“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 on 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 arm around 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 greatgrandfather 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. O.K. 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.