Katherine watched helplessly as Robbie lived and breathed Lionel Terry. His father talked through his reports even before he published. ‘What do you think, Robbie? Enough drama for you?’
Robbie wanted to sign the petition that ran throughout the country, but his father said, ‘When you’re older, son, you’ll have your turn.’
Donald tried to get Katherine to sign. It was the only time she remembered him swearing at her. She could feel every movement of her body, the heaviness of her arms, her legs, as she turned her back and walked out of the room. She could feel herself quivering, could feel his eyes burning at the back of her neck. The blackness of his rage, his stunned disbelief.
The petition collected thousands of names, but in the end it wasn’t needed. The Government had already decided: Terry’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Father and son tracked Terry’s progress from Wellington Gaol to Lyttelton, from Lyttelton Gaol to Sunnyside (mental hospital, indeed! – the papers didn’t say lunatic asylum any more), from the madhouse to his escapes into the countryside. Donald and Robbie told each other stories, embellishing them more and more with each telling – why, you’d think he was some modern-day Robin Hood, the way people talked, the way they helped him.
‘Terry’s adventures certainly add spice to the paper,’ Donald said as he poured more whisky. ‘We could run a series of cartoons, Robbie. Terry swimming the Waimakariri. Terry in the abandoned hut at Burnt Hill eating raw vegetables and grasses . . .’
So they weren’t Chinamen’s vegetables, Katherine thought.
They were all sitting in the parlour, Edie reading a book, Katherine mending yet another hole in Robbie’s sock. This one didn’t deserve the name ‘sock’. More a mass of darning held together by wool scrap. Why couldn’t Donald give her more money?
‘How about a cartoon of the man in Oxford giving him his handkerchief and check cap with the caption – Good on you, Terry. Keep up the good work . . .’
Damn. Katherine sucked her finger where she’d pricked it with the needle.
‘We could have Terry lecturing about the alien problem before the crowd at Sheffield . . . Sure they caught him in the end, carted him back to Sunnyside, but you can’t keep a good man down. I hear with his latest escape the Chinks throughout Canterbury locked up their shops and didn’t even work their gardens. Now there’s a good cartoon.’
Katherine sighed. Now she listened as Donald read aloud yet another letter:
My friend,
During my recent excursion I enjoyed a right royal time amongst the mountains and rivers, though the water was a little too cold and I had to indulge in a good run up hill to get what the silly little medicos call the ‘red blood corpuscles’ smiling again. I cannot understand why people choose to live on the stagnant flat when they might as easily live at altitude where the air is pure and life is infinitely more wholesome . . .
The madhouse is thoroughly tiresome. I miss the conversation of intelligent companions, this being the primary motivation for my numerous excursions. Your continued encouragement and strong support are a great comfort to me. Please give my kind wishes to all our mutual friends.
I remain,
Yours as ever,
Lionel Terry.
‘We need to start a petition for Terry’s release, Robbie,’ Donald said. ‘The madhouse is no place for a man of his intellect. It would be enough to send a sane man mad.’ He sat, hands steepled in concentration, Robbie beside him, a mirror image of his father.
As Katherine put away her sewing basket and went to cook dinner she noticed Edie, head raised from The Story of the Earth, quietly observing. Katherine did not need to tell her that women (and girls) of good breeding did not read Donald’s newspaper. Katherine always banished any unattended copy to a pile near the fireplace. Stories of avaricious doctors, filthy foods in restaurants, fallen women all went up in flames.
Nevertheless, Katherine worried. Not only about Donald’s influence but also about Edie’s own eccentricities. Once, in the library, Katherine caught her up on the shelves, fingers wrapped around Gray’s Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. She was seven, for heaven’s sake. All right, almost eight. Did she understand anything of what she read or did she just enjoy the illustrations, the challenge of impossible words? Thank goodness she hadn’t dropped it. Katherine was in no mood for an argument with the librarian. Nor did she fancy having to explain to Donald why they were paying for an expensive damaged book. He’d put on his shirt that morning complaining that even a Chinaman could do a better job of the ironing. As she’d pulled Edie down from the shelf, as she scolded her and slapped her hand, Katherine could hear Donald’s mother calling from the grave, her voice like a noose round her throat. Such stubbornness in a girl, she was saying, such peculiarity! Beat it out of her now, Donald, before it’s too late. What man will have her if you don’t nip it in the bud? How can this not lead to unhappiness?
Alone in the kitchen, Katherine sliced the top from an onion, stared at its translucent creamy-green rings. She could see a tree stump – the end of life, all the rings of its history. She was throwing a stone, watching the ripples of water.
It was easier not to think. Or feel. Perhaps intelligence was not a blessing. More a test of character.
She saw her daughter’s face, the long curls of red hair, a scattering of freckles over her upturned nose, her big hazel eyes. She sliced the bottom from the onion and her eyes watered. Once she’d looked like that too. Like her daughter.
She peeled the skin, held the naked onion in her hand. For a moment she saw a lopped-off globe with no continents or seas, a world that had lost its shape. And all its boundaries.