Blue Smoke (17 page)

‘Mam?’

Tamar looked up at the plaintive note in her daughter’s voice. ‘Something troubling you, dear?’

‘No. Yes. I’m not sure.’

Tamar put the lid on her pen and swivelled around in her seat.

‘It’s the girls,’ Keely began. ‘You know how we’ve only had two letters from them so far?’

‘Yes, darling, but then they’ve only been gone a month.’

‘I know, it isn’t that, it’s what’s in the letters that worries me.’

‘I thought they were having a lovely time?’

‘They are, that’s the trouble. They seem to be spending more time going to dances and into town and gadding about than they are working at the air base.’

Tamar was amused to hear this, especially from Keely, who had spent as many of her early years ‘gadding about’ as she could get away with.

‘Well, I’m sure they’re doing a wonderful job. Girls have to work very hard in the services, you know. They’re taken very seriously.’

Keely frowned, then nodded resignedly. ‘I expect they are working hard, but I’m still worried, Mam. There are a lot of men in Auckland —
unattached
men, I might add, looking for a last chance for a good time before they go away — and the girls have never been backward about being forward.’

Tamar could see that Keely really was worried, and she had
already been thinking about what could be done to help keep her granddaughters safe.

‘Look, why don’t I telephone Aunty Ri and let her know that the girls are in Auckland? She seems to know everyone who’s anyone up there, and I’m sure she could keep some sort of eye on them.’

Keely eyed her mother sceptically; Riria Adams must be seventy-eight by now, almost the same age as Tamar.

‘Would she be up to it, do you think, chasing a pair of energetic, twenty-one-year-old girls around Auckland?’

Tamar removed her spectacles and let them fall on their chain against her chest.

‘I very much doubt that Riria will chase them around, darling. She may visit them once or twice, or invite them to her house in Parnell for tea, but no, she won’t chase them.’

‘Well, then, what good will that do?’

‘She will give them good advice, and they will listen.’

‘I’m not sure that they will.’

‘I am. You know what Riria’s like. She can be very persuasive when she feels like it.’

Keely certainly did. When Andrew had died, Riria had come down from Auckland to be with Tamar during her period of mourning. Keely had been in a state herself, with the loss of her father coming so soon after her unplanned pregnancy and hasty marriage to Owen. As Riria had been quick to inform Keely in a private and very pointed little chat, she had been ‘neither use nor ornament’, and the shock of realising the truth of that, particularly when her mother needed her support, had chastened her considerably. She had respected Riria Adams ever since, and had admired and almost envied the lifelong friendship between her mother and the imposing, regal and wise Maori woman.

‘I suppose,’ Keely said after a moment, ‘that if nothing else she
might frighten them into behaving well. And if not, then at least she can keep us informed.’

They both laughed, although admittedly Keely’s laugh was not particularly hearty.

‘Good, I shall telephone her tomorrow,’ Tamar said, then glanced at Keely quizzically and cocked her head. ‘Is that someone crying? Is it Henry?’

Keely could hear it now too, the sound of someone wailing in the distance. She rushed down the hall and outside, and stood on the front steps straining to see across the paddocks. And there he was, small and forlorn, trotting all by himself along the track that led from Erin and Joseph’s house on the other side of the hill. As she watched he fell down, then got up again and staggered forward once more.

She leaped down the steps and ran across the lawn. ‘Henry!

Henry
! What is it?’

At the sight of her, Henry wailed even harder. By the time Keely reached him and knelt down in front of him he was almost beside himself, his eyes red and streaming and a liberal coat of snot smearing his upper lip.

‘What is it?
What is it
?’ Keely almost shrieked.

‘Uncle Joseph’s gone all funny!’ The little boy cried. ‘And Aunty Erin won’t stop screaming! It’s awful, Mummy, it’s
awful
!’

Keely had no idea what he was talking about, but she knew something must be terribly wrong. She gave him a quick cuddle.

‘Can you be a really brave little man and run and get Daddy for me? Tell him to get Gran and come over to Uncle Joseph’s. And then, I want you to go down to Aunty Lucy’s house and stay there, all right?’

Henry hiccupped, sobbed just once more, then nodded.

‘Good man, off you go then. Quickly!’

Keely watched him for a moment to make sure he was all right,
then whipped off her shoes and ran as fast as she could up the track.

Erin and Joseph’s cosy and comfortable house looked perfectly normal from the top of the hill, surrounded by Erin’s carefully selected trees and bright flower gardens and Joseph’s neat rows of vegetables, but as Keely hurried down the track she heard something that froze her blood — the sound of a grown woman howling and keening with almost insane intensity. With her heart in her mouth she raced the last few hundred yards and up the front steps onto the verandah.

‘Joseph!’ she yelled, unable to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘
Joseph
!’

There was no answer, and the keening went on and on. Then Ana appeared in the hallway, her tear-streaked face the colour of uncooked dough.

‘What is it, Ana? What’s happened?’

Ana’s face crumpled, and huge, fresh tears squeezed from her dark eyes. ‘It’s Billy, we got a telegram.’ She ran to Keely and clung to her tightly. ‘He was in Crete, Aunty Keely, he’s been killed!’

Keely thought she might faint, but her arms went around Ana and she began to stroke the girl’s hair, slowly and rhythmically.

‘Is that Mum crying out?’

Ana nodded.

‘Let’s go and see if we can help her, shall we? Where’s your dad?’

‘He’s in the kitchen; they both are.’

Her arm still around Ana, Keely walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

Joseph was sitting at the table, his face whiter than Ana’s, the telegram with its hateful news unfolded in front of him. His green eyes were dry and he was staring steadfastly at nothing at all, although his throat was working violently as if he were trying to swallow something unpalatable.

Erin was standing at the sink. She seemed unable to stop wailing; her eyes were bulging alarmingly and the cords in her neck stood out like taut ropes. Keely let go of Ana, went over to her cousin and slapped her briskly across the face.

The noise stopped immediately; the only sound in the kitchen now was the low buzzing of a fly stranded upside-down on the windowsill.

‘Erin, Erin! Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

‘
Erin
! It’s Keely.’

Erin turned slowly, and deep in her eyes there was a flicker of recognition. Even more slowly, she slumped into Keely’s arms.

‘Oh, Keely, we’ve lost him. We’ve lost our baby.’

Because there was no body, there could be no real tangihanga. But at Maungakakari there was a kawe mate, a traditional service to bring Billy’s spirit home. As he had been the mokopuna of Kepa Te Roroa, an influential and respected rangatira, and the son of Joseph Deane, the veteran of two wars, the ceremony was well attended by mourners from far and wide, including everyone from Kenmore.

There were haka in honour of Billy’s prowess as a warrior, veterans of the Maori contingents that had served in the Great War came proudly dressed in their old uniforms, and there were speeches and prayers and songs, including a beautiful and haunting rendition of ‘Blue Smoke’, the tune that had so touched Billy when he was away.

There was only one day of public grieving, instead of the traditional three, but it helped those who had known, loved and respected Billy to begin to come to terms with their loss. Even his close family would eventually accept his death, however bitterly or begrudgingly.

What none of them knew, however, was that in a small village in southern England, a young girl still waited for Billy. Harry Tomoana, who knew how deeply Billy had loved his pretty English girlfriend, would eventually write to Violet and tell her about Billy’s death, and how he had saved the lives of two men even while he lost his own in a bayonet charge that would go down in history. But Violet would not receive the letter until after the battalion had been evacuated to Egypt some weeks later and Harry had recovered from his own wounds.

Billy’s death left everyone at Kenmore with a feeling of emptiness and something approaching hopelessness. Duncan was still in England, Liam and Drew were away, Bonnie and Leila were in Auckland, and now Billy would never be coming home. Erin was plummeted into a deep, black depression that lasted for some months until she was able to claw her way out of it, while Joseph also retreated into himself until he realised that his two remaining still children needed him, perhaps even more than before, as did his parents, both of whom had taken Billy’s death very badly.

Robert, nineteen now and old enough to be sent to war, had registered with the National Service Department and was awaiting his call-up for service over seas. He could have appealed against his impending conscription on the grounds that he was engaged in essential employment on a sheep farm, or chosen not to register at all because of his Maori blood, but he wanted to go. And almost everyone who knew him suspected, correctly, that he wanted the opportunity to avenge his brother’s death. In the event he did not have to wait long: his papers arrived one wet and windy afternoon late in August. Three weeks later he was away to camp.

Ana was even more determined to do something for the war effort. At twenty, she was eligible for a range of wartime
occupations, but what she really wanted to do, and what she felt she knew best, was working on the land. So when the idea of a women’s land army based on the British model had been mentioned the year before she had been delighted. Opposition from various quarters had ensured the idea came to nothing so Ana had contented herself with working at Kenmore, taking the place of one of the drovers who had gone off with the Second Echelon, and learning more and more as the days passed about the practical business of running a sheep farm. However, the land army idea had resurfaced in January, and now she was merely waiting for the scheme to become official so she could sign up.

Her cousin Kathleen was a different matter altogether. Ana had valiantly tried to interest her in farming and gardening, because normally they got on very well together, but Kathleen had other ideas. James would have loved his daughter to have taken an interest in horticulture, about which he was so passionate himself, but she just wasn’t an outdoors sort of girl. She was certainly industrious, a great help to Lucy in the kitchen and around the house, and a built-in babysitter for her young cousin Henry, but she found the thought of getting dirt under her fingernails totally repulsive. The closest she ever wanted to come to fruit and vegetables was the finished product, on a plate, at the dining table.

James and Lucy had warned her several times already that if she did not find some way of contributing to the war effort, then she could very likely be manpowered into some occupation she would loathe, and then she’d be sorry; it was clear to just about everyone now that conscription of women into essential industries would be inevitable, whether it came this year or the next.

Auckland, August 1941

Tamar’s plan to manage, or at least monitor, Bonnie and Leila’s behaviour in Auckland had been forgotten in the shadow of Billy’s death, until a telephone call had come from Riria herself expressing her sincere condolences after seeing Billy’s name in the casualty lists in the paper. She would have come down herself, she’d said, but she was finding it more and more difficult to travel these days, and then there was the petrol rationing.

Tamar had been very pleased to hear her dear friend’s voice, as always, and had not been surprised when Riria had agreed to the favour she asked of her.

It was a favour that led to Bonnie and Leila sitting at a table near the entrance of the King George Grill and Tearooms in Queen Street one Friday afternoon, waiting for Gran’s best friend to arrive and have tea with them. Riria was late, and the girls were deciding whether they should leave or wait a little longer when there was a small commotion outside.

‘What is it?’ Bonnie asked curiously as Leila got to her feet for a better view.

‘It’s a car, a really ancient one with one of those fold-up tops, parked in the middle of the street.’

Bonnie snorted derisively.

‘Hang on,’ Leila exclaimed, ‘someone’s getting out and they’re wearing the most extraordinary hat. Oh my God, it’s Aunty Ri!’

Bonnie leapt to her feet. ‘Where? Oh, it is too. Has she seen us?’

‘Well, unless she’s waving to someone behind us, yes she has.’

The girls sat down again, and waited in pleasurable anticipation for the inevitable.

When Riria Adams stepped through the door, standing tall and with her head held high, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared. Despite her age, Riria had lost none of her spectacular
looks and regal bearing. Her hair, the thick wavy tresses now a uniform steel grey, still tumbled unfettered almost to her buttocks, which admittedly were a little more ample now than they had been in her youth. Her lined face was still pleasingly contoured and the cheekbones as pronounced as ever, but the lines of the moko on her chin had faded to a pale green and seeped across her skin to such an extent that the pattern was now only just discernible. Above the moko her lips remained full and proud, and her eyes glittered with their usual intelligence.

Her costume was old-fashioned, to say the least. She wore a long, full black skirt that reached almost to the ground and revealed, when she walked, a pair of side-buttoned, Louis-heeled black leather boots. The top half of her outfit consisted of a short, fitted velvet jacket in deepest black done up over a black chiffon blouse. A greenstone brooch gleamed softly at her throat, and long greenstone pendants dangled from her ears. Her hat, as Leila had observed, was indeed extraordinary, a confection of black net around a wide brim trimmed with a velvet band and two very long pheasant feathers.