The Love Apple

by Coral Atkinson

  ‘Do you happen to have relations in County Kildare?’ said Geoffrey, ignoring the response.

  ‘Kildare,’ said Bridey, ‘Kildare, is it? Sure, there’s Eddie Coulaghan, isn’t he at someplace …’

  ‘Nurney,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I knew a Tim Pat Coulaghan in Nurney. He was a grand man with the hounds.’

  ‘And aren’t I going to shoot the lot of youse?’ said Bridey.

  ‘Why don’t you have a little drink with me first,’ said Geoffrey, putting out his hand and indicating the bar, ‘and you can tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Bloody much any of youse care,’ said Bridey. She hesitated for a moment but, as Geoffrey moved towards her, she seemed to accept his invitation, gesturing willingness with a movement of the revolver.

  The publican, who had been watching the incident from the window, backed behind the bar. The crowd outside pressed in at the door.

  ‘Brandy for me, and whatever my friend drinks,’ said Geoffrey, ‘though make hers two. Two glasses.’

  Bridey slumped unsteadily against the counter. The drinks were delivered. Geoffrey moved one of the two whisky glasses to Bridey’s left. She put down the revolver and took the glass, but she held the derringer tight in her other hand. Geoffrey could feel the perspiration under his eyes and in the roots of his moustache.

  ‘Sláinte,’ he said, raising his glass.

  Bridey waved her whisky in reply to the Irish toast. ‘And don’t I hate this godforsaken country,’ she said. ‘Sure, there’s nothing here for the likes of us but death and damnation.’

  ‘We’re both a long way from home,’ said Geoffrey, trying to stay calm.

  ‘Home?’ said Bridey. ‘Home, is it? Sure, there’s no home now.’ She finished her whisky in one gulp.

  Please, oh please don’t let her put that glass down, Geoffrey thought.

  Bridey still held the empty tumbler in her left hand as she reached forward with the other hand to the full one. As her fingers touched the full glass she let go of the derringer.

  ‘I’m having those,’ Geoffrey said, grabbing both weapons.

  Bridey paid no attention as she emptied the second whisky down her throat. Geoffrey saw her eyes fill with tears.

  The incident made Geoffrey a celebrity. Drinks were pressed on him and his party, and huge meals of eggs, sausages, bacon, mutton chops and fried bread were put on the bar in front of them. Geoffrey, who felt that the crowd would have been just as happy to see him shot as fêted, lacked appetite for both the praise and the enormous breakfast.

  ‘You showed the old bitch’, ‘Took the baggage for a real ride there’, ‘Do her good to cool off for a bit in the clink’, the miners said approvingly. Geoffrey, who knew too well the lonely hell of inebriation, felt only pity and a sense of kinship with Bridey. The danger over, he had watched, sad and embarrassed for her, as she was taken off in handcuffs by a policeman, her errant toe sprouting tuber-like from her boot.

  Geoffrey, Huia and Bluett rode out of Ross and continued through the clustered bush. At times the road was well defined, at others it floundered in undergrowth and almost disappeared. There were rivers to cross, with water almost up to the horses’ chests. Sometimes the bush fell back, revealing a rolling ocean of interlocking hills, or a patch of cleared land with a tiny house like a pale crumb in the relentless green. At other times they rode on the beach.

  All the rest of that day Geoffrey thought about the incident with Bridey. ‘Death and damnation,’ she had said. The words haunted him as he rode south.

  Huia worked fast when they stopped to boil the billy. She had gathered the sticks and got a fire going in the time it took the men to attend to the horses. After they had drunk tea and eaten bread and jam, Geoffrey went a little way into the forest to take a closer look at a fall of white clematis hanging in a tree. He was reaching up to snap off a piece when he heard Huia’s voice behind him.

  ‘Pretty, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey.

  He turned, with some flowers now in his hands.

  ‘You were really brave this morning,’ said Huia.

  ‘Stupid, more like,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘And also,’ said Huia, and paused, ‘I want to say sorry. Sorry I swore at you the other day and that.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘You’re not angry?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Geoffrey, ‘though you won’t catch me changing my mind about taking your photograph.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Here,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Have the flowers.’

  Huia took the long spray of whiteness. She made a loose plait of hair at the side of her face and began to weave the clematis into it. Eve, Geoffrey decided as she stood there in the slivers of forest sunlight, fiddling with her hair, which fell dark and marvellous to her hips. This was where the girl belonged. Her shadowy colouring and lush hair perfectly fitted the voluptuous greenness of the bush. And, Geoffrey thought, why don’t all women leave their hair loose like that, rather than forcing it up with pins and pads?

  ‘Someone once told me,’ said Huia, remembering Stan Birtwistle twisting her long curls around his hand when they made love, ‘that my hair was my best feature. What do you think?’

  ‘I think,’ said Geoffrey, starting to walk back towards the fire, ‘some things are better left unsaid.’

  Chapter 5

  It was the light that woke him. Pure white brilliance, like coming to consciousness in the midst of a snowstorm or the centre of a rose. Geoffrey had forgotten that extraordinary pleasure of waking in a tent on a sunny morning. He was uncertain for a moment where he was and why he was being confronted by an avalanche of brightness and the whirling sound of surf.

  The night before, they had left the track that ran through the bush. Despite the huge deposits of wood brought down by rivers from the forest and the difficulties of getting around the moraine bluffs, it was easier to ride on the foreshore than along the more difficult stretches of so-called road. As dusk fell they had made camp in a sheltered elbow of headland where the flax swamps gave way to sand and coastal grasses.

  Geoffrey pulled back his blankets and opened the flap of the tent. The new day was ravishing, the whole landscape startlingly coloured, as if tinted with aniline dyes. Sea and sky were fiercely blue, bush unequivocal green. To the east the mountains, a pale, glistening line cresting the forest, white birds on a dark lake.

  Huia was on the beach collecting driftwood. She was bending over a large branch, breaking off pieces for kindling. Her dress, which appeared to have been very hastily pulled on, was open at the bodice and the outline of the girl’s unconfined breasts was clear under the thin chemise.

  Geoffrey had a sharp and unexpected flash of desire — a momentary image of being behind Huia as she stooped to her work. Of feeling her body bend before him and catching her breasts in his cupped palms. Since Vanessa’s death such frissons of lust had deserted him. The return was so sudden and so unexpected that for a moment he was uncertain what had happened.

  Sinful thoughts, the clergy would undoubtedly have said, and Geoffrey thought they would have been right. And then there was Vanessa — wasn’t this yearning after another woman, however fleetingly, unfaithful to her memory? But there was no answering stab of guilt, no voice of conscience dictating that this mortifying fancy must be put aside. Not this morning. Instead, Geoffrey felt surprise and a joy of recognition. Something he had believed dead had stirred, and it was far from disagreeable. He continued to stand at the tent flap, watching Huia and letting the fantasy excite him.

  Certainly no English rose, the girl would look incongruous netting a purse in a drawing room, or corseted and coiffed at a viceregal ball. But here on a New Zealand beach, Huia with her torrential hair and timber-coloured skin seemed alluring in a rumpled, colonial way.

  ‘Rattle your bloody dags, Hu, and get that fire going,’ Bluett shouted, coming around from the back of the tents where he had been feedi
ng the tethered horses.

  Huia turned on hearing her father’s voice. She made no reply but came back over the stones carrying the bundle of driftwood. She began to lay the fire in the previous night’s cinders.

  Geoffrey dropped the tent flap and, with Champ barking alongside, went down to the foreshore to wash in the freshwater stream that crossed the beach from swamp to sea. The swamp was filled with flax clumps; their tall maroon flowers reached upwards into the light. A pukeko high-stepped out of the cover onto the grass. The bird paused for a moment and, on seeing man and dog, quickly disappeared back into the raupo. It really was a perfect morning, Geoffrey thought. The day was so new; the sky, untroubled by any suggestion of cloud, had a rococo brilliance.

  The kettle was boiling when Geoffrey returned, and Huia was kneeling on the grass holding a frying pan over the flames. She had a bright paisley shawl around her neck and shoulders and her hair lay like a dark collar on the exotic decoration of the fabric. Smoke drifted in the morning air and Geoffrey could smell the aroma of bacon and mutton chops. He was ravenous.

  He moved from one side of the fire to the other, considering which angle he would use if he were to photograph Huia cooking on the brow of the beach. He smiled to himself at the way his craft asserted itself. He was glad Huia was busy turning the chops with a piece of wood. He certainly had no intention of going back on his word about photographing her, yet he had to admit she would make a pretty composition. He saw the scene in the gaze of the camera: the frantic white breakers at one side, the pebble and wood-strewn beach, and then on this small mat of grass a girl with a patterned shawl hunkered over a pot and a fire. ‘Breakfast’, ‘Morning’, ‘Best Meal of the Day’, he thought, devising possible names for his imaginary composition.

  ‘Do you want eggs with your bacon and chops?’ Huia said.

  ‘Eggs?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Huia, reaching in the horse’s feedbag lying beside her and picking out two eggs. ‘I brought them wrapped in my shawl.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Geoffrey.

  Huia smiled up at him, raising her eyebrows and opening her eyes very wide. ‘Thought you’d be pleased,’ she said.

  After breakfast they broke camp and set off down the long expanse of beach. Ten or fifteen years earlier, this stretch of coast had provided rich pickings for goldminers; all that was left now were the scattered remains of their shacks. Wooden planks stuck out of the sand like dislocated limbs. A piece of iron or a heap of tins and bottles indicated where a man’s hopes, or home of tent or shanty, had once stood.

  Geoffrey initially led the way, but once they reached a wider swath of firm sand Huia rode beside him, with Bluett on Diamond and the packhorses Gypsy, Rex and Bella behind. Bluett spoke little, though he frequently whistled in a rather tuneless way.

  Huia was now cheerful and talkative, her conversation full of questions. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ ‘Do you know any people with titles?’ ‘What’s wrong with ladies smoking?’ ‘Do you like long fingernails?’

  ‘Stop!’ said Geoffrey, laughing. ‘I can’t cope with such an inquisition so early in the morning!’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Huia, ‘I’ll race you to that big rock. Curly’s not such a fancy horse as yours but I bet I can make him go faster.’

  ‘What — race with all this gear in the saddlebags?’

  ‘Both horses are loaded,’ said Huia, ‘so that’s fair. Come on. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘You’re on,’ said Geoffrey, nudging Tsar into a gallop. Delighted to run, the big gelding pounded down the beach alongside Huia’s smaller mount. Geoffrey felt the muscles in his thighs tight against Tsar’s flanks, the horse tense and powerful under him.

  The morning parted cool and crisp; sky and surf unrolled like an endless blue scarf. Geoffrey thought of the hunts he’d been on as a youth in Ireland. He’d never had much enthusiasm for the kill — always felt sorry for the fox and secretly hoped it would escape. But there was no denying the excitement of the chase, the exhilaration of the mad canter through the countryside, thundering across fields, soaring over fences. The moments when his head and his stomach seemed to be flying in different directions and he felt his body slice the frosty air.

  Racing with Huia brought back those feelings. Geoffrey urged Tsar on, feeling exalted. The horses ran neck and neck, with Huia whipping up Curly and shouting alternately encouragement and abuse.

  A high clump of driftwood lay across their path. Geoffrey had no doubt that they would pass it on either side but as he guided Tsar to the left he realised that Huia was preparing to jump. Crouching over the mane, the girl urged her horse over. On a thoroughbred hunter the obstacle would have been difficult; on this third-rate hack from McIntyre’s stables it was suicide.

  ‘Huia!’ shouted Geoffrey, reigning his mount in. ‘Don’t!’

  It was too late: Curly was over. The jump and Geoffrey’s hesitation gave Huia the advantage and the smaller horse galloped ahead, reaching the rock seconds before Tsar.

  ‘I won!’ said Huia, dancing about on the sand. ‘I won!’

  ‘You could have broken your neck,’ said Geoffrey, dismounting beside her.

  ‘Sour grapes,’ said Huia. ‘You’re just crabby ’cause I beat you.’

  At the end of the beach a large rocky headland stuck far out into the water. The previous time Bluett had passed this way the boulders at the tip of the promontory had been generously shoaled up with sand and gravel so that one could ride around in safety, provided the tide was out. This morning things were different. The tide was low but the head offered no convenient passage. Weather and surf had scoured the sand from around the boulders, leaving only the crowns of rocks visible in the water.

  ‘Shit!’ said Bluett, riding up alongside Geoffrey as the party halted. ‘Don’t much fancy the look of that.’

  ‘Seems a bit iffy to me,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘We could do it easy,’ said Huia. ‘The water’s not deep.’

  ‘You keep out of this, missy,’ said Bluett.

  Huia pouted.

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ said Geoffrey, giving her a conciliatory smile. ‘Is there some way back onto the inland route from here?’

  ‘There’s a path up through the swamp somewhere behind us,’ said Bluett.

  They turned and trotted back the way they had come. Where beach met marsh someone had stuck what looked like a large whalebone in the sand.

  ‘Here,’ said Bluett, gesturing with his head, ‘this is it.’

  The track was wet and muddy and the way difficult to follow, though rags were occasionally to be seen tied to bushes to indicate the route. They rode between huge flax clumps; flowers like pennants of crusted blood waved and crackled over the horses’ heads. Sometimes the path disappeared or led straight into bog. In the worst parts, rocks had been sunk in the watery holes or fallen tree trunks positioned to carry travellers over the quagmire. Tsar was prepared to cross these makeshift bridges but Huia and Bluett’s horses repeatedly jibbed, preferring to flounder through the morass. It was an uncomfortable ride and a relief when they finally reached the firmer ground of the forested inland track.

  The trees were huge and elaborately hung with creepers: ferns with fronds as big as men jostled in the shadows, tiers of greenery on either side; every surface was abundantly covered and vivid with life. Kereru, their white chests like plump cushions, stared from the branches and the watery sounds of bellbird and tui trickled about.

  Geoffrey and his party passed a bullock team with a load of timber going north; they saw a old-timer asleep on a dining-room chair outside a ponga slab hut and a couple of tents and some prospectors near a creek. Otherwise the world was theirs.

  ‘What are you thinking, Mr Battle?’ said Huia.

  Geoffrey smiled at the name. The girl must have remembered that silly thing he had said about the Battle of Hastings the first time they met.

  ‘“A green thought in a green shade”,’ said Geoffrey.


  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Not sure I know myself. Just something I learnt once.’

  Having forded the Little Waitaha River they struck inland up the valley. Opposite the accommodation house, by the major branch of the river, they crossed south. The river level was down, so they didn’t need to use the services of the ferryman and were able to ride across.

  From there the track became narrow and steep as it wound through the forest of tightly packed totara and matai, finally arriving at the Wanganui River. On the near side, bush pressed to the water’s edge; on the other bank the land had been cleared. A sturdy wooden house surrounded by stables and outbuildings stood among the rough paddocks. Some distance away, a groyne stretched out into the river. This was Hende’s Ferry. At the end of the track a wire spanned the water. A tin dangling from the wire served to alert the ferryman when customers arrived. Bluett caught the tin and sent it rattling over the current. A few seconds later Peter Hende, who was bent over one of his beached boats, looked up and waved. He pulled one of the boats into the water and rowed across. The travellers stowed themselves and their gear in the boat; the horses would swim behind.

  Holding the horses’ bridles to keep them away from the oars was more difficult than Geoffrey expected; Tsar insisted on trying to swim alongside the boat, which made rowing difficult.

  ‘Give him a bloody good whack on the nose with the end of the bridle,’ Hende said, but despite any number of whacks the big horse kept surging forward. ‘Better to let him go altogether. Reckon he’ll just follow the other horses.’

  Somewhat reluctantly Geoffrey let the bridle drop. Thankfully the ferryman was right.

  Geoffrey sat in the Hendes’ parlour and smiled. He noticed how one end of the room acted as a post office, while the other was carefully decorated with pictures, china and bric-a-brac. Lace curtains hung at the windows, crocheted antimacassars protected the backs of chairs and handmade rugs offered warmth and softness on the wooden floor. Through an open doorway, Geoffrey could see a bed covered with an impeccable white quilt, a mosquito net looped above it.