Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  And as he held her hand and watched the stars slowly appear in the little piece of sky he could see outside his window, he considered that Elaine’s path to dancing at their wedding might be just as long and hard as his.

  When Elaine stopped by the doctor’s office the next day around noon, she did not find Berta in the clinic as usual. But the doors were not locked, and Elaine knew she would be welcome in Timothy’s room. However, she was not prepared for the sight that awaited her there. Timothy had disappeared, as had his wheelchair. Instead, she found Berta Leroy lying on the bed, propped up by cushions, and Roly O’Brien putting his arm awkwardly around her. He let her head slide to his shoulder, reached for her waist…

  Elaine stared openmouthed at the old nurse. But before she could slam the door in horror, Berta caught sight of her and let out a booming laugh.

  “Good God, Lainie, it’s not what you think!” she chuckled. “Oh, you should see your face. I can’t believe it. Did you really think I was up to no good with a half pint like this one?”

  Elaine turned a glowing red.

  “Hello, Miss Keefer,” Roly said. He appeared to grasp neither the situation’s suggestive nature, nor the comedy of it.

  “Let me reassure you, child. This is only a nursing course. We couldn’t find any volunteers who would pretend to be patients. My husband didn’t really need to leave for the Kellys’ this morning—he just wanted to get out of doing this. He has the same feelings about male nurses as Nellie Lambert has.”

  “Maybe Miss Keefer could volunteer?” Roly inquired hopefully, casting a covetous eye over Elaine’s slim body.

  Berta leaped up. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you! And then afterward, you’d tell the whole pub Miss Keefer let you feel her up. Now get out of here. We’ll continue in an hour or so. Maybe my husband will be back by then and spare us any surprises like the one we just had.” She chuckled again, and it struck Elaine that it had been a long time since she had seen Berta so happy. “Perish the thought if Mrs. Carey or Mrs. Tanner saw us like that. Come have some tea with me, Lainie. I want to know what you did to Tim.”

  After Roly had left the room, Berta closed the office temporarily and shooed Elaine into her apartment.

  “If someone wants something, they can ring. Now tell me. How did you do it?”

  Elaine’s head was spinning. “A male nurse?” she asked. “For Tim?”

  Berta nodded, beaming like a child under the Christmas tree.

  “Tim was like a changed man today. When they came for him this morning, they wanted to carry him out on a stretcher, but he insisted that they seat him in that monstrosity of a chair. He said he hadn’t suffered here for five months just to be carried out like he was brought in. And then the first thing he did was dismiss his nurse.”

  Elaine smiled. “The Miss Toeburton I’ve heard so much about?”

  Berta laughed. “One and the same. She said something to him like ‘And now we’re going to lay this nice, soft pillow under your hip, Tim,’ to which he answered that he hadn’t given her permission to call him by his first name. That awful mother of his looked at him like an ornery three-year-old and said, and I quote, ‘Now, be polite, baby.’ Then he exploded. And I tell you, a dynamite blast is nothing compared to what I witnessed. He had let Nellie’s caterwauling bounce off him for five months, but that was too much. They heard him roaring all the way out on the street, and I enjoyed every word. First, he sent his nurse packing. She’s leaving right away with the expert from Christchurch after he fits Tim with leg splints, though he thinks it’s too soon or too senseless to bother with them. But my husband took Tim’s side. If Dr. Porter didn’t want to put on the splints, he’d do it himself, he said. And naturally, Dr. Porter didn’t want to risk letting a town doctor take the credit. After that, Tim asked for a male caregiver. If there weren’t any available, we’d just have to train one. And that’s just what I was doing with Roly. Now, tell me how you did it, Lainie. I’m dying of curiosity.”

  Elaine, however, was still preoccupied with the idea of a male nurse. “How did you decide on Roly?”

  Berta rolled her eyes impatiently. “Mrs. O’Brien was in the office next door when the bomb went off. And like I said, you couldn’t get away from Tim’s yelling, no matter how indiscreet you thought it was to listen in. Mrs. O’Brien came up to me rather shyly afterward and asked if we couldn’t give Roly a try. The boy hasn’t wanted to go down in the mine since the accident. You can’t blame him, but naturally it puts the family in a rather difficult spot financially. The father dead, the oldest son without a real job. Roly’s been getting by as an errand boy, but he makes next to nothing. He wouldn’t think anything of it if the others teased him for being a nurse. Not when it’s for Timothy Lambert. You already know how he worships Tim.”

  Roly was among Timothy’s most dedicated visitors. The boy was convinced he owed Timothy his life, and he would do anything for him.

  “Now, tell me, Lainie. What happened yesterday between you and Tim? You stayed for a while, didn’t you? I had to leave with Christopher, you know.”

  Dr. Leroy had been called away to a difficult birth, and Berta always accompanied him to those.

  “I stayed until he fell asleep,” Elaine said. “But that wasn’t all that long. He was deathly tired.”

  “There was nothing more to it?” Berta asked incredulously. “You only held hands a bit, and then all was well again?”

  Elaine smiled. “Not quite. While we were at it we… might have gotten engaged.”

  8

  You must help me, Kura! You’re the only one who can!” Caleb Biller appeared in the Wild Rover on a Thursday just before midnight, much later than usual and completely out of sorts. He was also more elegantly dressed than he usually was for a visit to the pub. His gray three-piece suit was better suited to a formal dinner party. Though he could hardly wait for Kura to finish the piece she was playing, he nonetheless managed to gulp down a whiskey.

  “What is going on, Caleb?” Kura asked, amused. As she had gotten to know Caleb better over the last few months, she had grown accustomed to his occasionally peculiar reactions to more or less petty, everyday problems. Since the dance in the Maori village, she had done everything she could to quell her desire for physical love from Caleb. She understood that he shared the predilection of some of the members of Roderick’s ensemble who were more drawn to their own sex. Kura acknowledged this utterly without judgment. After all, having grown up the sheltered heiress of the Warden estate, she had never been confronted with resentment against homosexuality. And she had learned about this aspect of human nature for the first time among artists, where it was accepted as normal. Kura did not understand why Caleb made such a secret about it, but she had come to understand her role in the Biller household: Caleb’s parents were willing to accept even a bar singer with Maori ancestry, as long as it was a girl.

  “They want me to get engaged,” Caleb blurted out. Much too loudly really, though the pub was fairly quiet at that hour on a weeknight. The mine workers had already left, and the few remaining drunks at the bar appeared to be immersed in their own troubles. Only Paddy Holloway looked over with a smirk, which Caleb didn’t even notice.

  “Seriously, Kura, they didn’t say it in so many words, of course, but there were these intimations! And the girl, the way she behaves. As though she already knew with certainty that she would be the future Mrs. Biller. Everything has been arranged and…”

  “Slow down, Caleb. What girl?” Kura exchanged a look with Paddy that let her know that he had nothing against her closing the piano for the night. Instead, he brought two glasses over for Kura and Caleb at an out-of-the-way table.

  “Her name is Florence,” Caleb said, swallowing down the second whiskey. “Florence Weber, of the Weber Mine near Westport. And she is quite pretty, well educated; you can converse with her about anything, but…”

  Kura took a sip herself and noted with delight that Paddy had poured her a single malt as well. The barkee
per clearly thought she could use it.

  “So, once more, Caleb. Your parents had a dinner party today. Is that correct?” That was not difficult to deduce from Caleb’s clothes. “For this Weber family from Westport. And they introduced the girl to you then.”

  “Introduced? They presented her like a debutante. In a white dress, even. Well, not all white, there was a touch of green on it too. Appliqué around the neckline, you see.”

  Kura rolled her eyes. That was also typical of Caleb. He could never manage to concentrate on what was most important, because he was always being captivated by the details. This trait was helpful when it came to their work together—and the Maoris greatly appreciated it. Over the last few months, Kura and Caleb had sought out other villages where they could study haka, and Caleb could lose himself for hours working with some tohunga, discussing, for instance, the stylization of a fern in a typical carving. He had picked up the Maori language very quickly and took special note of unusual words—almost more than common words like “water” or “village.” Caleb’s meticulous nature did not make him particularly well suited to daily life, however, and in situations like this, he could drive his listener to distraction.

  “Get to the point, Caleb,” Kura admonished.

  “In any case, they never stopped talking about the mines, the Webers’ or ours, and their common distribution lanes. And she looked me over with such a resigned expression. It was as though she weren’t even at the horse market, but had already been stuck with a lame nag and decided to try to make the best of it.”

  Kura had to laugh. “But you’re no lame nag,” she remarked.

  “No, but a ‘queer fellow,’ as they say,” Caleb whispered, sinking his head far over his glass. “I don’t like girls.”

  Kura furrowed her brow. “People refer to that as being a ‘queer fellow’? I hadn’t heard that. But it’s hardly a surprise.”

  Caleb looked up at her, confused. “You… you knew?” His long face turned red as a beet.

  Kura had to laugh. It was inconceivable that this man had not noticed her attempts to seduce him. But it would do no good to tease him about it. So she nodded and waited for Caleb to cease struggling to breathe and for his face to resume a halfway-normal coloring.

  “As I said, it hasn’t escaped me,” she said finally. “But what do you plan to do now? Should I… I mean, would you like me to sleep with you? That won’t work; I can tell you that straightaway. Bernadette, one of the dancers in the ensemble, was in love with Jimmy, but he was… like you. Bernadette tried everything: made herself pretty, fondled him, got him drunk. But nothing worked. Some are just one way, others another.”

  Kura had no trouble accepting that. Caleb considered her again with pained, if also slightly embarrassed, looks.

  “I would never importune you in that manner, Kura,” he assured her. “Even to think about it would be indecent.”

  Kura could hardly hold back her giggling. She hoped Paddy Holloway was not listening and spreading this conversation around the pub.

  “It’s only… Kura, would you get engaged to me?”

  There. He had said it. Caleb looked at her expectantly, but the hopeful light in his eyes went out when he saw the expression on her face.

  Kura sighed. “How would that help, Caleb? I won’t marry you, absolutely not. Even if I could, I mean, even if I could warm up to the idea of getting married. I would want something out of it. I wasn’t made for a platonic marriage. You’re better off asking this Florence girl. Pakeha women are often brought up rather prudish.”

  “But I don’t even know her.” Caleb almost sounded like a child, and it struck Kura that he was scared to death of the Weber heiress. “And I wasn’t even thinking of marrying. Just of… er… being engaged. Or pretending that were the case. Until I think of another solution.”

  Kura couldn’t help but wonder what solution Caleb could possibly think of. However, he was highly intelligent. Perhaps he would find an answer once he had calmed down a bit.

  “Please, Kura,” he said. “At least come to Sunday dinner. If I invite you formally, that’s practically a sign.”

  Kura saw it more as a declaration of war, but the likes of Florence Weber did not scare her. The girl would probably look for the closest hole to crawl through as soon as she laid eyes on Kura. Kura knew how girls typically reacted to her, and she would do with Florence Weber just what she had done with Elaine O’Keefe.

  “All right, fine, Caleb. But if I’m going to play your fiancée, you must stop being so formal with me.”

  Florence proved to be of an entirely different caliber than Elaine. A person would require both Caleb’s kind disposition and his lack of instincts about female beauty to even call the girl “quite pretty.” Florence was short and of a shape that, though still appealing now, would assume the roundness of her mother after her first child. The pale-red freckles on her oval, almost doughy face did not exactly suit her thick brown hair. Though her dark tresses looked just as unruly as Elaine’s, they seemed to be smothering her face rather than dancing playfully around her features. Added to which, the girl was nearsighted—which was perhaps one of the reasons the sight of Kura had not completely demoralized her.

  “So, you are Caleb’s… friend,” Florence remarked as she greeted Kura. “I’ve heard you sing.” Florence emphasized the words “friend” and “sing” as she spoke, as though they demonstrated a total lack of propriety. However, the fact that Caleb kept company with barroom singers did not seem to shock her. Kura came to the conclusion that Florence Weber was not so easily shaken.

  “Florence took a few singing lessons herself,” Mrs. Biller piped. Though she had emphasized Kura’s attractive qualities at the last dinner party, she had apparently since decided to advocate for the Weber heiress. “In England. Isn’t that right, Florence?”

  Florence nodded, with eyes cast down demurely. “But merely to pass the time,” she said with a smile. “You can enjoy an opera or chamber music concert so much more when you have some understanding of how much work and how many hours are poured into a production of that sort. Don’t you agree, Caleb?”

  Caleb could only nod.

  “But you never really studied singing, did you, Miss Martyn?”

  Kura remained composed on the surface, but she was angry. This girl did not have even a modicum of fear or respect for her. And she would not be satisfied with Kura’s usual monosyllabic answers. Florence seemed to know that trick and only asked questions that required that Kura to answer in complete sentences or with as many justifications as possible.

  “I was privately educated,” Kura explained briefly.

  At which point Mrs. Biller, Mrs. Weber, and Florence all pointed out the undeniable advantages of a boarding-school education.

  Caleb listened with a pained expression on his face. His boarding-school education had helped him to understand his predisposition early in life. He had admitted as much to Kura later on that night in the pub, but of course he could not use that as an argument here. Instead, he presented such a theatrical demonstration of his love for Kura that it was almost embarrassing. A gentleman would never have put his feelings on display in that manner, but in this case, Caleb lacked his sense, usually so fine, for what was appropriate.

  Kura reflected that any other girl would surely have run screaming from the room if presented with such a candidate for marriage. Florence Weber, however, observed the performance with a stoic smile and ironclad composure. She chatted affectedly about music and art, effortlessly managing to make Caleb look silly and lovestruck, and Kura like Jezebel herself: “I understand that you particularly love Carmen, Miss Martyn. I’m sure you lend her a very convincing… air. No, I don’t think Don José is really to be blamed. If sin comes in such a seductive guise as that gypsy. And besides, he gets over her in the end. If by… well, rather drastic means.” She smiled at that, as though she would be ready at any time to sharpen the knife that would finally be thrust between Kura’s ribs.

 
Kura was thrilled when she could finally make her escape; Caleb, however, remained prey to Florence Weber. The Webers were the Billers’ houseguests while they looked for their own residence in Greymouth. Mr. Weber had acquired a share in the new train line and wanted to put his business affairs in order. It was quite possible that the Webers would reside with the Billers for several weeks before they returned to Westport, during which time they obviously hoped that Florence and Caleb would feather their own nest.

  The young man showed up at the pub again the next day in a dejected state and told Kura his sorrows. While his mother had dealt with him harshly that very evening after dinner, his father had gone about it more subtly. The next morning, he had asked his son to come into his office to say a few serious words to him, man to man. “Boy, naturally you’re attracted to that Kura girl. She’s without a doubt the loveliest thing you could imagine, but we have to think about the future too. Give Florence a couple of kids to keep her busy, and then find yourself a pretty mistress.”

  Caleb looked so desperate that even Paddy had some sympathy and waved Kura away from the piano.

  “Cheer the boy up a bit, girl. No one wants to see a sad sight like that. But get him to buy a bottle of the single malt while you’re at it, got it? Otherwise, you’ll have to make up the difference in what we make.”

  Kura rolled her eyes. Paddy was probably already taking bets on when and whether a milksop like Caleb Biller would ever succeed in getting Florence Weber pregnant.

  “She’s awful,” Caleb mumbled, seeming to tremble at the very thought of the girl. “She wants to smother me completely.”

  “That can happen,” Kura said drily, imagining the corpulence she expected of Florence someday. “But you don’t have to marry her. No one can make you. Look here, Caleb, I’ve been thinking about it.”

  She had actually been doing just that and, in the process, had gotten involved in someone else’s problems for the first time in her life. Kura could hardly comprehend it herself, but then again, the results of her efforts might work out favorably for her as well. She poured Caleb a large glass of whiskey and laid out her thoughts.