by Lark, Sarah
Elaine would have liked for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.
“Kura, it’s a folk song,” Helen explained. “You don’t have to stick to the notes obsessively.”
“You can only sing correctly or incorrectly,” Kura insisted. “If she had sung a G or a G-sharp…”
Elaine returned to her seat. “Just sing alone then!” she said sullenly.
And Kura did.
The incident had sobered everyone up, all the more so because no one else had noticed Elaine’s small mistake. Fleurette silently thanked heaven that the visitors would be moving out the next day. Although she enjoyed having her mother stay with her, she had to admit that she liked Kura as little as she liked William. Which recalled to Fleurette’s mind the matter of the assassination attempt in Ireland. Had Ruben noticed William’s reaction when she’d brought it up?
As she saw William out, Elaine thought over her situation with him. He did finally put his arms around her, but it was not as intoxicating as usual and felt instead like he was simply doing his duty. And the beautiful words that he mustered for her did not excite her much either.
“That music… and my red-haired dear… I feel as though I’m in the Salley Gardens.” William laughed and kissed her softly. “It’s strange, those songs, they bring Ireland back to life for me.”
“The vibrations” was on the tip of Elaine’s tongue, but she held it back at the last moment. William was not to think she was making fun of him.
“I wish my country was free, and I could return.”
Elaine frowned. “Can you not return while the English administer it? They’re not looking for you, are they?”
William laughed, though it came out a bit forced. “Of course not. Where did you get that idea? I’d just rather not return to a land in chains.”
Elaine remained skeptical. She tried to make him meet her gaze.
“William, you didn’t have anything to do with that assassination attempt, did you? On that… what was his name? Morley?”
“Viscount Morley of Blackburn,” William said, almost threateningly, through gritted teeth. “Chief secretary for Ireland, the highest-ranking oppressor.”
“But you didn’t shoot at him or plant a bomb, did you?” Elaine asked anxiously.
William glared at her. “If I had shot at him, he would be dead now. I’m a good shot. As for the bomb… it’s just a shame we never got close to him.”
Elaine was shocked. “But you tried to? Or knew about it? William!”
“If no one does anything, my country will never be free! And if we don’t show them that we’re prepared to do anything…”
William trailed off, bristling. Elaine, who had been leaning against him, backed away.
“But my father says Viscount Morley is for the Home Rule Bill,” she objected.
“For or against, what does that matter? He’s England’s representative. By going after him, we’d have struck a blow to the House of Lords and their whole accursed band!”
William felt once again the powerful rage he had felt when he and Paddy Murphy had been stopped at the entrance of the government building. They had found the bomb on his friend—an accident that had ended up saving his life. Though William had freely admitted his complicity, his father had pulled a few strings and talked to the right people. Ultimately, Paddy, a poor farmer’s son, had ended up on the scaffold, and they’d let William go. On the unofficial condition, however, that Frederic Martyn would get his son out of Ireland as quickly as possible. William had wanted to go to New York, but that was not far enough away to suit his father.
“I’d probably just hear about new idiocies. It’s practically crawling with agitators over there,” he said to his son as he booked his passage to New Zealand the next day. To Dunedin on the South Island, far from any nests of freedom fighters.
And now this girl was also objecting that he had tried to kill the wrong man.
“I think there is a difference,” Elaine said bravely. “In war you kill only your opponent and not his confederates.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Riled up, William turned away. “You’re just a girl.”
Elaine flared up angrily at him. “And girls don’t understand such things? It looks like you’re in the wrong country, William. Women can even vote here.”
“Good things are sure to come of that!” He was immediately sorry after the words burst from his mouth. He did not want to anger her. But she was such a child!
In his head, he heard Kura’s songlike speaking voice. Kura understood him. Even if she was technically younger than her cousin, she seemed more grown-up. She was already more developed, more womanly.
He caught himself thinking about Kura’s full breasts and wide hips as he pulled Elaine apologetically toward him.
“I’m sorry, Lainie, but Ireland… you simply can’t tell me about these things. Now, calm down, Lainie. Cheer up!”
Elaine had pulled back angrily from William at first, but then let herself be soothed. Still, she did not return his kiss right away. She did not seem to be in the best of spirits when she finally said good-bye to him.
William waved to her as he began to float down the river in his canoe. He would have to be especially nice to her the next day, even if her sulking got on his nerves, as he wanted to see Kura again. And for the time being, the only way to Kura was through Elaine.
6
Autumn in Queenstown was a sight to behold, with a variety of cultural and sporting events, most of which were organized by the parish. A few of the big farmers in the area threw parties as well, and the O’Keefes were invited, naturally—as were their guests from the Canterbury Plains. William received his invitations through Elaine, just as he had hoped he would. He accompanied her to church picnics and bazaars, musical evenings, and bingo games for charity. To Gwyneira’s delight and amazement, Kura usually joined them and seemed to enjoy herself. This, despite the fact that the girl had only honored festivities on Kiward Station and neighboring farms with her presence against her will.
“And here I was worried that Lainie and Kura wouldn’t particularly like each other,” she told Helen. “But now they’re always together.”
“Although Lainie doesn’t wear the happiest expression,” Helen observed keenly.
“Happy? The child looks like an animal in a trap,” Daphne interjected. The two “hotel” owners had met for their weekly tea, and Gwyneira had joined them. “I’d intervene, Helen. Kura is after Lainie’s boy.”
“Daphne! What a thing to say!” Helen recoiled.
Daphne rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, Helen. But I think… well, in my estimation, Miss Warden is showing an improper interest in Miss O’Keefe’s admirer.”
Gwyneira smiled. Daphne knew how to express herself appropriately for the occasion. Kura’s interest in William had not entirely escaped her—though she did not quite know what to make of it. Naturally, it was unfair to Elaine, but on the other hand, she liked William Martyn as her granddaughter’s admirer a great deal more than the Maori youth Tiare.
“But thus far, Mr. Martyn has behaved entirely correctly with regards to the girls,” Helen noted. “I haven’t noticed him favoring one over the other.”
“That’s just it,” said Daphne. “He’s supposed to prefer Elaine. She’s the one whose hopes he got up, after all. And now, at best, she gets as much attention as Kura. That has to have been a blow.”
“Oh, Daphne, they’re still children.” Gwyneira roused herself to a halfhearted pronouncement. “He cannot properly woo either of them yet.”
Daphne raised her eyebrows. “Children!” she snorted. “Don’t count on it. You’d do better to watch out—Helen, for Elaine’s tender soul and Gwyneira, for your heiress. For even if you’re convinced that Kura’s charms have not yet caused this William Martyn to lose any sleep… he can do other things in bed too. Counting sheep, for example. Lots and lots of sheep.”
Kura Warden did not know herself what was wrong
with her. Why she went along to these church picnics and let herself be chatted up by countless hicks. Why she listened to third-rate musicians and pretended she enjoyed their dilettante fiddling. Why she wasted her time with boat rides and picnics and found herself spitting out platitudes about the gorgeous landscape around Lake Wakatipu. It was all senseless, made only somewhat attractive because she was with William. She had never experienced anything like it before. She had never cared much for people. They were an audience, a mirror in which to check the effect she produced but never anything more. And now here was this William with his cheeky smile, his dimples, his flashing eyes, and his ethereal, sandy hair. Kura had never seen such a golden-blond person before; the Swedes and Norwegians in Christchurch were closest. But they were mostly pale and light-skinned, whereas William had brown skin that contrasted perfectly with his blond head of hair. And then there were his alert blue eyes, which followed her wherever she went. He made compliments without being at all salacious. His manners were irreproachable. Sometimes too irreproachable.
Kura often wished William would make more amorous advances, as Tiare had attempted to do. Naturally, she would reject his advances, but she wanted to feel the pulse of the earth—if, for example, he put his hand on her hip. The “pulse of the earth” was what Marama called it when a woman felt that tingling between her legs, that languorous ascendance of warmth through her body, the heartbeat of expectation. Kura had only rarely felt it with Tiare, but William unleashed it whenever his leg accidentally brushed her skirts under the table. Kura wished for clearer signs, but William always behaved very properly. Thus far, he had not granted her anything more than the fleeting touch of his hand whenever he helped her out of a boat or carriage. Kura, however, felt that these touches were neither accidental nor innocent. She was certain that their encounters electrified William too—that he burned with desire for her. Kura fanned that flame whenever she could.
She would have been astounded if anyone had told her how much she was hurting Elaine by doing so—she did not even notice her unhappy face and increasingly monosyllabic responses. Not that Kura would have foregone her efforts in order to spare her cousin. Kura did not even think about Elaine, who was just one more of the many unmusical and decidedly average creatures who populated the earth. Then again, it seemed that not even the gods were perfect. Certainly they succeeded only rarely in creating a masterpiece like Kura—or William Martyn. She felt that he was her soul mate, not Elaine’s. Kura saw fewer similarities between herself and Elaine than between a butterfly and a moth.
For that reason, she did not consciously register what was going on between Elaine and William. Kura had no qualms about leaving the man she had chosen alone with her cousin. And so William still took Elaine home, and he still kissed her, which was the only thing that held the girl together at all that autumn.
Elaine suffered deeply whenever she heard Kura and William chatting—about music and art, the opera, or the latest books—all subjects that occupied hardly anyone’s thoughts in Queenstown. It wasn’t that Elaine was uneducated—as Helen O’Keefe’s granddaughter, coming into contact with culture had been unavoidable. And now, because William was clearly interested in literature, she made an effort to read all the new publications and attempt to form an opinion on them. But Elaine was a pragmatic person. More than a poem a day made her fidgety, and entire volumes concentrated with poetry overwhelmed her. Elaine also did not like to have to chew over a story before its meaning—and its beauty—became clear to her. She could suffer and laugh with a book’s heroes, but endless navel-gazing, lugubrious monologues, and endless descriptions of the landscape bored her. If she were honest, she liked sneaking off with her mother’s magazines and reveling in the serialized stories in which women loved and suffered.
But of course she could not say any of that in front of Kura, and especially not in front of William. He had not really struck her as such an aesthete when she had first met him. Now he suddenly seemed to find nothing more satisfying than reciting poems with Kura or listening to her play the piano. His long-winded discussions with Kura spoiled all the picnics and boat regattas and other activities that she usually found so enjoyable. And she never seemed to be able to do anything right! When she leaped up and cheered at the top of her lungs for the eight-oared boat that George was rowing in, William and Kura looked at her as though she had thrown off her bodice on Main Street. And when she let herself be pulled into a rollicking round of square dancing at the church picnic, the two of them went out of their way to avoid her. The worst, however, was that she could not talk to anyone about it. Sometimes she thought she was going mad, since she it seemed that she was the only one who had noticed all of these changes in William’s behavior.
Her father was as enthusiastic as ever about his help in the store, and her grandmother Helen found it completely normal for a young man to behave himself “correctly.” Elaine could hardly tell her that William had already kissed her and caressed her body parts that… well, that a lady should not have made accessible to him. She did not want to turn to her mother, as she knew that Fleurette had never really liked William. As for her grandmother Gwyn, under normal circumstances, she would no doubt have been the ideal person to talk to. After all, Elaine felt that Kura’s constant blather about art and her endless speeches about music theory got on her grandmother’s nerves too. But Gwyneira loved Kura more than anything. She always reacted to critiques of her granddaughter with icy silence or took Kura’s side. And she appeared to sanction William’s relationship with Kura; at least, she didn’t seem to have anything against the young man. Elaine often saw her grandmother chatting with William. No wonder, since his natural whaikorero talent could be just as eloquently employed on sheep as music.
Winter arrived. Snow blanketed the mountains, and an occasional snowstorm passed through Queenstown as well. Gwyneira acquired a fur coat for Kura, which made the girl look like a South Sea princess who had gotten lost. Framed by the wide hood of the silver-fox coat, her black hair and unusual features astounded onlookers and drew all eyes to her once more. Elaine agonized whenever William solicitously helped the clumsy girl across the icy road or laughed with her when she attempted to feel the snowflake’s melody. To Elaine, they fell without a sound. By this time, she had nearly been convinced that she had no musical talent whatsoever and no sense of romance. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. She planned to ask William if he still loved her.
She found an opportunity to do so the following evening. Helen had arranged a music recital at her hotel. There were a few classical music lovers on the surrounding farms who played the violin, viola, and bass. They liked to come to Queenstown from time to time to play music together and then spend the night at Helen’s hotel. Elaine had always played the piano at these concerts. This time, however, it was Kura who played. Elaine had not dared to play an instrument in her cousin’s presence for some time now.
The O’Keefes would also be staying in town that night, as the weather made the long trip back out to Nugget Manor too troublesome. Elaine and William snuck outside after the concert for a few stolen tender moments while the others sat relaxing with a glass of wine. However, Elaine had a feeling the whole time that William had only reluctantly left Kura behind in her circle of admirers. Her cousin was positively holding court: there was no end to the compliments on her musical talent or her beauty. Is William really thinking of me, Elaine wondered, as he pulled her close and kissed her? Or was he imagining that he was holding Kura in his arms?
“Do you still care for me?” The words burst out of her when he finally let go of her. “I mean, really care? Are you… are you still in love with me?”
William gave her a friendly look. “You little fool! Would I be here if I wasn’t?”
That was precisely what Elaine wanted to know. But he had just offended her again by calling her a “fool.”
“Seriously, William. Do you think Kura is prettier than I am?” Elaine hoped her question did not sound like
begging.
William shook his head and appeared almost annoyed.
“Lainie, the difference between you and Kura is that she would never ask me such a thing!” With that, he left her standing there and walked back into the house. Did he feel insulted? Because she had suspected him of having feelings he did not? Or was it, rather, because he did not want to look her in the face?
Kura, standing behind a curtain, had observed the entire scene. She saw William kiss Elaine. She had already suspected something between them, but until then had never seen anything. Kura was not angry, however. If William kissed this girl, then surely he was only doing so to get by. Men needed girls. That, too, she had learned from the Maori. When they went a long time without lying with a woman, they became unbearable. But William deserved better. He was a gentleman. Very carefully, Kura would teach him to understand that even the pulse of the earth had a melody—and that it was more beautiful to explore it with someone who could hear it.
In June, Ruben O’Keefe and his family received a strange invitation. The Swedes in the gold-mining camps were celebrating Midsummer—completely disregarding the fact that the twenty-first of June in New Zealand was not the longest day of the year but the shortest and that, flowers were not blooming in the meadows but on windows in the form of ice crystals. A small detail like that did not, however, deter the rough men of the north. Beer and liquor tasted good in this hemisphere too, fires were blazing, and dancing warmed you up—it would just be a bit harder to pick flowers. But that was the girls’ job anyway; the men could do without. To ensure that there were plenty of girls, the gold miners sent invitations to Daphne and her crew.
“The easier the girls, the easier it will be for them to jump over the fire with us!” said Søren, one of the unusual festival’s organizers. “But there’s no need to worry about bringing your daughter, Mr. O’Keefe. We know a lady when we see one!”