Читать книгу The Wives of Henry Oades - Johanna Moran - Страница 13

HENRY SMELLED SMOKE and put the whip to Katie’s rump. A tramp’s cook fire started in the bushes, he figured, with the perfect breeze to bring it straight to his roof. Christ Almighty. He’d be up all night sopping down the bloody timbers. Rounding a stand of karaka trees, the smoldering destruction came into view. Henry called out, expecting his wife to appear, their homeless children clinging. He left the old nag and rig in the road and ran the last distance.

The fire was giving off the last of its heat. He entered where the door had been this morning. “Meg!” He stood stock still and listened for his family. “Meg, sweetheart.” He said it softly now, taking in the blackened wreckage, his eyes adjusting. In the same moment he saw a few cookpots, John’s lucky horseshoe, Meg’s mother’s ginger jar, and a human body. “Oh, Jesus, please.” He approached disbelieving, falling to one knee. The body was hairless, faceless, and long-limbed, not a child. “Oh God.” He removed his coat and laid it over her, then drew it away again and touched her head. An ashy wet bit of her came away on his fingers.

He stood in a stupor and called to his children. “John. Pheeny, darling. Dad’s here.”

He took careful steps, using his hat to gently rake the ashes. He paced off the length, and then the width. Here was something. He bent over, sweat pouring, soaking his beard. He rubbed the shard between his fingers—glass, not bone, a trembling joyous discovery. He started over. Inch by cautious inch he combed the floor for his children’s remains. He went outside and did the same without finding a trace. They were alive then. A fire will always leave something behind. “Kids!” he shouted. They were lurking in the woods above, having fled the fire in time. They’d be freezing, frightened out of their wits. He ran uphill without a lamp, bellowing their names.

The forest floor was damp and slippery. Henry searched along the quiet periphery, entering the bush from the south. He’d been up here during the day with John often enough, gathering kindling, debating which dogs were best. At night the black trees loomed the same in every direction. Henry ran north; he ran west, climbing deep into the interior. It was after midnight when he quit, exhausted and hoarse. He started down, still calling to them, spotting Mim Bell’s empty rig in the road then, a surge of love and relief rushing through him. The body inside had to be Mim’s.

Henry untied Mim’s skittish mare from the post and turned her and the buggy around. Meg and the children had somehow managed to escape. They would have found their way to the Bells’, their closest neighbor. Henry rode south a grateful man, a man redeemed. He could not fathom a life without them. He would take them home to England now. They’d endured enough. He planned to tell Meg first thing, the moment he saw her.

FEAR AND CONFUSION were fully restored by the time Henry reached the Bells’. Meg would not have set out in the cold and hiked the twenty miles with four children in tow, not with Bell’s horse and buggy at her disposal. He pounded Bell’s front door, hearing footsteps after an eternity, muffled cursing.

Cyril Bell appeared in his nightshirt, holding a lamp. He reached behind the door and brought out a crude cudgel. “Who the devil is it at this hour?”

Henry stepped into the wreath of light, listening for sounds in the house. “Oades. Henry Oades. We’ve met, sir.” He spoke fast, wheezing like a hound. “I’m Margaret’s husband. Your wife’s friend. My wife and children have gone missing.”

Bell frowned, scratching his privates with the club.

Henry demanded, “Are they here?”

“What’s this all about?”

“Are you bloody hard of hearing? I’m looking for my family.”

Bell craned, sniffing the air. “You’re about three sheets to it, aren’t you?” He lifted the club. “Go on home before I give you the beating of your life.”

Henry shoved him aside, shouting into the interior. “Meg!”

Bell recovered from the surprise, raising the club higher. Henry had the advantage of thirty more pounds and at least ten fewer years. He grabbed Bell’s wrist, locking the man against the doorjamb. “Where’s your wife?”

Bell struggled. “What do you want with her?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s not here, you buggering idiot. There’s nobody here but me and the dog. She’s a mean one, too. She’ll bite. One word from me and—”

Henry wrenched the club from Bell’s flaccid grip and sent it sailing into the dark yard. Bell ducked back inside. Henry put himself between door and jamb. “Help me, please.”

“Why should—”

“Your wife visited mine last evening?”

Bell swiped his nose on a sleeve. “If you say so. Walked out with a bee in her bonnet. Not for the first time. She and the boy. Pig-headed woman. Didn’t bother to say where they were headed.”

“I found your rig on my property.” Henry pointed vaguely. “I’ve returned it.”

“I owe you then. I thought…”

Henry ran a hand through his dry hair, still scanning the interior, half expecting Meg and the children to suddenly show themselves.

“My house burned to the ground last night.”

“That’s terrible news.”

Henry stood shivering, the dread rising in his chest, constricting his breathing. “My children are nowhere to be found.”

“Ah, for the love of—”

There had to be a rational answer. They couldn’t simply disappear.

“I came upon a body.”

“Oh, no, was—”

“My wife, I thought at first.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Or your wife, sir. I’m sorry.” Henry was anxious to leave. He’d given up the search too soon. There were miles still to cover. John would have constructed a shelter of some sort, far away from the smoke and fire.

Bell began to weep. “Jesus, Mary, and—”

“There’s no way of knowing,” said Henry. “I couldn’t tell.”

“My boy?” Bell’s tears streamed. “Oscar?”

Henry shook his head. “I’m sorry. No sign of him either.”

“Oh, sweet sacred heart. We’ll want to inform the authorities.”

“They can wait.” On the way over Henry had considered and rejected the idea. No good would come of rousing the governor at this hour. He was a useless indecisive man; his sycophantic underlings were no better. Meg and the children were his family, his concern. He’d have the benefit of daylight soon. He’d start over looking. “Will you make a loan of a horse, Mr. Bell?”

“Have your choice of the two in the stable,” said Bell. “I’ll take the other.”

They made good time, arriving by first light to a smoky quiet. Bell tied up the horses. Henry stood in the road making quarter turns, calling to his wife and children. The men tramped up to the bush and began searching, giving up after three hours, making their way down to the charred cottage. “Tucked away,” Meg had called it. “A perfect place.”

Bell had thought to bring a shovel and a bedsheet. The men labored with the delicate corpse. It collapsed in their hands, making red and yellow stains on the sheet. Daylight was no help, as Henry had hoped. “Can you tell anything?”

“Might be anyone,” muttered Bell.

“Anyone.”

“Mine wore a little gold locket on occasion,” said Bell.

“Mine wore her ring,” said Henry.

“With my likeness and Oscar’s inside,” said Bell.

Henry, the middle brother, had been the first in his family to present a wife with a wedding ring. His parents had disapproved, as had Meg’s parents. The older set still regarded the ring an ostentatious pagan practice. “Unseemly,” his mother had said. “Unchristian.” She may have reconsidered had she seen the thrill in Meg’s lovely eyes.

The men poked around and beneath the body for as long as they could bear it, finding nothing to prove who it was or wasn’t. The lack of evidence meant little to Henry. Meg often took off the ring. She feared losing it in the wash, she’d said.

They took turns with the shovel, burying the body out back, where the hydrangea once bloomed. They fashioned a cross of scorched stones and walked away, both quaking with uncertainty.

Henry discovered the dogs beneath a thicket of broadleaf puka, flies and beetles feasting on the head wounds. “My boy’s pets,” he said, incredulous. “Who’d do such a thing?” Bell stalked off, disgusted. Henry stared, attempting to make sense of the grisly mess. These were John’s harmless pups, pleasant, obedient animals, bound for the circus. His eyes burned. He craved sleep; he wished not to think anymore.

Bell called to him from below, waving an arm. Henry started down, his heart thundering with fear of finding a dead child. He came up on Bell, his breathing fast and shallow.

Bell held a white-tipped, black tail feather. “Huia,” he said. “They wear the filthy things in their topknots.” He pointed out the horse tracks leading down to the river, the droppings. “Goddamn Maori were here. I’d stake my last farthing on it.”

Henry had heard stories about long-ago murders and snatchings. He’d chalked them up to apocryphal pub tales at the time. There’d been problems back in the sixties, blood shed on both sides over land, but nothing lately, not since he’d arrived, not that he knew or even heard of. What would provoke them? Why his house and family? “I’m going after them,” he said.

“I’m going with you,” said Bell.

“We’ll need guns and rope,” said Henry, wide awake now, full of seething energy. “I’ll take a coat if you can spare it.”

They raced back to Bell’s for supplies. Henry was barely aware of the horse beneath him. He did not see what caused the animal to rear. He lost hold of the reins and fell back, striking the road hard, his leg audibly cracking. A dusty blur of hooves rose in his vision. Henry tucked his head and flung himself right, rolling down an embankment, his eyes filling with searing juices.

Bell came rushing, trampling leaves and twigs. “Close yer damn eye.” Henry couldn’t see him, but he could smell the man’s peculiarly olid flesh. “Close it, I said. Don’t try to use it.” A dry cloth was pressed to his right eye. “Yer damn leg’s broken. I can see the bloody bone. We’ll get you straight to hospital. Can you hear me, Oades? Put an arm about my neck. That’s it. I’ve got you. Gently does it. That’s a steady lad. Here we go then. On the count of three. One. Two. Here we go.”

A fiery bolt shot up his spine. Henry screamed and slipped into black oblivion.

THE DOCTOR SAID he was lucky. The leg was broken in three places, but both it and the eye had been saved. The doctor was a pale, walleyed man with cold hands. “You’ll walk eventually,” he said, “though it shan’t be anytime soon.”

The eye dressing would come off in two or three weeks, depending. Depending on what, the doctor did not say. Henry, in a laudanum fog, did not ask.

Bell’s note was read aloud to him. Dear Friend, it started. I’m off to see the governor. I haven’t a Chinaman’s chance on my own. Pray for us. Henry had a rambling, fevered chat with the Lord, and then slept straight through four days. “A near coma,” said the doctor. Henry brought a hand to his bandaged cheek and touched his shaved chin. He’d been bearded since twenty. He spent a drugged moment worrying that Meg and the children wouldn’t recognize him, then closed his good eye and slept another three days.

He woke asking for his wife, his children, Cyril Bell. The aide on duty told him he was better off resting now.

All the staff cajoled. “‘Tis always darkest before the dawn,” said the Irish nurse with Meg’s blue-gray eyes. She came on duty early and was the kindest of the lot. “We’ve a lovely porridge this morning, Mr. Oades. You’ll do your poor children no favors by starving.”

He asked, “Have you any news today?” The nurse took advantage of his open mouth and shoveled in the tepid, mealy paste. It came straight back up, along with his own sour bile.

“I’m not hungry just now,” he said, embarrassed.

She clucked and mopped his gown with a rag. “I’m praying for you,” she said.

Most gave up on him fairly quickly and went on to the next bed. The ward was full. The overflow suffered outside in the hall. The groaning and sobbing never ceased. Henry closed his eye, letting the din wash over and through his ineffectual self.

On Sunday he begged the homely missionary woman who came around to read Scripture, “Please, will you find Mr. Bell?” She promised she would. He, in turn, endured her biblical gush, feigning comfort. He did not see her again.

Mr. Freylock, Henry’s immediate supervisor, came the following week. He entered the ward with his hat in his hands, his mouth twitching with sympathy. “They tell me you’re not eating,” he said.

Mr. Freylock was a career man, one of the first of the distillery men to arrive in New Zealand. “The place suits me,” he’d once said. Henry recalled feeling both vaguely envious and disdainful of a man who found true contentment behind a desk.

He looked up at Mr. Freylock, his good eye filling. The eye wept constantly. He’d been given drops, but they did little good. A brown spider ran along the windowsill. He dabbed at the eye with a corner of sheet, thinking how spiders frightened Josephine.

Mr. Freylock touched Henry’s sleeve. “You’ve had an abysmal time of it.”

Henry cleared his throat. “Is there any news, sir?”

“Only that the scouting trip was unsuccessful.” Mr. Freylock fiddled with his felt brim. “Six men went out, myself included. The governor sent out four more. We rode together for a day and then split from them, thinking we’d cover more ground that way. I’m sorry, Henry.”

“My family could be anywhere then?” Henry’s dry lips cracked with speech. “Anyone might have them?”

“If you mean white men, no, not likely. The arson, you see, the snatching itself. It smacks of utu.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mr. Freylock sighed. “It is the heathen’s word for revenge. The governor believes your family was taken in retaliation for last month’s flogging. The whipping would have brought dishonor to the entire bloody tribe. Utu of some sort was inevitable. I sincerely loathe being the one to tell you.”

The Maori lad had been no more than fifteen. Henry had walked away before the lashing even began, repulsed by the gawking onlookers. “I assume another search is under way, sir?”

Mr. Freylock shook his head. “Not at present, I’m sorry to say.”

“Why not?”

“Simply put, Henry, it would do no good. The trail went cold scant miles out. We were but a handful of family men against a sodding band of savages. Sorry to say it. The odds weigh too heavily.”

“And the governor’s men?”

“They’ve since returned empty-handed as well. That is not to say you should relinquish hope. That is not to say you shouldn’t continue to pray. All of Wellington is praying for your wife and children.”

Henry’s eye ran, salting his stinging lips.

“Ah, Henry. I’m only adding to your distress.”

Henry pleaded, “Will you help locate Cyril Bell?”

Mr. Freylock took out his watch and flicked open the lid with a thumbnail. “Poor fellow had a bit of a breakdown, smashed a good bottle at McFadden’s, started a brawl. They locked him up for his own well-being.”

“When will he be released?”

Mr. Freylock glanced down at his watch. “Sooner rather than later, I’m sure.”

“Will you ask him to come round?”

“I shall, Henry. First chance. I must be off. I’m sorry the news isn’t better. Your post is being held indefinitely, if it’s any small consolation. That’s what I came to tell you.”

Henry struggled to remain civil, to issue his senior a proper farewell, but all before him had eclipsed. As if a cupboard door had just been nailed shut, and he’d found himself inside.