The Luminaries

‘It isn’t mine,’ said Clinch, with a scornful look. ‘I’m renting. Up and down the street—from Weld to Stafford, it’s all rented. This place belongs to a fellow named Staines.’

Gascoigne was surprised. ‘Emery Staines?’

‘Odd,’ Clinch said. ‘Odd to be renting from a man who’s half my age. But that’s the modern way: all of us upended, each man for his own.’

It seemed to Gascoigne that there was a forced quality to the way that Clinch spoke: his phrases seemed borrowed, and he uttered them unnaturally. He was guarded in his tone, even anxious, and seemed to be protecting himself against Gascoigne’s poor opinion, impossible project though that was. He does not trust me, Gascoigne thought, and then, well, I do not trust him, either.

‘What will happen to this place if Mr. Staines doesn’t return, I wonder?’ he said aloud.

‘I’ll stay on,’ said Clinch. ‘I’ll buy it, maybe.’ He fumbled a moment with a drawer beneath the desk, and then said, ‘Listen: you’ll think me a bore for asking again—but what were you doing in Anna’s room?’

He looked almost pleading.

‘We exchanged some words about money,’ Gascoigne said. ‘She is out of pocket. But I believe you know that already.’

‘Out of pocket!’ Clinch scoffed. ‘There’s a word! She has pockets enough, believe me.’

Was this a cryptic reference to the gold that had been sewn into Anna’s dress? Or simply a crass allusion to the girl’s profession? Gascoigne felt suddenly alert. ‘Why should I believe you—above Anna?’ he said. ‘By her account, she hasn’t a penny to her name—and yet you think it right, to demand six pounds of her, paid up at once!’

Clinch’s eyes widened. So Anna had confided in Gascoigne about the rent she owed. So she had complained about him—and bitterly, judging by the Frenchman’s hostile tone. The thought was hurtful. Clinch did not like the thought of Anna speaking about him to other men. Quietly he said, ‘That isn’t your business.’

‘On the contrary,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Anna brought the matter to my attention. She begged me.’

‘Why?’ said Clinch. ‘Why, though?’

‘I imagine because she trusts me,’ Gascoigne said, with a touch of cruelty.

‘I meant, what’s the use in begging you?’

‘So that I might help her,’ Gascoigne said.

‘But why you, though?’ Clinch said again.

‘What do you mean, why me?’

Clinch was almost shouting. ‘What’s Anna doing asking you?’

Gascoigne’s eyes flashed. ‘I suppose you are asking me to define the precise state of relations between us.’

‘I don’t need to ask that,’ said Clinch, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I know the answer to that!’

Gascoigne felt a swell of fury. ‘You are impertinent, Mr. Clinch,’ he said.

‘Impertinent!’ said Clinch. ‘Who’s impertinent? The whore’s in mourning—that’s all—and you can’t deny it!’

‘The fact that she is in mourning is the very reason why she cannot repay her present debts. And yet you persist in abusing her.’

‘Abusing—!’

‘I got the impression,’ Gascoigne said coldly, ‘that Anna is very much afraid of you’—which was not at all true.

‘She isn’t afraid of me,’ said the hotelier, looking shocked.

‘What do you care about six pounds? What do you care if Anna pays up to-morrow or next year? You’ve just landed yourself a homeward-bounder. You’ve got thousands of pounds in the bank! And here you are splitting hairs over a whore’s rental, like a Limehouse profiteer!’

Clinch bristled. ‘A debt’s a debt.’

‘Rot,’ said Gascoigne. ‘A grudge is a grudge, more like.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t yet know,’ said Gascoigne. ‘But I’m beginning to think, for Anna’s sake, that I ought to try and find out.’

Clinch turned red again. ‘You ought not to talk to me like that,’ he said. ‘You oughtn’t—in my own hotel!’

‘You talk as if you were her keeper! Where were you this afternoon, when she was in danger?’ said Gascoigne—who was beginning to feel a little reckless. ‘And where were you when she turned up near-dead in the middle of the Christchurch-road?’

But this time Clinch did not cower beneath the accusation, as he had done before. Instead he seemed to harden. He looked back at Gascoigne with his jaw newly set. ‘I won’t be schooled about Anna,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what she is to me. I won’t be schooled.’

The two men stared at each other, as two fighting dogs across a pit—and then each expressed his recognition of the other, and conceded, tacitly, that he had met his match. For Gascoigne and Clinch were not so very dissimilar in temperament, and even in their differences, showed a harmony of sorts—with Gascoigne as the upper octave, the clearer, brighter sound, and Clinch as the bass-note, thrumming.

Edgar Clinch had something of a circular nature. He was both solicitous and self-doubting—attributes that, because they opposed one another, tended to engender in him a state of constant, anxious flux. He provided for those whom he loved only to demand their fullest approbation for his care—a demand which, in turn, shamed him, for he was sensitive to the nuances of his own actions, and doubtful of their worth; consequently, he retracted the demand, doubled his provision, and began again, only to find that his need for approbation had doubled also. In this way he remained perpetually in motion, as a woman is perpetually in motion, harnessed to the rhythms of the moon.

His relationship with Anna Wetherell had begun in just this way. When Anna had first arrived from Dunedin, Clinch had been all but overcome: she was the rarest and most troubled creature he had ever known, and he swore that he would not rest until she was beloved. He secured his best room for her, and pampered her in all the ways that he was able, but he became very hurt when she did not notice the efforts he had made—and when she did not notice his hurt, he became angry. His anger was both unsustainable and unsustaining; it did not nourish him, as men are sometimes nourished by their own rage. Instead the emotion only diminished him, leaving him all the emptier—and, therefore, all the more ready to love.

When Anna first arrived in Hokitika she was with child, though her belly had not yet begun to wax, and her figure did not yet betray the secret of her condition. Clinch met her upon Gibson Quay, to which place she had been conveyed by lighter, the barque Godspeed having dropped its anchor some hundred yards or so offshore. The day was clear and bright with cold. The mouth of the river shone brilliantly; there was birdsong in the air. Even now Clinch felt that he could recollect every detail. He could see the wide halo of her bonnet, and the ends of her ribbons, flapping in the wind; he could see her ankle-boots, her buttoned gloves, her reticule. He could see the purple shimmer of her gown—which had been hired, as he later discovered, from the impresario Dick Mannering, to whom Anna would pay a daily rental until she could afford to make a purchase of her own. The garish colour did not suit her: it turned her complexion sallow, and drained the life from her eyes. Edgar Clinch thought her radiant. Beaming, he enclosed her thin hand in both of his own, and shook it vigorously. He welcomed her to Hokitika, offered her his elbow, and proposed a stroll, which she accepted. After directing the porters to have her trunk delivered to the Gridiron Hotel, Clinch threw out his chest and walked Anna Wetherell down Revell-street like a consort escorting a queen.

At that time Edgar Clinch had been in Hokitika less than a month. He did not yet know Dick Mannering, though he had heard the latter’s name; he had met Anna’s boat that afternoon quite without prearrangement with either the magnate or the whore. (Mannering had been detained in Dunedin, and would not arrive in Hokitika until the following week; in any case, he preferred to travel by steamship than by sail.) On fine days Clinch often stood upon the spit and greeted the diggers as they disembarked onto the sand. He shook their hands, smiled, and invited each man to take his lodgings at the Gridiron Hotel—remarking, casually, that he could offer a handsomely discounted price, but only to those men who accepted it within the next half-hour.