The Luminaries

Clinch was almost shouting. ‘What’s A

Gascoigne’s eyes flashed. ‘I suppose you are asking me to define the precise state of relations between us.’

‘I don’t need to ask that,’ said Clinch, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I know the answer to that!’

Gascoigne felt a swell of fury. ‘You are impertinent, Mr. Clinch,’ he said.

‘Impertinent!’ said Clinch. ‘Who’s impertinent? The whore’s in mourning—that’s all—and you can’t deny it!’

‘The fact that she is in mourning is the very reason why she ca

‘Abusing—!’

‘I got the impression,’ Gascoigne said coldly, ‘that A

‘She isn’t afraid of me,’ said the hotelier, looking shocked.

‘What do you care about six pounds? What do you care if A

Clinch bristled. ‘A debt’s a debt.’

‘Rot,’ said Gascoigne. ‘A grudge is a grudge, more like.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t yet know,’ said Gascoigne. ‘But I’m begi

Clinch turned red again. ‘You ought not to talk to me like that,’ he said. ‘You oughtn’t—in my own hotel!’

‘You talk as if you were her keeper! Where were you this afternoon, when she was in danger?’ said Gascoigne—who was begi

But this time Clinch did not cower beneath the accusation, as he had done before. Instead he seemed to harden. He looked back at Gascoigne with his jaw newly set. ‘I won’t be schooled about A

The two men stared at each other, as two fighting dogs across a pit—and then each expressed his recognition of the other, and conceded, tacitly, that he had met his match. For Gascoigne and Clinch were not so very dissimilar in temperament, and even in their differences, showed a harmony of sorts—with Gascoigne as the upper octave, the clearer, brighter sound, and Clinch as the bass-note, thrumming.

Edgar Clinch had something of a circular nature. He was both solicitous and self-doubting—attributes that, because they opposed one another, tended to engender in him a state of constant, anxious flux. He provided for those whom he loved only to demand their fullest approbation for his care—a demand which, in turn, shamed him, for he was sensitive to the nuances of his own actions, and doubtful of their worth; consequently, he retracted the demand, doubled his provision, and began again, only to find that his need for approbation had doubled also. In this way he remained perpetually in motion, as a woman is perpetually in motion, harnessed to the rhythms of the moon.

His relationship with A

When A

At that time Edgar Clinch had been in Hokitika less than a month. He did not yet know Dick Ma

During the short walk from Gibson Quay Clinch became very aware of the delicate pressure of A

A

Clinch was more than happy to fill the copper bathtub every Sunday, laborious though that duty was. He loved to glimpse A

Clinch’s efforts in love were always of a mothering sort, for it is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive, and it was a mother that Edgar Clinch most craved—his own having died in his infancy, and since then been resurrected as a goddess of shining virtue in his mind, a goddess whose face was as a blurred shape, seen through a window on a night of fog. There was an ill-fated aspect to all of his love’s labours, however, for they required of their object a delicacy of intuition that he himself did not possess. Edgar Clinch was a hopeless romantic, but in all the ordinary senses, he was an unsuccessful one: despite his daily ministrations, A