by Moir, Tanya
Roy spat. ‘Can’t trust a man who won’t take a drink with you. That’s what I always say.’
Daniel glanced up. Frank was waiting. He looked worried.
‘A half, then.’
Frank had laughed. He has a face like a cow’s haunch, skin stretched ruddy, and wide bones jutting. ‘Make it a pint! It’s pay day.’
Now, Daniel wants more than anything to sit down. His boots are heavy with clay. The day’s work is settling in his joints, and hardening in his muscles; he cannot forget that he still has a three-hour walk to make before he reaches home.
Looking over at the clock on the wall — a quarter past five, and the autumn light fast failing — he meets the eye of Reeves, the boatbuilder, at the other end of the bar. Daniel looks away quickly. He cannot help hearing the man’s ugly laugh, and the satisfied slam of a rum glass on the counter.
‘The problem with England,’ Roy is saying, ‘is there’s too much bloody education these days.’
‘No danger of that around here,’ laughs Frank.
‘There’s too many chiefs, if you know what I mean,’ Roy continues, ignoring the interruption. ‘Every bastard wants to be telling you what to do. There ain’t none prepared to do nothing themselves.’ He takes a long swallow of his beer. ‘Give a man a stumping jack, I say, and he’ll learn more about life in a day than he will from twenty books — ain’t that right, Dan?’
‘Just look at Jackie Reeves,’ agrees Frank, waving his glass in the boatbuilder’s direction. ‘Never opened a book in his life, so he says — unless it was an illegal one on the Derby! Now he owns half of bloody Pigeon Bay.’
But Roy has a point to make, and will not be distracted. ‘There’s nothing as bloody useless,’ he says, ‘as an Englishman of education. And now all the useless bastards are coming here, where there’s even less use for them. Dan here’s had enough education for five men, ain’t that right, Dan? And what bloody good’s it done him, eh? He’s down in the muck digging totara root, and he ain’t no better at it than I am.’
‘He’s coming along, though,’ Frank says kindly. ‘You can’t say he isn’t trying.’
‘Send out the labourers, that’s what I’m saying, and leave the men of education at home. Lot of stirrers, most of them, if you ask me. Think the world owes them a living. We don’t want them and their funny ideas out here — that’s what we bloody left for.’ Roy finishes his beer. He seems to realise that he may have been unkind. ‘Dan’s alright, I ain’t saying he’s not. You’ve put all that behind you now — ain’t that right, Dan?’
Daniel looks up from the filthy floorboards. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Another month,’ smiles Frank, ‘and no bastard’ll be able to tell you from any one of us.’
Four
Letitia is crying. ‘Let’s just go home,’ she says.
‘How can we, Lettie? No one pays for emigrants to go back. It’d cost us more than £100, even travelling in steerage. And there’d be no free cabin this time.’
‘You could write to Mr Fitzjohn.’
‘Lettie!’ Daniel rakes his hands through his hair, releasing a smell of sour woodsmoke. ‘How could I ask him for so much? And even if he were to lend it to us, how would we ever save enough to repay him?’ He closes his eyes. ‘We already owe Fitzjohn £20 for grass seed we can’t sow. God knows when he’ll get that back.’
‘You could ask to return to Willis, Gann. They always liked you.’
‘My position is gone.’ Daniel sighs. ‘Long gone.’
‘Then you could find another. A better one, perhaps …’
‘But what if I couldn’t? And what would we do while I looked?’ Daniel’s head is beginning to ache again, a thick pain, like a weight on his forehead. The morning is growing light; he does not have time for this conversation. ‘We have nothing in London now. Our house is let go, our savings are finished. Would you suggest we step off the ship in London without a shilling, and start looking for a bed?’
‘We could stay with my parents.’
‘All of us?’ Daniel pictures the tiny Clapham cottage. ‘How?’
‘We do have friends, Daniel. Mr Fitzjohn …’
‘Fitzjohn,’ snaps Daniel, ‘would never forgive us for throwing away our capital and his on a wild-goose chase, and then coming back to him, cap in hand, for more.’
‘Think of the children,’ Letitia pleads. ‘How are we to send Robbie to school?’
‘Would you rather they taught him at Whitechapel Workhouse?’
Letitia stares at her hands. They are red, the knuckles swollen. ‘It’s no life here,’ she says quietly.
‘It’s all there is.’
She shakes her head. ‘We shouldn’t have come.’
‘Perhaps not. But here we are.’
Outside the kitchen door, Daniel pulls on his boots and thinks he has not two children to support, but three. The glare of the ocean hurts his eyes. He presses his fingers hard between them, feels the rough edges of his own skin. He looks at his hands. His wedding ring is badly scratched. Under this sun it looks yellow as brass, and he hates it, this hard light that makes everything ugly.
There is a shameful prickling in his eyes; Daniel wipes them quickly. Roy, perhaps, is right. A man does not profit, here, from thinking.
Five
It had not occurred to me, until I overheard M. Delacroix mention it, that Father too might be a fool. Now I consider it, it seems likely enough our neighbour is right, for our success on La Rochelle’s Road seems very doubtful
Hester puts down her pen. She rereads the words as they dry in the evening breeze, the ink setting quickly, black on white. Her previous journal entry, dated some months back, reads:
Scrub clearing is not as unpleasant as I had expected. Once I had cut myself a route in, and had room to stand back from the supplejack and spiders as they fell, I found a sort of rhythm, and my mind could busy itself in other, less grimy spheres. I came in to dinner hugely proud of my afternoon’s work — until I looked back, and could barely make out my little patch of effort. There is so much to do. It does not seem possible that it shall ever be accomplished.
Hester finds she has no further stomach for her composition. Her last words alarm her. She slides the journal back into its pillowcase and places it, carefully, at the bottom of her sea chest, where she hopes to keep its pages safe from mice and spies.
Her hands are blistered. She is less clean than she would like. The itchy dust of falling bush clings to her scalp and spine, and though she has been wearing her cotton gloves, there is dirt under her nails that cannot be shifted.
In the room below, Hester hears Robbie groan, and feels a sympathetic shudder. He was too slow to evade a falling stem of the native nettle tree he was felling, and its stings have brought him not only a skin rash, but head pains, cramps and nausea.
Outside her window, the eastern hills are bloodied by the lowering sun. The first owl of the evening calls. In the scrub, black bird-shadows dart against pale tree trunks, racing the coming darkness. If she listens, Hester will hear the night sea, the predatory rise of tide, a cold sound, ravenous and lonely.
Six
For a moment, as she struggles with the gate, Letitia’s good idea seems less so. She looks over her shoulder at Robbie.
‘It’s all right, Mother,’ he smiles. ‘They won’t eat us, you know.’
Letitia does not find this remark at all funny. Scowling, she resumes her battle with the latch. Robbie leans over her shoulder and flicks it open with one hand. In response, three fat pink-and-black pigs trot out of the bush, their wet snouts probing for entry to the garden.
‘Shoo,’ says Letitia faintly.
In front of her, on the verandah, a brown dog raises its nose to the sky, stretches its back, and begins to bark. A man emerges from behind the house, wiping soil from his hands onto his trousers. He is fully dressed, in the manner of any other farmer, but still he causes Letitia’s stomach to flutter. He is only the third M
aori she has ever seen, and the first she has had to speak to.
She takes a deep breath. ‘We have come,’ she enunciates carefully, ‘to buy potatoes.’
The man stares at her, his head on one side, a picture of incomprehension. He takes a few steps closer. Emboldened by this, the brown dog bounds up and begins a thorough investigation of Letitia’s clothing.
‘Will you sell us,’ she tries again, louder this time, ‘some potatoes?’
Fascinated by her skirt, the brown dog sticks its head up the unfamiliar garment. Behind her, Letitia hears Robbie snort a traitorous laugh. The man laughs too, an unexpected giggle, rolling his old skin into creases like fat cigars.
‘Enough, mokai,’ he scolds the dog. ‘You got to introduce yourself before you do that to a lady.’ Grinning, he holds out his hand. ‘George Karupoti. Potatoes, e? How many?’
Letitia smiles back, a little tightly. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr … Mr George. My name is Letitia Peterson and this is my son, Robert.’ She squares her shoulders. ‘We would like twenty pounds of your potatoes a week, please. How much would you charge us for so many?’
‘Depends. You want me to bring them to your place?’
Letitia negotiates a price of ninepence a load, delivered.
‘I’ll send the boy up,’ George promises, ‘Saturday.’
Letitia walks back out to the road with her head held high. She has saved herself thruppence a week on Sarah Delacroix’s price.
As they turn out of the farm, a Maori woman is coming up from the beach, a basket of clams on her shoulder. Letitia means only to give her a courteous nod, but the woman has a face which commands her full attention. Her bones are sharp, her eyes cold and black. She has a tattoo on her lip and chin. Letitia’s stare seems to cause her no discomfort. She passes them by in silence, with no greater regard than if they were stones.
Seven
In the glass of the attic window, Hester can see her own reflection, shadowy and stark-boned against the blackness of the scrub. The two faces watch each other, wary, through the pane.
Mother seems somewhat improved, she has written, the first line on a new page. She is uncertain what should follow.
Behind her open journal, under the windowsill, leans the photograph. Their London portrait. Her face again, in black and white, three-quarter profile. It is soft and bright.
Hester tries to remember what she was thinking, eight months ago, gazing out of so theatrical a forest. She is neat and pale, composed. She is looking forward.
Her mother is not looking at the camera. She is looking up at her father, in an attitude of devotion. It is pretty, but must have been hard to sustain through the long seconds of exposure. Her hands are clasped together, quiet in the grey folds of her lap.
Hester remembers the trouble they went to, to get her that dress, the four of them dragging it home in its box, all the way from the Fitzjohns’ townhouse in Russell Square. A sea-green silk. She remembers how the shades of it moved in the light. Such a shame, after so much effort, that Letitia should have been captured like this, robbed forever of her colour.
Hester puts down her pen, and pulls the curtains.
Eight
Daniel leans on his knees and looks up, at the muscular back of Johnny Winslett, who is moving further ahead of him now, slicing through the undergrowth as easily as if it were already a field of grass. The younger man’s movements have the fluency of a waltz. He cannot be more than nineteen. Daniel shifts his grip on his axe, and wonders how long one must hack away at this scrub before one achieves such efficacy, and grace.
‘Have you worked for Barrington long?’ he asks when they stop for smoke-oh.
Winslett is lying on his back, his knees spread wide to the sky. ‘Since I turned twelve.’ He removes a hand from behind his head, and taps out a calculation on his chest. ‘Two years, now.’
Jean Delacroix looks over. ‘How old is your boy, Dan?’
In two weeks, it will be Robbie’s sixteenth birthday. ‘Fifteen,’ says Daniel.
‘Oh yeah?’ Johnny Winslett raises himself up on one arm. ‘Where’s he work?’
Daniel hesitates, too long.
‘Too good for us, is he?’ says Roy. ‘Dan’s son’s not to be a labouring man. What, you send him down to that school in Pigeon Bay then?’
Daniel’s face burns. He thinks of the enrolment papers lying on his desk at home. Their pretentious crest, and impossible fee. He gives a little smile, as if Roy has been making a joke. ‘He’s needed at home,’ he says.
‘Mamma’s boy, is he?’ says Jean.
‘How much does it cost to go to that school?’ asks Frank.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ lies Daniel.
‘Well, it’s one way to buy sense,’ sniffs Roy, ‘if you got less of that than money.’
There is a pause. Daniel looks down into the tea he is now finding difficult to swallow. But Roy has not finished yet.
‘You’d’ve gone to school yourself, now, wouldn’t you, Dan?’
‘No,’ says Daniel, with truth, and some pride. ‘I did not.’
‘Are you sure now?’ grins Roy. ‘I’d’ve sworn you did — since you know such a lot,’ he waves his mug at the scrub, ‘about everything.’
The others — Frank, and the Winslett boy too — laugh with Roy, and Daniel does his best to join them. They throw out the dregs of their tea and pick up their gear, and he tries a little harder to keep up with Johnny Winslett.
That night, when Letitia starts again, he is tired beyond all reason.
‘Robbie’s not going,’ he says, ‘that’s that.’ For once he is not moved to guilt by the tears starting in her eyes.
‘And what is to become of him, with no education?’
‘He’s had ten years more education than I did.’
‘But you taught yourself! You worked so hard!’
‘Precisely.’
Letitia stares at him. Daniel blows out the candle, and thinks she forgets too easily where he has come from.
Nine
It is the first day of the school term, and Robbie feels warm with the pleasure of knowing he will not attend. He holds it to him like an extra coat as he walks down towards Karupoti Bay through his first New Zealand frost. The sun has risen above the hills, spilling a silky light over the sea. At the heads, a glistening wall of fog hangs between the water and the cliff tops, white and thick as a flannel sheet strung up across the entrance to the bay.
Robbie is still warm from his bed, the grit of sleep on his face, and his light-brown curls flat upon his forehead. He has a hunk of potato bread wrapped in a handkerchief in his left pocket, and a sack stuffed down his shirt front. He is going to meet Tommy Karupoti, who has promised to show him a new way of catching pigeons. The Maori way, which is better. Robbie is not sure that any better method exists than to smite them from the sky with his father’s shotgun. But Tommy says his way is cleverer and, what’s more, is free, requiring the purchase of neither shot nor powder. As he takes to the bush, Robbie feels the joy of travelling unimpeded, no gun on his back to catch in the vines and wrench him from his progress.
He finds Tommy up a miro tree, holding what looks like a toy canoe.
‘It’s a trap,’ says Tommy.
Robbie climbs up to see. Tommy’s shoulders shake at the sight of his friend’s confusion. There is water in the canoe, and above it, flax loops jut from the sides in rows, like inverted oarlocks.
‘How does it work?’
Tommy flashes his broad teeth. ‘Try to touch the water.’
Robbie extends a careful finger through the loops towards the water. The loop tightens, and he is snared.
‘Easy, e? Kereru gets thirsty, tries to have a drink — and bam! He’s caught.’
They do not have to wait long. The first bird raises no alarm, and is soon joined by his mate. The couple attracts another, and the increasing party more, and more. Before the sun is high, Robbie leaves the bush, sack heavy, to reflect upon the perils of gregariousness, a
nd the stupidity of pigeons.
His five birds are fat, and he cleans them well. He does not understand why his mother cries when he brings them to her.
Ten
May 20th, 1867
Dear Lucy,
Winter has come down upon us with a vengeance. So intent have we been upon our work that we barely noticed the passing of autumn, which is marked here only by shortening days, and lengthening shadows;— no chestnuts redden, no plane leaves fall. The trees give out no warning.
It is perhaps no colder here than London, but our wooden boards are not as good as brick for keeping out the chill, and since the cottage stands alone, the winds are free to probe its gaps from every side. Mother and I keep a good fire in the kitchen, and ourselves close by it, as much as we are able.
Father and Robbie are not so lucky;— each morning they leave for work in darkness, and each evening they return in it. Often the walk is very long, and with only the light of a lamp to see by, uninspiring. I am glad that they have each other’s company, at least;— I think no harm will come of Robbie missing a term or two of schoolwork.
Mother was quite concerned at first, but seems to have resigned herself to the situation;— in any case, we no longer discuss it. She talks so little, now, that her old friends would not know her. I think she has exhausted herself these last few months;— sometimes it seems she barely knows who we are, she is so tired. Yesterday she asked me if I had seen the robins! (I did see a sparrow last week, but it was dead, poor thing;— I suppose a hawk had got it.)
One does miss the old birds, sometimes, and the flowers. The tameness of an English park. Who would have thought that we, who longed for change, would ever pine for the old order? But perhaps even the most ardent adventurer hungers, by and by, for a well-mannered lawn, and plants that know their place.