The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton Page B

can’t prove it, of course,’ Gascoigne said darkly. ‘But the man’s a brute. You are quite right to want to avoid him.’
    Moody stared at him, again at a loss for how to reply.
    ‘Every man has his currency,’ Gascoigne added after a moment.‘Perhaps it’s gold; perhaps it’s women. Anna Wetherell, you see, was both.’
    At this point the fat man returned, with his glass refreshed; he sat down, looked first to Gascoigne and then to Moody, and seemed to recognise, obscurely, a social obligation to introduce himself. He leaned forward and thrust out his hand. ‘Name’s Dick Mannering.’
    ‘It’s a pleasure,’ Moody said, in a rather automatic tone. He felt disoriented. He wished Gascoigne had not been interrupted quite at that moment, so he could have pressed him further on the subject of the whore. It was indelicate to attempt to revive the subject now; in any case Gascoigne had retreated back into his armchair, and his face had closed. He began turning his cigarette case over again in his hands.
    ‘Prince of Wales Opera House, that’s me,’ Mannering added, as he sat back.
    ‘Capital,’ said Moody.
    ‘Only show in town.’ Mannering rapped the arm of his chair with his knuckles, casting about for a way to proceed. Moody glanced at Gascoigne, but the clerk was staring sourly into his lap. It was clear that the fat man’s reappearance had severely displeased him; it was also clear that he saw no reason to conceal his displeasure from its object—whose face, Moody saw with embarrassment, had turned a very dark shade of red.
    ‘I could not help but admire your watch chain, earlier,’ Moody said at last, addressing Mannering. ‘Is it Hokitika gold?’
    ‘Nice piece, isn’t it?’ Mannering said, without looking down at his chest, or lifting his fingers to touch the admired item. He rapped the arms of his chair a second time. ‘Clutha nuggets, in actual fact. I was at Kawarau, Dunstan, then Clutha.’
    ‘I confess I’m not familiar with the names,’ Moody said. ‘I assume they’re Otago fields?’
    Mannering assented that they were, and began to expound on the subject of company mining and the value of the dredge.
    ‘You’re all diggers here?’ Moody said when he was done, moving his fingertips in a little circle in the air, to indicate that he meant the room at large.
    ‘Not one—excepting the Chinamen, of course,’ Mannering said. ‘Camp followers is the term, though most of us started off in the gorge. Most gold on a goldfield’s found where? At the hotels. At the shanties. Mates spend the stuff as soon as they find it. Tell you what: you might do better to open a business than to head to the hills. Get yourself a licence, start selling grog.’
    ‘That must be wise advice, if you have acted upon it yourself,’ Moody said.
    Mannering settled back into his chair, seeming very contented with the compliment. Yes, he had quit the fields, and now paid other men to work his claims for a percentage of the yield; he was from Sussex; Hokitika was a fine place, but there were fewer girls than was proper in a town of such a size; he loved all kinds of harmony ; he had modelled his opera house upon the Adelphi at the West End; he felt that the old song-and-supper could not be beat; he could not abide public houses, and small beer made him ill; the floods at Dunstan had been dreadful—dreadful; the Hokitika rain was hard to bear; he would say again that there was nothing nicer than a four-part harmony—the voices like threads in a piece of silk.
    ‘Splendid,’ Moody murmured. Gascoigne had made no movement at all during this soliloquy, save for the compulsive rhythm of his long, pale hands, as he turned the silver object over in his lap; Mannering, for his part, had not registered the clerk’s presence at all, and in fact had directed his speech at a spot some three feet above Moody’s head, as if Moody’s presence did not really concern him either.
    At length the whispered drama that was