‘I could feign a passion,’ said Gascoigne, and Lydia laughed again.
‘Passion,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘is not to be feigned.’ She rose from the sofa and went to the sideboard, where a plain bottle and three glasses were set out on a wooden tray. ‘I’m not surprised, you know,’ she added, turning two of the glasses right side up, and leaving the third upended.
‘You mean—about the pistol? You’re not surprised she tried to take her life again?’
‘Oh heavens, no—not that.’ Lydia paused, the bottle in her hand. ‘I am not surprised to see you here alone.’
Gascoigne flushed. ‘I did as you asked,’ he said. ‘I did not give your name; I told her it was a surprise. Going with a woman to look at hats, I said. She was pleased by the idea. She would have come. It was only this business with the pistol. She was shaken by it—and she wasn’t in a fit state, afterwards.’
He felt that he was gabbling. What a fine woman she was—the widow Wells! How smartly the ruffled bustle curved away from her!
‘You have been ever so kind to humour my silliness,’ said Lydia Wells, soothing him. ‘I tell you: when a woman approaches my age, she likes to play the fairy godmother, once in a while. She likes to wave her wand about, and make magic, for the betterment of younger girls. No, no—I knew that you had not spoiled my surprise. I simply had a premonition that Anna would not come. I have premonitions, Aubert.’
She brought Gascoigne his glass, carrying with her the sharp-and-cloudy scent of fresh-cut lemons—for she had bleached her skin and nails with lemon juice that morning.
‘I did not break your confidence, as I swore I would not,’ Gascoigne repeated. He wanted, for some obscure reason, her continued approbation.
‘Of course,’ Lydia agreed. ‘Of course! You wouldn’t have!’
‘But I am sure that if she had known that it was you—’
‘She would have rallied—in a heartbeat!’
‘She would have rallied.’
(This conviction, rather weakly echoed, was formed on Lydia’s assurance, repeatedly made, that she and Anna had once been the best of friends. It was on the strength of this assurance that Gascoigne had agreed to engineer Lydia’s ‘surprise’, whereby the two women would reunite, and renew their intimacy at once—an offer that was an atypical one for Gascoigne. It was rare for him to perform tasks for others that they might just as well have done themselves, and social manoeuvring of any kind generally made him uncomfortable: he preferred to be manoeuvred than to move. But Gascoigne was, as will now be fairly evident, somewhat in love with Lydia Wells—a foolishness that was powerful enough to drive him not only to act against his inclinations, but also, to alter them.)
‘Poor Anna Wetherell,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘That girl is the very picture of ill luck.’
‘Governor Shepard thinks that she has lost her mind.’
‘Gov. Shepard!’ said Lydia Wells, and laughed gaily. ‘Well, on that subject he is a veritable expert. Perhaps he’s right.’
Gascoigne had no real opinion about Governor Shepard, whom he did not really know, or his lunatic wife, whom he did not know at all. His thoughts turned back to Anna. He was already regretting the sharp tone he had taken with her just now, in her room at the Gridiron Hotel. Gascoigne could never stay vexed for long: even the shortest of intermissions was always sufficient to engender self-reproach. ‘Poor Anna,’ he agreed aloud. ‘You are right: she is a wretched picture. She cannot make rent, and her landlord is to cast her out. But she will not violate her code of mourning by returning to the streets. She will not disrespect the memory of her poor late child—and so, you see, she is in a bind. A wretched picture.’
Gascoigne spoke with admiration and pity.
Lydia leaped up. ‘Oh, but she must come live with me—she must!’ she cried, speaking as if she had been impressing this notion upon Gascoigne for some time, instead of having only just proposed it. ‘She can sleep in my bed, as a sister—perhaps she has a sister, somewhere far away; perhaps she misses her. Oh, Aubert, she must. Do be the one to beg her.’
‘Would she want it, do you think?’
‘Poor Anna adores me,’ Lydia said firmly. ‘We are the closest of friends. We are as two doves—or we were, at least, in Dunedin last year. But time and distance is nothing in the face of true affinity: we shall find each other once again. We must arrange it. You must make her come.’
‘Your generosity is most admirable—but also, perhaps, excessive,’ said Gascoigne, smiling indulgently at her. ‘You know Anna’s trade. She would bring that trade with her, you know, if only by way of her sullied reputation. Besides, she has no money.’
‘Oh, tosh: there’s always money to be made, upon a goldfield,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘She can work for me. I long for a maid. For a companion, as the ladies say. In three weeks the diggers will forget she’d ever been a whore! You won’t change my mind, Aubert—you won’t! I can be very mulish, when I have set my mind on something, and I have set my mind on this.’
‘Well.’ Gascoigne looked down at his glass, feeling weary. ‘Shall I walk back across the thoroughfare—to ask her?’
She purred. ‘You shall do nothing unless you perfectly desire it. I will go myself. I’ll go tonight.’
‘But then there will be no surprise,’ said Gascoigne. ‘You were so looking forward to your surprise.’
Lydia pressed his sleeve. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘The poor dear has been surprised enough. It’s high time she was given reason to relax; high time she was cared for. I shall take her under my wing. I shall spoil her!’
‘Are you this good to all your charges?’ Gascoigne said, smiling. ‘I have a vision of you: the lady with the lamp, moving from bedside to bedside, ministering kindness—’
‘It is well you spoke that word,’ Lydia said.
‘Kindness?’
‘No: vision. Oh, Aubert, I am bursting with news.’
‘News about the estate?’ Gascoigne said. ‘So soon!’
Gascoigne did not rightly understand the state of relations between Lydia Wells and her late husband, Crosbie. It was strange to him that the two had lived so many hundreds of miles apart—Lydia in Dunedin, and Crosbie in the depths of the Arahura Valley, a place that Lydia Wells never once visited, until now, nearly two weeks after the event of her husband’s death. It was only for very superficial reasons of propriety that Gascoigne had not questioned Lydia directly about her marriage—for he was curious, and Lydia did not appear to be grieving in any visible sense. She became vague and foolish whenever Crosbie’s name was mentioned.
But Lydia was shaking her head. ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with that! You must ask me what I have been doing since I saw you last—what I have been doing this very morning, in fact. I have been aching for you to ask. I cannot believe that you haven’t asked.’
‘Tell me, do.’
Lydia sat erect, and opened her grey eyes very wide, so that they sparkled. ‘I have bought an hotel,’ she said.
‘An hotel!’ Gascoigne said, marvelling. ‘Which hotel?’
‘This one.’
‘This—?’
‘You think me capricious!’ She clapped her hands together.
‘I think you enterprising, and brave, and very beautiful,’ said Gascoigne. ‘And a thousand other things. Tell me why you have bought this whole hotel.’
‘I intend to convert the place!’ Lydia said. ‘You know I am a worldly woman: I owned a business in Dunedin for almost ten years, and in Sydney before that. I am quite the entrepreneur, Aubert! You have not yet seen me in my element. You will think me very enterprising, when you do.’
Gascoigne looked about him. ‘What conversions will you make?’