by Fiona Kidman
Her eyes flicked across the room to where Martha McWhirtle sat in a corner. The afternoon sun had been making her guest even drowsier than she usually was. It was rare for Martha to join them, for there was little respite between the annual bouts of childbirth which had continued since her arrival in New Zealand, and when she did come she was quiet and abandoned, for the most part, to private thoughts. Her once magnificent hair straggled from under her cap, rusty-coloured and streaked with grey.
‘Yes Martha, tell us what you have heard,’ they said, turning to her now. ‘Is it true that people are building tunnels at Omaha down to the river banks in order to escape the natives when they attack? Should we be afraid?’
‘I’ve heard that people are doing that. They can’t have much to do with their time,’ said Martha, forced to rouse herself from a reverie. The tearing of the cards and the whirring of the spinning wheels dropped away. ‘The Maori seem perfectly friendly to me.’
‘Well you would know better than we do,’ said Annie briskly and wondered why she had addressed Martha, for she guessed what she might say before she had spoken.
But it was too late to retrieve the situation, for Martha looked around them thoughtfully and said, ‘Duncan Cave has told me that the Maori were given small change in return for their land. They were swindled by Busby. I think they have cause to be annoyed.’
‘What do you mean? We have paid for our land.’ Annie’s voice was sharp. Her afternoon, her lovely day which she had planned with such care, was not going well. She always regretted inviting Martha McWhirtle and had not expected her to come.
‘I was not suggesting you did not. It was Busby I was referring to.’ Martha picked up a fleece and began winding it around a card with unusual determination. ‘Forty pounds in gold, sixty blankets, ten coats, ten black trousers, twenty-five white pairs, four cloaks, five pieces for gowns, fifteen handkerchiefs, three hakimana …’
‘What is that?’
‘Guns,’ said Martha without altering her inflection. ‘Twenty hoes, fifteen iron pots, some axes, some bags of shot, and a bit of tobacco. That is as much as I can remember. But that is about all there was.’
‘It is a fortune,’ said an outraged voice from the back of the room.
‘It depends on what it is required to purchase.’
‘I have never heard such nonsense,’ said Annie. Her tone was bitter. ‘That is what I would expect of that fellow.’
Everyone in the room knew that she meant her half-brother, and that she would not refer to him again by name if she could avoid it.
‘It is not Duncan who has told me of it. It is Riria, who is his friend and has come to assist me with the children. She is a great help. I don’t know how I ever managed without her,’ said Martha, looking around them with a mild gaze. ‘Now at least I can go visiting from time to time. It is nice for me, don’t you agree?’
But the thought of the stranger who at this very moment was caring for Martha’s children was too much for the other women to contemplate. They frowned, and fumbled amongst the wool, turning back to their work.
‘Of course,’ said Martha, continuing in her contemplative fashion, ‘it is neither here nor there to us, we have no land.’
‘I am sorry for you Martha,’ said Annie, and knew she had gone too far. The older woman was not without friends, especially those who remembered her in the schoolroom when they were children.
‘Alexander is not inclined to own land, that is how it is,’ responded Martha, as if the conversation was quite natural. ‘But there, he is talking of going to the Coromandel soon. He has always had a mind to gather gold, and often wishes we had stayed in Australia. So it is just as well that we have accumulated so little. Except children.’ She smiled in a rueful way and was silent again.
‘How sorry my mother will be,’ exclaimed Annie, flickering delicately with pleasure and wishing to end the conversation there.
But soon her friends began to leave and in her raging heart she could hear them talking about what they had heard, imagining themselves safely out of earshot. She vowed to tell Hector about it at the next opportunity, and ask him what he would do about Duncan Cave, whom they also called Duncan Clubby, raised like Lazarus by their disreputable mother when she had thought him gone forever.
When she had recovered herself, she realised that at least the diversion had saved the women from asking after Francis, and maybe that it had all been for the best. For Francis had compromised Annie with the reality of change long before the death of McLeod. She had often felt compelled to stay silent when sinful ways were discussed. Francis, stout and comfortable, had filled their house with tobacco smoke and a beery breath. And there were other matters which gave rise to sideways looks and extra cups of tea; these she preferred not to contemplate.
In the end, the problem of Duncan Cave had not been with them for long. His reappearance was short-lived and when he died he was easier to cope with in the grave than he had been out of it. The same was true of Francis, though his departure took much longer. Time and death would enhance both men’s images and Annie would take her place with those who reviewed the effects of sin.
When Isabella had been accounted for as well, there was only Maria to contend with in the battle for moral superiority.
Until the dark man from the diggings swept away all the edifices which she had so carefully built around her daughter.
Maria dreamed of her mother. The air outside was acrid with the smell of ash and burnt vegetation. Here and there a lick of fire erupted amongst the stumps of the broken trees. A watcher slipped towards it and wielding his wet sack disappeared into the shadows.
In Maria’s dreams she saw her mother as she thought she might have been as a young woman, dark with a touch of stateliness in spite of her rounded shape. She could smell milk on her as she sat on a stool in a barn in Nova Scotia, her face against the flanks of a warm and restless cow, her hands stripping and pulsing, her dreams as yet unrealised. What did her mother dream of in those days? And had the dreams come true?
She opened her eyes for a moment, wondering where she was. It was the same bedroom that she had slept in all her life. What was the sound outside? Snow banking against the roof? But it was the wind and the sound of the trees shaking, and the earth in pain from the blight of fire. She called to her mother but no one came. She did not believe that Annie would not come to her, that they would stop her from coming now, after a day of mortal danger.
She thought she heard a voice but it did not answer hers, was some other person who watched in the night.
Sleeping, dozing, waking for periods, gradually becoming conscious as another milky dawn crept under the curtain, she relived her last meeting with her mother.
‘You’re very fancy to be going to church, young lady.’ Annie’s voice was sharp.
‘It’s only a bit of ribbon on my hat.’ Maria studied her reflection in the mirror. The ribbon was pale blue. She had considered something brighter, but it seemed unwise to draw too much attention to herself. Besides, the blue was cunningly bright against her straw-gold hair and her blue eyes that held a hint of green. ‘Just like your grandmother,’ Annie had remarked more than once, noting those shifting, elusive colours that were neither one thing nor another. She said it as though it tainted her admiration for Maria.
‘Only a bit of ribbon. D’you know what the Man would have said to that?’
‘McLeod? Ah mother, McLeod’s long gone, you don’t want to be dwelling on that forever.’
Annie’s face grew dark and Maria thought that she really believed he was listening, that he could hear her.
‘Let the Devil take McLeod.’
Her mother’s hand flicked out and Maria turned quickly away, narrowly avoiding the blow. But the warning was there. Annie had never struck Maria. Remembering this, Maria was afraid. It was not just what she had said, but all that had gone between them in recent weeks. Her mother was stretched to a state of almost unendurable tension.
Maria want
ed to soften the moment. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean it. Truly.’
‘He turned many a woman out of the kirk for her vanity.’
‘I know.’
‘What makes you think you’re better than the old people?’
Stung then, she retorted, ‘Perhaps you’d like me to shave my head?’
The two women exchanged despairing looks.
‘Don’t be cruel, Maria.’ It was Annie who broke first. ‘I’m old. You hurt me too much with talk like that. Oh your hair, that anyone should touch one strand of it.’ She could not resist touching it, running her fingers through it, and Maria, knowing she had won, stood allowing the privilege. ‘Don’t ever say that to me, not in jest, or anger. Heh, it’s so beautiful, such fine lovely hair, why d’you need ribbons and bows when you’ve got a crown like that to wear on your head? Eh? Eh, tell me, bonnie girl?’
Maria smiled at her mother then, through a tangle of starry brown lashes. ‘There, mother, it’s a wee bit of ribbon really.’
‘Oh. Oh you. Well go along. I can’t say anything.’
‘Come on then, we’ll be late.’
‘Aye, and keen for kirk too, ah that’s better, yes.’
The congregation had settled and the minister ascended into his pulpit. Light filtered through the tall tree outside, through the ungarnished windows, as the chamber echoed with the responses of the congregation. In the pew across the aisle sat her Uncle Hector, and behind him his sons and their new wives. The Minister, Kenneth Falconer, was a young man with an ascetic face, filling in for a year while Aeneas Morrison, a disciple in McLeod’s footsteps, was visiting his mother in Nova Scotia. Some said that it was this young man, however, who had a visage like McLeod’s and that his sermons were full of fire that reminded them of the past. His frequent sharp remarks appeared to be aimed at members of the congregation, striking to the very heart and causing blushes of shame such as had not been seen or felt for thirty years. The old people nodded their heads and glanced sideways at each other. There was a certain half-forgotten malice in the air. The church had been fuller each Sunday than it had for years.
The minister was very tall and leaned towards them from the pulpit, his light hair already thinning, steel-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his high-humped nose. He had a piercing voice which made Maria uncomfortable. She was sitting at the end of the pew against the wall and she leaned her face against the cool planed wood, as if it might block out at least a half of what was being said. She longed to look around but dared not. The unconfirmed presence behind her made her restless, so that she had to restrain herself from squirming in her seat. Perhaps it would help if she were to concentrate on the sermon?
She raised her eyes towards those of Kenneth Falconer, and it seemed as if he were leaning forward to address her directly. Clearly others in the congregation thought so too, for although they were trying not to look in her direction, imperceptibly their eyes were being drawn.
‘Timothy Chapter Two,’ intoned the Reverend Falconer.
There was a rustle amongst the people. ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold … or pearls … or costly ar-ray …’
Up and down the pews, flashing looks across the aisles now, the old people remembering the word of the Man. Or God. Wearily, Maria supposed that you could take your pick. They were one and the same, were they not?
The faces around her had taken on an alien look. They were no longer the faces of the people she had known all her life, but set countenances, with eyes looking across snow and ice and storm-driven seas, eyes set in networks of fine wrinkles, the women with mouths drawn and sucked in to small tight lines, the men stern and ramrod straight, grown like strangers. She wanted to duck their eyes, to look away from them, but she was afraid that if she did she might be seen to be looking at the man she knew now was sitting behind. The man who had come to look at her.
Instead, she held their gaze.
Afterwards they would say she looked back at them as bold as brass, as a brazen woman would.
‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection,’ said Kenneth Falconer. ‘I suffer a woman not to teach, not to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’
Beside her, her mother’s face was pale as glass and her eyes like those of a frightened animal. Maria reached out with a small gesture, which she hoped was inconspicuous, to take her mother’s hand, but what she touched was cold and unresponsive, shaking like the hand of someone who has lain asleep on a limb and woken to find it beating round wildly and without feeling.
Kenneth Falconer’s voice was very soft now, drawing them all in so that they listened to every word. ‘For Adam was first formed, then Eve …’
Not a word was spoken now in the church; there was only a silence that seemed as if it would never end. Then Maria heard someone scrape past a pew behind her, breaking the silence and scrambling to leave. Footsteps rang on the wooden floor and every eye except hers and Annie’s followed his departure.
Kenneth Falconer raised his chin slightly, his eyes which were a washed-out grey seeming to glint and shine a little more brightly behind the polished spectacles. ‘And if a woman has no man in her immediate family, an unfortunate situation which some people sadly, through death or circumstances, should find themselves in, until the time when she is taken in holy wedlock to be spiritually guided by the rightful head of her household … and her Bo-dy, then she must take counsel from those who are close and dear to her, and from the influence of the community which has nurtured her. Let me recommend the reading of Timothy 1 to all of you who might fall into this unus-ual category of people. Of course,’ and here he flashed a sudden smile of wintry light around him, ‘I have known this flock for only a short time. It may be that there is no one to whom the wisdom of Timothy particularly applies at this moment, but still it is worthwhile for all of us to reflect upon such matters, and all those women amongst us who are of fruitful years may take comfort from the concluding words of that chapter, in which we are reminded that the woman in transgression shall be saved by childbearing, if she should contin-ue in faith and charity and holiness and sobriety, Glory be to God Amen.’ With this flourish he concluded his sermon and Murdoch MacKenzie who was layreading stood up to give the notices. It was over, or so Maria thought, for the rest of the proceedings passed her in a blur of sound of which she was no part, just a fly against a wall, and the figure of Kenneth Falconer was the giant spider with his eyes magnified and multiplied behind his glasses.
As they rose to file out, Annie appeared to have recovered herself. She held her head high and her step was firm. She strode from the church, looking slightly to the left and right and nodding good morning to her neighbours, as if what had occurred was of no account to her at all.
At the door she stopped and shook Kenneth Falconer by the hand as was her wont. ‘A fine sermon, Mr Falconer.’
‘Thank you, Mrs McClure.’ He nodded his head gently up and down.
Trapped now, Annie could not leave without saying more. ‘It reminded me of the old days and the Man himself. Well, you’ve heard speak of the Man here, of course.’
‘Indeed, oh yes I have,’ he agreed.
‘I was reared at his table,’ she said stiffly, as if he had not understood her connection.
‘Really? Well, no one ever told me that.’
‘Why then, you must come to lunch, and I’ll tell you more of it,’ said Annie. ‘I’ve fresh bread baked last night, and cold meats prepared yesterday.’ She wished him to be aware of her consideration for the Sabbath, and that she knew how the old people did things.
He was dismissing her with such smoothness that for a moment she might have thought there was a hint of warmth in his voice, but in the unusual quietness of her friends, who were pretending now that they were not listening to the conversation instead of engaging in their usual lively Sunday discourse, she knew that she had imagined it and that
she was alone.
But still there was Maria who must pass Kenneth Falconer. Now the forced conversation around them fell completely away. Maria could nod her head and pass with downcast eyes and they might yet forgive her. Especially those who had always known her and remembering her as a small and shining child without a father might recognise in her the troubled woman whom they could yet protect. They were close enough to put out their hands and hold her.
Instead, she stood in front of the minister and looking into his multi-faceted eyes, said, ‘My mother is a widow, and a good woman. Did you deliberately set out to cause her pain?’
‘Miss McClure, I do not understand you.’
‘Was it the way of Christ to inflict public humiliation on a defenceless woman? Really, Mr Falconer, it seems to me that whatever business you may think you have to do with my mother and me, and in my opinion you have none, that it should be conducted in a courteous and private manner.’
‘I was discussing the scriptures in my sermon. And I do not think that women, young women such as yourself in particular, are fitted to discuss the scriptures, Miss McClure.’
‘Minister, I do not agree with your view,’ she said, lifting her chin.
‘I have nothing more to say to you. Good day, Miss McClure.’
‘Oh Mr Falconer, but it is not for you to decide when our conversation is to end. Who pays your stipend? Is it not we, the people?’ Maria opened the bag hooked to her wrist, and drew out three pence from it. ‘Mr Falconer, I despise you,’ she said, and threw the money at his feet.
Under the tree outside, Annie stood clutching its trunk. Those near her resumed their talking to cover what they had seen but nobody came to join her. Across the distance that separated them, Maria looked at her mother and turned to walk away. She will follow me, she said to herself, it is the only way, I have broken with them all, but she will not break with me. We are tied to each other and beyond that to the grave; to Isabella my grandmother, and to all women who have suffered and borne children and succoured each other. She will follow me down the road and I will tell her goodbye, that I must go with Branco, who has returned for me.