by Karen Zelas
People are looking askance at me with my girth increasing every day. It is hard to know what they are thinking. Sometimes I see pity, sometimes a smirk, as if I were a wanton woman, as if I had taken advantage of Claude in his illness to harvest one more child from him.
I do not tell them the truth. I dare not. I let them think what they will. Whatever it is, it will be easier for them to accept than my love for Tā¯tahi.
Only with my Tātahi can I indulge myself in picturing the little golden skinned infant who will soon be mine, ours. Tama caresses my belly and kisses our baby, and I return his caresses and kisses.
Sometimes a little guilt sneaks into the corner of my mind when I think of his “wife” and children, but never shame … I can never think of our love as shameful. I feel no guilt about Claude. I have done, and still do my best by him. But I never loved him like this. At one time I would have, if he had let me, but it was not his way. It appals me to think I could have missed knowing another as I know Tātahi.
Sue marvelled at Brigitte’s strength and quailed to think what lay before her, what reserves she would need to cope in their small, closed community. She obviously had not run away or hidden, or she would not have been living in the same house three years later. And anyway, where could she have run? Sue placed the first letter beside her and took up the next …
Ma chère Maman,
Today I confided in Rose. I thought I must prepare her. She will need to help me when my time comes and I cannot have her taking faint at the crucial moment. Poor Rose! You would think I had told her I was to give birth to a twin-headed monster. Her face was bleached of all colour, and all she could do was murmur: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
I am fearful that lifting and turning Claude may bring the baby early. I have everything ready, even my resolve not to be weighed down by what the old crows will say, Agnès and Thérèse. Always sticking their beaks into other people’s business, crossing themselves and saying “Hail Marys”. And Claudette who is barren and unable to forgive anyone who is fertile. I must not think of it, for it makes me angry in anticipation and that cannot be good for my baby. I want him to be a peaceable child, and to live in peace in a privileged position joining two races.
… and the next …
Chère Maman,
My ungodly transgression is known, and it is as I feared. No one but Rose will stand beside me and even she is disapproving, although I must say that she is enchanted by our little Waihau. It is what he represents that she takes exception to, my being unfaithful to my husband – although I see signs of the struggle within her, since she knows how cruel Claude has been to me. But to others he is a pillar of the community. I will continue to hold my head high, though women turn from me in the street and the store. But this is better than the taunts and spiteful comments received initially from Thérèse and Agnès. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with. And me still weak from childbirth. You might think they would have shown more human kindness. Still, if I had not been so weak, I might have said something I would later regret.
But my girls are devoted to their little brother. He is rarely out of their arms. His little presence helps heal the wound left by the loss of their big brother. How we all miss him still, Maman! At times I feel so angry that the Good Lord saw fit to take him from me. With what justification? With what right? Was I being punished in advance?
I fear for Waihau’s safety, even in Claude’s weakened state, if he were to comprehend the significance of our wee newcomer. I keep them well apart and am vigilant to ensure no self-righteous busybody tries to advise him. I could not bear to lose the baby, too.
Waihau will take Claude’s surname as his middle name (I am determined about that) so that he will not forget his French heritage, and so that those he meets will have to acknowledge it.
… and the next …
Claude has passed away in his sleep. It is such a relief! Tātahi is now openly living as my husband. It is difficult, but I have no regrets other than that people make it difficult when it need not be.
I stand in our garden sometimes and look at the hills and the sea and remember our beginnings here. Claude and I had such hopes and expectations, many of which have been fulfilled. I do not want to forget that, or the gratitude I owe him for those early days.
This afternoon I received a deputation, a few parents of children in my school and more of those who have no children but think they set the moral standards for our community. They said that while I continue to live in sin, I am not fit to teach their children. They would rather their children were illiterate than corrupted.
I refuse to see myself as sinful. Everyone is entitled to a little happiness in life and I am no exception.
…
I continue to be unable to teach in my own school! What hypocrisy! It makes my blood boil when I remember that so few of these people were willing to attend mass regularly that the priests sailed away and left us. Yet they are quick to criticise and to do so in the name of Our Holy Father.
What is more, Marie and Cathérine are being ostracised at school and there is muttering that they should leave so they should not be an ungodly influence on the other children. In my own school! I will not have it!
Sue rested her hands in her lap, still holding a scrap of paper with Brigitte’s neat spidery writing upon it. This house had been both hell and haven to Brigitte. Her eyes wandered around the room, settling on the iron catches of the window, the pointed bricks of the chimney breast, straying along the lines of the wide hand-hewn ceiling boards, down to the polished kauri floor. Brigitte – Bibi – sat in this room with her love, Tātahi. She received the accusatory deputation perhaps in this room, or rather, Sue hoped, outside on the porch; she wanted Bibi to have had the strength not to allow her accusers inside her home.
While Tātahi and my children are consolation, I must find a solution to this impasse. I will not be brought down.
Sue took the last piece of paper in her hands.
Ma chère, chère Maman
Tātahi and I are to be married. It will be official. I have discussed it with the Magistrate. I am a widow and Tātahi has never been married according to British law, therefore a marriage can proceed. When the opportunity arises, when we are next visited by the Bishop or a priest, the union will be blessed.
We will wed quietly, Maman, as befits the circumstances. After that there will be no justification for the scandalmongers to continue their campaign. We just wish to live peaceably with our neighbours in our community.
Te Marama will not come to our wedding, as she is unable to walk far these days, but she gives us her blessing. She is pleased to have a new mokopuna. Her other grandchildren have returned with their mother to her people, except for the eldest who remains to take care of her, as is the custom. I am so glad Te Marama is accepting of me as a daughter. I have come to love her dearly, though never as dearly as you, Maman.
Your loving daughter always,
Bibi
Sue sat a long time, barely moving. The light slowly faded until the Mt Bossu in her picture became a vague smudge. She had not been thinking so much as feeling. Feeling Brigitte’s sadness and joy, her outrage and calm. When she started to think, it was about the terrible, destructive influence of prejudice. She wondered whether moral prejudice might have been superseded by racial prejudice. How would Brigitte’s marriage to Tātahi have been greeted? From her reading, it seemed to have been acceptable for men to take Maori wives, but for a French widow to take a Maori husband? The English might have accepted it, but would the small, nominally Catholic French community? Sue thought how prejudice was never far beneath the surface – racial, religious, socioeconomic – and how the boundaries between them often blurred. Ben may say he was not racially prejudiced and that his opinions reflected objective facts, but was that just fortuitous? Did his prejudice antedate his knowledge of “the facts”? Is that what led him into Sociology? Had Charlie been more perceptive than she? There were no answers. She wrapped th
e scraps of paper in their cloth and placed them on the mantelpiece. Then she went upstairs to replace the floorboard.
Next morning, once the early mist had risen, the day was bright and clear. Sue looked out her bedroom window across to Mt Bossu. A great day for planting her newly dug herb garden. With Brigitte’s letters still on her mind, she headed up the valley to the Herb Farm to make her purchases. She meandered between the tables of plants, squeezing a leaf surreptitiously here, inhaling the heady aroma there. On the way back, the car boot laden with pottles of herbs, she stopped at the museum to invite Russell for dinner that evening. ‘I have something to show you,’ she said.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon were spent laying out the potager. Sue had dug a circular plot. Now, she planted the herbs in segments, leaving spaces between to make narrow brick pathways. In the centre, she planned to place a sundial – or a birdbath.
Sue enjoyed the physical work. She thought of Brigitte – Bibi – working in this same garden more than 150 years ago, planting fruit trees that flowered and fruited to this day. She stopped to examine the berry-sized fruit already appearing on the trees around her and wondered at their generative capacity. And Tātahi – she thought of Tātahi, with his spade. She wondered how much of the surrounding land had been under cultivation then. When she was done, she stood back and admired her handiwork. She would have to source some old bricks and persuade Ben to bring them over.
It was a warm walk to the butcher’s shop. Entering was like stepping back in time: butcher’s block in the corner, cuts laid out neatly behind glass and garnished with parsley, refrigerated chamber in the rear wall. The butcher cheerful in his white overall. Sue had no idea what Russell would like to eat. She hoped he was not vegetarian, as she walked out of the shop with a parcel of lamb fillet. Perhaps she should be giving him moules frites, she mused.
She returned to the cottage to put the meat in the fridge, then strolled beside the seawall to the bakery at the other end of town. French pastries and coffee would do for dessert. It was low tide and the salty tang of wet sand reached her. She watched the fishing boats putt-putting from the wharf back to their moorings at the end of the working day, each escorted by a flock of gulls, wheeling and squawking, reminding her of the fishing boat in the harbour at La Rochelle – and Gérard …
Sue was rushing around the kitchen, hot and flustered, when Russell arrived. ‘I can’t remember where I put anything,’ she said.
Russell placed a bottle of chardonnay on the bench. ‘You must have found something, if the vapours are anything to go by.’
‘You’re not vegetarian then?’
Russell shook his head. ‘I draw the line at saving the whales and dolphins.’ He gestured towards the bottle he had brought. ‘Do you suppose you can find a corkscrew?’
‘You have as much chance as me. Start looking in there.’ She pointed. ‘And glasses are there.’
Russell poured the wine and strolled into the living room with his glass.
‘Love the painting, darling. Is that what you had to show me? Mmm. Look at the light. D’you know that they say: if you can’t see the top of Mt Bossu, it’s raining, and if you can, it’s going to rain?’ Sue laughed. ‘It’s taken you no time at all to make the place look lived in.’
‘Is that a way of saying it’s untidy?’
‘What is it with you? Accept a compliment when given, darling. The room is divine. Invites me to poke around and discover things – about you. Who you are.’
‘When you find out, let me know,’ Sue said, Greek salad in one hand, sliced, grilled lamb fillet in the other. She placed them on the table with a bowl of new potatoes and fetched her wine. ‘Bon appetit.’ She raised her glass to Russell’s. She would save the letters for afters.
The wine, food and a sympathetic ear loosened Russell’s tongue. He recounted the saga of Guy’s leaving. The abject misery on his face moved Sue deeply. She felt annoyed with Guy for taking advantage of his lover’s generosity. For taking, and then when it suited him, leaving. That was not love; recent experience had convinced her of that – she sighed, thinking how nearly she had discarded what she and Ben shared. Sue suspected Russell would be easy prey for a young man needing temporary refuge. He deserved more loyalty than that. She thought Guy was not worth Russell’s grief, but realised it was not the time to say so.
‘Here, the last few drops are yours,’ she said, upending the wine bottle.
Over coffee and pastries, Sue said she would like to make a digital copy of the photo of Brigitte and the cottage. ‘I’ll put it in a recycled rimu frame and hang it over there,’ she pointed to the left of the bay window, ‘where it won’t fade. It would be nice to have them in here with me, Brigitte and Tātahi.’
‘Looks like we’re getting some money to employ an archivist for a time,’ said Russell. ‘Who knows what we might find if someone goes through everything carefully.’
Sue rose and took the fabric package from the mantelpiece. ‘This is what I wanted to show you,’ she said, unfolding the linen and passing the open package to Russell. She sat beside him on the couch to read the letters once more over his shoulder.
‘She was one spunky woman,’ said Russell when he came to the end.
‘Everything falls into place, doesn’t it?’ Sue said. ‘Waihau Dujardin Tātahi.’
‘Imagine the discrimination they faced. It’s monstrous that people treat each other like that. It’s terrible being on the receiving end.’ Russell shook his head sadly.
‘Yes.’ Sue felt again the anger that had surged when she read of their persecution. ‘In another age, she might have been burnt at the stake.’ She wished she could have been there to support Brigitte, to tell the narrow-minded bigots … Sue stopped; she had been one herself, she now knew. So many of her own faults she had criticised in others. It made her feel humble, as if she should make reparation. ‘I haven’t yet discovered when Brigitte died or where. It would be nice to locate her grave one day,’ she said, distracting herself from her discomfort.
The following morning dawned fine, the atmosphere crystal clear. A cool wind blew in from the sea, a southerly. Sue decided to go to Onuku. She had not been there since childhood and wondered how she would see it now. Things never look the same when you go back, she thought. Memories of a family picnic on the foreshore, near a small cemetery, sprang to mind. Throwing a ball, swimming, while her mother, recuperating from radiotherapy, sat in the shade of a large, striped umbrella. Her father, stripped to the waist, tanned.
Sue turned the car onto Rue Jolie and headed up-hill past the Garden of Tane. She followed Onuku Road for a winding three kilometres, tantalising glimpses of the harbour and Wainui on the opposite shore appearing and vanishing through the pine trees. Any cloud had dispersed and the sun shot blinding arrows between the black branches.
At Onuku, the road came down to the foreshore, to a small area of open land at the base of a valley. To one side in the foreground was the marae, enclosed by a traditional fortification of hand-hewn, pointed palings, weathered by wind, rain, salt and sun. Large, carved ancestors flanked the entrance, their paua eyes flashing. Flax, cabbage trees and lancewood surrounded the grassy assembly area. Beyond the marae, open grassland held a small cluster of houses.
Sue drew off the road into long grass and turned off the engine. She opened a window. The white noise of the sea on the pebbly shore engulfed her. She stepped out of the car, on her front a light southerly, on her back the warmth of the sun. A distant orchestra of cicadas, with one soloist close at hand. Somewhere, a lone bellbird’s call. It was so peaceful. Sue felt she was entering a special place. She walked slowly towards the settlement, between herself and the sea an enclosed area of grass and shrubs protected by an electric fence. Without the crudely painted sign, she would not have recognised this as the cemetery beside which her family had picnicked all those years ago.
A slight rise was dominated by the white church – she remembered the church – silhouetted against the az
ure sky, Mt Bossu to its right across the harbour. The sea was deep turquoise. A large red tiki stood sentinel beside the church and another on the peak of its roof, at the junction of the carved bargeboards. A red, picket fence enclosed the tiny building. The gate hung open, inviting Sue to enter. Pulling her jacket around her, she walked up the incline towards it, feeling strangely distant, her legs controlled by other than herself. She was startled by an amplified voice sweeping to her across the water over the hum of a motor. ‘… The Kaik. One of the oldest churches in the country. Built in 1876 … And here …’ The tourist catamaran. She could see the outline of passengers massed at the guardrail staring at the shore.
Drawing her attention back to the church, she entered the precinct. The Kaik was built of rough-hewn timber. On the porch, in front of the door, someone had placed a branch of leucodendron. Carefully stepping over the flower, Sue pushed the heavy door open and crossed the threshold. The original simplicity had been meticulously maintained. The Kaik was stunningly lit by two large gothic-shaped casement windows, framing views of the harbour and Mt Bossu, flaxes in the foreground.
Seated in a simple pew, Sue was at peace, as if she had come home. Her mind floated: Onuku was most likely Tātahi’s turangawaewae. The church was built long after Brigitte’s letter was written, so it would not have existed when he was young. She wondered how Tātahi had come into Brigitte’s life. She knew that there had been a small but thriving community here at Onuku when the French arrived, in spite of the casualties earlier inflicted by Te Rauparaha. Today the place seemed deserted. Not a human sound. The grassland at one time would have been cultivated and there would have been many whare.
Squinting in the sunlight, Sue walked back down the path to the gate, closing it gently and looking up at the guardian tiki. She wondered if it would protect her, if she could carry this serenity that had come upon her away into the rest of her life. She drifted down the slope to the marae entrance, intrigued by the tiny green and yellow lichens creating intricate patterns on the bleached wood of the fence posts, and was struck by the fierce demeanour of the carved figures. On the marae, she could see the large twentieth-century wharenui with carved bargeboards and a large warrior, pounamu mere in hand, perched atop the roof against the intense blue of the sky. Although the door to the meeting house appeared to be open, the marae gates were firmly closed and a notice warned against unauthorised entry. Sue did not feel authorised. Instead, she wandered up the road, past The Kaik and into the valley. The bellbird sang from the flax.