The Luminaries

‘What is it?’ said Staines, drawing back.

Abruptly she rose from her chair and crossed the room; she stood a moment, breathing deeply, her face turned towards the wall. ‘It’s stupid,’ she said thickly. ‘It’s stupid. Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right in a moment.’

Staines had risen also, in astonishment. ‘Have I offended you?’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry if I have—but what is the matter? Whatever can be the matter?’

Anna wiped her face with her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still without turning. ‘It came as a surprise, that’s all—but I was stupid to think otherwise. It’s not your fault.’

‘What has come as a surprise?’ said Staines. ‘What’s otherwise?’

‘Only that you—’

‘Yes? Please tell me—so that I can put it right. Please.’

She composed herself at last and turned. ‘You may ask your question,’ she said, managing a smile.

‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’

‘Quite sure,’ Anna said. ‘Please ask.’

‘Well, all right,’ said Staines. ‘Here. It’s about a man named Crosbie Wells.’

Anna’s expression of misery dissolved into one of shock. ‘Crosbie Wells?’

‘He is a mutual friend of ours, I think. At least—that is to say—he has my loyalty; I am under the impression that he also has yours.’

She did not reply; after squinting at him a moment she said, ‘How do you know him?’

‘I can’t tell you that exactly,’ said Staines. ‘He charged me to keep it a secret—his whereabouts, I mean; and the circumstances of our having met. But he mentioned your name in connexion with a gold nugget, and a man named Francis Carver, and a robbery of some kind; and if you don’t think me too impertinent—which I am; I know I am—then I should very much like to hear the whole story. I can’t say that it’s a matter of life or death, because it isn’t, and I can’t say that very much depends on my knowing, because really, nothing at all depends on it; except that I’ve gone into a kind of partnership with Mr. Carver—I was a fool to do it; I know that now—and I’ve got the sense, the awful sense, that I was wrong about him; that he’s a villain after all.’

‘Is he here?’ she said. ‘Crosbie. Is he in Hokitika?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Staines.

Her hands had moved to her belly. ‘You don’t need to tell me where he is,’ she said. ‘But I need you to take him a message. An important message—from me.’

THE ASCENDANT

In which Te Rau Tauwhare declines to mention Francis Carver’s name to Crosbie Wells, much less to describe the circumstances of their brief interaction one month prior, an omission that owes in equal parts to a deeply private nature and to a certain cunning when it comes to financial profit; the next time he sees Francis Carver, Tauwhare thinks, he will make an easy shilling, perhaps more.

Crosbie Wells had bought four panes of glass for a quartered window, but he had yet to cut the hole, and set the sill; for the moment, the panes were propped against the wall, reflecting, faintly, the flickering lamplight, and the square grating of the stove.

‘I knew a man who lost an arm in the floods at Dunstan,’ Wells was saying. He was lying on his bolster, a bottle of spirits on his chest; Tauwhare sat opposite, nursing a bottle of his own. ‘Got caught in a rapid, you see, and his arm got trapped, and they couldn’t save it. He had a plain name. Smith or Stone or something like that. Anyway—the point is—he talked of it afterwards, the incident, and his real sorrow, he said, was that the arm he’d lost had been tattooed. A full-rigged ship was the picture—a present to himself, after coming round the Horn—and it bothered him extremely that he’d lost it. For some reason it stayed with me—that story. Losing a tattoo. I asked him if he mightn’t just tattoo the other arm, but he was strange about it. I’ll never do that, he said. I’ll never do it.’

‘It is painful,’ said Tauwhare. ‘Ta moko.’

Wells looked over at him. ‘Is it sometimes a shock,’ he said, ‘to see yourself? After you haven’t been near a looking glass in a while, I mean. Do you forget?’

‘No,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Never.’ His face was shadowed; the lamplight accented the lines around his mouth, giving his expression a hawkish, solemn look.

‘I think I would.’

‘We have a saying,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Taia a moko hei hoa matenga mou.’

‘I cut a man’s face with a knife,’ Wells said, still staring at him. ‘Gave him a scar. Right here. Eye to mouth. It bled like anything. Did yours bleed like anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever killed a man, Tauwhare?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ said Wells, turning back to his bottle. ‘Nor have I.’

SATURN IN VIRGO

In which Quee Long brings a complaint before the law, and George Shepard, whose personal hatred of Sook Yongsheng has grown, over time, to include all Chinese men, declines to honour it, an injustice for which he does not, either then, or afterwards, feel any compunction.

‘I do not understand what you are saying.’

Ah Quee sighed. He pointed a third time to his certificate of indenture, which lay between them on Shepard’s desk. In the box marked ‘present site of employment’ was written the word Aurora.

‘Duffer,’ he explained. ‘Aurora is duffer claim.’

‘The Aurora is a duffer claim, and you work the Aurora, yes. That much I understand.’

‘Mannering,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Mannering make duffer not duffer.’

‘Mannering make duffer not duffer,’ Shepard repeated.

‘Very good,’ said Ah Quee, nodding. ‘Very bad man.’

‘Which is he—very good or very bad?’

Ah Quee frowned; then he said, ‘Very bad man.’

‘How does he make the duffer not a duffer? How? How?’

Ah Quee took his purse and held it up. Moving very deliberately, so that the action would not be lost on Shepard, he extracted a silver penny, which he then transferred to his left pocket. He waited a moment, and then he took the penny from his pocket, and returned it to his purse, as before.

Shepard sighed. ‘Mr. Quee,’ he said. ‘I see that the term of your indenture will not expire for some years; the term of my patience, however, reached its expiration some minutes ago. I have neither the resources nor the inclination to launch an investigation into Mr. Mannering’s finances on the strength of a half-articulated tip. I suggest you return to the Aurora, and count yourself lucky that you have any kind of work at all.’

JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS

In which Alistair Lauderback, having now officially announced his intention to run for the Westland seat in the Fourth New Zealand Parliament, an ambition that, in addition to furthering his already illustrious political career, will take him over the Alps to Westland proper in the coming months, thus granting the interview his bastard brother has so long desired, now turns his mind to practical matters, or, more accurately, entreats an old associate to turn his mind to practical matters on his, Lauderback’s, behalf.

Akaroa. 22 Aug.

My dear Tom—

I expect you know already of my ambition to run for the Westland seat; but if this news comes as a surprise to you, I have enclosed an article from the

Lyttelton Times

that explains the announcement, and my reasons for it, in more detail than I have time for here. You can be sure that I am eager to see the fine sights of West Canterbury with my own eyes. I plan to arrive in Hokitika by 15 January, an estimate dependent upon weather, as I will make the journey overland, rather than by sea, in order to follow and inspect the future Christchurch-road. I prefer to travel light, as you know; I have arranged for a trunk of personal effects to be transferred from Lyttelton in the last days of December. Might the

Virtue

collect the trunk in Dunedin prior to her departure on the 10th of January, and convey it to the Coast? As a West Canterbury foreigner I shall defer to your expertise on questions of Hokitika lodging, dining, coach hire, club membership &c. I trust fully in your good taste and capability, and remain,

Yours, &c.,

A. LAUDERBACK

MOON IN LEO, NEW

In which Mannering, driving Anna Wetherell to Kaniere, perceives in her a new quality, a hardness, a kind of distance; an observation that moves him, internally, to pity, though when he speaks, some three miles after this observation is first made, it is not to console her, the intervening miles having wrought in him a hardness of his own.

‘Misery won’t do. Misery is bad for business, whatever the business. A man won’t bet on it, and a man won’t bet against it—and it has to be one or the other, you see, in our line of work. Do you see?’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘I see.’

He was driving her to Chinatown, where Ah Sook was waiting with his resin and his pipe.

‘I’ve never had a girl murdered, and I’ve never had a girl beat,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said.

‘So you can trust me,’ he said.

SUN IN LEO

In which Staines confides in Mannering to the extent that he admits regret in having entered into a sponsorship agreement with Mr. Francis Carver, explaining that the initial opinion that he, Staines, formed of Carver’s character and history was and is grievously in error, his opinion now being that Carver is a villain of the first degree, and one not at all deserving of good fortune; to which Mannering, chuckling slightly, proposes a somewhat thrilling, because dastardly, solution.

‘There’s only one true crime upon a goldfield,’ said Mannering to Staines as they stamped through the undergrowth towards the southern edge of the Aurora claim. ‘Don’t you bother your head about murder, or theft, or treason. No: it’s fraud that’s the crime of crimes. Making sport of a digger’s hopes, you see, and a digger’s hopes are all he has. Digger fraud has two varieties. Salting a claim is the first. Crying a duffer is the second.’

‘Which is considered to be the more grievous?’

‘Depends on what you call grievous,’ said Mannering, swiping away a vine. ‘Salt a claim and get caught, you might get murdered in your bed; cry a duffer and get caught, you’re liable to get lynched. Cold-blooded, hot-blooded. That’s your choice.’

Staines smiled. ‘Am I to do business with a cold-blooded man?’

‘You can decide for yourself,’ said Mannering, throwing out his arm. ‘Here it is: the Aurora.’

‘Ah,’ said Staines, stopping also. They were both panting slightly from the walk. ‘Well—very good.’

They surveyed the land together. Staines perceived a Chinese man, squatting some thirty yards distant, his panning dish loose in his hands.

‘What’s the opposite of a homeward-bounder?’ said Mannering presently. ‘A never-going-homer? A stick-it-to-Mr.-Carver?’

‘Who’s that?’ said Staines.

‘That’s Quee,’ said Mannering. ‘He’ll stay on.’

Staines dropped his voice. ‘Does he know?’

Mannering laughed. ‘“Does he know?” What have I just told you? I’m not keen on getting murdered in my bed, thank you.’

‘He must think this a terribly poor enterprise.’

‘I haven’t the first idea what that man thinks,’ said Mannering, scornfully.

ANOTHER KIND OF DAWN

In which Ah Quee, placing his hands upon the armoured curve of Anna’s bodice, makes a curious discovery, the full significance of which he will not appreciate until eight days later, when the complete rotation of Anna’s four muslin gowns has given him a mental estimation of the extent of the riches they contain, excluding, of course, the dust contained within the gown of orange silk, which Anna never wears to Kaniere.

Anna lay perfectly still, her eyes closed, as Ah Quee ran his hands over her gown. He tapped every part of her corset with his fingers; he traced each flounce; he picked up the weighted hem and poured the fabric through his hands. His methodical touch seemed to anchor her in time and space; she felt that it was imperative that he touched every part of the garment before he touched her, and this certainty filled her with a lucid, powerful calm. When he slid his arm beneath her shoulders to roll her over, she complied without a sound, bringing her limp hands up to her mouth, like a baby, and turning her face towards his chest.

MOON IN VIRGO, CRESCENT

In which Ah Quee fills his firebox with charcoal, meaning to smelt the last of the dust excavated from Anna’s gown, and to inscribe the smelted bars with the name of the goldmine to which he is indentured, the Aurora; and Anna, as she sleeps, mutters syllables of distress, and moves her hand to her cheek, as if intending to staunch a wound.

When Anna woke, it was morning. Ah Quee had moved her to the corner of his hut. He had placed a folded blanket beneath her cheek, and had covered her with a woollen cape, his own. She knew upon waking that she had been talking in her sleep, for she felt flushed and disturbed, and much too hot; her hair was damp. Ah Quee had not yet noticed that she had woken. She lay still and watched him as he fussed over his breakfast, and examined his fingernails, and nodded, and hummed, and bent to rake the coals.

SUN IN VIRGO

In which Emery Staines, to whom Crosbie Wells has since narrated the full story of his betrayal at the hands of Francis Carver, each having won the other’s trust and loyalty, decides in a moment to falsify the quarterly report, removing all evidence of the bonanza from the goldfield records, and quite forgetting as he does so the determined worker Quee, who, according to protocol, and notwithstanding the circumstances of his indenture, is nevertheless deserving of a bonus.

Emery Staines, arriving at the camp station, was surprised to see that the Aurora’s box was flagged, meaning that a yield had been submitted. He requested the gold escort to unlock the box. Inside there was a neat lattice of smelted gold bars. Staines took one of the bars in his hand. ‘If I asked you to turn your back a moment,’ he said presently, ‘while I transferred the contents of this box elsewhere, what would be your price?’

The escort thought a moment, running his fingers up and down the barrel of his rifle. ‘I’d do it for twenty pounds,’ he said. ‘Sterling. Not pure.’

‘I’ll give you fifty,’ said Staines.

A PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN

In which Emery Staines journeys to the Arahura Valley, sack in hand, with the intention of burying the bonanza, for a period of safekeeping, upon a portion of land set aside for Maori use, having not considered the possibility that Francis Carver might soon return to Hokitika to investigate why the Aurora goldmine, such a promising investment, has become a veritable duffer.

In the flax at Staines’s shoulder a tui dipped its head and gave its rattling cry—sounding, to his ear, like a stick being dragged across pickets, while a reedy whistle played a tune. How wonderfully strange the sound! He stretched out his palm and touched the waxy blades of the flax, noting the vivid colours with pleasure: purple at the blade’s edges, melting to a whitish green in the very centre of the leaf.

The tui beat away, and it was quiet. Staines reached down and took up the smelted bars. He laid them carefully at the bottom of the hole that he had dug. After they were buried, he arranged above them several flat-topped stones in a sequence that he was sure to recognise, and then kicked away his footprints.

PAPA-TU-A-NUKU

In which, some half mile downriver from the site of the newly buried gold, Crosbie Wells and Tauwhare are sitting down to a hangi, a meal cooked in a fire pit that was covered in earth, later to be excavated, and the leaves around the meat unwrapped to yield a feast that is moist and richly flavoured with smoke and tannin and the rich, loamy flavours of the soil.

‘What I’m saying is that there’s nothing in it. You with your greenstone, us with our gold. It might just as well be the other way about. The greenstone rushes, we might call them. A greenrush, we might say.’

Tauwhare thought about this, still chewing. After a moment he swallowed and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

‘There’s no difference,’ Wells insisted, reaching for another piece of meat. ‘You might not like it—but you have to admit—there’s no difference. It’s just one mineral or another. One rock or another.’

‘No,’ Tauwhare said. He looked angry. ‘It is not the same.’

DETRIMENT

In which Anna Wetherell, who remembers the assault that occurred in the boudoir of the House of Many Wishes in Dunedin upon the night of the 12th of May with a stricken, nauseated clarity, and who is made wretched, daily, by the memory of that assault, a wretchedness not assuaged by the knowledge that her collusion, however tacit, helped an innocent man to escape unharmed, is surprised by the appearance of the disfigured man himself, and, in a moment of weakness, forgets herself

.

Francis Carver was riding inland on the Kaniere-road when he spotted a familiar figure on the roadside. He reined in, dismounted his horse, and approached her, perceiving that her walk was unsteady and her face, very flushed. She was smiling.

‘He got away,’ she mumbled. ‘I helped him.’

Carver came closer. He put his finger beneath her chin, and tilted her face. ‘Who?’

‘Crosbie.’

Carver stiffened at once. ‘Wells,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

She hiccupped; suddenly she looked frightened.

‘Where?’ He pulled back and slapped her, hard, across the face. ‘Answer me. Is he here?’

‘No!’

‘In Otago? Canterbury? Where?’

In desperation, she turned to run. Carver caught her by the shoulder, jerked her back—but just then there came the clap of gunshot, nearby—

‘Whoa,’ Carver shouted, spinning away—

And the horse shied up—

FALL

In which Anna Wetherell tells a falsehood to protect Crosbie Wells, attempting, in this belated act of loyalty, to atone for an earlier betrayal, the partial memory of which shifts and recedes, uncertainly, for her mind has been thrice fogged, once by smoke, a second time by violence, and lastly by the opiate administered by the physician Dr. Gillies, preparatory to a most unhappy procedure, during which Anna sobbed, and groaned, and clawed herself, becoming so distressed that Dr. Gillies was obliged to ask for help in restraining her, and Löwenthal, ordinarily a man of some fortitude in times of injury or upheaval, wept freely as he pried her hands away

.

When Anna opened her eyes Löwenthal was standing over her, a white cloth in one hand, a jar of laudanum in the other; beside him stood Edgar Clinch, white-faced.

‘She’s awake,’ said Clinch.

‘Anna,’ Löwenthal said. ‘Anna. Dear heart.’

‘Mnh,’ she said.

‘Tell us what happened. Tell us who it was.’

‘Carver,’ she said thickly.

‘Yes?’ said Löwenthal, leaning in.

She must not betray Crosbie Wells. She had sworn not to betray him. She must not mention his name.

‘Carver …’ she said again, her mind focusing, unfocusing.

‘Yes?’

‘… Was the father,’ Anna said.

THE DESCENDANT

In which Emery Staines, learning of Anna’s assault from Benjamin Löwenthal, saddles up at once and rides for the Arahura Valley, his jaw set, his eyes pricking tears, these being the external tokens of an emotional disturbance for which he does not, over the course of the journey north, admit true cause, much less attempt to articulate, inasmuch as any powerful emotion can be immediately articulated or understood by the sufferer, who, in this case, had been so distressed by Löwenthal’s frank account of the injuries sustained, and by the blood that soaked his printer’s apron from chest to hip, that he forgot both his wallet and his hat at the stables, and as he rode out, almost charged down Harald Nilssen as the latter exited Tiegreen’s Hardware with a paper sack beneath his arm

.

Wells opened his door. There upon the threshold, doubled over, was Emery Staines.

‘The baby’s gone,’ he sobbed. ‘Your baby’s gone.’

Wells helped him inside, and listened to the story. Then he fetched a bottle of brandy, poured them each a glassful, downed it, poured them each another, downed it, poured them a third.

When the bottle was empty Staines said, ‘I’ll give her half. I’ll share it with her. I’ve a fortune—secret—buried in the ground. I’ll dig it up.’

Wells stared at him. After a time he said, ‘How much is half?’

‘Why,’ mumbled Staines, ‘I’d guess perhaps two thousand.’ He put his head down upon the table, and closed his eyes.

Wells fetched down a tin box from his shelf, opened it, and withdrew a clean sheet of paper and a reservoir pen. He wrote:

On this 11th day of October 1865 a sum of two thousand pounds is to be given to MISS ANNA WETHERELL, formerly of New South Wales, by MR. EMERY STAINES, formerly of New South Wales, as witnessed by MR. CROSBIE WELLS, presiding

.

‘There,’ said Wells. He signed his name, and pushed the sheet to Staines. ‘Sign.’

But the boy was asleep.

MOON IN TAURUS (ORION’S REACH)

In which Anna Wetherell, lost to meditation, tallies her obligations, a project that gives rise to such disconsolation that her mind averts its eye, so to speak, and casts about for another, lighter subject, alighting, inevitably, upon the smiling, bright-eyed form of Emery Staines, whose good opinion she has come to desire above all the others of her acquaintance, a desire quashed just as often as it is expressed, knowing his situation to be a world above her own, his prospects as bright and numerous as hers are dark and few, and presuming his regard for her to be likewise contrary, that is, the very opposite of hers for him, a belief held in spite of the fact that he has called upon her thrice since her recovery, and recently made her a present of a bottle of Andalusian brandy, the last bottle of its kind in all of Hokitika, though as she took it from his hands he became suddenly stricken, and begged to recover it and return with another, more suitable gift, to which she replied, honestly, that she was very flattered to be given a gift that did not attempt in any way to be suitable, and anyway, it was the last bottle of its kind in all of Hokitika, and for that, much rarer and more singular than any favour or trinket she had ever received.

Anna’s debt to Mannering had doubled in the past month. A hundred pounds! It would take her a decade to repay that amount, perhaps even longer, if one considered the rates of usury, and the cost of opium, and the fact that her own value, inevitably, would come to fall. Her breath had fogged the corner of the window: she reached out to touch it. There was a snatch of something in her head, a maxim. A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past. Had she heard it spoken somewhere? Or had she composed it of her own accord?

SUN IN SCORPIO

In which Emery Staines, lost to meditation, doubts his own intentions, his natural frankness having accepted very readily the fact of his desire, and the fact of his delight, and the ease with which his pleasure might be got, expressions that cause him no shame, but that nevertheless give him pause, for he feels, whatever the difference in their respective stations, a certain bond with Anna Wetherell, a connexion, by virtue of which he feels less, rather than more, complete, in the sense that her nature, being both oppositional to and in accord with his own, seems to illumine those internal aspects of his character that his external manner does not or cannot betray, leaving him feeling both halved and doubled, or in other words, doubled when in her presence, and halved when out of it, and as a consequence he becomes suddenly doubtful of those qualities of frankness and good-natured curiosity upon which he might ordinarily have acted, without doubt and without delay; these meditations being interrupted, frequently, by a remark of Joseph Pritchard’s—‘if it weren’t for her debt, her dependency, she’d have had a dozen propositions from a dozen men’—that keeps returning, uncomfortably and without variation, to his mind

.

Perhaps he could buy her for the night. In the morning, he could take her to the Arahura, where he would show her the fortune he had buried there. He could explain that he meant to give exactly half of it to her. Would it defeat the purpose of the gift, if he had already paid for the pleasure of her company? Perhaps. But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know. He crushed a leaf against his palm, and then lifted his palm to his nose, to smell the juices.

THE LUMINARIES

In which Anna Wetherell is purchased for the night; Alistair Lauderback rides to meet his bastard brother; Francis Carver makes for the Arahura Valley on a tip; Walter Moody disembarks upon New Zealand soil; Lydia Wells spins her wheel of fortune; George Shepard sits in the gaol-house, his rifle laid across his knees; a shipping crate on Gibson Quay is opened; the lovers lie down together; Carver uncorks a phial of laudanum; Moody turns his face to unfamiliar skies; the lovers fall asleep; Lauderback rehearses his apology; Carver comes upon the excavated fortune; Lydia spins her wheel again; Emery Staines wakes to an empty bed; Anna Wetherell, in need of solace, lights her pipe; Staines falls and strikes his head; Anna is concussed; in drugged confusion Staines sets out into the night; in concussed confusion Anna sets out into the night; Lauderback spies his brother’s cottage from the ridge; Crosbie Wells drinks half the phial; Moody checks into an hotel; Staines makes a misstep on Gibson Quay, and collapses; Anna makes a misstep on the Christchurch-road, and collapses; the lid of the shipping crate is nailed in place; Carver commits a piece of paper to the stove; Lydia Wells laughs long and gaily; Shepard blows his lantern out; and the hermit’s spirit detaches itself, ever so gently, and begins its lonely passage upwards, to find its final resting place among the stars.

‘Tonight shall be the very beginning.’

‘Was it?’

‘It shall be. For me.’

‘My beginning was the albatrosses.’

‘That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.’

‘Ought we to have different ones?’

‘Different beginnings? I think we must.’

‘Will there be more of them?’

‘A great many more. Are your eyes closed?’

‘Yes. Are yours?’

‘Yes. Though it’s so dark it hardly makes a difference.’

‘I feel—more than myself.’

‘I feel—as though a new chamber of my heart has opened.’

‘Listen.’

‘What is it?’

‘The rain.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful for the support and encouragement of the New Zealand Arts Foundation, the estate of Louis Johnson, Creative New Zealand, the New Zealand Society of Authors, the Taylor-Chehak family, the Schultz family, the Iowa Arts Foundation, the University of Canterbury English Department, the Michael King Writers’ Centre, the University of Auckland English Department, the Manukau Institute of Technology Faculty of Creative Arts, and my colleagues and teachers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I feel very fortunate in having found a home at Granta in the UK, at Little, Brown in the USA, and at Victoria University Press in New Zealand.

This book is not a factual account by any means; however I owe a debt of inspiration to Colin Townsend’s account of the Seaview prison, Misery Hill, and Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s history of the New Zealand gold rushes, Diggers, Hatters and Whores. I am also indebted to the National Library of New Zealand news paper archives (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz); the extensive and some times hilarious astrological resources at www.astro.com; and the work of astrologers Stella Starsky and Quinn Cox. In charting stellar and planetary positions I used the interactive sky chart provided at www.starandtelescope.com and also the Mac application Stellarium.

My love and thanks to Max Porter, Sara Holloway, and Fergus Barrowman; to Philip Gwyn Jones and Reagan Arthur; to Caroline Dawnay, Olivia Hunt, Jessica Craig, Linda Shaughnessy, Sarah Thickett, Zoe Ross, and Sophie Scard; and of course to Emma Borges-Scott, Justin Torres, Evan James, Katie Parry, and Thomas Fox Parry, whose friendship and conversation inspired this book in countless ways. Sincere thanks also to XuChong Judy Guan, who translated sections of this book into phonetic Cantonese; to Christine Lo, Sarah Bance, Ilona Jasiewicz, and Anne Meadows, who helped to edit the manuscript; to Barbara Hilliam, who drew the charts so beautifully; to Philip Catton, who explained the stars, the planets, and the golden ratio; and to Joan Oakley, who sent me the shipping news, across the sea.

Lastly and above all: to Steven Toussaint, who was there for every conjunction, every opposition, and every dawn; who was Outermost and Innermost; who had faith in relation, and shared that faith with me. I cannot place a measure on your influence. Thank you—I to Thou.

ALSO BY ELEANOR CATTON

The Rehearsal

Copyright

Granta Publications, 12 Addison Avenue, London W11 4QR

First published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2013

Copyright © Eleanor Catton, 2013

The moral right of Eleanor Catton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Illustrations copyright © Barbara Hilliam, 2013

A CIP catalogue record for this ebook is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84708 593 1