Colour Scheme. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ Lord!’ said Gaunt softly.

      The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. ‘You can see quite clearly,’ Dikon said, ‘the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.’

      ‘Gawd!’ said Colly.

      ‘Can you look into the crater and see …?’

      ‘I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu, of course.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.’

      ‘How far away is it?’

      ‘About eight miles.’

      ‘It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.’

      ‘Kind of black, sir, isn’t it?’ said Colly.

      ‘Black and clear,’ said Gaunt. ‘A marvellous backdrop.’ They drove on in silence for some time. The flowing hills moved slowly about as if in a contrapuntal measure determined by the progress of the car. Dikon began to recognise landmarks. He felt extremely apprehensive.

      ‘Hullo,’ said Gaunt. ‘What’s that affair down on the right? A sort of doss-house, one would think.’

      Dikon said nothing, but turned in at a ramshackle gate.

      ‘You don’t dare to tell me that we have arrived,’ Gaunt demanded in a loud voice.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘My God, Dikon, you’ll writhe for this. Look at it. Smell it. Colly, we are betrayed.’

      ‘Mr Bell warned you, sir,’ Colly said. ‘I daresay it’s very comfortable.’

      ‘If anything,’ said Dikon, ‘it’s less comfortable than it looks. Those are the Springs.’

      ‘Those reeking puddles?’

      ‘Yes. And there, on the verandah, I see the Claires assembled. You are expected, sir,’ said Dikon. Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Gaunt’s gloved fingers go first to his tie and then to his hat. He thought suddenly: ‘He looks terribly like a famous actor.’

      The car rocked down the last stretch of the drive and shot across the pumice sweep. Dikon pulled up at the verandah steps. He got out, and taking off his hat approached the expectant Claires. He felt nervous and absurd. The Claires were grouped after the manner of an Edwardian family portrait that had taken an eccentric turn. Mrs Claire and the Colonel were in deck chairs, Barbara sat on the steps grasping a reluctant dog. Dikon guessed that they wore their best clothes. Simon, obviously under duress, stood behind his mother’s chair looking murderous. All that was lacking, one felt, was the native equivalent of a gillie holding a couple of staghounds in leash. As Dikon approached, Dr Ackrington came out of his room.

      ‘Here we are, you see,’ Dikon called out with an effort at gaiety. The Claires had risen. Impelled by confusion, doubt and apology, Dikon shook hands blindly all round. Barbara looked nervously over his shoulder and he saw with a dismay which he afterwards recognised as prophetic that she had gone white to her unpainted lips.

      He felt Gaunt’s hand on his arm and hurriedly introduced him.

      Mrs Claire brought poise to the situation, Dikon realised, but it was the kind of poise with which Gaunt was quite unfamiliar. She might have been welcoming a bishop-suffragan to a slum parish, a bishop-suffragan in poor health.

      ‘Such a long journey,’ she said anxiously. ‘You must be so tired.’

      ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Gaunt, who had arrived at an age when actors affect a certain air of youthful hardihood.

      ‘But it’s such a dreadful road. And you look very tired,’ she persisted gently. Dikon saw Gaunt’s smile grow formal. He turned to Barbara. For some reason which he had not attempted to analyse, Dikon wanted Gaunt to like Barbara. It was with apprehension that he watched her give a galvanic jerk, open her eyes very wide, and put her head on one side like a chidden puppy. ‘Oh, hell,’ he thought, ‘she’s going to be funny.’

      ‘Welcome,’ Barbara said in her sepulchral voice, ‘to the humble abode.’ Gaunt dropped her hand rather quickly.

      ‘Find us very quiet, I’m afraid,’ Colonel Claire said, looking quickly at Gaunt and away again. ‘Not much in your line, this country, what?’

      ‘But we’ve just been remarking,’ Gaunt said lightly, ‘that your landscape reeks of theatre.’ He waved his stick at Rangi’s Peak. ‘One expects to hear the orchestra.’ Colonel Claire looked baffled and slightly offended.

      ‘My brother,’ Mrs Claire murmured. Dr Ackrington limped forward. Dikon’s attention was distracted from this last encounter by the behaviour of Simon Claire, who suddenly lurched out of cover, strode down the steps and seized the astounded Colly by the hand. Colly, who was about to unload the car, edged behind it.

      ‘How are you?’ Simon said loudly. ‘Give you a hand with that stuff.’

      ‘That’s all right, thank you, sir.’

      ‘Come on,’ Simon insisted and laid violent hands on a pigskin dressing case which he lugged from the car and dumped none too gently on the pumice. Colly gave a little cry of dismay.

      ‘Here, here, here!’ a loud voice expostulated. Mr Questing thundered out of the house and down the steps. ‘Cut that out, young fellow,’ he ordered and shouldered Simon away from the car.

      ‘Why?’ Simon demanded.

      ‘That’s no way to treat high-class stuff,’ bustled Mr Questing with an air of intolerable patronage. ‘You’ll have to learn better than that. Handle it carefully.’ He advanced upon Dikon. ‘We’re willing,’ he laughed, ‘but we’ve a lot to learn. Well, well, well, how’s the young gentleman?’

      He removed his hat and placed himself before Gaunt. His change of manner was amazingly abrupt. He might have been a lightning impersonator or a marionette controlled by some pundit of second-rate etiquette. Suddenly, he oozed deference. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I have had the honour –’

      ‘Mr СКАЧАТЬ