The Luminaries

alert. ‘Why should I believe you—above Anna?’ he said. ‘By
her
account, she hasn’t a penny to her name—and yet you think it right, to demand six pounds of her, paid up at once!’
    Clinch’s eyes widened. So Anna had confided in Gascoigneabout the rent she owed. So she had complained about him—and bitterly, judging by the Frenchman’s hostile tone. The thought was hurtful. Clinch did not like the thought of Anna speaking about him to other men. Quietly he said, ‘That isn’t your business.’
    ‘On the contrary,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Anna brought the matter to my attention. She begged me.’
    ‘Why?’ said Clinch. ‘Why, though?’
    ‘I imagine because she trusts me,’ Gascoigne said, with a touch of cruelty.
    ‘I meant, what’s the use in begging
you
?’
    ‘So that I might help her,’ Gascoigne said.
    ‘But why
you,
though?’ Clinch said again.
    ‘What do you mean, why
me
?’
    Clinch was almost shouting. ‘What’s Anna doing asking
you
?’
    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 cannot repay her present debts. And yet you persist in abusing her.’
    ‘
Abusing
—!’
    ‘I got the impression,’ Gascoigne said coldly, ‘that Anna is very much afraid of you’—which was not at all true.
    ‘She isn’t afraid of me,’ said the hotelier, looking shocked.
    ‘What do you care about six pounds? What do you care if Anna pays up to-morrow or next year? You’ve just landed yourself a homeward-bounder. You’ve got thousands of pounds in the bank! And here you are splitting hairs over a whore’s rental, like a Limehouse profiteer!’
    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 beginning to think, for Anna’s sake, that I ought to try and find out.’
    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 beginning to feel a little reckless. ‘And where were you when she turned up near-dead in the middle of the Christchurch-road?’
    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 Anna,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what she is to me. I won’t be schooled.’
    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 Anna Wetherell had begun in just this way. When Anna had first arrived from Dunedin, Clinch had been all but overcome: she was the rarest and most troubled creature he had ever known, and he swore that he would not rest until she was beloved. He secured his best room for her, and pampered her in allthe ways that he was able, but he became very hurt when she did not notice the efforts he had