The Luminaries

knuckles—she with her hand on her hip, her weight upon one leg, pouring him a measure. But they were not lovers, and it was not their room.
    Gascoigne took another deep draught of his cigarette, and closed his eyes.
    Meaning to cheer him, Anna said, ‘I am very much looking forward to my surprise, Mr. Gascoigne.’
    For she had not lied to Joseph Pritchard, when she informed him she had an appointment—going with a lady, to look at hats. Gascoigne had arranged a private consultation with a lady of fashion; apparently he had paid for the consultation himself, though he had insisted that the details of the arrangement, and the identity of the lady, remain a surprise. Anna had never been asked to wait for a surprise before, and the prospect had filled her with both elation and dread; she had thanked the Frenchman very prettily, however, for his consideration.
    When Gascoigne did not respond, Anna tried to press him further . ‘Is your woman downstairs, waiting?’
    Gascoigne emerged from his reverie at last. He sighed. ‘No: I am to fetch you and bring you to her. She’s in the private parlour at theWayfarer—but she can wait ten minutes; she has waited ten minutes already.’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘Your hats can wait.’
    ‘What are you not sure of?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You just said, “I’m not sure”, but you didn’t finish your sentence .’
    They had adopted an easy tone with one another, this past fortnight , as so often happens after a shared ordeal—though Anna still called him Mr. Gascoigne, and never Aubert. Gascoigne had not pressed her to use the more informal designation, for he rather liked shows of propriety, and it flattered him to hear his family name pronounced.
    ‘I’m not sure what to make of it,’ Gascoigne said at last. He took the glass from her, but did not drink: all of a sudden, he felt extraordinarily sad.
    Aubert Gascoigne felt the pressure of anxiety rather more acutely than other men. When he was made anxious, as he had been by the inexplicable misfire of Anna’s pistol, he tended to give himself over to bursts of powerful emotion—shock, despair, anger, sorrow: emotions which he seized upon because they channelled his anxiety outward, and in a sense regulated the pressure that he felt within. He had earned a reputation for being strong and level-headed at a time of crisis—as he had been, that afternoon—but he tended to unravel after the crisis had been weathered or forestalled. He was still trembling, an agitated motion that had only started when he released the whore from their embrace.
    ‘There’s something I need to speak with you about,’ Anna said now.
    Gascoigne rolled his brandy around his glass. ‘Yes.’
    Anna returned to the armoire and poured herself a measure also. ‘I’m late on my rent. I owe three months. Edgar gave me notice this morning.’
    Abruptly she stopped speaking, turned, and peered at him. Gascoigne had been taking a draught of his cigarette; he paused at the end of the intake, his chest expanded, and made a gesture with his hands to ask
how much.
    ‘It’s ten shillings a week, with meals, and a bath every Sunday,’ Anna said. (Gascoigne exhaled.) ‘Over three months—that’s—I don’t know … six pounds.’
    ‘Three months,’ Gascoigne echoed.
    ‘I was set back by that fine,’ said Anna. ‘Five pounds, to the Magistrate. That was a month of wages for me. It cleaned me out.’ She waited.
    ‘Surely the whoremonger pays your rent,’ Gascoigne said.
    ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘He doesn’t. I report direct to Edgar.’
    ‘Your landlord.’
    ‘Yes: Edgar Clinch.’
    ‘Clinch?’ Gascoigne looked up. ‘That’s the man who purchased Crosbie Wells’s estate.’
    ‘His cottage,’ said Anna.
    ‘But he’s just come in on an enormous fortune! What does he care about six pounds?’
    Anna shrugged. ‘He just said to raise it. At once.’
    ‘Perhaps he fears what will happen at the courthouse,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Perhaps he fears he will have to give it all back again, once the appeal is granted.’
    ‘He didn’t say why,’ Anna said. (She had not yet heard about the sudden arrival, on Thursday afternoon, of the widow Wells, and so did not know that the sale of Crosbie Wells’s estate was in danger of being revoked.) ‘But he’s not calling my bluff about it; he said he wasn’t.’
    ‘You can’t—appease him somehow?’ Gascoigne said.
    ‘You can leave off the “somehow”,’ Anna said haughtily.