Chapter Four

Guinevere recovered her strength over the following days and during this time Quinn visited twice daily. Every night, before going to sleep, he vowed to say goodbye in the morning but each time he visited in his role of doctor, he found it strangely difficult to leave her. He couldn’t in all fairness, he explained to himself repeatedly, abandon his patient until she was completely recovered.

The town accepted his medical background, especially as the druggist said that the Irishman knew his stuff all right. Bet, the hotel proprietor, always addressed him as Dr O’Donnell, but with an ironical emphasis on the title and a quizzical look in her eye.

‘’Ere to examine ’er ladyship again?’ she would greet him each day with a grin, as Quinn continued to ignore the lewd undertone. However, Bet responded well to the tips he left to ensure her ladyship received a good dinner each night, though once she winked and said, ‘I’m not sure ’er ladyship’ll be wanting to make a recovery with a doctor like you dancing attendance.’

‘Our relationship is purely professional,’ Quinn said icily.

‘Oh, don’t go telling me that! I ’ear the two of you laughing there – nothing professional in the length of time you spend with ’er either. But don’t you worry, doc, I won’t be telling no one your secret – not that the ’ole town isn’t talking about it anyway.’

Quinn made his way up the stairs cursing. He knew he shouldn’t linger so long during his visits for in truth it was astonishing just how quickly such a fragile-looking little thing had flung off her fever. But she was lonely and there was something in the way her face lit up when he walked into her room that was strangely warming, though as often as not they would be scrapping within the half hour.

Quinn had brought her a couple of books he’d managed to find and she’d fallen on these with cries of joy. He’d also rustled up some paper and drawing pencils and though she said she was an indifferent artist, he thought her sketches of the thin-ribbed cats, limp lines of washing, and scrawny hens in the backyard of the hotel far preferable to the paintings that adorned her walls.

‘Rubbish!’ she said, when he ventured this opinion as he leaned over her shoulder to see her work on the table in front of her. She was still in her nightgown but with a shawl wrapped about her, her hair carelessly caught up in a knot on top of her head. He still could not tell if her disregard for conventions came from a casual innocence or a deep-seated arrogance where an Irishman was not worth the effort of dressing properly for. Of course it did not matter how an Englishwoman viewed him; her opinion mattered not a toss. Yet the not knowing irked like an itch.

‘Your doodles are real while these …’ Quinn waved a deprecatory hand at the walls, ‘are some rich fellows’ fancies of what they think real life is like.’

Guinevere turned to face him earnestly. ‘But the whole point of the Pre-Raphaelites is that they do show life as it really is.’

‘Then they’ve missed the point.’

Her head went up. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘And they had no idea about what they were painting. All this nonsense about love and suffering. What would they know about it anyway?’

Moving to the window, Quinn leaned a shoulder against it and crossed his arms.

‘Don’t you look so dismissive. They’ve loved. They’ve suffered,’ said Guinevere with passion.

He raised one eyebrow.

‘They have,’ cried Guinevere. ‘They continue to do their art no matter how damning the critics are. And they love with passion – even when the girls come from very poor homes. Why, Gabriel Rossetti sacrificed everything to marry his model, Lizzie, though her father just owned a small shop. He suffered with their unhappy marriage and was grief-stricken when she killed herself. So they do know life.’

‘No, that proves my point! They know nothing of life. Of course a marriage between people of different classes never works. And what do you mean they’ve suffered? What about the models these artists didn’t marry, for God’s sake? Did these fine artists leave fatherless children in their wake?’

Pushing back her chair, Guinevere rose and leaned forward both hands on the table to say emphatically. ‘And if they did, I am quite sure they always provided well for the baby.’

Quinn’s lip curled. ‘I’d like to hear from the mother how satisfactory she might find that arrangement.’ Then seeing her flush in fury and draw breath to battle further, Quinn threw up a hand to stem her words. ‘Sure, I only said I like your drawings more, that’s all.’

Looking taken aback by this aggressive compliment, Guinevere nodded. ‘Thank you. Perhaps I shouldn’t sound so churlish but it’s just you simply do not understand anything about art,’ she said in that tone of hers that made his toes curl in fury. Yet still he returned to see her each day.

While Quinn knew that under her delicate looks ran a vein of determination, he hadn’t realised quite how irrational and uncompromising she really was until nearly a week had elapsed.

The voice that called, ‘Come in,’ to his knock one morning was cheerful and when he went into the room he was pleased and a little surprised to see his patient fully dressed and sitting on the floor with two unpacked trunks about her. Clothes collected in drifts across the floorboards interspersed with piles of drawings and photographs.

Cerberus, who had been watching his mistress’s activities with interest, now bounded across the floor in greeting.

‘Good morning to you. ’Tis good to see you’re up,’ said Quinn, fending off the dog’s lavish welcome.

Guinevere smiled up at him from the drawings she was sorting. ‘Good morning to you too, Mr O’Donnell.’

He looked around at the chaos. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting my affairs in order. I need to see if I can condense my belongings into one trunk. It’s easier to travel that way.’

He nodded. ‘Good idea.’

Though he would be sorry to see his fair patient go, it was time for her to return to England. New Zealand was no place for a lady, especially not one on her own. Especially not in Hokitika.

He squatted down next to her and asked, ‘When do you sail?’

‘Sail?’ She turned an astonished face to him. ‘Who said anything about sailing? I’m talking about when I go after the moa. I’m leaving tomorrow. I took all my money out of the bank today and Bet has introduced me to a Maori man who knows all the forests like the back of his hand. She says if anyone can find the bird, he can. We leave at first light.’

Disbelief drove Quinn to his feet again. ‘Oh my God! Not that again! Jaysus, woman. Have you not one sensible bone in your whole body? For a start, you cannot be having money about you in this town – ’tis not safe.’

‘It is! I’ve hidden it here in my box of chemicals which has a false bottom – another of my father’s inventions. No one would think to look there.’ She indicated a stout wooden box stashed in one corner next to her camera and tripod.

‘Any thief worth his salt would smell that out in a trice. But money aside, after all that has happened to you, surely you cannot still be intent on pursuing such a daft scheme?’

Her chin came up. ‘If you mean do I intend fulfilling my father’s dream, then yes I do.’

‘But your father – lovely man though I’m sure he was – was clearly—’ He broke off but Guinevere guessed what he was about to say.

‘My father was not mad.’

‘No, no,’ Quinn assured her. ‘Just maybe – you know…’ and his finger tapped his temple lightly. ‘In the nicest possible way, of course. Perhaps it was a fever of the brain that he died from.’

Guinevere dropped the photographs she was holding into her lap and glowered up at him. ‘My father was not touched in the head!’

‘All right, maybe not. But surely he would never have intended for you to go off on such a dangerous venture all alone. What a man can do and a woman can do are two very different things.’

‘I will manage.’

Quinn closed his eyes in the face of this stubbornness and exhorted the heavens to provide him with patience.

‘M’lady,’ he began, but she immediately interrupted him with a bright, brittle smile.

‘Oh, wait, I know how this one goes, but you should say, “My dear Lady Guinevere, I do implore you …”’

Quinn shook his head. ‘I never implore.’

‘You really should,’ continued Guinevere, ignoring him.

‘Not should, must!’

Guinevere quelled him with an imperious look, even from her position on the floor. ‘Should,’ she repeated firmly. ‘I’m a lady. You cannot use must on me.’

‘I can and I will again. You must—’

‘Listen to reason!’ they both chimed in unison. Despite his frustration Quinn couldn’t help smiling and Guinevere laughed.

‘Don’t be so pompous,’ she begged, ‘and look at these pictures, instead. Don’t you think they are beautiful?’

Quinn however was not about to be deterred. ‘Lady Guinevere—’

‘I’ve told you before, I don’t want you to use my title.’

‘Lady Guinevere,’ he continued, ‘you don’t seem to fully realise the dangers out there. Men are dying all the time. There’re floods, ravines, the cold … ’Tis a rough country. And then not all men in the mountains are gentlemen, either.’

Unmoved, Guinevere replied, ‘There is no point in continuing with this conversation, Mr O’Donnell. My mind is quite made up,’ and she returned to her job of sifting the photographs into different piles.

Stony-faced, Quinn surveyed her then squatted down again so that he was only inches from her. ‘Did your father ever beat you, m’lady?’ he asked in a soft voice.

Guinevere’s eyes flew to his face, half-startled, half-laughing. ‘Never!’

‘Well, he should have!’ said Quinn. ‘You need some sense knocked into you.’

‘Why is it men always call it sense when it is their notion, and whim when it is a woman’s?’ Guinevere asked as though expressing a curious thought.

A reluctant grin tugged the corners of Quinn’s mouth. ‘Why is it a woman can be deaf, even with two perfectly good, God-given ears in her head?’

‘Probably because men talk such a lot of nonsense. Now, what do you think of these photographs by Margaret Cameron?’

‘There’s a woman amongst these artists of your father’s?’ asked Quinn as he took the pile she offered him.

‘Oh, yes. There are several; Christina Rossetti combines art and writing, while Lizzie did some wonderful work before she died. But Margaret is the one I’m closest to – she’s almost like an aunt to me. I’ve learned a lot about photography from her.’

Quinn straightened and took the photographs over to the window where the rectangle of sun lit dancing dust motes. Like the paintings on the wall, the pictures were of beautiful women with wild hair and mournful expressions.

‘And these are my father’s,’ said Guinevere, rising and handing him another pile.

As Quinn flicked through them he recognised several myths and stories behind the pictures. This woman must surely be Persephone with a painted wintry landscape behind her and a posy of spring flowers in her hand. Here was an agonised Lady Macbeth washing her hands. Quinn shook his head at all this play-acting but held his tongue. Joan of Arc, some knight – Galahad presumably. And Eve. Quinn paused, shocked. She was dressed in little but cunningly draped foliage, proffering an apple to an even more scantily dressed Adam.

‘Did your father take this one too?’ he demanded.

Guinevere leaned over to see which one he was talking about. ‘The Garden of Eden, yes, do you like it? He let me help with the lighting in that one and I had some say in the posing of the models, too.’ She tilted her head and considered the work. ‘I think now it would have been better to put the light a little more to the left. What do you think?’

Quinn did not care a toss about the lighting.

‘You saw people wearing as little as this?’ His scandalised voice made her smile.

‘I told you, these things were acceptable in my house. It’s art. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘No, but a young female ought not—’

‘Mr O’Donnell, now you are sounding dangerously like my tedious neighbours,’ warned Guinevere. ‘Do not presume to tell me what a young woman ought and ought not do. I will not be judged.’

He swallowed his next words and, with lips compressed, flicked through the rest of the pictures. They were beautiful, he readily agreed, but some were shocking with diaphanous materials wreathing, but not always concealing, luscious bodies. No wonder she had seen nothing strange in meeting him dressed in little more than a nightdress. The Englishwoman really was from a completely different world from him.

Still, he saw how he could use this to his advantage and turning to her said in a gentler voice, ‘Lady Guinevere what are you doing here? Truly, you should be going home. Surely you can see how different your world is to this,’ and his hand gestured to the barren little room with its bleak walls, alight only with the colours of her paintings and the silk cover on the bed. ‘You belong back there. You must miss it sorely.’

For a second Guinevere looked at him, her wide eyes suddenly vulnerable.

‘I do. I miss it horribly,’ she said softly.

‘Then why not return to it. Go back home. There’s nothing for you here.’

She dropped her eyes. ‘I cannot.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My father—’ she broke off and eyed him as though weighing how much to say. Then with a slight shrug of resignation she sat down on the chair as though all fight had at this moment left her. ‘My father was a good man, you must understand,’ she continued, her voice jerking over difficult sentences as her eyes fixed on her fingers interlaced tightly in her lap. ‘He supported artists all his life but he was not … wise with money. He spent lavishly and loaned money to the wrong people, then borrowed from worse.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know all that happened. All I do know is that we came here because he had to find money urgently.’

For a second she paused. Then drawing in a breath she looked squarely up at him. ‘You see, he mortgaged our house to our neighbour. A gentleman’s agreement. He gave us a very generous loan according to my father and all we had to do was repay it in three years … no interest even. But if my father didn’t, the house would go to Mr Ramsay.’

‘And?’

She shrugged. ‘Father was given very bad advice about an investment. He was assured that it was a venture that couldn’t fail. But it did. It took almost everything, leaving us with only our skills to fall back on and with just a year now to repay the loan. That’s when my father came up with the plan to photograph the moa.’

Quinn turned away to look out of the window so that she would not see his face as he shook his head. He simply could find nothing to say to this extraordinary story of folly and foolhardiness. How could any man so carelessly, so heedlessly lose his home? Guinevere may not want to face the fact but clearly her father was a wastrel and Quinn felt white-hot anger rising up against the man who lay safely in his grave, while his daughter was left all alone to fend for herself in this wild country.

Her problems were not, of course, Quinn’s problem. He had already done far more than enough for her. He didn’t need to feel responsible for her any more. But Jaysus, what a mess! He should have just walked away, leaving her on the side of that river when he’d had the chance.

‘Have you any money?’

‘Some. Not a lot. That is why I must find the moa.’

He moved to the table where he hitched his hip on the corner next to her. ‘No, that is why you must go home to England. There is no alternative because I can tell you now, you’ve as much chance of finding a moa as a leprechaun.’

‘Well, if I don’t, then I will find a job.’

‘And what exactly do you think you can do, here?’ he asked.

‘Photographs, of course.’

‘For whom? The diggers?’ And though she flinched at the derision in his voice, he continued. ‘What else, apart from photographs, do you think you are qualified for?’

Her chin came up. ‘Governess!’ she flung at him.

He shook his head. ‘Not in Hokitika.’

‘Then I’ll move to a city … Christchurch. There will be lots of jobs there. I could even work as a maid.’

‘You?’ Despite the gravity of Guinevere’s situation and his own frustration at being enmeshed in it, the incongruous image of her docilely kitted out in a maid’s apparel made him smile.

‘Don’t you dare laugh at me. I don’t see myself as any more important than any other woman.’

‘Maybe not. But others might not agree. Besides, you’d never cope. The hours are long and the work is heavy and tedious.’

‘There is nobility in any sort of work!’

‘Oh, Lady Guinevere. You really have no idea at all.’

‘Don’t be so damned superior.’

Quinn wagged a finger at her. ‘And you can’t be using those words or that tone with anyone you work for, you know, just because you don’t like what they say. You’d be turned out without a character the same day.’

He saw her fingers curl into a fist and continued relentlessly.

‘Ah, that temper. You said it was one of your besetting sins the day we met. What are the others? Stubbornness? Refusal to see sense?’

‘Oh, you are quite insufferable.’

‘So I’ve been told now, on several occasions.’

‘Go on then, Mr O’Donnell with all the answers. What would you do in my place?’

She had him there. He thought for a minute, brow furrowed.

‘There must be someone who can help you. An uncle perhaps, or a grandparent?’

She shook her head.

‘This Ramsay, then. Can you not reason with him? Surely he would not throw a girl alone out of her own home?’

She gave him a humourless smile. ‘Oh, no, he has no desire to throw me from my home. In fact, he even offered to tear up the contract my father signed.’

‘Well, there you are then.’

‘If I marry him.’

‘Ah.’

A silence fell between them.

‘So your father took a gamble and knew that if it didn’t come off, he could still barter you off.’

Stung, Guinevere cried, ‘No, it’s not like that at all!’

‘What is it like then?’

‘Mr Ramsay is one of my father’s close associates. He’s a man of many talents, one my father felt sure would make a fine husband. Indeed, he urged me to consider the offer very seriously, quite apart from the issue of our home.’

‘And you? What do you think of him?’

Guinevere hesitated. ‘He’s a man of inestimable qualities.’

‘Will you marry him?’

Cornered, she tilted her chin. ‘If it comes to that – yes.’

Quinn laughed scornfully. ‘Inestimable qualities? Sure, a blind man can tell you don’t care for him yet you are willing to marry yourself off.’

‘He is a man of fine understanding and a steady temperament. I’m sure I couldn’t hope for anything better in a husband.’

‘But you don’t love him?’

‘No, and I don’t want to. Having witnessed the havoc it has wrought in the lives of the artists my father supported, it seems to me that love can be a very inconvenient emotion. Fortunately, however, it would appear I am immune to it for I have never experienced the slightest pang.’

‘Not at all?’

‘Well, I once had a tendre for one of the artists – a very dashing young man – but he went away for a month and I quite forgot about him, so I don’t think that counts, do you?’

Quinn shook his head. ‘If you forgot him so easily, it certainly wasn’t love.’ His voice was bitter.

‘What would you know about it? Have you ever been in love?’ she demanded sceptically.

Quinn looked down at his clenched hands for a second. ‘Once I thought I was,’ he said shortly. ‘As you say, it is a very inconvenient emotion and not one I’d recommend to anyone.’

‘So you understand how I feel then? That love is best avoided?’

‘Well, I’ve certainly no intention of ever saddling myself with that fancy again, I can assure you. But at the same time nothing in the world would induce me to sell myself into a loveless marriage, either. God, you English are a cold-blooded race.’

Bouncing to her feet, arms rigid at her sides, Guinevere cried, ‘Oh, you are impossible! You want me to go back to England but if I do I must marry and you don’t like that notion either, do you? What other option is there, Mr O’Donnell?’

Quinn looked away, not knowing what to say. Damn it all, he didn’t know why it riled him so to think of her marrying. Fortunately she didn’t wait for an answer but continued in an impassioned tone, ‘It’s my home we are talking of here. I would do anything to save Maidenhurst. Have you any idea what it is like to face losing your home and everything you hold dear?’

Something snapped inside Quinn and he too sprang to his feet. ‘I know all right. I watched my mother dying in childbirth so weakened was she by the famine. My father died the year after – arrested by fine English soldiers for stealing food to feed his children. He died of gaol fever before they had the chance to hang him, leaving us to be parcelled out. I haven’t seen my sisters in over ten years and, if that wasn’t enough, because of the bloody English I can never go back to Ireland ever again to see them. So don’t talk to me about losing everything. What the hell would you know about it with your fancy title and your arranged marriages to help you out of holes of your own making?’

Quinn stopped, horrified to discover he’d been shouting. Horrified that he had said so much.

Guinevere, her face ashen, touched his arm. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Quinn said gruffly. ‘It’s past history now. It doesn’t matter anymore.’

‘But surely there must—’

‘Leave it!’ Her hand dropped and regretting his harsh tone, Quinn added, ‘It’s not me we’re talking of, it’s you. Why do you not just return to England and marry this fine gentleman then, if you are satisfied with the terms of the contract?’ He tried to sound reasonable but the bitterness was still there, the contempt.

Gwen smiled wanly. ‘I don’t have enough money for the ticket back to England,’ she said. ‘I just have the money that my father had on him at the time of his death. The rest is tied up until the terms of the will are read. The letter has gone to the lawyers in London of course, but it will take some time I imagine to sort everything out. In the meantime, I do have enough to continue with my father’s work here and earn money in that way.’

‘Why don’t you apply to this Ramsay fellow for the fare?’

Guinevere stepped back a pace and set her chin. ‘Until the moment I marry him, I prefer not to take his money. I do not accept charity.’

‘’Tis not charity … he’s to be your husband, after all.’

She shook her head. ‘I will not apply to him.’

‘You are the most stubborn—’

Guinevere drew herself up, transforming into the haughty English lady he loathed.

‘Of course I cannot expect you to understand, so please do not trouble yourself on the matter any longer, Mr O’Donnell,’ she said. ‘You have been most kind and I am sorry for all the trouble I have caused you in the past week.’

Crossing the room to her bed, she drew some notes from under her pillow. ‘I think this will cover the cost of your services – and your kindness. As I intend leaving tomorrow, I thought it best to pay you now.’

He looked at the money she held out then looked back into her eyes, his face hard and his voice dangerously soft. ‘I am not one of your flunkeys to be paid off when I am of no use any longer. I did what I did with no thought to payment at all.’

‘I don’t doubt that you did but you must accept all the same. I told you, I do not accept charity.’

‘And as I will never – till hell itself freezes over – accept one penny from the English, ’twould appear that we have reached an impasse. That being the case, I will take my leave, Lady Guinevere, and I wish you every success with your ventures.’

With a bow, he was gone.