Colour Scheme
Colour Scheme
Ngaio Marsh
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…
NGAIO MARSH
COLOUR SCHEME
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_ce00e7a1-1765-5d0d-acf2-73794a98275e)
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1943
Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1943
Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 978000651238
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344574
Version: 2017-05-04
DEDICATION (#ulink_46ad7a89-3e17-5a38-a23e-c8c73124f3dd)
To the family at Tauranga
CONTENTS
Cover (#u1ae9de51-6a42-5354-96e0-701bd38b5475)
Title Page (#ue27705da-098a-5ee9-b072-44a48e5189bf)
Copyright (#u0694c531-2393-55ca-a4b9-127684a84227)
Dedication (#u960679b2-00d8-57df-a211-cc583f526b7e)
Cast of Characters (#u2e1b120a-8af4-55fd-ac1a-4f1a7963a761)
1 The Claires and Dr Ackrington (#u4ecc8c25-dcd9-59df-bb87-15aa30bb3a14)
2 Mr Questing Goes Down for the First Time (#ue54ca098-c6bc-5a8e-b581-ccd1f5bd33c4)
3 Gaunt at the Springs (#uaae59afb-c62c-527a-9c4e-78ce21aaf0ba)
4 Red for Danger (#u61ed2e9e-db40-5521-866f-7b5855a23b8c)
5 Mr Questing Goes Down for the Second Time (#litres_trial_promo)
6 Arrival of Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
7 Torpedo (#litres_trial_promo)
8 Concert (#litres_trial_promo)
9 Mr Questing Goes Down for the Third Time (#litres_trial_promo)
10 Entrance of Sergeant Webley (#litres_trial_promo)
11 The Theory of a Put-Up Job (#litres_trial_promo)
12 Skull (#litres_trial_promo)
13 Letter from Mr Questing (#litres_trial_promo)
14 Solo by Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
15 The Last of Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#ulink_fab5c486-6631-5656-8bd2-18ab4192f962)
Dr James Ackrington, MD, FRCS, FRCP
Barbara Claire, his niece
Mrs Claire, his sister
Colonel Edward Claire, his brother-in-law
Simon Claire, his nephew
Huia, maid at Wai-ata-tapu
Geoffrey Gaunt, a visiting celebrity
Dikon Bell, his secretary
Alfred Colly, his servant
Maurice Questing, man of business
Rua Te Kahu, a chief of the Te Rarawas
Herbert Smith, roustabout at Wai-ata-tapu
Eru Saul, a half-caste
Septimus Falls
The Princess Te Papa (Mrs Te Papa), of the Te Rarawas
Detective-Sergeant Webley, of the Harpoon Constabulary
A Superintendent of Police
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_bf5f367d-80f7-59f3-82c8-29cdc81bf07d)
The Claires and Dr Ackrington (#ulink_bf5f367d-80f7-59f3-82c8-29cdc81bf07d)
When Dr James Ackrington limped into the Harpoon Club on the afternoon of Monday, January the thirteenth, he was in a poisonous temper. A sequence of events had combined to irritate and then to inflame him. He had slept badly. He had embarked, he scarcely knew why, on a row with his sister, a row based obscurely on the therapeutic value of mud pools and the technique of frying eggs. He had asked for the daily paper of the previous Thursday only to discover that it had been used to wrap up Mr Maurice Questing’s picnic lunch. His niece Barbara, charged with this offence, burst out into one of her fits of nervous laughter and recovered the paper, stained with ham fat and reeking with onions. Dr Ackrington, in shaking it angrily before her, had tapped his sciatic nerve smartly against the table. Blind with pain and white with rage, he stumbled to his room, undressed, took a shower, wrapped himself in his dressing-gown and made his way to the hottest of the thermal baths, only to find Mr Maurice Questing sitting in it, his unattractive outline rimmed with effervescence. Mr Questing had laughed offensively and announced his intention of remaining in the pool for twenty minutes. He had pointed out the less hot but unoccupied baths. Dr Ackrington, standing on the hardened bluish mud banks that surrounded the pool, embarked on as violent a quarrel as he could bring about with a naked smiling antagonist who returned no answer to the grossest insults. He then went back to his room, dressed and, finding nobody upon whom to pour out his wrath, drove his car ruthlessly up the sharp track from Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs to the main road for Harpoon. He left behind an atmosphere well suited to his mood, since the air, as always, reeked of sulphurous vapours.
Arrived at the club, he collected his letters and turned into the writing-room. The windows looked across the Harpoon Inlet whose waters on this midsummer morning were quite unscored by ripples and held immaculate the images of sky and white sand, and of the crimson flowering trees that bloom at this time of year in the Northland of New Zealand. A shimmer of heat rose from the pavement outside the club and under its influence the form of trees, hills and bays seemed to shake a little as if indeed the strangely primitive landscape were still taking shape and were rather a half-realised idea than a concrete accomplishment of nature.
It was a beautiful prospect but Dr Ackrington was not really moved by it. He reflected that the day would be snortingly hot and opened his letters. Only one of them seemed to arrest his attention. He spread it out before him on the writing-table and glared at it, whistling slightly between his teeth.
This is what he read:
Harley Chambers,
AUCKLAND, C.1
My dear Dr Ackrington,
I am venturing to ask for your advice in a rather tricky business involving a patient of mine, none other than our visiting celebrity the famous Geoffrey Gaunt. As you probably know, he arrived in Australia with his Shakespearean company just before war broke out and remained there, continuing to present his repertoire of plays but handing over a very generous dollop of all takings to the patriotic funds. On the final disbandment of his company he came to New Zealand, where, as you may not know (I remember your loathing of radio), he has done some excellent propaganda stuff on the air. About four weeks ago he consulted me. He complained of insomnia, acute pains in the joints, loss of appetite and intense depression. He asked me if I thought he had a chance of being accepted for active service. He wants to get back to England but only if he can be of use. I diagnosed fibrositis and nervous debility, put him on a very simple diet, and told him I certainly did not consider him fit for any sort of war service. It seems he has an idea of writing his autobiography. They all do it. I suggested that he might combine this with a course of hydrotherapy and complete rest. I suggested Rotorua, but he won’t hear of it. Says he’d be plagued with lion hunters and what-not and that he can’t stand the tourist atmosphere.
You’ll have guessed what I’m coming to.
I know you are living at Wai-ata-tapu, and understand that the Spa is under your sister’s or her husband’s management. I have heard that you are engaged on a magnum opus so therefore suppose that the place is conducive to quiet work. Would you be very kind and tell me if you think it would suit my patient, and if Colonel and Mrs Claire would care to have him as a resident for some six weeks or more? I know that you don’t practise nowadays, and it is with the greatest diffidence that I make my final suggestion. Would you care to keep a professional eye on Mr Gaunt? He is an interesting figure, and I venture to hope that you may feel inclined to take him as a sort of patient extraordinary. I must add that, frankly, I should be very proud to hand him on to so distinguished a consultant.
Gaunt has a secretary and a manservant, and I understand he would want accommodation for both of them.
Please forgive me for writing what I fear may turn out to be a tiresome and exacting letter.
Yours very sincerely,
IAN FORSTER
Dr Ackrington read this letter through twice, folded it, placed it in his pocket book, and, still whistling between his teeth, filled his pipe and lit it. After some five minutes’ cogitation he drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to cover it with his thin irritable script.
Dear Forster (he wrote),
Many thanks for your letter. It requires a frank answer and I give it for what it is worth. Wai-ata-tapu is, as you suggest, the property of my sister and her husband, who run it as a thermal spa. In many ways they are perfect fools, but they are honest fools and that is more than one can say of most people engaged in similar pursuits. The whole place is grossly mismanaged in my opinion, but I don’t know that you would find anyone else who would agree with me. Claire is an army man and it’s a pity he has failed so signally to absorb in the smallest degree the principles of system and orderly control that must at some time or another have been suggested to him. My sister is a bookish woman. However incompetent, she seems to command the affection of her martyred clients, and I am her only critic. Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they make no money and work like bewildered horses at an occupation that requires merely the application of common sense to make it easy and profitable. On the alleged therapeutic properties of the baths you have evidently formed your own opinion. They consist, as you are aware, of thermal springs whose waters contain alkalis, free sulphuric acid, and free carbonic acid gas. There are also siliceous mud baths in connection with which my brother-in-law talks loosely and freely of radioactivity. This latter statement I regard as so much pious mumbo-jumbo, but I am alone in my opinion. The mud may be miraculous. My leg is no worse since I took to using it.
As for your spectacular patient, I don’t know to what degree of comfort he is used, but can promise him he won’t get it, though enormous and misguided efforts will be made to accommodate him. Actually there is no reason why he shouldn’t be comfortable. Possibly his secretary and man might succeed where my unfortunate relatives may safely be relied upon to fail. I doubt if he will be more wretched than he would be anywhere else in this extraordinary country. The charges will certainly be less than elsewhere. Six guineas a week for resident patients. Possibly Gaunt would like a private sitting-room for which I imagine there would be an extra charge. Tonks of Harpoon is the visiting medical man. I need say no more. Possibly it is an oblique recommendation of the waters that all Tonks’s patients who have taken them have at least survived. There is no reason why I should not keep an eye on your man and I shall do so if you and he wish it. What you say of him modifies my previous impression that he was one of the emasculate popinjays who appear to form the nucleus of the intelligentsia at home in these degenerate days. Bloomsbury.
My magnum opus, as you no doubt ironically call it, crawls on in spite of the concreted efforts of my immediate associates to withhold the merest necessities for undisturbed employment. I confess that the autobiographical outpourings of persons connected with the theatre seem to me to bear little relation to serious work, and, where I fail, Mr Geoffrey Gaunt may well succeed.
Again, many thanks for your letter,
Yours,
JAMES ACKRINGTON
PS. I should be doing you and your patient a disservice if I failed to tell you that the place is infested by as offensive a fellow as I have ever come across. I have the gravest suspicions regarding this person.
J.A.
As Dr Ackrington sealed and directed this letter a trace of complacency lightened the habitual austerity of his face. He rang the bell, ordered a small whisky and soda and with an air of relishing his employment began a second letter.
Roderick Alleyn, Esq., Chief Inspector, CID,
c/o Central Police Station,
Auckland.
Sir,
The newspapers, with gross indiscretion, report you as having come to this country in connection with scandalous leakages of information to the enemy, notably those which led to the sinking of SS Hippolyte last November.
I consider it my duty to inform you of the activities of a person at present living at Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs, Harpoon Inlet. This person, calling himself Maurice Questing and staying at the local Spa, has formed the habit of leaving the house after dark. To my positive knowledge, he ascends the mountain known as Rangi’s Peak, which is part of the native reserve and the western face of which looks out to sea. I have myself witnessed on several occasions a light flashing on the slopes of this face. You will note that Hippolyte was torpedoed at a spot some two miles out from Harpoon Inlet.
I have also to report that, on being questioned as to his movements, Mr Questing has returned evasive and even lying answers.
I conceived it my duty to report this matter to the local police authorities, who displayed a somnolence so profound as to be pathological.
I have the honour to be,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES ACKRINGTON, MD, FRCS, FRCP
The servant brought the drink. Dr Ackrington accused him of having substituted an inferior brand of whisky for the one ordered, but he did this with an air of routine rather than of rage. He accepted the servant’s resigned assurances with surprising mildness, merely remarking that the whisky had probably been adulterated by the makers. He then finished his drink, clapped his hat on the side of his head and went out to post his letters. The hall porter pulled open the door.
‘War news a bit brighter this morning, sir,’ said the porter tentatively.
‘The sooner we’re all dead, the better,’ Dr Ackrington replied cheerfully. He gave a falsetto barking noise, and limped quickly down the steps.
‘Was that a joke?’ said the hall porter to the servant. The servant turned up his eyes.
II
Colonel and Mrs Claire had lived for twelve years at Wai-ata-tapu Springs. They had come to New Zealand from India when their daughter Barbara, born ten years after their marriage, was thirteen, and their son Simon, nine years old. They had told their friends in gentle voices that they wanted to get away from the conventions of retired army life in England. They had spoken blithely, for they took an uncritical delight in such phrases, of wide-open spaces and of a small inheritance that had come to the Colonel. With most of this inheritance they had built the boarding house they now lived in. The remaining sums had been quietly lost in a series of timid speculations. They had worked like slaves, receiving good advice with well-bred resentment and bad advice with touching gratitude. Beside these failings, they had a positive genius for collecting impossible people, and at the time when this tale opens were at the mercy of a certain incubus called Herbert Smith.
On the retirement of her distinguished and irascible brother from practice in London, Mrs Claire had invited him to join them. He had consented to do so only as a paying guest, as he wished to enjoy complete freedom for making criticisms and complaints, an exercise he indulged with particular energy, especially in regard to his nephew Simon. His niece Barbara Claire had from the first done the work of two servants and, because she went out so little, retained the sort of English vicarage-garden atmosphere that emanated from her mother. Simon, on the contrary, had attended the Harpoon State schools and, influenced on the one hand by the persistent family attitude of poor but proud gentility and on the other by his schoolfellows’ suspicion of ‘pommy’ settlers, had become truculently colonial, somewhat introverted and defiantly uncouth. A year before the outbreak of war he left school, and now was taking the preliminary Air Force training at home.
On the morning of Dr Ackrington’s visit to Harpoon, the Claires pursued their normal occupations. At midday Colonel Claire took his lumbago to the radioactivity of the mud pool, Mrs Claire steeped her sciatica in a hot spring, Simon went into his cabin to practise Morse code, and Barbara cooked the midday meal in a hot and primitive kitchen with Huia, the Maori help, in attendance.
‘You can dish up, Huia,’ said Barbara. She brushed the locks of damp hair from her eyes with the back of her forearm. ‘I’m afraid I seem to have used a lot of dishes. There’ll be six in the dining-room. Mr Questing’s out for lunch.’
‘Good job,’ said Huia skittishly. Barbara pretended not to hear. Huia, moving with the half-languid, half-vigorous grace of the young Maori, smiled brilliantly, and began to pile stacks of plates on a tray. ‘He’s no good,’ she said softly.
Barbara glanced at her. Huia laughed richly, lifting her short upper lip. ‘I shall never understand them,’ Barbara thought. Aloud she said: ‘Mightn’t it be better if you just pretended not to hear when Mr Questing starts those – starts being – starts teasing you?’
‘He makes me very angry,’ said Huia, and suddenly she became childishly angry, flashing her eyes and stamping her foot. ‘Silly ass,’ she said.
‘But you’re not really angry.’
Huia looked out of the corners of her eyes at Barbara, pulled an equivocal grimace, and tittered.
‘Don’t forget your cap and apron,’ said Barbara, and left the sweltering kitchen for the dining-room.
Wai-ata-tapu Hostel was a one-storeyed wooden building shaped like an E with the middle stroke missing. The dining-room occupied the centre of the long section separating the kitchen and serveries from the boarders’ bedrooms, which extended into the east wing. The west wing, private to the Claires, was a series of cramped cabins and a tiny sitting-room. The house had been designed by Colonel Claire on army-hut lines with an additional flavour of sanatorium. There were no passages, and all the rooms opened on a partially covered-in verandah. The inside walls were of yellowish-red oiled wood. The house smelt faintly of linseed oil and positively of sulphur. An observant visitor might have traced in it the history of the Claires’ venture. The framed London Board-of-Trade posters, the chairs and tables painted, not very capably, in primary colours, the notices in careful script, the archly reproachful rhyme sheets in bathrooms and lavatories, all spoke of high beginnings. Broken passe-partout, chipped paint and fly-blown papers hanging by single drawing pins traced unmistakably a gradual but inexorable decline. The house was clean but unexpectedly so, tidy but not orderly, and only vaguely uncomfortable. The front wall of the dining-room was built of glass panels designed to slide in grooves, but devilishly inclined to jam. These looked across the verandah to the hot springs themselves.
Barbara stood for a moment at one of the open windows and stared absently at a freakish landscape. Hills smudged with scrub were ranked against a heavy sky. Beyond them, across the hidden inlet, but tall enough to dominate the scene, rose the truncated cone of Rangi’s Peak, an extinct volcano so characteristically shaped that it might have been placed in the landscape by a modern artist with a passion for simplified form. Though some eight miles away, it was actually clearer than the nearby hills, for their margins, dark and firm, were broken at intervals by plumes of steam that rose perpendicularly from the eight thermal pools. These lay close at hand, just beyond the earth-and-pumice sweep in front of the house. Five of them were hot springs hidden from the windows by fences of manuka scrub. The sixth was enclosed by a rough bath shed. The seventh was almost a lake over whose dark waters wraiths of steam vaguely drifted. The eighth was a mud pool, not hot enough to give off steam, and dark in colour with a kind of iridescence across its surface. This pool was only half-screened and from its open end protruded a naked pink head on top of a long neck. Barbara went out to the verandah, seized a brass schoolroom bell, and rang it vigorously. The pink head travelled slowly through the mud like some fantastic periscope until it disappeared behind the screen.
‘Lunch, Father,’ screamed Barbara unnecessarily. She walked across the sweep and entered the enclosure. On a brush fence that screened the first path hung a weather-worn placard: ‘The Elfin Pool. Engaged.’ The Claires had given each of the pools some amazingly insipid title, and Barbara had neatly executed the placards in poker work.
‘Are you there, Mummy?’ asked Barbara.
‘Come in, my dear.’
She walked round the screen and found her mother at her feet, submerged up to the shoulders in bright blue steaming water that quite hid her plump body. Over her fuzz of hair Mrs Claire wore a rubber bag with a frilled edge and she had spectacles on her nose. With her right hand she held above the water a shilling edition of Cranford.
‘So charming,’ she said. ‘They are all such dears. I never tire of them.’
‘Lunch is nearly in.’
‘I must pop out. The Elf is really wonderful, Ba. My tiresome arm is quite cleared up.’
‘I’m so glad, Mummy,’ said Barbara in a loud voice. ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘What is it?’ said Mrs Claire, turning a page with her thumb.
‘Do you like Mr Questing?’
Mrs Claire looked up over the top of her book. Barbara was standing at a curious angle, balanced on her right leg. Her left foot was hooked round her right ankle.
‘Dear,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘don’t stand like that. It pushes all the wrong things out and tucks the right ones in.’
‘But do you?’ Barbara persisted, changing her posture with a jerk.
‘Well, he’s not out of the top drawer of course, poor thing.’
‘I don’t mind about that. And anyway what is the top drawer? It’s a maddening sort of way to classify people. Such cheek! I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to be rude. But honestly, for us to talk about class!’ Barbara gave a loud hoot of laughter. ‘Look at us!’ she said.
Mrs Claire edged modestly towards the side of the pool and thrust her book at her daughter. Stronger waves of sulphurous smells rose from the disturbed waters. A cascade of drops fell from the elderly rounded arm.
‘Take Cranford,’ she said. Barbara took it. Mrs Claire pulled her rubber bag a little closer about her ears. ‘My dear,’ she said, pitching her voice on a note that she usually reserved for death, ‘aren’t you mixing up money and breeding? It doesn’t matter what one does surely …’ She paused.
‘There is an innate something …’ she began. ‘One can always tell,’ she added.
‘Can one? Look at Simon.’
‘Dear old Simon,’ said her mother reproachfully.
‘Yes, I know. I’m very fond of him. I couldn’t have a kinder brother, but there isn’t much innate something about Simon, is there?’
‘It’s only that awful accent. If we could have afforded …’
‘There you are, you see,’ cried Barbara, and she went on in a great hurry, shooting out her words as if she fired them from a gun that was too big for her. ‘Class consciousness is all my eye. Fundamentally it’s based on money.’
On the verandah the bell was rung again with some abandon.
‘I must pop out,’ said Mrs Claire. ‘That’s Huia ringing.’
‘It’s not because he talks a different language or any of those things,’ said Barbara hurriedly, ‘that I don’t like Mr Questing. I don’t like him. And I don’t like the way he behaves with Huia. Or,’ she added under her breath, ‘with me.’
‘I expect,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that’s only because he used to be a commercial traveller. It’s just his way.’
‘Mummy, why do you find excuses for him? Why does Daddy, who would ordinarily loathe Mr Questing, put up with him? He even laughs at his awful jokes. It isn’t because we want his board money. Look how Daddy and Uncle James practically froze out those rich Americans who were very nice, I thought.’ Barbara drove her long fingers through her mouse-coloured hair, and avoiding her mother’s gaze stared at the top of Rangi’s Peak. ‘You’d think Mr Questing had a sort of hold on us,’ she said, and then burst into one of her fits of nervous laughter.
‘Barbie darling,’ said her mother, on a note that contrived to suggest the menace of some frightful indelicacy, ‘I think we won’t talk about it any more.’
‘Uncle James hates him, anyway.’
‘Barbara!’
‘Lunch, Agnes,’ said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. ‘You’re late again.’
‘Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,’ said Mrs Claire.
III
Dr Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.
‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.’ But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.
‘Is the leg bad, Uncle James?’
‘It’s always bad. Steady now.’
‘Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?’
‘I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.
‘He never washes,’ Dr Ackrington shouted. ‘I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking a shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.’
‘Are you sure …?’
‘Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him …’
‘That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.’
Dr Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a red-headed edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them. She and her uncle stared at each other in silence for some seconds.
‘Oh,’ said Dr Ackrington at last. ‘And what did your mother say?’
Barbara pulled a clown’s grimace. ‘She reproved me,’ she said in sepulchral serio-comedy voice.
‘Well, don’t make faces at me,’ snapped her uncle.
A window in the Claires’ wing was thrown open, and between the curtains there appeared a vague pink face garnished with a faded moustache, and topped by a thatch of white hair.
‘Hullo, James,’ said the face crossly. ‘Lunch. What’s your mother doing, Ba? Where’s Simon?’
‘She’s coming, Daddy. We’re all coming. Simon!’ screamed Barbara.
Mrs Claire, enveloped in a dark red flannel dressing-gown, came panting up from the pools, and hurried into the house.
‘Aren’t we going to have any lunch?’ Colonel Claire asked bitterly.
‘Of course we are,’ said Barbara. ‘Why don’t you begin, Daddy, if you’re in such a hurry? Come on, Uncle James.’
As they went indoors, a young man came round the house and slouched in behind them. He was tall, big-boned and sandy-haired, with a jutting underlip.
‘Hullo, Sim,’ said Barbara. ‘Lunch.’
‘Righto.’
‘How’s the Morse code this morning?’
‘Going good,’ said Simon.
Dr Ackrington instantly turned on him. ‘Is there any creditable reason why you should not say “going well”?’ he demanded.
‘Huh!’ said Simon.
He trailed behind them into the dining-room and they took their places at a long table where Colonel Claire was already seated.
‘We won’t wait for your mother,’ said Colonel Claire, folding his hands over his abdomen. ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Huia!’
Huia came in wearing cap, crackling apron and stiff curls. She looked like a Polynesian goddess who had assumed, on a whim, some barbaric disguise.
‘Would you like cold ham, cold mutton, or grilled steak?’ she asked, and her voice was as cool and deep as her native forests. As an afterthought she handed Barbara a menu.
‘If I ask for steak,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘will it be cooked …’
‘You don’t want to eat raw steak, Uncle, do you?’ said Barbara.
‘Let me finish. If I order steak, will it be cooked or tanned? Will it resemble steak or biltong?’
‘Steak,’ said Huia, musically.
‘Is it cooked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. I shall have ham.’
‘What the devil are you driving at, James?’ asked Colonel Claire, irritably. ‘You talk in riddles. What do you want?’
‘I want grilled steak. If it is already cooked it will not be grilled steak. It will be boot leather. You can’t get a bit of grilled steak in the length and breadth of this country.’
Huia looked politely and inquiringly at Barbara.
‘Grill Dr Ackrington a fresh piece of steak, please, Huia.’
Dr Ackrington shook his finger at Huia. ‘Five minutes,’ he shouted. ‘Five minutes! A second longer and it’s uneatable. Mind that!’ Huia smiled. ‘And while she’s cooking it I have a letter to read to you,’ he added importantly.
Mrs Claire came in. She looked as if she had just returned from a round of charitable visits in an English village. The Claires ordered their lunches and Dr Ackrington took out the letter from Dr Forster.
‘This concerns all of you,’ he announced.
‘Where’s Smith?’ demanded Colonel Claire suddenly, opening his eyes very wide. His wife and children looked vaguely round the room. ‘Did anyone call him?’ asked Mrs Claire.
‘Don’t mind Smith, now,’ said Dr Ackrington. ‘He’s not here and he won’t be here. I passed him in Harpoon. He was turning in at a pub and by the look of him it was not the first by two or three. Don’t mind him. He’s better away.’
‘He got a cheque from home yesterday,’ said Simon, in his strong New Zealand dialect. ‘Boy, oh boy!’
‘Don’t speak like that, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Poor Mr Smith, it’s such a shame. He’s a dear fellow at bottom.’
‘Will you allow me to read this letter, or will you not?’
‘Do read it, dear. Is it from home?’
Dr Ackrington struck the table angrily with the flat of his hand. His sister leant back in her chair, Colonel Claire stared out through the windows, and Simon and Barbara, after the first two sentences, listened eagerly. When he had finished the letter, which he read in a rapid uninflected patter, Dr Ackrington dropped it on the table and looked about him with an air of complacency.
Barbara whistled. ‘I say,’ she said – ‘Geoffrey Gaunt! I say.’
‘And a servant. And a secretary. I don’t quite know what to say, James,’ Mrs Claire murmured. ‘I’m quite bewildered. I really don’t think …’
‘We can’t take on a chap like that,’ said Simon loudly.
‘And why not, pray?’ his uncle demanded.
‘He’ll be no good to us and we’d be no good to him. He’ll be used to posh hotels and slinging his weight about with a lot of English servants. What’d we do with a secretary and a manservant? What’s he do with them anyway?’ Simon went on with an extraordinary air of hostility. ‘Is he feeble-minded or what?’
‘Feeble-minded!’ cried Barbara. ‘He’s probably the greatest living actor.’
‘Well, he can have it for mine,’ said Simon.
‘For the love of heaven, Agnes, can’t you teach your son an intelligent form of speech?’
‘If the way I talk isn’t good enough for you, Uncle James …’
‘For pity’s sake let’s stick to the point,’ Barbara cried. ‘I’m for having Mr Gaunt and his staff, Sim’s against it, Mother’s hovering. You’re for it, Uncle, I suppose.’
‘I fondly imagined that three resident patients might be of some assistance to the exchequer. What does your father say?’ He turned to Colonel Claire. ‘What do you say, Edward?’
‘Eh?’ Colonel Claire opened his eyes and mouth and raised his eyebrows in a startled manner. ‘Is it about that paper you’ve got in your hand? I wasn’t listening. Read it again.’
‘Great God Almighty!’
‘Your steak,’ said Huia, and placed before Dr Ackrington a strip of ghastly pale and bloated meat from which blood coursed freely over the plate.
During the lively scene which followed, Barbara hooted with frightened laughter, Mrs Claire murmured conciliatory phrases, Simon shuffled his feet, and Huia in turn shook her head angrily, giggled, and uttered soft apologies. Finally she burst into tears and ran back with the steak to the kitchen, where a crash of breaking crockery suggested that she had hurled the dish to the floor. Colonel Claire, after staring in surprise at his brother-in-law for a few seconds, quietly took up Dr Forster’s letter and began to read it. This he continued to do until Dr Ackrington had been mollified with a helping of cold meat.
‘Who is this Geoffrey Gaunt?’ asked Colonel Claire after a long silence.
‘Daddy! You must know. You saw him in Jane Eyre last time we went to the pictures in Harpoon. He’s wildly famous.’ Barbara paused with her left cheek bulging. ‘He was exactly my idea of Mr Rochester,’ she said ardently.
‘Theatrical!’ said her father distastefully. ‘We don’t want that sort.’
‘Just what I say,’ Simon agreed.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that Mr Gaunt would find us very humdrum sort of folk. Don’t you think we’d better just keep to our own quiet ways, dear?’
‘Mummy, you are …’ Barbara began. Her uncle, speaking with a calm that was really terrifying, interrupted her.
‘I haven’t the smallest doubt, my dear Agnes,’ he said, ‘that Gaunt, who is possibly a man of some enterprise and intelligence, would find your quiet ways more than humdrum, as you complacently choose to describe them. I ventured to suggest in my reply to Forster that Gaunt would find few of the amenities and a good deal of comparative discomfort at Wai-ata-tapu. I added something to the effect that I hoped lack of luxury would be compensated for by kindness and by consideration for a man who is unwell. Apparently, I was mistaken. I also fancied that, having gone to considerable expense in building a Spa, your object was to acquire a clientele. Again, I was mistaken. You prefer to rest on your laurels with an alcoholic who doesn’t pay his way, and a bounder whom I, for one, regard as a person better suited to confinement in an internment camp.’
Colonel Claire said: ‘Are you talking about Questing, James?’
‘I am.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘May I ask why?’
Colonel Claire laid his knife and fork together, turned scarlet in the face and looked fixedly at the opposite wall.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I am under an obligation to him.’
There was a long silence.
‘I see,’ said Dr Ackrington at last.
‘I haven’t said anything about it to Agnes and the children. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. In my view a man doesn’t speak of such matters to his family. But you, James, and you two children have shown so pointedly your dislike of Mr Questing that I’m forced to tell you that I – I cannot afford – I must ask you for my sake to show him more consideration.’
‘You can’t afford …?’ Dr Ackrington repeated. ‘Good God, my dear fellow, what have you been up to?’
‘Please, James, I hope I need say no more.’
With an air of martyrdom Colonel Claire rose and moved over to the windows. Mrs Claire made a movement to follow him, but he said, ‘No, Agnes,’ and she stopped at once. ‘On second thoughts,’ added Colonel Claire, ‘I believe we should reconsider our decision about taking these people as guests. I – I’ll speak to Questing about it. Please let the subject drop for the moment.’ He walked out on to the verandah and past the windows, holding himself very straight, and, still extremely red in the face, disappeared.
‘Of all the damned astounding how-d’ye-do’s …’ Dr Ackrington began.
‘Oh, James, don’t,’ cried Mrs Claire, and burst into tears.
IV
Huia slapped the last plate in the rack, swilled out the sink and turned her back on a moderately tidy kitchen. She lived with her family at a native settlement on the other side of the hill and, as it was her afternoon off, proposed to return there in order to change into her best dress. She walked round the house, crossed the pumice sweep, and set off along a path that skirted the warm lake, rounded the foot of Wai-ata-tapu Hill, and crossed a native thermal reserve that lay in the far side. The sky was overcast and the air oppressively warm and still. Huia moved with a leisurely stride. She seemed to be a part of the landscape, compounded of the same dark medium, quiescent as the earth under the dominion of the sky. White men move across the surface of New Zealand, but the Maori people are of its essence, tranquil or disturbed as the trees and lakes must be, and as much a member of the earth as they.
Huia’s path took her through a patch of tall manuka scrub and here she came upon a young man, Eru Saul, a half-caste. He stepped out of the bushes and waited for her, the stump of a cigarette hanging from his lips.
‘Hu!’ said Huia. ‘You. What you want?’
‘It’s your day off, isn’t it? Come for a walk.’
‘Too busy,’ said Huia briefly. She moved forward. He checked her, holding her by the arms.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Shut up.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What about? Same old thing all the time. Talk, talk, talk. You make me tired.’
‘You know what. Give us a kiss.’
Huia laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘You’re mad. Behave yourself. Mrs Claire will go crook if you hang about. I’m going home.’
‘Come on,’ he muttered, and flung his arms about her. She fought him off, laughing angrily, and he began to upbraid her. ‘I’m not posh enough. Going with a pakeha now, aren’t you? That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t you talk to me like that. You’re no good. You’re a no-good boy.’
‘I haven’t got a car and I’m not a thief. Questing’s a ruddy thief.’
‘That’s a big lie,’ said Huia blandly. ‘He’s all right.’
‘What’s he doing at night on the Peak? He’s got no business on the Peak.’
‘Talk, talk, talk. All the time.’
‘You tell him if he doesn’t look out he’ll be in for it. How’ll you like it if he gets packed up?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Don’t you? Don’t you?’
‘Oh, you are silly,’ cried Huia, stamping her foot. ‘Silly fool! Now get out of my way and let me go home. I’ll tell my great-grandfather about you and he’ll makutu you.’
‘Kid-stakes! Nobody’s going to put a jinx on me.’
‘My great-grandfather can do it,’ said Huia and her eyes flashed.
‘Listen, Huia,’ said Eru. ‘You think you can get away with dynamite. OK. But don’t come at it with me. And another thing. Next time this joker Questing wants to have you on to go driving, you can tell him from me to lay off. See? Tell him from me, no kidding, that if he tries any more funny stuff, it’ll be the stone end of his trips up the Peak.’
‘Tell him yourself,’ said Huia. She added, in dog Maori, an extremely pointed insult, and taking him off his guard slipped past him and ran round the hill.
Eru stood looking at the ground. His cigarette burnt his lip and he spat it out. After a moment he turned and slowly followed her.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_82021b6d-3850-54e5-b975-23f7f82d26c2)
Mr Questing Goes Down for the First Time (#ulink_82021b6d-3850-54e5-b975-23f7f82d26c2)
‘We’ve heard from Dr Forster, sir,’ said Dikon Bell. He glanced anxiously at his employer. When Gaunt stood with his hands rammed down in the pockets of his dressing-gown and his shoulders hunched to his ears one watched one’s step. Gaunt turned away from the window, and Dikon noticed apprehensively that his leg was very stiff this morning.
‘Ha!’ said Gaunt.
‘He makes a suggestion.’
‘I won’t go to that sulphurous resort.’
‘Rotorua, sir?’
‘Is that what it’s called?’
‘He realises you want somewhere quiet, sir. He’s made inquiries about another place. It’s in the Northland. On the west coast. Subtropical climate.’
‘Sulphurous pneumonia?’
‘Well, sir, we do want to clear up that leg, don’t we?’
‘We do.’ With one of those swift changes of demeanour by which he so easily commanded devotion, Gaunt turned to his secretary and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I think you’re as homesick as I am, Dikon. Isn’t that true? You’re a New Zealander, of course, but wouldn’t you ten thousand times rather be there? In London? Isn’t it exactly as if someone you loved was ill and you couldn’t get to them?’
‘A little like that, certainly,’ said Dikon drily.
‘I shouldn’t keep you here. Go back, my dear chap. I’ll find somebody in New Zealand,’ said Gaunt with a certain melancholy relish.
‘Are you giving me the sack, sir?’
‘If only they can patch me up …’
‘But they will, sir. Dr Forster said the leg ought to respond very quickly to hydrotherapy,’ said Dikon with a prime imitation of the doctor’s manner. ‘They simply hated the sight of me in the Australian recruiting offices. And I fancy I should have little more than refuse value at home. I’m as blind as a bat, you know. Of course, there’s office work.’
‘You must do what you think best,’ said Gaunt gloomily. ‘Leave me to stagnate. I’m no good to my country. Ha!’
‘If you can call raising twelve thousand for colonial patriotic funds no good …’
‘I’m a useless hulk,’ said Gaunt, and even Dikon was reminded of the penultimate scene in Jane Eyre.
‘What are you grinning at, blast you?’ Gaunt demanded.
‘You don’t look precisely like a useless hulk. I’ll stay a little longer if you’ll have me.’
‘Well, let’s hear about this new place. You’re looking wonderfully self-conscious. What hideous surprise have you got up your sleeve?’
Dikon put his attaché case on the writing-table and opened it.
‘There’s a princely fan mail today,’ he said, and laid a stack of typed sheets and photographs on one side.
‘Good! I adore being adored. How many have written a little something themselves and wonder if I can advise them how to have their plays produced?’
‘Four. One lady has sent a copy of her piece. She has dedicated it to you. It’s a fantasy.’
‘God!’
‘Here is Dr Forster’s letter, and one enclosed from a Dr James Ackrington who appears to be a celebrity from Harley Street. Perhaps you’d like to read them.’
‘I should hate to read them.’
‘I think you’d better, sir.’
Gaunt grimaced, took the letters and lowered himself into a chair by the writing-desk. Dikon watched him rather nervously.
Geoffrey Gaunt had spent twenty-seven of his forty-five years on the stage, and the last sixteen had seen him firmly established in the first rank. He was what used to be called a romantic actor, but he was also an intelligent one. His greatest distinction lay in his genius for making an audience hear the sense as well as the music of Shakespearean verse. So accurate and clear was his tracing out of the speeches’ content that his art had about it something of mathematical precision and was saved from coldness only by the apparent profundity of his emotional understanding. How far this understanding was instinctive and how far intellectual, not even his secretary, who had been with him for six years, could decide. He was middle-sized, dark, and not particularly striking, but as an actor he possessed the two great assets: his skull was well-shaped, and his hands were beautiful. As for his disposition, Dikon Bell, writing six years before from London to a friend in New Zealand, had said, after a week in Gaunt’s employment: ‘He’s tricky, affected, clever as a bagful of monkeys, a bit of a bounder with the temper of a fury, and no end of an egotist, but I think I’m going to like him.’ He had never found reason to revise this first impression.
Gaunt read Dr Forster’s note and then Dr Ackrington’s letter. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he cried, ‘what sort of an antic is this old person? Have you noted the acid treatment of his relations? Does he call this letter a recommendation? Discomfort leavened with inefficient kindness is the bait he offers. Moreover, there’s a dirty little knock at me in the last paragraph. If Forster wants me to endure the place, one would have thought his policy would have been to suppress the letter. He’s a poor psychologist.’
‘The psychology,’ said Dikon modestly, ‘is mine. Forster wanted to suppress the letter. I took it upon myself to show it to you. I thought that if you jibbed at the Claires, sir, you wouldn’t be able to resist Dr Ackrington.’
Gaunt shot a suspicious glance at his secretary. ‘You’re too clever by half, my friend,’ he said.
‘And he does say,’ Dikon added persuasively, ‘he does say “the mud may be miraculous”.’
Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.
‘Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your legs right, sir? And at least we could get on with the book.’
‘Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,’ cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, ‘shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry V in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. “And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …” God, I think I must play Henry in New York.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?’
‘Of course I would, damn you.’
‘Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em … London.’
‘You talk like a nanny in her dotage,’ said Gaunt fretfully. ‘I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?’
‘Ironing your trousers, sir.’
‘Tell him to come here.’
Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitudes towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
‘You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?’ said Gaunt.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Colly. ‘Going to run mudlarks, aren’t we?’
‘I haven’t said so.’
‘It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?’
‘Oh, you go to hell,’ said Gaunt.
‘There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he said that’s all right and give in his card. They say it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch and soda, reading the paper and watching the door.’
‘That won’t do him much good,’ said Dikon. ‘Mr Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?’
‘Noüe!’ said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. ‘More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr Bell.’
‘Why?’
‘I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.’
Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.
‘Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,’ he said. ‘Did they give you his card?’
Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. ‘Persistent sort of bloke, sir,’ he said, and fished out a card.
‘Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,’ said Gaunt. ‘You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.’
Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card:
MR MAURICE QUESTING
Wai-ata-tapu Thermal Springs.
Scribbled across the bottom he read: ‘May I have five minutes? Matter of interest to yourself. MQ.’
II
Mr Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.
When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lobby, Mr Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.
‘Pardon me if I speak in error,’ he said, ‘but is this Mr Bell?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Dikon, who still held the card in his fingers.
‘Mr Gaunt’s private secretary?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s great,’ said Mr Questing, shaking hands ruthlessly, and breaking into laughter. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Bell. I know you’re a busy man, but I’d be very very happy if you could spare me five minutes.’
‘Well, I …’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing, jamming a flat pale thumb against a bell-push. ‘Great work! Sit down.’
Dikon sat sedately on a small chair, crossed his legs, joined his hands, and looked attentively over his glasses at Mr Questing.
‘How’s the Big Man?’ Mr Questing asked.
‘Mr Gaunt? Not very well, I’m afraid.’
‘So I understand. So I understand. Well, now, Mr Bell, I had hoped for a word with him, but I’ve got an idea that a little chat with you will be very very satisfactory. What’ll you have?’
Dikon refused a drink. Mr Questing ordered whisky and soda. ‘Yes,’ said Mr Questing with a heartiness that suggested a complete understanding between them. ‘Yes. That’s fine. Well now, Mr Bell, I’m going to tell you, flat out, that I think I’m in a position to help you. Now!’
‘I see,’ said Dikon, ‘that you come from Wai-ata-tapu Springs.’
‘That is the case. Yes. Yes, I’m going to be quite frank with you, Mr Bell. I’m going to tell you that not only do I come from the Springs, but I’ve got a very considerable interest in the Springs.’
‘Do you mean that you own the place? I thought a Colonel and Mrs Claire …’
‘Well, now, Mr Bell, shall we just take things as they come? I’m going to bring you right into my confidence about the Springs. The Springs mean a lot to me.’
‘Financially?’ asked Dikon mildly. ‘Therapeutically? Or sentimentally?’
Mr Questing, who had looked restlessly at Dikon’s tie, shoes and hands, now took a furtive glance at his face.
‘Don’t make it too hot,’ he said merrily.
With a rapid movement suggestive of sleight-of-hand he produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of pamphlets which he laid before Dikon. ‘Read these at your leisure. May I suggest that you bring them to Mr Gaunt’s notice?’
‘Look here, Mr Questing,’ said Dikon briskly, ‘would you mind, awfully, if we came to the point? You’ve evidently discovered that we’ve heard about this place. You’ve come to recommend it. That’s very kind of you, but I gather your motive isn’t purely altruistic. You’ve spoken of frankness so perhaps you won’t object to my asking again if you’ve a financial interest in Wai-ata-tapu.’
Mr Questing laughed uproariously and said that he saw they understood each other. His conversation became thick with hints and evasions. After a minute or two Dikon saw that he himself was being offered some sort of inducement. Mr Questing told him repeatedly that he would be looked after, that he would have every cause for personal gratification if Geoffrey Gaunt decided to take the cure. It was not by any means the first scene of its kind. Dikon was mildly entertained, and, while he listened to Mr Questing, turned over the pamphlets. The medical recommendations seemed very good. A set of rooms – Mr Questing called it a suite – would be theirs. Mr Questing would see to it that the rooms were refurnished. Dikon’s eyebrows went up, and Mr Questing, becoming very confidential, said that he believed in doing things in a big way. He was not, he said, going to pretend that he didn’t recognise the value of such a guest to the Springs. Dikon distrusted him more with every phrase he uttered, but he began to think that if such enormous efforts were to be made, Gaunt should be tolerably comfortable at Wai-ata-tapu. He put out a feeler.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that there is a resident doctor.’
He was surprised to see Mr Questing change colour. ‘Dr Tonks,’ Questing said, ‘doesn’t actually reside at the Springs, Mr Bell. He’s at Harpoon. Only a few minutes by road. A very, very fine doctor.’
‘I meant Dr James Ackrington.’
Mr Questing did not answer immediately. He offered Dikon a cigarette, lit one himself and rang the bell again.
‘Dr Ackrington,’ Dikon repeated.
‘Oh, yes. Ye-es. The old doctor. Quite a character.’
‘Doesn’t he live at the hostel?’
‘That is correct. Yes. That is the case. The old doctor’s retired now, I understand.’
‘He’s something of an authority on muscular and nervous complaints, isn’t he?’
‘Is that so?’ said Mr Questing. ‘Well, well, well. The old doctor, eh? Quite a character. Well, now, Mr Bell, I’ve a little suggestion to make. I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in a wee trip to the Springs. I’m driving back there tomorrow. It’s a six hours’ run and I’d be very very delighted to take you with me. Of course the suite won’t be poshed up by then. You’ll see us in the raw, sir, but any suggestions you cared to make …’
‘Do you live there, Mr Questing?’
‘You can’t keep me away from the Springs for long,’ cried Mr Questing evasively. ‘Now about this suggestion of mine …’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘I’ll tell Mr Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.’
Mr Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.
‘Goodbye,’ said Dikon politely.
‘I’m staying here tonight, Mr Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if …’
‘Oh, yes. Perfectly splendid. Goodbye.’
He returned to his employer.
III
Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.
He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilisation. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.
‘My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,’ bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. ‘He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!’
Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.
Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent an hour before sunset. Sometimes one of his grandchildren, or an old crony of his own clan, would go up with him, but more often he sat there alone, lost, as it seemed, in a long perspective of recollections. The Claires, down at the Springs, would glance up and see him appearing larger than human against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-great-grandchildren.
This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hilltop, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hilltop.
‘Good evening, Mr Smith,’ said old Rua without turning his head.
‘G’day, Rua.’
The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.
‘Great doings down at the Springs,’ he said.
‘They seem to be busy,’ said Rua tranquilly.
‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.’
‘A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.’
‘He’s only an actor.’
‘Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.’
‘Then you know all about it, do you?’
‘I think so,’ said old Rua.
Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.
‘Questing’s at the back of it,’ he said. Rua stirred slightly. ‘He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!’ added Smith viciously. ‘By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.’
Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.
‘Look!’ Smith said. ‘He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.’
He lit the cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. ‘You don’t say much,’ he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. ‘Like a spot?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.’
‘Look, Rua,’ said Smith energetically. ‘I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?’
‘You are intimate with some of my people.’
‘Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.’ Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hilltop with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.
‘Questing’s got a great little game on,’ said Smith. ‘He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.’
Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.
‘My people are well contented,’ he said. ‘We are not Arawas. We go our own way.’
‘And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.’ Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key. He went on with an air of nervousness. ‘Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,’ he said.
Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.
‘That’s not so good, is it?’ said Smith.
‘My grandfather Rewi,’ Rua said, ‘was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.’
‘Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.’
‘The Peak is a native reserve.’
‘He reckons he could square that up all right.’
‘I am an old man,’ said Rua affably, ‘but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.’
‘Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.’
‘Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad pakeha Maori.’
‘Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.’
‘He will not find guides,’ Rua repeated.
‘Money talks, you know.’
‘So will the tapu of my grandfather’s toki-poutangata.’
Smith looked curiously at the old man. ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I am a rangitira. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr Smith,’ said Rua with a chuckle. ‘I know.’
‘You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much …’
Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. ‘Our people,’ Rua said, ‘stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth; your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their pakeha friends.’ Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. ‘There are pakeha laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky and too much beer,’ said Rua tranquilly, ‘but there are also pakehas who help them to break these laws. The pakehas teach our young maidens that they should be quiet girls and not have babies before they are married, but in my own hapu there is a small boy whom we call Hoani Smith, though in law he has no right to that name.’
‘Hell, Rua, that’s an old story,’ Smith muttered.
‘Let me tell you another old story. Many years ago, when I was a youth, a maiden of our hapu lost her way in the mists on Rangi’s Peak. In ignorance, intending no sacrilege, she came upon the place where my grandfather rests with his weapons, and, being hungry, ate a small piece of cooked food that she carried with her. In that place it was an act of horrible sacrilege. When the mists cleared, she discovered her crime and returned in terror to her people. She told her story, and was sent out to this hill while her case was discussed. At night she thought she would creep back, but she missed her way. She fell into Taupo-tapu, the boiling mud pool. Everybody in the village heard her scream. Next morning her dress was thrown up, rejected by the spirit of the pool. When your friend Mr Questing speaks of my grandfather’s toki, relate this story to him. Tell him the girl’s scream can still be heard sometimes at night. I am going home now,’ Rua added, and drew his blanket about him with precisely the same gesture that his grandfather had used to adjust his feather cloak. ‘Is it true, Mr Smith, that Mr Questing has said a great many times that when he takes over the Springs, you will lose your job?’
‘He can have it for mine,’ said Smith angrily. ‘That’ll do me all right. He doesn’t have to talk about the sack. When Questing’s the boss down there, I’m turning the job up.’ He dragged the whisky bottle from his pocket and fumbled with the cork.
‘And yet,’ Rua said, ‘it’s a very soft job. You are going to drink? I shall go home. Good evening.’
IV
Dikon Bell, marooned in the Claires’ private sitting-room, stared at faded photographs of regimental Anglo-Indians, at the backs of blameless novels, and at a framed poster of the Cotswolds in the spring. The poster was the work of a celebrated painter, and was at once gay, ordered, and delicate – a touching sequence of greens and blues. It made Dikon, the New Zealander, ache for England. By shifting his gaze slightly, he saw, framed in the sitting-room window, a landscape aloof from man. Its beauty was perfectly articulate yet utterly remote. Against his will he was moved by it as an unmusical listener may be profoundly disturbed by sound forms that he is unable to comprehend. He had travelled a great deal in his eight years’ absence from New Zealand and had seen places famous for their antiquities, but it seemed to him that the landscape he now watched through the Claires’ window was of an early age far more remote than any of these. It did not carry the scars of lost civilisation. Rather, it seemed to make nothing of time, for it was still primeval and its only stigmata were those of neolithic age. Dikon, who longed to be in London, recognised in himself an affinity with this indifferent and profound country, and resented its attraction.
He wondered what Gaunt would say to it. He was to return to his employer next day by bus and train, a long and fatiguing business. Gaunt had brought a car, and on the following day he, Dikon and Colly would set out for Wai-ata-tapu. They had made many such journeys in many countries. Always at the end there had been expensive hotels or flats and lavish attention – amenities that Gaunt accepted as necessities of existence. Dikon was gripped by a sensation of panic. He had been mad to urge this place with its air of amateurish incompetence, its appalling Mr Questing, its incredible Claires, whose air of breeding would seem merely to underline their complacency. A bush pub might have amused Gaunt; the Springs would bore him to exasperation.
A figure passed the window and stood in the doorway. It was Miss Claire. Dikon, whose job obliged him to observe such things, noticed that her cotton dress had been most misguidedly garnished with a neck bow of shiny ribbon, that her hair was precisely the wrong length, and that she used no make-up.
‘Mr Bell,’ said Barbara, ‘we were wondering if you’d advise us about Mr Gaunt’s rooms. Where to put things. I’m afraid you’ll find us very primitive.’ She laid tremendous stress on odd syllables and words, and as she did so turned up her eyes in a deprecating manner and pulled down the corners of her mouth like a lugubrious clown.
‘Comedy stuff,’ thought Dikon. ‘Alas, alas, she means to be funny.’ He said that he would be delighted to see the rooms, and, nervously fingering his tie, followed her along the verandah.
The wing at the east end of the house, corresponding with the Claires’ private rooms at the west end, had been turned into a sort of flat for Gaunt, Dikon and Colly. It consisted of four rooms: two small bedrooms, one tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger bedroom which had been converted into Mr Questing’s idea of a celebrity study. In this apartment were assembled two chromium-steel chairs, one large armchair, and a streamlined desk, all of rather bad design, and with the dealer’s tabs still attached to them. The floor was newly carpeted, and the windows in process of being freshly curtained by Mrs Claire. Mr Questing, wearing a cigar as if it were a sort of badge of office, lolled carelessly in the armchair. On Dikon’s entrance he sprang to his feet.
‘Well, well, well,’ cried Mr Questing gaily, ‘how’s the young gentleman?’
‘Quite well, thank you,’ said Dikon, who had spent the greater part of the day motoring with Mr Questing, and had become reconciled to these constant inquiries.
‘Is this service,’ Mr Questing went on, waving his cigar at the room, ‘or is it? Forty-eight hours ago I hadn’t the pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr Bell. After our little chat yesterday, I felt so optimistic I just had to get out and get going. I went to the finest furnishing firm in Auckland, and I told the manager, I told him: “Look,” I told him. “I’ll take this stuff, if you can get it to Wai-ata-tapu, Harpoon, by tomorrow afternoon. And if not, not.” That’s the way I like to do things, Mr Bell.’
‘I hope you have explained that even now Gaunt may not decide to come,’ said Dikon. ‘You have all taken a great deal of trouble, Mrs Claire.’
Mrs Claire looked doubtfully from Questing to Dikon. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said plaintively, ‘that I don’t really quite appreciate very up-to-date furniture. I always think a home-like atmosphere, no matter how shabby … However.’
Questing cut in, and Dikon only half listened to another dissertation on the necessity of moving with the times. He was jerked into full awareness when Questing, with an air of familiarity, addressed himself to Barbara. ‘And what’s Babs got to say about it?’ he asked, lowering his voice to a rich and offensive purr. Dikon saw her step backwards. It was an instinctive movement, he thought, uncontrollable as a reflex jerk, but less ungainly than her usual habit. Its effect on Dikon was as simple and as automatic as itself; he felt a stab of sympathy and a protective impulse. She was no longer regrettable; she was, for a moment, rather touching. Surprised, and a little disturbed, he looked away from Barbara to Mrs Claire, and saw that her plump hands were clenched among sharp folds of the shining chintz. He felt that a little scene of climax had been enacted. It was disturbed by the appearance of another figure. Limping steps sounded on the verandah, and the doorway was darkened. A stocky man, elderly but still red-headed and extremely handsome in an angry sort of way, stood glaring at Questing.
‘Oh, James,’ Mrs Claire murmured, ‘there you are, old man. You haven’t met Mr Bell. My brother, Dr Ackrington.’
As they shook hands, Dikon saw that Barbara had moved close to her uncle.
‘Have a good run up?’ asked Dr Ackrington, throwing a needle-sharp glance at Dikon. ‘Ever see anything more disgraceful than the roads? I’ve been fishing.’
Startled by this non sequitur, Dikon murmured politely: ‘Indeed?’
‘If you can call it fishing. Hope you and Gaunt aren’t counting on catching any trout. What with native reserves and the damned infamous behaviour of white poaching cads, there’s not a fish to be had in twenty miles.’
‘Now, now, now, Doctor,’ said Questing in a great hurry. ‘We can’t let you get away with that. Why, the greatest little trout streams in New Zealand …’
‘D’you enjoy being called “Mister”?’ Dr Ackrington demanded, so loudly that Dikon gave a nervous jump. Questing said uneasily: ‘Not much.’
‘Then don’t call me “Doctor”,’ commanded Dr Ackrington. Questing laughed uproariously. ‘That’s just too bad,’ he said.
Dr Ackrington looked round the room. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘what are you doing with the place?’
‘Mr Questing,’ began Mrs Claire, ‘has very kindly …’
‘I might have recognised the authentic touch,’ said her brother, turning his back on the room. ‘Staying here tonight are you, Bell? I’d like a word with you. Come along to my room when you’ve a moment.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon.
Dr Ackrington looked through the doorway. ‘The star boarder,’ he said, ‘is returning in his usual condition. Mr Bell is to be treated to a comprehensive view of our amenities.’
They all looked through the doorway. Dikon saw a shambling figure cross the pumice sweep and approach the verandah.
‘Oh dear!’ said Mrs Claire. ‘I’m afraid … James, dear, could you …? ’
Dr Ackrington limped out to the verandah. The newcomer saw, stumbled to a halt, and dragged a bottle from the pocket of his raincoat.
To Dikon, watching through the window, the intrusion of a drunken white figure into the native landscape was at once preposterous and rather pathetic. A clear light, reflected from the pumice track, rimmed the folds of his shabby garments. He stood there, drooping and lonely, and turned the whisky bottle in his hand, staring at it as if it were the focal point for some fuddled meditation. Presently he raised his head and looked at Dr Ackrington.
‘Well, Smith,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘You’re a sport, Doc,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a couple of snifters left. Come on and have one.’
‘You’ll do better to keep it,’ said Dr Ackrington quite mildly.
Smith peered beyond him into the room. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward to the verandah. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ said Questing importantly, and strode out to meet him. They confronted each other. Questing, planted squarely on the verandah edge, made much of his cigar; Smith clung to the post and stared up at him.
‘You clear out of this, Smith,’ said Questing.
‘You get to hell yourself,’ said Smith distinctly. He looked past Questing to the group in the doorway, and very solemnly took off his hat. ‘Present company excepted,’ he added.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Is that the visitor?’ Smith asked loudly, and pointed at Dikon. ‘Is that the reason why we’re all sweating our guts up? That? Let’s have a better look at it. Gawd, what a sissy.’
Dikon wondered confusedly which of the party felt most embarrassed. Dr Ackrington made a loud barking noise, Barbara broke into agonised laughter, Mrs Claire rushed into a spate of apologies, Dikon himself attempted to suggest by gay inquiring glances that he had not understood the tenor of Smith’s remarks. He might have spared himself the trouble. Smith made a plunge at the verandah step shouting: ‘Look at the little bastard.’ Questing attempted to stop him, and the scene mounted in a rapid crescendo. Dikon, Mrs Claire and Barbara remained in the room, Dr Ackrington on the verandah appeared to hold a watching brief, while Questing and Smith yelled industriously in each other’s faces. The climax came when Questing again attempted to shove Smith away from the verandah. Smith drove his fist in Questing’s face and lost his balance. They fell simultaneously.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An inexplicable and ridiculous affair changed abruptly into a piece of convincing melodrama. Dikon had seen many such a set-up at the cinema studios. Smith, shaky and bloated, crouched where he had fallen and mouthed at Questing. Questing got to his feet and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief. His cigar lay smoking on the ground between them. It was a shot in Technicolor, for Rangi’s Peak was now tinctured with such a violence of purple as is seldom seen outside the theatre, and in the middle distance rose the steam of the hot pools.
Dikon waited for a bit of rough dialogue to develop and was not disappointed.
‘By God,’ Questing said, exploring his jaw, ‘you’ll get yours for this. You’re sacked.’
‘You’re not my bloody boss.’
‘I’ll bloody well get you the sack, don’t you worry. When I’m in charge here …’
‘That will do,’ said Dr Ackrington crisply.
‘What is all this?’ a peevish voice demanded. Colonel Claire, followed by Simon, appeared round the wing of the house. Smith got to his feet.
‘You’ll have to get rid of this man, Colonel,’ said Questing.
‘What’s he done?’ Simon demanded.
‘I socked him.’ Smith took Simon by the lapels of his coat. ‘You look out for yourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s not only me he’s after. Your dad won’t sack me, will he, Sim?’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Questing said.
‘But why …’ Colonel Claire began, and was cut short by his brother-in-law.
‘If I may interrupt for a moment,’ said Dr Ackrington acidly, ‘I suggest that I take Mr Bell to my room. Unless, of course, he prefers a ring-side seat. Will you come and have a drink, Bell?’
Dikon thankfully accepted, leaving the room in a gale of apologies from Mrs Claire and Barbara. Questing, who seemed to have recovered his temper, followed them up with a speech in which anxiety, propitiation and a kind of fawning urgency were most disagreeably mingled. He was cut short by Dr Ackrington.
‘Possibly,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘Mr Bell may prefer to form his own opinion of this episode. No doubt he has seen a chronic alcoholic before now, and will not attach much significance to anything this particular specimen may choose to say.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course,’ Dikon murmured unhappily.
‘As for the behaviour of Other Persons,’ Dr Ackrington continued, ‘there again, he may, as I do, form his own opinion. Come along, Bell.’
Dikon followed him along the verandah to his own room, a grimly neat apartment with a hideous desk.
‘Sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington. He wrenched open the door of a home-made cupboard, and took out a bottle and two tumblers. ‘I can only offer you whisky,’ he said. ‘With Smith’s horrible example before you, you may not like the idea. Afraid I don’t go in for modern rot-gut.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dikon, ‘I should like whisky. May I ask who he is?’
‘Smith? He’s a misfit, a hopeless fellow. No good in him at all. Drifted out here as a boy. Agnes, my sister, who is something of a snob, talks loosely about him being a public-school man. Her geese are invariably swans, but I suppose this suggestion is within the bounds of possibility. Smith may have originated in some ill-conducted establishment of dubious gentility. Sometimes their early habits of speech go down the wind with their self-respect. Sometimes they keep it up even in the gutter. They used to be called remittance men, and in this extraordinary country received a good deal of entirely misguided sympathy from native-born fools. That suit you?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon, taking his drink.
‘My sister chooses to regard him as a sort of invalid. Some instinct must have led him ten years ago to the Spring. It has proved to be an ideal battening ground. They give him his keep and a wage, in exchange for idling about the place with an axe in his hand and a bottle in his pocket. When his cheque comes from home he drinks himself silly, and my sister Agnes gives him beef tea and prays for him. He’s a complete waster but he won’t trouble you, I fancy. I confess that this evening I was almost in sympathy with him. He did what I have longed to do for the past three months.’ Dikon glanced up quickly. ‘He drove his fist into Questing’s face,’ Dr Ackrington explained. ‘Here’s luck to you,’ he added. They drank to each other.
‘Well,’ said Dr Ackrington after a pause, ‘you will doubtless lose no time in returning to Auckland and telling your principal to avoid this place like the devil.’
As this pretty well described Dikon’s intention he could think of nothing to say, and made a polite murmuring.
‘If it is of any interest, you may as well know you have seen it at its worst. Smith is not always drunk and Questing is not always with us.’
‘Not? But I thought …’
‘He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However.’
Dr Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.
‘Since we have mentioned him,’ Dikon began nervously, ‘I confess I’m in a state of some confusion about Mr Questing. May I ask if he is actually the – if Wai-ata-tapu Springs is his property?’
‘No,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘I only ask,’ Dikon continued in a hurry, ‘because you see I was approached in the first instance by Mr Questing. Although I’ve warned him that Gaunt may decide against the Springs, he has been at extraordinary pains and really very considerable expense to – to alter existing arrangements and so on. And I mean – well, Dr Forster’s note suggested that it was to Colonel and Mrs Claire that we should apply.’
‘So it is.’
‘I see. But – Questing?’
‘If you decide against the Springs,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘you should convey your decision to my sister.’
‘But,’ Dikon repeated obstinately, ‘Questing?’
‘Ignore him.’
‘Oh.’
Steps sounded outside the window, and voices: Smith’s voice slurred but vicious; Colonel Claire’s high-pitched, perhaps a little hysterical; and Questing’s the voice of a bully. As they came nearer, odd sentences separated out from the general rumpus.
‘… if the Colonel’s satisfied – it’s not a fair pop.’
‘… never mind that. You’ve been asking for it and you’ll get it.’
‘… sack me and see what you get, you –’
‘… most disgraceful scene – force my hand …’
‘… kick you out tomorrow.’
‘This is too much,’ Colonel Claire cried out. ‘I’ve stood a great deal, Questing, but I must remind you that I still have some authority here.’
‘Is that so? Where do you get it from? You’d better watch your step, Claire.’
‘By God,’ Smith roared out suddenly, ‘you’d better watch yours.’
Dr Ackrington opened the door and stood on the threshold. Complete silence followed this move. Through the open door came a particularly strong wave of sulphurous air.
‘I suggest, Edward,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘that you continue your conversation in the laundry. Mr Bell has no doubt formed the opinion that we do not possess one.’
He shut the door. ‘Let me give you another drink,’ he said courteously.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_dc6e95fc-7dac-59a0-b10f-049667302b3e)
Gaunt at the Springs (#ulink_dc6e95fc-7dac-59a0-b10f-049667302b3e)
‘Five days ago,’ said Gaunt, ‘you dangled this place before me like some atrocious bait. Now you do nothing but bemoan its miseries. You are strangely inconsistent.’
‘In the interval,’ said Dikon, wrenching the car out of a pot hole, and changing down, ‘I have seen the place. I implore you to remember, sir, that you have been warned.’
‘You overdid it. You painted it in macabre colours. My curiosity was stimulated. For pity’s sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat track possibly be the main road?’
‘It’s the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know, and these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South.’
‘I’m afraid you’re a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand. There’s a most unpleasant smell about this place.’
‘It’s the thermal smell. People are said to get to like it.’
‘Nonsense. How are you travelling, Colly?’
Fenced in by luggage in the back seat, Colly replied that he kept his eyes closed at the curves. ‘I didn’t seem to notice it so much this morning in them forests,’ he added. ‘It’s dynamite in the open.’
The road corkscrewed its way in and out of a gully and along a barren stretch of downland. On its left the coast ran freely northwards in a chain of scrolls, last interruptions in its firm line before it tightened into the Ninety Mile Beach. The thunder of the Tasman Sea hung like a vast rumour on the freshening air, and above the margin of the downs Rangi’s Peak was slowly erected.
‘That’s an ominous-looking affair,’ said Gaunt. ‘What is it about these hills that gives them an air of the fabulous? They are not so very odd in shape, not incredible like the Dolomites or imposing like the Rockies – not, as you point out in your superior way, Dikon, really mountains at all. Yet they seem to be pregnant with some tiresome secret. What is it?’
‘Perhaps it’s something to do with the volcanic silhouette. If there’s a secret the answer’s in the Maori language. I’m afraid you’ll get very tired of that cone, sir. It looks over the hills round the Springs.’ Dikon waited for a moment. Gaunt had a trick of showing a fugitive interest in places, of asking for expositions, and of growing restless when they were given to him.
‘Why is the answer in Maori?’ he said.
‘It was a native burial ground in the old days. They tipped the bodies into the crater. It’s extinct, you know. Supposed to be full of them.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Gaunt softly.
The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. ‘You can see quite clearly,’ Dikon said, ‘the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.’
‘Gawd!’ said Colly.
‘Can you look into the crater and see …?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu, of course.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.’
‘How far away is it?’
‘About eight miles.’
‘It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.’
‘Kind of black, sir, isn’t it?’ said Colly.
‘Black and clear,’ said Gaunt. ‘A marvellous backdrop.’ They drove on in silence for some time. The flowing hills moved slowly about as if in a contrapuntal measure determined by the progress of the car. Dikon began to recognise landmarks. He felt extremely apprehensive.
‘Hullo,’ said Gaunt. ‘What’s that affair down on the right? A sort of doss-house, one would think.’
Dikon said nothing, but turned in at a ramshackle gate.
‘You don’t dare to tell me that we have arrived,’ Gaunt demanded in a loud voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘My God, Dikon, you’ll writhe for this. Look at it. Smell it. Colly, we are betrayed.’
‘Mr Bell warned you, sir,’ Colly said. ‘I daresay it’s very comfortable.’
‘If anything,’ said Dikon, ‘it’s less comfortable than it looks. Those are the Springs.’
‘Those reeking puddles?’
‘Yes. And there, on the verandah, I see the Claires assembled. You are expected, sir,’ said Dikon. Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Gaunt’s gloved fingers go first to his tie and then to his hat. He thought suddenly: ‘He looks terribly like a famous actor.’
The car rocked down the last stretch of the drive and shot across the pumice sweep. Dikon pulled up at the verandah steps. He got out, and taking off his hat approached the expectant Claires. He felt nervous and absurd. The Claires were grouped after the manner of an Edwardian family portrait that had taken an eccentric turn. Mrs Claire and the Colonel were in deck chairs, Barbara sat on the steps grasping a reluctant dog. Dikon guessed that they wore their best clothes. Simon, obviously under duress, stood behind his mother’s chair looking murderous. All that was lacking, one felt, was the native equivalent of a gillie holding a couple of staghounds in leash. As Dikon approached, Dr Ackrington came out of his room.
‘Here we are, you see,’ Dikon called out with an effort at gaiety. The Claires had risen. Impelled by confusion, doubt and apology, Dikon shook hands blindly all round. Barbara looked nervously over his shoulder and he saw with a dismay which he afterwards recognised as prophetic that she had gone white to her unpainted lips.
He felt Gaunt’s hand on his arm and hurriedly introduced him.
Mrs Claire brought poise to the situation, Dikon realised, but it was the kind of poise with which Gaunt was quite unfamiliar. She might have been welcoming a bishop-suffragan to a slum parish, a bishop-suffragan in poor health.
‘Such a long journey,’ she said anxiously. ‘You must be so tired.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Gaunt, who had arrived at an age when actors affect a certain air of youthful hardihood.
‘But it’s such a dreadful road. And you look very tired,’ she persisted gently. Dikon saw Gaunt’s smile grow formal. He turned to Barbara. For some reason which he had not attempted to analyse, Dikon wanted Gaunt to like Barbara. It was with apprehension that he watched her give a galvanic jerk, open her eyes very wide, and put her head on one side like a chidden puppy. ‘Oh, hell,’ he thought, ‘she’s going to be funny.’
‘Welcome,’ Barbara said in her sepulchral voice, ‘to the humble abode.’ Gaunt dropped her hand rather quickly.
‘Find us very quiet, I’m afraid,’ Colonel Claire said, looking quickly at Gaunt and away again. ‘Not much in your line, this country, what?’
‘But we’ve just been remarking,’ Gaunt said lightly, ‘that your landscape reeks of theatre.’ He waved his stick at Rangi’s Peak. ‘One expects to hear the orchestra.’ Colonel Claire looked baffled and slightly offended.
‘My brother,’ Mrs Claire murmured. Dr Ackrington limped forward. Dikon’s attention was distracted from this last encounter by the behaviour of Simon Claire, who suddenly lurched out of cover, strode down the steps and seized the astounded Colly by the hand. Colly, who was about to unload the car, edged behind it.
‘How are you?’ Simon said loudly. ‘Give you a hand with that stuff.’
‘That’s all right, thank you, sir.’
‘Come on,’ Simon insisted and laid violent hands on a pigskin dressing case which he lugged from the car and dumped none too gently on the pumice. Colly gave a little cry of dismay.
‘Here, here, here!’ a loud voice expostulated. Mr Questing thundered out of the house and down the steps. ‘Cut that out, young fellow,’ he ordered and shouldered Simon away from the car.
‘Why?’ Simon demanded.
‘That’s no way to treat high-class stuff,’ bustled Mr Questing with an air of intolerable patronage. ‘You’ll have to learn better than that. Handle it carefully.’ He advanced upon Dikon. ‘We’re willing,’ he laughed, ‘but we’ve a lot to learn. Well, well, well, how’s the young gentleman?’
He removed his hat and placed himself before Gaunt. His change of manner was amazingly abrupt. He might have been a lightning impersonator or a marionette controlled by some pundit of second-rate etiquette. Suddenly, he oozed deference. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I have had the honour –’
‘Mr Questing,’ said Dikon.
‘This is a great day for the Springs, sir,’ said Mr Questing. ‘A great day.’
‘Thank you,’ said Gaunt, glancing at him. ‘If I may I should like to see my rooms.’
He turned to Mrs Claire. ‘Dikon tells me you have taken an enormous amount of trouble on my behalf. It’s very kind indeed. Thank you so much.’ And Dikon saw that with this one speech, delivered with Gaunt’s famous air of gay sincerity, he had captivated Mrs Claire. She beamed at him. ‘I shall try not to be troublesome,’ Gaunt added. And to Mr Questing: ‘Right.’
They went in procession along the verandah. Mr Questing, still uncovered, led the way.
II
Barbara sat on the edge of her stretcher bed in her small hot room and looked at two dresses. Which should she wear for dinner on the first night? Neither of them was new. The red lace had been sent out two years ago by her youngest aunt who had worn it a good deal in India. Barbara had altered it to fit herself and something had gone wrong with the shoulders, so that it bulged where it should lie flat. To cover this defect she had attached a black flower to the neck. It was a long dress and she did not as a rule change for dinner. Simon might make some frightful comment if she wore the red lace. The alternative was a short floral affair, thick blue colour with a messy yellow design. She had furbished it up with a devilish shell ornament and a satin belt and even poor Barbara wondered if it was a success. Knowing that she should be in the kitchen with Huia, she pulled off her print, dragged the red lace over her head and looked at herself in the inadequate glass. No, it would never become her dress, it would always hark back to unknown Aunty Wynne who two years ago had written: ‘Am sending a box of odds and ends for Ba. Hope she can wear red.’ But could she? Could she plunge about in the full light of day in this ownerless waif of a garment with everybody knowing she had dressed herself up? She peered at her face, which was slightly distorted by the glass. Suddenly she hauled the dress over her head, fighting with the stuffy-smelling lace. ‘Barbara,’ her mother called. ‘Where are you? Ba!’ ‘Coming!’ Well, it would have to be the floral.
But when, hot and desperate, she had finally dressed, and covered the floral with a clean overall, she pressed her hands together. ‘Oh God,’ she thought, ‘make him like it here! Please dear God, make him like it.’
III
‘Can you possibly endure it?’ Dikon asked.
Gaunt was lying full length on the modern sofa. He raised his arms above his head. ‘All,’ he whispered, ‘I can endure all but Questing. Questing must be kept from me.’
‘But I told you –’
‘You amaze me with your shameless parrot cry of “I told you so”,’ said Gaunt mildly. ‘Let us have no more of it.’ He looked out of the corner of his eye at Dikon. ‘And don’t look so tragic, my good ass,’ he added. ‘I’ve been a small-part touring actor in my day. This place is strangely reminiscent of a one-night fit-up. No doubt I can endure it. I should be dossing down in an Anderson shelter, by God. I do well to complain. Only spare me Questing, and I shall endure the rest.’
‘At least we shall be spared his conversation this evening. He has a previous engagement. Lest he offer to put it off, I told him you would be desolated but had already arranged to dine in your rooms and go to bed at nine. So away he went.’
‘Good. In that case I shall dine en famille and go to bed when it amuses me. I have yet to meet Mr Smith, remember. Is it too much to hope that he will stage another fight?’
‘It seems he only gets drunk when his remittance comes in.’ Dikon hesitated and then asked: ‘What did you think of the Claires, sir?’
‘Marvellous character parts. Overstated, of course. Not quite West End. A number-one production on tour, shall we say? The Colonel’s moustache is a little too thick in both senses.’
Dikon felt vaguely resentful. ‘You captivated Mrs Claire,’ he said.
Gaunt ignored this. ‘If one could take them as they are,’ he said. ‘If one could persuade them to appear in those clothes and speak those lines! My dear, they’d be a riot. Miss Claire! Dikon, I didn’t believe she existed.’
‘Actually,’ said Dikon stiffly, ‘she’s rather attractive. If you look beyond her clothes.’
‘You’re a remarkably swift worker if you’ve been able to do that.’
‘They’re extraordinarily kind and, I think, very nice.’
‘Until we arrived you never ceased to exclaim against them. Why have you bounced round to their side all of a sudden?’
‘I only said, sir, that I thought you would be bored by them.’
‘On the contrary I’m agreeably entertained. I think they’re all darlings and marvellous comedy. What is your trouble?’
‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I’ve just discovered that I like them. I thought,’ said Dikon, smiling a little in spite of himself, ‘that the tableau on the verandah was terribly sad. I wonder how long they’d been grouped up like that.’
‘For ages, I should think. The dog was plainly exasperated and young Claire looked lethal.’
‘It is rather touching,’ said Dikon and turned away.
Mrs Claire and Barbara, wearing their garden hats and carrying trowels, went past the window on tiptoe, their faces solemn and absorbed. When they had gone a little way Dikon heard them whispering together.
‘In heaven’s name,’ cried Gaunt, ‘why do they stalk about their own premises like that? What are they plotting?’
‘It’s because I explained that you liked to relax before dinner. They don’t want to disturb you. I fancy their vegetable garden is round the corner.’
After a pause Gaunt said: ‘It will end in my feeling insecure and ashamed. Nothing arouses one’s self-abasement more than the earnest amateur. How long have they had this place?’
‘About twelve years, I think. Perhaps longer.’
‘Twelve years and they are still amateurs!’
‘They try so terribly hard,’ Dikon said. He wandered out on to the verandah. Someone was walking slowly round the warm lake towards the springs.
‘Hullo,’ Dikon said. ‘We’ve a caller.’
‘What do you mean? Be very careful, now. I’ll see no one, remember.’
‘I don’t think it’s for us, sir,’ Dikon said. ‘It’s a Maori.’
It was Rua. He wore the suit he bought in 1936 to welcome the Duke of Gloucester. He walked slowly across the pumice to the house, tapped twice with his stick on the central verandah post and waited tranquilly for someone to take notice of him. Presently Huia came out and gave a suppressed giggle on seeing her great-grandfather. He addressed her in Maori with an air of austerity and she went back into the house. Rua sat on the edge of the verandah and rested his chin on his stick.
‘Do you know, sir,’ said Dikon, ‘I believe it might be for us, after all? I’ve recognised the old gentleman.’
‘I won’t see anybody,’ said Gaunt. ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a Maori version of the Last of the Barons. Rua Te Kahu, sometime journalist and MP for the district. I’ll swear he’s called to pay his respects.’
‘You must see him for me. We did bring some pictures, I suppose?’
‘I don’t think,’ Dikon said, ‘that the Last of the Barons will be waiting for signed photographs.’
‘You’re determined to snub me,’ said Gaunt amiably. ‘If it’s an interview, you’ll talk to him, won’t you?’
Colonel Claire came out of the house, shook hands with Rua and led him off in the direction of their own quarters.
‘It’s not for us after all, sir.’
‘Thank heavens for that,’ Gaunt said but he looked a little huffy nevertheless.
In Colonel Claire’s study, a room about the size of a small pantry and rather less comfortable, Rua unfolded the purpose of his call. Dim photographs of polo teams glared down menacingly from the walls. Rua’s dark eyes rested for a moment on a group of turbaned Sikhs before he turned to address himself gravely to the Colonel.
‘I have brought,’ he said, ‘a greeting from my hapu to your distinguished guest, Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. The Maori people of Wai-ata-tapu are glad that he has come here and would like to greet him with a cordial Haere mai.’
‘Oh, thanks very much, Rua,’ said the Colonel. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘We have heard that he wishes to be quiet. If however he would care to hear a little singing, we hope that he will do us the honour to come to a concert on Saturday week in the evening. I bring this invitation from my hapu to your guests and your family, Colonel.’
Colonel Claire raised his eyebrows, opened his eyes and mouth, and glared at his visitor. He was not particularly surprised, but merely wore his habitual expression for absorbing new ideas.
‘Eh?’ he said at last. ‘Did you say a concert? Extraordinarily nice of you, Rua, I must say. A concert.’
‘If Mr Gaunt would care to come.’
Colonel Claire gave a galvanic start. ‘Care to?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. We should have to ask him, what? Sound the secretary.’
Rua gave a little bow. ‘Certainly,’ he said.
Colonel Claire rose abruptly and thrust his head out of the window. ‘James!’ he yelled. ‘Here!’
‘What for?’ said Dr Ackrington’s voice at some distance.
‘I want you. It’s my brother-in-law,’ he explained more quietly to Rua. ‘We’ll see what he thinks, um?’ He went out to the verandah and shouted, ‘Agnes!’
‘Hoo-oo?’ replied Mrs Claire from inside the house.
‘Here.’
‘In a minute, dear.’
‘Barbara!’
‘Wait a bit, Daddy. I can’t.’
‘Here.’
Having summoned his family, Colonel Claire sank into an armchair, and glancing at Rua gave a rather aimless laugh. His eye happened to fall upon a Wild West novel that he had been reading. He was a greedy consumer of thrillers, and the sight of this one lying open and close at hand affected him as an open box of chocolate affects a child. He smiled at Rua and offered him a cigarette. Rua thanked him and took one, holding it cautiously between the tips of his fingers and thumb. Colonel Claire looked out of the corners of his eyes at his thriller. He was long-sighted.
‘There was another matter about which I hoped to speak,’ Rua said.
‘Oh yes?’ said Colonel Claire. ‘D’you read much?’
‘My eyesight is not as good as it once was, but I can still manage clear print.’
‘Awful rot, some of these yarns,’ Colonel Claire continued, casually picking up his novel. ‘This thing I’ve been dipping into, now. Blood-and-thunder stuff. Ridiculous.’
‘I am a little troubled in my mind. Disturbing rumours have reached me …’
‘Oh?’ Colonel Claire, still with an air of absent-mindedness, flipped over a page.
‘… about proposals that have been made in regard to native reserves. You have been a good friend to our people, Colonel …’
‘Not at all,’ Colonel Claire murmured abstractedly, and felt for his reading glasses. ‘Always very pleased …’ He found his spectacles, put them on and, still casually, laid the book on his knee.
‘Since you have been at Wai-ata-tapu, there have been friendly relations between your family and my hapu. We should not care to see anyone else here.’
‘Very nice of you.’ Colonel Claire was now frankly reading, but he continued to wear a social smile. He contrived to suggest that he merely looked at the book because after all one must look at something. Old Rua’s magnificent voice rolled on. The Maori people are never in a hurry, and in his almost forgotten generation a gentleman led up to the true matter of an official call through a series of polite approaches. Rua’s approval of his host was based on an event twelve years old. The Claires arrived at Wai-ata-tapu during a particularly virulent epidemic of influenza. Over at Rua’s village there were many deaths. The Harpoon health authorities, led by the irate and overworked Dr Tonks, had fallen foul of the Maori people in matters of hygiene, and a dangerous deadlock had been reached. Rua, who normally exercised an iron authority, was himself too ill to control his hapu. Funeral ceremonies lasting for days, punctuated with long-drawn-out wails of greeting and lamentation, songs of death and interminable after-burial feasts maintained native conditions in a community lashed by a European scourge. Rua’s people became frightened, truculent and obstructive, and the health authorities could do nothing. Upon this scene came the Claires. Mrs Claire instantly translated the whole affair into terms of an English village, offered their newly built house as an emergency hospital and herself undertook the nursing, with Rua as her first patient. Colonel Claire, whose absence of mind had inoculated him against the arrogance of Anglo-Indianism, and who by his very simplicity had fluked his way into a sort of understanding of native peoples, paid a visit to the settlement, arranged matters with Rua, and was accepted by the Maori people as a rangitira, a person of breeding. He and his wife professed neither extreme liking nor antipathy for the Maori people, who nevertheless found something recognisable and admirable in both of them. The war had brought them closer together. The Colonel commanded the local Home Guard and had brought many of Rua’s older men into his division. Rua considered that he owed his life to his pakeha friends, and, though he thought them funny, loved them. It did not offend him, therefore, when Colonel Claire furtively read a novel under his very nose. He rumbled on magnificently with his story, in amiable competition with Texas Rangers and six-shooter blondes.
‘… there has been enough trouble in the past. The Peak is a native reserve and we do not care for trespassers. He has been seen by a certain rascal coming down the western flank with a sack on his shoulders. At first he was friendly with this no-good young fellow, Eru Saul, who is a bad pakeha and a bad Maori. Now they have quarrelled and their quarrel concerns my great-granddaughter Huia, who is a foolish girl but much too good for either of them. And Eru tells my grandson Rangi, and my grandson tells me, that Mr Questing is behaving dishonestly on the Peak. Because he is your guest we have said nothing, but now I find him talking to some silly young fellows amongst our people and putting a lot of bad ideas into their heads. Now that makes me very angry,’ said Rua, and his eyes flashed. ‘I do not like my young people to be taught to cheapen the culture of their race. It has been bad enough with Mr Herbert Smith, who buys whisky for them and teaches them to make pigs of themselves. He is no good. But even he comes to me to warn me of this Questing.’
The Colonel’s novel dropped with a loud slap. His eyebrows climbed his forehead, his eyes and mouth opened. He turned pale.
‘Hey?’ he said. ‘Questing? What about Questing?’
‘You have not been listening, Colonel,’ said Rua, rather crossly.
‘Yes, I have, only I didn’t catch everything. I’m getting deaf.’
‘I am sorry. I have been telling you that Mr Questing has been looking for curios on the Peak and boasting that in a little while Wai-ata-tapu will be his property. I have to come to ask you in confidence if this is true.’
‘What’s all this about Questing?’ demanded Dr Ackrington, appearing at the doorway in his dressing-gown. ‘’Evening, Rua. How are you?’
‘It began by being about Gaunt and a concert party,’ said the Colonel unhappily. ‘It’s only just turned into something in confidence about Questing.’
‘Well, if it’s in confidence, why the devil did you call me? There seems to be conspiracy in this house to deny my sciatica thermal treatment.’
‘I wanted to ask you if you thought Gaunt would like to go to a concert. Rua’s people have very kindly offered …’
‘How the devil do I know? Ask young Bell. Very nice of you, Rua, I must say.’
‘And then Rua began to talk about Questing and the Peak.’
‘Why don’t you call him Quisling and be done with it?’ Dr Ackrington demanded loudly. ‘It’s what he is, by God.’
‘James! I really must insist – You have no shred of evidence.’
‘Haven’t I? Haven’t I? Very well. Wait and see.’
Rua stood up. ‘If it is not troubling you too much,’ he said, ‘perhaps you would ask Mr Gaunt’s secretary …?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Colonel agreed hurriedly. ‘Of course. Wait a minute, will you?’
He stumbled out of the room, and they heard him thump along the verandah towards Geoffrey Gaunt’s quarters.
Rua’s old eyes were very bright and cunning as he looked at Dr Ackrington, but he did not speak.
‘So he’s been trespassing, has he?’ asked Dr Ackrington venomously. ‘I could have told you that when the Hippolyte was torpedoed.’
Rua made a brusque movement with his wrinkled hands but still he did not speak.
‘He does it by night sometimes, doesn’t he?’ Dr Ackrington went on. ‘Doesn’t he go up by night, with a flash lamp? Good God, my dear fellow, I’ve seen it myself. Curios be damned.’
‘Somehow,’ Rua said mildly, ‘I have never been able to enjoy spy stories. They always seem to me to be incredible.’
‘Indeed!’ Dr Ackrington rejoined acidly. ‘So this country, alone in the English-speaking world, stands immune from the activities of enemy agents. And why, pray? Do you think the enemy is frightened of us? Amazing complacency!’
‘But he has been seen digging.’
‘Do you imagine he would be seen semaphoring? Of course he digs. No doubt he robs your ancestors’ graves. No doubt he will have some infamous booty to exhibit when he is brought to book.’
Rua pinched his lower lip and became very solemn. ‘I have felt many regrets,’ he said, ‘for the old age which compelled me to watch my grandsons and great-grandsons set out to war without me. But if you are right, there is still work in Ao-tea-roa for an old warrior.’ He chuckled, and Dr Ackrington looked apprehensively at him.
‘I have been indiscreet,’ he said. ‘Keep this under your hat, Rua. A word too soon and we shan’t get him. I may tell you I have taken steps. But, see here. There’s a certain amount of cover on the Peak. If your young people haven’t altogether lost the art of their forebears –’
‘We must arrange something,’ said Rua composedly. ‘Yes. No doubt something can be arranged.’
‘What is it, dear?’ said Mrs Claire, appearing abruptly in the doorway. ‘Oh! Oh, I thought Edward called me, James. Good evening, Rua.’
‘I did call you about half an hour ago,’ said her husband crossly from behind her back, ‘but it’s all over now. Old Rua was here with some – oh, you’re still there, Rua. Mr Gaunt’s secretary says they’ll be delighted.’
Barbara came running distractedly from the kitchen. She and her parents formed up in a sort of queue outside the door.
‘What is it, Daddy?’ she asked. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nobody wants anything,’ shouted her father angrily. ‘Everybody’s delighted. Why do you all come running at me?’
‘My people will be very pleased,’ said Rua. ‘I shall go now and tell them. I wish you all good evening.’
As he walked along the verandah his great-granddaughter, Huia, flew out and excitedly rang the dinner bell in his face. He gave her a good-natured buffet and struck for home. Dikon, looking startled, came out on the verandah followed by Gaunt. Huia, over-stimulated by her first view of the celebrity, flashed her eyes, laughed excitedly and continued to peal her bell until Barbara took it away from her.
‘I think that must be dinner,’ said Mrs Claire with a bright assumption of surprise, while their ears still rang with the din. She turned with poise towards Gaunt. ‘Shall we go in?’ she asked gently, and they formed up into a kind of procession, trailing after each other towards the dining-room door. At the last moment Simon appeared, as usual from the direction of the cabins, where he had a sort of workshop.
But the first night’s dinner was not to go forward without the intrusion of that particular form of grotesque irrelevance which Dikon was learning to associate with the Claires, for, as Gaunt and Mrs Claire approached the front door, a terrific rumpus broke out in the kitchen.
‘Where’s the Colonel?’ an agitated voice demanded. ‘I’ve got to see the Colonel.’
Smith, dishevelled and with threads of blood crossing his face, blundered through the dining-room from the kitchen, thrust Gaunt and Mrs Claire aside, and seized the Colonel by his coat lapels. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to look after me. He tried to kill me.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8f6e03d6-fa38-5600-9f28-bcc9c792e0a6)
Red for Danger (#ulink_8f6e03d6-fa38-5600-9f28-bcc9c792e0a6)
Dikon, mindful of his only other encounter with him and influenced by an exceedingly significant smell, came to the conclusion that Mr Smith was mad drunk. Perhaps a minute went by before he realised that he was merely terrified. It was obvious that the entire Claire family made the same mistake for they all, together and severally and entirely without success, tried to shut Smith up and hustle him away into the background. Finally it was Dr Ackrington who, after a sharp look at Smith, said to his brother-in-law: ‘Wait a minute now, Edward, you’re making a mistake. Come along with me, Smith, and tell me what it’s all about.’
‘I won’t come along with anyone. I’ve just been along with someone and it’s practically killed me. You listen to what I’m telling you! He’s a bloody murderer.’
‘Who is?’ asked Simon from somewhere in the rear.
‘Questing.’
‘Smith, for God’s sake!’ said the Colonel, and tried to lead him away by the elbow.
‘Leave me alone. I know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you.’
‘Oh, Daddy, not here!’ Barbara cried out, and Mrs Claire said: ‘No, Edward, please. Your study, dear.’ And, as if Smith were some recalcitrant schoolboy, she repeated in a hushed voice: ‘Yes, yes, much better in your study.’
‘But you’re not listening to me,’ said Smith. And, to the acute embarrassment of everybody except Gaunt, he began to blubber. ‘Straight out of the jaws of death,’ he cried piteously, ‘and you ask a chap to go to the study.’
Dikon heard Gaunt give a little cough of laughter before he turned to Mrs Claire and said: ‘We’ll remove ourselves.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Dikon.
The doorway, however, was blocked by Simon and Mrs Claire, and before they could get out of the way Smith roared out: ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I want witnesses. You stay where you are.’
Gaunt looked good-humouredly from one horrified face to another, and said: ‘Suppose we all sit down.’
Barbara took her uncle fiercely by the arm. ‘Uncle James,’ she whispered, ‘stop him. He mustn’t. Uncle James, please.’
‘By all means let us sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington.
They filed solemnly and ridiculously into the dining-room and, as if they were about to witness a cabaret turn, sat themselves down at the small tables. This manoeuvre appeared to quieten Smith. He took up a strategic position between the tables. With the touch of complacency which must have appeared in the Ancient Mariner when he cornered the wedding guest, he embarked upon his story.
‘It was over at the level crossing,’ he began. ‘I’d been up the Peak with Eru Saul and I don’t mind telling you why. Questing’s been nosing around the Peak and the Maoris don’t like it. We’d seen him drive along the Peak road earlier in the evening. Eru and I reckoned we’d cut along by the bush track to a hideout in the scrub. We didn’t see anything. He must have gone up the other face of the hill if he was there at all. We waited for about an hour and then I got fed up and came down by myself. I hit the railroad about a couple of chains above the level crossing.’
‘By the railroad bridge?’ said Simon.
‘You’re telling me it was by the bridge,’ said Smith with extraordinary violence. ‘I’ll say it was by the bridge. And get this. The 5.15 from Harpoon was just about due. You know what it’s like. The railroad twists in and out of the scrub and round the shoulder of the hill and then comes through a wee tunnel. You can’t see or hear a thing. Before you know what’s happening, she’s on top of you.’
‘She is, too,’ agreed Simon, with an air of supporting Smith against unfair opposition.
‘The bridge is the worst bit. You can’t see the signals but you can see a bend in the Peak road above the level crossing. To get over the gully you can hop across the bridge on the sleepers, or you can wade the creek. I stood there wondering if I’d risk the bridge. I don’t like trains. There was a Maori boy killed on that bridge.’
‘There was, too.’
‘Yes; well, while I was kind of hesitating I saw Questing’s car come over the crest of the road and stop. He leant out of the driving window and saw me. Now listen. You’ve got to remember he could see the signal and I couldn’t. It’s the red and green light affair they put in after the accident. I saw him turn his head to look that way.’
Smith wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He spoke quietly now, was no longer ridiculous, and held the attention of his audience. He sat down at an empty table and looked about him with an air of astonishment.
‘He waved me on,’ he said. ‘He could see the signal and he gave me the all-clear. Like this. I didn’t move at first and he did it again. See? A bit impatient, too, as much as to say: “What’s eating you? Hop to it.” Yes, well, I hopped. I’ve never liked the bridge. It’s a short stride between sleepers and you can see the creek through the gaps. Look. I’d got halfway when I heard her behind me, blowing her whistle in the tunnel. It’s funny how quick you can think. Whether to jump for it or swing from the end of a sleeper, or stand waving my arms and, if she didn’t pull up in time, dive for the engine. I thought about Questing, too, and how, if she got me, nobody’d know he gave me the office. And all the time I was hopping like a bloody ballet dancer, with the creek below clicking through the gaps. Like one of those dreams. Look, she was on the bridge when I jumped. I was above the bank by then. I suppose it wasn’t more than ten feet. I landed in a matagouri bush. Scratched all over, and look at my pants. I didn’t even try to get out of it. She rumbled over my head, and muck off the sleepers fell in my eyes. I felt funny. I mean my body felt funny, as if it didn’t belong to me. I was kind of surprised to find myself climbing the bank and it seemed to be someone else that was winded when I got to the top. And yet all the time I was hell-set on getting at Questing. And had he waited for me? He had not. ’Struth, I stood there shaking like a bloody jelly and I heard him tooting his horn away along the Peak road. I don’t know how I’d have got home if it hadn’t been for Eru Saul. Eru’d come down the hill and he saw what Questing swung across me. He’s a witness to it. He gave me a hand to come home. Look, Eru’s out there in the kitchen. You ask him. He knows.’ He turned to Mrs Claire. ‘Can I get Eru to come in, Mrs Claire?’
‘I’ll get him,’ said Simon, and went out to the kitchen. He returned, followed by Eru, who stood oafishly in the doorway. Dikon saw, for the first time, a fleshy youth dressed in a stained blue suit. His coat was open, displaying a brilliant tie, and an expanse of puce-coloured shirt stretched tight across the diaphragm. He showed little of his Maori blood, but Dikon thought he might have served as an illustration of the least admirable aspect of colonisation in a native country.
‘Here, listen, Eru,’ said Smith. ‘You saw Questing swing it across me, didn’t you?’
‘Too right,’ Eru muttered.
‘Go on. Tell them.’
It was the same story. Eru had come down the hillside behind Smith. He could see the bridge and Questing’s car. ‘Questing leant out of the window and beckoned Bert to come on. I couldn’t see the signal, but I reckoned he was crazy, seeing what time it was. I yelled out to Bert to turn it up and come back, but he never heard me. Then she blew her whistle.’ Eru’s olive face turned white. ‘Gee, I thought he was under the engine all right. I couldn’t see him, like, from where I was. The train was between us. Gee, I certainly expected the jolt. I never picked he’d jump for it. Crikey, was I relieved when I seen old Bert sitting in the prickles!’
‘The engine driver pulled her up and they came back to inquire, didn’t they, Eru?’
‘Too right. They looked terrible. You know, white as a sheet. They’d got the shock of their lives, those jokers. We had to put it down in writing he’d blown the whistle. They had to protect themselves, see?’
‘Yeh. Well, that’s the whole works,’ said Smith. ‘Thanks, Eru.’
He rubbed his hands over his face and looked at them. ‘I could do with a drink,’ he said. ‘You may think I’ve had some by the way I smell. I swear to God I haven’t. It broke when I went over.’
‘That’s right,’ said Eru. He looked round awkwardly. ‘I’ll say good day,’ he added.
He returned to the kitchen. Mrs Claire glanced after him dubiously, and presently got up and followed him.
Smith sagged forward, resting his cheek on his hand as though he sat meditating alone in the room. Dr Ackrington limped across and put his hand on Smith’s shoulder.
‘I’ll fix you up,’ he said. ‘Come along.’
Smith looked up at him, got to his feet, and shambled to the door.
‘I could have him up, couldn’t I, Doc?’ he said. ‘It’s attempted murder, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so,’ said Dr Ackrington.
II
Mrs Claire stood in the centre of her own kitchen looking up at Eru Saul. The top of her head reached no farther than his chin, but she was a plumply authoritative figure and he shuffled his feet and would not look at her. Huia, with an air of conscious virtue, was dishing up the dinner.
‘You are going home now, Eru, I suppose,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘That’s right, Mrs Claire,’ said Eru, looking at Huia.
‘Huia is very busy, you know.’
‘Yeh, that’s right.’
‘And we don’t like you waiting about. You know that.’
‘I’m not doing anything, Mrs Claire.’
‘The Colonel doesn’t wish you to come. You understand?’
‘I was only asking Huia what say we went to the pictures.’
‘I’m not going to the pictures. I told you already,’ said Huia loudly.
‘There, Eru,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘Got another date, haven’t you?’
Huia tossed her head.
‘That will do, Eru,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘Too bad,’ said Eru, looking at Huia.
‘You’ll go now, if you please,’ Mrs Claire insisted.
‘OK, Mrs Claire. But listen, Mrs Claire. You wouldn’t pick Huia wasn’t on the level, would you? I didn’t pick it right away, but it’s a fact. Ask Mr Questing, Mrs Claire. She’s been over at the Bay with him this afternoon. I’ll be seeing you, Huia.’
When he had gone Mrs Claire’s round face was very rosy-red. She said: ‘If Eru comes here again you must tell me at once, Huia, and the Colonel will speak to him.’
‘Yes, Mrs Claire.’
‘We are ready for dinner.’ She walked to the door and hesitated. Huia gave her a brilliant smile.
‘You know we trust you, Huia, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Mrs Claire.’
Mrs Claire went into the dining-room.
They dined in an atmosphere of repressed curiosity. Dr Ackrington returned alone, saying that he had sent Smith to bed, and that in any case he was better out of the way. Throughout dinner, Gaunt and Dikon, who had a small table to themselves, made elaborate conversation about nothing. Dikon was in a state of confusion so acute that it surprised himself. From where he sat he could see Barbara – her lamentable clothes, her white face, and her nervous hands clattering her knife and fork on the plate and pushing about the food she could not eat. Because he tried not to look, he looked the more and was annoyed with himself for doing so. Gaunt sat with his back to the Claires’ table, and Dikon saw that Barbara could not prevent herself from watching him.
During the years of the association, Dikon’s duties had included the fending away of Gaunt’s adorers. He thought that he could interpret Barbara’s glances. He thought that she was sick with disappointment, and told himself that only too easily could he translate her mortification and misery. He was angry and disgusted – angry with Gaunt, and, so he said to himself, disgusted with Barbara – and his reaction was so foreign to his habit that he ended by falling quite out of humour with himself. Presently he became aware that Gaunt was watching him sharply and he realised that he had actually been speaking at random. He began to stammer and was actually relieved when, upon the disappearance of Huia, Colonel and Mrs Claire embarked in antiphony upon an apologetic chant of which the theme was Smith’s unseemly behaviour. This rapidly developed into a solo performance by Mrs Claire in the course of which she attempted the impossible feat of distributing whitewash equally between Questing and Smith. Her recital became rich in clichés: ‘More sinned against than sinning … A dear fellow at bottom … Means well but not quite … So sorry it should have happened …’ She was encouraged by punctual ejaculations of ‘Quite’ from her distracted husband.
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Ngaio Marsh
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…
NGAIO MARSH
COLOUR SCHEME
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_ce00e7a1-1765-5d0d-acf2-73794a98275e)
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1943
Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1943
Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 978000651238
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344574
Version: 2017-05-04
DEDICATION (#ulink_46ad7a89-3e17-5a38-a23e-c8c73124f3dd)
To the family at Tauranga
CONTENTS
Cover (#u1ae9de51-6a42-5354-96e0-701bd38b5475)
Title Page (#ue27705da-098a-5ee9-b072-44a48e5189bf)
Copyright (#u0694c531-2393-55ca-a4b9-127684a84227)
Dedication (#u960679b2-00d8-57df-a211-cc583f526b7e)
Cast of Characters (#u2e1b120a-8af4-55fd-ac1a-4f1a7963a761)
1 The Claires and Dr Ackrington (#u4ecc8c25-dcd9-59df-bb87-15aa30bb3a14)
2 Mr Questing Goes Down for the First Time (#ue54ca098-c6bc-5a8e-b581-ccd1f5bd33c4)
3 Gaunt at the Springs (#uaae59afb-c62c-527a-9c4e-78ce21aaf0ba)
4 Red for Danger (#u61ed2e9e-db40-5521-866f-7b5855a23b8c)
5 Mr Questing Goes Down for the Second Time (#litres_trial_promo)
6 Arrival of Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
7 Torpedo (#litres_trial_promo)
8 Concert (#litres_trial_promo)
9 Mr Questing Goes Down for the Third Time (#litres_trial_promo)
10 Entrance of Sergeant Webley (#litres_trial_promo)
11 The Theory of a Put-Up Job (#litres_trial_promo)
12 Skull (#litres_trial_promo)
13 Letter from Mr Questing (#litres_trial_promo)
14 Solo by Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
15 The Last of Septimus Falls (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#ulink_fab5c486-6631-5656-8bd2-18ab4192f962)
Dr James Ackrington, MD, FRCS, FRCP
Barbara Claire, his niece
Mrs Claire, his sister
Colonel Edward Claire, his brother-in-law
Simon Claire, his nephew
Huia, maid at Wai-ata-tapu
Geoffrey Gaunt, a visiting celebrity
Dikon Bell, his secretary
Alfred Colly, his servant
Maurice Questing, man of business
Rua Te Kahu, a chief of the Te Rarawas
Herbert Smith, roustabout at Wai-ata-tapu
Eru Saul, a half-caste
Septimus Falls
The Princess Te Papa (Mrs Te Papa), of the Te Rarawas
Detective-Sergeant Webley, of the Harpoon Constabulary
A Superintendent of Police
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_bf5f367d-80f7-59f3-82c8-29cdc81bf07d)
The Claires and Dr Ackrington (#ulink_bf5f367d-80f7-59f3-82c8-29cdc81bf07d)
When Dr James Ackrington limped into the Harpoon Club on the afternoon of Monday, January the thirteenth, he was in a poisonous temper. A sequence of events had combined to irritate and then to inflame him. He had slept badly. He had embarked, he scarcely knew why, on a row with his sister, a row based obscurely on the therapeutic value of mud pools and the technique of frying eggs. He had asked for the daily paper of the previous Thursday only to discover that it had been used to wrap up Mr Maurice Questing’s picnic lunch. His niece Barbara, charged with this offence, burst out into one of her fits of nervous laughter and recovered the paper, stained with ham fat and reeking with onions. Dr Ackrington, in shaking it angrily before her, had tapped his sciatic nerve smartly against the table. Blind with pain and white with rage, he stumbled to his room, undressed, took a shower, wrapped himself in his dressing-gown and made his way to the hottest of the thermal baths, only to find Mr Maurice Questing sitting in it, his unattractive outline rimmed with effervescence. Mr Questing had laughed offensively and announced his intention of remaining in the pool for twenty minutes. He had pointed out the less hot but unoccupied baths. Dr Ackrington, standing on the hardened bluish mud banks that surrounded the pool, embarked on as violent a quarrel as he could bring about with a naked smiling antagonist who returned no answer to the grossest insults. He then went back to his room, dressed and, finding nobody upon whom to pour out his wrath, drove his car ruthlessly up the sharp track from Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs to the main road for Harpoon. He left behind an atmosphere well suited to his mood, since the air, as always, reeked of sulphurous vapours.
Arrived at the club, he collected his letters and turned into the writing-room. The windows looked across the Harpoon Inlet whose waters on this midsummer morning were quite unscored by ripples and held immaculate the images of sky and white sand, and of the crimson flowering trees that bloom at this time of year in the Northland of New Zealand. A shimmer of heat rose from the pavement outside the club and under its influence the form of trees, hills and bays seemed to shake a little as if indeed the strangely primitive landscape were still taking shape and were rather a half-realised idea than a concrete accomplishment of nature.
It was a beautiful prospect but Dr Ackrington was not really moved by it. He reflected that the day would be snortingly hot and opened his letters. Only one of them seemed to arrest his attention. He spread it out before him on the writing-table and glared at it, whistling slightly between his teeth.
This is what he read:
Harley Chambers,
AUCKLAND, C.1
My dear Dr Ackrington,
I am venturing to ask for your advice in a rather tricky business involving a patient of mine, none other than our visiting celebrity the famous Geoffrey Gaunt. As you probably know, he arrived in Australia with his Shakespearean company just before war broke out and remained there, continuing to present his repertoire of plays but handing over a very generous dollop of all takings to the patriotic funds. On the final disbandment of his company he came to New Zealand, where, as you may not know (I remember your loathing of radio), he has done some excellent propaganda stuff on the air. About four weeks ago he consulted me. He complained of insomnia, acute pains in the joints, loss of appetite and intense depression. He asked me if I thought he had a chance of being accepted for active service. He wants to get back to England but only if he can be of use. I diagnosed fibrositis and nervous debility, put him on a very simple diet, and told him I certainly did not consider him fit for any sort of war service. It seems he has an idea of writing his autobiography. They all do it. I suggested that he might combine this with a course of hydrotherapy and complete rest. I suggested Rotorua, but he won’t hear of it. Says he’d be plagued with lion hunters and what-not and that he can’t stand the tourist atmosphere.
You’ll have guessed what I’m coming to.
I know you are living at Wai-ata-tapu, and understand that the Spa is under your sister’s or her husband’s management. I have heard that you are engaged on a magnum opus so therefore suppose that the place is conducive to quiet work. Would you be very kind and tell me if you think it would suit my patient, and if Colonel and Mrs Claire would care to have him as a resident for some six weeks or more? I know that you don’t practise nowadays, and it is with the greatest diffidence that I make my final suggestion. Would you care to keep a professional eye on Mr Gaunt? He is an interesting figure, and I venture to hope that you may feel inclined to take him as a sort of patient extraordinary. I must add that, frankly, I should be very proud to hand him on to so distinguished a consultant.
Gaunt has a secretary and a manservant, and I understand he would want accommodation for both of them.
Please forgive me for writing what I fear may turn out to be a tiresome and exacting letter.
Yours very sincerely,
IAN FORSTER
Dr Ackrington read this letter through twice, folded it, placed it in his pocket book, and, still whistling between his teeth, filled his pipe and lit it. After some five minutes’ cogitation he drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to cover it with his thin irritable script.
Dear Forster (he wrote),
Many thanks for your letter. It requires a frank answer and I give it for what it is worth. Wai-ata-tapu is, as you suggest, the property of my sister and her husband, who run it as a thermal spa. In many ways they are perfect fools, but they are honest fools and that is more than one can say of most people engaged in similar pursuits. The whole place is grossly mismanaged in my opinion, but I don’t know that you would find anyone else who would agree with me. Claire is an army man and it’s a pity he has failed so signally to absorb in the smallest degree the principles of system and orderly control that must at some time or another have been suggested to him. My sister is a bookish woman. However incompetent, she seems to command the affection of her martyred clients, and I am her only critic. Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they make no money and work like bewildered horses at an occupation that requires merely the application of common sense to make it easy and profitable. On the alleged therapeutic properties of the baths you have evidently formed your own opinion. They consist, as you are aware, of thermal springs whose waters contain alkalis, free sulphuric acid, and free carbonic acid gas. There are also siliceous mud baths in connection with which my brother-in-law talks loosely and freely of radioactivity. This latter statement I regard as so much pious mumbo-jumbo, but I am alone in my opinion. The mud may be miraculous. My leg is no worse since I took to using it.
As for your spectacular patient, I don’t know to what degree of comfort he is used, but can promise him he won’t get it, though enormous and misguided efforts will be made to accommodate him. Actually there is no reason why he shouldn’t be comfortable. Possibly his secretary and man might succeed where my unfortunate relatives may safely be relied upon to fail. I doubt if he will be more wretched than he would be anywhere else in this extraordinary country. The charges will certainly be less than elsewhere. Six guineas a week for resident patients. Possibly Gaunt would like a private sitting-room for which I imagine there would be an extra charge. Tonks of Harpoon is the visiting medical man. I need say no more. Possibly it is an oblique recommendation of the waters that all Tonks’s patients who have taken them have at least survived. There is no reason why I should not keep an eye on your man and I shall do so if you and he wish it. What you say of him modifies my previous impression that he was one of the emasculate popinjays who appear to form the nucleus of the intelligentsia at home in these degenerate days. Bloomsbury.
My magnum opus, as you no doubt ironically call it, crawls on in spite of the concreted efforts of my immediate associates to withhold the merest necessities for undisturbed employment. I confess that the autobiographical outpourings of persons connected with the theatre seem to me to bear little relation to serious work, and, where I fail, Mr Geoffrey Gaunt may well succeed.
Again, many thanks for your letter,
Yours,
JAMES ACKRINGTON
PS. I should be doing you and your patient a disservice if I failed to tell you that the place is infested by as offensive a fellow as I have ever come across. I have the gravest suspicions regarding this person.
J.A.
As Dr Ackrington sealed and directed this letter a trace of complacency lightened the habitual austerity of his face. He rang the bell, ordered a small whisky and soda and with an air of relishing his employment began a second letter.
Roderick Alleyn, Esq., Chief Inspector, CID,
c/o Central Police Station,
Auckland.
Sir,
The newspapers, with gross indiscretion, report you as having come to this country in connection with scandalous leakages of information to the enemy, notably those which led to the sinking of SS Hippolyte last November.
I consider it my duty to inform you of the activities of a person at present living at Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs, Harpoon Inlet. This person, calling himself Maurice Questing and staying at the local Spa, has formed the habit of leaving the house after dark. To my positive knowledge, he ascends the mountain known as Rangi’s Peak, which is part of the native reserve and the western face of which looks out to sea. I have myself witnessed on several occasions a light flashing on the slopes of this face. You will note that Hippolyte was torpedoed at a spot some two miles out from Harpoon Inlet.
I have also to report that, on being questioned as to his movements, Mr Questing has returned evasive and even lying answers.
I conceived it my duty to report this matter to the local police authorities, who displayed a somnolence so profound as to be pathological.
I have the honour to be,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES ACKRINGTON, MD, FRCS, FRCP
The servant brought the drink. Dr Ackrington accused him of having substituted an inferior brand of whisky for the one ordered, but he did this with an air of routine rather than of rage. He accepted the servant’s resigned assurances with surprising mildness, merely remarking that the whisky had probably been adulterated by the makers. He then finished his drink, clapped his hat on the side of his head and went out to post his letters. The hall porter pulled open the door.
‘War news a bit brighter this morning, sir,’ said the porter tentatively.
‘The sooner we’re all dead, the better,’ Dr Ackrington replied cheerfully. He gave a falsetto barking noise, and limped quickly down the steps.
‘Was that a joke?’ said the hall porter to the servant. The servant turned up his eyes.
II
Colonel and Mrs Claire had lived for twelve years at Wai-ata-tapu Springs. They had come to New Zealand from India when their daughter Barbara, born ten years after their marriage, was thirteen, and their son Simon, nine years old. They had told their friends in gentle voices that they wanted to get away from the conventions of retired army life in England. They had spoken blithely, for they took an uncritical delight in such phrases, of wide-open spaces and of a small inheritance that had come to the Colonel. With most of this inheritance they had built the boarding house they now lived in. The remaining sums had been quietly lost in a series of timid speculations. They had worked like slaves, receiving good advice with well-bred resentment and bad advice with touching gratitude. Beside these failings, they had a positive genius for collecting impossible people, and at the time when this tale opens were at the mercy of a certain incubus called Herbert Smith.
On the retirement of her distinguished and irascible brother from practice in London, Mrs Claire had invited him to join them. He had consented to do so only as a paying guest, as he wished to enjoy complete freedom for making criticisms and complaints, an exercise he indulged with particular energy, especially in regard to his nephew Simon. His niece Barbara Claire had from the first done the work of two servants and, because she went out so little, retained the sort of English vicarage-garden atmosphere that emanated from her mother. Simon, on the contrary, had attended the Harpoon State schools and, influenced on the one hand by the persistent family attitude of poor but proud gentility and on the other by his schoolfellows’ suspicion of ‘pommy’ settlers, had become truculently colonial, somewhat introverted and defiantly uncouth. A year before the outbreak of war he left school, and now was taking the preliminary Air Force training at home.
On the morning of Dr Ackrington’s visit to Harpoon, the Claires pursued their normal occupations. At midday Colonel Claire took his lumbago to the radioactivity of the mud pool, Mrs Claire steeped her sciatica in a hot spring, Simon went into his cabin to practise Morse code, and Barbara cooked the midday meal in a hot and primitive kitchen with Huia, the Maori help, in attendance.
‘You can dish up, Huia,’ said Barbara. She brushed the locks of damp hair from her eyes with the back of her forearm. ‘I’m afraid I seem to have used a lot of dishes. There’ll be six in the dining-room. Mr Questing’s out for lunch.’
‘Good job,’ said Huia skittishly. Barbara pretended not to hear. Huia, moving with the half-languid, half-vigorous grace of the young Maori, smiled brilliantly, and began to pile stacks of plates on a tray. ‘He’s no good,’ she said softly.
Barbara glanced at her. Huia laughed richly, lifting her short upper lip. ‘I shall never understand them,’ Barbara thought. Aloud she said: ‘Mightn’t it be better if you just pretended not to hear when Mr Questing starts those – starts being – starts teasing you?’
‘He makes me very angry,’ said Huia, and suddenly she became childishly angry, flashing her eyes and stamping her foot. ‘Silly ass,’ she said.
‘But you’re not really angry.’
Huia looked out of the corners of her eyes at Barbara, pulled an equivocal grimace, and tittered.
‘Don’t forget your cap and apron,’ said Barbara, and left the sweltering kitchen for the dining-room.
Wai-ata-tapu Hostel was a one-storeyed wooden building shaped like an E with the middle stroke missing. The dining-room occupied the centre of the long section separating the kitchen and serveries from the boarders’ bedrooms, which extended into the east wing. The west wing, private to the Claires, was a series of cramped cabins and a tiny sitting-room. The house had been designed by Colonel Claire on army-hut lines with an additional flavour of sanatorium. There were no passages, and all the rooms opened on a partially covered-in verandah. The inside walls were of yellowish-red oiled wood. The house smelt faintly of linseed oil and positively of sulphur. An observant visitor might have traced in it the history of the Claires’ venture. The framed London Board-of-Trade posters, the chairs and tables painted, not very capably, in primary colours, the notices in careful script, the archly reproachful rhyme sheets in bathrooms and lavatories, all spoke of high beginnings. Broken passe-partout, chipped paint and fly-blown papers hanging by single drawing pins traced unmistakably a gradual but inexorable decline. The house was clean but unexpectedly so, tidy but not orderly, and only vaguely uncomfortable. The front wall of the dining-room was built of glass panels designed to slide in grooves, but devilishly inclined to jam. These looked across the verandah to the hot springs themselves.
Barbara stood for a moment at one of the open windows and stared absently at a freakish landscape. Hills smudged with scrub were ranked against a heavy sky. Beyond them, across the hidden inlet, but tall enough to dominate the scene, rose the truncated cone of Rangi’s Peak, an extinct volcano so characteristically shaped that it might have been placed in the landscape by a modern artist with a passion for simplified form. Though some eight miles away, it was actually clearer than the nearby hills, for their margins, dark and firm, were broken at intervals by plumes of steam that rose perpendicularly from the eight thermal pools. These lay close at hand, just beyond the earth-and-pumice sweep in front of the house. Five of them were hot springs hidden from the windows by fences of manuka scrub. The sixth was enclosed by a rough bath shed. The seventh was almost a lake over whose dark waters wraiths of steam vaguely drifted. The eighth was a mud pool, not hot enough to give off steam, and dark in colour with a kind of iridescence across its surface. This pool was only half-screened and from its open end protruded a naked pink head on top of a long neck. Barbara went out to the verandah, seized a brass schoolroom bell, and rang it vigorously. The pink head travelled slowly through the mud like some fantastic periscope until it disappeared behind the screen.
‘Lunch, Father,’ screamed Barbara unnecessarily. She walked across the sweep and entered the enclosure. On a brush fence that screened the first path hung a weather-worn placard: ‘The Elfin Pool. Engaged.’ The Claires had given each of the pools some amazingly insipid title, and Barbara had neatly executed the placards in poker work.
‘Are you there, Mummy?’ asked Barbara.
‘Come in, my dear.’
She walked round the screen and found her mother at her feet, submerged up to the shoulders in bright blue steaming water that quite hid her plump body. Over her fuzz of hair Mrs Claire wore a rubber bag with a frilled edge and she had spectacles on her nose. With her right hand she held above the water a shilling edition of Cranford.
‘So charming,’ she said. ‘They are all such dears. I never tire of them.’
‘Lunch is nearly in.’
‘I must pop out. The Elf is really wonderful, Ba. My tiresome arm is quite cleared up.’
‘I’m so glad, Mummy,’ said Barbara in a loud voice. ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘What is it?’ said Mrs Claire, turning a page with her thumb.
‘Do you like Mr Questing?’
Mrs Claire looked up over the top of her book. Barbara was standing at a curious angle, balanced on her right leg. Her left foot was hooked round her right ankle.
‘Dear,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘don’t stand like that. It pushes all the wrong things out and tucks the right ones in.’
‘But do you?’ Barbara persisted, changing her posture with a jerk.
‘Well, he’s not out of the top drawer of course, poor thing.’
‘I don’t mind about that. And anyway what is the top drawer? It’s a maddening sort of way to classify people. Such cheek! I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to be rude. But honestly, for us to talk about class!’ Barbara gave a loud hoot of laughter. ‘Look at us!’ she said.
Mrs Claire edged modestly towards the side of the pool and thrust her book at her daughter. Stronger waves of sulphurous smells rose from the disturbed waters. A cascade of drops fell from the elderly rounded arm.
‘Take Cranford,’ she said. Barbara took it. Mrs Claire pulled her rubber bag a little closer about her ears. ‘My dear,’ she said, pitching her voice on a note that she usually reserved for death, ‘aren’t you mixing up money and breeding? It doesn’t matter what one does surely …’ She paused.
‘There is an innate something …’ she began. ‘One can always tell,’ she added.
‘Can one? Look at Simon.’
‘Dear old Simon,’ said her mother reproachfully.
‘Yes, I know. I’m very fond of him. I couldn’t have a kinder brother, but there isn’t much innate something about Simon, is there?’
‘It’s only that awful accent. If we could have afforded …’
‘There you are, you see,’ cried Barbara, and she went on in a great hurry, shooting out her words as if she fired them from a gun that was too big for her. ‘Class consciousness is all my eye. Fundamentally it’s based on money.’
On the verandah the bell was rung again with some abandon.
‘I must pop out,’ said Mrs Claire. ‘That’s Huia ringing.’
‘It’s not because he talks a different language or any of those things,’ said Barbara hurriedly, ‘that I don’t like Mr Questing. I don’t like him. And I don’t like the way he behaves with Huia. Or,’ she added under her breath, ‘with me.’
‘I expect,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that’s only because he used to be a commercial traveller. It’s just his way.’
‘Mummy, why do you find excuses for him? Why does Daddy, who would ordinarily loathe Mr Questing, put up with him? He even laughs at his awful jokes. It isn’t because we want his board money. Look how Daddy and Uncle James practically froze out those rich Americans who were very nice, I thought.’ Barbara drove her long fingers through her mouse-coloured hair, and avoiding her mother’s gaze stared at the top of Rangi’s Peak. ‘You’d think Mr Questing had a sort of hold on us,’ she said, and then burst into one of her fits of nervous laughter.
‘Barbie darling,’ said her mother, on a note that contrived to suggest the menace of some frightful indelicacy, ‘I think we won’t talk about it any more.’
‘Uncle James hates him, anyway.’
‘Barbara!’
‘Lunch, Agnes,’ said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. ‘You’re late again.’
‘Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,’ said Mrs Claire.
III
Dr Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.
‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.’ But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.
‘Is the leg bad, Uncle James?’
‘It’s always bad. Steady now.’
‘Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?’
‘I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.
‘He never washes,’ Dr Ackrington shouted. ‘I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking a shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.’
‘Are you sure …?’
‘Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him …’
‘That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.’
Dr Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a red-headed edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them. She and her uncle stared at each other in silence for some seconds.
‘Oh,’ said Dr Ackrington at last. ‘And what did your mother say?’
Barbara pulled a clown’s grimace. ‘She reproved me,’ she said in sepulchral serio-comedy voice.
‘Well, don’t make faces at me,’ snapped her uncle.
A window in the Claires’ wing was thrown open, and between the curtains there appeared a vague pink face garnished with a faded moustache, and topped by a thatch of white hair.
‘Hullo, James,’ said the face crossly. ‘Lunch. What’s your mother doing, Ba? Where’s Simon?’
‘She’s coming, Daddy. We’re all coming. Simon!’ screamed Barbara.
Mrs Claire, enveloped in a dark red flannel dressing-gown, came panting up from the pools, and hurried into the house.
‘Aren’t we going to have any lunch?’ Colonel Claire asked bitterly.
‘Of course we are,’ said Barbara. ‘Why don’t you begin, Daddy, if you’re in such a hurry? Come on, Uncle James.’
As they went indoors, a young man came round the house and slouched in behind them. He was tall, big-boned and sandy-haired, with a jutting underlip.
‘Hullo, Sim,’ said Barbara. ‘Lunch.’
‘Righto.’
‘How’s the Morse code this morning?’
‘Going good,’ said Simon.
Dr Ackrington instantly turned on him. ‘Is there any creditable reason why you should not say “going well”?’ he demanded.
‘Huh!’ said Simon.
He trailed behind them into the dining-room and they took their places at a long table where Colonel Claire was already seated.
‘We won’t wait for your mother,’ said Colonel Claire, folding his hands over his abdomen. ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Huia!’
Huia came in wearing cap, crackling apron and stiff curls. She looked like a Polynesian goddess who had assumed, on a whim, some barbaric disguise.
‘Would you like cold ham, cold mutton, or grilled steak?’ she asked, and her voice was as cool and deep as her native forests. As an afterthought she handed Barbara a menu.
‘If I ask for steak,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘will it be cooked …’
‘You don’t want to eat raw steak, Uncle, do you?’ said Barbara.
‘Let me finish. If I order steak, will it be cooked or tanned? Will it resemble steak or biltong?’
‘Steak,’ said Huia, musically.
‘Is it cooked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. I shall have ham.’
‘What the devil are you driving at, James?’ asked Colonel Claire, irritably. ‘You talk in riddles. What do you want?’
‘I want grilled steak. If it is already cooked it will not be grilled steak. It will be boot leather. You can’t get a bit of grilled steak in the length and breadth of this country.’
Huia looked politely and inquiringly at Barbara.
‘Grill Dr Ackrington a fresh piece of steak, please, Huia.’
Dr Ackrington shook his finger at Huia. ‘Five minutes,’ he shouted. ‘Five minutes! A second longer and it’s uneatable. Mind that!’ Huia smiled. ‘And while she’s cooking it I have a letter to read to you,’ he added importantly.
Mrs Claire came in. She looked as if she had just returned from a round of charitable visits in an English village. The Claires ordered their lunches and Dr Ackrington took out the letter from Dr Forster.
‘This concerns all of you,’ he announced.
‘Where’s Smith?’ demanded Colonel Claire suddenly, opening his eyes very wide. His wife and children looked vaguely round the room. ‘Did anyone call him?’ asked Mrs Claire.
‘Don’t mind Smith, now,’ said Dr Ackrington. ‘He’s not here and he won’t be here. I passed him in Harpoon. He was turning in at a pub and by the look of him it was not the first by two or three. Don’t mind him. He’s better away.’
‘He got a cheque from home yesterday,’ said Simon, in his strong New Zealand dialect. ‘Boy, oh boy!’
‘Don’t speak like that, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Poor Mr Smith, it’s such a shame. He’s a dear fellow at bottom.’
‘Will you allow me to read this letter, or will you not?’
‘Do read it, dear. Is it from home?’
Dr Ackrington struck the table angrily with the flat of his hand. His sister leant back in her chair, Colonel Claire stared out through the windows, and Simon and Barbara, after the first two sentences, listened eagerly. When he had finished the letter, which he read in a rapid uninflected patter, Dr Ackrington dropped it on the table and looked about him with an air of complacency.
Barbara whistled. ‘I say,’ she said – ‘Geoffrey Gaunt! I say.’
‘And a servant. And a secretary. I don’t quite know what to say, James,’ Mrs Claire murmured. ‘I’m quite bewildered. I really don’t think …’
‘We can’t take on a chap like that,’ said Simon loudly.
‘And why not, pray?’ his uncle demanded.
‘He’ll be no good to us and we’d be no good to him. He’ll be used to posh hotels and slinging his weight about with a lot of English servants. What’d we do with a secretary and a manservant? What’s he do with them anyway?’ Simon went on with an extraordinary air of hostility. ‘Is he feeble-minded or what?’
‘Feeble-minded!’ cried Barbara. ‘He’s probably the greatest living actor.’
‘Well, he can have it for mine,’ said Simon.
‘For the love of heaven, Agnes, can’t you teach your son an intelligent form of speech?’
‘If the way I talk isn’t good enough for you, Uncle James …’
‘For pity’s sake let’s stick to the point,’ Barbara cried. ‘I’m for having Mr Gaunt and his staff, Sim’s against it, Mother’s hovering. You’re for it, Uncle, I suppose.’
‘I fondly imagined that three resident patients might be of some assistance to the exchequer. What does your father say?’ He turned to Colonel Claire. ‘What do you say, Edward?’
‘Eh?’ Colonel Claire opened his eyes and mouth and raised his eyebrows in a startled manner. ‘Is it about that paper you’ve got in your hand? I wasn’t listening. Read it again.’
‘Great God Almighty!’
‘Your steak,’ said Huia, and placed before Dr Ackrington a strip of ghastly pale and bloated meat from which blood coursed freely over the plate.
During the lively scene which followed, Barbara hooted with frightened laughter, Mrs Claire murmured conciliatory phrases, Simon shuffled his feet, and Huia in turn shook her head angrily, giggled, and uttered soft apologies. Finally she burst into tears and ran back with the steak to the kitchen, where a crash of breaking crockery suggested that she had hurled the dish to the floor. Colonel Claire, after staring in surprise at his brother-in-law for a few seconds, quietly took up Dr Forster’s letter and began to read it. This he continued to do until Dr Ackrington had been mollified with a helping of cold meat.
‘Who is this Geoffrey Gaunt?’ asked Colonel Claire after a long silence.
‘Daddy! You must know. You saw him in Jane Eyre last time we went to the pictures in Harpoon. He’s wildly famous.’ Barbara paused with her left cheek bulging. ‘He was exactly my idea of Mr Rochester,’ she said ardently.
‘Theatrical!’ said her father distastefully. ‘We don’t want that sort.’
‘Just what I say,’ Simon agreed.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that Mr Gaunt would find us very humdrum sort of folk. Don’t you think we’d better just keep to our own quiet ways, dear?’
‘Mummy, you are …’ Barbara began. Her uncle, speaking with a calm that was really terrifying, interrupted her.
‘I haven’t the smallest doubt, my dear Agnes,’ he said, ‘that Gaunt, who is possibly a man of some enterprise and intelligence, would find your quiet ways more than humdrum, as you complacently choose to describe them. I ventured to suggest in my reply to Forster that Gaunt would find few of the amenities and a good deal of comparative discomfort at Wai-ata-tapu. I added something to the effect that I hoped lack of luxury would be compensated for by kindness and by consideration for a man who is unwell. Apparently, I was mistaken. I also fancied that, having gone to considerable expense in building a Spa, your object was to acquire a clientele. Again, I was mistaken. You prefer to rest on your laurels with an alcoholic who doesn’t pay his way, and a bounder whom I, for one, regard as a person better suited to confinement in an internment camp.’
Colonel Claire said: ‘Are you talking about Questing, James?’
‘I am.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘May I ask why?’
Colonel Claire laid his knife and fork together, turned scarlet in the face and looked fixedly at the opposite wall.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I am under an obligation to him.’
There was a long silence.
‘I see,’ said Dr Ackrington at last.
‘I haven’t said anything about it to Agnes and the children. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. In my view a man doesn’t speak of such matters to his family. But you, James, and you two children have shown so pointedly your dislike of Mr Questing that I’m forced to tell you that I – I cannot afford – I must ask you for my sake to show him more consideration.’
‘You can’t afford …?’ Dr Ackrington repeated. ‘Good God, my dear fellow, what have you been up to?’
‘Please, James, I hope I need say no more.’
With an air of martyrdom Colonel Claire rose and moved over to the windows. Mrs Claire made a movement to follow him, but he said, ‘No, Agnes,’ and she stopped at once. ‘On second thoughts,’ added Colonel Claire, ‘I believe we should reconsider our decision about taking these people as guests. I – I’ll speak to Questing about it. Please let the subject drop for the moment.’ He walked out on to the verandah and past the windows, holding himself very straight, and, still extremely red in the face, disappeared.
‘Of all the damned astounding how-d’ye-do’s …’ Dr Ackrington began.
‘Oh, James, don’t,’ cried Mrs Claire, and burst into tears.
IV
Huia slapped the last plate in the rack, swilled out the sink and turned her back on a moderately tidy kitchen. She lived with her family at a native settlement on the other side of the hill and, as it was her afternoon off, proposed to return there in order to change into her best dress. She walked round the house, crossed the pumice sweep, and set off along a path that skirted the warm lake, rounded the foot of Wai-ata-tapu Hill, and crossed a native thermal reserve that lay in the far side. The sky was overcast and the air oppressively warm and still. Huia moved with a leisurely stride. She seemed to be a part of the landscape, compounded of the same dark medium, quiescent as the earth under the dominion of the sky. White men move across the surface of New Zealand, but the Maori people are of its essence, tranquil or disturbed as the trees and lakes must be, and as much a member of the earth as they.
Huia’s path took her through a patch of tall manuka scrub and here she came upon a young man, Eru Saul, a half-caste. He stepped out of the bushes and waited for her, the stump of a cigarette hanging from his lips.
‘Hu!’ said Huia. ‘You. What you want?’
‘It’s your day off, isn’t it? Come for a walk.’
‘Too busy,’ said Huia briefly. She moved forward. He checked her, holding her by the arms.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Shut up.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What about? Same old thing all the time. Talk, talk, talk. You make me tired.’
‘You know what. Give us a kiss.’
Huia laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘You’re mad. Behave yourself. Mrs Claire will go crook if you hang about. I’m going home.’
‘Come on,’ he muttered, and flung his arms about her. She fought him off, laughing angrily, and he began to upbraid her. ‘I’m not posh enough. Going with a pakeha now, aren’t you? That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t you talk to me like that. You’re no good. You’re a no-good boy.’
‘I haven’t got a car and I’m not a thief. Questing’s a ruddy thief.’
‘That’s a big lie,’ said Huia blandly. ‘He’s all right.’
‘What’s he doing at night on the Peak? He’s got no business on the Peak.’
‘Talk, talk, talk. All the time.’
‘You tell him if he doesn’t look out he’ll be in for it. How’ll you like it if he gets packed up?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Don’t you? Don’t you?’
‘Oh, you are silly,’ cried Huia, stamping her foot. ‘Silly fool! Now get out of my way and let me go home. I’ll tell my great-grandfather about you and he’ll makutu you.’
‘Kid-stakes! Nobody’s going to put a jinx on me.’
‘My great-grandfather can do it,’ said Huia and her eyes flashed.
‘Listen, Huia,’ said Eru. ‘You think you can get away with dynamite. OK. But don’t come at it with me. And another thing. Next time this joker Questing wants to have you on to go driving, you can tell him from me to lay off. See? Tell him from me, no kidding, that if he tries any more funny stuff, it’ll be the stone end of his trips up the Peak.’
‘Tell him yourself,’ said Huia. She added, in dog Maori, an extremely pointed insult, and taking him off his guard slipped past him and ran round the hill.
Eru stood looking at the ground. His cigarette burnt his lip and he spat it out. After a moment he turned and slowly followed her.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_82021b6d-3850-54e5-b975-23f7f82d26c2)
Mr Questing Goes Down for the First Time (#ulink_82021b6d-3850-54e5-b975-23f7f82d26c2)
‘We’ve heard from Dr Forster, sir,’ said Dikon Bell. He glanced anxiously at his employer. When Gaunt stood with his hands rammed down in the pockets of his dressing-gown and his shoulders hunched to his ears one watched one’s step. Gaunt turned away from the window, and Dikon noticed apprehensively that his leg was very stiff this morning.
‘Ha!’ said Gaunt.
‘He makes a suggestion.’
‘I won’t go to that sulphurous resort.’
‘Rotorua, sir?’
‘Is that what it’s called?’
‘He realises you want somewhere quiet, sir. He’s made inquiries about another place. It’s in the Northland. On the west coast. Subtropical climate.’
‘Sulphurous pneumonia?’
‘Well, sir, we do want to clear up that leg, don’t we?’
‘We do.’ With one of those swift changes of demeanour by which he so easily commanded devotion, Gaunt turned to his secretary and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I think you’re as homesick as I am, Dikon. Isn’t that true? You’re a New Zealander, of course, but wouldn’t you ten thousand times rather be there? In London? Isn’t it exactly as if someone you loved was ill and you couldn’t get to them?’
‘A little like that, certainly,’ said Dikon drily.
‘I shouldn’t keep you here. Go back, my dear chap. I’ll find somebody in New Zealand,’ said Gaunt with a certain melancholy relish.
‘Are you giving me the sack, sir?’
‘If only they can patch me up …’
‘But they will, sir. Dr Forster said the leg ought to respond very quickly to hydrotherapy,’ said Dikon with a prime imitation of the doctor’s manner. ‘They simply hated the sight of me in the Australian recruiting offices. And I fancy I should have little more than refuse value at home. I’m as blind as a bat, you know. Of course, there’s office work.’
‘You must do what you think best,’ said Gaunt gloomily. ‘Leave me to stagnate. I’m no good to my country. Ha!’
‘If you can call raising twelve thousand for colonial patriotic funds no good …’
‘I’m a useless hulk,’ said Gaunt, and even Dikon was reminded of the penultimate scene in Jane Eyre.
‘What are you grinning at, blast you?’ Gaunt demanded.
‘You don’t look precisely like a useless hulk. I’ll stay a little longer if you’ll have me.’
‘Well, let’s hear about this new place. You’re looking wonderfully self-conscious. What hideous surprise have you got up your sleeve?’
Dikon put his attaché case on the writing-table and opened it.
‘There’s a princely fan mail today,’ he said, and laid a stack of typed sheets and photographs on one side.
‘Good! I adore being adored. How many have written a little something themselves and wonder if I can advise them how to have their plays produced?’
‘Four. One lady has sent a copy of her piece. She has dedicated it to you. It’s a fantasy.’
‘God!’
‘Here is Dr Forster’s letter, and one enclosed from a Dr James Ackrington who appears to be a celebrity from Harley Street. Perhaps you’d like to read them.’
‘I should hate to read them.’
‘I think you’d better, sir.’
Gaunt grimaced, took the letters and lowered himself into a chair by the writing-desk. Dikon watched him rather nervously.
Geoffrey Gaunt had spent twenty-seven of his forty-five years on the stage, and the last sixteen had seen him firmly established in the first rank. He was what used to be called a romantic actor, but he was also an intelligent one. His greatest distinction lay in his genius for making an audience hear the sense as well as the music of Shakespearean verse. So accurate and clear was his tracing out of the speeches’ content that his art had about it something of mathematical precision and was saved from coldness only by the apparent profundity of his emotional understanding. How far this understanding was instinctive and how far intellectual, not even his secretary, who had been with him for six years, could decide. He was middle-sized, dark, and not particularly striking, but as an actor he possessed the two great assets: his skull was well-shaped, and his hands were beautiful. As for his disposition, Dikon Bell, writing six years before from London to a friend in New Zealand, had said, after a week in Gaunt’s employment: ‘He’s tricky, affected, clever as a bagful of monkeys, a bit of a bounder with the temper of a fury, and no end of an egotist, but I think I’m going to like him.’ He had never found reason to revise this first impression.
Gaunt read Dr Forster’s note and then Dr Ackrington’s letter. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he cried, ‘what sort of an antic is this old person? Have you noted the acid treatment of his relations? Does he call this letter a recommendation? Discomfort leavened with inefficient kindness is the bait he offers. Moreover, there’s a dirty little knock at me in the last paragraph. If Forster wants me to endure the place, one would have thought his policy would have been to suppress the letter. He’s a poor psychologist.’
‘The psychology,’ said Dikon modestly, ‘is mine. Forster wanted to suppress the letter. I took it upon myself to show it to you. I thought that if you jibbed at the Claires, sir, you wouldn’t be able to resist Dr Ackrington.’
Gaunt shot a suspicious glance at his secretary. ‘You’re too clever by half, my friend,’ he said.
‘And he does say,’ Dikon added persuasively, ‘he does say “the mud may be miraculous”.’
Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.
‘Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your legs right, sir? And at least we could get on with the book.’
‘Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,’ cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, ‘shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry V in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. “And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …” God, I think I must play Henry in New York.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?’
‘Of course I would, damn you.’
‘Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em … London.’
‘You talk like a nanny in her dotage,’ said Gaunt fretfully. ‘I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?’
‘Ironing your trousers, sir.’
‘Tell him to come here.’
Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitudes towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
‘You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?’ said Gaunt.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Colly. ‘Going to run mudlarks, aren’t we?’
‘I haven’t said so.’
‘It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?’
‘Oh, you go to hell,’ said Gaunt.
‘There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he said that’s all right and give in his card. They say it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch and soda, reading the paper and watching the door.’
‘That won’t do him much good,’ said Dikon. ‘Mr Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?’
‘Noüe!’ said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. ‘More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr Bell.’
‘Why?’
‘I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.’
Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.
‘Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,’ he said. ‘Did they give you his card?’
Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. ‘Persistent sort of bloke, sir,’ he said, and fished out a card.
‘Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,’ said Gaunt. ‘You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.’
Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card:
MR MAURICE QUESTING
Wai-ata-tapu Thermal Springs.
Scribbled across the bottom he read: ‘May I have five minutes? Matter of interest to yourself. MQ.’
II
Mr Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.
When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lobby, Mr Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.
‘Pardon me if I speak in error,’ he said, ‘but is this Mr Bell?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Dikon, who still held the card in his fingers.
‘Mr Gaunt’s private secretary?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s great,’ said Mr Questing, shaking hands ruthlessly, and breaking into laughter. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Bell. I know you’re a busy man, but I’d be very very happy if you could spare me five minutes.’
‘Well, I …’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing, jamming a flat pale thumb against a bell-push. ‘Great work! Sit down.’
Dikon sat sedately on a small chair, crossed his legs, joined his hands, and looked attentively over his glasses at Mr Questing.
‘How’s the Big Man?’ Mr Questing asked.
‘Mr Gaunt? Not very well, I’m afraid.’
‘So I understand. So I understand. Well, now, Mr Bell, I had hoped for a word with him, but I’ve got an idea that a little chat with you will be very very satisfactory. What’ll you have?’
Dikon refused a drink. Mr Questing ordered whisky and soda. ‘Yes,’ said Mr Questing with a heartiness that suggested a complete understanding between them. ‘Yes. That’s fine. Well now, Mr Bell, I’m going to tell you, flat out, that I think I’m in a position to help you. Now!’
‘I see,’ said Dikon, ‘that you come from Wai-ata-tapu Springs.’
‘That is the case. Yes. Yes, I’m going to be quite frank with you, Mr Bell. I’m going to tell you that not only do I come from the Springs, but I’ve got a very considerable interest in the Springs.’
‘Do you mean that you own the place? I thought a Colonel and Mrs Claire …’
‘Well, now, Mr Bell, shall we just take things as they come? I’m going to bring you right into my confidence about the Springs. The Springs mean a lot to me.’
‘Financially?’ asked Dikon mildly. ‘Therapeutically? Or sentimentally?’
Mr Questing, who had looked restlessly at Dikon’s tie, shoes and hands, now took a furtive glance at his face.
‘Don’t make it too hot,’ he said merrily.
With a rapid movement suggestive of sleight-of-hand he produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of pamphlets which he laid before Dikon. ‘Read these at your leisure. May I suggest that you bring them to Mr Gaunt’s notice?’
‘Look here, Mr Questing,’ said Dikon briskly, ‘would you mind, awfully, if we came to the point? You’ve evidently discovered that we’ve heard about this place. You’ve come to recommend it. That’s very kind of you, but I gather your motive isn’t purely altruistic. You’ve spoken of frankness so perhaps you won’t object to my asking again if you’ve a financial interest in Wai-ata-tapu.’
Mr Questing laughed uproariously and said that he saw they understood each other. His conversation became thick with hints and evasions. After a minute or two Dikon saw that he himself was being offered some sort of inducement. Mr Questing told him repeatedly that he would be looked after, that he would have every cause for personal gratification if Geoffrey Gaunt decided to take the cure. It was not by any means the first scene of its kind. Dikon was mildly entertained, and, while he listened to Mr Questing, turned over the pamphlets. The medical recommendations seemed very good. A set of rooms – Mr Questing called it a suite – would be theirs. Mr Questing would see to it that the rooms were refurnished. Dikon’s eyebrows went up, and Mr Questing, becoming very confidential, said that he believed in doing things in a big way. He was not, he said, going to pretend that he didn’t recognise the value of such a guest to the Springs. Dikon distrusted him more with every phrase he uttered, but he began to think that if such enormous efforts were to be made, Gaunt should be tolerably comfortable at Wai-ata-tapu. He put out a feeler.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that there is a resident doctor.’
He was surprised to see Mr Questing change colour. ‘Dr Tonks,’ Questing said, ‘doesn’t actually reside at the Springs, Mr Bell. He’s at Harpoon. Only a few minutes by road. A very, very fine doctor.’
‘I meant Dr James Ackrington.’
Mr Questing did not answer immediately. He offered Dikon a cigarette, lit one himself and rang the bell again.
‘Dr Ackrington,’ Dikon repeated.
‘Oh, yes. Ye-es. The old doctor. Quite a character.’
‘Doesn’t he live at the hostel?’
‘That is correct. Yes. That is the case. The old doctor’s retired now, I understand.’
‘He’s something of an authority on muscular and nervous complaints, isn’t he?’
‘Is that so?’ said Mr Questing. ‘Well, well, well. The old doctor, eh? Quite a character. Well, now, Mr Bell, I’ve a little suggestion to make. I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in a wee trip to the Springs. I’m driving back there tomorrow. It’s a six hours’ run and I’d be very very delighted to take you with me. Of course the suite won’t be poshed up by then. You’ll see us in the raw, sir, but any suggestions you cared to make …’
‘Do you live there, Mr Questing?’
‘You can’t keep me away from the Springs for long,’ cried Mr Questing evasively. ‘Now about this suggestion of mine …’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘I’ll tell Mr Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.’
Mr Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.
‘Goodbye,’ said Dikon politely.
‘I’m staying here tonight, Mr Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if …’
‘Oh, yes. Perfectly splendid. Goodbye.’
He returned to his employer.
III
Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.
He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilisation. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.
‘My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,’ bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. ‘He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!’
Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.
Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent an hour before sunset. Sometimes one of his grandchildren, or an old crony of his own clan, would go up with him, but more often he sat there alone, lost, as it seemed, in a long perspective of recollections. The Claires, down at the Springs, would glance up and see him appearing larger than human against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-great-grandchildren.
This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hilltop, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hilltop.
‘Good evening, Mr Smith,’ said old Rua without turning his head.
‘G’day, Rua.’
The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.
‘Great doings down at the Springs,’ he said.
‘They seem to be busy,’ said Rua tranquilly.
‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.’
‘A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.’
‘He’s only an actor.’
‘Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.’
‘Then you know all about it, do you?’
‘I think so,’ said old Rua.
Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.
‘Questing’s at the back of it,’ he said. Rua stirred slightly. ‘He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!’ added Smith viciously. ‘By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.’
Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.
‘Look!’ Smith said. ‘He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.’
He lit the cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. ‘You don’t say much,’ he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. ‘Like a spot?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.’
‘Look, Rua,’ said Smith energetically. ‘I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?’
‘You are intimate with some of my people.’
‘Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.’ Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hilltop with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.
‘Questing’s got a great little game on,’ said Smith. ‘He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.’
Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.
‘My people are well contented,’ he said. ‘We are not Arawas. We go our own way.’
‘And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.’ Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key. He went on with an air of nervousness. ‘Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,’ he said.
Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.
‘That’s not so good, is it?’ said Smith.
‘My grandfather Rewi,’ Rua said, ‘was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.’
‘Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.’
‘The Peak is a native reserve.’
‘He reckons he could square that up all right.’
‘I am an old man,’ said Rua affably, ‘but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.’
‘Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.’
‘Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad pakeha Maori.’
‘Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.’
‘He will not find guides,’ Rua repeated.
‘Money talks, you know.’
‘So will the tapu of my grandfather’s toki-poutangata.’
Smith looked curiously at the old man. ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I am a rangitira. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr Smith,’ said Rua with a chuckle. ‘I know.’
‘You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much …’
Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. ‘Our people,’ Rua said, ‘stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth; your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their pakeha friends.’ Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. ‘There are pakeha laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky and too much beer,’ said Rua tranquilly, ‘but there are also pakehas who help them to break these laws. The pakehas teach our young maidens that they should be quiet girls and not have babies before they are married, but in my own hapu there is a small boy whom we call Hoani Smith, though in law he has no right to that name.’
‘Hell, Rua, that’s an old story,’ Smith muttered.
‘Let me tell you another old story. Many years ago, when I was a youth, a maiden of our hapu lost her way in the mists on Rangi’s Peak. In ignorance, intending no sacrilege, she came upon the place where my grandfather rests with his weapons, and, being hungry, ate a small piece of cooked food that she carried with her. In that place it was an act of horrible sacrilege. When the mists cleared, she discovered her crime and returned in terror to her people. She told her story, and was sent out to this hill while her case was discussed. At night she thought she would creep back, but she missed her way. She fell into Taupo-tapu, the boiling mud pool. Everybody in the village heard her scream. Next morning her dress was thrown up, rejected by the spirit of the pool. When your friend Mr Questing speaks of my grandfather’s toki, relate this story to him. Tell him the girl’s scream can still be heard sometimes at night. I am going home now,’ Rua added, and drew his blanket about him with precisely the same gesture that his grandfather had used to adjust his feather cloak. ‘Is it true, Mr Smith, that Mr Questing has said a great many times that when he takes over the Springs, you will lose your job?’
‘He can have it for mine,’ said Smith angrily. ‘That’ll do me all right. He doesn’t have to talk about the sack. When Questing’s the boss down there, I’m turning the job up.’ He dragged the whisky bottle from his pocket and fumbled with the cork.
‘And yet,’ Rua said, ‘it’s a very soft job. You are going to drink? I shall go home. Good evening.’
IV
Dikon Bell, marooned in the Claires’ private sitting-room, stared at faded photographs of regimental Anglo-Indians, at the backs of blameless novels, and at a framed poster of the Cotswolds in the spring. The poster was the work of a celebrated painter, and was at once gay, ordered, and delicate – a touching sequence of greens and blues. It made Dikon, the New Zealander, ache for England. By shifting his gaze slightly, he saw, framed in the sitting-room window, a landscape aloof from man. Its beauty was perfectly articulate yet utterly remote. Against his will he was moved by it as an unmusical listener may be profoundly disturbed by sound forms that he is unable to comprehend. He had travelled a great deal in his eight years’ absence from New Zealand and had seen places famous for their antiquities, but it seemed to him that the landscape he now watched through the Claires’ window was of an early age far more remote than any of these. It did not carry the scars of lost civilisation. Rather, it seemed to make nothing of time, for it was still primeval and its only stigmata were those of neolithic age. Dikon, who longed to be in London, recognised in himself an affinity with this indifferent and profound country, and resented its attraction.
He wondered what Gaunt would say to it. He was to return to his employer next day by bus and train, a long and fatiguing business. Gaunt had brought a car, and on the following day he, Dikon and Colly would set out for Wai-ata-tapu. They had made many such journeys in many countries. Always at the end there had been expensive hotels or flats and lavish attention – amenities that Gaunt accepted as necessities of existence. Dikon was gripped by a sensation of panic. He had been mad to urge this place with its air of amateurish incompetence, its appalling Mr Questing, its incredible Claires, whose air of breeding would seem merely to underline their complacency. A bush pub might have amused Gaunt; the Springs would bore him to exasperation.
A figure passed the window and stood in the doorway. It was Miss Claire. Dikon, whose job obliged him to observe such things, noticed that her cotton dress had been most misguidedly garnished with a neck bow of shiny ribbon, that her hair was precisely the wrong length, and that she used no make-up.
‘Mr Bell,’ said Barbara, ‘we were wondering if you’d advise us about Mr Gaunt’s rooms. Where to put things. I’m afraid you’ll find us very primitive.’ She laid tremendous stress on odd syllables and words, and as she did so turned up her eyes in a deprecating manner and pulled down the corners of her mouth like a lugubrious clown.
‘Comedy stuff,’ thought Dikon. ‘Alas, alas, she means to be funny.’ He said that he would be delighted to see the rooms, and, nervously fingering his tie, followed her along the verandah.
The wing at the east end of the house, corresponding with the Claires’ private rooms at the west end, had been turned into a sort of flat for Gaunt, Dikon and Colly. It consisted of four rooms: two small bedrooms, one tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger bedroom which had been converted into Mr Questing’s idea of a celebrity study. In this apartment were assembled two chromium-steel chairs, one large armchair, and a streamlined desk, all of rather bad design, and with the dealer’s tabs still attached to them. The floor was newly carpeted, and the windows in process of being freshly curtained by Mrs Claire. Mr Questing, wearing a cigar as if it were a sort of badge of office, lolled carelessly in the armchair. On Dikon’s entrance he sprang to his feet.
‘Well, well, well,’ cried Mr Questing gaily, ‘how’s the young gentleman?’
‘Quite well, thank you,’ said Dikon, who had spent the greater part of the day motoring with Mr Questing, and had become reconciled to these constant inquiries.
‘Is this service,’ Mr Questing went on, waving his cigar at the room, ‘or is it? Forty-eight hours ago I hadn’t the pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr Bell. After our little chat yesterday, I felt so optimistic I just had to get out and get going. I went to the finest furnishing firm in Auckland, and I told the manager, I told him: “Look,” I told him. “I’ll take this stuff, if you can get it to Wai-ata-tapu, Harpoon, by tomorrow afternoon. And if not, not.” That’s the way I like to do things, Mr Bell.’
‘I hope you have explained that even now Gaunt may not decide to come,’ said Dikon. ‘You have all taken a great deal of trouble, Mrs Claire.’
Mrs Claire looked doubtfully from Questing to Dikon. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said plaintively, ‘that I don’t really quite appreciate very up-to-date furniture. I always think a home-like atmosphere, no matter how shabby … However.’
Questing cut in, and Dikon only half listened to another dissertation on the necessity of moving with the times. He was jerked into full awareness when Questing, with an air of familiarity, addressed himself to Barbara. ‘And what’s Babs got to say about it?’ he asked, lowering his voice to a rich and offensive purr. Dikon saw her step backwards. It was an instinctive movement, he thought, uncontrollable as a reflex jerk, but less ungainly than her usual habit. Its effect on Dikon was as simple and as automatic as itself; he felt a stab of sympathy and a protective impulse. She was no longer regrettable; she was, for a moment, rather touching. Surprised, and a little disturbed, he looked away from Barbara to Mrs Claire, and saw that her plump hands were clenched among sharp folds of the shining chintz. He felt that a little scene of climax had been enacted. It was disturbed by the appearance of another figure. Limping steps sounded on the verandah, and the doorway was darkened. A stocky man, elderly but still red-headed and extremely handsome in an angry sort of way, stood glaring at Questing.
‘Oh, James,’ Mrs Claire murmured, ‘there you are, old man. You haven’t met Mr Bell. My brother, Dr Ackrington.’
As they shook hands, Dikon saw that Barbara had moved close to her uncle.
‘Have a good run up?’ asked Dr Ackrington, throwing a needle-sharp glance at Dikon. ‘Ever see anything more disgraceful than the roads? I’ve been fishing.’
Startled by this non sequitur, Dikon murmured politely: ‘Indeed?’
‘If you can call it fishing. Hope you and Gaunt aren’t counting on catching any trout. What with native reserves and the damned infamous behaviour of white poaching cads, there’s not a fish to be had in twenty miles.’
‘Now, now, now, Doctor,’ said Questing in a great hurry. ‘We can’t let you get away with that. Why, the greatest little trout streams in New Zealand …’
‘D’you enjoy being called “Mister”?’ Dr Ackrington demanded, so loudly that Dikon gave a nervous jump. Questing said uneasily: ‘Not much.’
‘Then don’t call me “Doctor”,’ commanded Dr Ackrington. Questing laughed uproariously. ‘That’s just too bad,’ he said.
Dr Ackrington looked round the room. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘what are you doing with the place?’
‘Mr Questing,’ began Mrs Claire, ‘has very kindly …’
‘I might have recognised the authentic touch,’ said her brother, turning his back on the room. ‘Staying here tonight are you, Bell? I’d like a word with you. Come along to my room when you’ve a moment.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon.
Dr Ackrington looked through the doorway. ‘The star boarder,’ he said, ‘is returning in his usual condition. Mr Bell is to be treated to a comprehensive view of our amenities.’
They all looked through the doorway. Dikon saw a shambling figure cross the pumice sweep and approach the verandah.
‘Oh dear!’ said Mrs Claire. ‘I’m afraid … James, dear, could you …? ’
Dr Ackrington limped out to the verandah. The newcomer saw, stumbled to a halt, and dragged a bottle from the pocket of his raincoat.
To Dikon, watching through the window, the intrusion of a drunken white figure into the native landscape was at once preposterous and rather pathetic. A clear light, reflected from the pumice track, rimmed the folds of his shabby garments. He stood there, drooping and lonely, and turned the whisky bottle in his hand, staring at it as if it were the focal point for some fuddled meditation. Presently he raised his head and looked at Dr Ackrington.
‘Well, Smith,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘You’re a sport, Doc,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a couple of snifters left. Come on and have one.’
‘You’ll do better to keep it,’ said Dr Ackrington quite mildly.
Smith peered beyond him into the room. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward to the verandah. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ said Questing importantly, and strode out to meet him. They confronted each other. Questing, planted squarely on the verandah edge, made much of his cigar; Smith clung to the post and stared up at him.
‘You clear out of this, Smith,’ said Questing.
‘You get to hell yourself,’ said Smith distinctly. He looked past Questing to the group in the doorway, and very solemnly took off his hat. ‘Present company excepted,’ he added.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Is that the visitor?’ Smith asked loudly, and pointed at Dikon. ‘Is that the reason why we’re all sweating our guts up? That? Let’s have a better look at it. Gawd, what a sissy.’
Dikon wondered confusedly which of the party felt most embarrassed. Dr Ackrington made a loud barking noise, Barbara broke into agonised laughter, Mrs Claire rushed into a spate of apologies, Dikon himself attempted to suggest by gay inquiring glances that he had not understood the tenor of Smith’s remarks. He might have spared himself the trouble. Smith made a plunge at the verandah step shouting: ‘Look at the little bastard.’ Questing attempted to stop him, and the scene mounted in a rapid crescendo. Dikon, Mrs Claire and Barbara remained in the room, Dr Ackrington on the verandah appeared to hold a watching brief, while Questing and Smith yelled industriously in each other’s faces. The climax came when Questing again attempted to shove Smith away from the verandah. Smith drove his fist in Questing’s face and lost his balance. They fell simultaneously.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An inexplicable and ridiculous affair changed abruptly into a piece of convincing melodrama. Dikon had seen many such a set-up at the cinema studios. Smith, shaky and bloated, crouched where he had fallen and mouthed at Questing. Questing got to his feet and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief. His cigar lay smoking on the ground between them. It was a shot in Technicolor, for Rangi’s Peak was now tinctured with such a violence of purple as is seldom seen outside the theatre, and in the middle distance rose the steam of the hot pools.
Dikon waited for a bit of rough dialogue to develop and was not disappointed.
‘By God,’ Questing said, exploring his jaw, ‘you’ll get yours for this. You’re sacked.’
‘You’re not my bloody boss.’
‘I’ll bloody well get you the sack, don’t you worry. When I’m in charge here …’
‘That will do,’ said Dr Ackrington crisply.
‘What is all this?’ a peevish voice demanded. Colonel Claire, followed by Simon, appeared round the wing of the house. Smith got to his feet.
‘You’ll have to get rid of this man, Colonel,’ said Questing.
‘What’s he done?’ Simon demanded.
‘I socked him.’ Smith took Simon by the lapels of his coat. ‘You look out for yourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s not only me he’s after. Your dad won’t sack me, will he, Sim?’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Questing said.
‘But why …’ Colonel Claire began, and was cut short by his brother-in-law.
‘If I may interrupt for a moment,’ said Dr Ackrington acidly, ‘I suggest that I take Mr Bell to my room. Unless, of course, he prefers a ring-side seat. Will you come and have a drink, Bell?’
Dikon thankfully accepted, leaving the room in a gale of apologies from Mrs Claire and Barbara. Questing, who seemed to have recovered his temper, followed them up with a speech in which anxiety, propitiation and a kind of fawning urgency were most disagreeably mingled. He was cut short by Dr Ackrington.
‘Possibly,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘Mr Bell may prefer to form his own opinion of this episode. No doubt he has seen a chronic alcoholic before now, and will not attach much significance to anything this particular specimen may choose to say.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course,’ Dikon murmured unhappily.
‘As for the behaviour of Other Persons,’ Dr Ackrington continued, ‘there again, he may, as I do, form his own opinion. Come along, Bell.’
Dikon followed him along the verandah to his own room, a grimly neat apartment with a hideous desk.
‘Sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington. He wrenched open the door of a home-made cupboard, and took out a bottle and two tumblers. ‘I can only offer you whisky,’ he said. ‘With Smith’s horrible example before you, you may not like the idea. Afraid I don’t go in for modern rot-gut.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dikon, ‘I should like whisky. May I ask who he is?’
‘Smith? He’s a misfit, a hopeless fellow. No good in him at all. Drifted out here as a boy. Agnes, my sister, who is something of a snob, talks loosely about him being a public-school man. Her geese are invariably swans, but I suppose this suggestion is within the bounds of possibility. Smith may have originated in some ill-conducted establishment of dubious gentility. Sometimes their early habits of speech go down the wind with their self-respect. Sometimes they keep it up even in the gutter. They used to be called remittance men, and in this extraordinary country received a good deal of entirely misguided sympathy from native-born fools. That suit you?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon, taking his drink.
‘My sister chooses to regard him as a sort of invalid. Some instinct must have led him ten years ago to the Spring. It has proved to be an ideal battening ground. They give him his keep and a wage, in exchange for idling about the place with an axe in his hand and a bottle in his pocket. When his cheque comes from home he drinks himself silly, and my sister Agnes gives him beef tea and prays for him. He’s a complete waster but he won’t trouble you, I fancy. I confess that this evening I was almost in sympathy with him. He did what I have longed to do for the past three months.’ Dikon glanced up quickly. ‘He drove his fist into Questing’s face,’ Dr Ackrington explained. ‘Here’s luck to you,’ he added. They drank to each other.
‘Well,’ said Dr Ackrington after a pause, ‘you will doubtless lose no time in returning to Auckland and telling your principal to avoid this place like the devil.’
As this pretty well described Dikon’s intention he could think of nothing to say, and made a polite murmuring.
‘If it is of any interest, you may as well know you have seen it at its worst. Smith is not always drunk and Questing is not always with us.’
‘Not? But I thought …’
‘He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However.’
Dr Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.
‘Since we have mentioned him,’ Dikon began nervously, ‘I confess I’m in a state of some confusion about Mr Questing. May I ask if he is actually the – if Wai-ata-tapu Springs is his property?’
‘No,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘I only ask,’ Dikon continued in a hurry, ‘because you see I was approached in the first instance by Mr Questing. Although I’ve warned him that Gaunt may decide against the Springs, he has been at extraordinary pains and really very considerable expense to – to alter existing arrangements and so on. And I mean – well, Dr Forster’s note suggested that it was to Colonel and Mrs Claire that we should apply.’
‘So it is.’
‘I see. But – Questing?’
‘If you decide against the Springs,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘you should convey your decision to my sister.’
‘But,’ Dikon repeated obstinately, ‘Questing?’
‘Ignore him.’
‘Oh.’
Steps sounded outside the window, and voices: Smith’s voice slurred but vicious; Colonel Claire’s high-pitched, perhaps a little hysterical; and Questing’s the voice of a bully. As they came nearer, odd sentences separated out from the general rumpus.
‘… if the Colonel’s satisfied – it’s not a fair pop.’
‘… never mind that. You’ve been asking for it and you’ll get it.’
‘… sack me and see what you get, you –’
‘… most disgraceful scene – force my hand …’
‘… kick you out tomorrow.’
‘This is too much,’ Colonel Claire cried out. ‘I’ve stood a great deal, Questing, but I must remind you that I still have some authority here.’
‘Is that so? Where do you get it from? You’d better watch your step, Claire.’
‘By God,’ Smith roared out suddenly, ‘you’d better watch yours.’
Dr Ackrington opened the door and stood on the threshold. Complete silence followed this move. Through the open door came a particularly strong wave of sulphurous air.
‘I suggest, Edward,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘that you continue your conversation in the laundry. Mr Bell has no doubt formed the opinion that we do not possess one.’
He shut the door. ‘Let me give you another drink,’ he said courteously.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_dc6e95fc-7dac-59a0-b10f-049667302b3e)
Gaunt at the Springs (#ulink_dc6e95fc-7dac-59a0-b10f-049667302b3e)
‘Five days ago,’ said Gaunt, ‘you dangled this place before me like some atrocious bait. Now you do nothing but bemoan its miseries. You are strangely inconsistent.’
‘In the interval,’ said Dikon, wrenching the car out of a pot hole, and changing down, ‘I have seen the place. I implore you to remember, sir, that you have been warned.’
‘You overdid it. You painted it in macabre colours. My curiosity was stimulated. For pity’s sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat track possibly be the main road?’
‘It’s the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know, and these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South.’
‘I’m afraid you’re a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand. There’s a most unpleasant smell about this place.’
‘It’s the thermal smell. People are said to get to like it.’
‘Nonsense. How are you travelling, Colly?’
Fenced in by luggage in the back seat, Colly replied that he kept his eyes closed at the curves. ‘I didn’t seem to notice it so much this morning in them forests,’ he added. ‘It’s dynamite in the open.’
The road corkscrewed its way in and out of a gully and along a barren stretch of downland. On its left the coast ran freely northwards in a chain of scrolls, last interruptions in its firm line before it tightened into the Ninety Mile Beach. The thunder of the Tasman Sea hung like a vast rumour on the freshening air, and above the margin of the downs Rangi’s Peak was slowly erected.
‘That’s an ominous-looking affair,’ said Gaunt. ‘What is it about these hills that gives them an air of the fabulous? They are not so very odd in shape, not incredible like the Dolomites or imposing like the Rockies – not, as you point out in your superior way, Dikon, really mountains at all. Yet they seem to be pregnant with some tiresome secret. What is it?’
‘Perhaps it’s something to do with the volcanic silhouette. If there’s a secret the answer’s in the Maori language. I’m afraid you’ll get very tired of that cone, sir. It looks over the hills round the Springs.’ Dikon waited for a moment. Gaunt had a trick of showing a fugitive interest in places, of asking for expositions, and of growing restless when they were given to him.
‘Why is the answer in Maori?’ he said.
‘It was a native burial ground in the old days. They tipped the bodies into the crater. It’s extinct, you know. Supposed to be full of them.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Gaunt softly.
The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. ‘You can see quite clearly,’ Dikon said, ‘the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.’
‘Gawd!’ said Colly.
‘Can you look into the crater and see …?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu, of course.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.’
‘How far away is it?’
‘About eight miles.’
‘It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.’
‘Kind of black, sir, isn’t it?’ said Colly.
‘Black and clear,’ said Gaunt. ‘A marvellous backdrop.’ They drove on in silence for some time. The flowing hills moved slowly about as if in a contrapuntal measure determined by the progress of the car. Dikon began to recognise landmarks. He felt extremely apprehensive.
‘Hullo,’ said Gaunt. ‘What’s that affair down on the right? A sort of doss-house, one would think.’
Dikon said nothing, but turned in at a ramshackle gate.
‘You don’t dare to tell me that we have arrived,’ Gaunt demanded in a loud voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘My God, Dikon, you’ll writhe for this. Look at it. Smell it. Colly, we are betrayed.’
‘Mr Bell warned you, sir,’ Colly said. ‘I daresay it’s very comfortable.’
‘If anything,’ said Dikon, ‘it’s less comfortable than it looks. Those are the Springs.’
‘Those reeking puddles?’
‘Yes. And there, on the verandah, I see the Claires assembled. You are expected, sir,’ said Dikon. Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Gaunt’s gloved fingers go first to his tie and then to his hat. He thought suddenly: ‘He looks terribly like a famous actor.’
The car rocked down the last stretch of the drive and shot across the pumice sweep. Dikon pulled up at the verandah steps. He got out, and taking off his hat approached the expectant Claires. He felt nervous and absurd. The Claires were grouped after the manner of an Edwardian family portrait that had taken an eccentric turn. Mrs Claire and the Colonel were in deck chairs, Barbara sat on the steps grasping a reluctant dog. Dikon guessed that they wore their best clothes. Simon, obviously under duress, stood behind his mother’s chair looking murderous. All that was lacking, one felt, was the native equivalent of a gillie holding a couple of staghounds in leash. As Dikon approached, Dr Ackrington came out of his room.
‘Here we are, you see,’ Dikon called out with an effort at gaiety. The Claires had risen. Impelled by confusion, doubt and apology, Dikon shook hands blindly all round. Barbara looked nervously over his shoulder and he saw with a dismay which he afterwards recognised as prophetic that she had gone white to her unpainted lips.
He felt Gaunt’s hand on his arm and hurriedly introduced him.
Mrs Claire brought poise to the situation, Dikon realised, but it was the kind of poise with which Gaunt was quite unfamiliar. She might have been welcoming a bishop-suffragan to a slum parish, a bishop-suffragan in poor health.
‘Such a long journey,’ she said anxiously. ‘You must be so tired.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Gaunt, who had arrived at an age when actors affect a certain air of youthful hardihood.
‘But it’s such a dreadful road. And you look very tired,’ she persisted gently. Dikon saw Gaunt’s smile grow formal. He turned to Barbara. For some reason which he had not attempted to analyse, Dikon wanted Gaunt to like Barbara. It was with apprehension that he watched her give a galvanic jerk, open her eyes very wide, and put her head on one side like a chidden puppy. ‘Oh, hell,’ he thought, ‘she’s going to be funny.’
‘Welcome,’ Barbara said in her sepulchral voice, ‘to the humble abode.’ Gaunt dropped her hand rather quickly.
‘Find us very quiet, I’m afraid,’ Colonel Claire said, looking quickly at Gaunt and away again. ‘Not much in your line, this country, what?’
‘But we’ve just been remarking,’ Gaunt said lightly, ‘that your landscape reeks of theatre.’ He waved his stick at Rangi’s Peak. ‘One expects to hear the orchestra.’ Colonel Claire looked baffled and slightly offended.
‘My brother,’ Mrs Claire murmured. Dr Ackrington limped forward. Dikon’s attention was distracted from this last encounter by the behaviour of Simon Claire, who suddenly lurched out of cover, strode down the steps and seized the astounded Colly by the hand. Colly, who was about to unload the car, edged behind it.
‘How are you?’ Simon said loudly. ‘Give you a hand with that stuff.’
‘That’s all right, thank you, sir.’
‘Come on,’ Simon insisted and laid violent hands on a pigskin dressing case which he lugged from the car and dumped none too gently on the pumice. Colly gave a little cry of dismay.
‘Here, here, here!’ a loud voice expostulated. Mr Questing thundered out of the house and down the steps. ‘Cut that out, young fellow,’ he ordered and shouldered Simon away from the car.
‘Why?’ Simon demanded.
‘That’s no way to treat high-class stuff,’ bustled Mr Questing with an air of intolerable patronage. ‘You’ll have to learn better than that. Handle it carefully.’ He advanced upon Dikon. ‘We’re willing,’ he laughed, ‘but we’ve a lot to learn. Well, well, well, how’s the young gentleman?’
He removed his hat and placed himself before Gaunt. His change of manner was amazingly abrupt. He might have been a lightning impersonator or a marionette controlled by some pundit of second-rate etiquette. Suddenly, he oozed deference. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I have had the honour –’
‘Mr Questing,’ said Dikon.
‘This is a great day for the Springs, sir,’ said Mr Questing. ‘A great day.’
‘Thank you,’ said Gaunt, glancing at him. ‘If I may I should like to see my rooms.’
He turned to Mrs Claire. ‘Dikon tells me you have taken an enormous amount of trouble on my behalf. It’s very kind indeed. Thank you so much.’ And Dikon saw that with this one speech, delivered with Gaunt’s famous air of gay sincerity, he had captivated Mrs Claire. She beamed at him. ‘I shall try not to be troublesome,’ Gaunt added. And to Mr Questing: ‘Right.’
They went in procession along the verandah. Mr Questing, still uncovered, led the way.
II
Barbara sat on the edge of her stretcher bed in her small hot room and looked at two dresses. Which should she wear for dinner on the first night? Neither of them was new. The red lace had been sent out two years ago by her youngest aunt who had worn it a good deal in India. Barbara had altered it to fit herself and something had gone wrong with the shoulders, so that it bulged where it should lie flat. To cover this defect she had attached a black flower to the neck. It was a long dress and she did not as a rule change for dinner. Simon might make some frightful comment if she wore the red lace. The alternative was a short floral affair, thick blue colour with a messy yellow design. She had furbished it up with a devilish shell ornament and a satin belt and even poor Barbara wondered if it was a success. Knowing that she should be in the kitchen with Huia, she pulled off her print, dragged the red lace over her head and looked at herself in the inadequate glass. No, it would never become her dress, it would always hark back to unknown Aunty Wynne who two years ago had written: ‘Am sending a box of odds and ends for Ba. Hope she can wear red.’ But could she? Could she plunge about in the full light of day in this ownerless waif of a garment with everybody knowing she had dressed herself up? She peered at her face, which was slightly distorted by the glass. Suddenly she hauled the dress over her head, fighting with the stuffy-smelling lace. ‘Barbara,’ her mother called. ‘Where are you? Ba!’ ‘Coming!’ Well, it would have to be the floral.
But when, hot and desperate, she had finally dressed, and covered the floral with a clean overall, she pressed her hands together. ‘Oh God,’ she thought, ‘make him like it here! Please dear God, make him like it.’
III
‘Can you possibly endure it?’ Dikon asked.
Gaunt was lying full length on the modern sofa. He raised his arms above his head. ‘All,’ he whispered, ‘I can endure all but Questing. Questing must be kept from me.’
‘But I told you –’
‘You amaze me with your shameless parrot cry of “I told you so”,’ said Gaunt mildly. ‘Let us have no more of it.’ He looked out of the corner of his eye at Dikon. ‘And don’t look so tragic, my good ass,’ he added. ‘I’ve been a small-part touring actor in my day. This place is strangely reminiscent of a one-night fit-up. No doubt I can endure it. I should be dossing down in an Anderson shelter, by God. I do well to complain. Only spare me Questing, and I shall endure the rest.’
‘At least we shall be spared his conversation this evening. He has a previous engagement. Lest he offer to put it off, I told him you would be desolated but had already arranged to dine in your rooms and go to bed at nine. So away he went.’
‘Good. In that case I shall dine en famille and go to bed when it amuses me. I have yet to meet Mr Smith, remember. Is it too much to hope that he will stage another fight?’
‘It seems he only gets drunk when his remittance comes in.’ Dikon hesitated and then asked: ‘What did you think of the Claires, sir?’
‘Marvellous character parts. Overstated, of course. Not quite West End. A number-one production on tour, shall we say? The Colonel’s moustache is a little too thick in both senses.’
Dikon felt vaguely resentful. ‘You captivated Mrs Claire,’ he said.
Gaunt ignored this. ‘If one could take them as they are,’ he said. ‘If one could persuade them to appear in those clothes and speak those lines! My dear, they’d be a riot. Miss Claire! Dikon, I didn’t believe she existed.’
‘Actually,’ said Dikon stiffly, ‘she’s rather attractive. If you look beyond her clothes.’
‘You’re a remarkably swift worker if you’ve been able to do that.’
‘They’re extraordinarily kind and, I think, very nice.’
‘Until we arrived you never ceased to exclaim against them. Why have you bounced round to their side all of a sudden?’
‘I only said, sir, that I thought you would be bored by them.’
‘On the contrary I’m agreeably entertained. I think they’re all darlings and marvellous comedy. What is your trouble?’
‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I’ve just discovered that I like them. I thought,’ said Dikon, smiling a little in spite of himself, ‘that the tableau on the verandah was terribly sad. I wonder how long they’d been grouped up like that.’
‘For ages, I should think. The dog was plainly exasperated and young Claire looked lethal.’
‘It is rather touching,’ said Dikon and turned away.
Mrs Claire and Barbara, wearing their garden hats and carrying trowels, went past the window on tiptoe, their faces solemn and absorbed. When they had gone a little way Dikon heard them whispering together.
‘In heaven’s name,’ cried Gaunt, ‘why do they stalk about their own premises like that? What are they plotting?’
‘It’s because I explained that you liked to relax before dinner. They don’t want to disturb you. I fancy their vegetable garden is round the corner.’
After a pause Gaunt said: ‘It will end in my feeling insecure and ashamed. Nothing arouses one’s self-abasement more than the earnest amateur. How long have they had this place?’
‘About twelve years, I think. Perhaps longer.’
‘Twelve years and they are still amateurs!’
‘They try so terribly hard,’ Dikon said. He wandered out on to the verandah. Someone was walking slowly round the warm lake towards the springs.
‘Hullo,’ Dikon said. ‘We’ve a caller.’
‘What do you mean? Be very careful, now. I’ll see no one, remember.’
‘I don’t think it’s for us, sir,’ Dikon said. ‘It’s a Maori.’
It was Rua. He wore the suit he bought in 1936 to welcome the Duke of Gloucester. He walked slowly across the pumice to the house, tapped twice with his stick on the central verandah post and waited tranquilly for someone to take notice of him. Presently Huia came out and gave a suppressed giggle on seeing her great-grandfather. He addressed her in Maori with an air of austerity and she went back into the house. Rua sat on the edge of the verandah and rested his chin on his stick.
‘Do you know, sir,’ said Dikon, ‘I believe it might be for us, after all? I’ve recognised the old gentleman.’
‘I won’t see anybody,’ said Gaunt. ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a Maori version of the Last of the Barons. Rua Te Kahu, sometime journalist and MP for the district. I’ll swear he’s called to pay his respects.’
‘You must see him for me. We did bring some pictures, I suppose?’
‘I don’t think,’ Dikon said, ‘that the Last of the Barons will be waiting for signed photographs.’
‘You’re determined to snub me,’ said Gaunt amiably. ‘If it’s an interview, you’ll talk to him, won’t you?’
Colonel Claire came out of the house, shook hands with Rua and led him off in the direction of their own quarters.
‘It’s not for us after all, sir.’
‘Thank heavens for that,’ Gaunt said but he looked a little huffy nevertheless.
In Colonel Claire’s study, a room about the size of a small pantry and rather less comfortable, Rua unfolded the purpose of his call. Dim photographs of polo teams glared down menacingly from the walls. Rua’s dark eyes rested for a moment on a group of turbaned Sikhs before he turned to address himself gravely to the Colonel.
‘I have brought,’ he said, ‘a greeting from my hapu to your distinguished guest, Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. The Maori people of Wai-ata-tapu are glad that he has come here and would like to greet him with a cordial Haere mai.’
‘Oh, thanks very much, Rua,’ said the Colonel. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘We have heard that he wishes to be quiet. If however he would care to hear a little singing, we hope that he will do us the honour to come to a concert on Saturday week in the evening. I bring this invitation from my hapu to your guests and your family, Colonel.’
Colonel Claire raised his eyebrows, opened his eyes and mouth, and glared at his visitor. He was not particularly surprised, but merely wore his habitual expression for absorbing new ideas.
‘Eh?’ he said at last. ‘Did you say a concert? Extraordinarily nice of you, Rua, I must say. A concert.’
‘If Mr Gaunt would care to come.’
Colonel Claire gave a galvanic start. ‘Care to?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. We should have to ask him, what? Sound the secretary.’
Rua gave a little bow. ‘Certainly,’ he said.
Colonel Claire rose abruptly and thrust his head out of the window. ‘James!’ he yelled. ‘Here!’
‘What for?’ said Dr Ackrington’s voice at some distance.
‘I want you. It’s my brother-in-law,’ he explained more quietly to Rua. ‘We’ll see what he thinks, um?’ He went out to the verandah and shouted, ‘Agnes!’
‘Hoo-oo?’ replied Mrs Claire from inside the house.
‘Here.’
‘In a minute, dear.’
‘Barbara!’
‘Wait a bit, Daddy. I can’t.’
‘Here.’
Having summoned his family, Colonel Claire sank into an armchair, and glancing at Rua gave a rather aimless laugh. His eye happened to fall upon a Wild West novel that he had been reading. He was a greedy consumer of thrillers, and the sight of this one lying open and close at hand affected him as an open box of chocolate affects a child. He smiled at Rua and offered him a cigarette. Rua thanked him and took one, holding it cautiously between the tips of his fingers and thumb. Colonel Claire looked out of the corners of his eyes at his thriller. He was long-sighted.
‘There was another matter about which I hoped to speak,’ Rua said.
‘Oh yes?’ said Colonel Claire. ‘D’you read much?’
‘My eyesight is not as good as it once was, but I can still manage clear print.’
‘Awful rot, some of these yarns,’ Colonel Claire continued, casually picking up his novel. ‘This thing I’ve been dipping into, now. Blood-and-thunder stuff. Ridiculous.’
‘I am a little troubled in my mind. Disturbing rumours have reached me …’
‘Oh?’ Colonel Claire, still with an air of absent-mindedness, flipped over a page.
‘… about proposals that have been made in regard to native reserves. You have been a good friend to our people, Colonel …’
‘Not at all,’ Colonel Claire murmured abstractedly, and felt for his reading glasses. ‘Always very pleased …’ He found his spectacles, put them on and, still casually, laid the book on his knee.
‘Since you have been at Wai-ata-tapu, there have been friendly relations between your family and my hapu. We should not care to see anyone else here.’
‘Very nice of you.’ Colonel Claire was now frankly reading, but he continued to wear a social smile. He contrived to suggest that he merely looked at the book because after all one must look at something. Old Rua’s magnificent voice rolled on. The Maori people are never in a hurry, and in his almost forgotten generation a gentleman led up to the true matter of an official call through a series of polite approaches. Rua’s approval of his host was based on an event twelve years old. The Claires arrived at Wai-ata-tapu during a particularly virulent epidemic of influenza. Over at Rua’s village there were many deaths. The Harpoon health authorities, led by the irate and overworked Dr Tonks, had fallen foul of the Maori people in matters of hygiene, and a dangerous deadlock had been reached. Rua, who normally exercised an iron authority, was himself too ill to control his hapu. Funeral ceremonies lasting for days, punctuated with long-drawn-out wails of greeting and lamentation, songs of death and interminable after-burial feasts maintained native conditions in a community lashed by a European scourge. Rua’s people became frightened, truculent and obstructive, and the health authorities could do nothing. Upon this scene came the Claires. Mrs Claire instantly translated the whole affair into terms of an English village, offered their newly built house as an emergency hospital and herself undertook the nursing, with Rua as her first patient. Colonel Claire, whose absence of mind had inoculated him against the arrogance of Anglo-Indianism, and who by his very simplicity had fluked his way into a sort of understanding of native peoples, paid a visit to the settlement, arranged matters with Rua, and was accepted by the Maori people as a rangitira, a person of breeding. He and his wife professed neither extreme liking nor antipathy for the Maori people, who nevertheless found something recognisable and admirable in both of them. The war had brought them closer together. The Colonel commanded the local Home Guard and had brought many of Rua’s older men into his division. Rua considered that he owed his life to his pakeha friends, and, though he thought them funny, loved them. It did not offend him, therefore, when Colonel Claire furtively read a novel under his very nose. He rumbled on magnificently with his story, in amiable competition with Texas Rangers and six-shooter blondes.
‘… there has been enough trouble in the past. The Peak is a native reserve and we do not care for trespassers. He has been seen by a certain rascal coming down the western flank with a sack on his shoulders. At first he was friendly with this no-good young fellow, Eru Saul, who is a bad pakeha and a bad Maori. Now they have quarrelled and their quarrel concerns my great-granddaughter Huia, who is a foolish girl but much too good for either of them. And Eru tells my grandson Rangi, and my grandson tells me, that Mr Questing is behaving dishonestly on the Peak. Because he is your guest we have said nothing, but now I find him talking to some silly young fellows amongst our people and putting a lot of bad ideas into their heads. Now that makes me very angry,’ said Rua, and his eyes flashed. ‘I do not like my young people to be taught to cheapen the culture of their race. It has been bad enough with Mr Herbert Smith, who buys whisky for them and teaches them to make pigs of themselves. He is no good. But even he comes to me to warn me of this Questing.’
The Colonel’s novel dropped with a loud slap. His eyebrows climbed his forehead, his eyes and mouth opened. He turned pale.
‘Hey?’ he said. ‘Questing? What about Questing?’
‘You have not been listening, Colonel,’ said Rua, rather crossly.
‘Yes, I have, only I didn’t catch everything. I’m getting deaf.’
‘I am sorry. I have been telling you that Mr Questing has been looking for curios on the Peak and boasting that in a little while Wai-ata-tapu will be his property. I have to come to ask you in confidence if this is true.’
‘What’s all this about Questing?’ demanded Dr Ackrington, appearing at the doorway in his dressing-gown. ‘’Evening, Rua. How are you?’
‘It began by being about Gaunt and a concert party,’ said the Colonel unhappily. ‘It’s only just turned into something in confidence about Questing.’
‘Well, if it’s in confidence, why the devil did you call me? There seems to be conspiracy in this house to deny my sciatica thermal treatment.’
‘I wanted to ask you if you thought Gaunt would like to go to a concert. Rua’s people have very kindly offered …’
‘How the devil do I know? Ask young Bell. Very nice of you, Rua, I must say.’
‘And then Rua began to talk about Questing and the Peak.’
‘Why don’t you call him Quisling and be done with it?’ Dr Ackrington demanded loudly. ‘It’s what he is, by God.’
‘James! I really must insist – You have no shred of evidence.’
‘Haven’t I? Haven’t I? Very well. Wait and see.’
Rua stood up. ‘If it is not troubling you too much,’ he said, ‘perhaps you would ask Mr Gaunt’s secretary …?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Colonel agreed hurriedly. ‘Of course. Wait a minute, will you?’
He stumbled out of the room, and they heard him thump along the verandah towards Geoffrey Gaunt’s quarters.
Rua’s old eyes were very bright and cunning as he looked at Dr Ackrington, but he did not speak.
‘So he’s been trespassing, has he?’ asked Dr Ackrington venomously. ‘I could have told you that when the Hippolyte was torpedoed.’
Rua made a brusque movement with his wrinkled hands but still he did not speak.
‘He does it by night sometimes, doesn’t he?’ Dr Ackrington went on. ‘Doesn’t he go up by night, with a flash lamp? Good God, my dear fellow, I’ve seen it myself. Curios be damned.’
‘Somehow,’ Rua said mildly, ‘I have never been able to enjoy spy stories. They always seem to me to be incredible.’
‘Indeed!’ Dr Ackrington rejoined acidly. ‘So this country, alone in the English-speaking world, stands immune from the activities of enemy agents. And why, pray? Do you think the enemy is frightened of us? Amazing complacency!’
‘But he has been seen digging.’
‘Do you imagine he would be seen semaphoring? Of course he digs. No doubt he robs your ancestors’ graves. No doubt he will have some infamous booty to exhibit when he is brought to book.’
Rua pinched his lower lip and became very solemn. ‘I have felt many regrets,’ he said, ‘for the old age which compelled me to watch my grandsons and great-grandsons set out to war without me. But if you are right, there is still work in Ao-tea-roa for an old warrior.’ He chuckled, and Dr Ackrington looked apprehensively at him.
‘I have been indiscreet,’ he said. ‘Keep this under your hat, Rua. A word too soon and we shan’t get him. I may tell you I have taken steps. But, see here. There’s a certain amount of cover on the Peak. If your young people haven’t altogether lost the art of their forebears –’
‘We must arrange something,’ said Rua composedly. ‘Yes. No doubt something can be arranged.’
‘What is it, dear?’ said Mrs Claire, appearing abruptly in the doorway. ‘Oh! Oh, I thought Edward called me, James. Good evening, Rua.’
‘I did call you about half an hour ago,’ said her husband crossly from behind her back, ‘but it’s all over now. Old Rua was here with some – oh, you’re still there, Rua. Mr Gaunt’s secretary says they’ll be delighted.’
Barbara came running distractedly from the kitchen. She and her parents formed up in a sort of queue outside the door.
‘What is it, Daddy?’ she asked. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nobody wants anything,’ shouted her father angrily. ‘Everybody’s delighted. Why do you all come running at me?’
‘My people will be very pleased,’ said Rua. ‘I shall go now and tell them. I wish you all good evening.’
As he walked along the verandah his great-granddaughter, Huia, flew out and excitedly rang the dinner bell in his face. He gave her a good-natured buffet and struck for home. Dikon, looking startled, came out on the verandah followed by Gaunt. Huia, over-stimulated by her first view of the celebrity, flashed her eyes, laughed excitedly and continued to peal her bell until Barbara took it away from her.
‘I think that must be dinner,’ said Mrs Claire with a bright assumption of surprise, while their ears still rang with the din. She turned with poise towards Gaunt. ‘Shall we go in?’ she asked gently, and they formed up into a kind of procession, trailing after each other towards the dining-room door. At the last moment Simon appeared, as usual from the direction of the cabins, where he had a sort of workshop.
But the first night’s dinner was not to go forward without the intrusion of that particular form of grotesque irrelevance which Dikon was learning to associate with the Claires, for, as Gaunt and Mrs Claire approached the front door, a terrific rumpus broke out in the kitchen.
‘Where’s the Colonel?’ an agitated voice demanded. ‘I’ve got to see the Colonel.’
Smith, dishevelled and with threads of blood crossing his face, blundered through the dining-room from the kitchen, thrust Gaunt and Mrs Claire aside, and seized the Colonel by his coat lapels. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to look after me. He tried to kill me.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8f6e03d6-fa38-5600-9f28-bcc9c792e0a6)
Red for Danger (#ulink_8f6e03d6-fa38-5600-9f28-bcc9c792e0a6)
Dikon, mindful of his only other encounter with him and influenced by an exceedingly significant smell, came to the conclusion that Mr Smith was mad drunk. Perhaps a minute went by before he realised that he was merely terrified. It was obvious that the entire Claire family made the same mistake for they all, together and severally and entirely without success, tried to shut Smith up and hustle him away into the background. Finally it was Dr Ackrington who, after a sharp look at Smith, said to his brother-in-law: ‘Wait a minute now, Edward, you’re making a mistake. Come along with me, Smith, and tell me what it’s all about.’
‘I won’t come along with anyone. I’ve just been along with someone and it’s practically killed me. You listen to what I’m telling you! He’s a bloody murderer.’
‘Who is?’ asked Simon from somewhere in the rear.
‘Questing.’
‘Smith, for God’s sake!’ said the Colonel, and tried to lead him away by the elbow.
‘Leave me alone. I know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you.’
‘Oh, Daddy, not here!’ Barbara cried out, and Mrs Claire said: ‘No, Edward, please. Your study, dear.’ And, as if Smith were some recalcitrant schoolboy, she repeated in a hushed voice: ‘Yes, yes, much better in your study.’
‘But you’re not listening to me,’ said Smith. And, to the acute embarrassment of everybody except Gaunt, he began to blubber. ‘Straight out of the jaws of death,’ he cried piteously, ‘and you ask a chap to go to the study.’
Dikon heard Gaunt give a little cough of laughter before he turned to Mrs Claire and said: ‘We’ll remove ourselves.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Dikon.
The doorway, however, was blocked by Simon and Mrs Claire, and before they could get out of the way Smith roared out: ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I want witnesses. You stay where you are.’
Gaunt looked good-humouredly from one horrified face to another, and said: ‘Suppose we all sit down.’
Barbara took her uncle fiercely by the arm. ‘Uncle James,’ she whispered, ‘stop him. He mustn’t. Uncle James, please.’
‘By all means let us sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington.
They filed solemnly and ridiculously into the dining-room and, as if they were about to witness a cabaret turn, sat themselves down at the small tables. This manoeuvre appeared to quieten Smith. He took up a strategic position between the tables. With the touch of complacency which must have appeared in the Ancient Mariner when he cornered the wedding guest, he embarked upon his story.
‘It was over at the level crossing,’ he began. ‘I’d been up the Peak with Eru Saul and I don’t mind telling you why. Questing’s been nosing around the Peak and the Maoris don’t like it. We’d seen him drive along the Peak road earlier in the evening. Eru and I reckoned we’d cut along by the bush track to a hideout in the scrub. We didn’t see anything. He must have gone up the other face of the hill if he was there at all. We waited for about an hour and then I got fed up and came down by myself. I hit the railroad about a couple of chains above the level crossing.’
‘By the railroad bridge?’ said Simon.
‘You’re telling me it was by the bridge,’ said Smith with extraordinary violence. ‘I’ll say it was by the bridge. And get this. The 5.15 from Harpoon was just about due. You know what it’s like. The railroad twists in and out of the scrub and round the shoulder of the hill and then comes through a wee tunnel. You can’t see or hear a thing. Before you know what’s happening, she’s on top of you.’
‘She is, too,’ agreed Simon, with an air of supporting Smith against unfair opposition.
‘The bridge is the worst bit. You can’t see the signals but you can see a bend in the Peak road above the level crossing. To get over the gully you can hop across the bridge on the sleepers, or you can wade the creek. I stood there wondering if I’d risk the bridge. I don’t like trains. There was a Maori boy killed on that bridge.’
‘There was, too.’
‘Yes; well, while I was kind of hesitating I saw Questing’s car come over the crest of the road and stop. He leant out of the driving window and saw me. Now listen. You’ve got to remember he could see the signal and I couldn’t. It’s the red and green light affair they put in after the accident. I saw him turn his head to look that way.’
Smith wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He spoke quietly now, was no longer ridiculous, and held the attention of his audience. He sat down at an empty table and looked about him with an air of astonishment.
‘He waved me on,’ he said. ‘He could see the signal and he gave me the all-clear. Like this. I didn’t move at first and he did it again. See? A bit impatient, too, as much as to say: “What’s eating you? Hop to it.” Yes, well, I hopped. I’ve never liked the bridge. It’s a short stride between sleepers and you can see the creek through the gaps. Look. I’d got halfway when I heard her behind me, blowing her whistle in the tunnel. It’s funny how quick you can think. Whether to jump for it or swing from the end of a sleeper, or stand waving my arms and, if she didn’t pull up in time, dive for the engine. I thought about Questing, too, and how, if she got me, nobody’d know he gave me the office. And all the time I was hopping like a bloody ballet dancer, with the creek below clicking through the gaps. Like one of those dreams. Look, she was on the bridge when I jumped. I was above the bank by then. I suppose it wasn’t more than ten feet. I landed in a matagouri bush. Scratched all over, and look at my pants. I didn’t even try to get out of it. She rumbled over my head, and muck off the sleepers fell in my eyes. I felt funny. I mean my body felt funny, as if it didn’t belong to me. I was kind of surprised to find myself climbing the bank and it seemed to be someone else that was winded when I got to the top. And yet all the time I was hell-set on getting at Questing. And had he waited for me? He had not. ’Struth, I stood there shaking like a bloody jelly and I heard him tooting his horn away along the Peak road. I don’t know how I’d have got home if it hadn’t been for Eru Saul. Eru’d come down the hill and he saw what Questing swung across me. He’s a witness to it. He gave me a hand to come home. Look, Eru’s out there in the kitchen. You ask him. He knows.’ He turned to Mrs Claire. ‘Can I get Eru to come in, Mrs Claire?’
‘I’ll get him,’ said Simon, and went out to the kitchen. He returned, followed by Eru, who stood oafishly in the doorway. Dikon saw, for the first time, a fleshy youth dressed in a stained blue suit. His coat was open, displaying a brilliant tie, and an expanse of puce-coloured shirt stretched tight across the diaphragm. He showed little of his Maori blood, but Dikon thought he might have served as an illustration of the least admirable aspect of colonisation in a native country.
‘Here, listen, Eru,’ said Smith. ‘You saw Questing swing it across me, didn’t you?’
‘Too right,’ Eru muttered.
‘Go on. Tell them.’
It was the same story. Eru had come down the hillside behind Smith. He could see the bridge and Questing’s car. ‘Questing leant out of the window and beckoned Bert to come on. I couldn’t see the signal, but I reckoned he was crazy, seeing what time it was. I yelled out to Bert to turn it up and come back, but he never heard me. Then she blew her whistle.’ Eru’s olive face turned white. ‘Gee, I thought he was under the engine all right. I couldn’t see him, like, from where I was. The train was between us. Gee, I certainly expected the jolt. I never picked he’d jump for it. Crikey, was I relieved when I seen old Bert sitting in the prickles!’
‘The engine driver pulled her up and they came back to inquire, didn’t they, Eru?’
‘Too right. They looked terrible. You know, white as a sheet. They’d got the shock of their lives, those jokers. We had to put it down in writing he’d blown the whistle. They had to protect themselves, see?’
‘Yeh. Well, that’s the whole works,’ said Smith. ‘Thanks, Eru.’
He rubbed his hands over his face and looked at them. ‘I could do with a drink,’ he said. ‘You may think I’ve had some by the way I smell. I swear to God I haven’t. It broke when I went over.’
‘That’s right,’ said Eru. He looked round awkwardly. ‘I’ll say good day,’ he added.
He returned to the kitchen. Mrs Claire glanced after him dubiously, and presently got up and followed him.
Smith sagged forward, resting his cheek on his hand as though he sat meditating alone in the room. Dr Ackrington limped across and put his hand on Smith’s shoulder.
‘I’ll fix you up,’ he said. ‘Come along.’
Smith looked up at him, got to his feet, and shambled to the door.
‘I could have him up, couldn’t I, Doc?’ he said. ‘It’s attempted murder, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so,’ said Dr Ackrington.
II
Mrs Claire stood in the centre of her own kitchen looking up at Eru Saul. The top of her head reached no farther than his chin, but she was a plumply authoritative figure and he shuffled his feet and would not look at her. Huia, with an air of conscious virtue, was dishing up the dinner.
‘You are going home now, Eru, I suppose,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘That’s right, Mrs Claire,’ said Eru, looking at Huia.
‘Huia is very busy, you know.’
‘Yeh, that’s right.’
‘And we don’t like you waiting about. You know that.’
‘I’m not doing anything, Mrs Claire.’
‘The Colonel doesn’t wish you to come. You understand?’
‘I was only asking Huia what say we went to the pictures.’
‘I’m not going to the pictures. I told you already,’ said Huia loudly.
‘There, Eru,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘Got another date, haven’t you?’
Huia tossed her head.
‘That will do, Eru,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘Too bad,’ said Eru, looking at Huia.
‘You’ll go now, if you please,’ Mrs Claire insisted.
‘OK, Mrs Claire. But listen, Mrs Claire. You wouldn’t pick Huia wasn’t on the level, would you? I didn’t pick it right away, but it’s a fact. Ask Mr Questing, Mrs Claire. She’s been over at the Bay with him this afternoon. I’ll be seeing you, Huia.’
When he had gone Mrs Claire’s round face was very rosy-red. She said: ‘If Eru comes here again you must tell me at once, Huia, and the Colonel will speak to him.’
‘Yes, Mrs Claire.’
‘We are ready for dinner.’ She walked to the door and hesitated. Huia gave her a brilliant smile.
‘You know we trust you, Huia, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Mrs Claire.’
Mrs Claire went into the dining-room.
They dined in an atmosphere of repressed curiosity. Dr Ackrington returned alone, saying that he had sent Smith to bed, and that in any case he was better out of the way. Throughout dinner, Gaunt and Dikon, who had a small table to themselves, made elaborate conversation about nothing. Dikon was in a state of confusion so acute that it surprised himself. From where he sat he could see Barbara – her lamentable clothes, her white face, and her nervous hands clattering her knife and fork on the plate and pushing about the food she could not eat. Because he tried not to look, he looked the more and was annoyed with himself for doing so. Gaunt sat with his back to the Claires’ table, and Dikon saw that Barbara could not prevent herself from watching him.
During the years of the association, Dikon’s duties had included the fending away of Gaunt’s adorers. He thought that he could interpret Barbara’s glances. He thought that she was sick with disappointment, and told himself that only too easily could he translate her mortification and misery. He was angry and disgusted – angry with Gaunt, and, so he said to himself, disgusted with Barbara – and his reaction was so foreign to his habit that he ended by falling quite out of humour with himself. Presently he became aware that Gaunt was watching him sharply and he realised that he had actually been speaking at random. He began to stammer and was actually relieved when, upon the disappearance of Huia, Colonel and Mrs Claire embarked in antiphony upon an apologetic chant of which the theme was Smith’s unseemly behaviour. This rapidly developed into a solo performance by Mrs Claire in the course of which she attempted the impossible feat of distributing whitewash equally between Questing and Smith. Her recital became rich in clichés: ‘More sinned against than sinning … A dear fellow at bottom … Means well but not quite … So sorry it should have happened …’ She was encouraged by punctual ejaculations of ‘Quite’ from her distracted husband.
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Ngaio Marsh
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…