In the Land of the Long White Cloud
Page 1
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2007 by Verlagsgruppe Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, Bergisch Gladbach
English translation copyright © 2012 by D. W. Lovett
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
In the Land of the Long White Cloud was first published in 2007 by Verlagsgruppe Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG as Im Land der weißen Wolke. Translated from German by D.W. Lovett. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2012.
Published by AmazonCrossing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612184265
ISBN-10: 161218426X
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012940831
Contents
PART ONE
Setting Out: London, Powys, Christchurch, 1852
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
PART TWO
Something Like Love: Canterbury Plains—West Coast, 1852–1854
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
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10
11
PART THREE
Something Like Hate: Canterbury Plains—West Coast, 1858–1860
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
PART FOUR
Arrival: Canterbury Plains—Otago, 1870–1877
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2
3
4
5
6
7
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10
11
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14
15
16
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Translator
Setting Out
LONDON, POWYS, CHRISTCHURCH
1852
1
The Anglican Church in Christchurch, New Zealand, is seeking decent young women, well versed in housekeeping and child rearing, interested in entering into a Christian marriage with highly esteemed, well-situated members of our congregation.
Helen’s gaze fixed briefly on the unobtrusive advertisement on the last page of the church leaflet. The teacher had browsed through the booklet while her students worked silently on a grammar exercise. Helen would have preferred to read a book, but William’s constant questions broke her concentration. Even now, the eleven-year-old lifted his brown mop top from his work.
“In the third paragraph, Miss Davenport, is it supposed to be which or that?”
Helen pushed her reading aside with a sigh and explained to the boy, for the umpteenth time that week, the difference between definite and indefinite relative clauses. William, the youngest son of her employer, Robert Greenwood, was a handsome boy, but not exactly gifted with a brilliant intellect. He needed help with every assignment and forgot Helen’s explanations faster than she could give them; he knew only how to gaze with touching helplessness at grown-ups, roping them in with his sweet boyhood soprano. Lucinda, William’s mother, fell for it every time. Whenever the boy snuggled up to her and suggested they do some little project together, Lucinda scrapped the after-school tutoring that Helen had arranged. For that reason, William still could not read fluently, and even the easiest spelling exercises were hopelessly over his head. Attending a university like Cambridge or Oxford, as his father dreamed, was unthinkable.
Sixteen-year-old George, William’s older brother, could not even be bothered to feign patience for his younger brother. He just rolled his eyes and pointed to the spot in the textbook where the exact sentence that William had been puzzling over for half an hour was given as an example. George, a lanky, gangling boy, had already completed his Latin translation assignment. He always worked quickly, although not always flawlessly; the classics bored him. George simply could not wait to join his father’s import-export business. He dreamed of travel to faraway lands and expeditions to the new markets in the colonies that were opening rapidly under the rule of Queen Victoria. George was without a doubt a born merchant. He already demonstrated a talent for negotiation and knew how to use his charms to considerable effect. Now and then he even succeeded in tricking Helen into shortening the school day. He made an attempt that day, after William finally understood what he was supposed to do—or at least, where he could copy the answer. When Helen reached for George’s notebook to check his work, the boy pushed it aside provocatively.
“Oh, Miss Davenport, do you really want to bother with all that right now? The weather’s far too lovely for school. Let’s play a round of croquet instead…you need to work on your technique. Otherwise, you’ll just have to stand around at the next garden party, and none of the young chaps will notice you. Then you’ll never get lucky and marry a lord, and you’ll have to teach hopeless cases like Willy for the rest of your days.”
Helen rolled her eyes and cast a glance out the window, wrinkling her brow at the dark clouds.
“Lovely notion, George, but the rain clouds are rolling in. By the time we’ve tidied up here and made it to the garden, they’ll be emptying themselves out over our heads, and that won’t make me any more attractive to the young nobles. How could you even think such a thing?”
Helen attempted to assume an emphatically neutral demeanor. She was quite good at it: when one worked as a governess to high-society Londoners, the first thing one learned was to master one’s facial expressions. Helen’s role was neither that of a family member nor of a common employee. She took part in the communal meals and often in the family’s leisure activities but took care not to offer any unsolicited opinions or to otherwise draw attention to herself. In any case, she would never have found herself casually mixing with the younger guests at a garden party. Instead, she generally stood off to the side, chatting politely with the ladies while surreptitiously keeping an eye on her charges. Of course, her gaze occasionally alighted on the younger male guests, and then she would sometimes indulge in a brief romantic daydream, in which she strolled with a good-looking viscount or baronet through his manor house’s park. But there was no way George could have noticed that.
George shrugged. “Well, miss, you’re always reading marriage adverts,” he said cheekily, indicating the church leaflet with a conciliatory grin. Helen berated herself for leaving it lying open next to her lectern. Naturally, a bored George would steal a glance at it while she was helping William put his thoughts in order.
“And you’re very pretty, miss,” George tried sweet-talking her. “Why shouldn’t you marry a baronet?”
Helen rolled her eyes. She knew that she should chide George, but she couldn’t help but be amused. If the boy kept it up, he’d go far; at least with the ladies, and in the business world people would appreciate his talent for flattery too. But would it help him at Cambridge? Besides, Helen believed herself immune to such silly compliments. She knew she wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense. Though her features were symmetrical, they were rather ordinary; her mouth was a bit too thin, her nose too pointy, and her calm, gray eyes gazed too
critically on the world to arouse the interest of a rich, young bon vivant. Helen’s most attractive feature was her long, straight, silky brown hair, tinged with red, which fell to her waist. Perhaps she could have turned heads with it if she had let it blow freely in the breeze, as some girls did at the picnics and garden parties that Helen attended with the Greenwoods. The more brazen among the young ladies might declare all of a sudden while strolling with their admirers that it was too hot and remove their hats. Or they pretended that the wind blew their little hats away while a young man was rowing them across the pond in Hyde Park. Then they would shake down their hair, freeing it as though by accident from the constraints of bands and barrettes and letting the men marvel at their luxurious tresses.
Helen could never bring herself to do that. As the daughter of a pastor, she had been raised strictly and worn her hair braided and pinned up since she was a little girl. She had had to grow up early, as her mother had died when she was twelve and her father had placed Helen in charge of keeping house and raising her three younger siblings. Reverend Davenport had not concerned himself with problems in the kitchen and the nursery. Instead, he had immersed himself in his parish work and the translation and interpretation of religious texts. He had paid attention to Helen only when she kept him company while he worked—only by fleeing into her father’s attic study could she escape the chaotic tumult of the family’s apartment. Which was why Helen could already read the Bible in Greek when her brothers were still sloughing their way through their first reading primers. In her beautiful, needle-sharp handwriting, she transcribed her father’s sermons and copied his article submissions for the diocese of Liverpool’s newsletter. There was little time for diversions. While Susan, Helen’s younger sister, took advantage of charity bazaars and church picnics to get to know the parish’s young notables, Helen helped with the selling of goods, baked cakes, and poured tea. Unsurprisingly, Susan married a well-known doctor’s son as soon as she turned seventeen, while Helen had been forced to take a position as a household tutor after her father died. Furthermore, with her earnings she supported her two brothers’ law and medical studies. Their inheritance from their father had not been sufficient to finance a proper education for the boys—nor were they making much effort to complete their studies in a timely manner. With a flash of anger, Helen recalled how her brother had barely scraped through yet another exam just last week.
“Baronets normally marry baronesses,” she finally replied curtly to George’s question. “And as for this…” she pointed to the church leaflet, “I was reading the article, not the advertisement.”
George said nothing but grinned knowingly. The article was about applying heat to arthritis, surely of interest to the older members of the parish, but Miss Davenport clearly did not suffer from joint pain.
Nevertheless, his teacher looked at the clock and decided to end the afternoon lesson after all. While George needed only five minutes to comb his hair and change for dinner, and Helen hardly more than that, it always took quite a bit longer to get William out of his ink-stained school uniform and into a presentable suit. Helen was grateful that she was not responsible for looking after William’s presentability. A nanny saw to that.
The young governess ended the lesson with a few general remarks on the importance of grammar, to which the two boys listened only halfheartedly. Immediately afterward, William leaped up excitedly, without giving his schoolwork a backward glance.
“I have to show Mummy, real quick, what I’ve made!” he declared, successfully foisting the work of cleaning up on Helen. She couldn’t risk having him flee in tears to his mother, telling her about some outrageous injustice on the part of his teacher. George cast a glance at William’s poorly executed drawing, which his mother would no doubt praise with cries of delight. Then he quickly packed his things. Helen noticed that he cast an almost sympathetic look her way as he left. She caught herself thinking about George's comment from earlier that, if she never found a husband, she would have to wrestle with hopeless cases like Willy the rest of her days.
Helen reached for the church leaflet. She had meant to throw it away but then thought better of it. She snuck it into her bag and took it with her to her room.
Robert Greenwood did not have much time for his family, but dinnertime with his wife and children was sacred to him. The presence of the young governess did not bother him a bit. On the contrary, he often found it stimulating to include Helen Davenport in conversation and learn her views on current events, literature, and music. She clearly had a better understanding of these matters than his spouse, whose classical education was somewhat lacking in this regard. Lucinda’s interests were limited to keeping house, idolizing her younger son, and working on the ladies’ committees of various charitable organizations.
So on this particular evening, Robert Greenwood smiled amiably as Helen entered, and pulled out a chair for her after formally greeting the young instructor. Helen returned the smile, taking care, however, to include Lucinda Greenwood. Under no circumstances did she want to arouse the suspicion that she was flirting with her employer, even if Robert Greenwood was an undeniably attractive man. Tall and slim, he had a thin, intelligent face and inquisitive brown eyes. His brown three-piece suit and gold watch chain suited him admirably, and his manners were second to none—even those of the gentlemen from the noble families in whose social circles the Greenwoods moved. Nevertheless, they were not entirely recognized in these circles and were still regarded as parvenus. Robert Greenwood’s father had built his flourishing company from practically nothing, and his son worked hard to increase their prosperity and social standing. Which explained his marriage to Lucinda Raiford, who came from an impoverished noble family. The Raifords’ poverty could be easily traced to Lucinda’s father’s penchant for gambling and horses, or so the rumors went. Lucinda had only grudgingly accepted her bourgeois status and tended a bit toward showing off. Thus the Greenwoods’ receptions and garden parties were always a touch more opulent than those of other London society notables. Though the other ladies enjoyed them, they criticized them nevertheless.
Even this evening, Lucinda had once again over-primped for a simple dinner with her family. She wore an elegant dress of lilac-colored silk, and her maid must have been busy for hours with her hair. Lucinda chatted on about a meeting of the ladies’ committee for the local orphanage that she’d attended that afternoon, but she did not get much of a response; neither Helen nor Robert Greenwood were especially interested.
“And what have you all done with this lovely day?” Lucinda Greenwood asked, finally turning her attention to her family. “I don’t need to ask you, Robert; presumably, it was work, work, work.” She showered her husband with a gaze that was no doubt meant to convey loving indulgence.
Lucinda Greenwood was of the opinion that her spouse paid too little attention to her and her social obligations. Now he grimaced unintentionally. Robert likely had an unkind response on the tip of his tongue, for his work not only provided for the family but also made Lucinda’s involvement in the various ladies’ committees possible in the first place. Helen doubted that Lucinda Greenwood’s organizational abilities had secured her election—it was more likely a result of her spouse’s charitable nature.
“I had a very interesting conversation with a wool producer from New Zealand, and…” Robert began, glancing at his eldest son. But Lucinda simply carried on speaking, now turning her indulgent smile on William.
“And you, my dear children? Surely you played in the garden, didn’t you? Did you beat George and Miss Davenport at croquet again, William dearest?”
Helen stared fixedly at her plate. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw George blinking heavenward in his usual manner, as though calling out to an understanding angel for succor. In reality, William had succeeded in winning more points than his older brother in only one instance, and George had had a nasty cold at the time. Although Helen hit the ball more skillfully through the hoops than William, she oft
en let him win. Lucinda approved, but her husband admonished her whenever he observed the ruse.
“The boy must get used to the fact that the world plays rough with fools,” he said sternly. “He has to learn to lose. That’s the only way he will ever win!”
Helen doubted that William would ever win, in any field at all. But her flash of sympathy for the unfortunate child was immediately eclipsed by his next comment.
“Oh, Mummy, Miss Davenport didn’t let us play at all,” William said with a pout. “We sat inside the whole day and studied, studied, studied.”
Lucinda shot Helen a disapproving look. “Is this true, Miss Davenport? You know, of course, that the children need fresh air. At this age they can’t simply sit with their noses in books all day!”
Helen seethed within, but she could not accuse William of lying. To her relief, George stepped in.
“That’s simply not true. Just like every day, William took a walk after lunch. But then it started to rain, and he didn’t want to go out. The nanny dragged him around the park once, and there wasn’t any time left for croquet before our lesson.”
“William painted instead,” Helen said, in an effort to redirect the conversation. Maybe Lucinda Greenwood would start praising William’s museum-worthy sketch and forget about William’s lack of fresh air. But it didn’t turn out as she’d hoped.
“Even so, Miss Davenport, when the weather at noon doesn’t cooperate, you simply must take a break in the afternoon. In the circles in which William will someday move, physical fitness is almost as important as intellectual ability.”
William seemed to enjoy the reprimand for his teacher, and Helen thought once more of the aforementioned advertisement.
George seemed to read Helen’s thoughts. Ignoring the discussion with William and his mother, he took up the conversation where his father had left off. Helen had noticed this trick between father and son several times before and was generally astounded at the elegant transition. This time, however, George’s comment made her blush.
“Miss Davenport is interested in New Zealand, Father.”