White Feathers (36 page)

They looked at each other and smiled, and the smiles turned to tears and they hugged fiercely, clinging tightly as if they might never see each other again.

By the time they’d exhausted Keely’s supply of clean handkerchiefs, they both felt enormously better. Together they went to Keely’s mirror and set about tidying themselves up.

‘Oh God,’ Keely groaned as a matching pair of red faces, swollen eyes and shiny noses stared back at them in the glass. ‘We look terrible. Do you think they’ll notice, downstairs?’

‘Probably,’ Erin replied, ‘but does it matter? We’ve been to a war, remember, we’re allowed to cry. It’s a pity the men aren’t. There are three downstairs who might do well if they did, now and again.’

‘Three?’ asked Keely.

‘Well, yes — James, Joseph and Owen Morgan.’

‘Oh, yes, Owen. I keep forgetting about him.’

Erin shook a little of Keely’s face powder onto a large brush, swept it across her nose and cheeks and frowned at the patchy result. ‘Well, perhaps you shouldn’t. This morning Aunty Tam suggested that there might be, well, a certain level of interest from that quarter.’

So had Joseph, adding that, in his opinion, Keely would be a fool not to make the effort to behave a little less unpleasantly towards Owen, as he seemed to be the only man within a hundred-mile radius of Kenmore who didn’t seem to mind her behaviour.

‘He’s been very rude to me,’ Keely said reproachfully as she applied a hint of pale rose gloss to her lips.

‘Surely not? He seems to have lovely manners.’

Erin had only met him this morning, and briefly at that, but already she could see that he was a kind, thoughtful and very stable sort of person. And quite good-looking. Not as attractive as Joseph of course, but certainly appealing.

Keely said, with a moue of distaste, ‘He said I had a face like a constipated sheep.’

Erin bit her lip. ‘Well, had he any cause to say that?’ she asked.

Keely put the lid back on her pot of gloss. ‘I might have been a little sour with him once or twice, but really, what a vulgar thing to say!’

‘Oh, don’t be a prude. We heard worse than that every day in the hospitals. We’ve
both
said worse than that plenty of times.’

Keely ignored that, because it was true. ‘Any way, he’s quite unsuitable. He has no money, he doesn’t move in the right circles, and he’s quite happy to do menial work.’ She looked at Erin in the mirror, her own blotchy face betraying a momentary flicker of interest. ‘He was a schoolteacher before the war, though,’ she said, but then she frowned again. ‘But he seems quite happy to trot around the station fixing broken fences and dagging smelly old sheep all day. I couldn’t possibly develop a serious interest in a man who does that for a living.’

‘Keely, our fathers do that for a living.’

‘Oh, you know I don’t mean it like that,’ Keely protested. ‘It’s just that he’s not, well, I don’t know what he isn’t, really. I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest. I’ve been too busy being rude to him.’

‘Then perhaps you should stop. Perhaps you could start by apologising for your behaviour.’

Keely looked genuinely appalled. ‘A
pol
ogise?’

‘Yes, it wouldn’t hurt. And perhaps you could have a talk with everyone else, too, about how you’ve been feeling and why. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps,
perhaps
,’ Keely mimicked. ‘Why are you always so sensible and right all the time, Erin?’

But she glanced at her cousin and smiled, and her face, swollen though it was, looked relaxed for the first time in months.

The following week was a whirlwind of whizzing into town in the car to buy magazines and pattern books then back to Kenmore to decide on a style for Erin and Keely’s dresses, then tearing into town again to purchase the fabrics, trims and accessories.

But before that there had been a very uncomfortable couple of days after Erin had announced that she intended to get married in her nurse’s military uniform; she was due to start work at Napier Hospital when her leave ran out six weeks after the wedding, she had been a nurse for the past five years, she was still a nurse, so why not wear her uniform? Men got married in their uniforms all the time, so why couldn’t she? Jeannie was appalled and refused to even speak to her daughter for an entire day, aghast at the idea of her only child marrying in a such a dreadfully dowdy grey dress. But Erin dug her toes in, and it took a period of intense negotiation, with Tamar acting as intermediary, before a compromise was reached. Erin finally agreed to wear a proper wedding gown, but it was to be of her choosing and her choosing alone — she flatly refused to wear anything frothy and extravagant, in which, she insisted, she would surely run the risk of being mistaken for a Christmas-tree fairy.

Then it was decided that the children needed new costumes as well, so back to town Lucy and Erin went, with Duncan and Liam bundled in the back of the car looking forward with tremendous excitement to a day out in Napier, unaware that most of it would be spent standing in various draughty shop dressing rooms trying on a succession of scratchy and uncomfortable little boys’ suits. At Kenmore, the men, including Joseph, looked on in bemusement, and quickly found reasons to spend as much time outside in the paddocks as possible.

Erin chose a very simple design to be made up in lustrous ivory
satin. There was a lace bodice trimmed at the neckline with seed pearls, and loose three-quarter sleeves generously hemmed with the same lace. The satin skirt fell from a high waist to just above the ankle, and a matching waistband fastened at the side with pearl buttons. Keely’s dress was in the same style, but in a soft champagne-coloured crepe with chiffon instead of lace. They would both carry bouquets of pale orchids and maidenhair fern.

The boys were not at all impressed with their little Norfolk suits, with short trousers and jackets, although Liam had initially been quite taken with his. Then Duncan announced he hated his with a vengeance and Liam soon decided that he did as well. Tamar thought the new outfits were really rather sweet, and was very cross when, four days before the wedding, she discovered both pairs of trousers in the daffodil paddock and the jackets under a pile of hay in the barn. She yelled at the boys very loudly and smacked them both across the backside. They both burst into tears, Duncan blurting between sobs that it wasn’t fair because his suit made him feel like an itchy old hedgehog and why couldn’t he just wear his farm clothes?

When Joseph tried on his own newly purchased wedding suit the following day, he muttered to James that he had to agree with Duncan, even if the boy was only three and a half.

He stood facing a full-length mirror looking this way and that, a little dismayed at what he saw. ‘I look like a prize bloody ram,’ he grumbled.

‘Well, don’t pull the trousers up so high,’ James replied, amused.

‘I have to, otherwise the waistband gets snagged on the buckle of my bloody leg harness. And I have to wear it — I can’t hop up the aisle, can I?’

‘You’re not going up an aisle, you’ll be standing in the parlour in front of the fireplace.’

‘Well, all right then, I can’t hop up to the fireplace,’ Joseph
snapped back. Then, sheepishly, he apologised.

James was surprised, and a thought struck him. ‘God, you’re not nervous are you? How extraordinary.’

‘Yes, I am actually,’ Joseph reluctantly admitted.

‘About the ceremony, or is it your leg? If it’s the ceremony, there’s nothing at all to worry about. It only takes a few minutes and it’s all fairly painless.’

‘I know, but I don’t particularly enjoy being the centre of attention. Not even for a few minutes.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said James, waving his hand airily, the old married man of nearly four years. ‘It’s certainly no worse than hopping the bags at Gallipoli. Just take a deep breath, close your eyes and it’ll all be over before you know it. If it’s your leg, though, what Erin might think about it I mean, then I can’t offer you much advice I’m afraid. Except to say that if a man has a good woman, then things like that usually turn out all right. And I should know. Lucy’s stood by me splendidly, despite my abominable behaviour.’

Joseph removed his new jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. ‘No, I’m not bothered about that. She saw me in the hospital, remember. Bathed me and bandaged the bloody thing for weeks, in fact.’

There was a brief silence during which neither man looked at the other: Joseph because he didn’t want his brother to see in his eyes that he and Erin had already been together, and James because he suddenly realised that they had, and he was too polite to let on that he knew.

Joseph continued, ‘Any way I suppose one stump’s the same as the next, and God knows she’s seen hundreds already.’

‘Not when it’s attached to the man she loves, I expect. And she does love you, you know, you can see it in her face every time she looks at you.’

‘Yes, you can, can’t you?’ said Joseph, grinning widely. ‘So, no, I
suppose I’m not nervous, really. In fact I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to be married to Erin.’

‘Good. And we’ll ask Mam to let the buttons out on your trousers, shall we? Then the waistband can sit under your straps and things won’t be quite so, well,
on show
.’

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

July, 1918

K
epa was wandering around the garden, getting a breath of fresh air before the ceremony. Only immediate family would be attending the actual wedding, but this afternoon there was to be a reception for seventy guests out here on the lawn. He looked at the huge marquee erected yesterday, then at the ripe grey clouds gathering over the hills, and hoped that if it rained, everyone would fit under it.

Only Joseph’s half-sister Huriana and her husband, and his foster-mother Mereana, would be attending from Maungakakari, but tomorrow Joseph and Erin would be guests of honour at a special wedding celebration in the village.

He checked his watch impatiently, and noted there was just over half an hour to go.

‘It’s a bore, all this standing around, isn’t it?’ said a voice.

Kepa turned to see James coming towards him, dressed, like Kepa, in his best suit and wearing a flower in his buttonhole. He lit a cigarette, shielding the flame of the match from the gentle breeze.

‘Joseph’s ready,’ he added. ‘He’s inside having a quick brandy.’

Kepa raised his dark eyebrows. ‘Not nervous, is he?’

‘Yes, I think he is, a little — not looking forward to all the fuss.’ James looked skywards as a few desultory drops of rain darkened the fabric of his coat. ‘Damn, I was hoping it would hold off.’

Kepa looked up as well. ‘Oh, I think it will. Most of those clouds are not moving at all.’

‘Well, I’m going inside any way. Would you care for a snifter of something yourself while we’re waiting?’

‘Yes, thank you, James,’ said Kepa, ‘I would.’

They turned and walked back across the lawn. As they reached the back door of the house, James flicked his cigarette butt into the winter spinach in the kitchen garden; it lay smoking lazily until he stepped on it and ground it into the soil.

Kepa observed dryly, ‘Do not let your mother catch you doing that. You know how she feels about her vegetable garden.’

James looked at Kepa sharply, at his immaculately tailored suit and his dark, handsome face framed by patrician silver wings in the black hair sweeping back from his strong temples, and felt an immediate pang of anger. Who was this man to imply ownership, or at the very least guardianship, of his mother’s feelings? Yes, he was Joseph’s father, and Tamar was Joseph’s mother, but as far as James was concerned any further relationship between the pair of them was inappropriate and certainly unwelcome.

Even as a small child James had sensed, or imagined he sensed, something more between Kepa and Tamar than a mutual interest in Joseph’s wellbeing. He had never understood why his father tolerated it; if he had been in Andrew’s position he would have gone to considerable lengths to prevent anything more than strictly necessary contact. But Andrew had welcomed Kepa at Kenmore and seemed quite happy with his presence at various family functions over the years. Tamar had never given any indication that her relationship with Kepa went any deeper than shared concern for Joseph’s welfare, but James was still uneasy about the arrangement,
particularly now that Kepa’s wife had died. He was even more uneasy about the realisation that he saw Andrew’s capitulation as a form of weakness, so he tried not to think about it too often. He genuinely liked and respected Kepa, and he found his own private discomfort confusing.

At least Kepa and his mother wouldn’t be sitting together at the top table at the wedding breakfast. Everyone in the district knew the situation, but there was an unspoken understanding in the family that there was little to be gained by actively advertising the fact, so it had been mutually agreed that although Kepa would of course attend the wedding, he would not take his place beside Tamar.

Today of all days, however, James had no wish to cause a scene of his own with Kepa, so he bent down and retrieved the cigarette butt. ‘Probably right,’ he replied lightly, and looked around for somewhere less noticeable to dispose of it as they went inside.

Spread across the vast kitchen table, two extra tables brought in especially for the occasion, and every other available flat space, were arrayed the fruits of Mrs Heath’s toil for the past week. There was a selection of cold meat, and, judging by the tantalising smell, hot meat dishes still on the stove and in the oven, plates of cakes, pikelets, scones, coloured jellies and junket for the children. Enough, in James’s opinion, to more appropriately feed two hundred guests, not less than half that number.

In a corner of the kitchen, carefully out of the way so it couldn’t be bumped, was the wedding cake. Mrs Heath had clearly ignored Erin’s original request for something simple — or perhaps Erin had simply given in — and had outdone herself. The vision consisted of three individual cakes supported by pillars, each layer heavily decorated with marzipan and white sugar icing. A riot of incredibly intricate scrollwork was piped around each tier, and on the smooth tops had been arranged multiple sprays of tiny icing
flowers interspersed with silver foil leaves, wedding bells, white satin ribbons and the odd horseshoe. On the top sat a slim, delicate vase made of icing and filled with trailing artificial flowers, and the whole lot sat on a gleaming, solid silver platter lined with paper lace doilies.