by Lark, Sarah
Dobbins expounded on the difference between superstructure and substructure in the laying of tracks and the fineness of the bridge construction, especially here in the mountains, but most of his students showed little interest. They were struggling with nausea again as the line passed over narrow bridges. Only Richard and Atamarie discussed with hushed seriousness the advantages and disadvantages of suspension, arch, and truss bridges.
Both were sad when the line ended in Palmerston. They would have to ride the rest of the way. Richard looked unhappily at his loan horse.
“How long’s the ride from here?” he asked, swinging himself skillfully into the saddle.
“About three days,” Atamarie said. “Well, if you move fast. But with this group . . .” She let her gaze wander over other students, some of whom were approaching the animals with a respect bordering on fear.
Indeed, some of the students proved to be highly unskilled riders, and the wagon in which Dobbins had loaded every possible surveying instrument also held them back. Plus, the balky loan horses did not exactly wow Atamarie, an opinion Richard shared.
“You’re from a sheep farm?” Atamarie asked him during a delay.
Professor Dobbins had gotten the wagon stuck in a mud hole. Their instructor was a brilliant engineer, land surveyor, and draftsman—but when it came to chariots, he was no Ben-Hur.
Richard smiled. “Well, I’m from the country, but we have more cropland than sheep. My father has no talent for animal husbandry. I still don’t know why he was so set on being a farmer, anyway. I suppose it’s tradition in our family—and in Temuka, he could buy a lot of land for a little money. We’d never had much before, back in Cornwall. And we’re a big family to feed. Nine children in all.”
“Nine! That’s almost a rugby team.”
“More like an orchestra.” Richard smiled. “Every one of us had to learn an instrument. I play the cello myself.”
Atamarie was impressed. Aside from a few brief attempts at Maori wind instruments, she had no musical education.
“Are you good?”
Richard shook his head. “I’m only really good,” he admitted, “at mathematics and physics. And machine building. I’d love to be an inventor.” This last statement came out very quietly, almost as if he were ashamed.
“And you can be one,” Atamarie assured him. “You don’t need a university degree to register a patent. And you can start where you’re at. Farming machines, for example—there’s surely room for improvement there, or hauling technology.”
Smiling, she pointed at Dobbins and one of his third-year students. They were in the process of thoroughly elucidating the problem of the stuck wagon from a theoretical standpoint.
“This mess is screaming for a lever. Come on, let’s make ourselves useful.”
With Dobbins’s permission, Atamarie took the situation in hand, harnessing two more horses to the covered wagon with makeshift tackle while Richard directed students to apply levers in precisely determined places. The vehicle sprang from the morass, and Richard effortlessly changed a damaged wheel himself. Atamarie realized that he had not only a mastery of theory but also exceedingly skillful hands. Big, powerful hands, which she liked as much as his open, friendly face with its nut-brown eyes and thick, curly hair.
In the end, Atamarie and Richard were smeared with mud, but they reaped the praise of Professor Dobbins. Unfortunately, the other students eyed them with renewed mistrust. Richard, it seemed, was an outsider too. He treated everyone politely, but he appeared to be on his own. And, Atamarie noted, he did not wear a wedding ring.
Atamarie rode her horse contentedly alongside Richard’s while he dissertated on vehicle technology. He did have ideas for improving farming machines and seemed invigorated by her faith that he could do so. For Atamarie, the day flew by despite the delays and continual rain. They should already have been able to see the mountain, but Taranaki was veiled by low-hanging clouds.
“Why even bother putting a national park here?” grumbled one of the students. “It doesn’t look that different from the plains.”
In truth, they were still riding through hilly grassland. Occasionally, they passed harvested fields, but most of the land belonged to sheep breeders. The animals could often be seen as well, large groups standing stoically in the rain. The water ran easily off their thick wool.
“They’ve got it good,” Richard said, gesturing to their own sodden clothes. “If we have to sleep in tents tonight, we’ll never warm up.”
That night, however, the travelers were in luck. Dobbins found a farm whose owner gladly opened up a shearing shed for the frozen scientists. Though the city-born students wrinkled their noses at the smell of manure and lanolin, everyone was relieved and grateful. The farmer’s wife even cooked for them, the farmer let them light a fire, and the family came by in the evening to chat.
“So, you’re here to help with the park up there around Taranaki?” the farmer asked amicably. “That used to be Maori land, right? Then the government confiscated it, but not much seems to grow there. Although, that model farming village of the Maori’s—what was it called again?—they did a real nice job with it.”
“Parihaka,” Atamarie answered. “But Maori didn’t cultivate the rain forest. It’s the land around it that’s fertile. And now pakeha farmers have almost all of it.”
Indeed, not much was left of the hundreds of acres the people of Parihaka had once farmed to feed their many residents and hundreds of visitors. The government had recruited pakeha settlers and sold them Maori land out from under them. Now only a fraction of their former fields belonged to the Maori, who made the most of them, using the latest agricultural methods.
“That’s right,” said their host. “I hear the Maori don’t have anything against the national park, unlike the white settlers. Apparently, there were protests.” He uncorked a bottle of whiskey and offered it to Dobbins. “Sorry to say, you’d better get used to sleeping in tents, Professor. It’s not likely someone there’ll offer you a place to stay. Who even had the idea to do this surveying in the fall?”
Two of the students had likewise pulled bottles from their bags and were passing them around with general enthusiasm. It almost reminded Atamarie of festivals in Parihaka or gatherings around the Ngai Tahu’s fires. But the atmosphere here was tense. The juniors and seniors formed their own little groups and competed for the professor’s approval. For his part, Dobbins conversed politely with the farmer, with whom he had little in common. But Atamarie got along brilliantly with their host, scoring even more points with her professor. She talked about Parihaka and her grandfather’s sheep farm, which, to her surprise, the farmer knew.
“Michael Drury? Goodness, child, the world is small. I’ve got a descendent of his best ram.” He poured Atamarie some whiskey, too, and could hardly be kept from dragging her out to the fields to show her the wonder ram. “The national champion—Heribert. As you know, I’m sure.”
Atamarie certainly did. A portrait of that ram, eternalized by her aunt Heather in oil paint, hung in the Drurys’ living room.
Ultimately, the subject came around to wool production, and Dobbins and Richard began theorizing about the possible employment of electricity in the development of sheep-shearing machines. While Atamarie found that quite interesting herself, the whiskey was starting to make her braver. She liked Richard Pearse better and better, and really, it was about time he recognized her as a woman. She shivered dramatically and leaned casually on her new friend.
After a few moments, Pearse noticed and turned to smile. Atamarie hoped he would put his arm around her, but their host thwarted her plans.
“Well, this really was a pleasant evening,” he said, “but I’ve to get up early tomorrow. And you lot have a long day ahead of you too. Just make yourselves comfortable in the straw. It’s far enough from the fire, and that’ll go out soon anyhow. Oh yeah, and Miss—what was your name again? Marie? My wife’s expecting you in the house. She’s made up the guest room.”
Atamarie tried to decline, but the farmer wouldn’t hear of it. Under no circumstances could the young woman spend the night with twelve men in a shearing shed. So, she accepted—not that she was particularly unhappy about it. She wouldn’t have been able to share a sleeping bag with Pearse anyway. After all, this wasn’t a Maori village, where a girl and boy who withdrew together had at most to reckon with a little teasing. She would fall into disrepute if she made a pass at Richard, and he wouldn’t be receptive, in any case. No doubt he was a gentleman.
Atamarie comforted herself with the cozy bed, which was far more comfortable than straw. There was even warm water, and Atamarie took a great deal of time liberating herself from the mud and grime. She would look particularly cute the next morning. Perhaps she would finally see the light she longed for in Richard’s eyes.
The next day, it didn’t rain nearly as hard. Now and again it even cleared up, and the Pouakai mountain chain, dominated by snow-covered Mount Taranaki, came into view. The sight was breathtaking. Most of the expedition members lost themselves completely in contemplating the majestic peak before the deep-blue sky. A crystal-clear river danced down from the mountains, leaping over rocks and crossing the green foothills through which Dobbins led them.
“This area is extraordinarily lovely,” Richard said to Atamarie. “And the mountain is fascinating. It’s a volcano, right? Perhaps we should have seismographs set up to monitor it.”
Atamarie sighed. She had expected a somewhat more romantic reaction. After all, Taranaki moved other men to spout verse, and Atamarie could imagine a young man comparing his beloved to the goddess Pihanga.
Atamarie knew her skin was rosy after the ride through the rain and the restful sleep that had followed. It had almost made her sorry to braid her freshly washed hair, but she had to be practical for the long ride. Her riding dress was still damp and dirty, so she’d decided to put on her new outfit. It wasn’t really a dress, but rather an elegant top and wide-legged pants. Kathleen Burton had designed them for her granddaughter, who refused to ride sidesaddle.
The outfit was dark blue and tailored to flatter Atamarie’s figure. The farmworkers she passed reacted at once with whistles, and she spotted a prurient glimmer in the other students’ eyes. Even Dobbins managed a genial, “You look lovely, Miss Turei.”
Only Richard Pearse remained unmoved. Finally, he commented on the cut of the pants: “Very practical and elegant, if I may say so. It’s really skillful the way the cut uses the drape. Are you familiar with sewing machines, by the way? I was allowed to attend a demonstration last year—extremely interesting.”
Over the next hours, he regaled Atamarie with stories about the mechanical needle threaders he had invented for his mother as a boy, and they laughed about how they’d both loved to experiment even as children. Richard had built his sisters a zoetrope, and the thought of moving images gripped him as well as Atamarie. It was exceedingly entertaining to travel with him.
Still, Atamarie wished for more than long conversations. It could have been so romantic to ride together through the landscape, which more and more resembled a magic land. It seemed completely untouched, empty even of sheep. The green hills, out of which gray and white rocks jutted, seemed freshly grown, and the little copses that brightened the grassland spoiled the eye with countless shades of green. Atamarie told her astounded friend that, for the Maori, each tree had a personality, and asked him to touch one and try to feel its soul. But Richard looked at her with friendly irritation and changed the subject to motorized saws.
Otherwise, he was a perfect gentleman. He had first-class manners, plied her with bread and tea, and expounded on materials that could surely be used to keep drinks warm. Atamarie found the topic intriguing, but she did wonder whether she herself was this boring.
At the end of the day, no farm was willing to take them in, but Atamarie was hopeful that another campfire might let her get closer to Richard. First, though, she was able to help him set up his tent. The brilliant inventor simply could not manage to fit the tent poles together.
“You can’t overthink things like this. You just have to do what you’re supposed to do,” Atamarie laughed, connecting the poles at lightning speed.
“But structurally speaking, it’s a poor design,” Pearse objected. “Aside from how heavy the poles are, I could imagine a much different construction—round, perhaps. And the poles should be flexible, maybe a soft wood.”
He further developed this idea over dinner—and seemed to find it thoroughly pleasant when Atamarie leaned on him while he chatted with Dobbins about seismographs. He even gave her an occasional smile and did not withdraw his hand when she carefully brushed his finger while filling his teacup. Yet he never interrupted his conversation with Dobbins or made a gesture of his own.
Atamarie wondered if perhaps Richard was just shy. And neither were her own advances particularly skillful. Atamarie was still a virgin, despite her summers in Parihaka and her little romantic dalliances there. Her grandma Lizzie had advised her: Only do it when you really want to. Not because a boy wants it or puts pressure on you. Look at your partner as a gift, and only when you think the gods have truly blessed you by leading you to this man in particular, then give yourself to him.
Atamarie preferred to think of it like a raffle: she wanted to sleep with a man only if she really felt he was the grand prize. She had encountered only consolation prizes—until now. Richard Pearse, she felt, was a soul mate. Finally, here was someone she could talk to, someone who shared her interests—and someone who did not seem to care one bit that she was a girl.
Atamarie sighed and curled up alone in her clammy sleeping bag. It was such a waste—a few yards away, her very own gift from the gods was probably freezing just like her. Perhaps she should have made sacrifices to the ancestors more often or at least danced a haka for them.
Chapter 8
The next evening, an unpleasant surprise awaited the group. After a long ride, they reached the farmhouse on the east side of Taranaki that had been planned as their first staging point for surveying the park. However, the farmer had changed his mind. Dobbins and his students were able to glean from his harangue that the government was planning an access road that would cut through the man’s land. The farmer, Mr. Peabody, was enraged, and now Dobbins and his students had to pay.
“And don’t you so much as set up your tents here. Go get lost in the woods. And rest assured, I’ll be keeping a close eye on all of your ‘calculations.’ The government’s not getting an inch of my land!”
“That same government did him the favor of stealing that land from the Maori to give to him,” Atamarie commented. “It would serve him right if the government took it back.”
“No politicking, Miss Turei,” replied Dobbins, clearly despondent at the prospect of another night in a wet tent. “Let’s ride into the rain forest. We’ll get to know some interesting insects tonight—a treat for the naturalists among you.”
The students responded with groans. Atamarie frowned.
“Professor Dobbins, we should just ride to Parihaka. My mother invited us. She’s looking forward to it. Everyone there is.”
The students perked up immediately, but Dobbins looked skeptical. “I don’t know, Miss Turei. Your mother would certainly be happy to see you. But thirteen strangers and fourteen horses?”
“Arriving in the middle of the night?” Richard added.
He’d unfolded a map and eyed the way to Parihaka. There was no way they could make it before midnight, as they’d still have to ride halfway around the mountain.
Atamarie shook her head. “It’s Parihaka, Professor. They used to get two thousand visitors at every full moon. And Maori tribes always come to visit, everyone together, men, women, and children. Thirteen guests, that’s nothing in Parihaka. And the sooner we set out, the sooner we’ll be there.”
After a little more persuasion, Professor Dobbins consented, sensing his students’ desire for a roof over their heads.
For a few of the young men from Dunedin, this was the first camping trip of their lives, and they’d already had enough after the first rainy night in their tents.
So, the group rode through the night, led by Richard with his map and Atamarie, who showed her fellow students how to orient themselves by the stars. Fortunately, the sky had cleared, and the moon bathed the paths in soft light. Really, they just needed to ride in the direction of the water. Parihaka lay between the volcano and the Tasman Sea.
“Which Maori tribe lives there, anyway?” Richard asked.
The other students listened with interest as well. A few of them had never had contact with Maori before, while others, like Richard, had seen the tribes that lived nearest their families’ farms. Their parents might have hired Maori shepherds or servants.
“It’s not one tribe; it’s Parihaka,” Atamarie explained, amazed that none of them knew the story. “It was founded by Te Whiti, an old chieftain and prophet, after the land wars, really to take in refugees. It developed into a sort of model village, but it was also almost like a sacred place. On the one hand, they wanted to show the pakeha that the Maori could manage themselves without interference. Parihaka had schools, a hospital, a bank, a post office, everything on the pakeha model. On the other hand, they honored the old customs of music and art and religion. And Te Whiti preached. He advocated for Maori rights, and against land confiscation without reimbursement or against the will of the rightful owners. But he also wanted peace. He wanted Maori and pakeha to learn from each other. For a few years, thousands of visitors would come to Parihaka every full moon to hear him. And most of the tribes on the island built their own marae in Parihaka.”