Jacko, the cook, stood at the door of the hut banging an enamel pie dish with a spoon to announce the meal.
‘Hey, Carter!’ said Birtwistle, coming in with the other men. ‘You can’t sit there.’
‘Why bloody not?’ said Carter.
‘It’s Templeton’s place,’ said Birtwistle.
‘Mine now,’ said Carter.
‘Beat it,’ said McNamara, rolling off his bunk and coming over. ‘Top of the table is the privilege of the longest in the camp.’
‘Bloody bunch of old women,’ said Carter, getting up.
‘Watch it,’ said Birtwistle.
The men collected plates off the table and went to the hearth, where Jacko was ladling mutton stew from a large pot hanging over the open fire. They sat down and started eating. No one said much. It was eleven hours since breakfast and work in the forest had been solid, except for brief stops for smokes and a bit of tucker at midday.
Birtwistle was sitting next to Carter and watched as the man speared the contents of the stew with his knife and carried meat and potatoes to his mouth on the blade’s tip. The camp had its code: eating off your knife was frowned upon.
‘Got a sword-swallower here giving a performance,’ said Birtwistle.
Everyone looked at the two men.
‘Bastard,’ said Carter, and spat on the floor.
‘Don’t you know the bloody rules?’ said Templeton. ‘No spitting, no eating off your knife, no talking about sheilas, or work after six o’clock, and see you wash your clothes on Sunday.’
Carter appeared not to hear. He speared another lump of meat on his knife and ate it. He took a piece of bread and leaned over Birtwistle, knife in hand, ready to cut some butter. Birtwistle grabbed his wrist and held it down on the table.
‘Haven’t we told you, Carter — no eating off your knife,’ said Birtwistle. ‘Seems you’re a slow bloody learner. Do you want us to show you what happens to sword-swallowers around here?’
‘Give over, you bloody prick,’ said Carter, making a fist with his free hand and swinging it at Birtwistle.
‘Temper, temper,’ said Dobbs, fending off the blow intended for Birtwistle and pinioning Carter’s arm against the table.
The other men laughed. Carter squirmed and cursed. He struggled against Birtwistle and Dobbs and tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet.
‘Need a hand, you two?’ said McNamara, coming over and joining in. He caught Carter’s arm and twisted it behind his back. Carter yelped and struggled more wildly.
‘So, Mr Carter doesn’t like his lesson in manners,’ said Birtwistle.
‘Bloody asked for it,’ said Dobbs.
‘Seems he’s getting a bit hot and bothered,’ said McNamara, still holding Carter’s arm in a painful twist.
‘Throw him in the river,’ said Dobbs. ‘That’ll cool him down.’
‘Maybe we should,’ said Birtwistle.
‘Let the man be,’ said Templeton.
‘Tell you what,’ said Birtwistle, ‘anyone got some string?’
‘Here,’ said McNamara, pulling a piece from the pocket of his trousers.
‘Thanks,’ said Birtwistle, taking the string and picking up Carter’s knife. ‘It’s all right, Templeton, we won’t do our sword-swallowing friend any harm. We’ll just tie his knife to the leg of the table when we’re eating. No harm in that, is there, Mr Carter? See, you can still use your knife at work but you won’t be getting to the butter with it. A few days of this and I’d say it’s a lesson you won’t bloody forget.’
‘Fucking bastard,’ said Carter, as McNamara released his arm. ‘I’ll get you for this Birtwistle, I bloody will.’
At smoko a few days later Birtwistle was sitting on a log running the whetstone over his axe when Carter came over. They hadn’t spoken since the incident in the hut, and Carter’s knife was still tied to the table leg at mealtimes.
‘Not off chasing little Miss Muffet today?’ said Carter.
‘What do you mean?’ said Birtwistle.
‘You know what I mean. I’ve seen you two in the trees screwing. Heard you at it, more than once,’ said Carter, pulling a tin box out of his trouser pocket and taking out a hand-rolled cigarette.
‘Bugger off!’ said Birtwistle. ‘It’s bloody nothing to do with you, so mind your own fucking business.’
‘Friendly advice, that’s all. Break it off, lover boy, before there’s trouble,’ said Carter, striking a match and lighting up.
‘Trouble?’ said Birtwistle.
‘Don’t give me that shit. I’m told you’re a married man, Birtwistle, or have you forgotten? Bet Miss Muffet doesn’t know you’ve got a wife up there in Greymouth and a clatter of kids.’
‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’
‘Her old man will kill you if he finds out. Bluett’s got a filthy bloody temper, too, by the sounds of it.’
‘He won’t find out.’
‘I’ve a mind to tell him — and your missus. And the boss up at the mill, maybe.’
‘I’ll smash your fucking face if you bloody squeal,’ said Birtwistle, standing up.
‘Try it,’ said Carter. ‘Just bloody try it.’
Huia had waited for Birtwistle, cross-legged on the ground at the foot of the split rimu. The bark had been cleared of moss and the underscrub removed ready for felling, though for some reason the tree had been left standing. She had been there a few minutes before she saw the soldier’s cap near the base of the trunk. There was a torn bit of an old label tucked behind the badge. Turning it over she saw a pencilled message: Sorry, can’t go on. Heading north. You can keep the hat. SB
Huia thought of that moment as she kicked up the sawdust, obliterating the pattern she had made on the ground. She could see her father pointing at the map Geoffrey Hastings was holding. Hastings had taken off his gloves and his hands looked pale and long. The two men were nodding. It seemed agreement had been reached.
Huia remembered Birtwistle with his dirt-ingrained fingers and rank, tobacco-tasting mouth. For the first time since he left she was not sorry he’d gone.
It had started to rain by the time Huia and Geoffrey got back to the house. Fine, cold rain falling from the sky like an upturned box of pins.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Huia said as they came out of the trees into the home paddock. ‘I could rake up the fire and you could get a bit warm as well.’
The kitchen reminded Geoffrey pleasantly of the cottage kitchens he had visited on his father’s land when he was a boy in County Kildare. The only real difference was the walls: pit-sawn timber rather than whitewashed mud. There was the same crane holding the kettle and other utensils over an open fire, a bread oven in the side of the chimney, and a mat on the beaten earth floor, made of twisted rags. Like the Irish houses it even had a homemade paper-lace cover over the mantel of the fireplace. The paper was old and discoloured. It seemed there was no wife or mother about the place. Geoffrey wondered who had made the paper lace.
Huia pulled over a chair so he could hang his coat by the fire. She fetched the one good linen cloth, put it over the newspaper on the table and got the best china off the dresser. It was years since anyone had visited the Bluetts. There had been teaspoons when Huia’s mother lived there, but these had long gone.
She set the brown teapot, a jug of milk, a half-cut loaf and some butter on the table and they both sat down. Geoffrey drank his tea and talked politely of the weather and the ships that were currently in Hokitika, and had Huia read in the papers about that woman who had graduated from the university in Christchurch with a Master of Arts degree? Huia said little. She did not mention Geoffrey’s proposed trip upcountry. She knew better than to meddle with her father’s arrangements.
Having Geoffrey in the kitchen made the place seem intolerably crowded and shabby. Huia imagined what he must be thinking of the smoking outdoor chimney, the porridge-stained newspaper cover on the table when they came in, the half-full slop bucket in the corner, her father’s home-brew flagons by the
wall. These things, along with the absent teaspoons, made her feel embarrassed and uneasy. It was a relief when Geoffrey left.
He waved as he and his horse disappeared down the track into the trees. Huia was glad of the wave. She stood for some moments on the steps down from the narrow timber deck that ran in front of the house. The rain had stopped. Everything was covered with a slippery brightness. As she went back into the house she began singing:
Or if I was an eagle and had two wings to fly,
I would fly to my love’s castle and it’s there I would lie,
In a bed of green ivy I would leave myself down,
With my two folded wings I would my love surround.
It was a song the Irish bushmen sang in the camps.
Chapter 3
It was Saturday afternoon. Pay day. End of the working week. The streets were crowded with riders, carts, gigs and drays. The billiard rooms were doing brisk business. Those waiting for a game loafed about, hands hooked in waistcoats, or gambled on the cards in ‘unlimited loo’. Miners jingled coins in the pockets of their stained moleskins, shouted mates drinks in bars and played two-up in the dust. Dares were made to imbibe at every pub on the street, and sovereigns changed hands in sculling competitions. There was the usual crowd at the post office on Gibson Quay — the place to meet. People collected letters and read them as they stood about on the pavement. Sweethearts kissed in secluded doorways and young women linked arms to walk about the town together. Outside the volunteer fire brigade building a little girl in a broderie anglaise pinafore with a torn flounce was skipping.
Paddy on the railroad
Picking up stones.
Up came the railway train
And broke Paddy’s bones.
The horse-drawn tram had just arrived from Kaniere and the sound of hooves, wheels, bells and shouts was loud above the insistence of the nearby surf. Revell Street, the main thoroughfare, mimicked the line of beach it backed onto. Near the river end was an alleyway ending in a rotting wall, to which posters for long-gone circuses, shadow shows and theatricals clung doggedly. Drunks urinated against the wall’s rough surface, or slept off excesses behind it among the poroporo. Mostly the place was deserted.
Huia came down the alleyway, her only good dress over her arm. After leaving her father at the Harp of Erin she had gone around the shops on foot, ordering the supplies she would collect later in the afternoon. Flour, sugar, syrup, tea, a bit of bacon, mutton flaps, bones, some tobacco for her father.
There was not much else to do except walk the streets when Alf Bluett was drinking — womanising, too, for all Huia knew. Stan Birtwistle had said her father was probably a regular at Hokitika’s bawdy houses and brothels. Huia had been shocked but not sure if it was true. Certainly when father and daughter came to town together Bluett was keen to be rid of her, sending Huia off to do the errands double quick. And always at the end of the evening there was the interminable hanging about outside one pub or another, waiting for Alf Bluett to head home.
Huia took a quick look around to make sure she wasn’t observed, then began opening the long line of buttons that ran down her dress from neck to thigh. Once changed into her good dress, she folded the clothes she had been wearing and hid them under a rusted hip-bath upturned on the ground. Then, with a smile at her reflection in a broken window, she set off, biting her lips to redden them as she went.
‘Damnation,’ said Geoffrey, putting his shoulder to the back gate, which had swelled yet again in the rain. Suddenly giving way under his weight, it swung open and he lurched into the yard. Champ, who he’d left shut in the kitchen, was barking.
Geoffrey hadn’t seen the Bluett girl since the previous week, when he’d had tea with her at Hobbs Forks. Now she was sitting cross-legged under his apple tree, stroking the kitten he had recently befriended.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Geoffrey, politely removing his hat. ‘You gave me a surprise.’
‘Didn’t mean to,’ said Huia, standing up. ‘I like your kitten. What’s he called?’
‘That’s Adolph,’ said Geoffrey.
‘Reminds me of my Nanny Rina. She was crazy about cats, called them ngeru; it means silky. She used to say the first cat she had was the softest thing she ever felt.’
‘I’m a bit of a cat man myself, though don’t tell my dog that,’ said Geoffrey as he reached into his waistcoat pocket for the back-door key. ‘Have you come with a message from your father about the trip?’
‘No,’ said Huia, ‘I wanted to see you. Da doesn’t know I’m here. He’s drinking at the Harp of Erin so he won’t miss me.’
The girl was much more carefully dressed than when Geoffrey had seen her first. Her hair was caught up in an old-fashioned dark lace snood and she wore a slightly grubby, full-skirted pale blue gown. The dress was obviously intended to be worn with a crinoline, and without a hoop it dragged heavily. It must be at least fifteen or twenty years old, Geoffrey thought, and it was far too big for her. Yet somehow the effect was charming rather than dowdy; the glazed poplin accentuated the glow of the girl’s hair and skin, and the overlong sleeves and loose waist made her seem immensely fragile, like some fey creature masquerading as a human being.
‘Hey, do you like my dress? I wear it for best.’
‘Very nice,’ said Geoffrey.
‘I wore it because I want you to take my photograph.’
‘A portrait — of you?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘I told you I’m not in that line of business any more.’
‘But you still have the gear. You could take a photograph of me if you wanted.’
‘I could.’
‘So you will, then.’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘You don’t think I can pay?’
‘Money’s not the issue, Miss Bluett. I have made a decision not to do any more portraits.’
‘Why?’
‘Private reasons, really.’
‘I’ll give you this if you’d do it.’ Huia reached into the bodice of her dress and drew out a very fine pounamu pendant.
‘As I said, it’s not a question of money, and I certainly wouldn’t want your jewellery.’
‘So you won’t do it?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Bastard!’ said Huia and regretted the word immediately. It was an expression Geoffrey had never heard on a woman’s lips before.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but it was too late. Geoffrey had turned and gone into the house, shutting the door behind him.
Bugger, bugger, bugger and buckets of shit, Huia said to herself. I’ve ruined everything.
It had never crossed her mind that Geoffrey would refuse. Ever since their meeting the previous week she had thought about little other than the Irish photographer and an image of herself captured by his camera. Being unable to pay had been a slight worry but she knew her pendant was precious. He would surely accept it. Huia was not clear on the details of the transaction or what she really expected to happen but she had had faith that with the taking of the photograph the rest would slip into place. Hastings would most certainly fall in love with her.
She had thought about the photograph so much and so ardently that the portrait had assumed its own reality. She saw herself as one of the pictures in the Argus Annual or the odd copies of the Illustrated London News that her father sometimes brought up from town. Sad and lovely as the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, hair undulating about her throat in entrancing ripples, perfect sloping shoulders, eyes like a night of stars.
‘Miss Katarina Huia Bluett, famous New Zealand beauty, who is now visiting London’, ‘Miss Katarina Huia Bluett on her way to Buckingham Palace’, ‘The engagement is announced of Miss Katarina Huia Bluett, of Westland, New Zealand, and …’
The photograph was the key, the stepping stone, the talisman that would transform her life. But now, before any of this had happened, with hardly a glance or even a proper explanation, Geoffrey Hastings had not only refused to let her sit for a portrait b
ut gone off in a huff. He might never speak to her again. Who could blame him? It was all her own fault.
Huia absentmindedly scratched Adolph under his chin. ‘I wish you could come and live with me,’ she said to the kitten. ‘If Nanny Rina was alive I’d take you and give you to her.’
Nanny Rina with her hair foaming around her face and her big-sounding laugh. Nanny Rina in the house that once stood down by the river. The house was a bit like the old woman herself: every spring you expected it to be carried away in the raging torrent, but for years it managed to remain. Frequently the rough grass at the doorstep was a quagmire, and when the rains were heavy and the river rose, water would trickle in under the weatherboards and run among the whariki. The floor was beaten earth and Huia and her cousins would pick at it with sticks and make little mounds of clay when they were supposed to be asleep in the back of the hut. It was hard to sleep with the sound of Nanny Rina and the other adults talking and singing in front of the blanket that hung over a rope separating the bedroom and the living area. Not that you let Nanny Rina see you picking at the earth, because you’d get a hiding with the razor strop that hung menacingly on a nail by the door.
The razor strop had once belonged to the shaving gear of Jack Delahunty, Nanny’s husband, but he had died or disappeared long since, so all that was left of him was a greenish piece of leather that made your legs sting, and the legend of his boots. As a girl, Nanny Rina had run away with a deserting sailor, and ended up working in a hotel in the new town of Auckland. Sent to collect the guests’ boots one day for cleaning, she had come on a pair of exceptionally fine ones — ‘real Morocco leather’, she used to say as she told the story.
‘So I said to my friend Anna, “I’m going to marry the man who owns these boots”, and do you know what?’ she’d say, pausing for effect and looking around the group of grandchildren on the floor around the fire. ‘I did, too right I did, because who did those boots belong to?’
‘Jack Delahunty!’ the children would chorus.
The Love Apple Page 3
