by Craig Cliff
‘Doig has my sister,’ I said. ‘Where can we find them?’
‘In all honesty, I cannot say. This island is not so small when you want to disappear.’
‘Where did he live before your father gave him the land?’ my father asked.
‘Inland,’ she said.
‘Due west?’
‘I am not a compass, Mr Kemp. I know that Doig used to come down from the hills. It was a day’s ride, according to my father. When he carried out all this work,’ she waved her hand in the air dismissively, ‘he camped out in our barn to save him the journey.’
‘A day’s ride,’ my father repeated.
‘Of course, Mr Doig never said anything for himself. All I have is what my dear departed father told me. I would be awfully sorry if I end up sending you two on a wild goose chase.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Donaldson.’
‘Miss Donaldson,’ she corrected.
‘Yes, of course. Come, John, we have much to consider.’
VIII.
The next day we set out for the hinterland. My father rode Emily and I took Charlotte. Though neither horse was used to a saddle or a rider, they were so old they could scarcely muster the energy to throw us off. I found it easy enough to stay upright, pinching Charlotte’s flanks with my strong legs. I’d pay for this technique the first few days whenever I dismounted, but I soon learnt to balance without tensing every muscle.
Ours was to be a deliberate pace—one of many niggles for my father—but it left me plenty of time to observe all the new plants and birds I hadn’t seen before.
‘What’s that?’ I’d ask whenever my father seemed up to responding.
‘A hawk,’ he’d say. ‘A willow.’ ‘The river.’
The town of Marumaru—first glimpsed through the window and later explored on foot—had been a great disappointment, but the world beyond the town was infinitely richer and more fascinating than I could have ever imagined.
My father hoped to find people along the way who could direct us, or at least narrow our search, and that we’d have Avis home in a couple of days. I saw that he packed my sister’s diary, though I’m not sure if he thought it would help guide our search or if he brought it for sentimental reasons. I never saw him reading it. For provisions we had a small camp oven, a sack of flour, some glass jars containing other powders and spices, several tins of sardines, a tin of biscuits, two canteens of fresh water each and a basket of apples that drove the poor horses crazy. From Bannerman, my father had borrowed two swags, a green tarpaulin for shelter if it rained, a hunting rifle and a box of cartridges. He kept the rifle slung over his back as he rode, the butt bouncing against the saddle, the muzzle pointed to the sky.
This weapon was a disturbing development. I could no longer be sure of overpowering my father when he finally turned to violence. I’m sure he told himself he was just bringing it along to scare Doig, but I didn’t trust what he might do with his temper up.
After several hours we stopped to stretch our legs and eat a biscuit. ‘We’d best follow the river,’ he said.
‘Where does the water come from?’
‘From the mountains.’
‘Why is it this colour?’
He grunted.
‘The sea,’ I persisted, ‘is not this colour. A glass of water has no colour at all. And yet this river—?’
‘It’s melted snow.’
‘Will it snow where we are going?’ I asked, excited.
‘It’s the middle of summer, boy. There’ll still be snow on the Alps because they’re so high, but we’re not going that far. Doig is holed up a day’s ride from the coast. There’s bound to be a settlement somewhere along the river. That’s where they’ll be, or that’s where we’ll find someone who knows where they are.’
He indicated that it was time to get back in the saddle. I pulled myself onto Charlotte with ease and watched as my father struggled to lift his foot into the stirrup. When he was finally up and had readjusted Bannerman’s rifle, I asked, ‘How many times has Sandow been to Marumaru?’
He flicked the reins and Emily started to amble forward. Charlotte snorted and decided to follow without any guidance from me.
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember? You are always telling us about meeting Sandow. I had the impression you were in regular contact with the man.’
I’d finally drawn level and he turned to look at me.
‘Who have you been talking to?’
‘Jesse Hikuroa.’
‘Jesse?’
‘The next mayor of Marumaru.’
He snorted.
‘He performed with Sandow.’
‘He told you that, did he?’
‘I saw a photograph.’
‘There are photographs of you and Avis, you know? Performing in the window. They were in newspapers from Invercargill to Auckland.’ His hands clenched tighter on the reins and I could tell another rant about The Carpenter was coming. ‘We could have—’
He pressed his lips together and gazed at the crest of the hills on the other side of the milky river.
‘I thought Sandow was my father,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t see any of myself in you or . . . or Flossie. But I was looking for physical development, forgetting that it must be achieved, forgetting all the hours of work that went into being this strong.’ I took one hand from the reins and rubbed the back of my head. ‘I only hope there’s some truth in what we have been taught. That a person’s character can be trained as well. That it can be improved through hard work and diligence. Because I don’t want to end up anything like you.’
My father reached forward and patted Emily’s neck, then looked up at me. ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.’
We stopped at a couple of farmsteads that afternoon but no one had heard of Gabriel Doig or The Carpenter. They seemed unimpressed with us ‘townies’, as they called us, interrupting their day with our problems.
Toward the end of the afternoon I caught my first glimpse of the Southern Alps. Until this point, they’d been hidden by the rolling hills of the hinterland. These dark green lumps had seemed quite large and filled me with dread should we decide to drive Emily and Charlotte up their slopes, but the Alps, good God. They loomed dark as charcoal, dark as the far edge of the ocean. We set up camp in the lee of a string of willows, filled our bellies with damper, unrolled our swags and climbed inside. We both lay on our backs in silence, staring up through the willow branches at the slowly shifting stars.
‘We’ll press on in the morning,’ my father said. ‘We didn’t make great time today, but that’s to be expected if we’re to stop so often.’ His voice grew quieter, as if he were now talking to himself. ‘People will be more helpful tomorrow. We’ll find them soon,’ he said. ‘We’ll bloody find them soon.’
Avis and I used to sleep under the stars once or twice every summer. We were allowed to take our bedclothes out onto the back lawn as long as we washed them ourselves afterwards. I wonder now what kind of surveillance my father carried out on us. Did he stay awake all night to ensure we didn’t sneak through the hedges? Or did he make Flossie do it, since she’d told us we could sleep outside in the first place?
We’d lie on our backs, counting the stars, talking about the boy in the moon. On one of these nights we decided that he must have had a poor season in the window.
‘He forgot to use the lav beforehand,’ I said, ‘and wet his pants during the first performance.’
‘The townspeople laughed at him and turned away,’ Avis said, ‘consigning him to a life of solitude.’
‘Knowing he would never find a wife,’ I added, ‘he built a skyrocket and strapped himself to it. Only he’d forgotten to light the fuse.’
‘His arms were bound and he could not free himself. There he remained, strapped to his skyrocket, for seven days and nights.’
‘Until,’ I said, eager to push the story on, ‘a forest fire swept through the tow
n, killing everyone—’
‘Except the boy strapped to the skyrocket. The fire lit his fuse and he was shot to the moon, where he remains to this day.’
‘When the moon is full,’ I said, ‘you can still see the scars on his face from the fire.’
‘But he survived,’ Avis insisted.
‘Yes. He had the last laugh. The crescent moon is actually his smile, if you tilt your head.’
‘A happy ending.’
‘So long as you tilt your head the right way.’
That first night on the trail with my father, the moon had just begun to wane. It would be another week before the boy’s smile began to show. The next day we continued west, following the river, stopping at every house to ask about Doig and returning to the trail each time none the wiser.
‘They can’t have made it this far west,’ my father said some time after midday. We’d come to a stretch where the river widened into dozens of smaller streams and rivulets after passing through a bush-clad gorge. Some of the islands in the river were so large they had their own narrow forests of tea tree and fern. ‘We’re too far south. That’s the problem.’
In the last three weeks my world had expanded from a few acres to include the town of Marumaru and now this sweeping landscape only partly tamed by man. I felt we could search for the rest of our lives and never find Avis. Part of me would have been all right with this. The world seemed full of wonder, teeming with space, ripe for adventure.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure someone will help us further north.’
It was harder going once we left the river. The trails were overgrown and hilly. We spent a lot of time on foot leading our mounts, tugging at their reins.
We didn’t encounter another soul the whole of our third day. It was no use trying to make conversation with my father as he was so often out of breath and in a permanent huff.
Late on the morning of our fourth day we joined a larger trail and soon came across a team of bullocks, their driver walking beside them. He seemed full of energy and carried a whip attached to a stick that was six or seven feet long. We got down from our horses and the bullock driver pulled on the yoke of the front pair with his free hand and the team drew to a stop.
‘Morning,’ he said, brushing off his shirtsleeves and rubbing his hands together.
‘I haven’t seen a team like this since I was a boy,’ my father said.
‘Not every road is a highway,’ the man said. ‘Not yet.’ By the sound of his voice, it seemed my father was already offside with him.
‘We’re looking for a man by the name of Gabriel Doig. Some people know him as The Carpenter. He has a place a day’s ride from the coast.’
‘The coast.’ The man turned to look at me, then back to my father.
‘Do you know of this man?’ my father asked.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve been running this team back and forth a dozen years, never heard the name Doig.’
‘Yes, well, he mightn’t have been round here much in that time. But he lived up here eighteen, twenty years ago.’
‘What have you got against this man?’ The driver’s eyes drifted up the barrel of Bannerman’s rifle that showed above my father’s shoulder.
‘He has my daughter.’
‘This is the place you’d run off to,’ he said and brushed the dust off the thighs of his heavy trousers. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be of any help to you blokes.’ My father nodded.
The man cracked his whip and the bullocks swung their heads forward. They began to trudge up the trail, the driver letting each pair pass until the dray, loaded with heavy bales, came level with him. He stuck a hand out, caught one of the ropes that secured the load and pulled himself up so that one foot rested on the frame of the dray and the other swung free. ‘Best of luck finding your daughter.’
My father raised his hand to the brim of his hat. ‘He knows something,’ he said under his breath. ‘We’re on the right track, boy. Come on.’
I tended to fall in behind my father on the trail, which meant Bannerman’s rifle was always right there in front of me: the dents in the rich wood of the stock, as if it had been struck with a tiny hammer; the way the trigger guard stretched down the base of the weapon and ended in the kind of wrought iron scroll that decorated our front gate; the sights sticking up like errant teeth at either end of the barrel.
We encountered more people along the trail that day. A woman picking raspberries, a lone priest riding south, a team of small boys swimming in a dark pond ringed with lime green algae. Each time they claimed not to recognise the name Gabriel Doig and each time my father decided they were lying.
‘We’re getting closer,’ he told me. ‘I can feel it. I can see it on their faces. I can hear it in their voices.’
‘I’m glad you can,’ I said. ‘All I see are the glances they give that rifle.’
‘You think they’d stop and talk to us without it?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
‘Listen, I’m not going to use it. It’s not even loaded.’
‘What about when we find Doig?’
‘It’ll give him a fright, won’t it?’
‘It won’t be loaded?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t want me to rough him up a bit? I thought that was the only reason you brought me along.’
‘You’re a part of this too, boy. We’re getting your sister back.’
‘Have you thought about what he’s doing to her up here, Father?’
‘Of course I have. It’s all I think about.’
‘And what if it’s true? What if he’s defiled her?’
‘Eugen—’
‘What if he’s killed her? Are you telling me you won’t reach for the cartridges?’
‘That’s enough, Eugen.’
We rode further north before bearing toward the Alps once more. The next day we backtracked and proceeded further east, back toward the coast, though I never saw anything that faintly resembled Marumaru. By this time we’d established a new routine. The rhythm of our horses plodding forward, the hastily cooked meals, the time spent lying beneath the stars, each with our own thoughts. We were yet to encounter rain, but by the dry and crumbling trails, the parched paddocks and earth-coloured sheep, it was clear the good weather had begun well before we took to our horses.
Though we continued to break new ground every day, the landscape became more familiar to me. There was less and less to ask my father about and eventually my thoughts returned to Marumaru.
‘Tell me about Louisa,’ I said one day toward the end of our first week or the beginning of our second.
My horse was level with my father’s, but he turned his head down and away from me.
‘She was our mother. That’s what Flossie told us.’
‘I don’t want to talk about such things.’
‘But I do,’ I said. ‘I have a right to know.’
I saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed. ‘When did Flossie tell you?’
‘In the anteroom. The last time we saw her.’
‘I see.’
‘She said our mother died giving birth to us.’
‘She’s dead,’ he said.
‘Do you blame us? Is that it?’
‘Eugen—’
‘What is it?’
He turned to me, the lower rims of his eyelids red and glistening. He shook his head. ‘We’ll not talk of such things.’
That night, as I lay awake, looking at the crescent moon, my father spoke.
‘I loved Louisa very much,’ he said faintly.
I wriggled down in my swag so that my ear was closer to him.
‘She could draw anything. I would pass her a pencil and it became a part of her. It did what she wanted it to do. She encouraged me to make my own mannequins.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘If she knew how much it would madden me, the tools, the wood, she may have kept her mouth shut. But she believed in me.’
He said nothing more that night, though I stayed s
till, my ear level with his mouth, waiting for another word.
The next morning he was his gruff self. Saddle the horses, fill the canteens, wipe the ashes off the camp oven—as if he hadn’t spoken a word about my mother. He met the day’s frustrations—the blank faces of the locals, the horses stopping to feast upon every budding fern—with the same set jaw and white knuckles. But that night, he spoke again.
‘Her father didn’t approve of me. I understand why. My father was very old by the time I was born. I didn’t grow up cultured. I wasn’t pampered. But I loved her. I loved her so much that it was impossible for her to refuse me. Her face. I still see it every time I close my eyes. The thin eyebrows. The cleft in her chin. The big eyes. I tried to carve it so many times, but it was beyond me.’
Over the next twelve nights, he told the story of how he met my mother on a buying trip to Christchurch with Old Man Donaldson. He explained how she’d sketched the plans for his window displays. How her parents had attended the mayor’s picnic in the Cashmere Hills, the sudden hailstorm that overtook them, the influenza and deaths that followed.
He spoke about the last day of 1902 and the first of 1903. I’ve tried to piece them together to explain to myself what took him down his dark path, but even I’m not completely satisfied by the explanation. A full account might stretch back to his own childhood, or the life his itinerant father led before arriving in Marumaru, or the life of his father’s father.
I understood the contract I’d entered into with my father on those nights beneath the stars. If I wished to learn more, if I wanted the stories to continue, I had to keep silent. I hoped that unburdening himself at night would ease the tension he showed during the day, but it didn’t appear to work this way. In the dark, though, he was just a voice. In the dark, he possessed a chilling calm.
‘I’m a broken man,’ he began one night. ‘I have a black heart. It doesn’t make it any easier to know this. It makes it worse.
‘I walked around Marumaru for forty-eight hours pretending Louisa was still alive. After that, I pretended my children were dead. In the middle of all this, I went to a show. A vaudeville show with sopranos and dancing ponies.
