The Love Apple (11 page)

‘Are yiz wanting to play?’ asked a boy with a large burn-hole in his jacket.

‘Sure, I haven’t time,’ said PJ, walking on.

When PJ got to the village of Killeigh he went to the forge. A shop or a public house would have done as well but having worked with horses PJ knew the ways of forges. There was gossip at the forge; men hanging about chewing on straws, as shoes were shaped and sparks flew. Bound to be someone there who’d know where Mrs Sullivan was.

‘Mrs Sullivan,’ said the blacksmith, who was bolting the doors of the forge, having finished work for the day when PJ arrived. ‘Wasn’t there a nurse, a Dublin wan, over at the big house in the summer? Though to tell the truth I haven’t seen her lately. She’ll be who yer after.’

To have come all this long way and find someone who actually knew Mrs Sullivan made PJ light-headed with gratitude and relief.

The grounds of the big house adjoined the village green. PJ walked up the drive. He was stiff, wet, shivering and hungry. Blisters made each step painful and his feet ached. He was also happier than he’d been since Mick’s death. In a few minutes he would find her. It was like coming home. The boy went under the carriageway that led into the main courtyard. Hens ran in and out of the barn and a brougham was in front of the coach house.

In the narrowing light PJ saw a woman carrying a vase of leaves coming out of what looked like the kitchen door. She wore a dark dress and had a bunch of keys at her belt. PJ guessed she was the housekeeper.

‘What do you want, sonny?’ she said. ‘If you’re from the tinkers we want no truck with them.’

‘Excuse me, missus, but I’m looking for someone. Mrs Sullivan. I’ve walked from Dublin to see her.’

The housekeeper rested the vase on top of a pile of butter boxes that stood beside the door. ‘Am I right in thinking you’re PJ?’

The boy nodded.

‘You unfortunate little divil. You’d better come in, PJ. You’d better come in.’

G
rotesque was the only word Geoffrey Hastings could think of that adequately described his situation. Here he was in his own drawing room, sitting in his own serpent-green plush armchair, watching Mrs Moller, a large woman with sweat stains on her dress, pulling her huge breasts out of her bodice: thrusting them in front of him like a gardener exhibiting marrows at a fête.

‘Firm and round,’ Mrs Moller said, ‘and the nipples, see the nipples, nice and elastic, just as Mrs Beeton says they ought.’

‘Mrs Beeton, the household expert?’ said Geoffrey.

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Moller. ‘So you haven’t read what she says about wet nurses?’

Geoffrey felt that this was seen as a serious deficiency. He certainly hadn’t thought of consulting a book, especially what he regarded as a cooking book, as preparation for the interview. Now he wished he had. What in heaven’s name was he supposed to say or do? This was clearly women’s work. It was Huia’s responsibility, there was no doubt, but in this as in much else of Geoffrey’s relationship with his second wife, what he thought should happen and what actually took place seldom coincided.

At this moment Huia was in bed upstairs, crying. The baby, Oliver, was mercifully asleep in his cradle. Geoffrey had accepted
the employment of a nursemaid but he could see no sense in appointing a wet nurse. The fashionable practice of paying a woman to suckle one’s own children struck him as totally unreasonable. Huia was able to feed the baby herself and, had she married a working man, she would undoubtedly have done so. But Huia had other ideas.

‘I want my twenty-inch waist back,’ she said. ‘And you don’t want a wife like an old cow with flapping udders. Anyway, I don’t like all the sucking and tugging. It hurts and it’s common. Ladies don’t feed, they have wet nurses.’

‘Don’t lecture me about what ladies do and don’t do,’ said Geoffrey. In the months since the wedding Huia had become increasingly concerned both with her looks and being — when it suited — what she called ‘a lady’.

She had wept and sulked and refused to feed Oliver until finally Geoffrey had given up in desperation. He had assumed that Huia would at least interview the prospective wet-nurse applicants, but though several weeks had elapsed since the birth, Huia kept to her bed, pleading exhaustion and crying at any mention that she might get up.

Maeve, the young Irish nurse married to Geoffrey’s friend Arthur Pascoe, had been there for Huia’s lying-in.

‘Can’t see a stim wrong with her,’ Maeve had said, ‘and Dr Mackintosh agrees with me. She’s the picture of health and the baby’s a fine child too, but your wife certainly seems in a bad way. Melancholic, I suppose you’d say. Seen it before with new mothers, never know what to make of it. I’m sure it’ll pass.’

‘Very nice,’ said Geoffrey, taking a quick look at Mrs Moller’s overgenerous breasts and hoping that was all that was required.

‘But will they do, sir?’ said Mrs Moller.

‘Well,’ said Geoffrey, uncertain how to either judge or reply.

‘So you think I can’t produce,’ said Mrs Moller. ‘Is that it? Nine children of my own I’ve suckled with these and eight others I’ve nursed. And never a complaint. Look at this, Mr Hastings, just take a look at this.’

Mrs Moller took one elongated nipple in her fingers and pinched it. A trail of milk arched across the room and feathered down on the books on the canterbury.

‘Good God!’ said Geoffrey.

‘Thought you’d be jiggered by that. The gents always are. So do I get the job?’

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey wearily, ‘you do.’

The coming of Oliver had been an extraordinary event for Geoffrey. To have a son gave him a pleasure he had never expected. When Huia had announced she was pregnant he had felt nothing except horror for the child she carried. If it hadn’t been for Sybil he would have sent the girl away, far away: Australia, most likely. Geoffrey recoiled whenever he considered how close he could have come to losing Oliver. Losing this miracle of flesh that was his own.

There had been a night some weeks after the birth when Huia was still permitting the baby in their bed. The moonlight was gentle on the room and Oliver was asleep in the soft tunnel between his parents’ bodies. Geoffrey had opened his eyes and found himself looking at the folded flesh of the baby’s neck and the fluff of his hair. My son, Geoffrey thought to himself, but also Huia’s; this child carried not only the blood of generations of Anglo-Irish gentry but also another, wilder, more startling inheritance — the Maori of New Zealand. At first Geoffrey had refused to let himself contemplate what that meant, the enormity of it too great, the prejudice of society too severe. He had comforted himself when he married Huia that she could easily pass for being part Spanish, Italian even. But he knew it
wasn’t true and it was his shame that yearned for such invention.

Looking at the sleeping Oliver another thought arose: why did it matter? The child was perfect. What was all this fear about race anyway? Dividing people up according to the past or their skin colour, setting them above or below or against each other, were ugly, staining things. Wasn’t there something fine and freeing in thinking that his son was one of a new people, a fresh creation?

The baby had one arm up over his head. Geoffrey felt his whole being swoop with tenderness at the sight of the tiny hand like a shell on the pillow. Oliver sighed in his sleep and Geoffrey was overwhelmed by protectiveness. Pain, he knew, was an essential component of the human lot; yet the thought that his son might one day be confronted by injustice, prejudice, sadness and grief seemed unbearable. But he would protect him; Geoffrey vowed he would. He would shield him from danger, nurture him with his own life.

Geoffrey gazed entranced at his small son as Oliver slept. The baby had the long eyelashes of his mother, his mouth a pink leaf. It seemed beyond belief that in the fierce moment of their two bodies coupling this flawless, new human life had been forged. Geoffrey looked across the bed at Huia and felt tender towards her. He got up and knelt on the floor beside his wife. She was so young it was hard to blame her for anything. Motherhood would soften and mature her. She would grow up. One day, with luck, he would feel they were a family.

Huia’s long hair lay across the sheets and Geoffrey touched a strand of it with his fingers. Huia opened her eyes. She smiled up at him. Geoffrey kissed her neck.

‘You want to, Mr Battle?’ she said, holding his hand against her skin.

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey, thinking of the hot pools. ‘If you’re well enough. But I don’t want to waken Oliver.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ Huia said, getting up. ‘We’ll do it on the floor.’

Geoffrey’s longing was for gentle, languorous lovemaking in the soft white country of their bed. Huia ruched up his nightshirt and sat straddling his body.

‘You want a show?’ she said, laughing.

Very slowly she gathered her clothing in her hands. Geoffrey could see her thighs, the soft thatch of her pubic hair, the roundness of her stomach, fuller now since she had given birth, and then her breasts. Huia pulled the nightdress over her head and up her arms. There were times like this when she still shocked him and yet, though he could hardly admit it, he also found it exciting.

‘Now,’ said Huia, ‘now,’ as she eased Geoffrey into her flesh, controlling his eagerness with her muscles, arousing and tantalising, making him wait. Geoffrey was urgent with desire, desperate for release, but Huia would not permit it. She nudged, provoked, parried and feinted. It was a duel that Geoffrey didn’t want, and couldn’t win. Finally, when he felt unable to survive another minute, Huia raised her hands above her head as her body lapped and quivered about him. She gave a shout. It was the
coup
de
grâce.

‘You liked that, eh?’ she said against his ear.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Geoffrey. It sounded as hollow as he felt. The floor was hard and cold. Tenderness gone.

Geoffrey was at his desk in the studio, sorting through an order of cabinet mounts he had just brought home from the printer. He liked this new, larger format and was pleased that he had chosen the dark green card, rather than the black. He was less certain about the gilded, bevelled edge, wondering if the impression was over-elaborate when coupled with the gold flourishes of his imprint: ‘Geoffrey Hastings, Photographic Artist, Hokitika, New
Zealand’. In such matters he preferred the austere end of ostentation. Geoffrey had ordered the cartes with the intention of making a series of photographs of Oliver. Other portraits too, maybe. Following Oliver’s birth the revulsion he had felt for this type of work seemed to have left him. He wanted to produce a visual diary of Oliver’s growing up, an icon for every year, but it was more than that. He had never before had much interest in child portraiture. He found the children — stuffed into kilts, tam-o’-shanters or sailor suits, bullied into passivity and thrust before his camera — impossible to make live. Stony and vacant, the young sitters stared at his lens as if facing a firing squad. The swings, toy ships and skipping ropes that were the traditional props hung limp and spurious in their hands. His images were invariably of dead manikins, the ebullience of childhood obliterated by the photographic process. It would not be so with Oliver. The love Geoffrey felt for his son would illuminate each exposure: the pictures would glow with it, the child made new every time.

There was a sound in the house. Geoffrey listened. Wailing was coming from the nursery. It had the despairing quality of a child that has been left weeping for a long time. Oliver was now six months old. The wet nurse had been dispensed with, it was the nurserymaid’s afternoon off and the cook-general was shopping. Huia will attend to the baby, Geoffrey thought.

The crying grew louder. He went upstairs. Huia was nowhere about. Geoffrey went into the nursery to find Oliver, scarlet in the face, lying against the side of his cot, his face smeared with vomit. He had been sick on his pillow. Geoffrey took the baby in his arms and wiped Oliver’s face with his handkerchief. The child was hot, feverish and distressed. Geoffrey sat down in the rocking chair and tried to calm the boy. What was the matter with him? Was it serious? Should he get a doctor? And where was Huia? She must have gone out, leaving the child
alone while Geoffrey himself was elsewhere. He felt anxiety for Oliver and anger at Huia. He felt worried and furious. It was as if all the irritations he’d harboured against her since they got married and had not allowed himself to indulge were suddenly unleashed. They rose up in a fiery bile, making his chest contract; bitterness overwhelmed him like heartburn. He had tried to be forbearing and understanding with Huia, made excuses for her, forced himself to remember her different social position, youth, pregnancy, the birth, learning the new ways of his life and household. He had overlooked her social gaffes, her insistence on running about at home barefoot, her refusal to learn which knives and forks were used for which courses, her sitting with her legs crossed, her holding her skirts immodestly high when she went upstairs, her pipe-smoking in the kitchen, her stirring sugar in her teacup as if mixing concrete and her treating the servants as intimates one minute and slaves the next. The list went on and on. And these were the minor annoyances: more important was Huia’s extravagance: her endless appetite for clothes, morning dresses, riding costumes, tea gowns, ball frocks. Clothes to outfit a London society belle, not the wife of a photographer in a hick gold-town at an obscure corner of the empire.

But there was worse. It was Huia’s moods, her sulks and depressions, her constant need for attention and affection that Geoffrey found the most difficult. He had tried — God knew he had — but Huia’s desire for admiration seemed limitless. And there was the child. Geoffrey had assumed that mothers naturally loved their children but he wasn’t sure at all about Huia. Sometimes she seemed to be obsessively concerned for her son; at others her indifference frightened him.

And there was the loss of Sybil. For days he had argued and debated with his sister-in-law over her advice that he should marry Huia. He had advanced every possible reason why he shouldn’t, and heaven knows there were plenty, but in the end
Sybil, coupled with his own sense of guilt, had triumphed. Geoffrey envisaged the marriage as a penance to be endured, a way of absolution for what he saw as his betrayal of Vanessa. No sooner had he agreed to marry Huia than Sybil started looking in the papers for governess positions. Weeks before the wedding she left Hokitika for employment on a high-country station in Canterbury.

Once she was gone Geoffrey realised how much he had enjoyed her brief visit and how much he missed her. In retrospect it seemed that Sybil had offered not only a consolation for his grief, but an end to his loneliness: fate had sent her to him as his last desperate chance, an opportunity he was too ill-prepared to grasp. She continued to write to Geoffrey once a week. Calm, interesting letters full of good sense and sharp observation, but there was nothing personal about them. They seemed to Geoffrey letters written by someone looking down on the earth from a great height; letters devoid of sentiment or feeling.

‘Where in God’s name have you been?’ said Geoffrey as Huia came into the room. She was wearing her fashionable walking costume with the moiré lapels. At another time her husband might have noticed.

‘Shopping. Looking at the new English pattern books.’

‘Shopping,’ said Geoffrey. ‘You leave your child in the house on his own, while you go out looking at pattern books.’

Oliver, who had become silent in Geoffrey’s arms, began whimpering.

‘
Pepe
wouldn’t stop bawling. I tried to stop him, I really did. But there was no one here and he was driving me wild, so I went out. I knew you’d be back soon. Don’t be cross,’ said Huia, beginning to cry herself.

‘Cross?’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’m livid. Oliver’s sick: can’t you see that? What’s the matter with you? It’s unnatural, the way you behave. You’re not fit to be a mother.’