The Silk Thief (23 page)

In response, the girl deliberately moved even more glacially. Finally, to the accompaniment of Friday’s heaved sighs, she finished mucking about, took Friday’s money, draped a square of muslin over the crate, pushed it across the counter, and said at the top of her voice, ‘Enjoy your dinner.’

The crowd of waiting customers burst into laughter.

‘Don’t assume everyone has the same eating habits as you, lardarse,’ Friday shot back.

The crowd went, ‘Ooooh!’ and Aria cackled her laugh.

Friday grinned at her, hefted the crate off the counter and marched out of the bakery.

Outside, Paikea said, ‘I will carry the box.’

‘Why?’ Friday’s reticule dangled from her arm and the muscles above the neckline of her bodice bulged. ‘I can manage. You and Yahoo can trot along behind.’

‘Kahu,’ Kahu said curtly. ‘My name is Kahu.’ He turned to Paikea and said something in Maori so indignant-sounding that Friday smirked all the way back to Leo’s.

Everyone was sitting on the floor except Tu and Mahuika, who had commandeered the tattoo chair and stool respectively, and Leo and Harrie, who had brought chairs through from the other room. Spread across the bench was a selection of bone chisels of differing sizes and slightly different shapes, two beautifully carved wooden pots, and a small ceramic container. Tu was speaking while Leo listened intently, and Harrie gazed down at her hands. Friday thought she looked very tired.

‘Here,’ Friday said to Paikea, ‘take the food through to the other room and put it on the table.’

‘You take it. I am not a slave.’

‘Well, neither am I.’

‘You were happy to carry it back here,’ Paikea said.

‘Friday,’ Aria warned quietly.

Across the room Friday could see Mahuika watching them, frowning.

Annoyance flickered across Aria’s face. ‘Here, I will see to it,’ she said, and beckoned to a woman sitting on the floor, who took the crate from Friday.

Paikea made his way around the room until he stood behind Mahuika. He bent and whispered in her ear at length, and Mahuika caught Friday’s eye again. This time she scowled — heavily. Feeling the frosty disapproval of the woman’s gaze, Friday returned the stare for a moment before looking away. Obviously Aria’s mother was an interfering cow, but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to annoy her unnecessarily. She moved towards Leo’s parlour-cum-kitchen to see what Aria was doing, but Aria was coming back out.

‘Have you laid it all out already?’

Aria looked startled. ‘The food? Waiora will do that.’

‘Oh.’ Friday was surprised. Aria had said it as though she wouldn’t even contemplate doing something as domestic and mundane as setting out plates of food.

‘Shall we listen to what my father has to say? Whatever else he might be, he is a very skilled tohunga and he is always worth listening to when he speaks of ta moko.’

Now Friday was dying to know what other things Aria considered her father to be. In her experience, no one who said that ever meant well of the person they said it about. It was nice to know it wasn’t just English families who bickered, fought and didn’t trust each other. She nodded and followed Aria to the front of the room and sat down beside her on the floor.

But as soon as she did, Mahuika interrupted her husband’s monologue. ‘Mr Dundas, excuse me, why is that … female still here?’ She gestured at Friday with a dismissive flip of her hand. ‘Is she not just a customer of yours?’

‘Yes, she is,’ Harrie spoke up, blushing yet again, ‘and she hasn’t finished her session. It was booked weeks ago. She should be allowed to stay. She can stay, can’t she, Leo?’

Leo contemplated Harrie’s worried face. ‘Aye, I’d prefer not to turn a valued customer away. I’d rather she stayed.’

Mahuika’s mouth puckered in disapproval, but she remained silent.

As Tu talked on, Aria inched almost imperceptibly closer to Friday. At one point she set her hand on the ground, and Friday’s heart thrilled as Aria’s little finger extended to touch the side of her hand. From the corner of her eye she caught the glorious woman’s gaze; Aria winked and Friday ducked her head, hiding behind her hair, grinning with delight.

Tu ended his lecture twenty minutes later by opening the trio of pots. One contained ink made from burnt moth larvae used specifically for moko on the body, another held a very black and therefore highly prized ink for the face, prepared from the soot of the fallen kauri tree, and the third contained bird oil infused with a herbal mulch to treat infected scabs and skin lesions. Friday found it fascinating. She stood up and asked, ‘How much do you charge for one of your tattoos?’

‘Money?’ Tu said in a tone just disdainful enough to be noticeable. ‘I do not charge money. For the privilege of receiving my services I am regularly gifted with dog skin and feather cloaks, huia feathers, fine food, weapons, jade, whalebone, beautiful walking sticks, horses. Guns.’ This last brought forth mumbles of approval from the audience. ‘Do you have guns, white girl?’

‘Not on me, no,’ Friday replied sarcastically. White girl? She hadn’t made a song and dance about him being a brown man.

Mahuika interrupted yet again. ‘My husband would not tattoo you, anyway. Ta moko is not for whores, and especially not Pakeha whores.’

Friday thought, well, fuck you, you rude bitch. She wasn’t putting up with this, not even to be near Aria. And bugger the rest of her tattoo session for today — she had to leave before she belted someone.

She said, ‘Sorry, Harrie, I’ll see you next time,’ stepped around everyone sitting on the floor and left.

She was almost out onto George Street when she heard, ‘Friday, wait!’

She turned to see Aria running down the alleyway, her skirts hitched to her knees revealing shapely calves above button boots, and her long hair flying behind her like a black silk banner.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I apologise for my mother. And my father. May I please see you again?’

Friday’s anger dissolved instantly and a lovely warm feeling spread out from her belly. ‘Hell, yes. Better not tell your ma, though. What a cow, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ A cow? She was razor-tongued bloody old tarleather.

‘Of course I will not tell her. Or Paikea. He is my guard.’

‘Your guard? What do you need a guard for?’

Aria looked irritated. ‘I will tell you another time. Shall I come to you? Where do you live?’

‘At the Siren’s Arms Hotel, on Harrington Street. It’s only round the corner from here. When can you come?’

‘I will send a message,’ Aria said. ‘I must go back.’ And she kissed Friday on the corner of her mouth and trotted back along the alleyway, just as Mahuika appeared in Leo’s doorway, looking thunderous.

Friday waved gaily at her and walked off along George Street, swinging her arms jauntily and grinning her head off.

Mahuika gripped her daughter’s arm. ‘What were you saying to that red-headed whore?’

Aria glared at her. ‘Goodbye. I was saying goodbye, Mother. You did not have to be so rude to her.’

‘Clearly I did. You are forbidden to stray, especially not with some common Pakeha prostitute.’

‘Yes. I am sorry.’ Aria hung her head. ‘You are right. I was only saying goodbye.’

Mahuika loosened the pressure on Aria’s arm. ‘Good. I am glad you are able to see sense. The girlish freedoms you once enjoyed are behind you. You have responsibilities. You will behave, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

That evening, as Harrie sat on the sofa folding washing Abigail had brought in, Nora appeared and said, ‘Dr Downey is downstairs asking to see you.’

Harrie sat very still, a pillowslip suspended between her hands. ‘Tell him to go away. Tell him I don’t want to talk to him.’

‘Is that what you really want?’ Nora asked.

She wasn’t sure what had driven Harrie to squander her virginity on a virtual stranger, but knowing how she felt about James Downey, Nora was fairly confident that something he’d done had been behind it. And as James Downey was a man, she assumed he’d been with a woman. An infidelity was just the sort of thing to push Harrie over the edge in her current delicate mental state. But men were like that. For Harrie to have any sort of future with James, she would have to put it behind her.

‘Yes. It is,’ Harrie said. She dropped the pillowslip and hurried off towards the attic stairs.

‘I’ll tell him, then. If you’re sure,’ Nora said to an empty room.

‘God, it’s hot this morning.’ Sarah fanned her face with one hand and kept a firm grip on Clifford’s lead with the other. ‘Was it this warm last October?’

‘For a few days, it was. Spring’s bloody unpredictable here, isn’t it? I like it, though. Keeps you on your toes.’ In accordance with the warmer weather, Friday was wearing one of her low-cut summer dresses in a startling indigo blue.

Everywhere on the street women had ventured out with nothing more than lightweight shawls over their gowns, and men’s hair stuck sweatily to their heads beneath their hats. The heat also had the unfortunate effect of increasing the stink from the open drains and piles of ordure in the streets, attracting growing numbers of flies — annoying harbingers of the infestation that would arrive with summer proper.

‘Well, if it’s going to be this hot, maybe I won’t buy wool after all,’ Sarah said. ‘Maybe I’ll buy all cotton. What do you think?’

‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know the first thing about fabric.’

‘No, but you know what colours look nice.’

‘Not according to Mrs H, I don’t.’ Friday laughed. ‘She reckons my frocks frighten the horses.’

Sarah laughed as well because it was true — Friday’s dresses were quite loud, particularly her summer ones. But they suited her character, and the colours did in fact always somehow complement her fair skin. ‘Pity Harrie couldn’t come. How’s she getting on with Leo?’

‘He says she’s got a great eye. She has, too. She’s doing a lovely job of my phoenix.’

Sarah stepped around a boy sitting on the footway selling bunches of parsley. ‘Clifford, stop that! Obviously she’s not tattooing you today.’

‘Leo’s invited some uppity Maori chief to teach him and Harrie how to tattoo the way the New Zealanders do it, him and his high and mighty bloody shrew of a wife. I think they’re there this morning.’

Sarah looked sideways at Friday. Though she’d just made a rude comment, she didn’t sound irritated. In fact she was in an altogether excellent mood. Something was up. She opened her reticule and took out a piece of paper. ‘This is how much fabric Harrie said I should get for each dress.’

‘Is she sewing them, or Nora Barrett?’

‘Well, I’m paying Nora. I just assumed Harrie doesn’t have the time to sew for us these days, though I bet she would if I asked.’

‘Time? It’s her wits I’d be worried about. You might end up with a dress with four sleeves.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I was watching her the other day. We were listening to that Maori cove talk about tattooing, and Harrie went into this sort of … trance. And it wasn’t even boring, it was more like she couldn’t scrape up the energy to stay in the same realm as the rest of us, so she just let go and slid off into another one.’

Sarah swallowed. That was the most frightening thing anyone had said yet about the state of Harrie’s mind. ‘Has Leo noticed anything?’

‘Hell, yes. He’s really worried.’

‘Is it the abortion, do you think?’

‘I think it’s everything bad that’s happened since we got here,’ Friday said. ‘I think it’s all piling up in her head. Poor love.’

Outside the draper’s, Sarah stopped. ‘Should we go and talk to James? I mean, he is a doctor. He should be able to tell us what we can do to help.’

‘He’s half the reason Harrie’s unhinged, him and bloody Rowie Harris.’

‘But do you really think what Rowie said was true?’ Sarah gave Clifford’s leash a good yank as she lunged at a passing child. ‘Because I’m not so sure it is. I know I didn’t like James to start with, but when he came to stay with me while Adam was away, I changed my mind. He’s a decent man, Friday. I don’t think he did sleep with her.’

Friday made a vulgar noise, startling Clifford.

‘Oh, you think all men are bastards, because of what you do,’ Sarah said.

‘They are.’

‘They are not.’

‘You’re singing a different tune these days.’

‘Well, you like Matthew Cutler, don’t you?’

‘I suppose,’ Friday admitted.

‘And Adam? And Leo? And Jack at the pub?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘There you go. James loves Harrie, he really does. I know he does. And he’s a good man.’

Friday stood aside to let a pair of matrons into the shop. ‘So why won’t he help her?’

‘You know why. She won’t let him.’

There didn’t seem to be anything to add to that, so Sarah tied Clifford to a post and they went inside. The shop was long, its dim interior lit with wall lamps illuminating an extensive range — for Sydney — of fabrics stacked on shelves along one wall. There was bolt after bolt of crepe, camlet, calico, gingham, linen, lawn, chintz, muslin, striped cotton, velvet, silk (plain and figured), satin, taffeta, damask, superfine, bombasine, merinoe, kerseymere, flannel, stuff, drab, diaper, blue jean, moleskin, canvas, fustian, duck, drill, and great rolls of silk mosquito gauze (plain and coloured). On the opposite wall deep shelves displayed crepe and silk waistcoats, Norwich and Thibet shawls, straw and fabric bonnets, men’s beaver hats and dress shirts, pelerines, stays, house caps (plain and lace), parasols, work trousers and jackets, and a range of readymade children’s and infants’ wear.

A deep counter ran across the back of the shop for cutting and measuring, and in the centre were arranged tall glass cabinets containing sewing tools, and tables displaying box after box of sewing cottons and silks, edgings, ribbons, lace, tassels and other notions, silk and cloth handkerchiefs, kid and silk gloves, lace and men’s collars, buttons, steel and whalebone busks, sheet willow and bonnet wire, split straw, silk flowers, hatpins, men’s and women’s hosiery, and scarves and veils. Milling around the tables were at least a dozen women, clucking among themselves and picking over the goods like chickens in a yard.

‘God, where do I start?’ Sarah said.