A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  But he remembered how he had felt when he thought the child was his and the feeling had been different from anything he had known before. Now he felt a pang of regret that the baby wasn’t his after all. Thoughtfully, he looked over at the cradle.

  ‘You didn’t come for me, did you, Morgan?’

  The woman was persisting. But there was something new on his mind. He had his plantation carved out of the jungle now, and there was every reason to think it would be a success. The Manchester cotton mills were hungry for new cotton supplies now that the Southern states had seceded from the Union and his gamble had paid off. With the cheap labour he had brought in from the Philippines he stood to make a fortune. He needed an heir and this sparky English girl was just the right woman to give him one.

  ‘I knew you didn’t,’ Mary said bitterly. She walked to the edge of the steps and stared blindly out over the bay.

  ‘Oh, but I did,’ said Morgan. He walked up behind her and put his arms around her, holding her curves against him, remembering how good she was in bed. He looked across the compound and saw Francis and Eleanor coming towards the mission house, both of them looking damp and bedraggled but he hardly noticed that.

  ‘Will you marry me, honey?’ he asked. ‘For here’s the very fellow to do the job for us, we could be away on our honeymoon this very night.’

  ‘Certainly not, Mary,’ said Francis.

  ‘Excuse me, Parson?’ said Morgan West, lifting his dark eyebrows almost to his hairline in offended surprise. ‘Are you refusing to marry us?’

  Francis glanced across the verandah table at the American, feeling at a decided disadvantage. There he sat, looking the very picture of a Southern gentleman like the ones in the illustrations to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which happened to be a book circulating among the Europeans on the islands just at present. He himself hadn’t had a chance to tidy himself up and he knew his coat was stained with seawater from being wrapped round Eleanor’s damp shoulders and his boots were stained with mud from where the stream met the sea.

  ‘Mary is our responsibility,’ he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘We brought her out from England and we cannot let her go off with the first man who takes her fancy.’

  He was uncomfortably aware that this was exactly what had happened with Mary’s sister Prue; the Lord only knew what sort of abandoned life the young girl was leading among the seamen of Sydney. Where was Eleanor? As soon as she saw they had a visitor she had disappeared into the bedroom, taking baby John with her.

  ‘Mary, will you ask Mrs Tait to come out as soon as she is ready?’ he asked and Morgan looked even more affronted.

  ‘I think, sir, Miss Buckle is no longer your responsibility, nor is she your servant to do your bidding.’

  Francis was genuinely surprised. What did the man mean? Of course Mary was their servant; that was why they were sitting here discussing her future. And the very fact that Mary was sitting with them showed how liberal, how genuinely caring they were.

  The situation was resolved when Eleanor came to the open door of the bedroom. In the ten minutes she had been gone she had managed a remarkable transformation from the bedraggled state she was in when she came home. She had changed into a fresh linen dress, creamy and with a deep coffee-coloured lace collar, and her black hair, newly washed at the stream, was piled sleekly on top of her head and topped by a small lace cap. Her eyes sparkled and a rosy flush coloured her cheeks.

  The two men rose to their feet as she swept in and Francis moved to hold a chair for her. Mary smiled. Oh indeed, Eleanor made her smile – this was her best dress, the dress that had only been worn on Christmas Day. For the rest of the year Eleanor stuck to the conventional dress of the missionaries’ wives, black or dark grey cotton, unadorned. Mary watched as Eleanor looked out of the corner of her eye to see the effect she was having on Morgan. Oh yes, Eleanor made her smile; why, she almost burst out laughing.

  Now, my fine lady, she said silently to Eleanor, you can try to charm as much as you like but Morgan West is going to marry me, no matter what you or Francis Tait say. And her smile was broadly triumphant as she looked across at her lovely man.

  As it happened, Morgan was watching Eleanor and with a certain amount of admiration, Mary judged, but it didn’t disurb her. No, he was the sort of man who would always look at other women but nevertheless he belonged to her. Morgan caught her glance and looked away, coughing slightly behind his hand to cover the moment.

  ‘I don’t care for your attitude, Mr Tait,’ he said, taking up the conversation where it had been left. ‘Miss Buckle is no longer your servant, I said.’

  Eleanor blinked. ‘But of course she is,’ she interjected.

  ‘No, ma’am. Not since she accepted my hand, she is not. She is now the future Mrs West and we have a position to uphold in the society of the islands.’

  Mary sat back, taking no part in the argument; indeed, there was no need. Morgan had such a lovely turn of phrase, she thought dreamily. By, it was going to be grand, married to an American gentleman, mistress of a plantation. He was quite right, she had finished taking orders from the Taits.

  ‘Mary is not yet married to you, and indeed, I have great doubts about the suitability of the match.’ Even in his own ears Francis sounded pompous but he did have a responsibility to Mary.

  ‘Mary, please pack your bags, you are coming with me,’ said Morgan, rising to his feet and holding a hand out to assist Mary.

  ‘She can’t do that! Mary, stay where you are,’ commanded Francis. Mary moved to do Morgan’s bidding, thoroughly enjoying the drama of the confrontation. By, she thought, who would have believed there would be all this fuss over a pitman’s daughter from Hetton-le-Hole?

  ‘I am taking her away on the evening tide,’ said Morgan, ‘whether we are married or not. You may be the parson here, Mr Tait, but we are free, white and American, or at least I am and Mary soon will be. We won our independence from the English, sir, a long time ago.’

  ‘A pity your notions of freedom don’t extend to our darker brethren!’ snapped Francis but Morgan ignored him. Mary disappeared into the back of the house and Morgan walked to the edge of the steps to wait for her.

  ‘Francis!’ whispered Eleanor. ‘You can’t let them go off unmarried. What will our friends think if you do?’

  Francis frowned; the story would be all around the islands in no time if he refused to marry the couple. And in any case, they would surely find someone else to perform the ceremony once they landed on one of the larger islands.

  ‘Very well,’ he said heavily. ‘I will do it. Though I have to say it is much against my better judgement. What time is high tide?’

  ‘Six thirty,’ said Morgan without turning round, but from his voice Francis thought he was grinning in triumph.

  ‘I will perform the ceremony at five o’ clock.’ Francis looked across at Eleanor, who was tracing a pattern on the top of the bamboo table with one finger, seemingly absorbed in it. ‘Come, my dear, we have things to discuss,’ he said.

  Morgan was left on his own on the balcony. He hadn’t intended to get married when he woke up this morning, he thought ruefully. But Mary was a beauty and she was young, he would be able to mould her to what he wanted in a woman. And Minister Tait had properly got his dander up, yes sirree, he wasn’t going to let a jumped-up Englishman tell him what to do.

  A strange wedding, thought Eleanor. The chapel was almost empty; the only person there apart from the bridal couple and themselves was Mr Radley, the Australian store owner, who had been persuaded to close the shop for half an hour so he could be a witness. But the bride was as radiant as brides were supposed to be. As Eleanor watched her coming down the aisle on Francis’s arm, she forgot her own confused feelings about the wedding and genuinely hoped her old Sunday School friend was doing the right thing.

  Even Francis seemed to have accepted the marriage and changed roles from giving the bride away to conducting the ceremony
smoothly.

  The late-afternoon sun shone through the open doorway of the chapel and picked out the highlights of Mary’s bright hair. White and gold, thought Eleanor, for they had hastily constructed a garland of white wild flowers for a bridal crown and Mr Radley had unearthed a white muslin dress from the depths of his store. It was simple and too old-fashioned to take a crinoline under it but on Mary it looked lovely. And afterwards, when Francis handed them the marriage certificate that they had to take to Bau to get ratified, she had to admit that they made a very handsome couple indeed.

  ‘I’m sorry there wasn’t time to organise a wedding breakfast,’ she whispered as she kissed the bride and wished her well.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mary answered and they all walked out of the chapel into the sunshine. And there someone had organised a feast. The Tongans had got wind of the wedding and they were there on the beach with a semi-circle of bright cloths laid out and covered with food: roast sucking pig and chickens, fruit in abundance, coconut shredded on pineapple and heaps of glistening rice, all presided over by Matthew and the women of the village. There were bowls of fermented coconut milk to drink and Eleanor looked sideways at Francis as she saw them but he was blandly leading the bride and groom to the middle of the semi-circle where the women were waiting to pile brightly coloured garlands round their necks.

  ‘Did you tell them?’ Mary asked Morgan but he shook his head.

  ‘Not I,’ he answered and then, prosaically, ‘I hope we don’t miss the tide.’ So she was convinced he was telling the truth.

  The islanders knew the sea, however. At the very moment when any further delay would mean the couple would have to stay until morning, there was a general movement towards Mary and Morgan and they were lifted shoulder high and carried along the jetty to board the boat.

  After that, there was little time for goodbyes, though Eleanor clung to Mary for a moment.

  ‘Keep in touch, please keep in touch,’ she said. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Mary.’

  ‘I will,’ Mary answered, suddenly feeling unsure of herself. But the anchor was lifted and the little sailing vessel cast off, still carrying a few islanders. No one was worried about it; as soon as the boat was in clear water the islanders dived into the sea and swam for the shore where they resumed the feasting.

  Eleanor picked up a sleeping John from his hollowed-out makeshift cradle in the sand under the shade of a coconut palm, and wrapped his shawl more securely round him. Though the evening was warm, still she was frightened of the mist that sometimes came with the dark and she cuddled the baby to her as she and Francis walked back to the mission house. In fact she lived in dread of fever coming to the island and shivered as she thought of the tiny graves already in the churchyard on the edge of the compound, mute testimony to the dangers that lurked on these paradise islands.

  ‘I pray Mary will be happy,’ she said as she climbed the steps on to the verandah and sat down on the swing. It was time for John’s feed and he was stirring and whimpering and nuzzling his head into her breast. Modestly she pulled her muslin wrap across herself and the baby before loosening her dress to give him what he sought.

  Francis looked away. It always made him feel a little uncomfortable when Eleanor fed the baby on the verandah where Matthew could intrude at any moment. He knew it was the coolest and most comfortable place in the house, especially in the evening, but still …

  ‘Why don’t you take him into the bedroom?’ he asked. ‘Goodness knows what he might pick up from the night air. Didn’t you say that Florence Nightingale said disease is borne on bad air?’

  Eleanor blanched; for some reason she had thought that when she was sitting on the balcony it was as good as being inside the house and quite safe. Hurriedly she freed her nipple from the baby’s mouth despite his protesting cries and carried him into the bedroom.

  As she sat in the rapidly deepening gloom, for she hadn’t bothered to light the lamp, Eleanor’s thoughts roamed over the eventful day. She grinned as she remembered Francis’s shock when he found her bathing with the women. It served him right of course; he should never have come to that corner of the beach when it was understood that it was for the use of the women.

  It was funny – he hadn’t been a bit bothered about the native women and a lot of them had much less covering them than she had; in fact compared to them she was quite decently clad in her shift and voluminous drawers, which tied below the knee. She sighed as she lifted the baby and changed him to the other breast before settling back in her chair again.

  Then there had been the business of Morgan West and Mary. There she had been, walking silently up the beach with Francis, her hair all over the place and her dress damp and clinging to her legs. Neither she nor Francis had noticed the strange sailing boat tied up to the jetty. They were too full of their own affairs and wouldn’t have noticed if it had been a tea clipper.

  She had been preparing what she was going to say to him, for she knew that when they were in the house and by themselves Francis would demand to know what she thought she was doing. He would say that it was all right for the native women, that was what they were used to and it took time to persuade them to dress modestly and decently as became good Christian folk.

  Well, she admitted to herself, she knew he was right, but oh, it had been so good to splash about in the water with the Tongan women, so good. But yes, she was a little bit ashamed of letting herself be caught in her shift and drawers and it might have been one of the good-for-nothing beachcombers who had recently come to the island and roamed about a law unto themselves, all rags and tatters, who had come across her.

  But not as ashamed as she had felt of her reaction when she discovered that Morgan West was on the island, sitting on her verandah in fact. How her pulse had leapt! She had forgotten all about the row with Francis and rushed into the bedroom to change into her best dress and do up her hair. And how crushed she had been when she went back out, feeling like a queen in her new dress, and found out the reason he had come to Lakeba was because he wanted to marry Mary. By, she had felt like crawling under a stone.

  The baby had finished suckling and smelled to high heaven so he needed his nappy changing. She’d have to do the washing of his cloths herself now, she reminded herself. Mary had gone and the only servant she had now was Matthew, whom she could hardly ask to wash a baby’s nappy.

  It was going to be very strange without Mary but she would just have to get used to it. And now that she had recovered from the shock, she wished her well, both her and Morgan, of course she did, and so did Francis. Why else would he have gone down to the Tongan huts and told them of the wedding? The Tongans were such a happy lot, they were always ready to make a celebration feast.

  Eleanor put John down to sleep in his cot and walked tip-toed to the door. The verandah was deserted but there were lights among the trees on the beach and the sound of laughing and people calling to one another. Oh yes, the Tongans knew how to enjoy themselves, she thought. There was a light from the living-room window – Francis must be in there. She would go in to him and make her peace with him; they had only each other now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was towards the end of the following year that Edward, Francis and Eleanor’s second son, was born. Eleanor had felt tired and unwell for the whole of the day and, as usual, Francis was away visiting some new converts on a neighbouring island.

  ‘Mia will stay with you, my dear,’ he had said before setting off in one of the native canoes the local chief had put at his disposal. When Mary left, Matthew had suggested that his cousin Mia take her place and Eleanor was well pleased to have her. It was so exhausting looking after little John and still trying to find time to visit the Tongan village to put her ideas into practice, something she was determined to do.

  This particular morning, despite the fact that she was so near her term, Eleanor had left John in Mia’s care and was walking through the compound to the corner of the beach where she had first made fr
iends with the Tongan women. She carried a basket made from pandanus leaves over her arm with bottles of ipecacuanha cough syrup, laudanum drops and clean bandages to bind up a festering wound one of the women had sustained on her leg when she had cut it on a sharp stick in the undergrowth.

  Unusual enough, she thought as she strolled along, keeping as far as she could to the shade by the side of the track. One did not often see festering wounds on the local people. She suspected that the fact that they bathed in the sea every day could have something to do with it. She had to admit that the Tongans’ idea of hygiene was often superior to that of the whites, who considered bathing once a week ample.

  She sighed heavily. The heat was so oppressive that her clothes were wet through before she’d had them on an hour and then they chafed her skin as she walked, creating sore places.

  There was not much laughing going on at the bathing place; a few women and children were splashing about in the shallows and one or two even swimming close to the shore. But there were also some just lying on the beach or sitting with their backs propped against the trunks of the palm trees as though they hadn’t the energy to do anything.

  Eleanor sighed again, her own discomforts forgotten. Since the John Wesley had called last, leaving a group of whites who seemed to spend most of their time lounging about on the beach eating coconuts and chasing the local women to the glowering disapproval of the Fijian men, there had been this sickness among the Tongans.

  ‘Really,’ she had said to Francis when they saw the ship had such passengers, nothing at all to do with the church. ‘Really you should make a complaint to the district, it isn’t right that the John Wesley should carry people like that.’

  ‘The ship earns a little money with the fares and it covers her maintenance costs,’ Francis had answered, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You know our funding is often slow to come through.’

  Eleanor remembered the many fund-raising events in aid of overseas missions, the faith suppers, the lectures and talks. There were so many even in their small chapel in Hetton. If all the chapels raised that amount of money, and she was sure they did, then surely there should be enough.