Captive Wife, The (18 page)

There is nothing to be done, I said. I was afraid he would go off and leave us here without protection. The mood of the men left behind was very sour.

We will take a whaleboat to sea, Thomas White said, within my hearing. He was a man I had taken against from the first, his
dark jowls set as if with an inner fury.

Even though it's holed, I asked, for I was not going to let him get away with this. Perhaps he thought a woman couldn't understand the King's English.

We can bail fast enough to keep it afloat, he said. We can bring back a rescue boat.

A likely story, Jacky said, when I told him. Mind you, the plan is not entirely foolish but these men cannot handle a boat holed like this. And who's to say they will come back, once they've saved themselves?

You're not going yourself, I said. Or begged. I knew that if anybody could do it, it would be him, but I was terrified of being left alone.

Perhaps, he said.

Would you take us?

Never, he said firmly.

Then you cannot leave us. I heard my voice piteous and weak.

He did not answer. That evening, I saw him and Charley and Captain Hall deep in conversation.

David, after seeming to rally, was ill again. Young John had stopped eating altogether. I wondered if we too should make approaches to the tribe, like the deserters. They were, no doubt, having a more comfortable life than ours — unless they'd been eaten. But though the people of Taranaki were not well disposed towards us, they might consider a deal if Jacky offered something in return for our shelter. By now, I was willing to risk it. My hair was matted thick, my throat and nostrils raw from salt spray. The children were failing, my milk had all but dried up. I had offered John my breast, big boy though he was, but there was nothing there.

We had now been on the beach for more than a week. It was the seventh of May. Two things happened that day.

First, three of the deserting crewmen arrived back at the beach.

What has happened? Don't your friends at the pa want you
any more? I asked, in what I hoped was my most sarcastic tone.

They didn't look at me. I knew they had done something wrong. Though they wouldn't talk to me, I guessed from their appearance that it was something very bad, and that we were now in greater danger.

Later, the women at the pa would tell me what had happened. All had seemed well for some days, and the men had been well fed, in return for their gifts from the
Harriet
's stores. Then three young girls, not yet twelve, had had their bodies torn open and tossed aside by the men. Afterwards, the men took their place beside the fire, picking fernroot from their teeth, with the virgin blood of the girls on their hands, as if what they had done was of no account.

No wonder they had taken flight. Their wits had not completely deserted them, for soon they sensed the mood around them after the tearful girls were discovered. They escaped the fury of their hosts by running back to us.

It was late in the afternoon when the second thing happened.

Two hundred warriors advanced upon us. There was no question of a fight, we were outnumbered on every side. All that remained of our belongings was taken. The warriors took with them such items as soap, though God knows, we were past washing or bathing, sugar and a sack of flour, which at least I could have made a paste from. When they left, we looked at each other, gaunt and hollow-eyed, the bones in our cheeks standing out like those of the skeletons on the beaches of Te Awaiti.

Days passed, which I remember as if in a dream. I am not sure whether it really happened or not, but I seem to recall Charley coming to me in the night and kneeling beside me. It will be all right, darling, he said, I'll take care of you. Another time I might have been shocked by his endearment.

I sat bolt upright and Jacky was not there beside me on the hollowed out sea-grass that was our bed. Has he put to sea? I cried.

I knew by the look in Charley's eyes that it was so.

But in the morning Jacky was there. Again the seas ran high. I thought perhaps he had tried and failed to launch the boat.

What will become of us? I asked myself many times.

David seemed to decide this for himself. He was now truly delirious and spoke like a madman. Tell Mama she was the best mother in the world, he said, holding onto my hand. His eyes were heavy, the lids swollen so that he could hardly see.

I thought those were powerful words of forgiveness but I did not let them move me. She is all right, I said. Our mother is our mother. You can tell her these things yourself, for soon we will be rescued. I was willing him to stay with me, for John and Louisa to stay. If just one of them were to slip beyond my grasp, then I would know God had forsaken us altogether.

On the tenth of May, we were taken by the Maoris.

The first raid happened soon after dawn. Thomas White was killed before our eyes.

Around midday, musket fire hit our party. Our group returned the fire. I saw, in part, the manoeuvre Jacky and Charley and Captain Hall had been planning: what were left of our muskets were being fired from positions on the beach where they were most likely to hit a party descending from the hilltops. More than twenty Maoris fell before this onslaught, but in all, we lost fourteen men. Richard Hall was the first to go. The beach rang with the men's dying shouts, some bitter at their fate, others muttering prayers, and words of love for people far away.

David staggered to his feet.

I tried to pull him back with us. I cried out, David, for God's sake, stay with me. You cannot fight.

I don't think he heard me, or if he did, my words made no sense to him. He walked upright, the first steps he had taken in days, putting his shoulders back. He walked out into the line of fire that came from above. I ran out to stop him, and felt a blow like a tree trunk falling on me. Above me stood a man with a raised tomahawk. A look of astonishment crossed his face. He
glanced at his weapon as if there was something wrong with it. I touched my head, and felt a burning pain. My head was split, but not shattered as it might have been. Instead, the tortoise-shell comb in my wild and tangled hair had shielded my skull from the violence of the blow. Blood ran from a wound in my throat where the axe had grazed as it slipped off my shell, as if I was the tortoise.

Then I saw David fall, watched his blood running across the sand.

Mama, I am truly sorry, I said, whether in my head or out loud, I am not sure. Please forgive me, Mama.

His blue eyes stared blank at the sky. My brother was just eighteen years of age. Among the tangle of limbs, brown and white, strewn across the beach, I saw the tribe, too, had lost boys who were little more than children. So they lay together.

I touched the sticky blood seeping down my chest, but I felt nothing, as if the blood belonged to another person. I heard a voice rising in a wail. It was my own. I heard Jacky say: Do not take on like this, it will not make things better.

But strong and sinewy hands were pulling me.

Run, Jacky shouted, but there was nowhere I could run. Charley, and other men who had survived, were in retreat along the beach, and suddenly the tribe seemed to lose interest in them. They still held onto Jacky, his arms pinned to his side as he looked on from across the beach.

A man with smouldering eyes, not unlike those of Thomas White in their hatred, stepped forward. I would later learn he was the father of one of the girls taken by the sailors. His was the first hand to tear my clothes, the blue dress peeled away. Others followed him in undressing me, my corset stripped off, so that my breasts sprang free. In a few minutes I stood naked, and there was nowhere to hide myself. Voices rose in sighs and ahs and I prepared myself for death or the sharp spear of the men's bodies between my thighs. The children were crying. I could not comfort them. I raised my ashamed eyes and saw Jacky's face, full
of anguish, as he struggled in vain against those who held him.

My first tormentor reached over with his lips puckered. He brushed the nipple of my right breast as he leant into my throat where the blood still trickled and fell on my shoulders. With one hand he pushed my hair away and with the other he held me still. I felt his mouth close over the wound in my neck and begin to suck.

He stood back, as if offering others the chance to follow, but he must have swallowed all the blood, because the flow had stopped. He seized an iron hoop, which I believe had come from the wreck of the
Harriet
, digging it into my neck in an effort to open up a fresh wound.

As the frenzy of excitement continued, the men holding Jacky were perhaps distracted, looking towards their turn with me, for when I looked again, he was gone and I knew he had slipped their grasp. A musket shot rang out, but he was lost to them.

Now the mood turned uglier still, as I struggled to cover my nakedness, my hands in front of the bush of hair covering that last forbidden place. But death was on their minds and the man lifted his spear.

Only, at that moment, more people arrived. One of them was Te Matakatea, and with him was a woman. She saw what was happening and stepped forward. There is something to be said for the kindness of women to one another at the worst possible hour. The woman threw a cloak over my body, and in that instant I was saved.

The woman was the wife of Te Matakatea.

Instead of execution, we were told to follow.

But it was as I feared, the children and I were alone. I carried Louisa in my arms. A lithe dark man I had not seen before carried John in his arms. I guessed that he must have come from Waimate with Te Matakatea. I could barely keep up with him. Perhaps I imagined it, but he seemed to throw a look of sympathy towards me. He did not speak to the men who had taunted me on the beach. In this way we came to the pa of Te
Namu, high above the sea. We climbed to it by a rope ladder that could be drawn up as quickly as it was dropped.

We found ourselves in an open space before a meeting house.

That night the chief's wife asked her husband if my life might be spared. He listened intently, nodding his head as if in sympathy with her arguments. It was to these two people of the Taranaki tribe that I owed my life.

The slim young man who had carried John also spoke with Te Matakatea. I learnt that his name was Oaoiti and that he was a chief of Ngati Ruanui. In this manner, it was decided that I would live there at Te Namu pa, as part of the tribe.

Before this could begin, we had to submit ourselves to a ritual stampede, in which we were trampled underfoot, while the people of the pa shouted I know not what. But I took it to mean that we were no longer pakea, stripped of our whiteness, and must now consider ourselves Maori. I saw the pain Louisa was in, even as she was torn from my hands and hurled beneath the running trampling feet. I saw a foot descend on her chest and believe I heard her rib snap.

My little girl.

I saw then that I was bleeding, not from my wounds, but from that time of the month, the first since Louisa's birth. A man looked down at me, with utter disgust, as if he had trampled on shit. But at least the trampling stopped.

I was placed in a hut surrounded by stakes at the edge of the pa. A woman was sent to mind me. I never learnt her name. It is considered rude to ask a person's name directly, and after awhile it became too late for me to find out, though perhaps they thought I knew. It may have been Ruiha, or perhaps it was simply that she was a ruahine, a woman who knows spells. I think of her as Ruiha. I knew I had been sent to the hut because I was unclean, and that I could not leave until I was finished bleeding. But then something else happened that I could not have imagined. I had thought that in sparing me, my children
would be allowed to stay with me. Louisa was given to me, though later that night she was taken away, cradled in the arms of one of the women of the tribe, who said she would care for her, and I did not mind that.

But John was taken away from the pa, riding off on the shoulders of a stranger. I ran to the door because I heard him calling me. He wanted to get down but he was grasped by his ankles, on either side of the man's neck, so that he couldn't move.

Please, I cried. I turned to the woman who I thought was my friend, but this time she shrugged as if there was nothing she could do. He is going to be a rangatira, she said. He will get the very best care, or words to that effect. As if I should be proud.

No, I said, that cannot be.

Mama. Mama, John called. I will be a good boy. Don't let them take me away.

Stop, I shouted with all the voice I could muster, and that language I had spoken with my friends in Cloudy Bay. Kati. Ko taku tama tena. Stop. That is my boy.
My
boy.

Nobody appeared to listen as I fell to the ground. I remember it flashing through my mind, as my cheek rested on the beaten earth of Te Namu pa, that I had failed every person I loved.

I did not see John again for several months.

I rest my forehead on the cold glass of the windowpane. Outside in the thin light of the new day, Australian birds stir and shout with their bold mocking voices among a garden that Adie has told me looks as if it is straight from the English countryside. Barefoot I step outside. The scent of late honeysuckle rises from beneath the dew, sharp and sweet. I see the tousled dahlias in the wispy dawn, a line of gladioli at attention like soldiers, and wonder where the next line of musket fire might come from.

I have an odd premonition that the most important part of my life, that for which I will be remembered, has already passed.

2 March 1835
    

My dear Miss Malcolm

I enclose some drawings the children have made for you. How can I prevail upon you? Your presence in my house is essential. Every day, Austen cries and asks for Nanny Adie. I did not know he called you this. He is inconsolable. I have a woman come every day, but although I think her kind enough and she does not beat the children hard, it seems she does not truly understand their needs.

At first, after you left, I thought that children should accept their lot and not question the arrangements made by their elders. But as I see my son growing more despondent every day, I wonder how I will ever make a man of him. Shoulders up, boy, I say. I ask the cook if he has eaten everything put in front of him, but she reports that the plate returned on his tray is hardly touched. Of course she is not a good cook. Do you think she should be replaced with a better one? Miss Malcolm — Adeline, if I may be so forward — I would allow you to find a better cook
if you returned to my household.

I know that in the past you have encouraged me to seek an education for Mathilde at one of the better schools for young ladies. I see she is sorely in need of some lessons in deportment, for her manner has become quite rough and rude, like that of the convict children of the Rocks. She still has the language of a lady, but there is a certain insolence about her that I cannot tolerate. But I will do whatever you suggest to improve her attitude.

I am quite at a loss as to how these children should be brought up without you here to help me.

If I have done anything to offend you, I do ask your forgiveness. You have nothing to fear from me. As far as the matter on which we have disagreed is concerned, for all I know Mrs Guard may be more sinned against than sinful, and perhaps I have been too quick to judge. Your friendship towards her is as a trifle to me, if you will just come back.

Yours,

Gerald Roddick

‘The cheek of it,' says Adie, her hands trembling, as she reads this over her breakfast tray. She and Betty sit in the shaded porch in front of the cottage, the small table before them.

‘He is very condescending in his manner,' Betty says. She is pale and drawn, with dark circles beneath her eyes from lack of sleep.

‘
You have nothing to fear
.' Adie quotes the letter with a spit of contempt in her voice.

‘Oh, I thought you were referring to his words about me.
Perhaps I have been too quick to judge
.'

‘That? Well, yes, I do see that that might be wounding to you. Rumour without substance is always unkind.'

‘Well,' says Betty with some vehemence, ‘he's just offering a general view of my character, isn't he? Nothing you can put your finger on, nothing that I can go and say to your lieutenant, what is it exactly that you mean? What sin have you heard about of
mine? For he would say in answer, but I have said nothing of you, I have only spoken in the kindest terms. I'm taking your side.'

Adie looks at her friend carefully.

‘I don't think you've told me everything, Betty.'

‘Why on earth would I do that?' Betty says, with the semblance of a laugh. And then, as if to turn away her sharpness, she adds, ‘You mightn't always hear me, Adie. Or perhaps I don't put into words some of my darkest reflections.'

‘I'm sorry. I was very tired last night,' Adie says, after another silence. ‘I can't imagine what I'd have done, in your circumstances.'

‘You'd have done whatever you must, whatever you had to do to save your children's lives. You'd have pretended to yourself that nothing existed except the place you were in. Until you came to believe it.'

‘So you think I should go back to Lieutenant Roddick's house?' says Adie, as if she has hardly been listening.

‘Roddick?' Betty is glad of a diversion from scrutiny of herself. ‘Well, like me, I suppose you have the children to consider too. But these aren't your children,' she says, with the appearance of a frown. ‘Surely that's different.'

‘In what way?' The teacher's voice is querulous.

‘They'll grow up and grow away, and then you'll be on your own again. What cause will the lieutenant have for you remaining in his household when they are gone?'

‘I don't want to think about that, Betty.'

‘You love him, don't you?'

The governess fans her burning cheeks, her damp eyes.

‘Why,' says Betty, ‘you're a late bloomer, aren't you?'

‘Am I? Do you think so?'

‘Well, yes,' says Betty, without irony. ‘But of course, if it's the lieutenant you're after, the whole thing changes. Either it's the children you're worried about, or the lieutenant.'

‘Couldn't it be both?' asks Adie, her voice humble.

‘It would be worse for the children if you returned and then left again. I expect they'll get used to someone new if they have to.'

‘You can't know that,' Miss Malcolm cries.

‘Well, I know a lot. It's different with every child. My daughter is dead. But my son has had plenty of mothers and does very well.'

‘Are you thinking of leaving Captain Guard?'

‘For the moment, that is exactly what I've done.' Betty appears light-headed and giddy when she voices this admission.

Miss Malcolm lets out a wail like a child. ‘I don't know what to do.'

‘About me, or yourself?' Betty feels like another person, older and wiser than the woman before her, whose shaky hand mops up her poached egg with a piece of bread. She looks into Adie's eyes watering in bright sunlight, so that the rims of her pupils seem to dissolve. ‘What do you really want? If it's the lieutenant, you must weigh up the possibilities. Can you bear to bring up his children while you sleep in an iron bed in the maid's quarters, or do you have any chance of bringing him to bed yourself?'

Adie looks away from Betty, her eyes narrowed against the morning sun. ‘Will you go back to Captain Guard?'

‘Before I can decide that, I'll have to see if he asks me,' says Betty. ‘You could say, Adie, that our misfortunes have something in common.'