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‘And he does say,’ Dikon added persuasively, ‘he does say “the mud may be miraculous”.’
Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.
‘Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your legs right, sir? And at least we could get on with the book.’
‘Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,’ cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, ‘shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry V in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. “And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …” God, I think I must play Henry in New York.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?’
‘Of course I would, damn you.’
‘Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em … London.’
‘You talk like a nanny in her dotage,’ said Gaunt fretfully. ‘I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?’
‘Ironing your trousers, sir.’
‘Tell him to come here.’
Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitudes towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
‘You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?’ said Gaunt.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Colly. ‘Going to run mudlarks, aren’t we?’
‘I haven’t said so.’
‘It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?’
‘Oh, you go to hell,’ said Gaunt.
‘There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he said that’s all right and give in his card. They say it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch and soda, reading the paper and watching the door.’
‘That won’t do him much good,’ said Dikon. ‘Mr Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?’
‘Noüe!’ said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. ‘More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr Bell.’
‘Why?’
‘I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.’
Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.
‘Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,’ he said. ‘Did they give you his card?’
Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. ‘Persistent sort of bloke, sir,’ he said, and fished out a card.
‘Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,’ said Gaunt. ‘You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.’
Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card:
MR MAURICE QUESTING
Wai-ata-tapu Thermal Springs.
Scribbled across the bottom he read: ‘May I have five minutes? Matter of interest to yourself. MQ.’
II
Mr Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.
When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lobby, Mr Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.
‘Pardon me if I speak in error,’ he said, ‘but is this Mr Bell?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Dikon, who still held the card in his fingers.
‘Mr Gaunt’s private secretary?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s great,’ said Mr Questing, shaking hands ruthlessly, and breaking into laughter. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Bell. I know you’re a busy man, but I’d be very very happy if you could spare me five minutes.’
‘Well, I …’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing, jamming a flat pale thumb against a bell-push. ‘Great work! Sit down.’
Dikon sat sedately on a small chair, crossed his legs, joined his hands, and looked attentively over his glasses at Mr Questing.
‘How’s the Big Man?’ Mr Questing asked.
‘Mr Gaunt? Not very well, I’m afraid.’
‘So I understand. So I understand. Well, now, Mr Bell, I had hoped for a word with him, but I’ve got an idea that a little chat with you will be very very satisfactory. What’ll you have?’
Dikon refused a drink. Mr Questing ordered whisky and soda. ‘Yes,’ said Mr Questing with a heartiness that suggested a complete understanding between them. ‘Yes. That’s fine. Well now, Mr Bell, I’m going to tell you, flat out, that I think I’m in a position to help you. Now!’
‘I see,’ said Dikon, ‘that you come from Wai-ata-tapu Springs.’
‘That is the case. Yes. Yes, I’m going to be quite frank with you, Mr Bell. I’m going to tell you that not only do I come from the Springs, but I’ve got a very considerable interest in the Springs.’
‘Do you mean that you own the place? I thought a Colonel and Mrs Claire …’
‘Well, now, Mr Bell, shall we just take things as they come? I’m going to bring you right into my confidence about the Springs. The Springs mean a lot to me.’
‘Financially?’ asked Dikon mildly. ‘Therapeutically? Or sentimentally?’
Mr Questing, who had looked restlessly at Dikon’s tie, shoes and hands, now took a furtive glance at his face.
‘Don’t make it too hot,’ he said merrily.
With a rapid movement suggestive of sleight-of-hand he produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of pamphlets which he laid before Dikon. ‘Read these at your leisure. May I suggest that you bring them to Mr Gaunt’s notice?’
‘Look here, Mr Questing,’ said Dikon briskly, ‘would you mind, awfully, if we came to the point? You’ve evidently discovered that we’ve heard about this place. You’ve come to recommend it. That’s very kind of you, but I gather your motive isn’t purely altruistic. You’ve spoken of frankness so perhaps you won’t object to my asking again if you’ve a financial interest in Wai-ata-tapu.’
Mr Questing laughed uproariously and said that he saw they understood each other. His conversation became thick with hints and evasions. After a minute or two Dikon saw that he himself was being offered some sort of inducement. Mr Questing told him repeatedly that he would be looked after, that he would have every cause for personal gratification if Geoffrey Gaunt decided to take the cure. It was not by any means the first scene of its kind. Dikon was mildly entertained, and, while he listened to Mr Questing, turned over the pamphlets. The medical recommendations seemed very good. A set of rooms – Mr Questing called it a suite – would be theirs. Mr Questing would see to it that the rooms were refurnished. Dikon’s eyebrows went up, and Mr Questing, becoming very confidential, said that he believed in doing things in a big way. He was not, he said, going to pretend that he didn’t recognise the value of such a guest to the Springs. Dikon distrusted him more with every phrase he uttered, but he began to think that if such enormous efforts were to be made, Gaunt should be tolerably comfortable at Wai-ata-tapu. He put out a feeler.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that there is a resident doctor.’
He was surprised to see Mr Questing change colour. ‘Dr Tonks,’ Questing said, ‘doesn’t actually reside at the Springs, Mr Bell. He’s at Harpoon. Only a few minutes by road. A very, very fine doctor.’
‘I meant Dr James Ackrington.’
Mr Questing did not answer immediately. He offered Dikon a cigarette, lit one himself and rang the bell again.
‘Dr Ackrington,’ Dikon repeated.
‘Oh, yes. Ye-es. The old doctor. Quite a character.’
‘Doesn’t he live at the hostel?’
‘That is correct. Yes. That is the case. The old doctor’s retired now, I understand.’
‘He’s something of an authority on muscular and nervous complaints, isn’t he?’
‘Is that so?’ said Mr Questing. ‘Well, well, well. The old doctor, eh? Quite a character. Well, now, Mr Bell, I’ve a little suggestion to make. I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in a wee trip to the Springs. I’m driving back there tomorrow. It’s a six hours’ run and I’d be very very delighted to take you with me. Of course the suite won’t be poshed up by then. You’ll see us in the raw, sir, but any suggestions you cared to make …’
‘Do you live there, Mr Questing?’
‘You can’t keep me away from the Springs for long,’ cried Mr Questing evasively. ‘Now about this suggestion of mine …’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘I’ll tell Mr Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.’
Mr Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.
‘Goodbye,’ said Dikon politely.
‘I’m staying here tonight, Mr Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if …’
‘Oh, yes. Perfectly splendid. Goodbye.’
He returned to his employer.
III
Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.
He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilisation. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.
‘My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,’ bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. ‘He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!’
Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.
Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent an hour before sunset. Sometimes one of his grandchildren, or an old crony of his own clan, would go up with him, but more often he sat there alone, lost, as it seemed, in a long perspective of recollections. The Claires, down at the Springs, would glance up and see him appearing larger than human against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-great-grandchildren.
This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hilltop, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hilltop.
‘Good evening, Mr Smith,’ said old Rua without turning his head.
‘G’day, Rua.’
The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.
‘Great doings down at the Springs,’ he said.
‘They seem to be busy,’ said Rua tranquilly.
‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.’
‘A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.’
‘He’s only an actor.’
‘Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.’
‘Then you know all about it, do you?’
‘I think so,’ said old Rua.
Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.
‘Questing’s at the back of it,’ he said. Rua stirred slightly. ‘He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!’ added Smith viciously. ‘By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.’
Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.
‘Look!’ Smith said. ‘He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.’
He lit the cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. ‘You don’t say much,’ he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. ‘Like a spot?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.’
‘Look, Rua,’ said Smith energetically. ‘I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?’
‘You are intimate with some of my people.’
‘Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.’ Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hilltop with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.
‘Questing’s got a great little game on,’ said Smith. ‘He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.’
