Song of the Spirits (37 page)

When fall came, the men rode into the highlands to herd the sheep down to the plains. William brought eternal shame upon himself by getting lost in the mountains while searching for a runaway sheep. It took a search party until the next day to find him.

“We all thought he’d picked up and left,” Andy reported with a grin to the sneering James. Neither of the McKenzies had ridden along this time. Gwyneira had thought Kura could use some company, and James’s bones had begun to hurt when he spent the entire day in the saddle and his nights on the hard ground. He had started to imagine leaving Kiward Station to William someday and moving into a small, cozy house with Gwyneira. A few sheep, a dog-breeding business, and a warm fireplace in the evening that he lit himself instead of leaving it to a servant. Gwyneira and James had dreamed of such a life when they were both young, and James saw no reason not to make it a reality. Giving up the farm would make him a little sorry, but only for Jack’s sake. Though his son was still young, he would be the perfect stock farmer—and Andy was full of praise for the boy.

“Jack has a sixth sense for the work. He finds every sheep, and the dogs listen to him almost before he speaks. Is there really no chance of his taking over the farm?”

James shook his head. “He’s not even a Warden. If Gwyneira had inherited the farm, it would have been somewhat different. Stephen, George, and Elaine would have preceded Jack in order of inheritance, but we could have come to some agreement with them. Stephen and George don’t have any interest in it, after all, and Elaine has her own sheep farm now.”

“But Kura doesn’t have any interest either,” Andy objected. “It’s a shame you couldn’t marry her off to Jack. Yeah, it’d be a bit incestuous, but good blood.”

James laughed heartily. “Jack wouldn’t do such a thing for all the sheep in the world, Andy! Even if Kura was the last girl on earth, he’d become a monk!”

As Kura’s delivery approached, her mood became noticeably worse. William did everything he could think of to lift her spirits, but without much success. Ever since he had stopped reaching for her at night—to keep from harming the child—she had treated him with icy disdain, sometimes becoming so angry that she threw things at him. There no longer was anyone who could cheer Kura up even for a short time. She did not want a baby. And Kiward Station was the last place she wanted to be.

Marama was worried that Kura’s anger could harm the child, and Gwyneira, too, was occasionally reminded of her own pregnancy with Paul. She had likewise rejected her child. But Paul had been fruit borne of a rape while Kura awaited a child borne of love. Gwyneira was almost relieved when Kura’s labor finally began. Marama and Rongo Rongo, the Maori midwife, arrived straightaway to be at Kura’s side; Gwyneira also sent for Francine Candler, so that she would not feel insulted. The baby was already born, however, by the time the midwife arrived from Haldon. Kura had an easy delivery and was in labor for only six hours before bringing a very small but healthy girl into the world.

Marama’s whole face glowed when she presented the baby to Gwyneira.

“You’re not angry, are you, Gwyn?” she asked, sounding concerned.

Gwyneira smiled. Marama had asked the same question when Kura was born.

“Of course not, we’re maintaining the female line,” she said as she took the baby from Marama’s arms. She looked searchingly into the
tiny face. She could not yet see whose features the baby had inherited, but the down on her little head looked more golden than black.

“What does Kura want to name her?” Gwyneira asked, rocking the baby. The infant reminded her of Fleurette as a newborn, causing a wave of tenderness to wash over her as the baby awoke and gazed at her with big blue eyes.

Marama shrugged unhappily. “I don’t know. She’s hardly spoken, and she didn’t even really look at the baby. All she said was, ‘Take her to her grandmother,’ and ‘I’m sorry it’s not a boy.’ When William said, ‘Next time, my love!’ Kura almost went mad with fury. Rongo Rongo just gave her a sleeping potion. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but with her raving like that…”

William was likewise disappointed. He had been counting on a son. Tonga nevertheless sent a present for the birth, since the Maori recognized female inheritance.

Gwyneira did not care whether it was a boy or girl. “As long as she’s not musical,” she said to James, laying the baby down in her crib. Since no one had given it any thought of it before, she had turned Kura’s little salon into a nursery. James had retrieved the cradle from storage. It seemed that no one had even thought about a name.

“Name it after Kura’s favorite singer,” James advised. “What are their names, again?”

Gwyneira rolled her eyes. “Mathilde, Jenny, and Adelina. We can’t do that to the child! I’ll ask the baby’s father. Perhaps we can name her after his mother.”

“Then she’ll probably have a name like Mary or Birdie,” James said.

It turned out that William had, in fact, thought of a name for his daughter.

“It has to be a special name,” he declared, already a little addled by whiskey when Gwyneira had found him in the salon downstairs. “Something to express our triumph over this new land. I think I’ll name her Gloria!”

“I suppose there’s no need to explain it to Tonga that way,” James said, grinning, when Gwyneira told him the news. Jack had joined
him, and father and son were busy affixing a mobile over the baby’s crib. James explained to his son that the baby couldn’t really see much just then, but that in time the little dangling bear would distract and calm her.

“What is she anyway? My aunt?” Jack asked, as he peered, fascinated, at Gloria in the crib.

“You can touch her if you’re gentle,” Gwyneira encouraged him. “But good question. What is she? You and Kura’s father would have been half brothers. So Kura would have been your half niece. And the baby is your great–half niece. It’s is a little complicated.”

Jack smiled at the baby. His face mirrored the expression that his father showed when looking at newborn animals: incredible astonishment, almost something like devotion. Finally, he stuck his hand in the crib and felt carefully with his finger for Gloria’s small hand.

The baby opened her eyes for a brief moment before closing them again. She blinked at Jack, apparently fascinated. With a tight grip, she closed her tiny hand around Jack’s finger.

“I think I like her,” said the boy.

Over the next few days, the care of little Gloria became a major point of contention among the women of Kiward Station. Marama and Kiri, the cook, were dead set against taking responsibility for the child away from Kura. Years earlier, after Gwyneira’s unfortunate pregnancy, Kiri had cared for little Paul and now, looking back, thought that a mistake. Gwyneira had never worked on building a relationship with her son and had never really loved him as a child—or as an adult. Had she simply let Paul cry, Kiri argued, Gwyneira would sooner or later have been forced to nurture the baby—and then she would have developed natural maternal instincts toward him. It would be the same with Kura and Gloria, Kiri maintained.

Gwyneira, however, felt that she had to take responsibility for her infant great-granddaughter. If for no other reason than that no one else was doing it. Kura, for one, did not seem to feel obligated
to pick up her baby just because it was crying. She simply retreated into another room to avoid hearing her cries. Putting little Gloria in her salon, the most remote room in her suite, had proved to be a mistake. The nursery was connected to a corridor, so Gloria’s crying did not remain concealed from the other residents of the house. But when Kura withdrew into her bedroom or dressing room, she heard next to nothing. As for Heather Witherspoon, the screaming clearly rattled her nerves, but she was afraid of dropping Gloria if she picked her up—and after Gwyneira observed her holding the baby, she shared that concern.

“My God, Miss Witherspoon, that’s a baby, not a doll! Her head isn’t screwed on; you have to support it. Gloria can’t hold it up herself yet. And she’s not going to bite you if you lay her on your shoulder. Nor will she explode—you don’t have to hold her like a stick of dynamite.”

Heather Witherspoon had kept her distance ever since. As did William, who had nevertheless engaged a nanny, a certain Mrs. Whealer. He refused to have a Maori girl looking after his daughter. Though Mrs. Whealer was quite competent, she could only start work at nine o’ clock in the morning since she came from Haldon, and she liked to be home before dark. James grumbled that they could just train the man who drove Mrs. Whealer to change diapers and it would cost the same.

Regardless, there was no one to comfort and feed Gloria at night, and as often as not, it was Jack who went to his parents’ room to tell them that the baby needed them. The boy slept in the room next to the newly furnished nursery and was therefore always the first to hear the baby. The first few times, he simply took the baby out of her crib and laid her next to him like he did the puppy he had gotten for Christmas. However, he tended to feed the puppy before he went to bed, which meant the dog slept soundly, whereas Gloria could not sleep because she was hungry.

This left Jack no other choice but to wake his mother. Out of a sense of duty, he always tried to wake Kura first, but she never stirred. From her bedroom, she never responded to his knocking, just as she
never responded to Gloria’s crying, and the boy did not dare to barge into her private rooms.

“What is that boy William doing anyway?” grumbled James as Gwyneira got up for the third night in a row. “Can’t anybody explain to him that it’s not enough just to make a baby?”

Gwyneira threw on a dressing gown. “He doesn’t even hear it. Nor does Kura. Heaven only knows what they’re thinking. In any case, I can’t imagine William with a milk bottle in his hand, Can you?”

James was just about to reply that William would first have to let go of the whiskey bottle, but he did not want to worry Gwyneira. She was so busy with the baby and the farm that she hadn’t noticed, but James had seen a marked reduction in the alcohol stores. William and Kura’s marriage no longer seemed to be as happy as it had been early on—or even as in the early months of her pregnancy. The two no longer turned in early for the night, exchanging loving glances as they once had, but now seemed rather to be living alone together. William often remained in the salon long after Kura had retired. Sometimes he stayed there chatting with Heather Witherspoon—James would have loved to know what they had to talk about. Yet he often brooded there alone, always with a full glass of whiskey at his side.