Call of the Kiwi (3 page)

Gloria sniveled. “Can I at least take Nimue with me? Or Princess?”

Although it broke Gwyneira’s heart, she shook her head again.

“No, love. They don’t permit dogs there. As for horses, I don’t know, but many schools in the countryside do. Isn’t that right, James?” She looked at her husband imploringly as if the old shepherd were an expert on English boarding schools.

James shrugged and turned. “Miss Bleachum?”

Sarah Bleachum had, until then, kept quiet. She was a rather inconspicuous young woman who kept her hair up in a matronly bun and who seemed to keep her handsome light-green eyes always lowered.

“I think so, Mr. McKenzie,” she said. Sarah Bleachum’s family had emigrated when she was still a baby, so she could not speak from experience. “But it varies. And Oaks Garden is more artistically oriented. My cousin wrote me that they don’t participate in sports much.” Miss Bleachum turned beet red as she uttered the last sentence.

“Your cousin?” James teased her. “Are we missing something?”

Since she could hardly turn any redder, Miss Bleachum’s skin grew mottled.

“I, well, my cousin Christopher has just begun his first rectorate in Cambridge. Oaks Garden belongs to his parish.”

“Is he nice?” Gloria asked.

“He is very nice,” Miss Bleachum assured her. James and Jack observed with fascination how she turned red once again.

“Regardless, you won’t be alone,” Gwyneira said, now playing her trump card. Elaine had confirmed to her that Lilian would be traveling to England as well. “Your cousin Lily will also be going. You like her, don’t you, Glory? You’ll have loads of fun together.”

Gloria looked somewhat comforted.

“What exactly do you have in mind for the journey?” Jack asked. He knew he should not criticize in front of Gloria, but the entire plan felt wrong to him, and he could not hold himself back. “Are the two young girls supposed to board the ship alone? With a sign hung round their necks:
T
O BE DELIVERED TO
O
AKS
G
ARDEN
, C
AMBRIDGE
?
”

Gwyneira glowered at her son, caught unawares. “Of course not. Kura and William will most certainly pick her up.”

“Oh, really?” Jack asked. “According to their tour itinerary, they’ll be in St. Petersburg in March.”

“They’r
e . . .
?” Gwyneira broke off. None of this should have been discussed in front of Gloria. “We’ll have to find someone to accompany the girls.”

Miss Bleachum seemed to be wrestling with herself. “If I, well, I would not want to impose, but I could.” Once again the blood shot to her face.

“My, how times have changed,” James noted. “Fifty years ago, people married in the other direction.”

Miss Bleachum seemed close to fainting. “How, wha
t . . .
?”

James smiled encouragingly. “Miss Bleachum, I’m old, not blind. If you’d like to be discreet, you’re going to have to stop blushing every time a certain reverend is mentioned.”

Miss Bleachum reddened again.

“Please don’t think
I . . .
”

Gwyneira looked up, irritated. “Am I understanding this correctly? You would be willing to accompany the girls to England, Miss Bleachum? You understand that you’ll spend at least three months traveling?”

Miss Bleachum did not know where to look, but Jack eventually took pity on her.

“Mother, Miss Bleachum is trying to tell us, as properly as possible, that she’s contemplating taking on the vacant position of pastor’s wife in Cambridge,” he said, grinning. “So long as that affinity is affirmed, which, after several years of exchanging letters with her cousin Christopher, she believes both parties feel. Have I expressed the situation correctly, Miss Bleachum?”

The young woman nodded, relieved.

“You want to get married, Miss Bleachum?” Gloria asked.

“So you’re in love?” Lilian asked.

Elaine arrived on Kiward Station with her daughter a week before the girls’ departure for England.

After two days with the lively Lilian, Gloria had thawed, and the girls became the best of friends. During the day they roamed the farm; at night they curled up in Gloria’s bed and exchanged secrets—which Lilian blabbed immediately the next day.

Miss Bleachum did not know how to keep from blushing when the girl mentioned her love life.

Lilian, on the other hand, found nothing embarrassing in it. “How exciting to cross the ocean because you love a man you’ve never seen,” she prattled. “Just like in ‘John Riley.’ Do you know that one, Miss Bleachum? John Riley is at sea for seven years, and his true love waits for him. She loves him so much she says she’d die if something happened to him, but then she doesn’t even recognize him when he returns. Do you have a photograph of your true love, er, of your cousin, Miss Bleachum?”

“Ever the bar pianist’s daughter,” James said, teasing his shocked granddaughter, Elaine, who blushed in turn. “She learns these songs from you.”

Before marrying Tim, Elaine had played the piano for a few years at the Lucky Horse Inn. Lilian had a weakness for the stories behind the ballads and folk songs that Elaine had once entertained the coal miners with.

“Lily, we don’t ask such questions.” Elaine said. “Those are Miss Bleachum’s private affairs. Please excuse her, Miss Bleachum.”

“Lilian is right, of course. It’s not a secret. My cousin Christopher and I have been writing to each other since we were children. Over the last few years, we’ve, well, become closer. And yes, I do have a picture of him, Lilian. I’ll show it to you on the ship.”

Gwyneira wished for nothing more than a happy rendezvous for Sarah and Christopher Bleachum. If it all turned out as they hoped, Gloria would have a trusted adult nearby.

When the girls finally climbed into the coach in which Jack would drive them to the ship, Gwyneira forced herself to smile. Elaine would accompany the group and then board the train in Christchurch to return to Greymouth.

“We’re riding over the Bridle Path,” Lilian said excitedly. Legions of New Zealanders had stumbled along the path, weary from the endless ocean passage and too poor to afford the mule transportation service. Gwyneira had told her about the magnificent sight that greeted them at the end of the climb: the Canterbury Plains in the sunlight, with the breathtaking panorama of mountains rising behind them. In that moment she had fallen in love with the land that was to be her country. But the girls’ path now led them in the opposite direction.

3

A
ccompanying Gloria and Lilian to Christchurch was the hardest thing Jack had ever done. The group made good time with his powerful cob mares, but he would have given a great deal to slow the passage of time as they approached the ship.

He still thought it an awful mistake to deliver Gloria to her parents and their whims. He knew people did it all the time, but Gloria was different. Everything in him bristled against putting the girl in Kura’s custody. He still recalled the many nights when he had taken a wailing Gloria out of her crib while her mother slept soundly in the next room. And Gloria’s father had only cared about what to name her. “Gloria” was meant to symbolize his “triumph over this new land,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

The travelers spent the night at a hotel in Christchurch then took the Bridle Path early the next morning. The ship was to weigh anchor at dawn, and Gloria and Lilian were still half-asleep as Jack directed his team through the mountains. Elaine held her daughter tightly. Gloria clambered onto the driving box and curled up next to Jack.

“If it’s really bad, you’ll come get me, right?” she whispered sleepily.

“It won’t be so bad, Glory. Just think of Princess. She came from England. There are sheep and ponies there just like here.”

Jack caught a look from Miss Bleachum, who was visibly biting her lip. She had made inquiries, and there were neither sheep nor horses at Oaks Garden. But she held her tongue. Sarah Bleachum, too, loved Gloria.

Shortly thereafter, Jack and Elaine were left waving on the pier as the gigantic steamship pulled out into the bay.

“I hope we’re doing the right thing,” Elaine sighed. “Tim and I are far from certain, but Lily wouldn’t hear otherwise.”

Jack did not answer. It was all he could do to hold back his tears. Fortunately, however, they had to leave to get Elaine to the train on time.

After dropping off Elaine, Jack directed his team toward the Avon River. George Greenwood and his wife had a house near the river. Although he would have preferred to brood silently on the drive back to Kiward Station, he was hoping to catch up on the latest news on the wool trade, and Elizabeth had invited him to spend the night.

Elizabeth Greenwood, a slightly corpulent matron with crisp features and friendly blue eyes, noticed his unhappy demeanor when she opened the door.

“My God, boy, you look like you sent little Gloria to the scaffold. We’ll cheer you up a bit,” she said and embraced Jack. Elizabeth Greenwood and Gwyneira McKenzie had traveled on the same ship from England to New Zealand, and Jack was like family to her. “She’ll be happy in England. Our Charlotte didn’t even want to come back.” Elizabeth smiled and opened the door to their little parlor for Jack.

“That’s not true, Mum.”

She looked up and glared reproachfully at Elizabeth.

“I was always homesick for Canterbury, sometimes even dreaming of the view from above the plains toward the mountains. There’s no place where the sky is as clear as here.” Her voice was soft and musical.

Jack had heard that Charlotte, George and Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, was back in Christchurch. As the girl stood up to greet Jack, he momentarily forgot the sharp pain of separation from Gloria.

Charlotte Greenwood was the prettiest girl Jack had ever seen. Her skin glowed, translucent and milk white like fine porcelain. Her hair was blonde like her mother’s, and her ponytail fell in luxuriant locks over her shoulder. Her most riveting feature, however, was her large, chocolate brown eyes. The girl looked like a fairy—or like the magical being in that song, “Annabel Lee,” that little Lilian was always singing.

“Allow me to introduce my daughter Charlotte. Charlotte, Jack McKenzie,” Elizabeth Greenwood said, breaking through Jack’s breathless silence.

When Charlotte reached out her hand to him, Jack responded unconsciously with a gesture he had practiced in his etiquette lessons but never performed for a woman from the Canterbury Plains: he kissed the girl’s hand.

Charlotte smiled. “I remember you, Mr. McKenzie,” she said amiably, “from that concert that your—cousin?—gave before she left for England. I traveled on the same ship, you know.”

Jack nodded. He only had hazy memories of Kura-maro-tini’s farewell concert in Christchurch.

“You were looking after that little girl, and I was a little jealous.”

Jack looked at Charlotte incredulously. He had been almost eighteen at the time, and sh
e . . .

“I would have preferred to be playing with that wood horse and building a toy village with the Maori children to sitting still and listening to the music,” the girl admitted.

Jack smiled. “So you don’t count yourself among the admirers of m
y . . .
strictly speaking, she’s my half niece.”

Charlotte closed her eyes, revealing her long, honey-colored lashes. Jack was smitten.

“Then again, maybe I wasn’t old enough,” she said. She opened her eyes and abruptly transitioned from polite chitchat to her thoughts on artistic representation. “Mrs. Martyn’s interpretation of her people’s heritage is not exactly what comes to mind when I think of the preservation of cultural treasures. ‘Ghost Whispers’ only makes use of that element of the culture that seemed to be of use to the singer to—well, to increase her fame. While Maori music, as I understand it, generally has a more communicative dimension.”

Although Jack understood little of what Charlotte had said, he could have listened to her for hours. Elizabeth Greenwood turned her eyes toward heaven.

“Enough, Charlotte, once again you’re giving speeches while your listeners politely starve to death. Charlotte stayed in England to attend college, Jack. She studied something to do with history and literature.”

“Colonial history and comparative literature, Mum,” Charlotte gently corrected her. “I apologize if I’ve bored you, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Just call me Jack,” he managed. He just wanted to go on worshipping the girl silently. But then his mischievous spirit shone through again. “After all, we’re among the few people in the entire world who don’t revere Kura-maro-tini Martyn. It’s a very exclusive club, Miss Greenwood.”

“Charlotte,” she said, smiling. “But I did not mean to diminish the accomplishments of your half niece. I had the pleasure of hearing her again in England, and she is certainly a gifted artist. As far as I can tell, that is. I’m not very musical. What bothers me is how myths are being taken out of context and the history of a people reduced to, well, banal love poetry.”

“Charlotte, offer our guest a drink before we eat. George should be arriving soon, Jack. And perhaps our Charlotte will attempt somewhat more comprehensible conversation. If you keep ranting like that, my dear, you’ll never find a husband.”

Charlotte led her guest into the neighboring salon, and offered him some whiskey. He declined.

“Not before sundown,” he remarked.

Charlotte smiled. “You do look like you could use something strong. Maybe some tea?”

When George Greenwood arrived a half hour later, he found his daughter and Jack McKenzie deep in animated conversation. At least that’s how it looked at first glance. In reality, Jack was simply stirring his cup of tea and listening to Charlotte, who was telling him about her childhood in an English boarding school. If English boarding schools produced such angelic beings as Charlotte, nothing bad could happen to Gloria.

“And your ‘artistic-creative’ development?” Jack asked.

Charlotte furrowed her brow charmingly.

“We painted a little,” she said. “And whoever wanted to could play piano or violin.”

“I don’t think the girls at Oaks Garden are denied a musical education,” George Greenwood interjected. “I have no doubt that the Martyns will put a very different emphasis on their daughter’s education than we did.”

Jack looked at George Greenwood, confused. He made it sound as if English schoolgirls were forcibly dragged to the piano.

“These boarding schools aren’t all alike, Jack,” George continued. “Some are little more than finishing schools with a touch of literature and art. Others offer girls Latin and physics and chemistry, and the students don’t automatically get married right after graduating. Some go on to college or university. Like our Charlotte, you see.”

He winked at his daughter.

“It’s true. I went off to college, and now I’m not even engaged. But you’d be happy if I were to get married, admit it. And Mum most of all.”

George Greenwood sighed. “Naturally your mother and I would welcome it if you were to find a suitable husband, Charlotte, instead of parading around in blue stockings. Studies in Maori culture! What use is that?”

Jack’s ears pricked up.

“You’re interested in Maori culture, Charlotte?” Jack asked rather keenly. “Do you speak the language?”

George rolled his eyes. “Heavens no.”

Just then, Elizabeth called them to dinner.

Elizabeth Greenwood dominated the conversation at dinner, mostly chatting about society in Christchurch and the Canterbury Plains. Jack only half listened, as he was making his own plans. Toward the end of dinner, the conversation returned to Charlotte’s projects. The girl intended to ask a Maori named Reti, George’s business manager for the wool trade, for lessons in Maori. George was energetically opposed.

“Reti has other things to do,” he explained. “Besides, the language is complicated. It would take you years before you had enough of a command of it to understand their stories and get them down on paper.”

“Oh, it’s not all that complicated,” Jack objected. “I speak fluent Maori.”

“But you were partly raised in their village, Jack,” George said.

“And the Maori on Kiward Station speak English just as fluently,” Jack continued. “If you came to stay with us for a while, Charlotte, we could arrange something. My half stepmother, so to speak, Marama, is a
tohunga
. A singer, really. But she supposedly knows all the most important stories. And Rongo Rongo, the tribe’s midwife and witch doctor, speaks English as well.”

Charlotte’s face brightened.

“You see, Daddy? Everything will work out.”

“Gwyneira McKenzie has probably had enough of spoiled girls interested in culture beneath her roof for one lifetime.”

“Not at all, not at all. My mother i
s . . .
” He trailed off.

To depict Gwyneira as a patron of the fine arts would be an exaggeration. But Kiward Station, like all the farms in the plains, was a welcoming household. And Jack could not imagine his mother being anything but taken with this girl.

Elizabeth, however, broke in.

“But George, what are you thinking? Of course Gwyneira would support Charlotte’s research. She’s always been interested in Maori culture.”

That was the first Jack had ever heard of it. Gwyneira got along well with the Maori. Many of their customs aligned with her practical nature, and she did not tend toward prejudice. But Jack’s mother was more interested in animal husbandry and dog training than anything else.

Elizabeth smiled at Jack.

“Didn’t Jenny work for a year on their farm?” Charlotte asked, turning to her mother.

Jack nodded fervently. He had forgotten that the older Greenwood daughter, Jennifer, had spent a year on Kiward Station teaching the children in the Maori village.

“Yes, of course,” Elizabeth said. “Your sister got to know her husband there.”

Elizabeth gave her own husband a meaningful look. When he still did not understand, she moved her eyes back and forth between Jack and Charlotte.

George finally seemed to understand.

“Naturally nothing at all stands in the way of Charlotte paying a visit to Kiward Station,” he said. “I’ll take you along the next time I have business in the plains.”

Charlotte beamed at Jack. “I can’t wait!”

“I’ll be counting the days.”