The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

  It was a beautiful night. The Milky Way was a long, glimmering snail trail winding up the sky. It reminded her of a night on the Morning Light, somewhere along the forties on a still night, the stars bending near the earth, the Milky Way incandescent. She had stood at that other rail, on that other ship, asking, What is infinity?

  Thea had said it was all God’s love et cetera, Mr. Wright talked a little astronomy, and Kay herself stared into the reaches of the blackness, the universe stretching out on either side, every side, into never a border, no end to it, because what would be outside? Turtles all the way down, each ancient turtle carved with Captain Cook’s initials, scars so old that they mean nothing among all the other scars . . .

  She was tired. She hugged Aren’s arm for a moment, and took herself off to bed.

  7

  Auckland

  The Tofua reached Auckland early on July 11. Full summer in Yarmouth; mid-winter in Auckland, but it felt like a sparkling autumn morning. Watching the city near, Kay’s memory was full of Pilot, her dear dog, at Piha beach, by the dentist’s rattle-trap railway along the cliffs. Perhaps those crazy cars still screamed around the curves. Handing her a bit of fur and fluff on a whim, that shaky man had given Kay great stability. Her companion, her first friend in the new life, before even Aren. Well, she would not continue on that rickety train of thought, it would just land her in the salty deeps.

  The Tofua would stay in dock until four, loading passengers and goods bound for the outer islands, and Kay persuaded Aren to walk along the harbour with her while they waited. Thinking he would stand out in the city, he was reluctant. She said, “Things are different here. You may be yourself here without disguise.”

  He shook his head, saying that was not necessarily true. “And besides, all humans are always in disguise of some sort.”

  But he put on his good jacket and came with her down the gangplank, weaving their way among the thronging people who were coming up (a few English and American, but mostly Maori and Pacific Islanders, taking deck passage). The dock was equally crowded with people carrying huge packages for their friends. Some of the bundles leaked blood—there was a great appetite for beef on the islands.

  They braced themselves to burrow through the crowd of dauntingly large Pacific Islanders, and inevitably were separated, each threading a path through the mass until they reached the wharf and relative safety and found each other.

  And Kay also found, standing quietly on the Auckland pier, thin in the middle of that sturdy, milling crowd, wearing his grey linen jacket and looking up through green-smoked glasses, her dear friend, Mr. Brimner.

  He was unchanged. Except as Kay looked again, looked longer, he was changed very much. He was younger, because she was older. His face was the same: serious, broad-browed, tender-skinned still, but he had achieved some truce with the sun and was now an even biscuit tone, several shades less pale. He looked at rest, in some ineffable way.

  She walked—ran—the few remaining paces between them, to clasp the hands he held out, warm and strongly responding. Her friend, the one who knew her best, so far from home, and so unexpectedly! This was why she could not send Aren alone.

  “Kay! My dear Kay!” He took her hands and then her elbows, gratefully shaking them and then her hands, and turned to her brother. “And Aren, how tall you are!”

  Aren laughed, and stood taller. No one ever said that to him.

  At Mr. Brimner’s lead, they turned to walk up out of the thronging crowd to find some peaceful place. His straw hat could not be the same one, but his smoked spectacles certainly were. He took them off as they climbed up to the shaded porch of a nearby hotel, and then Kay could see the whole of his face.

  She wished to say, “I am overwhelmed with happiness,” but instead, in case she had been staring, she looked down at the boards of the porch. Each board perfect, the dark interstices cool and perfect. Mr. Brimner’s boots were very worn, but clean and polished to a cheerful sheen.

  He turned aside to speak to the waiter; Kay and Aren found a table with wicker chairs. A long box of flowering thyme ran along the railing, a scented barrier between porch and road.

  “What a comfortable spot,” Mr. Brimner said, returning to them.

  Kay asked, almost stern in her effort to keep her happiness contained, “But how do you come to be here? You must tell us everything, and where you are going—but we only have an hour or two before the Tofua leaves again! How do you come to be in Auckland? Have you been moved here? Or posted for a locum?”

  “No, no,” he said, having tried to interrupt several times. “Let me explain, I beg you! Nothing of the sort. I am still at Ha‘ano. I only arrived two days ago.”

  Quicker off the mark, Aren said, “You are here to meet us?”

  “I did not hear from you,” Kay said. “I thought my cable had gone astray.”

  “Receiving your cable very late (after some not-surprising mishaps), I counted the days. There are limited ways to arrive at Tonga, and a limited schedule of ships. I calculated that if you were not on the Tofua, you’d be on the Matua, a week from now, and I ran!”

  A pitcher of cold tea and a plate of sandwiches came. Waving away Kay’s purse, Mr. Brimner had coin ready to pay the waiter. Aren, the younger brother, let them argue over it and tucked in to the lunch as if he had not just had breakfast.

  Mr. Brimner said he had put up at the diocesan centre and had a little holiday. “I do not know Auckland well—but I remembered our trip to the dentist, last time!”

  She laughed, and then, because of course he would remember, told him briefly, “I had to put Pilot down, just before we left. He was very sick.” She was surprised to find that her eyes were welling with tears again, seeing his still body in the straw. Aren put his warm hand on her arm and handed her a clean handkerchief.

  “I am sorry for him, and for you.” Kindly giving her time to stop crying, Mr. Brimner said, “In his honour, all unknowing, I went out through the forest to Piha beach yesterday. It is still very beautiful . . .”

  Then he said, to Aren, “But why are you here? Kay’s cable gave only the bare fact that you were coming.”

  Kay looked at Aren, but he said nothing. “Well, we are set for Nuku‘alofa first, perhaps looking to charter a boat from there, or from Fiji, or at least—Oh, it is so frustrating not to know, Aren! I wish you would not keep putting off . . .”

  There was a little silence.

  Steadfastly not looking at her, Aren told Mr. Brimner, “Kay decided I should go home. To Pulo Anna,” he added, to explain what home might mean. He put the last sandwich in his mouth.

  That gave her a shock, hearing it stated straight out. Had he not wanted to come?

  After a moment, Mr. Brimner asked it out loud. “Did you need persuading?”

  “It was a good idea,” Aren said. He looked over their heads at the hotel wall beyond. “But I did not think of it.”

  “Had something happened that made you wish to leave Nova Scotia?”

  “I was not being a good citizen,” Aren said. He pushed his chair back and said, “I will go for a walk, I think, and stretch my legs farther than the ship allows. I’ll meet you back there at four, Kay.”

  Kay and Mr. Brimner sat in silence after he left, and Kay struggled with a bloom of shame. Consciousness of having managed things, and people, swept through her. Some people required that direction, but never Aren. When people around you were quiet and accepting, you had to be doubly, trebly careful not to impinge on their independence.

  Mr. Brimner took up his satchel from beside his chair. “Let me show you something,” he said.

  He pulled out a padded manila envelope, and from it eased a dark-blue box sleeve. He looked at it briefly, fondly, saying, “Please note, a most elegant quarter-morocco solander box . . .” From that, at last, he pulled out a book with a grey cover and blue leather along the narrow spine. He passed it across the table to her.

  The cover read, Poems of Charles Leland Prior · now first publishe
d · edited with notes by Rev. Henry Brimner

  “You have finished it!”

  “It is finished.”

  A nonsensical thing struck her first: she had not known that Mr. Brimner’s name was Henry. She opened the stiff cover and admired the water-marbled end papers and the thick cream pages, and turned one or two to see the poems, set out on the page (she caught herself thinking) like in a real book.

  “It is quite beautiful,” she said.

  “I think so.”

  “You have done justice to your friend.”

  Mr. Brimner’s smile widened again, amplifying beautifully into an accepting, grateful, acknowledging beam.

  The hotel clock struck, and looking up, Kay saw there was only half an hour till the Tofua left again. She handed the book back and pointed to the clock. “I am afraid we must be back at the ship soon. And you must need to return to your—” Not parish, precisely, because there was no church? “To your home.”

  He smiled at her, the unfolding, understanding benediction she remembered very well. “It is my home. I would like you to see Ha‘ano again, because I know it better. But just now I will go with you and Aren, I think. It strikes me that you may need some companionship.”

  “Oh.”

  Her relief and gratitude was so great that Kay could not say anything more.

  Then as was only practical, and not managing, she said, “Well, you must go and get your things, for the Tofua leaves at four.”

  Mr. Brimner clapped his hands on his jacket and his small satchel. “All that is mine I carry with me, like Cicero’s Bias: omnia mecum porto mea. And do you know, Seneca tells exactly the same tale of Stilpon, also running from the destruction of his city, but arranges it slightly differently, which is a lesson to all us translators: Omnia mea mecum sunt . . .”

  “All my things are with me,” Kay said. “I think that is better, and cleaner, but it may not have as nice a rhythm.”

  Talking in this enjoyable way, they progressed along the pier until they came to Aren, waiting in the shadow of a baggage shed. He put an arm around Kay’s shoulder and she hugged his waist, and they were of one mind again.

  Going up the gangplank, Mr. Brimner said, “I must see the purser. If there are no cabins left, I shall travel as a deck passenger. Ten years have made me a Tongan, you’ll find.”

  Aren said, with a friendly air, “There is an empty bunk in my cabin. I would be honoured to have your company, if that suits you.”

  Kay loved his calm courtesy, matching Mr. Brimner’s. After all, those two did not know each other as well as she knew each of them.

  They found a place at the rail to look down on the city once more and the crowded quay. A momentary pause, one last shuffling and calling farewell of visitors and hangers-on, and then the engine note changed, the gangplank came up and the ropes went slithering through watery sky, and they were steaming again out of Auckland harbour.

  They parted, Aren taking Mr. Brimner to the purser’s cubbyhole to arrange things, and Kay saying she would meet them on B deck before dinner.

  It was useful to have a friend in the crew. Jimmy Giles had a word with the purser, and the purser had a word with the steward, and the upshot was that the cabin arrangement was fixed up easily; when they went in to dinner, Kay found that they had been moved to a table for six. The Misses Pike were there before them. The sixth chair had a name holder but no name; Jimmy stopped by and said he’d take his supper with them if he had time, tomorrow night.

  Mr. Brimner came to dinner late, explaining as he slid his chair in that he had been caught up in a religious conversation from which it was difficult to extricate himself. “We have on board the Roman Catholic bishop of Cape Town—perhaps you have seen his entourage on the promenade deck?”

  Kay laughed and shook her head.

  “He keeps to the shade, I believe. He travels with several priests, mostly good fellows. Their presence gives us, according to sea superstition, promise of a good passage. It is a curious fact that, like Jonah, Anglican clergy are generally credited with bringing bad weather.”

  Kay introduced Mr. Brimner to the Misses Pike. They had brightened at his approach, being quite accustomed to clergymen at table, and clearly expecting him to be a less uncomfortable companion than either Kay or Aren.

  Which he was, since he gave them his unassuming and friendly smile and asked after their selves, their souls and families, each in turn, keeping himself to himself in a quiet way. They had not seen even a photograph of the school to which they were bound; Mr. Brimner, who had visited it while doing a locum in Suva ten years before, was able to assure them that it was well run and well funded, and that the students were (or at least had been ten years ago) delightful. Various teachers would have changed, more than likely, because time, like an ever-rolling stream, et cetera, but he had heard very good reports of its continued stability and success. The Misses Pike breathed a double sigh of relief and asked if Mr. Brimner would care to play a rubber of bridge, and since all the tables were being turned to that purpose, it was difficult to refuse. He winked at Kay and said that he and Kay would engage to take their money if they insisted.

  He shuffled and cut the cards like a professional, and Aren pulled a hard chair over to his elbow, ready to enjoy the show. The first hand went quickly, because between them Mr. Brimner and Kay had all the trumps, so that Kay wondered if he had stacked the deck. He was a surprising person in many ways.

  “And the last four hearts are ours—hard lines, Miss Pike! I call that too bad, don’t you?”

  Miss Pike the younger pushed out her lips. “I did not have a single decent card.”

  “Nor I, not one,” said Miss Pike the elder.

  “Are you going to deal?” Miss Vera demanded.

  “I deal them like this, since I’m left-handed,” Miss Pauline said, placing each card separately onto one of four piles.

  At the end of a century, she pushed the piles around the table, picked up her own packet and began to assemble them painstakingly into a fan. “Sorry to be so slow, but I really must put them in the proper order, so I can see what I’ve got . . .”

  Another century went by as she took, placed, took, placed, her cards, the end of the fan growing. Her broad face glowed above the cards, the hundredth of the Hundred Faces fan.

  At last Kay prompted, “Miss Pike?”

  “Oh! It’s me . . . Well, let me see, one spade.”

  Mr. Brimner passed.

  Miss Vera said, “Now, don’t scream, Pauline—seven spades.”

  Her sister screamed.

  The worst of it was that since Miss Pauline had first bid spades, she was the one to play the hand, and was forever asking, “Is it dummy or me to lead?”

  Patiently, Mr. Brimner would tell her, “You’re on the table, Miss Pike.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, how about—” Then she would rootle in her hand, reorganizing the cards, snick, snick, snick, and finally lay a card. Saying this would drive her mad, Vera left to find more candied nuts, but Aren stayed on, watching quizzically as Miss Pike laid out every spade, one by one, to take a grand slam, which Vera returned in time to witness.

  At the end of an hour, Mr. Brimner tallied the points and found—without giving exact scores, but how terribly sad—that he and Kay had only just failed to win the rubber, and therefore owed their opponents, “penny a point, let me see: forty cents.” They would have their revenge another night, he said, pulling the coins from his pocket.

  The loss gave them licence to get up gracefully from the table.

  “I have defrauded the poor,” Mr. Brimner said as they made their way out, “since that would have gone into the collection box.”

  “But your sanity is of more value to your people in the long run,” Kay said. “I will add forty cents to the next collection box I see, to make up for the deception.”

  Collecting Aren from the bar corner where he had retreated to talk to Jimmy Giles, they made their way out onto the shelter deck.

  The
night air was soft and fragrant, as if nearby islands sent out a faint scent. Kay felt transported in an alchemical way back to the deck of the Morning Light. If Thea and Francis came walking along, it would be perfect, she thought. And Roddy could come too. She cupped one hand from the breeze to light a cigarette.

  “Will you be promoted to Nuku‘alofa one day?” Kay hoped it was not painful to ask.

  “Ha‘ano is my place for now,” he said. “But the bishop is leaving us, and I may do better with the next. If not, I am content to stay with my—with the people who have been kind to me. My Tongan family. I might even refuse to be lifted up to Nuku‘alofan heights.”

  Aren clasped his arm, condoling and congratulating at once.

  They leaned comfortably against the railing in the silky dark while Mr. Brimner talked about his island, and the people there; adding in explanation a brief synopsis of his life before Ha‘ano, which Kay had never heard before—she had never thought to ask, in the old days on the Morning Light. His parents’ early deaths, his scholarship, his time at Cambridge reading classics, his decision to study for the priesthood at Oxford: all those led to the circumstances of his friendship with Prior. Then a curacy near Prior’s parish, and the increasing relationship with Prior’s mother, a woman he came to admire and respect, he said, almost as much as he did his friend. And her request that he be the one to edit Prior’s work.

  “It was all due to poor Prior dying so suddenly. He was well, if tired from overwork, and then he was a little poorly—and the next day he died, to the great dismay of all his friends and of course the devastation of his mother. I did not have time to tell him how deeply I respected his work—none of us did! And he had no time to send the poems out into the wider world, although he meant to do so. The habit of perfection made it difficult for him to relinquish his work.”

  “Why are the poems so good?” Aren asked.