The fourth photograph was a blowup of a portion of the previous one. The sitting bed was occupied. She stiffened slightly and the smile which had appeared on her face as she’d begun leafing through the pictures disappeared.
There were two figures lying on the bed: a man and a woman. Both were naked. What had started out as a joke was no longer amusing.
One photograph remained. She didn’t want to look at it but she was unable to stop herself from raising the sheet and turning it over. The man and the woman were both sitting up in bed now. To be more precise, the man was sitting up and the woman was on his lap. She had her arms around him and he around her.
The image was fuzzy. It was difficult to discern expressions but not features. She was able to recognize the man instantly, even through the screening that shielded the porch. A voice inside kept insisting it had to be someone else, that it couldn’t be him. But there weren’t many men Robert’s size.
It took a minute longer for her to identify the woman he was cradling in his arms. It was Merita, the housekeeper who looked after the lakeside villa. Her features were not distinct, but there was no mistaking that long black hair and the voluptuous figure.
Holly set the pictures down carefully, even though they were paper and would not break. The hand that held them was trembling. She felt for the nearby chair and sat down slowly. For a long time she stared across the room, not really thinking, too numbed to react.
After some time had passed (she didn’t know how much time), she remembered the letter that had accompanied the photographs. Picking it up, she began to read.…
Coffin dug into his supper with gusto. It had been a profitable day. Word had come that the price of wool was up sharply. As if that weren’t enough to stimulate a cheer, one of his ships, the Albatross, had arrived more than a week early from London thanks to unusually favorable winds. He and Elias had gone aboard to check the cargo and satisfy themselves that everything was as promised by their English shippers.
And Cook had outdone herself tonight. The duck in particular was succulent and tasty. Across the table Holly didn’t seem to feel similarly. She was hardly eating at all, picking indifferently at the dark meat. Since they’d sat down to eat she’d said hardly a word. Chewing on a slice of duck breast he wiped at his lips with a linen napkin.
“What’s wrong, woman? You’re pale as a ghost and about as lively. Have you forgotten we’re due at the Hamptons’ later for tea and dessert?” To his surprise Coffin had found he was beginning to enjoy their nocturnal excursions. He was particularly looking forward to tonight’s visit. The Hamptons had imported a chef from Paris who excelled at concocting the kind of sugary insubstantialities Coffin would never have touched years ago. Such delights were more to his taste now. He was beginning to acquire a waistline, but then he no longer spent the day riding the back country or climbing the rigging of a ship.
“I’m not going, Robert.”
He had to strain to understand the words. When he did he frowned and put the napkin aside. “What do you mean you aren’t going? What kind of nonsense is this? You enjoy the Hamptons’ company more than I.”
“I said I’m not going.”
“What’s wrong? Not feeling well tonight?”
Instead of answering she rose from the table, walked to the bookcase behind her seat, and extracted a sheaf of paper. Approaching him she dumped the pile unceremoniously next to his plate. He stared at it uncomprehendingly.
“What’s this? Bad news from home?”
“No. Not from England.”
Curious, Coffin took a sip of his wine before picking up the papers. Now he saw they were photographs, the exposed sides facing down. When he turned the second one over his expression darkened.
He stared at the last one for a long time. When he finally set it aside with the others he became aware she was still hovering close by, watching his face. Violently he shoved the pile toward the center of the table.
“Nonsense. All nonsense,” he muttered.
“Nonsense?” A strange sound came from her throat, as if she were choking. “How can they be nonsense, Robert?”
He didn’t look up at her. “Photographs can be altered. Treated and changed around. All you need is a clever photographer, a chemist, and an artist.”
“Are you trying to tell me that’s not you and that snippet of a housemaid in those pictures?”
“All I’m saying is that faces can be altered.”
She took a step away from him, the loathing in her voice unmistakeable. “You must think I’m still half mad. I suppose that porch and that bed has been ‘altered’ as well. And the house of course. How could you, Robert? You and I slept in that same bed.” Her voice was cracking now. “And with a native.”
He said nothing. There was really nothing he could say. But she wasn’t finished yet.
“A Maori woman. Like a common fanner. Animals, rutting in the yard.”
“Who brought you these?” He gestured toward the damning images. She ignored him as she rambled on wildly.
“All these years. How long, Robert? How long? You told me you built that house for me, for us!”
“I did.”
“The hell you did! You built it for you and that woman! Your secret little love-nest, wasn’t it? All those ‘inspection’ trips you made to the lake district. Did you do a lot of inspecting, Robert?” She stalked down the length of the table, picked up the photographs and shook them at him. “It must’ve been very painful for you. All those times you came home so tired, so worn out, so exhausted by your exertions on behalf of the ‘business’!” She threw the pictures across the table. They separated and drifted to the floor.
He looked up at last. “Holly, she’s nothing but a housemaid. She means nothing to me.”
“Lies compounding like interest! Don’t lie to me, Robert. Not now. You won’t save yourself with that. You’ve been lying to me for years, haven’t you?” She picked up a letter, glanced briefly at it. “Eleven years, to be precise. All the happy summers we spent at that house, riding around the lake, bathing in the hot springs. All the time we ate there while that woman,” and she spoke the word as though referring to an incurable tropical disease, “cooked for us and served us. How many secret smiles did I miss, Robert? How many grins and little touches did the two of you exchange when I wasn’t looking. When I went early to bed did you have her on the kitchen table, Robert?”
“Holly, I.…”
“You want to know the worst of it? What really hurts? I liked her. I really liked her.”
“She likes you as well, Holly.”
“Likes me?” She gaped at him, her expression unbalanced now. “Likes me? How could she? How could she?” Her voice had risen to a steady scream. “To talk to me the way she did, do my laundry, be my friend—and then lie with you behind my back.”
“She’s Maori, Holly. Among the Maoris it’s not uncommon to love more than one person.”
“Heathen ways. They’re all heathens, the lying bastards. They killed Christopher. Now I find one of them has been deceiving me with my husband for more than a decade.” Her expression changed, her eyes narrowing and her voice tightening. “And the two of you even have a little bastard of your own. How charming.”
Coffin had dealt as well as possible with each succeeding accusation. Only now was he unnerved. “How did you know that?”
“Andrew,” she hissed sarcastically. “That cute little boy who has the run of the house and grounds and calls you ‘Uncle’ Robert. I knew from looking at him he was a half-breed, but I never suspected he was your half-breed. You even deceive your own child.” She leaned forward, resting both hands on the polished table.
“Who else have you deceived, Robert? What about this poor, ignorant native girl? Did you tell her you would leave me some day so you could marry her?”
“No, that isn’t necessary with her. She didn’t need that.”
“How open-minded she is.”
“How did you find out about And
rew? He’s not in any of the pictures.”
“Oh. The pictures didn’t come alone. There was a letter.” Turning, she strode around the” table and lifted the paper from her chair. “This letter. It’s very long, Robert. Very detailed. Whoever wrote it didn’t want anyone seeing those pictures to have the slightest doubt what they implied.”
Coffin rose and moved toward her. She backed away from him, breathing hard. He tried to keep his voice level. “Give me that letter, Holly.”
“Why not? Here!” She threw it at him. It floated to the floor like a severed palm frond. “Why should I want to keep it from you? There’s nothing in it you don’t already know.”
He bent to recover the several sheets of paper which had been clipped together, and began reading. She was right about the detail. Whoever had written the missive had been clinical in the descriptions. It described everything he had worked to conceal from her for the past eleven years.
“Who sent it? Who!”
“I’ve no idea.” She had backed herself against the bookcase. “Is’bel took them from a messenger boy who came to the house. There was no return address on the package.” She laughed then, a sad, unhappy sound. “I am not surprised. Whoever sent these couldn’t have been proud of their work.”
“There must have been something. Some indication. A postmark, anything.”
“Nothing.” She was sneering at him now. “There was nothing. It didn’t come through the post. I thought that unusual at the time. I thought it came from one of our neighbors. From one of our friends.” Again the despairing laugh. “For all I know that might be the truth. After all, what do I know? Who else knows about you and your Maori tart? How many of our friends have been laughing at us, laughing at me behind my back over the years?”
He continued studying the damning letter. “No one knows about it,” he muttered. “No one.”
“Someone does. Someone who knew enough to have a photographer in just the right place, Robert, at just the right time. Someone who knew your secret life pretty well.”
“Yes, that’s true. But who?” Anyone who knew this much about Robert Coffin must also know that what they’d done had marked them for death, yet that hadn’t dissuaded them. But how to trace letter and pictures back to their origin?
“I’ll interview every photographer in New Zealand until I find out who’s responsible for this!”
She was staring at him and shaking her head. “Thinking of yourself. You’re always thinking of yourself, Robert. No picture-maker’s responsible for what’s happened. You’re responsible. You. All you can think of right now is revenge, isn’t it? Revenge against whoever knew the truth about you. The truth hurts. So easy, it’s so easy when it’s just your own little secret, nothing complicated, nothing painful. Maybe whoever wrote the letter also took the pictures. What about that?”
“Then I’ll trace cameras.”
“You can’t trace cameras. You might as well try to trace stoves or bridles.”
He crushed the letter in his fingers. “I’ll find out. You’ll see. Someday. Someday.” He sat down heavily, still clutching the crumpled letter as he stared at the floor where the photographs lay scattered like so many playing cards. “Who would do such a thing? Why?”
She was trembling all over. It was amazing so small a body could contain so much fury. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s true.” She ran at him then and he flinched from her anger. Her spittle landed on his face as she railed at him. “It’s true, it’s true! Deny it, Robert. Sit there before God and deny it!”
He inhaled deeply and rose, backing her away. “All right. It’s true.” He walked away from her. “I thought you were going to die, Holly. Everyone did. The servants, the doctors. But you did everything but die. You stared out the window overlooking the yard. Day after day you sat in that damned chair and stared! When you weren’t staring you walked the halls like a statue. Can you imagine what that was like? Can you conceive of how oppressive my life became?
“I took it as long as I could. Dammit, woman, I’m not a corpse! Nor am I a relic. I still had feelings, emotions, needs. Merita was there when I needed her. You weren’t.”
It was silent then, until she said quietly, “And if I had been there, Robert, what then? Are you trying to tell me this never would have happened? That you wouldn’t have made love to her behind my back? That you wouldn’t have had a child by her when I couldn’t give you another one?”
“That’s right. That’s right. I wouldn’t have.”
“I don’t believe you. How can I believe you? I think you would have had this affair whether I was depressed, crippled, or healthy as a horse. Because you wanted this woman. And what the great Robert Coffin wants, he takes. How you must have enjoyed the planning! Keeping your sordid little secret, setting her up in her own house pretending it was ours—don’t try to deny that, not now. I won’t stand for it. I am the visitor at Tarawera, the guest. Oh no, it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d not become ill.”
“It would. I swear to you it would have, Holly.”
“Don’t speak my name, you miserable adulterer! Look at you, standing there trying to deny your own lust, trying to appear the outraged one.”
“Why would someone do a thing like this?” He gestured toward the fallen photographs. “Ask yourself that?”
“Why should I? What are you trying to do with such words? Put the blame on the poor unknown who revealed the truth to me? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the truth. That exists by itself, separate and apart from the letter and the pictures and the motives of whoever is responsible for them. None of them are as important as the truth, and the truth is that you love your little Maori whore, don’t you? You love her!”
“Holly, I love you as well.”
This time her laugh was frightening. She was walking the edge now, the thin line she’d traversed during her long, slow recovery.
“You don’t love me, Robert. You value me, as you value all your possessions, all your successes. As you probably value that poor woman. Why did you really do it? Because I couldn’t have another child after Christopher?”
“That had nothing to do with it. I’ve told you why it happened. Because I was lonely and you were here but not here.”
“The great Robert Coffin. So you are as weak as any of the rest of us after all.”
“I never denied that. I’m a human being. Do you condemn me for that?”
“I don’t know.” She spun away from him. “I don’t know. All I know is that when I spoke the marriage vows to a hopeful young man in England oh so many years ago, I meant them. And you did not.”
“Father Methune. We should talk to Father Methune. He can explain to you what I was going through, living with the shadow of the woman I’d married.”
“I’m sorry if you suffered, Robert. Believe me I am. But bringing Father Methune to talk to me won’t wipe out what you’ve done, won’t extricate you from your own filthy machinations. Nothing you can say or do can alter the truth. That’s the funny thing about truth, isn’t it? It’s quite immutable. You can try to cover it over, try to hide behind an avalanche of excuses and apologies, but it’s too big for that.
“And now if you don’t mind,” she said suddenly, “I’m rather tired and I am going to bed. As you may have noticed, I’ve no appetite tonight.” She turned toward the door.
He took three strides to block her retreat. “No. Neither of us is going anywhere until this is settled.”
She stared calmly up at him. “Until what is settled? What is there to settle, Robert? Nothing has really changed. You still have everything you want. Your dutiful wife and your Maori whore.”
“Don’t call her that. Whatever you may think of me, that’s not what she is.”
“Oh?” Her voice was shaking. “Why not? Isn’t a whore someone who sells herself for money?”
“She never did that.”
“Really? She appears to have done fairly well from what I can see. A fine house
, an independent income. Or are you going to tell me you pay her for cleaning and cooking?”
“Whether you believe me or not, that is the truth.”
“More truth from Robert Coffin, the master of deception?”
“She did it for me.”
“She did it for you. For you?” Holly laughed. “Am I now to be forced to acknowledge the nobility and self-sacrifice of your trollop?”
“She,” he hesitated, “she loves me. She always has.”
“Well of course she does! How could anyone not love the great Robert Coffin? Why else would she lie with you and bear your son if not out of love for the irresistible, the all-conquering Robert Coffin? How foolish of me to think otherwise.” She turned to leave.
He grabbed her arm. “Don’t end it like this, Holly. You don’t understand.”
“No. No, I guess I do not, Robert. I don’t understand. I’m just a simple girl from London who thought she knew what life was all about, what love and marriage were supposed to be about. Obviously I was wrong. That’s all different here, halfway around the world. It would be so much simpler if I were Maori, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that right, Robert?” Her stare and words were so cold he let go of her.
“You may come upstairs whenever it suits you.” This time when she tried to laugh she failed miserably. “After all, with your country tart unavailable you will have to make do with whatever you can find in the city, won’t you?” She put a hand on the handle of the dining room door intending to twist it ’round. Then she crumpled, silent as a rag doll, as if her legs had simply given out.
“Holly!” He ran over to kneel beside her. “Holly?” He put his ear to her chest, heard her heart still beating. “Is’bel, Edward! Edward, damn you, get in here!”
A moment later the door was pulled aside to reveal the butler and maid. The girl put her hands to her cheeks and made a small gasping sound.
Maori Page 42
