The Love Apple (7 page)

Huia appeared from the other side of the clearing. ‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ she called.

‘I am,’ said Geoffrey.

‘Look what I’ve found,’ she said when Geoffrey reached her. The girl pointed to a dead tree with an oval hole in the trunk. ‘What do you think?’ she said, putting her face through the hole.

‘Splendid head clamp,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Get someone to put their head through that and there’d be no problem about them wriggling around while I took their photograph.’

‘You do it,’ said Huia as she moved away.

Geoffrey rested his head in the hole and made a silly face. Huia put her hand in her pocket and took out a white clay pipe.

‘Do you smoke that?’ said Geoffrey.

‘Sometimes. Got it when my Nanny died but don’t tell my Da.’ She laughed as she stuck the pipe in Geoffrey’s mouth.

‘Now I know how a snowman feels,’ said Geoffrey.

‘You don’t like the
paipa
?’

Huia pulled the pipe from Geoffrey’s lips, then leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

‘Gracious,’ said Geoffrey, feeling himself flush with embarrassment. ‘What was that about?’

‘I like you, Mr Battle. Do you like me too?’

‘Like you?’ said Geoffrey. ‘After you’ve drenched me? I should think not.’ He moved away from the tree, Huia caught
his arm and together they walked back into the bush. The warmth of the girl’s fingers was reassuring. Geoffrey squeezed her hand, realising his abject hunger for this comforting touch of human skin.

Coming out of the forest again they found themselves on a low terrace running alongside a powerful stream. ‘Nearly there,’ said Huia, running her hand in the river. ‘Feel this.’

Geoffrey knelt beside her. The water was faintly warm. Steam rose off the river and over an apron of boulders and grass jutting from the lip of the bush.

Huia gestured with her head. ‘There are the old pools you’re so keen on. You can get in whichever you like. You’re better off
kiri
kau
though: the water stinks and it rots your clothes.’

‘I see,’ said Geoffrey, looking around at the steaming, rocky pools. He didn’t understand the Maori but, catching the drift, felt discomfited by the girl’s reference to nakedness.

‘No need to be shy,’ Huia said as if she read his thoughts. ‘I’m not staying. Don’t much like the pools; they make my skin wrinkle. Think I’ll look for kakariki feathers.’

Once Huia had disappeared into the trees, Geoffrey undressed. He placed his clothes in a neat heap that looked somewhat incongruous with the rough grass.

He put a toe in the nearest pool, decided it was too fiercely hot and moved to another. The water, which reached to his chest, was a delicious temperature: just above blood heat. Geoffrey waded across to a rock and sank against it, allowing the kindly warmth to seep into his flesh. All the soreness of the journey floated from his limbs. Above him the tightly wooded sides of the valley rose sheer to the snowline. Must be at least an hour or two to tramp up there, he thought, gazing at the whiteness that seemed to hang directly above him, so impeccable and near, it felt close enough to touch.

Half-submerged, Geoffrey peered through the steam at the perfect, azure sky and remembered a bright blue silk dress a girl he once knew always wore at the children’s parties in County Kildare. He drifted into sleep thinking of light and colour and how in New Zealand, unlike Ireland, there was a brightness, as if the entire landscape were illuminated for a theatrical production.

Huia’s kiss woke him. She was close by in the pool, wearing her soldier’s cap, her long hair floating on the water.

‘Huia?’ said Geoffrey, uncertain as to where he was. He reached out and touched the girl’s exposed shoulder, as if to convince himself she was real. Her naked skin felt curious, like the rich, damp pelt of some water creature.

‘Undine,’ said Geoffrey.

‘Who?’ said Huia.

‘A water sprite,’ said Geoffrey, still drowsy.

Huia kissed him again, this time on the ear; her tongue lingered against his skin, her breath moved on his face. Geoffrey felt his body stir. Heat fluxed through him as if lava were coursing in his blood. Huia smiled, and in the dark corridors of her eyes Geoffrey could see wreaths of steam.

‘You are very beautiful,’ he said, adrift in her glance. ‘Your eyes are like grapes in a Zuberan painting.’

‘Kiss me, Battle. You want to, eh?’

Huia leaned forward. Her soldier’s cap fell off and floated on the steamy water, a dark blossom in the opaque air.

Dreamlike, without apparent effort, their naked bodies moved together, mouths opened, tongue on tongue. Clutching each other, they rocked and swayed. Geoffrey ran his hand down Huia’s back, over the blades of her shoulders, the chasm of her backbone, the top of her buttocks where the cheeks divided. Reaching forward, he touched the hidden cleft, the place soft, hair undulating under his fingers.

Huia raised her legs and spread them about him, weightless as if in flight. Geoffrey felt her pressing urgently against him and every sensation in his body became the exaltation between his thighs. The swirling steam off the pools, the water leaking through the fissures of volcanic rock from the hot spine of the land, fused with his desire. Frantic with need, he clasped Huia against him, pushing himself into her pliant flesh. It seemed like a journey into the earth itself.

And afterwards on the grass, under the embroidered shawl, Geoffrey entered her again. The meadow of silk flowers rippled and convulsed as man and woman locked together, their cries of pleasure lost in the uproar of running water and distant calls of birds.

‘We’d better be getting back,’ said Huia as she finally stood, clutching the shawl around her naked body.

Geoffrey had no desire to move, or to think. He felt the grass stalks at his back and sun on his body. He was wrung out, exhausted. He wanted only to sleep.

‘Hey, lazybones,’ said Huia, gently kicking at his arm with her foot. ‘I don’t want the old man getting cranky and he’ll want his tucker.’

In silence they dressed and began their way back to the camp. Geoffrey was tired and vacant. He imagined the top of his skull lifted off and his mind floating about the afternoon air like thistledown.

‘When we get home, you’ll be able to come courting,’ said Huia as she stopped walking and put her face up for him to kiss. Geoffrey obliged — absentmindedly — while he rummaged unsuccessfully in his mind for a picture of himself, red roses in hand, knocking on the door of the Bluetts’ shack.

‘Will you take me to London?’ said Huia.

‘I don’t know,’ said Geoffrey.

‘Please.’

‘I’m tired, Huia.’

‘Well, I’m your sweetheart now,’ said Huia as she snuggled against his shoulder. ‘Aren’t I?’

Geoffrey hadn’t thought of this possibility. There was a completeness about the events at the pools, astonishing and marvellous as they were, but totally separate from ordinary life. The unsullied mountain place, the warm water like an artery of the earth, the frenzied needs and satisfactions of flesh now seemed the distant memory of some other man. If Geoffrey expected anything it was that Huia would herself understand that their encounter was unique, belonging only to this single spot and day. Huia’s assumption that there was something ongoing between them was alarming.

‘Da wouldn’t mind if we wanted to get married, you being so la-di-da; I bet he’d be tickled pink, not like he was with Eddie Green.’

The implications of this seemed too immense to contemplate.

‘Who was Eddie Green?’ Geoffrey said, by way of distraction.

‘No one special, just a chap.’

Geoffrey wondered briefly and inconclusively if there had already been other men in Huia’s life. She seemed so young, so naive, he couldn’t believe it; and yet on reflection there was a brazenness about her that shocked him. He certainly didn’t want to think about it; in fact, he didn’t want to think about Huia at all.

The way back to the camp seemed to have grown enormously since they set out. The tightly wedged trees and bushes appeared endless. Geoffrey felt sick of dodging branches and watching his footfall for obstacles.

‘You do love me?’ said Huia.

‘Oh, Huia, it’s not the time for that.’

‘But you loved her, that dead wife of yours.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘So you don’t love me, is that it?’

Geoffrey didn’t answer.

‘Up at the pools, you think that was nothing, just a big bloody nothing?’ said Huia. And with a stick she savagely broke a delicate clump of moss growing on a tree trunk.

W
hen Huia returned from taking her father his dinner the parcel was by the front door. It was wrapped in glossy brown paper, tied with string and sealed with red wax. Huia’s name was on the label and there was a seal impressed in the wax. Geoffrey Hastings, Huia thought. It must be.

She had never had a parcel before and the wonder of it consumed her. How had it got here? Had Geoffrey himself delivered it? Had she missed him? That would be too terrible after all the waiting and hoping. Maybe it had been left by the carter who took provisions up to the timber camp, or brought by some Hokitika urchin in return for a couple of pence? Huia turned the package over and over: desperate for it to be a gift, a sign from Geoffrey; terrified she would open it and be disappointed. Finally she cut the string with the carving knife. Out of the tissue-paper interior slid a pair of gloves — the most beautiful, the most expensive gloves Huia had ever seen. Soft, elegant gloves with pearl buttons at each wrist and pleated cuffs bound with braid. Huia put them on. Her kid-covered hands were pale, lovely birds.

There was a card, too — a card of pansies bearing the words:

Pansies were for thoughts. Geoffrey had been thinking of her.

Huia sat down at the kitchen table and began to cry. He hadn’t forgotten her; there was hope after all.

It had been over two months since they had come back from the Routledge. Sixty-four days, in fact, since she had seen him. Huia knew this because every night she made a little mark with a pencil on her wall beside her bed. She had also, on the last night of each month, placed her boots in the form of a T and recited:

The charm had failed on both occasions.

It wasn’t only that Huia was lovesick. She longed for Geoffrey in the obsessive way that the starving long for food but there was something else: worse, much worse. Something Huia hardly knew how to name. She had even considered stealing a half-crown from her father to send for some of
Dr
McDermott’s
pills
for
female
problems,
all
blockages
dealt
with,
advertised in the
Auckland
Weekly
News,
but the risk of her theft being discovered was too great. And anyway, Huia was uncertain. What was a blockage? It seemed a strange name for what troubled her.

She was surprised by the way the things that gave her happiness could suddenly upturn, plunging her into misery like a pleasure-seeker in a capsizing boat. It was odd, she decided,
how the underside of joy was always grief.

The day she and Geoffrey had gone to the hot pools was one of the happiest of Huia’s life. Hadn’t she seen how Geoffrey had looked at her, such appetite in his eyes, his longing so obvious? Wasn’t she sure he was in love with her? She thought of Geoffrey’s fierce passion in the water and how glamorous and desirable it had made her feel. She remembered the mountains and trees lurching in the steam, the exquisite moment when it seemed she and Geoffrey soared together, their separate selves melting in ecstasy and shared delight. It had been good — but never quite that good — with Stan Birtwistle. And she knew Geoffrey had felt it too. What she couldn’t understand was the way everything had altered: happiness turned sour. In a few hours the Geoffrey who had gazed besotted at her was replaced by another man. A man who didn’t see her. A man who wanted her gone.

When they had got back to the hut her father was drunk, having consumed a great deal of Geoffrey’s brandy.

‘About bloody time, too,’ Bluett shouted when he saw them coming. ‘Been waiting hours for some hot grub.’

‘Look here, Bluett,’ Geoffrey had said.

For one frightful moment Huia had thought Geoffrey was going to tell her Da off, point out that he was paying him, and wasn’t it Bluett’s ankle that was causing all sorts of nuisance on the trip? Huia, knowing her father’s drunken temper, dreaded what might happen. Maybe Geoffrey understood too, for he stopped speaking, took a book from his saddlebag and disappeared into the forest. Huia didn’t see him again until dinner. Then, and for the rest of the evening, Geoffrey said nothing beyond the most cursory ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

Huia had lain awake in the dark, flicking away mosquitoes and feeling as open and broken as the hut itself. She thought of
how much she wanted Geoffrey’s touch, his holding, his tenderness. She would win him back: she was determined of that. She wondered what to do next. If only she could speak to him, be alone with him, things would be all right. Geoffrey had pitched his tent in the clearing only a few yards away, yet he could have been on the other side of the world for the gulf that was now between them.

At dawn Huia had an idea. When her father and Geoffrey woke, she was already getting breakfast. Geoffrey rolled out of his blankets and looked about for Champ. The dog had gone. It was unusual for Champ to be out of earshot. Geoffrey, who was very attached to the little terrier, was worried.

‘I’ll help you look after we’ve had breakfast,’ said Huia.

When they finished breakfast, Huia and Geoffrey went into the trees, whistling and calling. It seemed Huia was very certain of the direction they should take.

‘Listen,’ said Huia. ‘I can hear him.’

Geoffrey could hear nothing.

Huia led the way to where there was the sound of barking. Champ was tied to a tree.

‘You did this?’ said Geoffrey.

‘Yes,’ said Huia.

‘In God’s name, why?’

‘Because,’ said Huia, ‘I want to see you, talk to you, be with you. I can’t say anything to you with Da up there. I love you. I want you to love me too.’

Huia caught Geoffrey’s hand and shoved it between the two missing buttons on her bodice. He could feel her breast like warm bread under the chemise. The intervening fabric added an alluring barrier between flesh and flesh. In his palm Huia’s nipple was rising. Instinctively Geoffrey’s fingers closed.

He had spent a sleepless night castigating himself for what had happened at the pools: his immorality, his corruption of
Huia, his careless disregard for Vanessa’s memory. Moments before he was thinking of finding Champ; now he was consumed by desire. The memory of the previous day threw images like magic lantern slides in his head. He saw the ribbon of Huia’s body as she drifted towards him in the pool, the sweet undulations of hip and buttocks, the seemingly aquatic caves of marvellous flesh that lay between her thighs. For a moment he hesitated. He was like a man on the edge of a cliff, bent on destruction but pausing briefly at the thought of a fire left dangerously untended at home, or an unlocked door inviting burglary. Then he pulled back Huia’s clothing and began to kiss and bite her shoulders.

‘You do love me, I can tell,’ said Huia as they sank onto the forest floor.

Geoffrey couldn’t have replied even if he’d wanted to. The furore of his feelings, the chaotic confusion of need, recollection, lust and surrender rendered speech impossible.

They’d got back to Hokitika somehow: Bluett’s ankle had prevented any thought of continuing on up the Routledge. As it was, it didn’t seem to matter. Geoffrey had lost all enthusiasm for the expedition and just wanted to get home. Huia remembered little of the return journey. Geoffrey spoke to her only when he had to, and they were never alone together. Bluett was cross and in pain. Huia was desolate, her mood fluctuating from self-blame to anger at Geoffrey. They had parted formally at the livery stables in Hokitika. Geoffrey bowed slightly to Huia and said, ‘Thank you very much.’ It was as if they had just come off the floor at some fashionable ball.

In the days and weeks that followed, Huia had told herself that absence made the heart grow fonder. If she were patient and made no move, Geoffrey would have second thoughts and contact her again. But he didn’t. As time went by, Huia thought
of her mother and of Stan Birtwistle, and wondered if abandonment was just what happened. Nothing could be trusted: love least of all. And then she became aware of the other matter.

Huia was late with the meal. She had pulled the gloves on and off a hundred times, tried them on with various items of clothing, done and undone the buttons. She had examined and re-examined the card, even copying Hastings’ signature over and over onto a piece of the brown paper. All this used up a large part of the afternoon. Huia had stoked the fire, made a rice pudding and was just about to put the potatoes on to boil when her father came in.

‘What have you got there?’ Bluett asked, unlacing his boots.

‘Nothing,’ said Huia, hastily shoving the gloves down the front of her sacking apron.

‘Don’t bloody lie to me, girl,’ said her father. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’

Huia held the gloves out to him. Bluett took them.

‘Where did those come from?’ he said, turning them over.

Huia could think of nothing except the truth. ‘Mr Hastings sent them to me.’

‘Hastings?’ said Bluett. ‘Since when did he start giving you gee-gaws? Have you been acting the trollop with him?’

Huia was silent.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ said Bluett.

‘I’ve done nothing,’ said Huia.

‘Why’s he giving you bloody tart’s gifts, then? Answer me that?’

Huia hung her head.

‘Answer me, girl.’ He caught her arm in a painful grip.

‘Maybe he just wanted to say thank you for my cooking up the Routledge. He might have noticed I don’t have any gloves.’

‘Humph!’ said Bluett, getting up. ‘Who does Hastings think he is anyway? Buggered my bloody leg going after his
horse and what thanks did I get? And now he’s throwing his money around on you. Suppose he thinks I don’t provide well enough, can’t clothe my own kin. Is that it? Well, there’s only one place for this sort of fancy muck in my house.’

‘Please, Da, please,’ said Huia, who had seen her father destroy things before. ‘I’ll put the gloves away. I promise I’ll never wear them if you give them back.’

‘Likely story,’ said Bluett.

‘Please, please,’ said Huia.

Bluett went out, banging the door behind him. Huia knew it was no use arguing; she’d only get a hiding and he’d still get rid of the gloves. Through the window she saw her father cross the rough grass and go into the privy. He came out quickly, the gloves no longer in his hands.

Huia sat on the planks over the long drop. She had locked herself in and didn’t want to come out. Ever. The privy was dark, draughty and smelly. It was also home to several weta, whose armour-plated insect bodies and evil-looking heads had greatly alarmed Huia as a child. Now she watched one scuttle about in a corner and felt a grim satisfaction in its malevolent appearance.

Far below her in the stinking tide of urine and excrement were the gloves: her gloves. The gloves Geoffrey had chosen for her, gloves his fingers must have touched. There was no way of rescuing them but at least they were there. Geoffrey had sent them. He remembered her. There was comfort in that. Hope.

And Lady Luck did smile, or at least Huia thought so. Two days later Alf Bluett said he was heading north for a night or two. He was going up to Nelson’s Creek with his mate to look at a bit of land Mathias was thinking of buying. Ever since the gloves had arrived, Huia had tried to find a way of getting to see Geoffrey. It had to be concealed from her father but there was no way she could walk to Hokitika and back in a morning, or an
afternoon. To be away from home for longer was impossible, as Bluett expected his meal brought up to the forest at midday and a hot dinner waiting when he got back. It would, of course, be possible for Huia to get to see Geoffrey when she and her father went on their next trip to town, but having to wait almost two weeks seemed an additional agony.

Bluett’s departure was a godsend. The gloves gave Huia the perfect reason to visit Geoffrey, and when she was there … her thoughts trailed off at this point. She was sure she loved Geoffrey. She was also confused, frightened, alone, and there was something bewildering and strange happening to her body.

Huia knew that her good dress, the dress she had from her mother, would be crushed again by the time she had carried it over her arm the six miles to town but she was still going to iron it. She raked up the stove and set the heavy flatiron near the coals to heat, then sat at the table polishing her fingernails with her mother’s nail buffer. Huia’s nails were bitten and had bled in some of the corners. She wished she had Geoffrey’s gloves to hide their ugliness.

Taking the iron off the stove, she brushed off the ash with a cloth and spat on the plate. If it sizzled you knew it was ready — this was something she had learned from her mother. Huia thought of Florrie’s small brown hand holding this same iron as the saliva shrank into fizzing liquid balls. Her mother, Ma. The thought made Huia feel faint. She stood there holding the upturned iron, unable to move, unable to breathe. Her stomach hurt; she felt dizzy and sick. The walls of the kitchen came pressing in, closer, closer. They were going to meet — to catch and squash her between them. Then a voice — Huia thought it was her own — began sobbing over and over: ‘I want Ma. I want Ma now.’ It was the first time Huia had ever let herself think or say such a thing, but as the words came she knew that in spite of all pretence, the feeling had always been inside her: cunningly
waiting, insidiously growing every day of the eight years that had passed since her mother had left.