And all the time Miss Eunice Burlington Brown watched Edward, hoping for some small sign, her hopes fading as she saw he simply did not notice her. She had read from the newspaper to him, that delicious intimacy: they had been happy. She jealously wondered if Hetty Green still languished round the harbour, her arm tied to a cricket bat. But then she pulled herself up. What was she thinking of? How could she feel jealousy over a servant? Edward would not, of course, be thinking of a servant: he was kind merely, he had healed her arm. But she had understood that the strange idyll in the little house (it seemed to her an idyll) had bewitched them: all of them in that small rough room in a storm, Harriet seeming to think she could speak of ‘women’s rights’, Hetty drying her hair. Her brother was quite right (and Miss Eunice’s mouth pursed in disapproval): it was even more important in a colonial situation for standards to be maintained, for the lower classes to be kept in their place. At least so she tried to comfort herself. But slowly, as Edward did not notice her, as he made plans for his move north to his new piece of land, her hopes faded; miserably she turned her thoughts to living forever, more and more a spinster, with her brother and his wife in this godforsaken, miserable colony, and in private she held her arms around herself, and wept.
* * *
On the shore, as they were being loaded, as Quintus ran everywhere, barking with delight (but keeping well away from the sea), the boy George began to scream. He simply refused to go back on the water, nothing could make him set foot in the small boat that rowed them out to mid-harbour: when Ralph tried to lift him he fought and kicked and screamed like an animal possessed.
Finally Benjamin said, ‘Leave him, Ralph, for God’s sake. He is terrified of the sea. I will arrange something.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Ralph, ‘he must learn to be a man. That is what I will teach him.’ And he nodded to the big, burly boatman in waterboots, who picked up the screaming boy bodily, placed him under his arm, and walked out to sea. George was unceremoniously dumped on the bottom of the boat beside a portmanteau of clothes; his piteous screams could be heard as the man rowed imperviously onwards to the White Princess.
Ralph and Benjamin embraced. They did not speak, for there was too much to say.
* * *
Benjamin and Edward stood together on the beach, hearing the capstan begin noisily to raise the anchor, seeing the white sails fill with wind. They waved as the barque turned; Edward thought of his letters, making their way to his dear family; Benjamin thought for a moment of the boy George, back so soon on board ship; waved again to the small, almost invisible figures on the White Princess.
Somebody called and they turned away from the harbour. The natives were to take Benjamin south that day, the stores were being loaded on to a schooner, there was some question to answer. The two friends shook hands, then Edward went off to arrange nails and Benjamin, his business completed, walked back to the Government House with the Lieutenant-Governor, then excused himself to find Miss Cooper and say goodbye
She sat by the flagpole, watching the White Princess intently: did not see or hear Benjamin until he sat beside her.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Benjamin said, ‘What shall you do now?’
‘Lucy and Quintus and I are to join my cousin Edward. He has been given new land.’
He nodded. ‘Edward seems very relieved at another chance to settle. I am glad.’
‘So am I,’ said Harriet. ‘But I will have to learn many things.’
The same bright fantails darted across from tree to tree in the Lieutenant-Governor’s garden; still the flag flapped at the flagpole; Quintus could be seen in a far corner, chasing something with delight.
Then Benjamin said softly, ‘Will you be – all right?’
She looked up at the grey eyes, remembered at once how he had asked her that question in the bookshop in Oxford Street, in another life.
She smiled at him: the smile that took away the strain, and the pain, of what had happened to her.
‘I think I will be all right,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your – kindness to me, Ben. Then. And now.’
They called for Benjamin and he was gone.
And Harriet, shading her eyes from the white Wellington light, watched from the seat in the garden above the harbour the sails of the White Princess; saw the barque, tiny now, turn towards the heads and the open sea and then quite disappear. She turned her head slowly towards the hills behind the town, where the rough cemetery lay.
In four months perhaps, the news of the death of her father would reach England, and it would be real.
THIRTY-FIVE
Quintus tore across the field, through the big wooden gate, past the house, to where Harriet was sitting in the long grass, brushing at little insects, balancing her ink bottle, and writing. He came up to her barking and panting and wagging his tail, checking she was there, the way he often did. She rubbed his ears and laughed, his wet nose caught her cheek and then he was off again, haring back to the gate. There was so much to do, not just rats but sheep, but he seemed to be smiling.
Harriet was writing a letter to Mr Dawson, of Dawson’s Book Emporium in Oxford Street.
Dear Mr Dawson,
I am writing to send you my very good wishes, to hope that you are very well and to ask you if you will prepare a parcel, or parcels, for me of all the books that you use in all your classes at the Working Men’s Institute. All the books. I have had come upon me a hungry feeling that I want to read everything. I want to read all the philosophy books and all the language books (ancient and modern) and all the history books and all the books on religion and all the novels and all the poets. I include mathematics in my list. All these subjects I at least have spoken of with my dear sister Mary: I will be grateful to be guided by you as to how to proceed further. The only way I can describe my hunger is that I want – if this does not sound too odd – to learn everything in the whole world! I enclose a letter of authorisation for Coutts Bank. I will return to London at some time and come to see you but please in the meantime send me everything you think I will benefit from. I will watch for the ships’ arrivals and wait, every week, to hear from you.
Your friend
Harriet Cooper
PS I would be glad if you would give my greetings to Mr Cecil Forsythe who, like yourself, was so very kind to me, when I was most in need.
She read the letter over. And then, at last, she slowly picked up the old pale notebook that was lying beside her on the grass, the one that her brother Walter had given her, and began to write.
TO THE DEAR READERS OF MY JOURNAL
30 November 1851
Yesterday my cousin Edward married Hetty Green at the little wooden church in the valley, and I baked my first cake. And I wondered, as we sat eating cake and cold mutton in the warm spring sunshine, what Aunt Lucretia would have said, had she been here. Edward has recently had mail from her: ‘Which Greens?’ she enquired most anxiously, several times (for he had written of his intentions). But dear Edward told us all that he had written back yesterday to say he was now a married man, a farmer, and the happiest man in New Zealand. Yet Aunt Lucretia will one day discover that her son has married beneath him and she will be mortified, and in my heart I know that I too have much to learn, and that I still struggle to come to terms with the new ways of this new world.
I think of Hetty as I first met her aboard the Amaryllis. She seemed to me then not only a servant but a ‘naughty’ girl, with that – overflowing energy, and her immense attractiveness, and her eye for the sailors, and the things that she said. Some of the things she said disturbed me always. But over this last year and a half I have seen how she has used that same energy to assist and support and encourage Edward: on the land, in the house, from dawn to dusk she has been indefatigable (as is he: they are marvellously suited in that way). I see that sometimes, as he walks past her, he brushes her arm and I have seen how he looks at her, with a kind of wonder – and I do not dare to interpret that wonder too deeply. Bu
t I know that Miss Eunice Burlington Brown, a more acceptable choice in many ways, could never have delighted Edward in the way that Hetty Green has delighted him.
But I do hope that it will not be something Edward comes to regret, for I feel they will never be able to go home, to England. I think of his family, my dear relations, around the table in the dining room at Rusholme and I cannot see Hetty, sitting there, with Alice and Augusta and Uncle William and Cousin John. And Asobel. Uncle William said, with tears in his eyes: the sun never sets on the British Empire, let us hear proud things of you. And he would be proud: of how hard Edward has worked, success at last with his wheat, and with his new sheep: financial gain already. But Uncle William would not expect Hetty. Yet I know that without Hetty, Edward would not have thrived so well and so happily.
Edward and I have never, in the end, spoken to each other of the things within our hearts. I know that part of him still disapproves of my coming to New Zealand alone, that it has never been satisfactorily explained to him. And I would have liked to ask him if he had realised he could never again sit at ease with his family, with Hetty. But it would have seemed like disapproval also, and I do not mean that. Only that it is hard to be the first to break society’s rules (especially while Mr and Mrs Burlington Brown are the arbiters of its moral and social register!) and I know that he will find it difficult, even here.
Or – perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this country will teach other ways, just as it is teaching me. This is the country where I became free. And perhaps, in another way, Hetty (and Edward) feel the same.
When Edward and I and Lucy and Quintus rode over the hills here to the Wairarapa; when we saw the flat, fertile land stretching out before us from the bridle path at the top of the hill, down there beside the shining lake, I believe Edward nearly wept in relief. Everybody wanted to be seen to be doing their utmost for the nephew of the recently deceased Sir Charles Cooper, MP: the New Zealand Company assured him that they owned the acreage involved and so Edward would travel no further. (Recently we have found that the intricacies of the land purchase from the natives are unclear but Edward is too involved now to back out. He paid the New Zealand Company: that is certain and documented; he has acted always in good faith and we hope that all will be well.) So Lucy and Quintus and I stayed in the tiny settlement at the bottom of the hill and Edward went back to collect his belongings, of which – it soon became clear – Hetty Green was now part. (She still wore the cricket bat on her arm; it did its unlikely work well and now Hetty uses it for banging stakes into the ground or chasing the sheep, for Edward has one hundred and fifty sheep which I am proud to say I assisted him to purchase.)
The first winter in particular was very hard and our pioneering life was no longer a romance (as perhaps I had seen it at first). I of course did not understand that just the business of living, and being, is such hard work if other people are not doing much of it for you. We have had many terrifying experiences also and I have been frightened, but I do not find rats or wild pigs as frightening as the things that frightened me earlier in my life, nor the appearance late one night of an escaped convict from Australia, nor the odd comings and goings of the – sometimes immensely kind, sometimes undependable – natives, nor the rumbling sound in the distance that heralds another earthquake. But although I often wished that I was warm, or dry, or comfortable, or that my arms and my legs would not ache so, or in particular that there was time to read, or simply to think – never once did I wish I was back in Bryanston Square. But there have been three women in our little family, and no children, which is quite different from most families. Two women in this tiny settlement have died in childbirth. For women with children, and having more children, life is often difficult and dangerous and heartbreaking. (But I see, too, that Hetty faces her future with joy: some small boy will play cricket with that cricket bat.)
We lived much at first under tarpaulin; it was colder than we expected and it rained a great deal and Edward had immense trouble trying to build another house because the weather was so unpredictable. But he employed a gang of natives to help and then Benjamin Kingdom appeared on his way to look northwards for his elusive bird and turned out to be a most practical man (for an ornithologist). He is also extremely erudite and taught me many things in the time he was here: I found myself discussing the strangest matters with him – rocks of course, and birds, but also telescopes, and Latin, and balance (we were on the roof trying to unblock Edward’s chimney), and God, and Henry VIII, and shoes!
In our new house Lucy can cook and sing at the same time, Hetty seems to be able to do anything at all, Quintus chases rats for all the world as if he were in Bryanston Square, and I attempt daily all the things that other people once did for me. I have, for instance, learned to hang the clothes I have washed with my own hands outside to dry in the fresh air, even undergarments, without so much as a blush to my cheek.
Lucy wishes to go back to Wellington to work in one of the hotels, where she will meet (she is quite certain of this and so am I!) a hard-working husband. Although she has not said so I think the marriage of Edward and Hetty has disturbed her also, disturbed old certainties that have sustained her. She would be too polite to say so but she does not really approve of me doing the washing, for instance, it makes her own role unclear and she does not like that. I encourage her to make her own life, of course, for I am constantly aware that it is because our roles are less strictly defined that we both have the chance to grow. But I shall miss her abrupt kindness more than I can say. And her singing! I woke this morning to hear her high clear voice echoing back from the fields, she sang that she would be seventeen come Sunday, and indeed she soon will be sixteen at least! There are many things unsaid between us. It still moves me (and makes me laugh at the same time) to think of her bringing Quintus to New Zealand. And in a way she saved my life, but she does not know that.
It is now two years since the Amaryllis left the English coast at last. Sometime I will have to go back to England to, as they say, sort out my affairs. For ironies abound (I sometimes see Mary’s face still, that quizzical smile). I have received letters advising me that my father left me a great deal of money ‘if she is living with me at my death and has not married’ and there we were, as the Lieutenant-Governor no doubt advised the lawyers and as it says in the hotel register, living at Barratt’s Hotel, Wellington. Of course I expected him to leave me to the care and charity of my brothers. But my father no doubt thought that I should have, unmarried, served him well before he died.
It feels so odd to think of England, and that life. Asobel writes of a huge exhibition in Hyde Park which is inside, so she says, ‘a palace made from glass and there were exhibits from New Zealand which I studied, Harriet, to learn as much as possible, until I should come’.
Whatever happens I will return here. I want to live here. I feel there is a better chance here for women to have some sort of say in their lives, if they wish it. But there is something else. I have changed a great deal, I no longer have to look about for my safety in the way that I did. And like my sister Mary I now find that it is not enough just to be, I want so much more than that, even though I will never have to worry about money again.
It is almost a new year, with new hopes: 1852! I want a new life and I want my life to be useful. Oh – I feel like Mary felt, there is so much for me to learn: to read, to understand. I know I am still in great want of education and I am so, so hungry to be taught. I suppose I, too, am now too old for the Ladies’ College in Harley Street, in a few months I will turn twenty! But I have written to Mr Dawson in his Book Emporium and he will advise me. And then, when I have at last been properly, truly educated, and opened my mind, I might be useful, somehow, in this new land.
My thoughts about what I might eventually do are so unthinkable (even to me) that I hardly dare write them down: yet I believe in them. It was true what my father said: he owned us, my mother and my sister and me. He owned us because we were prevented from being educated and owning ours
elves. So we were owned by my father and only a quirk of fate has prevented me now from being passed on to, and being owned by, my brothers. There is much agitation here for self-government, and for working men as well as gentlemen to be given the vote. And what I have been considering is this: why should not women, whose lives here are not easy, but without whom good men like Edward could not survive, be given the vote also? Why should they not, without having to get permission from a father or a brother or a husband, make decisions for themselves, own property themselves, earn money for themselves? Why not?
These are heady thoughts indeed, but surely I cannot be the only woman in the world who is thinking them?
Benjamin Kingdom makes me laugh. For some reason I trust him, even though I realise he knows very much about me. He has a very droll view of the world, rather as my sister Mary did. And the more I laugh, the more I remember laughing with Mary when I was younger, before things changed. I feel almost as though I have at last become – myself: my mother’s daughter. (I am aware that I show great want of character in writing about myself so portentously in this way but my life has changed so much that I feel I need to try and make sense of it all. I mean only to say that fear prevented me, earlier, from growing. One cannot grow if one is frightened. I shall however desist from such portentousness from now on!)
The Trespass: A Novel Page 45