Free The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton Page B

moment. ‘I might have driven a flock myself,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Up and over the pass. Five pounds a head, ten pounds a head—why, I’d have made a fortune, selling up. You might have told me that every piece of meat in this town is salt or smoked: I’d have brought a month of dinners with me. With a pair of dogs I might have done it very easily.’
    ‘Nothing easy about it,’ said Balfour.
    ‘Made myself a killing,’ said Lauderback.
    ‘Saving every sheep that breaks its neck in the rapids,’ said Balfour, ‘and every one that’s lost, and every one that won’t be driven. And all the miserable hours you’d spend counting them—rounding them up—chasing them down. I wouldn’t fancy it.’
    ‘No profit without risk,’ returned the politician, ‘and the journey was miserable enough; I might at least have made some money at the end of it. Heaven knows it might have improved my welcome.’
    ‘Cows, perhaps,’ said Balfour. ‘A herd of cows behaves itself.’
    ‘Still going begging,’ said Lauderback, pushing the plate of liver towards Balfour.
    ‘Couldn’t do it,’ said Balfour. ‘Couldn’t possibly.’
    ‘You take the rest of it then, Jock, old man,’ said Lauderback, turning to his aide. (He addressed his two attendants by their Christian names, for the reason that they shared the surname Smith. There was an amusing asymmetry to their Christian names: one was Jock, the other, Augustus.) ‘Stop your mouth with an onion, and we shall not have to hear any more tripe about your blessed brigantines —eh, Tom? Stop his mouth?’
    And, smiling, he bent his head back towards Balfour.
    Balfour pulled again at his nose. This was very like Lauderback, he thought; he encouraged agreement on the most trivial of points; he angled for consensus when a consensus was not due—and before one knew it, one was on his side, and campaigning.
    ‘Yes—an onion,’ he said, and then, to get the conversation away from ships, ‘Mention in the
Times
yesterday about your girl in the road.’
    ‘Hardly
my
girl!’ Lauderback said. ‘And it was hardly a mention, for that matter.’
    ‘The author had a fair bit of nerve,’ Balfour went on. ‘Making out as if all the town deserved a reprimand on the girl’s account—as if every fellow was at fault.’
    ‘Who’s to credit his opinion?’ Lauderback waved his hand dismissively. ‘A two-bit clerk from the petty courts, airing his peeves!’
    (The clerk to whom Lauderback so ungenerously alluded was of course Aubert Gascoigne, whose short sermon in the
West Coast Times
would also capture Walter Moody’s attention, some ten hours later.)
    Balfour shook his head. ‘Making out as if it was
our
error—collectively. As if we
all
should have known better.’
    ‘A two-bit clerk,’ Lauderback said again. ‘Spends his days writing cheques in another man’s name. Full of opinions that no one wants to hear.’
    ‘All the same—’
    ‘All the same, nothing. It was a trifling mention, and a poor argument ; there’s no need to dwell on it.’ Lauderback rapped his knuckles on the table, as a judge raps his gavel to show that his patience has been spent; Balfour, desperate to prevent a revival of their previous topic of conversation, spoke again before the politician had a chance. He said, ‘But have you seen her?’
    Lauderback frowned. ‘Who—the girl in the road? The whore? No: not since that evening. Though I did hear that she revived. You think I ought to have paid a call upon her. That’s why you asked.’
    ‘No, no,’ said Balfour.
    ‘A man of my station cannot afford—’
    ‘Oh, no; you can’t afford—of course—’
    ‘Which brings us back to the sermon, I suppose,’ Lauderback said, in a newly reflective tone. ‘That was the clerk’s precise point. Until certain measures are in place—almshouses and so forth, convents—then who’s accountable in a situation like that? Who’s responsible for a girl like her—someone who has