just a man,’ said another.
‘More than that, he’s just a statue!’ said the third.
A short man waving his hands and trying to make it to the front of the crowd caught Jesse’s attention. He wore an accordion-pleated ascot tie and as he approached he said, in an elevated voice, ‘Dear boy, you are bound for the fine establishment of Hercus & Barling, are you not?’
‘I—’
‘For I am the eponymous Hercus, Emile Hercus, proprietor of the newest, largest and best patronised department store in a twenty-five-mile radius.’
‘This is—?’
‘Oh no you don’t, Emile,’ said an older man in a brown suit that may have once been dignified but now looked merely comfortable. ‘You’re coming to Donaldson’s, aren’t you?’
‘Donaldson’s?’ Hercus said. ‘The Great Sandow would not be seen dead in that moth-ridden closet.’
The man in the brown suit placed a hand on the plaster Sandow’s shoulder. ‘It’s a good thing Mr Sandow is inanimate then, isn’t it?’
‘Please don’t touch the statue, sir,’ Jesse said. ‘You’ll leave a mark.’
‘Quite right,’ the man said, removing his hand and wiping it on his lapel. ‘Charles Begg,’ he said and held out this same overworked hand and Jesse shook it. ‘We have a very good window dresser—that term doesn’t really do the man justice. He’ll rig something up so that you’d swear it was Sandow himself in the window. Where is Kemp, anyway?’ Begg asked the crowd of townspeople, who swayed like windblown toetoe, looking for Colton Kemp among their number. He was so often prominent in any scandal, ruckus or commotion. But there was no sign of him.
‘I’m sure my man is here,’ said Hercus, who perched on tip-toe to little effect. ‘Has anyone seen The Carpenter?’
A hand went up from the middle of the crowd and they parted. A compact man in a heavy brown checked suit stood there, his large, square hand held out in front of him as if anointing someone or something.
‘Over here, my good man,’ said Hercus.
‘Kemp?’ Begg called. ‘Where the blazes is Colton Kemp?’
‘We stock all of Sandow’s physical culture paraphernalia, of course,’ Hercus said to Jesse, who was not used to being spoken to with any sort of respect or reverence. ‘Quickly, man.’ Hercus hurried The Carpenter, whose approach looked laboured. Jesse wondered if it was due to the heavy woollen suit he wore on this warm summer’s morning, or simply age. ‘I’m afraid he’s rather taciturn,’ Hercus added.
‘Sorry, sir—’ Jesse began.
‘Oh, don’t worry. The Carpenter is the most able man in the field of displays. Just one look at our present window should allay any fears you may have. But why would you have fears? You’ve come to deposit Mr Sandow’s likeness at Hercus & Barling and you’re very much in the right spot.’
‘A sack of rats for Kemp,’ said Begg. ‘That’s what awaits him, a sack of rats.’
‘Come,’ Hercus said, placing his arm across Jesse’s shoulders, ‘let us repair to my store.’ He turned to The Carpenter. ‘I trust you can transport the precious cargo?’
The man nodded.
‘Never a peep, that fellow,’ Hercus said. ‘Now tell me, boy, what is your name and how long have you been associated with Mr Sandow?’
In which Colton Kemp keeps mum
The lighthouse, vacant since the death of its first and only keeper, stood at the head of a nameless crag. From the handful of times Kemp had gone fishing with his father he could recall the way the bluff and the land sloping down and away resembled the severed tail of a lizard. For twelve years the gas-powered light had acted as a beacon for ships—Mayor Raymond was still agitating for another townsperson to take up the mantle of lighthouse keeper—but for now the tall white tower and the rocks below attracted only would-be suicides.
Kemp was now a widower and a father of twins—all in the space of a morning. Two lives in exchange for one. But he did not care about those small, squirming things just now. He had left Flossie to deal with the aftermath, hadn’t told her where he was going. She was seventeen but had a good head on her shoulders. She had dealt with the sudden death of her parents quietly and had adjusted to life in slower, less accomplished circles. He knew she’d do a good job this time, that she feared and respected him.
The town of Marumaru was further down the lizard’s tail, where the cliffs ended and the short beach began. The walk to town was a dry dirt path bisecting a field of sheep-shorn grass that resembled a cricket pitch or, though he tried not to see it, a fairway. Before Kemp’s birth, his father had been the greenkeeper of a golf links north of Dunedin. He spoke of it only once: the pride he’d taken in turning scrub into emerald carpets of grass, the thought that went into the placement of each sand trap, the wickedness of a sou’wester on the thirteenth, the difficulties players faced in coming north—the boggy roads, slips and skittish horses—and the slow exodus of members to the Balmacewen course closer to home. The links had been abandoned in the end. In all likelihood it had now been divided into rectangles and was patrolled by Corriedale and cattle beast, though Kemp preferred to think of it overgrown: a shimmering straw-coloured fairway flanked by wild fennel gone to seed and gnarled macrocarpa leading the eye to a perfect circle of Scotch thistle where his father’s green had once shone. Kemp senior had been nearly sixty when he moved north to Marumaru and met his wife. His death concluded a roving, eventful life, but left his son with only a handful of memories. Single moments of grace or anger or despair from which Colton was expected to reconstruct a father.
He has been dead so long. Now Louisa has joined him.
This time he had a thousand memories. He had the raw materials to reconstruct his wife. It was impossible to avoid. But it was not enough. He thought of his failure to carve the likeness of her face and knew she was gone.
He stood on the edge of the crag, staring out to the horizon. Looking due east he was faced with over five thousand miles of uninterrupted ocean. All but six of those miles, however, were hidden by the curvature of the Earth. This thought, the concealed distance, the massive isolation, was more fearsome to him than the thought of the rocks thirty feet below. He looked down. The cliff face was vertical for the first half of its descent, then the moss started and the rock stretched out, eager to meet the water. It would take an almighty leap to make the creamy waves.
He did not leap. Instead, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed out over the edge, the wind breaking up his stream after a few feet and beating it back into the rock face.
As he headed back down the slope he encountered a black-faced sheep, still heavy with winter wool, standing squarely on the path.
‘Hyah!’ he said and threw out his hand.
The sheep tilted its head to one side.
‘Hyah!’
