation that her mind averts its eye, so to speak, and casts about for another, lighter subject, alighting, inevitably, upon the smiling, bright-eyed form of Emery Staines, whose good opinion she has come to desire above all the others of her acquaintance, a desire quashed just as often as it is expressed, knowing his situation to be a world above her own, his prospects as bright and numerous as hers are dark and few, and presuming his regard for her to be likewise contrary, that is, the very opposite of hers for him, a belief held in spite of the fact that he has called upon her thrice since her recovery, and recently made her a present of a bottle of Andalusian brandy, the last bottle of its kind in all of Hokitika, though as she took it from his hands he became suddenly stricken, and begged to recover it and return with another, more suitable gift, to which she replied, honestly, that she was very flattered to be given a gift that did not attempt in any way to be suitable, and anyway, it was the last bottle of its kind in all of Hokitika, and for that, much rarer and more singular than any favour or trinket she had ever received.

Anna’s debt to Mannering had doubled in the past month. A hundred pounds! It would take her a decade to repay that amount, perhaps even longer, if one considered the rates of usury, and the cost of opium, and the fact that her own value, inevitably, would come to fall. Her breath had fogged the corner of the window: she reached out to touch it. There was a snatch of something in her head, a maxim. A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past . Had she heard it spoken somewhere? Or had she composed it of her own accord?

In which Emery Staines, lost to meditation, doubts his own intentions, his natural frankness having accepted very readily the fact of his desire, and the fact of his delight, and the ease with which his pleasure might be got, expressions that cause him no shame, but that nevertheless give him pause, for he feels, whatever the difference in their respective stations, a certain bond with Anna Wetherell, a connexion, by virtue of which he feels less, rather than more, complete, in the sense that her nature, being both oppositional to and in accord with his own, seems to illumine those internal aspects of his character that his external manner does not or cannot betray, leaving him feeling both halved and doubled, or in other words, doubled when in her presence, and halved when out of it, and as a consequence he becomes suddenly doubtful of those qualities of frankness and good-natured curiosity upon which he might ordinarily have acted, without doubt and without delay; these meditations being interrupted, frequently, by a remark of Joseph Pritchard’s—‘if it weren’t for her debt, her dependency, she’d have had a dozen propositions from a dozen men’—that keeps returning, uncomfortably and without variation, to his mind.

Perhaps he could buy her for the night. In the morning, he could take her to the Arahura, where he would show her the fortune he had buried there. He could explain that he meant to give exactly half of it to her. Would it defeat the purpose of the gift, if he had already paid for the pleasure of her company? Perhaps. But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know. He crushed a leaf against his palm, and then lifted his palm to his nose, to smell the juices.