The Last Letter

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Albert reached again for Sarah’s hand. This time Brooke wasn’t about to stand by as the woman he’d finally chosen was harassed by a man with no discernible background, nor breeding. He was a competent advisor to the Viceroy, but it was undeniable that no one knew anything about the man. He was an enigma who’d just dared lay a hand on the woman he loved. The woman I love? As that fact crashed into him, he found himself wrenching Albert’s arm off Sarah, and up behind his back. Yelling in pain, Albert tried to throw off the younger man.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Sarah screamed at the men, her loyalties torn. What an absolute nightmare. She tried to come between the struggling men.

  ‘Get away, Sarah!’ her father yelled at her.

  Naomi stood by uselessly, alternatively clasping her hands and fluttering them like a hummingbird.

  Captain Doulton appeared, physically pulling the two men apart. ‘Jesus, Brooke, what the hell are you doing?’

  Major Brooke shook himself free of his friend. ‘It’s nothing. Lester here was harassing Miss Williams. I’m sure that’s been sorted now, though. Am I right, Lester?’

  The older man gazed at his daughter through hurt eyes, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Sarah?’

  She shook her head, skirting past him, and into Naomi’s waiting arms, as if touching him would be tantamount to approving his actions. ‘Can we go inside, please?’ she begged Naomi, who was more than happy to spirit the younger woman away, where she’d be able to draw out all the juicy details.

  Doulton gave Brooke a shove away from the Lodge, and with a tight grip on his major’s arm, he yanked him down the driveway.

  Albert watched the men walk away, imagining the conversation they might be having. Rubbing his arm, he walked in the opposite direction, onto the sweeping lawn and through to the manicured gardens. The visual display of Victorian excess never failed to impress him. He’d embraced this new life, surrounding himself with the beauty of the craftsmanship of future antiques, while they were still in their prime, before they became worm-riddled and dented, altered and defiled. A bit like life really. Everyone starts out pure and unadulterated, and over time they are kicked, and scratched, misused or ignored, changed irrevocable by someone else’s idea of beauty.

  He tried to feel some guilt over his role in packing away Sarah’s belongings. He’d ordered her rooms be emptied, packed away for safe keeping, as soon as his Sarah had disappeared the first time. After the breakdown of the real Sarah Williams, everyone agreed it prudent that the house be packed up, and shipped back to England with her. He’d starting packing everything up, but it had all been delayed by the troubles in India, and the goods sat in a warehouse, slowly decaying. As if shutting them away closed the lid on his past, on his family. How easy it was to forget someone when you believe them lost to you. Now she’s back, what should I do? Stay? Encourage her to stay? The country was about to erupt. He cared not one whit about himself, but Sarah was his daughter. There was a time when he would do anything for her, but he wasn’t sure now whether that ‘anything’ extended to giving up this life for her, not now that she was an adult. His going back would only cause heartache for everyone. His only memory of buying anything of Indian origin, from anyone in Salisbury, was a small gold snuffbox. When he’d bought it, he hadn’t realised it was gold, thinking it instead to be brass. On polishing it up for sale, reality hit. And, like a number of other valuable pieces, he’d put it away, for a rainy day, when bank funds were low, or unexpected expenses cropped up. He’d often referred to those items as his ‘retirement fund’. He would have been disappointed had he known how little his collection of Doulton Lambethware was worth now, and that Sarah had slowly been sending them off to auction, one at a time, including his favourite jardinière, the one by Hannah Barlow, the first female artist to work for Doulton in 1871. It was the embossed snuffbox he was thinking about now. He hadn’t recognised it when it was in Simeon Williams’ possession, but he had recognised it after Sarah’s return, and he hoped like hell it had been packed up by Nirmala and the others, as per his instructions. If, in fact, Simeon still owned it, and hadn’t gambled it away like almost everything else of worth that came into his possession. And now ... now if Sarah demanded access to the stuff from the house ... well, he would have to put a stop to it. She had to go home, but he would orchestrate the when and where. She couldn’t stay. It wasn’t safe. She had to go.

  THE MOTHER

  Annabel Lester smoothed her hair as best she could in the primitive living conditions. Not primitive in the sense of being in a cave, or a tent in an overcrowded refugee camp, but primitive in the sense that she had no electricity. Dunedin wouldn’t see electricity until 1885. Of all the things she missed, electricity was the main one. That and hair conditioner. And hair straighteners. Still, she’d managed to tidy her hair as far as possible, and checked her reflection in the small hand mirror in her room. The Bishop allowed no mirrors in the Manse – ‘a sign of vanity,’ he’d said. So she kept this one in her chest of drawers, under her underwear – the most utilitarian creations she’d ever seen, and ones she was certain even the cretin Bailey wouldn’t dream of disturbing. She’d found the mirror in a pawn shop. It wasn’t of any great value, being plain ebony. It had once been part of a larger ladies’ dressing table set, but the pawnbroker had divided the collection, selling each item individually, and only had the hand mirror left. Usually this would be the most desirable piece of all, but because there was a small nick in the handle, it had remained unsold. This was why complete sets commanded such high prices at auction in the modern world. She herself had been guilty of breaking up jewellery sets, and dinner sets and silver sets, anything to get a sale. She regretted those decisions now. But, nothing was ever achieved in life by hanging on to the past.

  A final glance in the mirror and she was ready for her walk. They’d arranged to meet at Hubert’s Café and Club on Princes Street for lunch. It was her afternoon off, but still she slipped silently out of the house, afraid her employer would see her, and question her intentions. It was assumed by the Bishop that she’d come to Dunedin under the Assisted Female Immigration Scheme. It was well known that many women who’d come to New Zealand on that scheme had turned to prostitution, for a variety of reasons, but primarily due to the lack of work in the province by the time they’d finally arrived. As a result, she never felt completely at ease with him. Constant worry about being thrown out contributed to her insomnia – or perhaps that was brought on by daydreaming of Warden William Price.

  Walking to the café, she reflected on the changing society in which she lived. Dunedin had been a smug Presbyterian community when she’d first arrived, but since the flood of miners, the settlement’s moral and religious tone was teetering on the brink of collapse. If the Bishop and his lackey knew where she was going, they’d accuse her of contributing to that moral downfall.

  She was grateful Price hadn’t suggested they meet at night. Walking about town in the evening was not for the fainthearted. The swathes of tents in town, combined with the criminal element who’d fled New South Wales in search of glory on the Otago goldfields, made it increasingly likely to be set upon by a ruffian en route to one of the newly formed musical societies. No, going out for lunch was entirely respectable, and she shouldn’t worry unnecessarily about the Bishop. There was no chance he’d have any idea what she was up to this afternoon. None at all.

  THE STATUE

  Nicole Pilcher locked the door behind the last apologetic police officer. Exhaling for what felt like the first time that day, she sunk onto the tatty stool, and waited for her hands to stop shaking. She felt quite light-headed – not just down to the fact she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Her gaze travelled around the shop. It didn’t look too disturbed from the inspection by the police. They’d done a half decent job of tidying as they went. Inevitably they’d broken a couple of plates, large cake plates, but that was no worse than what she normally broke in a day. There’d been assurances they’d pay for the damage, but she di
dn’t hold out much hope of that. What was worse was that not a single customer had been allowed in all day, so her sales total for the day was zero.

  It was bizarre how guilty she’d felt as the police searched the shop and Sarah’s apartment, as if she herself had been complicit in Sarah and Patricia’s disappearance and the murder of the museum guard. She’d helped the policewoman box up the stock books – there had been dozens of them, written in a variety of hands. Some were deliciously comprehensive in their descriptions, most just one line – “Chinaware”, or “Wooden Articles”, which could have covered anything from a Maori feather box, to the Ark of the Covenant. Good luck to the lucky sod who gets tasked with reading those.

  Her mouth parched, and the shop’s meagre coffee supply depleted by the police, she slipped upstairs, thinking she might find something in Sarah’s kitchen. Up here was a different story. The place had been ripped apart. Books pulled from shelves. The couch, devoid of cushions, sat oddly in the middle of the lounge. She narrowed her eyes. Walking into the kitchen only made her feel worse. She grimaced at the mess which confronted her. Jesus. Every cupboard had been emptied. Tins of baked beans tangled with half-empty packets of pasta and store brand rice crackers. A roll of paper towels had unravelled from its cardboard, and lay stranded on the floor. The cutlery drawer had been emptied into the sink – the miasma of mismatched bone-handled knives and odd forks, coffee spoons and ancient bottle openers given no more consideration than a beggar on the street.

  Pushing up her sleeves, she set to tidying up, huffing as she went. This was the last thing she wanted to do, but she couldn’t have Sarah coming back and thinking she was responsible for the mess. She wouldn’t have liked to have come home to a flat which looked like it had been robbed, and doubted Sarah would either.

  After the kitchen, she moved back into the lounge. Shaking her head she picked up the books, the easiest to re-home. For a woman who owned a second-hand shop, Sarah appeared to have very little of value in her flat. A classic railway clock on the wall, a brass stand in the shape of an umbrella, filled with old walking sticks – or rather, which had been filled with old walking sticks. They’d been tipped out and left strewn in a corner. One looked like it had once been topped with sterling silver, now crudely wrenched off. She hoped like hell that it wasn’t the police who’d stooped to nicking something so utterly worthless. But, apart from those few pieces, it was very much like her own flat. Lifeless. Nowhere was really a home without someone to share it, even a cat. But here ... here, Sarah had nothing, and no one to share her life, and her flat reflected that.

  Having done as much as she could legitimately do, without prying too much into the detritus of Sarah’s life, Nicole poured herself a glass of water, and spent some time reading the titles she’d replaced on the bookshelves, filling in time before she herself went back to her own empty flat. Life generally never worked out the way you wanted. She certainly didn’t have the large diamond ring on her finger she’d expected to have by now. Not even a small diamond ring. All she had was an empty flat. The love she’d been promised had disappeared, a bit like Sarah and Patricia. Maybe it’s me? At this rate, she could keep running the shop, keep the profits, and no one would know. Tempting. She tumbled the idea over in her mind, then remembered Patricia’s boyfriend Andrew. He knew she was here, of course. She shuddered. All of a sudden, being in Sarah’s personal space felt wrong. She may not have had any customers, but hopefully her Internet sales wouldn’t let her down, they’d all be closing soon, mostly when she was away, but she still had stuff to organise for her trip to France, so that was a priority.

  Back downstairs, she fired up her computer, checking on the bids, oblivious to the man outside her window, peering in through the newly cleaned shelves.

  THE BUYER

  Shalfoon checked his watch. The online auction for the little Roman statue was due to end in fifteen minutes, well after the closing hours printed on the shop window. Is it acceptable to knock on the door as soon as the auction finishes? The girl in the shop might be keen enough to finalise at least one sale. He’d watched all day, albeit from a distance, and knew no one had been allowed inside, which meant there’d been no sales. He wasn’t familiar with the reasons why there were police there today – his only concern was that it didn’t involve his statue.

  And there, as the minute hand swept past the twelve, the auction finished. The price was of no consequence. He’d placed the highest bid to ensure no one else would be able to spirit it away, again. Once he had the authorities involved, the statue would rightly be returned to the church, at no cost, and with much media interest.

  He checked through the window again. The girl was immersed in her laptop. Given the appalling state inside, she should be tidying up, but that was none of his business. If he’d known the shop was usually that cluttered, he’d have been even more distressed.

  He was about to knock, but hesitated as another car rolled to a stop outside. The windows were covered with that dark film favoured by unsavoury types the world over. He suddenly felt self-conscious loitering on the street in his work clothes, his clerical collar a white beacon in the fading light. Shaking himself free of his dreams of plaudits, he hurried off, throwing a glance back towards the idling car, before being swallowed up by the crowd of workers eager to return home for mediocre dinners in front of their flat-screen televisions.

  THE SON

  Colin Lloyd shivered on the ship. He’d been cold before – that was par for the course living in Wales – scrimping and saving every penny he and his mother could earn to keep them alive. Alive but not necessarily warm. But he’d never been this wet and cold for so long, salt-water spray making his trousers and shirt stiff, rubbing his neck raw, and chafing his skinny thighs. He missed the peculiar balmy weather they’d had earlier on in the voyage, but standing there on deck, shivering in the wind, even watching a poor soul thrown overboard, was far preferable to being below in steerage, where the stench of vomit was all pervasive. His stomach had stood up to the rigours of an ocean crossing better than most; he’d at least been able to keep down his meals. Regular food was a luxury he was unfamiliar with, and he wasn’t going to let an upset stomach stop him from eating everything put before him.

  He hugged himself harder. Standing on his own, he let down his guard, becoming the boy he truly was, instead of the man he was trying to be. He’d marvelled at the flying fish they’d seen, and for the past week dolphins had escorted their ship, weird shiny fish smiling and gibbering at him every time they caught his eye with their silly antics.

  He’d barely spoken to the man they’d just wrapped in old sailcloth and tossed over the side, albeit with a Christian service. The man hadn’t distinguished himself in any way – he, too, had been travelling alone, heading for the glittering goldfields of New Zealand, before a tragic accident robbed him of his dreams.

  You never knew when God was going to call your name – which was what had brought him. His brother was in New Zealand, finding his fortune, according to the letters he’d found from Isaac to their mam. Originally they’d described the abundance New Zealand offered, the opportunities, begging her to bring the rest of the family out. But his more recent letters hadn’t been as glowing. They spoke of hardship and unrest, urging their mother to stay put; that he’d be home as soon as he’d made some money. And then they’d stopped.

  Colin was here for two reasons: to find his brother; and to find his fortune. His family deserved more than living in one room above an inn, their tenancy constantly a struggle. He deserved more than working in the dark coal mines of Wales.

  The captain had said New Zealand was only a few days away, weather dependent, although this wind would help. Tearing his eyes away from the disappearing body of the dead man, he strained to catch sight of land, but the vast expanse of empty ocean teased him with its dancing waves, and its choir of porpoises.

  Munching on his ration of raisins, he savoured their sweet taste, wondering if Isaac’s ship was provis
ioned with such things. He wanted to send some back to his little brothers, but they were too good. He’d write once they got there, and describe them. Swallowing, he smiled, the sweet taste clinging to his tongue and teeth. He had no desire to go below deck, to play chess or another interminable game of cards with the other lads. Being up here, taking in the world outside was enough entertainment for him.

  His mind wandered to the problems he would face once he arrived at Port Chalmers. Getting from there to Bruce Bay was the biggest one. The lack of food and shelter never once crossed his mind – a typical teenage boy frame of mind.

  THE LUNCH

  Hubert’s Café was filling up. Not the most illustrious in Dunedin, despite its claims of grandeur, but it was the most affordable for the average person – hence the numbers who filled it every weekend.

  Price waited outside, nodding at the enquiring glances thrown his way. Most diners were too focussed on their own relaxation to worry about the handful of shiny men waiting outside for their lady friends. Price, however, cast his eye over every man and woman who walked past, still looking for Sinclair and Sarah. He didn’t think he’d ever stop searching for them. His life needed to go on, but could it go on without her? Then he caught sight of Annabel.

  She smiled at Price, subconsciously touching her hat. It still felt like she was playing dress-ups every time she went out. Initially, she thought she’d never tire of it, but a couple of Otago summers had cured her of that romanticism. But, on chilly days like today – and there were many of them – she was grateful for the voluminous skirts, quilted jackets, hats and gloves society dictated she wear.