The Luminaries

himself, that morning! And he very frequently rolled his sleeves above his elbows. His cuffs were buttoned, as were the diggers’ own; he had purchased his shirt at the Hokitika outfitters, just as they had. Frost wanted to say all of this—but instead he knelt down and held out his hands, palm upward, for the collie-dog to lick.
    ‘Can we move?’ he said in an undertone to Mannering.
    ‘In a moment.’
    Having replaced his purse in his inner pocket, Mannering was now fussing over the buttons of his great coat—for he could not decide whether to leave all but the bottom button undone, which would give him the best ease of access to his pistols, or all but the topmost button undone, which would do best to conceal his pistols from sight.
    Frost shot another nervous look around him—avoiding the gaze of the diggers beneath the awning. The track from the ferry landing forked away through the trees—one spoke bearing eastward, towards Lake Kaniere, and the other southeast, towards the Hokitika Gorge. Beyond the south bank of the river lay a richpatchwork of claims and mines that included, among others, the goldmine Aurora. Frost did not know any of this; in fact he could hardly have pointed north, had he been asked. He looked about for a sign that might direct them to Chinatown, but there was none. He could see no Chinese faces in the crowd.
    ‘That way,’ Mannering said, as if hearing his thoughts; he nodded his head to the east. ‘Upriver. None too far.’
    Frost had caught the dog between his knees; he now began kneading her wet fur, more for his own reassurance than for the dog’s pleasure. ‘Ought we to agree on—on a plan of some kind?’ he ventured, squinting upward at the other man.
    ‘No need,’ said Mannering, buckling his belt a little higher.
    ‘No need for a plan?’
    ‘Quee doesn’t have a pistol. I’ve got two. That’s the only plan
I
need.’
    Frost was not entirely soothed by this. He freed Holly—she bounded away from him immediately—and stood up. ‘You’re not going to shoot an unarmed man?’
    Mannering had decided upon the top button. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s best.’ He smoothed his coat over his body.
    ‘Did you not hear me?’
    ‘I heard you,’ said Mannering. ‘Stop fretting, Charlie. You’ll only draw attention to yourself.’
    ‘You might answer me, if you want to ease my fretting,’ Frost said, in a voice that was rather shrill.
    ‘Listen,’ Mannering said, turning to face him at last. ‘I’ve paid Chinamen to work my claims for the past five years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s this. They go after that smoke like a hatter for a whore, and no exceptions. By this time on a Saturday, every yellow man this side of the Alps will be laid out limp with the dragon in his eye. You could walk in to Chinatown and round up every one of them with one arm tied behind your back. All right? There’ll be no need for violence. There’ll be no need for any guns. They’re only for show. It’s all stacked to our advantage, Charlie. When a man’s full of opium it’s like he’s made of water. Remember that. He’s useless. He’s a child.’

SUN IN CAPRICORN
    In which Gascoigne recalls his first encounter with the whore; several seams are unpicked with a knife; exhaustion takes its toll; and Anna Wetherell makes a request.
    Perceiving Anna and Gascoigne through the chink in the doorway, Joseph Pritchard had seen only what he himself most craved—love, and honest sympathy. Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere. In that moment—as Anna’s body folded against Gascoigne’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her, and placed his cheek against her hair—Pritchard, his hand cupped limp around the cold knob of the door, would not have been consoled to know that Aubert Gascoigne and Anna Wetherell were merely, and very simply, friends. Loneliness cannot be reassured by proportion. Even friendship would have seemed to Pritchard a feast behind a pane of glass; even the smallest charity would have wet his lip, and left him wanting.
    Pritchard’s assumptions about Gascoigne had been formed on very limited acquaintance—on one conversation only, as a matter of fact. Judging from his haughty manner and the impeccable standard of his dress, Pritchard had supposed that Gascoigne occupied a position of some influence at the Magistrate’s Court, but in truth the clerk’s responsibilities