Kitty

by Challinor, Deborah

  ‘Good morning, Miss Carlisle,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d do you the honour of welcoming you on board the Katipo myself.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ Kitty replied, dying to rub her throbbing knee but forcing herself to stand upright. ‘How thoughtful of you.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t it?’ Rian agreed. ‘I imagine you’re here to inspect the carpets?’

  Kitty gave him a cool stare, annoyed that he’d assumed she would be interested only in household furnishings. ‘No, actually, I’m here to look at the agricultural machinery.’

  Rian’s eyebrows went up. ‘Are you really?’

  The look on his face made Kitty smile. ‘No. My aunt would like a rug for our house, but she doesn’t care for the sea and sent me to look instead.’

  ‘She must have had an awful time on the way out, then,’ Rian said.

  Kitty checked his face for signs of sarcasm, but couldn’t see any.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a voyage for someone averse to the ocean.’

  ‘Yes, she did suffer somewhat.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it, though?’ he asked. ‘The voyage, I mean?’

  Unable to help herself, Kitty’s face lit up. ‘Oh yes, I adored it,’ she said, remembering the hours spent leaning over the ship’s rail watching the ocean run past beneath her. ‘There’s something about the sea, isn’t there?’

  But before Rian could respond, Win, noting Kitty’s delighted expression and mistaking the reason for it, interrupted swiftly. ‘Captain, your cargo?’

  ‘Of course,’ Rian said, moving towards a wide hatch propped open in the centre of the deck, his visitors following him.

  But before Kitty reached the hatch, something caught her eye—a compact ball of black fur curled into the hollow formed by a coil of rope.

  ‘Oh, look, a cat!’ she exclaimed and reached down to stroke the sleeping animal.

  Rian shouted ‘No!’ but it was too late. The cat snapped open citrine eyes and uncurled itself, bouncing back on its haunches and striking out at Kitty. In a blur its claws raked the back of her hand, immediately drawing three bright lines of blood.

  Kitty gasped and whipped her hand back. The cat, hissing malevolently, took another swipe, then leapt out of the rope and shot up the mainmast, not stopping until it reached the upper boom far above them, where it crouched in fluffy rancour, still spitting.

  ‘What a foul-tempered little creature,’ Kitty said, blinking back involuntary tears of pain and pressing down on her bleeding scratches with her handkerchief.

  ‘Not normally,’ Rian said. ‘She just doesn’t like women.’

  Kitty ignored the jibe. ‘Has it got a name?’

  ‘Boadicea.’

  ‘How apt.’

  Rian glanced at Kitty’s hand. ‘Is it bleeding much?’

  She lifted the handkerchief. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps we should go back to shore,’ Rebecca said anxiously.

  ‘No need,’ Rian said, calling over his shoulder, ‘Hawk!’

  From the shadows of the schooner’s cabin emerged a figure dressed in a fawn shirt and loose trousers. The shirt, open at the neck and revealing a smooth copper-coloured chest, was cinched by a fancy leather belt holding a sharp-bladed knife. The man’s hair had been fashioned into two gleaming black plaits hanging almost to his waist, and his broad face was as red-brown and as hairless as his chest. He approached silently, oblivious to the stares of the Katipo’s visitors, and waited with his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘This is Running Hawk of the Seneca, one of the six tribes of the Iroquois Nation of America, and my first mate,’ Rian said, then turned to him and added conversationally, ‘Boadicea’s had a go at the lady’s hand. Could you get her some of that evil-smelling salve of yours?’

  ‘Please, don’t go to any trouble,’ Kitty insisted.

  Hawk regarded her politely, then retreated back into the cabin. After a moment he reappeared carrying a folded cloth and a green glass jar; he removed the lid and immediately a rancid stench wafted up.

  Win jerked his head back. ‘Heavens, man, what is it?’

  Rian shrugged. ‘Not sure, but it works on just about everything.’

  ‘It is a traditional recipe of my grandmother’s,’ Hawk said in good, clear English. ‘She is a revered medicine woman. It has many uses.’

  Kitty wrinkled her nose at the dreadful stink, but when Hawk signalled for her to extend her injured hand, she did so, palm down. The Indian carefully wiped away the still-oozing blood with the now heavily stained handkerchief, then bent down, stuck the index finger of his right hand into the jar and scooped out a blob of brownish grease. Gently dabbing it over the vicious scratches, he wrapped Kitty’s hand in the clean cloth and tucked the edges neatly under at the wrist.

  Putting the lid back on the jar he said, ‘Do not take the cloth off for three days,’ then nodded to Kitty before padding off across the deck and disappearing into the cabin again.

  William Colenso, who had observed everything with interest, said, ‘Well, that was fascinating, wasn’t it? Is he your ship’s surgeon, Farrell?’

  ‘No,’ Rian said. ‘We see to ourselves.’

  ‘Where is the rest of your crew?’ Win asked suspiciously.

  ‘All ashore,’ Rian replied, ‘except our cook, who I believe is in the galley preparing our dinner.’

  ‘At Paihia?’

  ‘No, Kororareka.’

  Win grunted with ill-concealed disapproval. ‘Well, let’s get on with it then, shall we?’

  Rebecca chose a cheerful red and yellow carpet, while Kitty selected one patterned with flowers and leaves in green, blue and grey—muted colours she thought her aunt would like. Her hand barely even stung now, which was a relief. As a child, she had once been scratched by a terrified fox cub, which had also been very painful, and her arm had become mildly infected so that the local physician had had to be summoned. William Colenso approved of the paper, after opening at least a dozen reams at random to ensure that it was all of the same quality. Win selected some bits and pieces he declared would be useful on the mission farm, then arranged for the lot to be taken ashore when the Katipo’s crew returned from Kororareka. Which, he said disparagingly to Mr Colenso and well within the captain’s hearing, could be any time over the next forty-eight hours, depending on the extent of their depravity.

  To Rian directly, he said, ‘I hope you will be joining us on Sunday morning, Captain Farrell. You missed a wonderful service a couple of weeks ago when we confirmed forty-four of our Maori flock and twenty of our own. Marvellous day, it was. The Bishop of Australia officiated.’

  ‘So I heard,’ Rian said. The Maoris at Pukera had, by all accounts, thoroughly enjoyed getting dressed up for the event. ‘Unfortunately we’ll be at the Waitemata by Sunday and after that probably the Manukau, loading timber.’

  ‘When might you be calling back this way? Perhaps you could attend a service then?’ Win asked, ever hopeful regarding the possibility of the captain’s personal salvation.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rian replied diplomatically, not quite meeting Win’s eye.

  Business concluded, the visitors departed. As Win turned the dinghy away from the Katipo and struck out for the shore, Kitty glanced back to see if the captain was still on deck, but all she could see was the hateful little cat, still crouched high on the boom, staring haughtily down at them.

  Kitty didn’t see Rian Farrell again for two months. Her hand healed beautifully with barely a mark to show where the deep scratches had been, and Mrs Williams made a note to ask the ‘Red Indian gentleman’, as she referred to him, for the recipe for his wonderful healing salve.

  The end of January and February passed in a swelter of heat, interspersed with sudden heavy downpours and a plague of enormous flies and shiny black crickets. The flies walked over everything that might be considered edible, including every kitchen utensil and surface, and the crickets hid in corners, under furniture and in bedding. The mission’s children delighted in h
unting them out then squashing them juicily underfoot, causing the remains to release a sharp stink that lingered long after the crushed corpses had been swept up. Win said it was the heat bringing them, and Kitty dreaded to think what the winter might deliver—not wetas looking for somewhere dry to spend the cooler months, she sincerely hoped. The first one she’d encountered had been so utterly alien and repulsive, with its long, jointed legs, enormous gleaming body and revoltingly supple antennae waving above beady eyes, that she’d almost fainted from fright.

  Kitty wasn’t enjoying the hot weather at all. It was, she decided, an altogether different sort of heat than that of a Norfolk summer—stickier, heavier and much more oppressive. Without the sea breezes coming off the harbour it would have been unbearable. The heat gave her a headache and she sweated almost constantly, which left her hair lank and her body and clothes particularly pungent by the end of the day, requiring considerable sponging of both. She had increased her baths from one to two a week, which helped, but she was the only one in the house who had. Sarah refused to get undressed for anything except bed—and Kitty sometimes wondered if she even did that—and Uncle George was apparently oblivious to the fact that he smelled like a badger’s set, refusing even to go about in his shirt-sleeves.

  And nor was the heat doing much for anyone’s temper. Sarah in particular was growing increasingly disillusioned with Amy, suspecting her of being sneaky and light-fingered, among many other criticisms. The most recent incident related to the whereabouts of Sarah’s precious Spode ‘frog pattern’ meat platter—cherished because it was a piece identical to the very service used at King George’s coronation in 1821. Sarah was convinced Amy had stolen it.

  Amy was certainly a handful. She never said aloud that, as far as she was concerned, her presence in the Kelleher household was only as a companion to her royal cousin Wai, but her behaviour certainly implied it. She was obviously intelligent and quite skilled at reading and writing both English and Maori, but she showed little interest in learning the finer points of housekeeping and the domestic arts, consistently approaching every task she was given with what could only be described as an apathetic and at times even impertinent attitude. She simply flattened the sheets and underblankets, then drew the quilt over them, so that the beds looked made but actually weren’t. When she was asked to prepare vegetables she always ‘forgot’ that peas need to be shelled, or potatoes peeled, and green beans invariably appeared on plates with bits of stalk still attached unless she was supervised throughout the entire process. The floor was never swept or washed properly, much of the dirt ending up under Sarah’s new rug in the parlour, crockery and cooking implements were frequently found on the shelf with food still stuck to them, and no chore was ever quite completed. She was unfailingly polite, however, and always apologised profusely for these misdemeanours, but in a manner that left people with the vague impression that they had somehow been tricked or, at the very least, patronised.

  With Kitty, though, she was less obsequious—perhaps because she knew that the balance of power did not lie in Kitty’s hands, but in Sarah’s. George took very little notice of what happened in the house, being out of it much of the time or shut upstairs in his stiflingly hot little study working on his sermons. Or selecting tracts from the Bible he deemed suitable to be translated into Maori and subsequently printed by Mr Colenso, a project George had pounced upon with fervour. If either of the housegirls irritated him, he never said so.

  Amy’s casual attitude towards her domestic duties aside, Kitty did not dislike her. She laughed a lot, had a rich sense of humour and an even greater liking for adventure, which more often than not led her into trouble. She was far more outgoing than her cousin, but it was Wai Kitty was becoming particularly fond of.

  Wai had settled in well. She was keen to learn, enthusiastic about her training, and seemed committed to understanding, and living by, the catechisms she read aloud to Kitty in English at least once a day. She also had a sharp eye for the ridiculous and a very infectious giggle. Compared with Amy, however, she seemed quite naïve, and Kitty wondered whether her upbringing had been sheltered because of her status as a chief’s daughter, and because of the arranged betrothal. She also wondered what Wai’s mother had been like—long-suffering, if Tupehu was any indication—but realised even after just a few months in New Zealand that, growing up, Wai would have had the affection of plenty of other women—aunts and the like. The Maoris seemed to have very big and complicated families.

  Kitty herself had learnt a lot from Wai, who was certainly nowhere near as unsophisticated as Kitty discovered herself to be, particularly in matters concerning men and women. Sarah would be horrified if she knew that Kitty was now quite au fait with how women got themselves with child, as opposed to the hazy idea she’d had before coming out to New Zealand, cobbled together from what her mother had told her not to do.

  But even possessing this detailed level of knowledge, Wai still often had an air of innocence about her, which Kitty thought made her very appealing, even if she was occasionally a little self-centred. She was an odd mixture of character traits—sweet, a little arrogant, kind, occasionally very shrewd, and sometimes even cruel. Above all, she very rarely complained, even when the balance of household duties fell on her because Amy had slipped out to the yard to smoke her pipe, or had disappeared altogether. Wai seemed philosophical about her cousin’s behaviour, possibly, Kitty suspected, because she’d lived with it all her life. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

  She was certainly philosophical about the wretched heat, and even seemed to relish it, sitting outside at every opportunity while Kitty and Sarah swooned sweatily in the shade of the verandah. One afternoon, in the first week of March, Kitty asked Wai and Amy why they didn’t seem to mind how hot it was.

  ‘We are accustomed to it,’ Amy said, with a hint of superiority.

  ‘And we swim,’ Wai added.

  ‘Do you?’ Kitty said, fascinated by the idea. ‘In the sea?’

  ‘No, the river. Between here and the village there is a pool.’

  ‘When, though?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘When we are supposed to be having a moe, after dinner.’

  The missionary families often had a short sleep, or at least a rest, after the midday meal, and Kitty had never imagined that Amy and Wai had been anywhere but in their rooms at the time.

  Seeing a possibility of relief from the relentless mugginess, she asked, ‘Who else goes?’

  ‘Everyone,’ Amy said.

  ‘At the same time?’ Kitty was shocked.

  Amy snorted at the absurdity of the idea. ‘No, the pool is not big enough.’

  ‘No, I mean, well, do men and women go together?’

  ‘Ae. So?’

  Kitty’s heart plummeted.

  ‘But there is another pool, where the river branches,’ Wai said. ‘Not many go there.’

  ‘Could you take me?’ Kitty asked. ‘Please? I would love that.’

  Wai shrugged. ‘If you like. We will go now. We have done our chores.’

  Kitty knew Amy hadn’t finished hers, but the prospect of a dip in cool, fresh water was too tempting.

  It was a twenty-minute walk along a narrow track through the bush to reach the main pool, which was in fact occupied by a very rowdy group of children. Kitty couldn’t help noticing that all the bathers were naked, boys and girls alike, their bodies sparkling with water and their shrieks of delight echoing off the tall trees and bush bordering the swimming hole. She also noticed, among the brown bottoms, several white ones, quite possibly belonging to missionary children; she wondered if their mothers knew where they were.

  Wai smiled at the sight but turned away. ‘A little further,’ she said to Kitty.

  When they came to the second pool Kitty gasped with pleasure and anticipation. It was empty and its shade-laced surface was as smooth and as inviting as satin.

  Wai and Amy undressed immediately, which didn’t take long as neither wore shoes, stockings or under
garments.

  When they were naked Kitty was unable to stop herself from staring, even though she knew it was extremely rude to do so. Both girls were brown all over, as she had expected, but she hadn’t realised quite how brown they would be. Both had high breasts, Amy’s heavier than Wai’s, with large nipples so dark they were almost purple. The colour of their pubic hair matched that on their heads, although Amy’s was much more abundant than Wai’s, a wiry bush springing energetically from her crotch. Amy appeared to Kitty to be a fully developed woman already, but Wai still had some girlish characteristics, although it was clear from the burgeoning curve of her hips and the thrust of her small breasts that she would have her proper woman’s body very soon.

  But the most amazing revelation of all was that Wai was extensively tattooed across her buttocks, a symmetrical pattern that spiralled out from the cleft between them to cover both cheeks before ending at a point in the centre of each. In marked contrast, Amy’s bottom displayed nothing but smooth brown skin.

  Kitty continued to stare. ‘Why do you have that?’ she blurted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That tattoo on your, er, bottom.’

  ‘Not tattoo,’ Amy corrected, ‘moko.’

  ‘Puhi,’ Wai replied, as if, once again, that would explain everything. ‘Also because I am untouched and promised to a chief.’

  As she and Amy stared back at her, apparently highly amused, Kitty dropped her gaze and concentrated on getting undressed herself, feeling suddenly shy and embarrassed. The girls turned and waded into the pool, their bodies barely disturbing the surface as they sank into its cool depths.

  Kitty sat on the bank and unlaced her boots, then peeled her garters and knee-high stockings down and tugged them off, draping them over a log to let them air. She undid the buttons at the side of her dress, pulled it off over her head, then released her hair from its tidy chignon. She had given up ragging it every night to make ringlets for the next day—the heat invariably made them fall out by dinnertime. Next off were her petticoats, followed by her stays, then the short chemise tucked into her drawers, and finally the drawers themselves. She looked up to see Wai and Amy watching her in fascination.