Страница 65 из 191
She hummed her pleasure—but she shifted her knee for the sake of modesty, and crossed her arms across her breasts. Her distended belly was a perfect sphere, buoyed high in the cloudy water like an apple in a pail.
‘Did you walk back—all the way from Kaniere?’ Clinch asked. Surely she had not just walked four miles—not when she could hardly hold her head up! Not when she could hardly stand!
She hummed again, breaking the tone in two pieces, to indicate a negative.
‘How then?’ Clinch said.
‘Dick was passing through,’ she mumbled. The words were like treacle in her mouth.
Clinch stepped closer. ‘Dick Ma
‘Mm.’ She closed her eyes again.
‘Gave you a lift, did he?’
But A
Clinch was still holding the pinch of gold in his fingers. Carefully he laid the dress over the back of the chair and then dropped the pinch of gold into his pocket, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together to release the flakes, as if he were salting a stew.
‘I’ll leave you to your bath,’ he said, and withdrew from the room.
But instead of returning downstairs he walked swiftly across the hallway, to A
He sat down upon her bed.
A
He considered the alternatives. Could Ma
Suddenly furious, Clinch punched the quilt with the heels of his hands. Ma
He heard splashing in the room next door—A
‘Please accept my sincere apologies,’ said Gascoigne.
Clinch blinked. ‘What for?’
‘For insinuating that you had anything other than Miss Wetherell’s very best interests at heart.’
‘Oh,’ said Clinch. ‘Yes. Well, thanks.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Gascoigne.
Clinch received this farewell with disappointment. He had rather hoped that Gascoigne would stay a moment longer—at least until his valet returned from lunch—and talk the issue over. It always pained him to leave a conversation on a less than civil note, and in fact he did want to discuss the issue of A
He stepped forward, and even put out his hand, meaning to delay Gascoigne’s departure. He wanted to beg him not to leave; he wanted, suddenly, desperately, not to be alone. But what reason could he give, to persuade Gascoigne to stay? Stalling for time, he said, ‘Where are you off to?’
The question rankled Gascoigne. How dreary frontier living could be! Every man was asked to share his private business; it was not like Paris, or London, where one felt the luxury of strangeness on every corner; where one could really be alone.
‘I have an appointment,’ he said curtly.
‘Who’s your appointment? What’s it all about?’
Gascoigne sighed. It was so dull to be asked. Clinch was looking almost sulky—as if Gascoigne’s departure was vexing to him! Why, they had only met ten minutes before.
‘I’m going with a lady,’ he said, ‘to look at hats.’
TRUE NODE IN VIRGO
In which Quee Long is interrupted thrice; Charlie Frost holds his ground; and Sook Yongsheng names a suspect, to everyone’s surprise.
At the very moment that Gascoigne took his leave of Edgar Clinch, slamming the Gridiron’s front door rather discourteously behind him, Dick Ma
‘Chinatown’ was something of a misleading name for the small clutch of tents and stone cabins some few hundred yards upriver from the Kaniere claims, for although every man hailed from Canton, and most from Kwangchow, together they could hardly be said to comprise a township: ‘Chinatown’ was home, at that time, to only fifteen Chinese men. Of this small cluster, Quee Long’s dwelling was notable for its handsome chimney, made of fired clay. The brick oven from which this chimney issued had been constructed as a miniature forge, fitted with a cast-iron chamber beneath a raised clay shelf, and positioned in the centre of the dwelling’s only room; it was upon this clay shelf that Quee Long slept at night, warmed by the bricks that still held the heat of that day’s fire. When he was smelting his weekly yield in ore, he filled the firebox with charcoal, for although that fuel was costly, it burned hotter than coke; today, however, his crucible and bellows had been set aside, and the firebox was stacked with a lattice of slow-burning wood.