The Love Apple (2 page)

A
bugger of a morning, Huia thought, relishing the word she was forbidden to use. It was the day she turned sixteen.

Of course it had been a mistake to expect a present. She never got one, but each birthday the hope returned: perhaps this time her father might have something for her. A diary with a miniature lock, a pair of proper ladies’ gloves, a brooch of swallows — best of all would be a puppy with a mouth like a pink flower and tiny teeth. Huia longed for a dog or a cat, something warm and living to cuddle and stroke. Animals were a bloody nuisance, according to her father, so she knew it was a waste of time to even think of a pet. But sixteen was a special birthday. You were no longer a child at sixteen; surely, Huia thought, at last something good will happen.

‘It’s my birthday,’ she said as she ladled Alf Bluett’s porridge into the bowl with the violets around the rim and put it on the newspaper that served as a tablecloth.

‘What?’ said Bluett, blowing on the tea in his cup.

‘My birthday,’ said Huia. ‘It’s today.’

‘What do you expect me to do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Huia.

‘Well, don’t think you’re going to get something. I’ve no
mind to spend good money on knick-knacks and gee-gaws and women’s blasted nonsense.’

Huia took the pot and hung it back over the open fire. Disappointment spread through her like a touch from a damp hand. I’m a silly bloody cow even to hope, she thought.

It was Monday. Washday. The day Huia disliked the most. After breakfast and the morning chores she would take the clothes down to the river. She’d light a fire under a couple of kerosene buckets and wash in them, using the washboard, elbow grease and homemade soap. Rinsing was done in the river. The snow-fed water brought chilblains and cracks to Huia’s hands and her feet turned mauve and numb standing in the shallows. Her father had promised he’d fix up some tubs by the back door but Huia doubted it ever would happen.

Once the meal was over Bluett left the house. He took his axe, sledgehammer and bottle of kerosene to pour on the felled trees and went up to the forest at the back. He made a modest living cutting timber, and sometimes he acted as a guide as well. Born in Australia, he had come to New Zealand in the gold rush of the late sixties and fallen in with a group of Maori prospectors — men and women. They found little gold but from these people Bluett learnt how to snare birds, catch eels, locate edible berries, cross rivers using a pole, make serviceable rafts out of flax. He also picked up detailed knowledge of the characteristics of every major river, stream, lake and mountain in the area. And he met his future wife, Florrie Delahunty, who was also travelling with the itinerant group. Deciding to abandon the wandering life, Bluett and Florrie bought a piece of land beyond Hokitika. Together they burnt and cleared the bush and built a house.

Huia used the hot water from the kettle to wash the dishes in the scullery. After she’d put the crockery to drain on the wooden rack, she gathered up the scraps into the iron pot and
went out to feed the fowls. She had just started to throw the food to the birds when a man rode up the track on a black horse. He had a small, dark moustache, shining riding boots and a duster coat, split to cover the entire saddle. The coat was a deep
grape-coloured
gabardine, with matching suede collar and cuffs.

‘Excuse me,’ said Geoffrey, removing his hat, ‘but I’m looking for a Mr Bluett. Am I right in thinking he lives here?’

‘Yes,’ said Huia, gathering the last of the scraps out of the pot with her hand. She hated this elegant man seeing her wearing her father’s cast-off trousers and old work clothes.

‘Is he at home?’

‘No.’

‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Have you any idea when he’ll be back?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Perhaps I could wait? I’ve ridden up from town and I don’t fancy having to come back again.’

‘You want to see my Da?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s up working near the Three Mile Camp,’ said Huia, her head still lowered but her eyes raised for the first time. Her large brown eyes had a soft, furry quality that made Geoffrey think of uncurling ferns.

‘I’ll show you, if you want, but it’ll take half an hour or so and you can’t bring the hoiho.’

‘Fine. It’d be quicker than having to ride up here again.’

‘I’ll take you, then. You can tie the horse in the paddock.’

‘Most kind. I’m Hastings, Geoffrey Hastings, and I take it you are Miss Bluett?’

‘Miss Bluett!’ said Huia, and giggled. ‘No one’s ever called me that before. My name’s Katarina Huia, after my nanny. Most call me Hu.’

‘Huia, like the bird,’ Geoffrey said as he looked down on the deep lacquer gloss of Huia’s hair. She was well named.

‘This way,’ said Huia, pushing open a rough gate made of branches that led into the home paddock.

Geoffrey dismounted and tied Tsar to the rail. At the far side of the cleared area the bush began again. He followed Huia along a small track through the trees. Unaccustomed to trousered women, he found the speed and freedom of the girl’s movements surprising. Huia walked fast, without any acknowledgement that he was behind her, striding ahead over the protruding roots and uneven ground. Flakes of light fell through the foliage onto the forest floor and fantails circled about, catching insects.

‘Have you always lived up here?’ Geoffrey addressed himself to Huia’s back.

‘Mostly,’ she said, without turning around.

‘I’m new to the Coast myself. Been here going on three years now.’

‘Thought you were a Pom.’

‘Irish, actually.’

‘You don’t sound it, with that fancy accent.’

They walked on in silence. Five minutes or so later Huia stopped.

‘What do you want to see my Da for?’ she asked, putting her hand against the moss-covered trunk of a tree. ‘Do you want a guide?’

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’m a photographer. I want to go up the Routledge and take some shots. Heard your father did some guiding.’

‘Photographer — you mean you do likenesses?’

‘Portraits? Yes — well, once, not now.’

‘Would you do one of me? I’ve never had a photograph. Can you do one back at the house?’

‘I haven’t the equipment with me,’ said Geoffrey. He looked at Huia with her androgynous clothing and her
fern-frond
eyes, and felt glad of the excuse. In the past he’d have been
eager enough — there was a very appealing quality about the girl, both arrogant and shy. Once he would have enjoyed attempting to capture it, but not any more. Now even thinking of trying made him uneasy.

‘Blast!’ said Huia, as she kicked a tree root with the side of her bare foot.

The path petered out and they went on in single file. The place was dark. Moss and ferns covered the ground and swaddled branches and trunks.

‘You married?’ said Huia, stopping suddenly.

‘Mmm,’ said Geoffrey.

‘Eh?’

‘Well, yes and no.’

‘You mean you are but she’s somewhere else.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Then you’re not.’

‘My wife’s dead,’ said Geoffrey.

Huia hadn’t expected that answer. It made her uncomfortable. She pulled a stray strand of hair through her lips.

‘Have you been to London?’ she said, changing the subject.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘What’s it like? Is it as good as they say?’

‘It’s big enough, but I don’t much like it. Too much noise and dirt.’

‘I’m going to go to London.’

‘Is your father taking you?’

‘Hell, no,’ said Huia and suddenly started to run, jumping over a fallen tree that lay in her path.

Geoffrey was uncertain whether he should run also, and decided against it. He had never mastered the easy stride that old hands have in the bush — that effortless pace that continues steady over broken trunks, roots, climbers, streams, boggy patches and the general debris of the forest floor. Fortunately
Huia stopped before disappearing out of sight.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Three Mile’s not far from here.’

In the distance was the harsh hiss of working saws. Geoffrey and Huia walked on. Abruptly the green largesse of the bush gave way to cleared patches, smashed trees, broken branches, severed stumps and piles of sawdust. Further in, rough wooden rails showed where the bush tram had hauled out timber. The place had the high, resonant smell of felled trees.

‘What are they cutting?’ said Geoffrey as they walked through the beaten forest.

‘Kahikatea mostly — you know, what you Pakeha call white pine,’ said Huia. ‘But Da says they’re getting totara as well, now they’re further in. The McCorkingdales’ mill is over by Skuse Creek. Da and his mate sell their timber to the mill, but most of the men up here work for McCorkingdales’.’

Geoffrey looked at the trees. It appeared that only the largest, finest specimens had been taken.

‘Do they only fell the best ones?”

‘Course,’ said Huia. ‘Though they’ll all go if they start farming up here.’

Progress, Geoffrey thought, though he regretted the loss of the kahikatea. Butter boxes and butchers’ blocks seemed a shabby end for such elegant trees.

‘Who’s he?’ said Bluett, as he stopped the large two-handed saw he and his mate were working.

‘Mr — what did you say your name was?’ Huia asked Geoffrey.

‘Hastings,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Like the battle.’

‘Eh?’ said Bluett. He looked Geoffrey up and down, and decided the man was a toff.

‘Wants you to do some guiding,’ said Huia.

‘Guiding,’ said Bluett, and put out his hand. Geoffrey saw it was missing a finger. ‘I’m Bluett, and this is Mathias.’

Huia wandered away and sat on a felled log, her eyes fixed on Geoffrey. In his long, tailored coat and gauntlet gloves he looked like a photograph from the Christmas edition of one of the English magazines. He was more stylish, better dressed than anyone Huia had ever seen.

For years Huia had been watching men, usually as they worked. There were few women around Hobbs Forks, and none of Huia’s age. She had no sisters or girlfriends with whom to share gossip about local lads and who they fancied. No female companions to giggle with as they experimentally made up their faces, trying out magnesia powder or French chalk.

The McCorkingdales’ sawmill had a large hut at Three Mile Camp where a dozen or more of the men lived. A few had tents or huts in the bush. Most of the timber workers were young and single, or married men with families in Hokitika or Greymouth.

Alone, Huia watched the men. Secretly, from behind a tree or through the lattice of leaves, she would slide her glance over eyes and mouths and shoulders. She would stare at boots and moleskin legs, gazing with interest at the swellings that dangled discreetly under the crotch of trousers. In hot weather, when the men shed waistcoats, shirts and singlets to work bare-chested in the sun, Huia would gaze at their nakedness, daydreaming of limb and muscle. Speculating on romance. One day, she thought, he will come. A man to save her from the shack on the margin of the dripping forest, a man to free her from her father with his moods and drunken rages, a man quite unlike the cloddish bushies who whistled or looked coy as she passed.

Huia drew an arabesque with her toe in the leaves and sawdust. This Geoffrey Hastings was nothing like the timber workers, or the men her father had guided before. She was cook and rouseabout on most of the guiding trips, and the men on these journeys were a dull, anxious lot, forever grousing about sandflies, rats and indigestion. Mostly evangelists and government
officials, they seemed slightly contemptible with their spectacles, Bibles, notebooks and bits of American cloth wrapped around their legs in futile attempts to stave off the wet.

If only, Huia thought, Mr Hastings decided to engage my Da. Despite the awful old clothing she was wearing, Huia hoped the photographer thought her pretty. Men did, she was sure of that. She knew that in the old country a girl like her wouldn’t stand a chance with a gentleman like Mr Hastings, but things were different in New Zealand. Everyone said so.

Huia crossed two fingers for luck as excitement bubbled through her like gulped ginger beer. She added the outline of a heart to the pattern on the ground.

At fourteen Huia had permitted herself to be kissed by Reg Vincent, who collected the bobby calves for butchering down on the flat. The youth’s breath smelt of beer and dripping and his tongue in her mouth made her think of a fillet of tarakihi or a flounder stuck halfway down her throat.

A few months later, she found kissing Eddie Green much more agreeable. Eddie drove one of the bush trams that took timber to the mill. He was known as a fine trolley man — with no reins, and sparing use of the whip, he controlled his four-horse team with impressive skill. Eddie would put his arm around Huia and pull her close against his body when they walked. She thought it lovely. She was less sure about his hands, which reached and groped between her naked thighs in ways that thrilled and alarmed her all at once.

‘Come on, Hu, I’m sure you want to,’ Eddie would say, his face close to hers. Huia was not sure. She would swear at him and climb into the overhanging trees if he persisted. In the end Bluett caught them kissing down by the willows. He threatened Eddie with a stock whip and dragged Huia home by one ear to throw her across the kitchen table and beat her with the heavy
wooden laundry spoon. Pain, humiliation and anger sharpened her enthusiasm, but though Huia waited day after day at the meeting place down by the ford, Green didn’t come back.

The following summer she noticed a new timber worker, stripped to the waist and wearing a soldier’s cap. He was standing on a jigger board embedded in a tree trunk, making a V preparatory to felling. A bushman really worth his tucker could cut this initial wedge so accurately that he could tell within a hand’s breadth where the tree would fall.

Huia watched the stranger working and was sure he had the gift. The sunlight in the newly cleared patch of forest glinted on the toetoe-coloured hair protruding from under the man’s cap, his heavy muscles and his axe. Next to the ugly, hairy whiteness of so many of the men, Stan Birtwistle was golden as a vision, clean-shaven and beautiful. Huia stood at the edge of the trees and watched as his body clenched and swung with each well-aimed blow.