She was dressed in mourning, but by the old-fashioned style of the gown (the bell-shaped skirt, the pointed waist) and the faded hue of the cloth, Pritchard guessed it had not been tailored for her new: it must have been a gift, or, more likely, something salvaged. He saw that the hem had been let out: two inches of darker black showed as a stripe against the floor. It was a strange thing to behold a whore in mourning—rather like seeing a dandified cleric, or a child with a moustache; it gave one a sense of confusion, Pritchard thought.
It struck him that he had rarely seen Anna except by lamplight, or by the moon. Her complexion was translucent, even blue, and tended to a deep purple beneath her eyes—as if she had been painted in watercolour, on a paper that was not stiff enough to hold the moisture, so the colours ran. Her countenance was, as Pritchard’s mother might have said, made up of angles. Her brow was very straight and her chin was pointed. Her nose was narrow, even geometric: a sculptor might render it in four strokes, with one slice on either side, one down the bridge, and one tuck beneath. She was thin-lipped, and though her eyes were naturally large, she tended to peer upon the world suspiciously, and so rarely employed them to seductive effect. Her cheeks were hollow, and her jawbone was visible, as the rim of a drum is visible, tight beneath the stretched membrane of the skin.
The previous year she had been with child, a state that had warmed the wax of her cheeks, and made plump the wretched bones of her arms—and Prichard had liked her: the round belly, the swollen breasts, hidden beneath yards of lawn and tulle, fabrics which softened her, made her buoyant. But sometime after the spring equinox, when the evenings were becoming longer, and the days brighter, and the sun hung low and scarlet over the Tasman Sea for hours before slipping, finally, into the red wash of the sea, the baby perished. Its body had since been wrapped in calico and buried in a shallow grave upon the terrace at Seaview. Pritchard had not spoken to Anna about the baby’s death. He did not frequent her rooms with any kind of regularity, and he did not ask her questions when he was there. But he had wept, privately, when he heard the news. There were so few children in Hokitika—perhaps three or four. One looked forward to seeing them as to hearing a familiar accent of speech, or a beloved ship on the horizon, that put one in mind of home.
He waited for her to speak first.
‘You can’t stay,’ she said. ‘I’ve an appointment.’
‘I won’t keep you. I wanted to ask after your health.’
‘Oh,’ she burst out, ‘I am sick of the question—sick of it!’
He was surprised by the violence of her answer. ‘I haven’t visited you in a while.’
‘No.’
‘But I saw you in the thoroughfare—just after the New Year.’
‘It’s a small town.’
He moved closer. ‘You smell like the sea.’
‘I don’t. I haven’t been sea-bathing in weeks.’
‘Something stormy, then. As when a body comes in from the snow, and carries in the cold.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing?’
‘By speaking in that way—poetical.’
‘Poetical?’
(Pritchard had the bad habit, when conversing with women, of answering a question with another question. Mary Menzies had complained of it once, long ago.)
‘Sentimental. Fanciful. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.’ Anna plucked at her cuff. ‘I have recovered my health,’ she added. ‘And you can save your next question for yourself. I didn’t mean any kind of unnatural harm. I meant to take a pipe same as always, and then I fell asleep, and then the next thing I remember, I was in gaol.’
Pritchard placed his hat upon the armoire. ‘And since then, you’ve been hounded.’
‘To death.’
‘Poor you.’
‘Sympathy is worse.’
‘Well, then,’ Pritchard said, ‘I shan’t give you any. I’ll be cruel to you instead.’
‘I don’t care.’
It seemed to him that she spoke with pity and blankness, which angered him; he considered showing it, but then he reminded himself that he was on an errand. ‘Who’s the client?’ he said instead, to taunt her.
She had gone to the window, and half-turned in surprise. ‘What?’
‘You said you’ve an appointment. Who is it?’
‘There’s no client. I’m going with a lady to look at hats.’
He snorted. ‘I’ve heard of a whore’s honour, you know. You don’t have to lie.’
She studied him from what seemed like a great distance—as if he were only a mark on the horizon for her, a distant speck, receding. And then she said, slowly, as if speaking to a child, ‘Of course—you didn’t know. I’m done with whoring for a time.’
He raised his eyebrows, and then, to cover his surprise, laughed at her. ‘Honest woman, are you now? Hats and window boxes, is it? Gloves in the street?’
‘Just while I mourn.’
He felt that this answer—stated simply and quietly—made him look foolish for having laughed, and a knot of frustration began to gather in his chest.
‘What’s Dick got to say about that?’ he said, referring to Anna’s employer, Mr. Mannering.
Anna turned away. ‘He’s not happy,’ she said.
‘I should imagine not!’
‘I don’t want to talk about that with you, Jo.’
He bristled. ‘What’s your meaning?’
‘I don’t have a meaning. Not a special one. I’m just tired of thinking about him.’
‘Has he been a beast to you?’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Not really.’
Pritchard knew about whores. The mincing types who pretended shock and spoke in high-pitched voices full of air; the buxom, helpful types who wore draped-elbow sleeves in any season, and called one ‘lad’; the drunkards, greedy and whining, with chipped red knuckles and watery eyes—and then there was the category to which Anna belonged, the unknowable types, by turns limpid and flashing, whose carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. Anna Wetherell was more than a dark horse; she was darkness itself, the cloak of it. She was a silent oracle, Pritchard thought, knowing not wisdom, but wickedness—for whatever vicious things one might have done, or said, or witnessed, she was sure to have witnessed worse.
‘Why didn’t you come to me?’ he said at last, wanting to accuse her of something.
‘When?’
‘When you took ill.’
‘I was in gaol.’
‘But after that.’
‘What good would that have done?’
‘It might have saved you a good deal of trouble,’ he said curtly. ‘I could have proven that opium was poisoned, if you’d let me testify.’
‘You knew it was poisoned?’
‘I’m guessing. How else, Ann? Unless—’
Anna moved away from him again, to the bedhead this time, and wrapped her fingers around the iron knob. As she moved he smelled her again—the sea. The intensity of the sensation startled him. He had to check the urge to step towards her, to follow her, and breathe her in. He smelled salt, and iron, and the heavy, metallic taste of foul weather … low cloud, he thought, and rain. And not just the sea: a ship. That tarred ropy smell, the dusty damp of bleached teak, oiled sailcloth, candle wax. His mouth began to water.
‘Poisoned,’ Anna said, peering at him. ‘By whom?’
(Perhaps it was a sensory memory—merely a chance echo, the kind that suddenly flooded one’s body, and then vanished just as swiftly. He put it from his mind.)
‘The possibility must have occurred to you,’ he said, frowning.
‘I suppose. I don’t remember anything.’