The Luminaries

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

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

She stared at him. ‘Attempted suicide?’

‘Did you not try and take your life?’

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

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

‘That’s absurd.’

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

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

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

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

‘—Proof?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘You would use a different one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your child was taken from you?’

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

Gascoigne was silent. He had not yet finished his cigarette, but he dropped it, crushed the ember with the heel of his shoe, and lit another. Anna sat down again. She placed her hands upon the fabric of her dress, laid out upon the table. She began to stroke it. Gascoigne looked at the rafters, and Anna at the gold.

It was very unlike her to burst out in such a way. Anna’s nature was watchful and receptive rather than declamatory, and she rarely spoke about herself. Her profession demanded modesty of the strictest sort, paradoxical though that sounded. She was obliged to behave sweetly, and with sympathy, even when sympathy was not owing, and sweetness was not deserved. The men with whom she plied her trade were rarely curious about her. If they spoke at all, they spoke about other women—the sweethearts they had lost, the wives they had abandoned, their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, their wards. They sought these women when they looked at Anna, but only partly, for they also sought themselves: she was a reflected darkness, just as she was a borrowed light. Her wretchedness was, she knew, extremely reassuring.

Anna reached out a finger to stroke one of the golden nuggets in the pile. She knew that she ought to thank Gascoigne in the conventional way, for paying her bail: he had taken a risk, in telling a falsehood to the gaoler, keeping her secret, and inviting her back to his home. She sensed that Gascoigne was expecting something. He was fidgeting strangely. His questions were abrupt and even rude—a sure sign that he was distracted by the hope of a reward—and when she spoke he glared at her, quickly, and then glanced away, as if her answers annoyed him very much. Anna picked up the nugget and rolled it around in her palm. Its surface was bubbled, even knot- holed, as if the metal had been partly melted in a forge.

‘It appears to me,’ Gascoigne said presently, ‘that someone was waiting for you to smoke that pipe last night. They waited until you were unconscious, and then sewed this gold into your dress.’

She frowned—not at Gascoigne, but at the lump in her hand. ‘Why?’

‘I have no idea,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell? And just how much was he willing to pay?’

‘Listen, though,’ Anna said, ignoring the question. ‘You’re saying that someone took this dress off me, sewed in all this dust so carefully, and then laced me back up—filled with gold—only to leave me in the middle of the road?’

‘It does sound improbable,’ Gascoigne agreed. He changed his tack. ‘Well then: answer me this. How long have you had that garment?’

‘Since the spring,’ Anna said. ‘I bought it salvage, from a vendor on Tancred-street.’

‘How many others do you own?’

‘Five—no; four,’ said Anna. ‘But the others aren’t for whoring. This is my whoring gown—on account of its colour, you see. I had a separate frock for lying-in—but that was ruined, when—when the baby died.’

There was a moment of quiet between them.

‘Was it sewed in all at once?’ Gascoigne said presently. ‘Or over a period? I suppose there’s no way to tell.’

Anna did not respond. After a moment Gascoigne glanced up, and met her gaze.

‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell?’ he asked again—and this time Anna could not ignore the question.

‘I was with a man named Staines,’ she said quietly.

‘I do not know this man,’ Gascoigne said. ‘He was with you at the opium den?’

‘No!’ Anna said, sounding shocked. ‘I wasn’t at the den. I was at his house. In his—bed. I left in the night to take a pipe. That’s the last thing I remember.’

‘You left his house?’

‘Yes—and came back to the Gridiron, where I have my lodging,’ Anna said. ‘It was a strange night, and I was feeling odd. I wanted a pipe. I remember lighting it. The next thing I remember, I was in gaol, and there was daylight.’

She gave a shiver, and suddenly clutched her arms across her body. She spoke, Gascoigne thought, with an exhilarated fatigue, the kind that comes after the first blush of love, when the self has lost its mooring, and, half- drowning, succumbs to a fearful tide. But addiction was not love; it could not be love. Gascoigne could not romanticise the purple shadows underneath her eyes, her wasted limbs, the dreamy disorientation with which she spoke; but even so, he thought, it was uncanny that the opium’s ruin could mirror love’s raptures with such fidelity.

‘I see,’ he said aloud. ‘So you left the man sleeping?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘He was asleep when I left—yes.’

‘And you were wearing this dress.’ He pointed at the orange tatters between them.

‘It’s my work dress,’ Anna said. ‘It’s the one I always wear.’

‘Always?’

‘When I’m working,’ Anna said.

Gascoigne did not reply, but narrowed his eyes very slightly, and pressed his lips together, to signify there was a question in his mind that he could not ask with decency. Anna sighed. She decided that she would not express her gratitude in the conventional way; she would repay the sum of her bail in coin, and in the morning.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘It’s just as I told you. We fell asleep, I woke up, I wanted a pipe, I left his house, I went home, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’

‘Did you notice anything strange about your own rooms when you returned? Anything that might show that someone had been there, for example?’

‘No,’ Anna said. ‘The door was locked, same as always. I opened it with my key, I walked in, I closed the door, I sat down, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’

It wearied her to recapitulate—and she would become still wearier in the days to come, once it transpired that Emery Staines had disappeared in the night, and had not been seen since, by anyone. Upon this point Anna