by Lark, Sarah
“Nothing came of it,” he explained. “Like the reverend said’d happen. And then I remembered what he said. The others kept on going and going, but when I finally found just a little gold once, I used it to buy a mule. I’d ride out to the men who weren’t panning in the main spots but somewhere out in the wilderness. I sold ’em whiskey, mostly.” Heather nodded. She could picture it as clear as day. “But I’m no salesman. I prefer going across country. Now I’ve got five wagons, twenty horses.”
Heather smiled. “I’m so happy to hear that. What is your real name, by the way?”
Bulldog grinned. “Tom Tibbs.” He tugged blithely on his cap. “Could I ask you—”
“Heather?” Atamarie tapped her aunt on the shoulder. “We want to get going. You’ll come to the farm, won’t you?”
Heather turned her attention away from Bulldog and furrowed her brow. “Gladly, but we’re not riding with Richard, Atamarie. We’ll rent a chaise. My Lord, girl, people are already guaranteed to be talking.” Heather pulled out her purse. “Forgive me, Mr. Tibbs. It was really nice to see you again. But now I need to take care of my niece before we become the talk of the town.” She rolled her eyes. “Head over heels.” Heather smiled as she counted out the money for Bulldog. “That’s how you were for Violet back then, weren’t you? She’s doing very well. But now I really must—”
Heather said a friendly good-bye and made her way inside to ask the saleswoman about a rental stable. Bulldog was left behind with his questions. Although he did wonder how Violet was doing, he had not been in love with her. When he thought of the girls back then, he did not picture the little beauty with her mahogany hair and bewitching blue eyes, but rather felt a small, shy hand in his own. Rosie had only touched him once—when a storm had tossed the ship here and there, and a couple of lowlifes had gone after the girls. But he still recalled how sweet she had been, how anxious and delicate. Something precious he had wanted to protect. He had been successful when it came to Rosie—at least on the ship. His own sister, Molly, he had not been able to keep safe.
Bulldog rubbed his forehead. He did not want to think of Molly, and it was better not to think of Rosie either. But he would have liked to know how she was doing.
Atamarie climbed obediently into the chaise Heather had rented while Richard drove his engine back to his farm alone. Nevertheless, the news of Atamarie’s return had spread rapidly in Timaru—as had word that Cranky Dick was threatening to fire up his flying machine again.
A surprise was waiting for Atamarie when she finally arrived at Richard’s farm. She had been worried about Heather’s reaction to the place, which had surely gone to seed in her absence. However, a few things had changed since the last harvest. Disassembled farming equipment and engines still lay everywhere, but no animals wandered freely, and everything seemed tidier. The fields, too, which would soon be harvested, looked kempt. The solution to the riddle appeared in the form of young Hamene. Atamarie greeted him happily.
“Do you work here full time now?” she asked. “It was a good idea of Richard’s to hire you.”
Hamene, who had adapted enough to wear pakeha farm clothes and go without his long hair and warrior bun, smiled at her.
“It wasn’t Richard’s idea; it was Shirley’s,” he explained, “and the elders didn’t have anything against my helping here. The pakeha can’t do everything. He is a tohunga, after all.”
Hamene gave his employer, who was about to unload the motor, an admiring look.
But who was Shirley? After brief reflection, the image of a short, stocky blonde woman came to Atamarie, one of the Hansley daughters. Atamarie had seen her a few times, but back then she had never exchanged more than a few words with Richard—let alone with Atamarie. Yet now she was opening the door to Richard’s farmhouse as if doing so were completely natural.
Shirley was wearing an old-fashioned-style dress with a white apron. She gave Atamarie and Heather a forced smile.
“And what are you doing here?” Atamarie asked. She knew it was impolite, but she had lived so long on Richard’s farm that she almost felt like the lady of the house.
Shirley returned her deprecatory gaze—for a moment, she eyed Atamarie just as disapprovingly as Atamarie had done with her. Then, however, she smiled again and raised her hands apologetically. Her face was round and somewhat childlike.
“Oh, I help out a bit,” she replied. “Mr. Pearse and my parents, well, they thought Richard needed some help around the house. And that’s certainly the case!” She giggled conspiratorially. “But please, do come in.” Shirley stepped back and held the door open for her visitors. Heather gave Atamarie a questioning look. A young housekeeper in a bachelor’s household? In Dunedin, that would have been unthinkable. “I’ve made something to eat, and if you like, you can stay the night.”
Again, Atamarie met with a not-very-friendly sidelong glance, which she returned. She had never made a secret of sleeping there for weeks.
Atamarie sensed something like matchmaking afoot—not exactly in typical pakeha manner, but tailored precisely for Richard. Atamarie certainly would not put it past Richard’s parents to adapt their moral position to serve their goals.
Ultimately, Atamarie decided to go help Richard and Hamene carry the motor into the barn. Richard placed it on a clean sheet and wanted to take it apart at once. But then Shirley appeared.
“Richard, my lands, you don’t really mean to play with this thing now, do you?” she asked disapprovingly. “You have guests, Richard. I’ve made food. Eat with your guests now, and you can bother with that devilish contraption tomorrow.”
To Atamarie’s amazement, Richard obediently followed the woman into the kitchen.
Atamarie walked alongside him grumpily. “What is she, your nanny?”
Richard looked at her apologetically. “I do sometimes need someone to remind me of manners.” He smiled and looked so mischievous that Atamarie was appeased at once. It did not sound as if he were sharing a bed with Shirley, at least. And the looks he exchanged with Atamarie, once the engine was out of sight, did not suggest there was another woman for him.
Besides, the local girl would not find the way to his heart through his stomach, Atamarie thought as she dug into the unimaginative food accompanied by unimaginative conversation. Mashed potatoes and ribs, cooked with too much salt. Shirley might have been a good housekeeper, but she was not a good cook.
“I’ll be on my way back to the hotel. Do you want to come with me or stay here?” Heather asked Atamarie outright after the meal.
Atamarie was unsure. Her gaze wandered back and forth between Richard and Shirley.
“You mean to go?” Richard’s voice sounded puzzled and disappointed.
Atamarie had to struggle not to blush under Shirley’s withering look, but then her joy that Richard had clearly missed her won out.
“No,” she said, “of course, I’ll stay.”
Shirley lowered her gaze, but then pulled herself together and smiled.
“As I said, everything’s prepared,” she remarked, pointing toward the bedrooms. “I’ll be going now.”
Shirley took off her apron with short, quick movements. She kept an iron grip on herself, but Heather, an exceptional observer, still saw the burning rage behind her feigned indifference.
In Richard’s bedroom, Atamarie did indeed find a freshly made bed, and her night with her beloved did not disappoint. Again, Richard made love to her tenderly, taking his time. He finally whispered words of love to her, kissed and caressed her, and brought her as close to flying as was possible without an aeroplane. And once again, he seemed to forget everything as soon as he laid eyes on his engine the next morning.
Fortunately, Hamene was already there to feed the animals. He found nothing unusual about Richard disappearing into the barn with the briefest of greetings.
“He’s speaking with the spirits,” the tall Maori declared to Atamarie with reverence. “And it’s not as with our tohunga who call on the gods and only
receive their response in their own spirit. The gods answer Mr. Pearse quite loudly. It’s true. I’ve heard it.”
Atamarie smiled. She knew that Richard had been experimenting for some time with a phonograph, recording sound on wax discs. The technology was new, but he hoped to impress his mother by improving it enough to record the music of the family orchestra for posterity. Hamene must have been witness to a few of these attempts—and no doubt he had not heard about the invention of the gramophone. Atamarie began explaining the principle to him herself.
“Richard would also like to record the song of a haka or a prayer during a powhiri.”
Hamene, however, only shook his head. “Why?” he asked. “To anger the gods? It won’t please them if we no longer sing and dance ourselves but build a machine for it. Mr. Pearse has good reasons, I’m sure. And Waimarama says he needs the blessing of the gods to overcome his darkness. But honestly, I can’t see the use of his inventions.”
“Then why do you help him?” Atamarie asked. “I thought—”
Hamene shrugged. “Shirley says I should.”
Atamarie saw the glint in his eyes. So, Hamene was in love with Shirley. But did he stand a chance? Or was it perhaps not for Richard’s sake that Shirley was there? Was she looking for a way to be close to Hamene?
Chapter 4
Heather laughed at Atamarie when, that afternoon, she reported a possible romance between Hamene and Shirley. Beforehand, she had raved about her day in Richard’s barn. It did look as if the motor was precisely what he had been lacking to make further innovations in the field of flying. She did not need to tell her aunt how happy he had made her the night before. Heather could see that in her shining eyes. As for Shirley, though, she did not let her niece get her hopes up.
“That girl and a Maori, Atamarie? You don’t even believe that yourself. She’s the embodiment of country living—a sort of saint—or at least, she might see herself that way. There she is, sacrificing herself for your Richard, only to have him run back to you with open arms. That requires grit. And she has her parents’ blessing as well as his. Only Richard doesn’t seem to be playing along. This is bizarre, Atamarie. Believe me, I’ve been all over, and I’ve known very eccentric people. But he—at first, I thought he might just be cold, but then, he practically panted over that motor.”
Atamarie laughed. “He’s definitely not cold.”
Heather shrugged. “But nor is he some great lover in the romantic sense. The man is not right, Atamarie. Be careful. Plus, right now, the greatest danger comes from Saint Shirley sticking a knife in your back.”
Atamarie did not take her aunt’s concerns seriously but returned with her to Christchurch the next day.
They met Chloe in the White Hart Hotel, where she told them about Rosie. She had left the maid in the care of one Lord Barrington in Addington. Barrington was a British gentleman and a sheep baron who mostly left his farm in the hands of a capable manager while he devoted himself to the promotion of horse racing in New Zealand. He had offered Rosie a position working with his own horses, mostly to do Chloe a favor. Rosie herself would have preferred to get a job at a harness-racing stable with Trotting Diamond, but the lord rejected this.
“Do forgive me, Chloe. I know your, erm, husband was also part of this new, erm, movement, and there are certainly serious stables, but the trainers they have there—well, that awful fellow Brown is still around.”
John Brown had organized the first harness races in New Zealand. In England, harness racing was considered a sort of racing for the common man. The rules had been confusing, and the riders, spectators, and referees sometimes came to blows. To people like Lord Barrington, this was abhorrent, and the racing union only very reluctantly opened its track to the harness racers. The movement, however, would not be stopped, and the events had eventually taken a more orderly and serious shape. A few years before, a new track in Addington had been built primarily for harness races, and since the consolidation of the two racing clubs, they had been planning larger, more lucrative events there. However, there were still shady characters to be found among the horse owners and trainers. And in Lord Barrington’s view, Addington was full of them.
“And right after, we had a very unedifying encounter,” remarked Chloe. “You remember Joseph Fence, Violet’s son?”
Atamarie nodded. Her friend Roberta had sometimes talked about her brother. Violet had apprenticed him to a horse trainer when she left Invercargill with Roberta.
“An unpleasant child even then,” Chloe continued, “just like his father. I thought I was having a stroke when I saw him on the racetrack. And Rosie went white as a sheet, the poor thing, but she got ahold of herself. I think she’s over that unhappy business with Eric Fence.”
Heather looked unsure. Rosie had hated and feared Violet’s late husband. Neither Heather nor Chloe wanted to hear anything about it, but there was surely something to Joseph’s claim that the girl had a hand in Eric’s accident on the racetrack.
“Anyway, Joseph has a racing stable in Addington. Barrington thinks it’s a den of thieves. And there could be no question of Rosie working with him, of course. I made a few allusions to their history, and, well, now Rosie’s Trotting Diamond is stabled alongside Barrington’s Thoroughbreds, and our Rosie is living in his servants’ quarters. The Barringtons practically have their own town hall, you know.”
“I know,” Heather said with a laugh. She had contributed significantly to its decoration with oil paintings of noble racing horses.
“And next, little Rosie and her little horse are going to teach Roberta’s brother the meaning of fear on the racetrack?” Atamarie asked. “I mean, based on what Roberta says about Joseph, and now Lord Barrington too—shouldn’t we be worried?”
Chloe shrugged. “I trust Lord Barrington. He owns half the racetrack, not to mention half of Addington. No one would dare hurt someone under his protection. And it’s time for Rosie to grow up. But now, what about you, Atamie? How were things in Temuka?”
Heather let her niece talk, and Atamarie delivered an enthusiastic report. She spoke of Richard’s joy at their reunion and his excitement at the motor. Chloe listened silently but occasionally looked questioningly at her girlfriend.
“Do you intend to go back during vacation?” Chloe asked when she was done.
Atamarie played with her hair. “Of course,” she replied. “It really was nice. And the motor—”
“No technical lectures, please,” Chloe interrupted. “Automobiles are quite lovely—I got to ride in one, Heather! Lord Barrington isn’t only crazy about horses. Anyway, I couldn’t care less about how they work. I’m more interested in how things are working for you, Atamarie. In all honesty, I expected you to stay there, as crazy as you are for the young man. Is it because of this girl? The ‘housekeeper’?”
“I don’t know if there’s anything between him and Shirley,” Atamarie admitted, “but if so, then it’s nothing very serious. I—” She spoke quickly before Heather or Chloe could protest. “I at least want to know how things progress with the engine, with the aeroplane. I’d like Richard to fulfill his dream. Then, he’ll—”
“Then he’ll love you back?”
Atamarie bit her lip. “Then, everything will be different.”
After her brief visit to Richard’s, Atamarie spent the first months of her break in Parihaka. She did not know whether she’d hoped to see Rawiri again or feared it. But to her amazement, the young tohunga was no longer there.
“Is he visiting kite makers again so he can sit at their feet and learn more karakia?” Atamarie asked Pania, Rawiri’s mother. “He’s already got the technique down, so no one’s going to be able to make better kites than Rawiri, and no one can fly them better either, unless they can cut the strings and steer them with song.”
Pania laughed. She was a doctor in Parihaka’s hospital and had a similarly skeptical view of her son’s excessive spirituality. “No more tohunga, Atamarie, which I’m grateful for, as much as I love
Parihaka and open myself to its spirit. But really, I’d always pictured Rawiri at the university rather than singing prayers and crafting kites. Yes, I know it’s one of our people’s great arts, but as a full-time occupation? In any case, I’m thankful to you for pushing him in another direction. Since you visited us last time, Rawiri has subscribed to Scientific American, spent two semesters at the engineering school in Wellington, and now he’s in the United States.”
“He’s where?” Astonished, Atamarie dropped the weirs she had been repairing to go fishing that afternoon. “In America?”
Pania nodded. “In a town called Dayton, wherever that is. But there’s a factory, the Wright Cycle Company, and he’s working there.”
“He had to go to America to build bicycles? Couldn’t he have done that in Auckland? I mean, America’s a world away. First you have to go to China or somewhere over there, and then—”
“He was traveling for three months,” Pania confirmed. “And don’t ask me what exactly he’s doing there. He must have arrived by now, but that’s all I know.”
Atamarie was amazed. “He always was strange,” she remarked, and wondered with concern whether that applied to all the men she found attractive.
The rest of Atamarie’s time in Parihaka passed without incident, although there were plenty of other men who courted her. But she did not want any further complications. And after three weeks of fishing, weaving, dancing, and jade carving, she had once again had enough, and decided, before the beginning of classes, that she ought to visit her relatives in Dunedin—Timaru being an easy stop along the way, of course.
With Heather’s and Chloe’s words in her ear, Atamarie rented a hotel room in Timaru and a horse to take her to Temuka, where she was completely surprised by Richard’s transformation. He greeted her full of vim and vigor and seemed not to know whether he first wanted to pull his friend and beloved into the barn or into the bedroom. While Atamarie was in Parihaka, he had made himself intimately familiar with the motor and was now developing new plans for his flying machine. He was frenetic again, but, at the same time, somehow more relaxed. Atamarie was overjoyed when he drew her into the construction of the aeroplane. Richard had now decided once and for all against a double-decker, and his drawing almost resembled Rawiri’s kites. Atamarie, however, thought the kite designs more elegant. She took a pencil and altered the plans slightly.