The Colour (24 page)

All urgency, Harriet realised, had somehow drained out of her mission to get the doctor to Lilian. It had been obliterated by her terrible desire to gobble food and she felt ashamed of every bite of everything that she took, but she went on eating until nothing remained on the plates, and then she wiped her mouth and looked at the clock on the wall above the sacks of coffee and felt the night assemble all around her, pressing on the windows and altering the colour of the candle-flames.

She arrived back at the Cob House with the elderly Dr Pettifer towards one o'clock in the morning and lit a lamp and they went together into Lilian's calico room. Straightaway, Lady began whining and jumping up on to Harriet's muddy skirts. On the doctor's black coat there was a smell of iodine and ether.

Lilian was lying as Harriet had left her, with her head wrapped in the towel and her body neat and straight in the bed. One arm was raised and resting on the pillow, however, and Lilian's hand held up the darning egg, as though to demonstrate its usefulness or to show its marbled colours to the light. When Dr Pettifer took up the hand to feel for a pulse, the egg popped out of it and bounced on to the floor and Harriet saw the note she'd wrapped around it float down after it. As Harriet bent to retrieve the egg, Lilian opened one eye.

‘Lilian,' said Harriet, leaning near. ‘Lil?'

‘She can't hear you,' said Dr Pettifer, who was now lowering Lilian's arm and arranging it by the side of her body. ‘She's dead as can be. I'd say she went two hours ago.'

‘She opened her eye . . .'

‘Both eyes normally open in death. Unless there is a little rheum present, so that the eyelid adheres – which we have, I expect, in her right eye, still. I would estimate that death occurred at eleven o'clock.'

Harriet remembered that it had been at this hour that the baby had been born in the back room of Parsons & Co., a boy, and that the father of the child had appeared in the shop, in search of grog, and found Harriet sitting at his table. He'd shown no surprise, as if, on this night of the birth of his son, he'd expected strangers to be waiting there. Nothing was said about the stolen food, but Harriet found herself explaining that her mother-in-law had been trying to build a wall out of sacks when she'd fallen over.

‘A wall of sacks?'

‘Filled with shingle and sand. To keep out the rain.'

‘Ah.' Then the man smiled as his hand lighted on the grog flagon.

‘In New Zealand,' he said, ‘you cannot keep out the rain.'

Now, Harriet stood up and looked down at Lilian. She stroked the hand that had held the egg. She thought of Lilian's palm cross nailed to her room at Mrs Dinsdale's and her white shawl laid out ready for the night. She said to Dr Pettifer: ‘If we had got here sooner, might you have been able to save her?'

But Dr Pettifer was already writing out the certificate of death and he was one of those self-important people who refused on principle to do two things – such as writing and talking – at the same time, and so he made no answer.

‘Christian name of the deceased?' he snapped after a moment.

‘Lilian,' replied Harriet.

‘Other names?' he said with a long, exhausted sigh.

‘Lilian May,' said Harriet, who had begun to unwind the towel from Lilian's head. ‘Lilian May Blackstone.'

Harriet was told by Dr Pettifer that an undertaker would be sent from Rangiora ‘in a few days'. How many days he couldn't say. And then he was gone, with his ether smell and his shabby coat and his tiredness, trotting away into the dark on his bay horse, and Harriet was left alone with Lilian.

She was glad that the heat-wave had passed. The cooler air of March would be kinder to the body. All she prayed was that the Cob House would endure and that the tin roof wouldn't come crashing down upon Lilian as she lay and waited to be put into the ground.

Harriet fed the dog and made tea and she and Lady sat by Lilian's side and the only sounds were the rattle of the teacup on its saucer and the grinding of the dog's teeth on a worn bone.

Both Lilian's eyes were closed now and her hair, in its wiry plait, was dry and smoothed back from her face. She looked as cheerful as she'd ever seemed. And Harriet remembered how, in the winter, she used to get into her bed very often and lie exactly like this, with her nose in the air, as though practising dying.

The night very slowly passed. Harriet kept vigil with a single lamp and Lady slept at her feet. Joseph was always on the edge of her thoughts and she knew that, although he seemed to be a man untouched by any strong emotion, he had tried to do his best for Lilian. And it was for Lilian, certainly, as much as for himself or for her or for any future they might have together, that Joseph was searching for gold.

Harriet didn't know how Joseph would receive the news of his mother's death. She thought he would be altered by it in ways that she couldn't foresee. And so she understood that the news had to reach Joseph as soon as possible, wherever he was, and that the news would have to be carried by her, because who else was there to take it? As his wife, she owed him this.

When the morning came, Harriet pulled the sheet over Lilian's face and went out to feed the animals. The sky was blue, but she could see clouds piling up on the southerly horizon and feel the wind rising again and smell the nearness of rain.

II

Harriet sat with Dorothy Orchard by the fire, while the rain drove against the windows, and described how she had dressed Lilian in her finest black bombazine dress and her favourite bonnet and put into her hands, as she lay in her coffin, the painting of Joseph as a child, which Harriet had first seen in Lilian's room at Mrs Dinsdale's.

‘Poor woman,' said Dorothy. Then she asked: ‘Was the coffin well made?'

Harriet shook her head. ‘I felt . . .' she began, ‘that its sides were too thin. I was afraid that when they lifted it up, it was going to bend.'

‘Oh dear,' said Dorothy. ‘I have heard just such a thing before, that the slabs they use are too insubstantial.'

‘But Lilian wasn't heavy,' Harriet went on. ‘I think that our life here had worn her out. She was carried safely into her grave.'

‘And I suppose you were the only mourner?'

‘Yes. But I managed to sing one hymn that Lilian liked: “Hold High the Fiery Banner”.'

Edwin, who had been in a corner of the parlour, writing a story about a Moa bird, now put down his pencil and asked suddenly: ‘What is bombazine?'

Harriet turned and looked at Edwin. She noticed that, in the shadowy room, Edwin's eyes looked tired. She explained that bombazine was a kind of material, something between silk and worsted, of which mourning dresses were very often made.

Edwin said: ‘When you die and go to heaven, do you only have one suit of clothes for all eternity?'

‘Oh, of all the questions!' said Dorothy. ‘But if children should die, I think that they would certainly have beautiful white robes and feathery wings.'

‘I don't want white robes,' said Edwin.

‘No?' said Dorothy. ‘But then you're not going to die. Not until you're very, very old.'

‘Yes, I am,' said Edwin. Then he sat down again at his story and began immediately writing:
One day, the Moa looked around and saw that he was lonely . . .
The two women glanced at each other and then they heard Edwin say: ‘I will ask if I can have the wings and not the robes.'

Dorothy got up and crossed the room to Edwin and put her arms round him. ‘Why do you say that you're going to die, my darling?' she asked. ‘What on earth has put that into your mind?'

Edwin didn't look at his mother, but down at the drawing of the Moa he had made to illustrate his story. ‘Do you want to hear my story so far, Mama?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Dorothy, ‘I would very much like to hear your story. But first I want to know why you said that you were going to die.'

Edwin stared at his picture. He thought that perhaps the colouring he'd done was all wrong and that the Moa might not have been yellow and red, but a dull brown like the kiwi.

‘Edwin,' said Dorothy, hugging him more tightly. ‘Answer me.'

‘The Moa wasn't red and yellow, was it?' he said.

‘I don't know what colour it was,' said Dorothy. ‘I want an answer to my question!'

Her voice had become cross, without Dorothy's intending this. And this crossness brought tears to Edwin's eyes, not tears for himself, but tears of sorrow for Pare who had vanished from his life. In his dreams, he saw Pare falling from a rock into a river and being swept away to her death, and in all of these dreams it seemed to him that she called to him to follow.

And now, in his waking life, Edwin Orchard believed that he
would
follow, at least in his mind, and that the calling of Pare would never stop until he reached her and that, to reach her, he would have to depart from his life here. He wouldn't be able to say a word to his parents about it – except to try to find ways of warning them as he had just done – but quite soon he would have to leave them.

Dorothy was shaking Edwin now and tears had welled up in her eyes, too. ‘Edwin,' she kept repeating, ‘tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you meant!'

Edwin knew that part of him wanted to follow Pare, but part of him wanted to stay here with Dorothy and Toby and the dogs and Janet's blue blancmanges. His tears fell on to the picture of the Moa and the red and yellow merged together in places, to form a peculiar orange. He tried to push Dorothy away. ‘Don't hold me so tight, Mama!'

‘I'll hold you tight until you say what you meant. I'll hold you and never let you go.'

‘I don't
know
what I meant!' Edwin blurted out at last.

‘I don't believe you. Why would you have said such a thing for no reason?'

‘I only said I didn't want those robes . . .'

‘But why is there a question of robes? Are you ill, Edwin? Is something happening that you haven't told us?'

‘No! I just
said
that in case.'

‘In case? What d'you mean “in case”?'

‘In case I fell . . .'

‘Fell? Fell from where? From your pony?'

‘Fell anywhere. All I meant was, I'd like the wings by themselves and not those white things and not bombazine!'

Mother and son were both weeping now and clinging to each other and Harriet got up and slowly crossed the room to them and sat down opposite them.

‘Harriet,' sobbed Dorothy, ‘what in the world has brought this into his mind?'

‘I think', said Harriet gently, ‘that he may have had a dream. Am I right, Edwin? I think you may have been lying down somewhere comfortable, perhaps in your bed, or perhaps somewhere else like in the toi-toi grass, and then you went to sleep and had a dream about falling and dying. And now the dream won't go away. Am I right?'

Edwin turned his head from where it was buried in Dorothy's shoulder. His crying ceased. He said nothing, but only nodded and regarded Harriet gravely with his wide grey eyes.

‘Is that it?' said Dorothy. ‘Is Harriet right? You had a dream?'

‘Yes,' lied Edwin. ‘But now it's gone.'

After supper, Toby Orchard, puffing on a cigar, his wide frame nicely settled in his favourite chair, said: ‘I have been putting my mind to how we can get word to Joseph and there are only two ways. The first way is that one of us must go to Lyttelton and make sure a letter is put into the hands of the captain of the
Wallabi
or the
Nelson
to be given to the commissioner or warden at Hokitika. However, I can't say when these boats may next be putting out, so very much time might be lost here.'

‘Perhaps there is no particular haste?' suggested Dorothy. ‘For this kind of news does not alter, Toby.'

‘No,' said Toby, ‘of course it does not “alter”, Doro. But when a man has lost his mother, he should be told about it. Harriet is perfectly right on that score. So. Our alternative is that we ride to Amberley, to the dray road, and talk to one of the foolhardy crew going west over the mountains and entrust a letter to a stranger of our choice – and hope that he, and the letter, may arrive at his destination in one piece.'

‘There is talk of a proper route being sought,' said Dorothy. ‘Through one or other of the passes.'

‘Yes,' said Toby, ‘but that does not help us at the moment, Doro, does it?'

‘No, I was merely remarking, there
is
to be a road one day.'

Toby looked critically at the end of his cigar, fearing it had gone out, but there was still a little glow on it and he concentrated on sucking this back into life while Dorothy said: ‘What I keep thinking about it is how, when any letter finds its way to Hokitika, it may also find its way to Joseph. For where is Joseph now, Toby? We do not know.'

‘No,' said Toby. ‘We do not know. And I saw the goldfields in Otago and they were like a rabbit warren going on and on, with everywhere the same features and the same huts and shelters, and to find a man there would have been almost impossible. But Harriet might send a photograph – if she has one? And this could be passed around.'

Harriet replied that she had no photograph of Joseph, that he had not wanted a wedding picture, that the only likeness of him she had ever seen had been put into the ground with Lilian. And she saw in her mind's eye the enormous distance that was already beginning to expand between Joseph and the news that was so necessary to him, so that it wasn't difficult to imagine weeks and months going by, with a letter waiting somewhere, but never arriving in Joseph's hand.