by Alison Wong
He told her the radiance of her dress brought out the light in her eyes like the wings of a Doxocopa cherubina. A butterfly, he said. From Venezuela. Peru. Had she heard of those places? Its uniqueness, he said, lay in its iridescence. You might look once and see only a plain but lovely green, but look again, down its wings, and it was like gazing into a prism – shimmering strips of blue and green.
‘What about the whites of my eyes?’ she’d said recklessly. ‘Do they remind you of cabbage butterflies?’
He’d stared at her, surprised, and she blushed. She turned to leave, but he caught her by the arm – she could feel the tingle of his hand on her skin. He looked deeply into her eyes and said, ‘You should come and see my collection. It is but a small affair, but the Doxocopa cherubina is well worth perusing.’
Within the week he was walking her around his parlour, stopping at each framed, winged body. ‘Katherine,’ he said. ‘Kate . . .’ He placed the palm of his hand upon her back as he guided her from one specimen to another, told her butterflies and moths belonged to the same order – only butterflies were the more beautiful. Later she discovered he’d bought them from a lepidopterist he’d interviewed for the Post. He’d memorised the Latin names, country of origin, distinguishing features of male and female.
The Doxocopa cherubina was still pinned and framed on the wall of their parlour. Breathtaking if, as he said, you looked down, not up, its wings. It was very still. It had lost the capacity to breathe.
As Katherine watched her husband eat soft meat and gravy and cauliflower boiled till its grey lumpiness mashed in the mouth like small brains, she saw very clearly – had she not always known, if not for a temporary madness? – all of Donald’s women were Lepidoptera: either a moth to the flame or merely part of his silent collection.
‘. . . the gravy’s not bad, I suppose, considering . . .’
Katherine felt Donald’s gaze.
‘. . . but put in some more onion, for godsake. Didn’t you learn anything when Mother came to stay? God bless her soul, may she rest in peace.’
Katherine gathered up the plates and took them into the kitchen – Donald’s and Edie’s eaten clean, hers and Robbie’s barely touched. She could hear Donald getting down the dictionary that had passed from McKechnie father to McKechnie son. ‘Procrustean,’ Donald was saying. ‘Robbie, what does procrustean mean?’
Katherine’s finger stung where a line of blood pooled beneath her nail. She scraped the uneaten food back into the pot. Left the onions to rot in the pantry.
A Fíne Example of a Brítísh Gentleman
When Donald came home in the wee hours reeking of whisky and tobacco, Katherine pulled the eiderdown over her face and feigned sleep.
‘Met a fascinating gentleman tonight,’ he said, his words slurred and slow. Katherine pictured a giant snail, with Donald’s waxed moustache, sliming across the room. But snails do not lurch drunkenly into bed, she thought. I’m being unkind to snails.
‘. . . Terry’s a splendid specimen of a man,’ he said. ‘And don’t you get any funny ideas about it . . . We had a few drinks with . . .’
A few?
Donald rattled off names of prominent Members of Parliament, as he called them.
Katherine waited, but before he could say more he had slumped over the bed, letting out loud, immelodious snores.
Katherine smiled. Did Donald know that word? Had he found it in his dictionary? Now, such words came to her only in his absence. Immelodious. The sound of birdsong, even more beautiful than melodious. The sound of contradiction. Like waking in the night and seeing for the first time. Like falling out of love.
For days Donald couldn’t speak of anything but Lionel Terry. Terry, graduate of Eton and Oxford. Terry, descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte. Terry in the Transvaal fighting the savage Matabeles. Terry, friend of Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. Terry the poet and painter. How could Donald remember? Hadn’t he been drunk? Was he having lunch with the splendid specimen every other day? (And wasn’t that the word you used to describe dead things? Things you collected and pinned under glass?) Katherine swept around Donald’s feet with the hearth brush, making him move one foot, then the other. She swept in front of the fireplace and then came back again – and again – imitating the perversions of a small, obstinate fly, but nothing could dampen Donald’s enthusiasm.
‘He walked all the way from Mangonui to Wellington carrying just a walking stick and a knapsack. Bet you a shilling you have no idea where Mangonui is, eh. Kate, he pretty much walked the entire length of the North Island!’
Katherine swallowed. He hadn’t called her Kate for years.
‘Damned fine poet, too,’ Donald continued. ‘Gave me one of his tracts.’ He waved it at her, but she excused herself to empty the dustpan.
‘Yes indeed, a fine example of a British gentleman,’ he was saying as she left the room.
Katherine had a suspicion of British gentlemen. They had the right accent and excellent manners, which concealed any number of vices. Good riddance to bad rubbish, she thought as she watched coal dust and ash fall into the bin in a small cloud.
‘I’ve invited him for dinner Sunday,’ Donald called from the parlour.
Katherine examined Mr Terry upon his arrival. He was at least six foot five. Athletic. Handsome. He stood very erect – obviously a man with military experience. She had to admit, reluctantly, that he did appear a splendid specimen of a man, though his abundant hair had turned prematurely grey.
‘Mrs McKechnie,’ he said, ‘a pleasure.’ He smiled. ‘Is that roast mutton I smell cooking? I’m sure you are an excellent cook, Mrs McKechnie, but regretfully I do not eat meat. Our carnivorous tendencies are an unhealthy obsession and play havoc with our constitutions.’
Katherine was at a loss for words. She had never heard of anyone who did not eat meat. All she could do was summon the children to set the table.
Terry ruffled Robbie’s hair. ‘Let the boy join us in the parlour,’ he said.
From the kitchen, Katherine could hear their outbursts of laughter. Edie sniffed.
‘Blow your nose, Edie. It does a young lady no favours to sniff like a dog.’ Katherine bit her lip. She could hear her own mother’s voice – the same words, the exact same tone. My sakes, she didn’t want to be like her mother!
She watched Edie wipe her eyes and blow into an embroidered handkerchief. She put her hand lightly on her daughter’s shoulder.
‘If you hurry and set the table, then you can call them straight in for dinner.’
‘Mrs McKechnie,’ Terry said as he entered the dining room, ‘where may I ask do you buy your vegetables? From an honest Briton or do you buy them from the heathen?
Katherine stepped back, for Terry towered above her. ‘The Chinaman’s fruit and vegetables are cheaper,’ she said, ‘and fresher.’
Terry smiled. His upper lip twitched. He looked her in the eye and then, as if the leading man in some theatrical production, he began to recite, his voice resonant, deliberate, his bearing, his hands somehow embellishing each word:
See, advancing, grim, relentless, as a scourge sent forth from hell,
Comes the blighting curse of Mammon, in the white man’s land to dwell;
Mongol, Ethiop, nameless horror, human brute from many a clime,
Vomited from earth’s dark pest holes; bred of plague, diseases, and crime.
Swathed in rags and noisome odours, gaunt and fleshless, dwarfed of limb,
Visages like the grisly jackal seeking dead midst shadows dim;
See the horde of drug besotten, sin begotten, fiends of filth,
Swarming o’er thy nation’s bulwarks; pillaging thy nation’s wealth.
He pulled tracts from his suit pocket and handed them to the children. Katherine saw the brightness, the flush of excitement on Robbie’s face, the fascination and uncertainty of Edie.
Suddenly, inexplicably, she wished the bowl of carrots in her hands were not chopped and boiled, but still whole and raw, sharpe
ned, hardened like arrows. For one long moment she imagined tipping a water-filled pot of them; imagined Terry’s astonished expression as he lay soaked and pinned to the floor, half a dozen carrots passing through his chest and into the floorboards. She could hear the tinny, frenzied piano accompaniment, the quick, jerky black and white motion of his neck, his arms, his legs, as he tried to pick himself up. She almost laughed, nervously, astonished at her ludicrous imagination. Instead she placed the bowl on the table and showed Terry to his seat while Donald carved the mutton.
Terry asked Robbie to pass a tract to his mother. Katherine pressed her lips into a thin smile. No one noticed. Terry had the poetic gift. He and Donald had enough conversation in them for the whole family.
‘We cannot eradicate the natural hatred between races with civilisation,’ Terry was saying as Katherine passed vegetables around the table. ‘We have to end this insane practice of importing alien races . . . No, thank you. I’m sure you are a fine cook, Mrs McKechnie, but I do not eat food contaminated by Chinamen . . . This employment of alien labour is a criminal injustice to the British workman. It’s the chief cause of poverty, crime, degeneracy and disease throughout the Empire . . .’
Donald raised his glass. ‘Hear, hear!’
‘Robbie,’ Terry continued, ‘where do leprosy and bubonic plague come from?’
When Robbie could not answer, Terry said, ‘Why, from the filthy heathen, son. The Mongols and black savages . . .’
Katherine gritted her teeth. Robbie was not Terry’s son. But Donald smiled, nodded, patted Robbie on the back.
Terry spread butter on a slice of Katherine’s home-baked bread. He turned to Donald. ‘The presence of Asiatics in this country jeopardises the rights of our fellow Britons. We have to take drastic measures before it’s too late . . .’
Terry chewed on his bread. ‘A wholesome loaf, Mrs McKechnie.’
To Donald he said, ‘As for the Maoris, there has never in the history of the world been a case of two races living together in the same country without the deterioration and decay of one or the other. The weakest race is always doomed . . .’
Katherine tried to consider at least some of Terry’s words. After all, didn’t the politicians say precisely this – that the Maoris required protection, that they were in danger of extinction?
Terry reached for another slice of bread. ‘The Maoris are now in such a state of moral, mental and physical degeneration that without complete and utter separation, their race will be beyond salvation. I see no practical solution but to exchange all lands in Maori possession for islands such as Stewart and the Chathams . . .’
Katherine wondered how much land was still in Maori possession. And how many Maoris were there left to be crammed onto the islands?
‘An interesting proposition,’ Donald said. ‘But how to achieve the desired result – now that’s the challenge.’
Terry swallowed. ‘McKechnie, my man, nothing worth its salt comes without hard work and sacrifice . . . As for race-adulterers, they should be transferred to outlying islands also. Mark my words . . .’
Race-adulterers? Katherine had never even considered the mixing of races, but to use the term adultery seemed absurd. She accepted Terry’s exhortation and drew a thick black line through every one of his words.
‘My petitions to members of Parliament, the Commissioner of Customs, the Minister of Native Affairs, etcetera, etcetera, have been to no avail,’ Terry was saying.
He declined the roast mutton, the vegetables, even Katherine’s bread and butter pudding. He did not eat foreign foods. Sugar, he said. He did not even drink tea. Katherine went to the meat safe to fetch him milk. She didn’t know whether to be alarmed or to be sorry for the man.
Early the next morning before anyone else rose, Katherine searched for the tracts. She knew Donald had his, but hadn’t Terry left another three? Where were they all? She found two and fed them, deliciously, to the coal range, filled the kettle and set it on top. How she would savour her porridge this morning, her sweet, milky tea.
A Bag of Peanuts
The news spread from one shop to another, from laundry to greengrocery to market garden. There had been the shooting in Naseby the previous year, and then the murder of Ham Sing-tong in Tapanui only a few weeks before, but this was Haining Street. This was where Cousin Gok-nam lived, where Shun and his brother Yung went on Sundays for wontons and roast pig, for tea and gossip.
Joe Kum-yung was not a clansman, but with maybe three hundred in all of Wellington, every Chinese was a brother, especially one shot at point-blank range. Yung heard from Fong-man, who heard from Joe Toy, that Kum-yung had been walking home when a man came up behind him and shot him twice in the head. No one got a good look at the murderer. It was a Sunday evening. It was dark. Haining Street was almost deserted. The man with the revolver wore a long grey coat. He was tall. He was gweilo. When Joe Toy got there, his cousin was lying outside Number 13 in a dark pool of blood, a paper bag of peanuts scattered about him.
Shun wondered whether the locks on the doors were adequate. Kum-yung had been in New Zealand thirty years – a cripple from his gold-mining days on the West Coast. His clansmen had raised the money to return him to China, to return him to his wife, but instead the fool had gone up the coast to try his hand at market gardening. And lost everything! He’d only been back in Wellington a few weeks. Why hadn’t he gone home? When he’d had the chance . . .
Shun rubbed his gammy leg. He told his brother not to go out after dusk. Not to go out at all, not unless absolutely necessary.
But the murder had barely passed three hundred pairs of lips when stranger, even more compelling news broke. A man had turned himself in. The murderer was in custody.
The Tríal
A crowd began to gather early on the morning of the trial, eager to see Lionel Terry brought down from the Terrace Gaol. Donald half-ran down Lambton Quay, and by the time he arrived at the Supreme Court his armpits felt uncomfortably wet and his shirt stuck to his back in a film of sweat.
‘Damned hot for November,’ he said as he joined a group of reporters.
‘We get this in Auckland all the time,’ one of them laughed. ‘But not the blinking wind!’
Thompson, whom Donald used to work with at the Evening Post, offered a cigarette. ‘I hear you’ve met Terry.’
‘Yeah. Good bloke, Terry.’
Thompson struck a match and held it up, sheltering it from the breeze. ‘Did you have any inkling he was going to do this?’
Donald drew on his cigarette, blew out. ‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘Didn’t like Chinks, that’s for sure. A scourge, he called them. Wanted them sent back. Who doesn’t? But . . .’ Donald shook his head sadly, drew on his cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke. ‘Sure knows how to make a point . . .’
They stood on the steps of the courthouse, shifting their weight from foot to foot, discussing the case as the crowd grew and became more boisterous and spilled across the road, threatening to close Stout Street.
When the doors finally opened and Terry still hadn’t appeared, Donald and the press and a mass of spectators charged for the main courtroom doors; yet more snaked up to the public gallery by the steep staircases on either side. Donald found a place in the press area. There was not enough room and some reporters ended up sitting with Chinamen and other spectators. The doors closed with hundreds still amassed outside.
Perhaps it was the sheer number of chattering, excitable people, the sour taste of stale sweat, everywhere the darkness of stained wood. Donald gazed upwards where the walls were paler, off-white, where faint light filtered through second-floor windows. This was not some inexplicable error, some minor indiscretion. His friend was on trial. For murder.
The crier called out and the crowd fell silent and rose. The Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, entered and sat at the bench.
Donald took a pencil and pad from his pocket.
Even as Terry came up from the cells, as he stood tall between his guards, a whit
e handkerchief neatly folded in his suit pocket, Donald noted that he had a dignity uncommon in those who frequented the dock. He caught his eye and Terry smiled, nodded slightly.
He had declined counsel. If anyone could defend himself with honour, then surely that was Terry, yet a vague uneasiness stirred in Donald’s stomach. He watched as the registrar read the charge and asked how Terry pleaded.
Terry lifted his chin and peered down at the man. He objected to the word guilty. He had nothing to say except that his action was right and justifiable.
‘That means not guilty,’ said His Honour.
Not guilty. The words reverberated in Donald’s mind. As the jury was empanelled, he listened to the names, good British names, examined each face, speculating on each man’s views. How could they not agree on the Asiatic problem?
He listened as the Crown opened with Charles William Harris, who was in Taranaki Street on 24 September at 7.35 p.m. Harris had heard a report from the direction of Haining Street and seen a man standing on the footpath. He saw a flash and heard a second report, then saw the man come towards him. The man was tall and wore a long, light overcoat. Only then did he notice a Chinaman lying on the footpath twenty to twenty-five feet from where the man had been standing.
Terry looked on implacably. He had no questions for Mr Harris or for the next witness, Constable Fitzgerald.
Now Joe Duck, a resident of Haining Street, was sworn in. Joe Duck. What kind of name is that? Donald watched the scorn on Terry’s face as the interpreter lit a match, handed it to Duck, mumbled something unintelligible and waited for him to blow it out.
Duck had lengthy discussions with the interpreter.
‘We need an interpreter for the interpreter,’ the Prosecutor said.
Donald, Terry and half the court snickered.
If the interpreter was to be believed, the Chinaman saw a man in a light overcoat fire a gun in Haining Street. The man who fired walked off. The man who fell was Joe Kum-yung.
