‘You’re all set for another month, thank you kindly, Will.’ Henry Bramwell took the money Will Budd had paid him for his grocery account and rang it up on the cash register. ‘Though it’s the new owner of Bramwell’s you’ll be paying next time you come in.’
‘Aye, Henry, and it’s sorry I am to see you and Mai leaving. But I wish you both well.’
‘Thank you kindly, Will. We’re sorry to be leaving, but I feel in my bones the time’s right to make the move, and doubtless we’ll see you from time to time in Hokitika. Now, are you sure there’s nothing else I can get you?’ He smiled at Libby Budd, standing at her father’s side.
Will picked up his box of groceries from the counter. ‘I think that’s all for now.’ He winked at Henry.
Libby’s face drooped with disappointment. The girl looked much younger than her eleven years, Henry thought. Wiremu and Don, his own sons, three and four years younger respectively, were both a good head taller.
‘What’s this, then?’ Will asked his daughter as she tugged the hem of his jacket. ‘Have I forgotten something?’
Libby’s head bobbed like a jack-in-the-box.
‘Well! What could that be?’ Will made an elaborate show of looking in the box of groceries and checking the items. ‘I am quite sure your mother and I have all we wanted.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Is there something we have forgotten, Mrs Budd?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘Nothing I’m aware of, Mr Budd.’
Libby hopped from one foot to the other, her anxious gaze flicking between her parents.
Looking puzzled, Will shrugged. ‘Well now, Mr Bramwell — can you see anything I may have forgotten?’
‘No, indeed I cannot, Mr Budd,’ Henry said, enjoying the ritual that was played out every time the Budd family called in for their stores and settled the previous month’s account.
Will shrugged. ‘It seems we have everything, then.’
Libby gave her mother and father a reproachful look before setting her gaze on the sparkling glass jars on the counter top filled with bullseyes, boiled lollies, peppermints, barley-sugar twists and gaily coloured paper-wrapped toffees.
‘Ah, dear me! Whatever is this I have in my hand?’ From behind his back, Henry pulled out a paper cornucopia full of lollies and handed it to Libby. She beamed. Selecting her favourite, a barley-sugar twist, she popped it in her mouth, waved goodbye to Henry, and followed her parents out of Bramwell’s Store.
‘Little Libby’s face lit up like a lamp when I gave her the lollies,’ Henry remarked to his wife as the Budds’ wagon drove off down the road.
‘She falls for that trick every time,’ Mai said, wiping down the shelves behind the counter, which ran almost the full width of the shop. ‘Will and Sylvia are going to get a shock one day when she doesn’t.’
‘Damned shame she’s not right in the head.’ Henry thought of their two healthy sons. To have one of them so afflicted would grieve him sorely.
Neither of them mentioned Libby’s epilepsy or the visions that had plagued the child since the fall that had robbed her of her reason. Seeing dead people was not right, not something to be spoken of lest you, yourself, might be thought simple-minded.
The girl was a heavy burden on her parents, yet her father doted on her. Privately, Mai thought it might have been better if Libby hadn’t survived the fall that had left her addled. The Budds had been good friends to her and Henry. She would miss Sylvia when she and Henry moved to Hokitika, where Henry was opening a new store.
Mai had been dumbfounded when Henry had first mooted the shift. The shop here in Stafford earned them a good living and life was familiar and comfortable. She had long since overcome the suspicion and bigotry her Chinese ancestry had evoked among so many of the townsfolk. What if that should start all over again once they moved?
‘Stafford’s growing smaller, Mai,’ Henry had argued when she’d protested. ‘It’s a dying town. Our takings have been down these past two years. Not enough to cause me a sleepless night, I grant you, but the signs are there. Time we moved to a bigger place, opened a bigger shop.’
‘But Hokitika, Henry?’ Mai recalled the neglected appearance of many of the town’s buildings the last time they’d visited. ‘It’s no longer the thriving place it used to be.’
‘It’s a sight bigger and more vigorous than Stafford.’
‘But what if they should have another great fire like the one that destroyed so many buildings in Revell Street? And it’s always flooding, you know that. The Hokitika River’s so close to the town. What if we should all be swept away and drowned?’
‘Dammit, woman! What if we should be run over by a wagon or trampled by a horse? We cannot let “what ifs” and “buts” rule our lives. That fire happened in ’69 — fourteen years ago! As for the drownings, it’s the treacherous entrance to the port that’s been responsible for so many of them, not so much the flooding. And I’ve no intention of allowing me or mine to set foot on any ship out of the place, so we’ll never be in the slightest danger of drowning.’
She would have let the matter lie, if not for his arrogance in assuming she would meekly abide by his decision, made without any consultation.
‘Why not wait a while and see what happens to Stafford?’ she’d pressed. ‘Who knows? Surely there are more goldfields yet to be discovered, Henry? What if that should happen and we’re no longer here?’
‘We could argue the same for Hokitika in that case. No, I’ve already decided. Best we go now while we can still sell the shop.’ His cool glare had rocked Mai, reminding her of the dreadful row they’d had years ago when he’d been set on copying Dick Seddon and his shop in Big Dam and selling liquor in the store. She’d seen too much misery and poverty caused by drink to contemplate adding to the liquor outlets in the town. But Henry had stubbornly dismissed her objections and set about obtaining a conditional publican’s licence. It had only been a deputation of publicans informing him they would take their grocery trade elsewhere if he should proceed that had stopped him.
The rift between her and Henry had taken months to heal. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening again, so she’d given in to his wish to move. Carpenters were already working on the building Henry had bought in Revell Street, but a trace of bitterness lingered.
‘It’s going to be the finest store in town,’ he’d proudly told her only the day before. ‘Hokitika’s the place for us. It has merchants and the port on its doorstep and that, for a start, will be a boon to business. Think what we’ll save on freight costs, and the stock we’ll be able to bring in directly over the Tasman from Melbourne, or Sydney town.’ His face was lit with an enthusiasm she hadn’t seen for a very long time.
Henry had written to Jimmy Edwards, a former employee and old friend now living in Australia, offering him employment in the new shop. And, according to the reply he had received this very morning, the offer could not have come at a better time. Jimmy had written that he had been planning to return to New Zealand and intended sailing from Melbourne some time in November. By the time he arrived, the Bramwell family would be well settled into the new shop at Hokitika.