by Geoff Lawson
Hopefully, later today she would get some.
After we had been under way for a while she stirred and
leaned against me, the side of her head resting lightly on my
shoulder and her arm looped through mine. As I turned my
head to look at her she swivelled her weary eyes at me. They
seemed large and blue, but unlike earlier there was now a hint
of calm in them. It was obvious she was happy with our
closeness. Was this an informal peace offering? Today was
certainly a day for surprises.
Yesterday, she was my boss, or at least she thought she
was. Today, she may have finally realised she was helpless in
the face of problems she could not influence or control. Out
here, her pedigree and her title were meaningless appendages
from a civilization that may as well not exist. Metaphorically,
we were adrift in a sea of misfortune and I was the only thing
left to cling to.
Today, she was all humility and willingly deferential to me.
I was all masculine, all-powerful; a position I may add, which
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may not be entirely unattractive to her femininity. Of course,
one must also take into account that the last thirty hours had
savagely drained her emotional and physical strength. Her
spirit was too tired and bruised to fight.
Another hour later, she stirred and began to divest herself
of the blankets I had so carefully wrapped her in as the heat of
the sun began to filter through. She drank some water and
made herself comfortable. We talked.
“You’re very brave,” I said for openers. “Yesterday you
saved my life. I was only seconds away from getting killed
when you intervened.” She smiled deferentially. “An awful lot
of women could not have done that. Beneath your feminine
exterior, you evidently have strength of character. That
pedigree of yours definitely counts for something and I have
great admiration for you.”
She smiled coyly. “I’m British. We British don’t scare
easily.” Then she laughed. “Actually, I was terrified. If I had
stopped to think about what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t
have done it.” It occurred to me that it was probably good for
her to unburden herself. Then she turned serious.
“I couldn’t just stand by and see you killed. I had to protect
you.” There she went again. Did she mean what I think she
meant, or was she hinting of something else? I leaned towards
her and kissed her cheek. She made no attempt to evade me.
She sat perfectly still, even though she saw me coming, her
blue eyes watching me all the way to contact. I pulled away
slightly. She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
There was a degree of confusion in there, as well as
resignation, but for once it was not a look that said no, so I
leaned towards her again. This time her eyes closed. She was
waiting for me. I kissed her mouth gently, lingeringly.
“That’s for you. That is all I can give you as a token of my
appreciation.”
For a second she blushed and looked away, but she was not
angry with me. There was a smile fixed on her face and to date
I hadn’t seen many of those.
“You are abominable,” she said quietly. There was no
malice in her voice; it was more like a compliment. I knew I
had stepped over the line – it didn’t do for common men to
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kiss m’ladies, married or otherwise. That was the reason for all
those retainers she talked about. It wouldn’t do to have the
prime breeding stock of the realm polluted by contact with
inferior males. But I knew she’d wanted me to. Now I had and
that was that.
We continued along in silence. It was just a simple
flirtation really. For me, Sarah was a substitute for someone I
loved. I wanted to feel those feelings again. For Sarah, I
suspect that I too was a substitute for someone she loved.
Someone who was not her husband, I’d bet on that. Someone I
reminded her of. I looked at her again.
“Forgive me?”
She smiled. “Of course.” She looped her arm back through
mine.
We emerged onto another plain so I stopped the wagon and
pulled out the map. After checking, I decided we must be ten
miles from Duntroon and if that was so, then there was not
much probability of running into any more Boers.
Nevertheless, it would be foolish to let our guard down now.
We moved out into the open and almost immediately, I
spotted a column of horsemen a few miles to the south. They
were travelling on a converging course, so it was safe to
assume that they had seen us, too. I stopped the wagon and
found the binoculars. After adjusting the focus I could make
them out enough to know that they were either New
Zealanders or Australians. Could they be my boys? I counted
them. There were seven, only seven of them. Where was
Blenky? I scanned for any sign of a Wolseley helmet, but there
was none.
When the range had dropped to a mile, I stopped the
wagon again and we waited. They changed tack and came
straight towards us. They were my boys all right. Through the
glasses I could see Steele, Collins, Carter, Fitzy, Walsh,
Emmett and Milsom. Ominously, Blenkinsop and Jones were
missing. The boys looked tired and their horses plodded along,
one foot in front of another, heads and tails hanging. They
came up to the wagon and surrounded it, wearily slumping out
of their saddles. It had been twenty-four hours since we last
saw them and by the look of them, they had plenty to report.
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“’ello men, you look all in.”
“Morning Ritchie, m’lady.” Their voices sounded weary.
“I can see you’ve been pretty busy. What happened to
Jones and Blenkinsop?”
“Jones and Blenkinsop didn’t make it,” mumbled Steele.
“We’ve had a pretty torrid time of it, I tell you. We sure as hell
are pleased to see you.”
“How come you are still out here?” queried Walsh. “I’d a
thought you might have reached Duntroon last night.”
“We’ve had some trouble ourselves since we last saw you
lot.”
“M’lady’s lookin’ pretty beat. You must have.”
“Okay, tell me what happened to you.”
“We went to the hill with Blenkinsop and after hiding our
horses around the back, we took up positions and waited,” said
Steele.
“Yeah,” added Walsh, “an’ about thirty of the blighters
soon swept into view, so we opened fire on ’em to get their
attention, so you and m’lady could get away. Soon they began
to flank us, so we got the hell out of there before we were
surrounded.”
“That’s right,” interrupted Collins. “We had to sprint to
keep ahead of ’em. We only just made it too. We got to the
next hill and repeated the performance. As soon as it was
obvious they were flanking us, we jumped back on our horses
and beat it out of there. At
about this point they must have
realised that the express wagon was missing, so some of ’em
peeled away and disappeared in the direction that you and
m’lady had taken.
“That had evened the odds up a bit. Then they decided to
charge our hill. Ten of ’em tried to race around one side of our
flank, while the rest of ’em kept a covering fire going.
Blenkinsop took four of us and we raced over the top of the
hill to meet ’em comin’ up the other side. He took them
completely by surprise, springing out at point-blank range into
their midst brandishing that revolver of ’is and got two of ’em.
Boy, were they in disarray. They split in panic before some of
‘em rallied and done for ’im. He was hit three times, poor
blighter.
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“After that they beat a retreat, but we got another one
before they got out of range. After that it was stalemate. They
didn’t have the numbers to ferret us out, so they resorted to
long range sniping until dark. That’s when Jones got it. A
sniper bullet bounced off a rock and whacked him in the
swede. That did for ’im, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah,” chipped in Walsh. “An’ after dark we put our
saddles on the spare horses and skedaddled out of there. We
were concerned about you and m’lady here, but even with the
moon up we knew we wouldn’t find you in the dark. We also
realised that there was every reason to think you ’ad run into
trouble, so after a while we decided to stay where we were an’
look for you come mornin’ – an’ ’till now, that’s what we’ve
been doin’. We cut across this road ’ere about ten mile back
and noticed that there were skinny wheel marks, like an
express wagon makes, so we took a shortcut overland to catch
you up an’ ’ere we are.”
We were so engrossed in our conversation that Sarah had
climbed down from the wagon and none of us had noticed.
Quietly, she had moved into our circle with her arms folded
across her chest and as the lads told their story she absorbed
every word, her eyes following each speaker in turn.
“What about you, Ritchie, how come there’s a bloodstain
on your trouser leg?”
“Yeah,” said another, “where’d you get that revolver in
your pocket?”
“Well boys, you won’t believe this. Lady Sarah saved my
life.” All eyes swivelled towards her. No one spoke. Evidently
embarrassed by this swell of male attention she cast her eyes
downward and clasped her hands, so to divert their attention I
told them our story.
Except for a couple of details, I recited it just as everything
had happened. They stood and stared in silence. Then slowly,
they began to clap.
“Three cheers for Lady Sarah,”
“Hip hooray, hip hooray, hip hooray – for she’s a jolly
good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow,” and they finished
up clapping and whistling. She just stood there and looked
from face to face, her own expression one of barely suppressed
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tears. For a brief second she looked at me. It was a look that
said ‘thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
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Chapter Sixteen
WHANGANUI, New Zealand. April 1899
It was a nerve-wracking three days that followed my meeting
with Rachel’s father. Through the day I could throw myself
into my work and try not to think about any potentially
negative outcome, but at night there was no escaping it. I
would sit alone in my room, or go for a walk, but there was no
getting away from the trepidation I felt.
Then on Thursday, Reggie hove into view. Evidently the
fire in the office was too warm for comfort, for he had
removed his jacket, loosened his tie and partly rolled-up his
sleeves, although this time around he had remembered to do all
of the buttons on his waistcoat up.
“It’s getting like a bloody post office around here,” he
rasped, looking disgruntled and red-faced. A cigarette still
hung from the corner of his mouth and ash fell from the tip as
he spoke.
“Here’s another bleedin’ love letter from Miss Purdue.”
My dearest Richard, meet me at the post office corner at five
past twelve.
Please, please, don’t be late!
Love me, Rachel
When I got there I could see her coming, grinning like
mad.
“Yes, yes!” she screamed. “Father says you can court me!”
I lifted her off her feet and spun her round and round. We
found a bench seat and sat down.
“What did he say about me?”
“He said you have a way with words. He also said he
thought you were honourable.” I doubted that I had been
allowed to court Rachel on the basis of that alone and I
wondered how much Rachel and her mother had influenced his
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decision; I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the
Purdue house during the last few days.
In the months that followed I would sometimes visit her in
the evenings and on weekends I would stay all day. Alistair
was polite, although distant, but Rachel blossomed and you
can bet he noticed. All of the older boys were at university or
boarding school; only Wilmot, the youngest sibling, remained
at home. Sometimes, I wondered how Albert would react if he
came home one day and found me there.
On Saturdays, we would while away the hours by walking.
If Emily Ellen chaperoned we didn’t wander far, but if Wilmot
were coerced to ‘play gooseberry,’ we would wander for half
the day. We would walk along the riverbank hand in hand, or
gaze at the mountain from a seat at Queens Park.
Sometimes, we would dawdle along the Avenue, where we
could gaze in shop windows and rest in a teashop. There were
occasions when Rachel’s old friends would sit and talk with us
at our table. Of course, they were curious about me and in this
way I made many new friends. On sunny days we would see
other couples out walking and they would smile and say hello.
Rachel’s exile was diminishing and her gradual return to social
acceptance did wonders for her self-esteem.
One Sunday, we went for a boat ride to South Beach.
Alistair was busy at the office, so the four of us, Emily Ellen,
Rachel, Wilmot and I, would go. We arrived at the Hatrick &
Co wharf at ten in the morning and joined the hundred or so
others who had queued to go. The boat was the P.S. Manuwai,
an all roofed, two-deck, stern-wheeler of significant
proportions; its safety valve blowing as men, women and
children laden with food all jostled for seats. There were
women in long coats with large hats and girls in smocks and
white linen dresses, while the boys were dressed in waistcoats,
jackets and trousers.
The crew on the lower deck were coiling rope as Manuwai
pulled into the current. Up in the bow, the anchor engine
rattled and hissed while steering chains clinked and
slid slowly
back and forth in their blocks. Fresh coal was shovelled into
the boiler and in an instant, thick black smoke billowed up as
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we turned and headed for the town bridge, which had been
opened to allow us through.
As we cruised by the town wharf we passed ship after
ship, where sailors waved to our passengers and the passengers
waved enthusiastically back. Later, I made my way to the stern
of the lower deck where I stood in front of the slowly
revolving paddle, which reared up above me, dipping and
dripping, churning the water behind us while the long steel
rods from the engines moved slowly back and forth. It was my
first trip on a riverboat and I was thoroughly enjoying the
sounds, smells and the panoramic vistas of the river, as
Manuwai eased through the current that was heading for the
sea.
Another day, we boarded the train to Castlecliff and made
ourselves comfortable while Puffing Billy pulled us along.
Initially, the tracks followed the river and gave us lovely vistas
of shimmering green water from the incoming tide, while a
peaceful Putiki Marae could be seen in the sun on the opposite
shore. Then the track hooked inland, skirting some swamps
before it journeyed past the all brick hospital; on past a row of
wool stores and mercantile warehouses to continue along to the
end of the line. Once there, we were required to disembark and
walk to where a broad sweep of sandbar made a pleasant spot
to paddle and swim, where the mouth of the river spilled into
the sea.
There were social occasions as well. Eleanor would invite
us around for morning or afternoon tea, or sometimes Sunday
dinner, which Rachel always enjoyed. Eleanor was always
kind to Rachel, so the two of them became friends in spite of
the difference in age. In this way, Rachel’s mother was
introduced to Eleanor and they got along too.
The months went by, but all was not quite as right as it
might have been. Alistair decided there would be no
engagement for at least two years and no talk of marriage for a
year after that. That frustrated Rachel and even though I
explained that they were at least amenable to the idea that we
would be engaged, she was not pacified. The other problem
was me – how I longed for the creak of saddle leather and the
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smell of gun oil; the warmth of a campfire and the fragrance of