by Sarah Lark
Violet prayed she was spared that, but the Maori were still there when the three left the building the same way they had come. Atamarie called a few cheerful words over to them; the men answered with amusement and waved at Violet and the girls as they went.
“You see, we didn’t do anything wrong, Mrs. Fence,” said Atamarie. “I asked them very nicely beforehand if we could go in, and they said yes. So—”
“Wrong is relative,” Violet sighed, recalling one of Caleb Biller’s favorite expressions. “It looks like by going in alone, you’ve saved our law. I hope, anyway. We’ll see what Sean says about it.”
Matariki had not waited in her office but had given in to her hunger, hanging a note for Violet and the girls on the office door:
I’m at the Backbencher. Come there if Violet hasn’t already killed you.
“She doesn’t take anything seriously,” Violet said, then nearly ran with the girls to the Backbencher, a restaurant on Molesworth Street favored by representatives, lobbyists, and government employees. Matariki aside, Violet hoped to find Sean there.
The Backbencher was crowded. Violet looked around for Sean, but she spotted Matariki, Kate Sheppard, and Meri Te Tai Mangakahia first. Violet went over to them.
Matariki smiled at her. “Well, you found the girls. Where were you, Atamarie? Violet was worried sick.”
“Tell them where you were,” Violet said stiffly. “I’m looking for Sean, Matariki. It’s an emergency. He needs—”
“Mr. Coltrane is over there,” Kate Sheppard said, smiling. “But don’t you mean to say hello first, Violet? Dear heavens, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost, just—” Atamarie started babbling.
Violet told her to be quiet with a gruff hand gesture. “Where’s Sean?” she insisted.
Kate Sheppard gestured to a recess where Sean sat with two representatives from the upper house, drinking beer. Kate must have disapproved of that, but she probably saw it as a means to an end. The two men were opponents of women’s suffrage. Sean was having a lively conversation with them—likely trying to change their minds.
Violet walked toward Sean with brisk strides.
“Mr. Coltrane, forgive me if I’m interrupting, but I’ve just heard something. I—”
Sean looked up with a furrowed brow. Usually he was happy to see her, but she could see her interruption came at an inopportune moment.
“I can speak with you in a moment, Violet. I’m in the middle of a discussion.”
Violet shook her head. “We don’t need to leave,” she said in a clear voice. “These gentlemen are welcome to listen. Really, they should know too.”
Sean and the two men listened spellbound to Violet’s tale. When she was done, Sean did not look nearly as overjoyed and relieved as Violet had expected.
“Whew,” he said with a look at the men. “I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but I could use a whiskey. What do you say we head to the nearest pub and talk there about whether the Liberal Party can still be saved?” When the men involved nodded, he turned to Violet. “Mrs. Fence, please, could you keep this to yourself? Even from Miss Drury, and especially Mrs. Sheppard and Mrs. Mangakahia? If this gets out, Mrs. Fence, Seddon will fall, and all of us with him.”
Naturally, the women bombarded Violet with questions. The girls had already told them about their adventure. However, they had not understood the implications of what they had heard. They had only told the women that Mr. Seddon had whiskey in his office and that Mr. Bromley really wanted to be Minister of the Treasury in the new government.
“And they talked about women’s suffrage too,” Roberta added when Violet came back.
Matariki, Kate, and Meri were on the verge of putting two and two together. Violet’s silence disappointed them deeply.
“Won’t you at least confirm what we think?” Kate Sheppard finally asked.
Violet shook her head. “I need to have something to eat,” she said, only to play with the food on her plate. Atamarie and Roberta ate with enough appetite for her. So far, no one had upbraided them for sneaking into the Parliament Building.
“So, if it doesn’t work out being premier, we could be spies instead,” Atamarie said. “I thought it was exciting in that closet. I could do that every day.”
Violet’s landlady was incensed when Sean Coltrane knocked on her door late that night.
“Don’t you know what time it is?” she asked indignantly, sniffing audibly. Sean smelled of whiskey.
As soon as Violet heard the knock on the front door, she was sure it was Sean, and she left her room. “It’s all right, Mrs. Rudyard. It’s important,” she said. “Perhaps we could speak in your receiving room as an exception?”
The strict Mrs. Rudyard had often allowed Violet and Sean just that. She had nothing against the relationship between the young widow and the exceedingly distinguished member of Parliament. However, she was very sensitive about propriety, and he seemed drunk.
“Not here, Violet,” Sean said before the landlady answered. “I know, Mrs. Rudyard, I’m compromising Mrs. Fence, but it’s important. And it has to stay between us. Please, come, Violet.”
Violet had already thrown on a shawl and hurried past Mrs. Rudyard before she could protest. She followed Sean down the stairs and onto the street. He stopped only when they were safely out of view of the old lady, who was surely watching them through the window.
“I’m sorry, Violet, about the whiskey as well,” he began, “but such conversations are best had among men over a glass. And, and besides, I might otherwise have lacked the courage to steal you away from that dragon, Mrs. Rudyard, tonight.”
“I almost died of suspense,” Violet said. “Matariki and the others spent hours trying to talk me into telling them. They already suspect something. I’m sorry, but the girls talked.”
“Keep it to yourself anyway, Violet. There are only three days left. And we, well, Mr. Leicester, Mr. Torrance, and I agreed that the public shouldn’t catch wind of what you heard. Seddon stands for the Liberal Party. What he does comes back to bite the whole government. If you speak to the press, they’ll force him to resign, and it might come to new elections—those would not help us either.”
Sean looked at Violet imploringly.
“But if Bromley votes against the bill—,” Violet said.
Sean shook his head. “I’m going to speak to Mr. Bromley tomorrow. And Leicester is speaking to Seddon. I’ve made a deal with Leicester and Torrance. I promised you wouldn’t say a word or cast aspersions on the Liberal Party. In exchange, they will vote for suffrage for women and the Maori. We’ll win twenty to eighteen. You just have to say yes, Violet.”
Violet nodded. She was enraged at Seddon and would have liked to damage him. However, Sean and many others in his party were honorable men who had set out to make New Zealand a nation with the most progressive laws on earth. She could not allow the idiocy of an uneducated provincial politician whom fate had kicked upstairs to destroy everything.
Sean smiled with relief when she agreed. He had watched her attentively while she considered. He loved her serious face, the furrows her forehead made as she turned over a problem, and he loved her triumphant smile when she made her decision.
He should not have drunk the whiskey. But he never would have dared to kiss her if he hadn’t. Sean bent down to Violet as she looked up at him, smiling. She was so small and delicate; yet she always protected everyone. Sean hoped she would let him take care of her.
Violet had often seen people kiss, but she had never kissed anyone herself. She had been forced to endure Eric’s tongue in her mouth, but for her that had never been a kiss. Now, though, she parted her lips for Sean. And marveled that she hardly tasted whiskey as so often with Eric. She tasted peppermint, and alongside her rising excitement, she felt somehow touched. He must have gone home to brush his teeth. So, he had planned this.
Without thinking, she said something to him about it when they parted.
Sea
n nodded. “I’ll admit it. I had to have some liquid courage. I’ve never compromised a woman before, Violet Fence. And tomorrow, Mrs. Rudyard is guaranteed to tell all Wellington. Not just your reputation will be ruined.”
Violet fixed Sean with a mischievous stare. “There might still be a way to avert scandal,” she said. “But then, then you’d have to ask me something else, and I would have to say yes.”
Sean smiled. And then he asked the question.
Chapter 3
On the day before the passage of the law on women’s suffrage, Richard Seddon, the premier, had an astounding conversion. He avowed the fundamental Liberal principles and declared that equality before the law demanded suffrage for women and the Maori.
His supporters in Parliament couldn’t understand what had happened. Outside of Parliament, however, people celebrated the premier’s change of heart. Seddon’s popularity climbed, and women cheered for him in front of the Parliament Building.
“He really did manage to come out on top of the whole thing,” said Sean.
He and Violet had agreed to let Matariki and Kupe in on their secret. Matariki had already coaxed out of her daughter nearly the precise wording of the conversation between Bromley and Seddon. She could piece together the rest. Sean needed an audience to whom he could let off steam.
“I’ve been telling you,” Kupe said, “a born populist. With him we’ll have our hands full in Parliament. Sean, I think we have some interesting years ahead of us.”
Sean shook his head. “You might, Kupe, if you stand for election. With the Maori and the women’s vote, you’d win for sure. But I’m done. Under Seddon, I’ll never be on solid footing. It’s no secret how he treats his opponents. And my heart’s not in it anymore. If it continues like this, if I’m just having to fight against corruption and incompetence, I’m not made for that. I’ll stay till November, but then I won’t run again. I’ll go back to Dunedin with Violet, open a firm, and support Peter’s parish in legal matters.”
“Specializing in divorce?” Matariki teased.
“And questions of land ownership,” Sean responded seriously. “I think I’m going to take another look at the Parihaka affair. Maybe you all will get some sort of reparations.”
“Sure, when heaven and earth meet,” grumbled Kupe.
Matariki looked out the window. It was raining again. “Which is not impossible,” she said. “If Rangi never stops crying,” she said, referring to the rain, “maybe it’ll move the gods.”
On September 19, 1893, as the governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Act into law, giving women the right to vote, the rain stopped and the sun shone over Wellington, and the women danced together through the streets. Matariki hugged Amey Daldy, who had traveled there to experience her triumph in person in the capital.
“We did it, Mrs. Daldy,” she cheered. “Suffrage for us and for Maori women too. Would you have believed it when I started teaching them English all those years ago?”
Amey Daldy smiled at her graciously. That day Mrs. Daldy was acting almost frivolously. Instead of one of the black or brown outfits she usually wore, she came in a light-green one with a matching flower hat. In any case, she forgave Matariki her missteps, and for her part, Matariki suppressed the suggestion of drinking a glass of champagne to their victory. She was ebulliently happy and completely wound up following the strain of the days before.
As Sean had predicted, the law had passed on September 8, twenty to eighteen, but afterward another flurry of action surrounded the Parliament. Opponents of suffrage hoped until the end for a veto from the governor and tried to influence him to achieve that goal. Petitions and counterpetitions chased one another. The women at the front did not get a minute’s rest. In the meantime, nearly every citizen wore either a white or red camellia on the street as a sign of agreement or rejection of women’s suffrage. The governor, Lord Glasgow, did not allow any of it to impress him, however. Unlike Richard Seddon—now known by his nickname, “King Dick”—Glasgow had no weakness for the old lordly politics. The law had passed; his signature was just a formality.
Matariki wanted to share her excitement with Kupe by hugging him, but he rebuffed her stubbornly.
“I would like to know what happened between them,” Violet whispered to Sean.
Matariki overheard her. “Me too,” she grumbled. “Dear God, he can’t really still be holding it against me that I fell in love with a pakeha more than ten years ago.”
November 28 was another radiant early-summer day. The flowers shone in competition with the colorful summer dresses of the women walking proudly to the ballot boxes for the first time, a newspaper in Christchurch reported, re-creating the mood in the streets quite closely.
“I hope it won’t come to riots during the election,” Matariki said, concerned when she met her friends around eleven o’clock to cast their votes together.
Several newspapers had expressed corresponding fears, and the police presence near the polling stations had been increased.
“We’ll make it through this now too,” Violet said, smiling.
Violet shone in competition with the sun. Matariki had taken Roberta to spend the night before with her and Atamarie. Violet had been with Sean. After a celebratory dinner at the Commercial Hotel, they went to the apartment he had rented near the Parliament Building.
“We don’t need to make love tonight,” Sean said gently when he saw her pale face. “We can just as easily wait for our wedding night.”
Violet shook her head. “I’m not a prude,” she said. “I’m just—”
Sean kissed her tenderly. “You just can’t imagine making love with me will make you happy. You can’t imagine that—”
“That it won’t hurt,” Violet whispered.
Sean took her in his arms and then looked her straight in the eye. “I’ll never hurt you. That I promise you. I won’t lock any doors or hold you unwillingly. Whenever you want to stop—”
Violet shook her head. “Please, just hold me willingly,” she murmured, snuggling against him as he lifted her up and over the threshold of his small apartment.
On his bed, she lay completely still at first, but then she helped Sean with the bands and hooks of her dress as he undressed her.
“You don’t have to be completely, um,” Violet whispered embarrassedly, particularly as Sean had not extinguished the light.
Sean laughed. “No, you don’t have to be naked, but I’d very much like to see you, Violet. And you should see me too. We will see and hear and feel and taste each other—I’d like to become one with you, Violet.”
Sean covered her body with kisses, and a night of enchantment began for Violet. She opened herself to him joyfully and explored his slender, wiry body. When she cuddled into Sean’s arms to fall asleep, she had forgotten everything that had come before. Worlds lay between what Eric had done to her and what she and Sean had experienced together.
Violet blinked into the sunny morning when she awoke next to Sean. Election day. What a wonderful start. There were so many things she could look forward to, and Violet suddenly saw her life as a shining road of joy and contentment ahead of her. No wonder her beauty and her inner radiance outshone those of all the other women that day.
“That dress really suits you,” said Matariki, greeting her friend and her half brother with a wink and a smile. “A morning gift?”
Violet turned red, but Sean nodded and laughed. “An engagement present,” he corrected her. “And thank heavens it fits.”
The aquamarine-blue empire-waist dress with its matching hat came from the Gold Mine Boutique. Sean had asked them to ship it to him. Kathleen had guessed Violet’s measurements. Quite successfully as it turned out.
Matariki wore a dress patterned in gold and red that complemented her black hair and golden-brown skin. Kupe could not stop looking at her, though he turned away shyly when their eyes met. Matariki would have liked nothing more than to normalize her relationship with Kupe. Or maybe even more than that.
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In their months of working together, she had gotten to know Kupe as an exceedingly competent attorney, obliging but persistent in dealing with the Maori and pakeha. He spoke both languages fluently, and he made a distinguished and self-assured appearance. He also impressed Matariki with his obstinacy. She did not know what she had done to wound him so badly that he still held it against her, but his determination to stay away from her motivated Matariki to try her arts of seduction on him. The new low-cut dress was part of that. It had been exceptionally expensive, but Matariki thought the occasion worth it. She found herself in agreement with the women on the islands who were wearing their most elegant clothes.
The women of New Zealand were turning their first vote into a summer festival. The feared protests did not materialize, and those wearing red camellias proved to be good losers: they left their flowers at home—white dominated the streets.
Seddon, the premier, handed the chair of the Women’s Franchise League in Wellington a bouquet of white camellias after she had cast her vote. “For the Liberals, I hope,” he said gallantly.
The chair of the league did not quite know where to look. Sean, who was strolling with his friends from one polling station to another, taking in the scene, rubbed his forehead.
“You really want to be part of this Parliament?” he asked Kupe.
He shrugged. He had not put himself on the ballot for the current election. He planned to go to Waipatu and work with the Te Kotahitanga. He had focused his studies on property law. The Maori Parliament had asked him to advise it on related matters.
“Someone has to do it. And now that we’re allowed to vote, no more pakeha strawmen are going to sit in the lower house. Shall we find someplace to eat? I’m starting to get hungry.”
Matariki, Violet, Sean, and Kupe ate in a café, which, to Matariki’s dismay, did not serve champagne.