by Moir, Tanya
As she walks down the slope, the sun on her back, she is free to think that this, perhaps, is what La Rochelle missed, this marriage of hope and soil and work. He came to admire the view for a time, but his future never entwined with these hills, and so he could slip out and away with no more thought than he gave to his arrival. Today, Hester feels no envy.
She turns back uphill, her bag of seed growing lighter. Away to her right, she can see Robbie, slightly ahead on a parallel line, and Portia nosing in his tracks. Above the road, the sky is darkening to a dense and perfect blue, curling around the headland. ‘Flesh of the sky.’ Hester smiles, measuring her steps, moving slowly towards the horizon, the land stretching up like a ladder to meet it.
‘Haven’t seen much of Frank these last weeks,’ says Mary at lunch, over the Sunday weka. She watches Hester. ‘Is he still not done with that house?’
Daniel finishes his mouthful without haste. ‘He’s going to try to get up next week.’
‘Ah,’ says Mary.
For a moment, they all look at Hester. She concentrates on her plate.
‘He’s been held up,’ Robbie says. ‘He’s had to wait for the joiner.’
‘Ah,’ says Mary again. ‘Has he, now? That’ll be why, then.’ She passes the potatoes up to Daniel. ‘But you’ve reason to think he won’t be much longer?’
‘Good reason,’ says Daniel, calmly.
The afternoon cools early, a chill creeping down with the shadows. Hester casts one last bag of seed, and considers the inevitability of Frank. She sees it is rolling towards her, gathering momentum, like a rock. Yet she cannot seem to find the wit to step out of the way.
‘He’ll want to speak with you when he comes,’ says Daniel, after tea. They are standing, awkward, in the cold of the disused parlour. ‘Hester? Do you understand? Have you thought what you must say?’
Hester stares at the rug. ‘But I don’t want to,’ she says.
‘You’re not a child. Frank will give you as good a home as you’ll find.’
‘I don’t love him.’
Daniel gives a short, hard laugh. ‘Be grateful.’
Hester takes to the attic as soon as she can, but finds no sleep there. She stares at the rising moon, and considers her options. She runs over them several times, but they grow no more appealing. She has no wish to be anyone’s servant. She knows of no children to govern. A hut in the bush would be cold, and difficult to construct, not to mention damp and lonely.
Below, she hears Mary snuffle in her sleep, and wishes she could just vanish. Like Matthew Halloran. Like Old Halloran, his father. She wishes she could close her eyes and wake up in someone else’s life.
She takes out La Rochelle’s papers. ‘My darling Juliana,’ she reads.
‘Hester!’ whispers Daniel, through the floor. ‘For God’s sake put that light out, and go to sleep!’
The following Sunday, Hester dresses with care. She defies the urge to smear ash on her face, and leave her hair in tangles. She does not allow herself to think of tracks through the bush on her way out to the washhouse. She waits. She will not be childish.
The morning passes, but Frank does not come. No one, not even Mary, mentions his absence. At two o’clock, they eat their dinner in silence. Hester looks round the table, but no one will meet her gaze.
Five
In the dining room of the Victoria Inn, Rosie O’Keefe laughs, and Frank thinks that he has promised nothing to anyone.
It is Rosie’s day off. He buys her a half-pint, and a fish dinner. She has a round face, open like a flower. She waves her fork in the air, and when she smiles, she shows every one of her little teeth, and the fat pink tip of her tongue between them.
Rosie O’Keefe is the best kind of talker, requiring little effort from her partner. She leaves few gaps for Frank to fill, and plenty of time for him to think of things to say in them. He sits back, and admires the effortless way she pulls them both through the silence.
He tells her about his house.
‘Well!’ she exclaims. ‘Doesn’t that sound fine! You’re quite the big man around here, now, aren’t you?’
Frank smiles, and stretches out his legs. He is feeling larger.
She talks all the way to the end of the jetty and back, and around the beach as far as Green’s Hotel, where her name has recently been painted above the door. Other men stop and smile and touch their hats. They say, ‘Afternoon, Mrs O’Keefe’, and ‘Gidday, Rosie’.
It is Sunday, and the bar is closed. They walk around to the back, where Frank presses the widowed publican up against her stable wall, and mutters, ‘Rosie.’
Rosie O’Keefe says not a word. Frank feels her plump pink tongue against his, and his head begins to hum; when she slides her hand down his trouser front, he thinks he will burst with gratitude and gladness.
Six
Daniel learns of Frank’s engagement to the landlady of Green’s Hotel while the gang is cutting in the Richardsons’ new track. He hides his surprise well.
There is much back-slapping and ribaldry. The strength of the widow O’Keefe’s arm is remarked upon, and suppositions made as to her prowess in pulling a man a pint. Frank, cheeks burning, takes it in good part.
‘That bloody Frank.’ Roy shakes his head. ‘He’s a sly young dog. Trust him to land on his feet.’
Daniel nods, intent on his spadework.
‘He was keen on your girl for a while, wasn’t he, Dan?’
Daniel’s neck prickles. He feels Roy take his measure. He says nothing. Nearby, several of the gang have stopped their digging.
‘Ah, well,’ Roy continues, loudly. ‘Can’t say as I’d let him near any daughter of mine — not till the bastard’d put a big gold ring on her finger.’
He watches as Daniel cuts another foot of clay. Daniel feels quite sure that Roy does not have a daughter.
‘Got to keep an eye out, ain’t that right, Danno? Can’t blame a bloke for taking a free feed if it’s going.’
There is some laughter at this. Daniel smiles along with it. He thinks back, with some sadness, on the many Sunday dinners Frank has shared. He sees Hester across the table, thin and pinched and silent. Just sitting there.
‘Do not worry, Dan!’ calls Jean Delacroix. ‘There are other men. Roy, here, is still not taken.’
The men laugh louder. Roy grins, and makes a gesture with fist and elbow which he does not bother to conceal from Daniel.
Daniel leans on his shovel. He can see, quite clearly, that what has happened is his fault. He should have done something sooner. He has allowed his children’s heads to remain full of novels, soft with nonsense, long past the age when such things are harmless. He has not taught them the truth of this sharp-edged world, where delicate things get broken.
Here is Robbie now, his outraged face bright red, and his mouth hanging open like some simpleton at a fair. He is making a target of himself, a coconut for these strong-armed men to shy at. And at home is Hester, waiting, waiting, as if that will do her any good. As if the future is a thing she can rely on. A pet that will come when she calls it; a thing it is safe to let go.
He nods slowly, raises his eyebrows in recognition of Jean’s fine joke. One by one, the men resume their digging.
‘Congratulations,’ he says to Frank at lunchtime. ‘You’ll be very happy, I’m sure.’
‘Thanks,’ says Frank, but he will not meet Daniel’s eye, and he takes his lunch to the other end of the bank, to sit with Jean and Roy.
Daniel eats his bread and stares down over the bay. He thinks of Frank’s house. It had seemed so solid. Robbie sits down beside him. His chin is up, and Daniel can see he has something to say. ‘You’d better put your back into it this afternoon,’ he tells him. ‘You don’t want them docking your pay.’
At the end of the day, Daniel and Robbie walk home through a cold grey dusk, leaving Frank and the others behind them, heading the other way. With each step, the things Daniel had dared think certain recede, lost behind the hills. The war
m valley, the prospering fields, the children in their safe harbour. The hand at his elbow in his old age, the place of respect at a good man’s table. By the time Daniel reaches La Rochelle’s Road, they have all disappeared, burned down like his patch of scrub to a sour black ash.
He looks down over his cleared hillside. It is dark, but he knows that the grass is beginning to grow. In the shadows under the stumps, he sees furtive movement. Rats, or weka, digging up the ground. They are ruining his seed.
‘Get that dog back in there tonight,’ he orders Robbie.
Seven
Robbie walks the field for two hours after dinner. He is pleased to be out of the house. There is a full moon behind him, high over Karupoti Bay, and in the cool silver light everything around him seems clean and clear. The wind has dropped, and the night is not cold. He takes his time.
He finds only four weka in his snares, well down from his high score, last week, of ten. Though bad for his sport, this is good for the cocksfoot. His father, it seems, is winning.
Robbie resets the snares, and lays more where he comes across signs of the birds’ digging. There is barely a breeze now, the air still but for the wash of a gentle surf below the cliffs. He thinks he might almost hear the stars, were Portia not breathing so heavily in his ear.
The dog has been slow tonight, sticking close to his side, and failing to flush a single rat out of the shadows. He wonders whether the bite she took to her foreleg has put her off, or if she has simply tired of the game.
As he walks back up to the house, a finger of moonlight stretches towards him across Karupoti Bay. He feels the pull of it, the beach, like the moon, so close he can almost touch it. He sees the texture in its bright sands, the shapes that shift in its dark shadows. In just a few steps, it seems, he could be there. It is an illusion, of course; no good will come of trying to reach it. But still he wishes he were brave enough to walk down into that shade.
At the top of the road he sits, for a time, and watches the stars move. Slowly, the moon passes overhead. He feels tired now, heavy in his bones. He picks up his sack of weka, and walks home.
Mary has left a light burning for him in the hall. He sits on the step, and takes off his boots. A moth flutters fatly through the open door. He whistles softly, but Portia does not come. He hears her scrabbling under the house, and sighs. Now, it seems, she will go ratting. Robbie hangs his birds in the meat safe, and washes quickly. He opens his bedroom window for the dog, and, despite the light of the setting moon, is soon asleep.
The next morning, Portia has still not returned. Nor does she come to his call. On the verandah, as Robbie pulls his boots back on, a tiny cry comes from under the house. He listens. There is another, and another.
He finds Portia beneath the parlour. She licks his hand. A litter of black and white pups squirms beside her, mewling like little round seagulls. Robbie counts them. There are eight. He wriggles out and runs around to the back of the house.
‘Hester, quick, come and look!’
In the kitchen, his sister wipes the flour from her hands and looks at him in alarm. ‘What is it?’
‘You won’t believe me if I tell you. Come and see!’
‘Oh!’ breathes Hester softly. She picks up a puppy, which grumbles a little, and noses blindly along her hand. ‘Oh, what a clever girl, Portia! Eight! And to think we never even noticed.’
Portia gives a heavy sigh, and shuts her eyes. Robbie and Hester smile at each other. It is dim beneath the house, but he can see that his sister’s eyes are shining.
‘What shall we call them all?’
‘That one looks like a Jack, don’t you think?’
The newly named Jack gives a little growl and Hester giggles. ‘Come on! Let’s get Portia something to eat — she must be starving.’
Robbie crawls out after her. ‘Do you think we should move them inside, by the fire?’
Daniel is waiting on the verandah. ‘What’s going on under there?’
‘It’s Portia,’ says Hester excitedly. ‘She’s had puppies!’
Daniel stares, first at Hester, and then at Robbie. His eyes move from Robbie’s face, down to his boots, and back.
Robbie becomes aware of the dirt on his trousers and shirt, the cobwebs clinging to his shoulders. ‘There are eight,’ he says into the silence.
His father shakes his head, as if they are infants he has caught playing in something foul.
‘Get rid of them,’ says Daniel. ‘Now.’
Robbie watches Hester’s face turn white. ‘No!’ she says, quite softly. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t argue with me,’ snaps Daniel. ‘Robbie, hurry up and do as you’re told. There’s work to be done.’
Robbie’s whole body is starting to shake. He holds himself up and in, and says, ‘I won’t.’
‘You will,’ says Daniel. ‘You live under my roof and shall do as I say.’
Robbie stands as still as he can. The anger is a hot, hard lump in his throat. He is frightened that he will cry. He thinks, suddenly, of Matthew Halloran and his gun. He raises his chin, and fixes his eyes on a point above his father’s shoulder.
‘I want them gone by the time I come back,’ says Daniel. He stares at Robbie for a second more, then turns, and walks back inside.
Eight
Robbie puts the basket of puppies down in the sun on George Karupoti’s porch.
‘Thanks,’ says George. ‘Bit late for Christmas.’
‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ Robbie’s face burns. He feels ill with the effort of carrying the pups down to the bay, an awkward, stumbling blur of fear and squealing, with Portia breathing hard, circling his legs like a running noose. His head is full of ugliness, of small screams, and of Daniel.
George watches him for a while, and nods. ‘Dad won’t let you keep them?’
Robbie bites the inside of his cheeks, and stares down at the boards. He cannot say it, yet. George continues to rock gently in his chair; the silence settles down around them, soft and sun-warmed, shot through with the song of the last cicadas and the light sparkling up off the sea.
Tentatively, Portia picks a pup out of the basket. No one protests. She settles down, and begins to give it a forceful licking.
‘She feeding?’ asks George.
‘Yes,’ says Robbie. He hangs his head again. ‘I think so.’
‘Give them to her, e? We’ll see. That’s it, one at a time now.’
The pups, once inspected, squabble, feed and fall asleep, an untidy heap in the sun.
‘Put the kettle on,’ says George.
Tommy holds a puppy up to his face, nose to nose, and mimics its tiny cries. ‘I couldn’t’ve done it either,’ he says. ‘E, wee boy? You’d have to be some kind of mean.’
Robbie strokes his dog’s ears, and says nothing.
‘It’s hard on a bitch, raising pups,’ says George, carefully, into the ensuing silence. ‘’Specially for a young one like her. It’s hard on everyone — takes a lot of time, a lot of money.’
Robbie looks up, alarmed, but George holds up his hand and laughs. ‘It’s alright. I’m an old man. I got both.’
Tommy puts the puppy back. ‘There you go, girl, he’s alright. All safe now, e?’
Robbie looks around, at the old man with his face still creased up, laughing at himself, at Tommy feeding Portia the cold mutton off his plate, at the food on the table and the squares of sunshine coming in through the kitchen window. He cannot remember the last time he heard laughter at La Rochelle’s Road. His anger and fear have ebbed. He is left with tiredness and shame, a bitter wrack of feeling, hardening in the sun.
‘So what are you going to tell your dad when you get home?’ asks Tommy.
‘Nothing,’ says Robbie.
‘He won’t ask you?’
‘I’m not going back there.’
Tommy looks worried. ‘What’ll you do, then?’
Robbie examines his hands. ‘I’ll make myself a place somewhere,’ he tells them firmly. ‘A place o
f my own.’ He sees the hut between the dunes, the simple raupo whare. He thinks of himself, inside, behind its blanket door.
‘Sounds like a good plan,’ says George. He pours himself more tea, and opens his newspaper. ‘You know, we could do with a hand round here. Maybe you’d think about helping us out for a while. Until you get your place ready.’
‘That way,’ says Tommy, ‘you wouldn’t have to leave Portia.’
Robbie watches his sleeping dog. ‘I could do that,’ he says.
Nine
Daniel returns at lunchtime, dusty and weary from cutting scrub. Any doubts as to his course of action have hardened into righteous resolve as the morning has passed, and Robbie has failed to appear.
‘Where is he?’ he demands of Hester’s back, as he sits down at the kitchen table.
Hester is standing at the stove, bestowing upon the kettle an attention its heating cannot possibly require. For a moment it seems she will not reply, and Daniel feels his anger heave like bile.
‘He went down to the Bay,’ she says, at last.
Daniel sighs. The boy’s incompetence is quite beyond understanding. ‘What for?’
‘To get rid …’ Hester stops and her shoulders slacken. He watches her force them back. ‘To get rid of the …’ She loses control of her voice on the final word. It comes out as a little choking sob. ‘The puppies.’
The image hangs between them. A sack, filling with seawater. Daniel feels suddenly cold and sick and lost, as if he himself is drowning. He thinks that he should not have to teach such lessons all by himself, alone, and with that thought comes another, more plaintive anger.
‘Hester,’ he says softly. ‘Look at me.’
She obeys him slowly, her body wooden, like a doll turned on a rope.
‘You must understand,’ he begins.