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

by Lark, Sarah

  “You could never, ever live here in Greymouth with another man,” she explained. “People would never stop talking about you if you did such a thing, and your parents would drag one Florence Weber after another into the house. You’d eventually get worn down, Caleb. That simply won’t work. You would only be left the life of a bachelor. But you’re an artist. You play the piano very well, and you’ve got a talent for composing and arranging music. There’s no reason for you to make your gifts public only after you’ve gotten drunk in the pub.”

  “Kura, please! Have you ever seen me drunk?” Caleb looked at her indignantly before pouring himself a third glass of whiskey.

  “Well, no, not drunk, but tipsy,” Kura replied. “But an artist needs to have the courage to sit at the piano without whiskey. What I’m getting at is that we could put a recital together, Caleb. You arrange a few of the haka and songs we’ve collected for piano and voice. Or for two pianos with vocal accompaniment, or for a duet on one. The more voices, the better it will work. We can test it out here and in Westport, and then we can go on a tour. First around the South Island, then the North Island. Then Australia, England…”

  “England?” Caleb looked hopeful. After all this time, he still dreamed of his friends from boarding school. “Do you think we could be that successful?”

  “Why not?” Kura was full of confidence. “I like your arrangements, and the Londoners supposedly love anything exotic. It’s worth a try, at any rate. You just need to trust yourself, Caleb. Your father—”

  “My father won’t be enthusiastic.” Caleb chewed his lower lip. “But at first, we could perform at charity events. My mother is involved in those, as is Mrs. Weber.”

  Kura smiled sardonically. “Miss Weber will undoubtedly be more charmed than anyone. So, shall we do it? If you want to do it, we can practice in the evenings, after the mine closes and before the pub opens.”

  As expected, Florence Weber put on a brave face and pretended to be quite enthused by the music of the Maori. Fortunately for Caleb, the Webers had begun renting a house in Greymouth by this time, and Florence and her mother spent a great deal of their time furnishing it. Mrs. Biller raved every day about the taste and skills that Florence was developing in the process.

  Kura noted with amusement that Caleb actually enjoyed it when Florence flirtatiously asked for his advice about wallpaper colors and seat covers. Caleb was an aesthete. He could find something to enjoy in every artistic endeavor, though his first love was music.

  For her part, Florence studied the sheet music with a serious expression, though Kura doubted the girl could read the notes. Being of a rather practical nature, however, she soon made a habit of accompanying Caleb to his practice sessions.

  Naturally, that ignited the town gossip, which vexed Caleb to no end. Kura observed it all calmly. Her new partner needed to get used to playing in front of an audience one way or another. He might as well start with the most difficult test. And that was Florence Weber, without question. She criticized them without compunction. Even if her critiques were meant more unkindly than constructively, she was right more often than not and Kura adopted many of her suggestions.

  “Shouldn’t you accompany this song with a few… how should I put it… descriptive gestures?” she inquired about the love song given to them by Kura’s friends at the Pancake Rocks.

  It had become both Kura and Caleb’s favorite piece. Caleb’s arrangements sounded artful and playful, in stark contrast to the straightforward lyrics. Caleb had eventually learned what the words meant but had never translated them for Florence. Yet Kura’s expressive voice and Caleb’s ebullient and occasionally provocative accompaniment gave Florence a good sense of what they were about. Caleb blushed deeply when Florence asked questions about the songs with apparent innocence, but Kura merely smiled. When she sang the song again, Kura started swinging and thrusting her hips so enticingly that Paddy Holloway’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. And Florence Weber’s even more so.

  “I’ll hold myself back a little in front of the pastor, of course,” Kura said to Caleb afterward when Florence had disappeared—for once—with a beet-red face.

  They had already arranged to perform their first concert in Greymouth at the church picnic. The proceeds would benefit the families of the victims of the Lambert Mine accident. In addition, thanks to Mrs. Biller’s assistance, they had a performance planned in one of the hotels on the quay. Though Kura was looking forward to the concerts, Caleb was anxious.

  “Now, don’t be like that. You’re an artist,” Kura teased him. “Think of the beautiful body of our Maori friend and how nice it would be if he were here now and could dance to your song. Just don’t start thrusting your hips when you do or you’ll knock the piano over.”

  William Martyn ignored the bigger towns on the West Coast for the time being. He assumed that Carl Latimer would already have sold a sewing machine to any remotely interested woman who could pay for one in those urban areas. That left only the miners’ wives, and he was not likely to do much business with them. Instead, William concentrated on the single-family settlements; he also enjoyed unexpected success in the Maori villages. Gwyneira had once told him that the Maori tended to adopt the customs of the pakeha very quickly. Most Maori wore Western clothing, so why shouldn’t the women learn to use sewing machines too? Naturally, money was an issue. However, the tribes had come into some money by selling land, and that money was usually administered by the chief.

  William quickly developed a way of explaining to the tribal leaders that they would rise in the Maori ladies’ graces and could, moreover, acquire the pakeha’s respect by no longer shutting out the blessings of the modern world. When he demonstrated his Singer sewing machines, the entire tribe usually stood around him enthralled, watching with wide eyes as William sewed the child’s dress together and then staring at him as though he had conjured it out of thin air. The women quickly mastered the machine, and it wasn’t long before owning a Singer became a status symbol. It was rare for William to leave a tribe without a sales contract. In addition, the Maori being as hospitable as they were, he had no room-and-board expenses.

  William occasionally cursed his poor knowledge of the language, however, as he would have liked to ask about Kura and pick up her trail, which had gone cold after Gwyneira’s search among the Maori of Blenheim. As it was, he had to make do with English. Most of the Maori spoke some broken form of the language of the pakeha, and they understood almost everything. William often got the impression that the people were not telling him everything, becoming distrustful that a stranger was asking about a member of their tribe.

  This was especially noticeable with a tribe located between Greymouth and Westport. People there withdrew almost immediately when William asked in his poor Maori about a girl who had run away from her pakeha husband and was now making music. Whereas other tribes had simply laughed loudly as soon as he mentioned Kura’s escape from the marriage, these people became nervous and quiet. The chieftain’s wife finally cleared up the situation.

  “He does not want anything from the flame-haired girl. He’s asking about the tohunga,” she explained to her tribe. “You’re looking for Kura? Kura-maro-tini? Has she leave the husband who no like…”

  The tribe let out a roar of laughter at her explanatory gesture. William, alone, looked confused, as well as a little insulted.

  “Is that what she said?” he inquired. “But we—”

  “She was here. With tall blond man. Very smart, makes music too. Also tohunga. But shy.”

  The others chuckled again but evidently did not want to reveal anything more about Kura’s visit. William had his own ideas about that. So Kura was with another man, again! Though not with Roderick Barrister. She had replaced him, just as quickly as she had left him, William, for the opera stage. And now for a shy blond musician.

  William’s desire to find his wife again and give her a piece of his mind—before wrapping his arms about her and convincing her of his own i
ncontestable advantages—grew with each passing day.

  Elaine was worried about Timothy, who looked more haggard and exhausted each time she visited. The laugh lines around his mouth had turned into deep gouges, the kind that testified to the constant overexertion and weariness of many miners. Of course, he was still always happy to see Elaine, but he had greater difficulty joking and laughing with her. That might also have had to do with a certain estrangement—the old familiarity between the two diminished with every day they did not see each other. And those days had become more frequent, though it was not for lack of effort on Elaine’s part. The distance was not the problem; the Lamberts’ house lay only two miles from the center of town, and Banshee or Fellow could trot that distance in twenty minutes. But then Elaine had to get past Nellie Lambert, and that was proving to be a much more difficult hurdle.

  Sometimes Nellie would not open up at all when Elaine knocked with the heavy copper door knocker. Roly and Timothy did not hear it, as the sound only reached to the parlor, or at best the salon. A maid or Nellie herself should always have been within earshot, but Elaine believed that they were simply pretending not to hear. If Elaine did manage to cross the threshold, Nellie found a thousand excuses to keep her son’s “friend”—the word “fiancée” never crossed her lips, even though Timothy made no secret of his intentions—from him. Timothy was sleeping, Timothy did not feel well, Timothy was out being pushed by Roly and she had no idea when they would come back. Once she nearly scared Elaine to death when she declared that Timothy could not receive her because he was lying in bed with a heavy cough. Elaine had rushed back to town and emptied her heart out to Berta Leroy in a panic.

  Berta, however, had allayed Elaine’s fears.

  “Nonsense, Lainie, your Tim’s not going to catch a lung infection any faster than you or I. True, he was in more danger as long as he was lying in bed, but from what I understand, he’s moving around today more than the rest of us combined. We’ll hear about it firsthand in a moment, since Christopher is at the Lamberts’ right now. Nellie is driving him crazy too. Supposedly, Timothy felt some pain while he was coughing, so of course Christopher had to rush off to see about it. I hope he doesn’t catch his own death in this rain.”

  It was storming heavily outside, and after her fast ride, Elaine, too, was completely soaked. Berta rubbed her hair dry and pointed her to a seat by the fire while she made tea. However, Elaine was still shivering when Dr. Leroy finally came home in a furious state.

  “I’m charging that woman double from now on, Berta, you’d better believe it!” he blustered, pouring a touch of brandy into his tea. “Four miles through this storm for a mild cold.”

  “But…” Elaine wanted to object, but Dr. Leroy shook his head.

  “If it hurts when the boy coughs, it’s because his muscles are overworked by his excessive training regime. When I arrived, he was lifting weights.”

  “What for?” Elaine asked. “I thought he wanted to learn how to walk again.”

  “Do you know what those leg splints weigh, which he has to lift with every step?” Dr. Leroy poured himself another cup of tea and poured a spot of brandy in Elaine’s cup as well. “In all seriousness, girl, I’ve never seen a man work as hard and with as much discipline as Timothy Lambert. I no longer have any doubt that he will meet you at the altar on his own legs. What I saw today—despite all the coughing and sniffing—you’ve got to respect that. Nevertheless, I gave him two days of bed rest to recover from the cold and the worst of his muscle cramps. Whether he sticks to it is a different matter. Nonetheless, I told him you would come by tomorrow to check on him. And I said it in the presence of that dragon he calls a mother—so she can hardly turn you away.”

  Nellie Lambert would have preferred that Elaine come to the Lambert household only on special occasions and at her personal invitation. Roughly every two weeks, she received the girl for tea. These were miserably stuffy events that Elaine loathed—in part because the Lamberts bombarded her with questions. About her supposed childhood in Auckland, about her relatives, about her ancestry in England. Elaine entrapped herself in an increasingly complex web of lies, whose details she kept forgetting. Then she would have to improvise, squirming not only under Nellie Lambert’s merciless gaze but likewise at Timothy’s amused winking.

  Timothy clearly saw through her fibs, and Elaine feared that he viewed them as a sign of a lack of trust in him. She was always expecting him to bring them up, which made her anxious and tense when she was alone with him.

  For his part, Timothy hated to sit across from Elaine in a wheelchair or to have her push him around. His barbell exercises were bearing fruit, and he could now move his monstrosity of a wheelchair a few yards on his own, but turning, and even the simplest maneuvering around furniture, was still exceptionally difficult. Timothy hated more than anything for people to view him as a “cripple.” Whenever Elaine visited him in his own rooms, Roly usually helped him into an armchair. However, the chairs around the dinner table in the dining room were uncomfortable, and the sofas and armchairs in the salon too low. So Timothy sat there in his wheelchair, so discouraged and tense that he could not manage a normal conversation.

  Disappointed and helpless, Elaine sometimes cried into Banshee’s or Fellow’s mane on her way home after these visits, while Timothy released his frustrations on the barbells in his room, training all the more tenaciously.

  Thus both of them were dreading the solemn Christmas meal to which Nellie Lambert had formally invited Elaine.

  “A small party, Miss Keefer. I hope you have something suitable to wear.”

  Elaine fell into a panic at once, because of course she had no evening gowns. The invitation had been sent very late, so she had no time to have something tailored, even if she’d had enough money for it.

  She tried on one dress after another in desperation until Charlene finally came upon her in tears.

  “Everyone’s going to look down their nose at me,” Elaine sobbed. “Nellie Lambert will get to display to all the world that I’m nothing but a barroom girl without etiquette. It will be horrible!”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Charlene said, soothing her. “It’s not even a dinner invitation. It’s only to lunch. Besides, the whole world’s not going to be there. She didn’t even invite me, for example.”

  Elaine raised her head. “Why should she?”

  “As Mr. Matthew Gawain’s official fiancée!” Charlene beamed and twirled proudly in front of the mirror. “Look at me, Lainie Keefer. Here stands a respectable young lady. I’ve already talked to Madame Clarisse: as of today, I’ll still be serving in the pub, but I won’t be taking the fellows upstairs anymore. I’m afraid Matt will still have to pay for that until the wedding, but I don’t want to know the details. At any rate, we’ll be getting married in January! How’s that for a surprise?”

  Elaine forgot her troubles and embraced her friend.

  “I thought you didn’t ever want to get married,” she teased.

  Charlene smoothed out her dark hair and wound it into a tight knot, the way Berta Leroy wore her hair, to see how that looked.

  “I didn’t want to become respectable at any price, but Matt’s a foreman. He’ll be sharing the management of the mine with Tim at some point. The two of them have already worked that out. So I haven’t got a pauper’s life in a hut with ten children pulling at my apron ahead of me; I’m really moving up. Just wait, Lainie, in a few years the two of us’ll be leading the church’s charity bazaars. Besides, I love Matt—and that’s made more than one person change her mind, isn’t that right, Lainie?”

  Elaine laughed and blushed.

  Charlene continued. “Mother Lambert still can’t tolerate the sight of me,” she said as she looked over Elaine’s collection of dresses. “That’s why Matt’s getting the cold shoulder too, and hasn’t been invited to join them. He’s real sore about it.” She grinned. “Here, put this on.” She held up the pale-blue summer dress that Madame Clarisse had had tai
lored for Elaine when she had first arrived. “And wear my new jewelry with it. Here, look—Matt’s engagement present.” Charlene proudly held a jewelry case out to Elaine that contained a delicate silver necklace with lapis lazuli stones. “I’ve always thought you were more of an aquamarine type, but that all looks very nice. The neckline may be a little low, but it’s summer, so who cares?”

  Elaine’s heart was beating in her throat. She lowered her eyes as she extended her hand to Timothy’s parents and wished them a merry Christmas. She gave Timothy, who was sitting unhappily in his wheelchair, an appropriately cool and reserved kiss. He was already sweating in his three-piece suit, which etiquette evidently demanded that he wear to this event despite the high-summer temperatures. Moreover, his mother insisted on covering his legs with a plaid flannel blanket—as though they were something offensive that had to be kept out of sight.

  Elaine would have liked to comfort Timothy and make some kind of confidential gesture to show he was not alone. But once more, she felt as though she were frozen—particularly after she was introduced to the other guests. Marvin and Nellie Lambert had invited the Webers and the Billers—since the two families were friends, it could hardly be avoided. This last fact, however, seemed to please neither Marvin Lambert nor Joshua Biller. The two of them had already given themselves a dose of Dutch courage, and their wives would spend the rest of the afternoon carefully maneuvering them so that they would avoid starting a fight over something trivial.

  The Webers looked composed and distinguished, though both wife and daughter eyed Elaine’s somewhat inappropriate dress with equal disapproval. They then whispered about it to Mrs. Biller, which resulted in further critical looks. Elaine’s attire was completely forgotten, however, the moment Caleb introduced a real scandal. Nellie Lambert had intended for Florence Weber to sit across from him, but he appeared instead with his supposed “fiancée,” Kura-maro-tini Martyn.