The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  This act of kindness, so unorthodox in George Shepard’s gaol-house, was not a terribly unusual one for Gascoigne. It was his pleasure to strike up friendships within the servile classes, with children, with beggars, with animals, with plain women and forgotten men. His courtesies were always extended to those who did not expect courtesy: when he encountered a man whose station was beneath him, he was never rude. To the higher classes, however, he held himself apart. He was not ungracious, but his manner was jaded and wistful, even unimpressed—a practice that, though not a strategy in any real sense, tended to win him a great deal of respect, and earn him a place among the inheritors of land and fortune, quite as if he had set out to end up there.

  In this way Aubert Gascoigne, born out of wedlock to an English governess, raised in the attics of Parisian row-houses, clothed always in cast-offs, forever banished to the coal scuttle, by turns admonished and ignored, had risen, over time, to become a personage of limited but respectable means. He had escaped his past—and yet he could be called neither an ambitious man, nor an unduly lucky one.

  In his person Gascoigne showed a curious amalgam of classes, high and low. He had cultivated his mind with the same grave discipline with which he now maintained his toilette—which is to say, according to a method that was sophisticated, but somewhat out of date. He held the kind of passion for books and learning that only comes when one has pursued an education on one’s very own—but it was a passion that, because its origins were both private and virtuous, tended towards piety and scorn. His temperament was deeply nostalgic, not for his own past, but for past ages; he was cynical of the present, fearful of the future, and profoundly regretful of the world’s decay. As a whole, he put one in mind of a well-preserved old gentleman (in fact he was only thirty-four) in a period of comfortable, but perceptible, decline—a decline of which he was well aware, and which either amused him or turned him melancholy, depending on his moods.

  For Gascoigne was extraordinarily moody. The wave of compassion that had compelled him to lie on Anna’s behalf dissipated almost as soon as the whore was freed: it darkened to despair, a despair that his help might, after all, have been a vain one—misplaced, wrong, and worst of all, self-serving. Selfishness was Gascoigne’s deepest fear. He loathed all signs of it in himself, quite as a competitive man loathes all traces of weakness that might keep him from his selfish goal. This was a feature of his personality of which he was extraordinarily proud, however, and about which he loved to moralise; whenever the irrationality of all this became too evident to ignore, he would fall into a very selfish bout of irritation.

  Anna had followed him out of the gaol-house; in the street he suggested, almost brusquely, that she come to his quarters, so as to explain herself in private. Meekly she acquiesced, and they walked on together, through the rain. Gascoigne no longer pitied her. His compassion, quick to flare, had given way to worry and self-doubt—for she was a failed suicide, after all; and, as the gaoler had warned him as he signed the form for Anna’s release, probably insane.

  Now, two weeks later, in the Gridiron Hotel—with his arms about her, his hand splayed firmly in the hollow of her back, her forearms pressed against his chest, her breath dampening his collarbone—Gascoigne’s thoughts again turned to the possibility that perhaps she had tried, a second time, to end her life. But where was the bullet that ought to have lodged in her breastbone? Had she known that the gun would misfire in such a peculiar way, when she pointed the muzzle at her own throat, and pulled the hammer down? How could she have known it?

  ‘All men want their whores to be unhappy’—Anna herself had said that, the night she was released from gaol, after she followed him home to his quarters, and they took apart her gown at his kitchen table, with the rain beating down, and the paraffin lamp making soft the corners of the room. ‘All men want their whores to be unhappy’—and how had he responded? Something curt, most likely, something terse. And now she had shot herself, or tried to. Gascoigne held her for a long time after Pritchard closed the door, gripping her tight, inhaling the salty smell of her hair. The smell was a comfort: he had been many years at sea.

  And he had been married. Agathe Gascoigne—Agathe Prideaux, as he had known her first. Elfin, quick-witted, teasing, and consumptive—a fact he had known when he made his proposal, but which had somehow seemed immaterial, surmountable; more a proof of her delicacy than a promise of ill tidings to come. But her lungs would not heal. They had travelled south, in pursuit of the climate cure, and she had died on the open ocean, somewhere off the Indian coast—horrible, that he did not know exactly where. Horrible, how her body had bent when it had struck the surface of the water—that slapping sound. She had made him promise not to order a coffin, nor to have one approximated, should she die before they reached their port of call. If it happened, she said, it would happen in the mariners’ way: sewn into a hammock with a double-backed seam. And because the hammock was hers, that bloom of scarlet, darkened now to brown—he’d knelt and kissed it, macabre though that was. After that, Gascoigne kept sailing. He stopped only when his money ran dry.

  Anna was heavier than Agathe had been—more angular, more substantial; but then (he thought), perhaps the living always seem substantial to those whose thoughts are with the dead. He moved his hand across her back. With his fingers he traced the shape of her corset, the double seam of eyelets, laced with string.

  After leaving the gaol-house they had detoured past the Magistrate’s Court, so that Gascoigne could leave his bail purse in the deposit box there, and file the bail notices, ready for the morning. Anna watched him perform these tasks patiently and without curiosity: she seemed to accept that Gascoigne had done her a great favour, and she was content to obey him, and keep silent, in return. Out of habit she did not walk beside him in the street, but followed him at a distance of several yards—so that Gascoigne could claim not to know her, if they encountered an arm of the law.

  When they reached Gascoigne’s cottage (for he had a whole cottage to himself, though a small one; a one-roomed clapboard cabin, some hundred yards from the beach), Gascoigne directed Anna to wait beneath the awning of the porch while he split a log for kindling in the yard. He made short work of the log, feeling a little self-conscious with Anna’s dark eyes fixed upon him as he chopped. Before the heartwood could dampen in the rain, he gathered the splintered fragments in his arms and dashed back to the doorway, where Anna stood aside to let him pass.

  ‘It’s no palace,’ he said foolishly—though, by Hokitika standards, it was.

  Anna made no comment as she passed under the lintel and into the dim fug of the cottage. Gascoigne dropped the kindling on the hearth and reached back to close the door. He lit the paraffin lamp, set it on the table, and knelt to build a fire—intensely aware, as he did so, of Anna’s silent appraisal of the room. It was sparsely furnished. His one fine piece of furniture was a wingback armchair, upholstered in a thick fabric of pink and yellow stripes: this had been a present to himself, upon first taking possession of the place, and it stood pride of place in the centre of the room. Gascoigne wondered what assumptions she was forming, what picture was emerging from this scant constellation of his life. The narrow mattress, over which his blanket was folded thrice. The miniature of Agathe, hanging from a nail above the bedhead. The row of seashells along the window sill. The tin kettle on the range; his Bible, the pages mostly uncut except for Psalms and the epistles; the tartan biscuit tin, inside of which he kept his letters from his mother, his papers, and his pens. Beside his bed, the box of broken candles, the wax pieces held together by the string of their wicks.

  ‘You keep a clean house,’ was all she said.

  ‘I live alone.’ Gascoigne pointed with a stick to the trunk at the base of his bed. ‘Open that.’

  She loosed the clasps, and heaved open the top. He directed her to a swatch of dark linen, which she lifted up, and Agathe’s dress slithered out over her knees—the black one, with the tatted collar, that he had so despised.


  (‘People will think me an ascetic,’ she had said cheerfully, ‘but black is a sober colour; one ought to have a sober dress.’

  It was to hide the bloodstains, the fine spray that peppered her cuffs; he knew it, but did not say so. He agreed, aloud, that one ought to have a sober dress.)

  ‘Put it on,’ Gascoigne said, watching as Anna smoothed the fabric over her knee. Agathe had been shorter; the hem would have to be let down. Even then, the whore would show three inches of her ankle, and maybe even the last hoop of her crinoline. It would be awful—but beggars could not be choosers, Gascoigne thought, and Anna was a beggar tonight. He turned back to the fire and shovelled ash.

  It was the only dress of Agathe’s that Gascoigne still possessed. The others, packed in their camphor-smelling cedar case, had been lost when the steamer ran aground—the berths first looted, then flooded, when the steamer fell at last upon her side, and the surf closed in. For Gascoigne the loss was a blessing. He had Agathe’s miniature: that was all he wished to keep. He would pay her memory due respect, but he was a young man, and still hot-blooded, and he meant to begin again.

  By the time Anna had changed, the fire was lit. Gascoigne glanced sideways at the dress. It looked just as ill upon her as it had upon his late wife. Anna saw him looking.

  ‘Now I will be able to mourn,’ she said. ‘I never had a black dress before.’

  Gascoigne did not ask her whom she was mourning, or how recent the death. He filled the kettle, and put it on the range.

  Aubert Gascoigne preferred to initiate conversation, rather than fall in with another person’s theme and tempo; he was content to be silent in company until he felt moved to speak. Anna Wetherell, with her whore’s intuition, seemed to recognise this aspect of Gascoigne’s character. She did not press him to converse, and she did not watch or shadow him as he went about the ordinary business of the evening: lighting candles, refilling his cigarette case, exchanging his muddy boots for indoor shoes. She gathered up the gold-lined dress and conveyed it across the room to spread on Gascoigne’s table. It was heavy. The gold had added perhaps five pounds to the weight of the fabric, Anna guessed: she tried to calculate the value. The Crown would buy pure colour at a rate of around three sovereigns per ounce—and there were sixteen ounces in a pound of weight—and this was five pounds of weight, at least. How much did that total? She tried to imagine a column of sums in her mind, but the figures swam.

  While Gascoigne banked the fire for the evening, and spooned tea leaves into a strainer, ready to steep, Anna examined her dress. Whoever had hidden the gold there evidently had experience with a needle and thread—either a woman or a sailor, she thought. They had sewn with care. The gold had been fitted up and down the bones of the corset, sewn into the flounces, and parcelled evenly around the hem—an extra weight she had not noticed earlier, for she often carried lead pellets around the bottom of her crinoline, to prevent the garment from blowing upward in the wind.

  Gascoigne had come up behind her. He took out his bowie knife, to cut the corset free—but he began too like a butcher, and Anna made a noise of distress.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how—please let me.’

  He hesitated, and then passed her the knife, and stood back to watch. She worked slowly, wanting to preserve the form and shape of the dress: first she took out the hem, then worked her way upward, along each flounce, snicking the threads with the point of the knife, and shaking the gold out of the seams. When she reached the corset, she made a little slice beneath each stay, and then reached up with her fingers to loose the gold from where it had been stuffed, in panels, between the bones. It was these lumpy parcels that had so reminded Gascoigne of chainmail, in the gaol-house.

  The gold, shaken out of the folds, shone gloriously. Anna collected it in the centre of the table. She was careful not to let the dust scatter in the draught. Each time she added another handful of dust, or another nugget, she cupped her hands over the pile, as if to warm herself upon the shine. Gascoigne watched her. He was frowning.

  At last she was done, and the dress was emptied.

  ‘Here,’ she said, taking up a nugget roughly the size of the last joint of Gascoigne’s thumb. She pushed it across the table towards him. ‘One pound one shilling: I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘I will not touch this gold,’ said Gascoigne.

  ‘Plus payment for the mourning dress,’ Anna said, flushing. ‘I don’t need charity.’

  ‘You might,’ said Gascoigne. He sat down on the edge of the bed and reached into his breast pocket for his cigarettes. He flipped open the silver case, plucked out a cigarette, and lit it with care; only after it was lit, and he had taken several lungfuls, did he turn to her, and say,

  ‘Who do you work for, Miss Wetherell?’

  ‘You mean—who runs the girls? Mannering.’

  ‘I do not know him.’

  ‘You would if you saw him. He’s very fat. He owns the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘I have seen a fat man.’ Gascoigne sucked on his cigarette. ‘Is he a fair employer?’

  ‘He has a temper,’ Anna said, ‘but his terms are mostly fair.’

  ‘Does he give you opium?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he know you take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who sells you the stuff?’

  ‘Ah Sook,’ said Anna.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘He’s just a chink. A hatter. He keeps the den at Kaniere.’

  ‘A Chinese man who makes hats?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I was using local talk. A hatter is a man who digs alone.’

  Gascoigne paused in his line of questioning to smoke.

  ‘This hatter,’ he said next. ‘He keeps an opium den—at Kaniere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you go to him.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alone.’ He spoke the word accusingly.

  ‘Most often,’ Anna said, squinting at him. ‘Sometimes I buy a little extra, to take at home.’

  ‘Where does he get it from? China, I suppose.’

  She shook her head. ‘Jo Pritchard sells it to him. He’s the chemist. Has a drug hall on Collingwood-street.’

  Gascoigne nodded. ‘I know Mr. Pritchard,’ he said. ‘Well then, I am curious: why should you bother with Chinamen, if you could buy the stuff from Mr. Pritchard direct?’

  Anna lifted her chin a little—or perhaps she merely shivered; Gascoigne could not tell. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know,’ said Gascoigne.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kaniere is a long way to walk for a mouthful of smoke, I think.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And Mr. Pritchard’s emporium is—what—not ten minutes’ walk from the Gridiron. Still less if one walked at a pace.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Why do you go to Kaniere Chinatown, Miss Wetherell?’

  Gascoigne spoke acidly; he felt that he knew the probable answer to the question, and wanted her to say the words aloud.

  Her face was stony. ‘Maybe I like it there.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Maybe you like it there.’

  (For goodness’ sake! What had come over him? What did he care if the whore plied her trade with Chinamen or not? What did he care if she made the trip to Kaniere alone, or with an escort? She was a whore! He had met her for the first time that very evening! Gascoigne felt a rush of bewilderment, and then immediately, a stab of anger. He took refuge in his cigarette.)

  ‘Mannering,’ he said, when he had exhaled. ‘The fat man. Could you leave him?’

  ‘Once I clear my debt.’

  ‘How much do you owe?’

  ‘A hundred pounds,’ said Anna. ‘Maybe a little over.’

  The empty dress lay between them, like a flayed corpse. Gascoigne looked at the pile, at its glimmer; Anna, following his line of sight, looked too.

  ‘You will be tried at the courts,
of course,’ Gascoigne said, gazing at the gold.

  ‘I was only tight in public,’ said Anna. ‘They’ll fine me, that’s all.’

  ‘You will be tried,’ Gascoigne said. ‘For attempted suicide. The gaoler has confirmed it.’

  She stared at him. ‘Attempted suicide?’

  ‘Did you not try and take your life?’

  ‘No!’ She leaped up. ‘Who’s saying that?’

  ‘The duty sergeant who picked you up last night,’ said Gascoigne.

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘I’m afraid it has been recorded,’ said Gascoigne. ‘You will have to plead, one way or another.’

  Anna said nothing for a moment. Then she burst out, ‘Every man wants his whore to be unhappy—every man!’

  Gascoigne blew out a narrow jet of smoke. ‘Most whores are unhappy,’ he said. ‘Forgive me: I only state a simple truth.’

  ‘How could they charge me for attempted suicide, without first asking me whether I—? How could they? Where’s the—’

  ‘—Proof?’

  Gascoigne studied her with pity. Anna’s recent brush with death showed plainly in her face and body. Her complexion was waxy, her hair limp and heavy with grease. She was snatching compulsively at the sleeves of her dress with her fingers; as the clerk appraised her, she gave a shiver that racked her body like a wave.

  ‘The gaoler fears that you are insane,’ he said.

  ‘I have never spoken one word to Gov. Shepard in all my months in Hokitika,’ said Anna. ‘We are perfect strangers.’

  ‘He mentioned that you had recently lost a child.’

  ‘Lost!’ said Anna, in a voice full of disgust. ‘Lost! That’s a sanitary word.’

  ‘You would use a different one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your child was taken from you?’

  A hard look came across Anna’s face. ‘Kicked from my womb,’ she said. ‘And by—by the child’s own father! But I suppose Gov. Shepard didn’t tell you that.’