The Love Apple

by Coral Atkinson

  ‘If you want,’ said Bluett, ‘though there’s almost a track now, with all them bloody sightseers.’

  Geoffrey and Huia did the chores, saw that the horses were fed and secure and left Bluett with food and brandy within arm’s reach.

  The sun was rising in a tentative pink sky, the snow on the surrounding mountains lightly flushed. Closer at hand, the bush was speckled with the white of kamahi and the red of early-flowering rata. Steam rose from the land, and leaves catching the light appeared brightly lacquered. Evidence of the preceding night’s ferocious storm had vanished. The world was newly made.

  Huia talked and smiled as they went: happy, it seemed, to be free of her father. Geoffrey felt cheerful too. Bluett was an unappealing travelling companion; his absence conferred the lightheartedness of an unexpected holiday.

  ‘Guess what my Nanny once told me,’ said Huia.

  ‘What?’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘She said that in the old days, if a girl really liked a man she’d tie a knot in some rushes and he’d find it and know.’

  ‘How did the chap work out who did it?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Could have been anyone.’

  ‘He’d know,’ said Huia. ‘He’d just know.’

  ‘Sounds daft to me,’ said Geoffrey. They both laughed.

  The way to the pools was stiff uphill walking, a steady climb through fern and forest. Sometimes Huia walked close to Geoffrey; at others she ran ahead and disappeared into the bush.

  ‘Mr Battle!’ Her voice was close but Geoffrey could not see her.

  ‘Where are you?’ He looked about and saw nothing but the green tangle of the forest.

  ‘Here!’ said Huia. ‘Look up.’

  Geoffrey glanced upward into the canopy to where Huia sat in the branches. The leaves suddenly shook violently, and water drenched Geoffrey’s head and shoulders.

  ‘You vile girl!’ he said, though he smiled as he wiped his face with his handkerchief.

  ‘Catch me if you can,’ said Huia as she shinned down the tree and darted past him.

  ‘I will, too,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and you’ll be sorry.’

  Huia ran towards a nearby glade, her wide-tasselled shawl floating like wings behind her. Geoffrey wrenched his swag off his shoulders and ran after her. Coming out of the protective darkness of the forest into the sunlight made him light-headed and slightly dizzy. As he moved half-stumbling over the mountain grass, a great surge of what felt like happiness flowed through him. The feeling was so strong and so unexpected that it made him stop in the middle of the clearing. The place reminded him of a bushy glade where he had photographed Vanessa some years before. At the thought of Vanessa he cringed, waiting for the customary anguish that always followed such recollection, but it didn’t come. He waited but still he didn’t feel it. She’s gone, dead, he said to himself, deliberately trying to see how far he could plunge the knife before blood flowed, but still there was nothing. The usual nostalgia but no pain. It seemed as if he had suddenly wakened, recovered after a terrible fever. The scene about him looked impossibly beautiful: mountains on every side covered in black beech forest reached upwards to snowy tops. Two kereru dropped like bright scarves through some nearby branches and in the distance was the sound of water running: everything was radiant with sunshine and saturating light. The touch of God, absent since Vanessa’s death, seemed everywhere apparent. Always been like Byron, thought Geoffrey: a bit of good weather and I’m a pious prig.

  Huia appeared from the other side of the clearing. ‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ she called.

  ‘I am,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Look what I’ve found,’ she said when Geoffrey reached her. The girl pointed to a dead tree with an oval hole in the trunk. ‘What do you think?’ she said, putting her face through the hole.

  ‘Splendid head clamp,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Get someone to put their head through that and there’d be no problem about them wriggling around while I took their photograph.’

  ‘You do it,’ said Huia as she moved away.

  Geoffrey rested his head in the hole and made a silly face. Huia put her hand in her pocket and took out a white clay pipe.

  ‘Do you smoke that?’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Sometimes. Got it when my Nanny died but don’t tell my Da.’ She laughed as she stuck the pipe in Geoffrey’s mouth.

  ‘Now I know how a snowman feels,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘You don’t like the paipa?’

  Huia pulled the pipe from Geoffrey’s lips, then leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘Gracious,’ said Geoffrey, feeling himself flush with embarrassment. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘I like you, Mr Battle. Do you like me too?’

  ‘Like you?’ said Geoffrey. ‘After you’ve drenched me? I should think not.’ He moved away from the tree, Huia caught his arm and together they walked back into the bush. The warmth of the girl’s fingers was reassuring. Geoffrey squeezed her hand, realising his abject hunger for this comforting touch of human skin.

  Coming out of the forest again they found themselves on a low terrace running alongside a powerful stream. ‘Nearly there,’ said Huia, running her hand in the river. ‘Feel this.’

  Geoffrey knelt beside her. The water was faintly warm. Steam rose off the river and over an apron of boulders and grass jutting from the lip of the bush.

  Huia gestured with her head. ‘There are the old pools you’re so keen on. You can get in whichever you like. You’re better off kiri kau though: the water stinks and it rots your clothes.’

  ‘I see,’ said Geoffrey, looking around at the steaming, rocky pools. He didn’t understand the Maori but, catching the drift, felt discomfited by the girl’s reference to nakedness.

  ‘No need to be shy,’ Huia said as if she read his thoughts. ‘I’m not staying. Don’t much like the pools; they make my skin wrinkle. Think I’ll look for kakariki feathers.’

  Once Huia had disappeared into the trees, Geoffrey undressed. He placed his clothes in a neat heap that looked somewhat incongruous with the rough grass.

  He put a toe in the nearest pool, decided it was too fiercely hot and moved to another. The water, which reached to his chest, was a delicious temperature: just above blood heat. Geoffrey waded across to a rock and sank against it, allowing the kindly warmth to seep into his flesh. All the soreness of the journey floated from his limbs. Above him the tightly wooded sides of the valley rose sheer to the snowline. Must be at least an hour or two to tramp up there, he thought, gazing at the whiteness that seemed to hang directly above him, so impeccable and near, it felt close enough to touch.

  Half-submerged, Geoffrey peered through the steam at the perfect, azure sky and remembered a bright blue silk dress a girl he once knew always wore at the children’s parties in County Kildare. He drifted into sleep thinking of light and colour and how in New Zealand, unlike Ireland, there was a brightness, as if the entire landscape were illuminated for a theatrical production.

  Huia’s kiss woke him. She was close by in the pool, wearing her soldier’s cap, her long hair floating on the water.

  ‘Huia?’ said Geoffrey, uncertain as to where he was. He reached out and touched the girl’s exposed shoulder, as if to convince himself she was real. Her naked skin felt curious, like the rich, damp pelt of some water creature.

  ‘Undine,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Who?’ said Huia.

  ‘A water sprite,’ said Geoffrey, still drowsy.

  Huia kissed him again, this time on the ear; her tongue lingered against his skin, her breath moved on his face. Geoffrey felt his body stir. Heat fluxed through him as if lava were coursing in his blood. Huia smiled, and in the dark corridors of her eyes Geoffrey could see wreaths of steam.

  ‘You are very beautiful,’ he said, adrift in her glance. ‘Your eyes are like grapes in a Zuberan painting.’

  ‘Kiss me, Battle. You want to, eh?’

  Huia leaned forward. Her soldier’s cap fell off and floated on the steamy water, a da
rk blossom in the opaque air.

  Dreamlike, without apparent effort, their naked bodies moved together, mouths opened, tongue on tongue. Clutching each other, they rocked and swayed. Geoffrey ran his hand down Huia’s back, over the blades of her shoulders, the chasm of her backbone, the top of her buttocks where the cheeks divided. Reaching forward, he touched the hidden cleft, the place soft, hair undulating under his fingers.

  Huia raised her legs and spread them about him, weightless as if in flight. Geoffrey felt her pressing urgently against him and every sensation in his body became the exaltation between his thighs. The swirling steam off the pools, the water leaking through the fissures of volcanic rock from the hot spine of the land, fused with his desire. Frantic with need, he clasped Huia against him, pushing himself into her pliant flesh. It seemed like a journey into the earth itself.

  And afterwards on the grass, under the embroidered shawl, Geoffrey entered her again. The meadow of silk flowers rippled and convulsed as man and woman locked together, their cries of pleasure lost in the uproar of running water and distant calls of birds.

  ‘We’d better be getting back,’ said Huia as she finally stood, clutching the shawl around her naked body.

  Geoffrey had no desire to move, or to think. He felt the grass stalks at his back and sun on his body. He was wrung out, exhausted. He wanted only to sleep.

  ‘Hey, lazybones,’ said Huia, gently kicking at his arm with her foot. ‘I don’t want the old man getting cranky and he’ll want his tucker.’

  In silence they dressed and began their way back to the camp. Geoffrey was tired and vacant. He imagined the top of his skull lifted off and his mind floating about the afternoon air like thistledown.

  ‘When we get home, you’ll be able to come courting,’ said Huia as she stopped walking and put her face up for him to kiss. Geoffrey obliged — absentmindedly — while he rummaged unsuccessfully in his mind for a picture of himself, red roses in hand, knocking on the door of the Bluetts’ shack.

  ‘Will you take me to London?’ said Huia.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m tired, Huia.’

  ‘Well, I’m your sweetheart now,’ said Huia as she snuggled against his shoulder. ‘Aren’t I?’

  Geoffrey hadn’t thought of this possibility. There was a completeness about the events at the pools, astonishing and marvellous as they were, but totally separate from ordinary life. The unsullied mountain place, the warm water like an artery of the earth, the frenzied needs and satisfactions of flesh now seemed the distant memory of some other man. If Geoffrey expected anything it was that Huia would herself understand that their encounter was unique, belonging only to this single spot and day. Huia’s assumption that there was something ongoing between them was alarming.

  ‘Da wouldn’t mind if we wanted to get married, you being so la-di-da; I bet he’d be tickled pink, not like he was with Eddie Green.’

  The implications of this seemed too immense to contemplate.

  ‘Who was Eddie Green?’ Geoffrey said, by way of distraction.

  ‘No one special, just a chap.’

  Geoffrey wondered briefly and inconclusively if there had already been other men in Huia’s life. She seemed so young, so naive, he couldn’t believe it; and yet on reflection there was a brazenness about her that shocked him. He certainly didn’t want to think about it; in fact, he didn’t want to think about Huia at all.

  The way back to the camp seemed to have grown enormously since they set out. The tightly wedged trees and bushes appeared endless. Geoffrey felt sick of dodging branches and watching his footfall for obstacles.

  ‘You do love me?’ said Huia.

  ‘Oh, Huia, it’s not the time for that.’

  ‘But you loved her, that dead wife of yours.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘So you don’t love me, is that it?’

  Geoffrey didn’t answer.

  ‘Up at the pools, you think that was nothing, just a big bloody nothing?’ said Huia. And with a stick she savagely broke a delicate clump of moss growing on a tree trunk.

  Chapter 7

  [SOME MONTHS LATER]

  When Huia returned from taking her father his dinner the parcel was by the front door. It was wrapped in glossy brown paper, tied with string and sealed with red wax. Huia’s name was on the label and there was a seal impressed in the wax. Geoffrey Hastings, Huia thought. It must be.

  She had never had a parcel before and the wonder of it consumed her. How had it got here? Had Geoffrey himself delivered it? Had she missed him? That would be too terrible after all the waiting and hoping. Maybe it had been left by the carter who took provisions up to the timber camp, or brought by some Hokitika urchin in return for a couple of pence? Huia turned the package over and over: desperate for it to be a gift, a sign from Geoffrey; terrified she would open it and be disappointed. Finally she cut the string with the carving knife. Out of the tissue-paper interior slid a pair of gloves — the most beautiful, the most expensive gloves Huia had ever seen. Soft, elegant gloves with pearl buttons at each wrist and pleated cuffs bound with braid. Huia put them on. Her kid-covered hands were pale, lovely birds.

  There was a card, too — a card of pansies bearing the words:

  I hope you like these.

  I remain yours truly,

  G. Hastings

  Pansies were for thoughts. Geoffrey had been thinking of her.

  Huia sat down at the kitchen table and began to cry. He hadn’t forgotten her; there was hope after all.

  It had been over two months since they had come back from the Routledge. Sixty-four days, in fact, since she had seen him. Huia knew this because every night she made a little mark with a pencil on her wall beside her bed. She had also, on the last night of each month, placed her boots in the form of a T and recited:

  I place my boots in the form of a T,

  Hoping this night my sweetheart to see,

  The colour of his eyes, and the colour of his hair

  And the day he’ll be wed to me.

  The charm had failed on both occasions.

  It wasn’t only that Huia was lovesick. She longed for Geoffrey in the obsessive way that the starving long for food but there was something else: worse, much worse. Something Huia hardly knew how to name. She had even considered stealing a half-crown from her father to send for some of Dr McDermott’s pills for female problems, all blockages dealt with, advertised in the Auckland Weekly News, but the risk of her theft being discovered was too great. And anyway, Huia was uncertain. What was a blockage? It seemed a strange name for what troubled her.

  She was surprised by the way the things that gave her happiness could suddenly upturn, plunging her into misery like a pleasure-seeker in a capsizing boat. It was odd, she decided, how the underside of joy was always grief.

  The day she and Geoffrey had gone to the hot pools was one of the happiest of Huia’s life. Hadn’t she seen how Geoffrey had looked at her, such appetite in his eyes, his longing so obvious? Wasn’t she sure he was in love with her? She thought of Geoffrey’s fierce passion in the water and how glamorous and desirable it had made her feel. She remembered the mountains and trees lurching in the steam, the exquisite moment when it seemed she and Geoffrey soared together, their separate selves melting in ecstasy and shared delight. It had been good — but never quite that good — with Stan Birtwistle. And she knew Geoffrey had felt it too. What she couldn’t understand was the way everything had altered: happiness turned sour. In a few hours the Geoffrey who had gazed besotted at her was replaced by another man. A man who didn’t see her. A man who wanted her gone.

  When they had got back to the hut her father was drunk, having consumed a great deal of Geoffrey’s brandy.

  ‘About bloody time, too,’ Bluett shouted when he saw them coming. ‘Been waiting hours for some hot grub.’

  ‘Look here, Bluett,’ Geoffrey had said.

  For one frightful moment Huia had
thought Geoffrey was going to tell her Da off, point out that he was paying him, and wasn’t it Bluett’s ankle that was causing all sorts of nuisance on the trip? Huia, knowing her father’s drunken temper, dreaded what might happen. Maybe Geoffrey understood too, for he stopped speaking, took a book from his saddlebag and disappeared into the forest. Huia didn’t see him again until dinner. Then, and for the rest of the evening, Geoffrey said nothing beyond the most cursory ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

  Huia had lain awake in the dark, flicking away mosquitoes and feeling as open and broken as the hut itself. She thought of how much she wanted Geoffrey’s touch, his holding, his tenderness. She would win him back: she was determined of that. She wondered what to do next. If only she could speak to him, be alone with him, things would be all right. Geoffrey had pitched his tent in the clearing only a few yards away, yet he could have been on the other side of the world for the gulf that was now between them.

  At dawn Huia had an idea. When her father and Geoffrey woke, she was already getting breakfast. Geoffrey rolled out of his blankets and looked about for Champ. The dog had gone. It was unusual for Champ to be out of earshot. Geoffrey, who was very attached to the little terrier, was worried.

  ‘I’ll help you look after we’ve had breakfast,’ said Huia.

  When they finished breakfast, Huia and Geoffrey went into the trees, whistling and calling. It seemed Huia was very certain of the direction they should take.

  ‘Listen,’ said Huia. ‘I can hear him.’

  Geoffrey could hear nothing.

  Huia led the way to where there was the sound of barking. Champ was tied to a tree.

  ‘You did this?’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Yes,’ said Huia.

  ‘In God’s name, why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Huia, ‘I want to see you, talk to you, be with you. I can’t say anything to you with Da up there. I love you. I want you to love me too.’

  Huia caught Geoffrey’s hand and shoved it between the two missing buttons on her bodice. He could feel her breast like warm bread under the chemise. The intervening fabric added an alluring barrier between flesh and flesh. In his palm Huia’s nipple was rising. Instinctively Geoffrey’s fingers closed.