Authors: Deborah Challinor
Blue Smoke
This one is for my parents, Pat and Brian
Challinor, who hardly laughed at all when I
said I wanted to write books for a living.
S
he’s too hot and wants to roll over to ease the minor but annoying ache in her back, but can’t summon the energy. No matter, the ache will be gone soon. It has always been very hot here, at the tail end of March, and she learned to live with it years ago. So different from the climate she knew as a child, but certainly no worse.
Dying is such a bore. She’s ready to go now, and has been for more than a year. There’s no pain any more, just this feeling of almost-weightlessness, of still being tethered but knowing that the cord will separate very soon and release her.
Why she can’t just go now she isn’t sure, and then she remembers. There’s one more child she must see before she leaves. It’s important, that the ones left behind have these last memories of the one who is going. Soon, in the infinity of the grand scheme of things, she will become just another portrait on a parlour wall, and there will be no one left alive who actually knew her, but that doesn’t matter either. Because she has done what she wanted to do. She has loved her men, raised her children, nurtured her grandchildren and stayed alive long enough to meet at least some of her great-grandchildren. Surely a woman can’t ask for more than that?
The child is finally here now, and she is weeping. She wishes
they wouldn’t cry, because it all will be fine. Perhaps when they grow old, they will know that too, but not until then.
Is it growing dark outside, or is it nearly time? They’re all here, her family, except for the ones who have been ripped away from her, over the years. But no matter about that, either — she will be seeing them soon enough.
She tells them what they have all meant to her, and they begin to fade away. But only in her vision, never from her heart.
She waits, just a handful of slow heartbeats longer, and then he comes for her, the one she has always loved the most.
She raises her hand to meet him.
Kenmore, 3 February 1931
K
eely Morgan adjusted the angle of her hat in the hall mirror while she waited for her mother to finish getting ready. The hat was a chic little affair — peach felt with a narrow, turned-up brim — and it looked rather good on her, even if she did say so herself. And it nicely complemented her pale salmon, calf-length dress and matching heels. Keely’s twelve-year-old twin daughters, Bonnie and Leila, called the ensemble her ‘apricot outfit’ — not because of the colour, they insisted, but because it made her look like one.
There was muffled giggling behind her. Keely, without even bothering to turn around, said, ‘Run upstairs, girls, will you, and see what’s keeping Gran. Tell her we’ve really got to be going.’
Out of the corner of her eye she watched the girls jostling each other to be first up the stairs and along the upper hallway to their grandmother’s bedroom, then turned back to the mirror to complete her inspection.
Owen, her husband, had said at breakfast that she looked ‘peaky’, and suggested that perhaps she and her mother should postpone their trip into Napier if she hadn’t slept well. But they went every week — it was their time together, with no interruptions from
demanding children, or men wanting to know where yesterday’s grubby work trousers had disappeared to — and it would take more than a hint of shadow under Keely’s eyes to keep them from their treat.
And it was only a hint. She hadn’t slept well last night because it had been so muggy, but Owen always fussed over her and she didn’t think she looked particularly peaky at all; her eyes sparkled with health, her skin was smooth and supple, and her thick auburn hair shone with its usual lustre. She’d had it cut last year in a short, modern bob with finger waves, but Owen had disliked it intensely; had said, in fact, that if it wasn’t for her shapely bust, she’d have looked like a boy from the back with her slim hips and long legs. So she’d let it grow again; longer hair was coming back any way, and Keely liked to be fashionable.
She adjusted her hat a final fraction of an inch, thinking she actually looked rather good for a woman of thirty-eight with two semi-grown — and extremely challenging — children.
They rarely behaved for her, but then they wouldn’t behave for their father either. But he had deep reserves of equanimity on which he was able to draw, and their constant high spirits didn’t seem to goad him as much as they did her. She realised, however, that for the most part, the problem was her lack of patience, and she blamed herself for the discord that sometimes abounded in the household. Her discomfort was compounded by the guilt she still harboured for virtually abandoning them during the first few months of their lives. At the time she had been deeply ambivalent about her marriage to Owen, but they’d grown to love each other very dearly, although their road together had never been particularly smooth. They had had to marry, of course, which was ironic in itself, since there had been no sign whatsoever of any further children, despite their very healthy physical relationship.
‘Here she comes!’ shouted Bonnie and Leila in unison as they thumped back down the stairs.
Keely stepped back from the mirror and looked expectantly up at her mother, who had paused on the landing halfway down the wide, carpeted staircase.
Tamar Murdoch was sixty-nine years old, and looked approximately a decade younger. She walked with freedom and grace, was still slender — well,
mostly
slender, she told herself whenever she consulted her dressing mirror — and the silver in her burnished chestnut hair had confined itself to two wide streaks sweeping back from her temples, accentuating the width of her green eyes. Her hair was long and she wore it up in her habitual, slightly dishevelled style. None of these short fashions for her; one or two of her peers had acquired bobs and they looked, in her opinion, like stringy old ewes after a particularly aggressive clip. No, she wasn’t young any more, and was happy to admit it, and as far as she was concerned that entitled her to do whatever she liked with her hair. And her clothes, for that matter. She wore what took her fancy these days, whether it was
à la mode
or not, but was always elegant and still managed to turn heads wherever she went.
Today she was dressed for town, in a flatteringly cut jacket and skirt in copper-coloured linen, with a smart black hat and shoes. There were also gloves, but these were dangling precariously from her handbag, which was currently being swung at great speed around Leila’s head.
‘Stop that, darling,’ Tamar said mildly. ‘You’ll break something.’
‘No I won’t! It’s an aeroplane coming in to land in the top paddock,’ Leila replied breathlessly, and swooped the bag perilously close to her mother’s face.
‘Leila!’ Keely snapped. ‘Put that
down
!’
Exasperated, she tugged on her own gloves, then sighed. She loved her daughters very much, but by God they tried a person.
‘I’m sorry, girls,’ she added after a moment, and in a calmer tone. ‘I’m feeling a bit tired and grumpy today. Why don’t you go and see if Mrs Heath is baking this morning? She might let you lick the spoons.’
The twins, almost identical except that Leila’s hair was honey blonde while Bonnie’s was auburn like her mother’s, elbowed each other and grinned gleefully, then tore off down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house, delighted with the idea of invading the elderly housekeeper’s domain.
Tamar raised her eyebrows. ‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to do to Mrs Heath, dear. You know she doesn’t like being pestered while she’s cooking.’
‘No, I know, but if we’re still here when Erin arrives we’ll never get out the door.’
Tamar had to agree; the combination of the twins and Erin and Joseph’s three children — Billy, Ana and Robert — always resulted in a certain level of chaos. ‘Did you ask her last night if she needed anything from town?’
‘Yes, and she said they’re fine.’
Tamar nodded, then added, ‘I often think we should talk her into coming with us more often.’
‘Well, I’ve said dozens of times she should, but you know Erin, she’s never happier than when she’s baking or sewing or doing something
homely
like that.’ Keely screwed up her face as if the very idea was anathema to her. ‘She says once a month in town is more than enough for her.’
‘Well, dear, not everyone needs shopping to make them happy,’ Tamar observed, amused. ‘And she obviously
is
very happy.’
Keely, who had never quite got the hang of the domestic arts herself, shrugged. ‘I know, and I think it’s lovely. It’s just not for me, that’s all.’
‘Oh, you have your moments, dear. What about those little iced
cakes you make for Owen? The ones he’s so fond of? And the outfits we’ve sewn for the girls over the years?’
‘You’ve sewn, you mean.’
‘You chose the fabric and the styles,’ Tamar countered, retrieving her gloves. ‘Has Lachie brought the car around?’
Keely nodded and preceded her mother out onto the porch and down the sweeping front steps. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock so the sun was still climbing in the eastern sky and early morning dew still fleetingly decorated the lawn and extensive flowerbeds surrounding the house. If they didn’t get a move on they would be feeling the new day’s heat before they even reached town.
In the gravel driveway stood a gleaming and very stylish Chrysler Imperial Roadster. Kenmore Station’s second car, currently parked in one of the sheds at the side of the house, was a robust Cadillac sedan that could accommodate seven passengers and was just the thing for family outings. But it really was a big vehicle and Keely had to perch on two cushions to see over the steering wheel, so she preferred to take the smaller but racier Chrysler into town: it required only one cushion. And any way, it was a much more exciting car to drive, capable of reaching speeds of seventy miles per hour on a good road. Tamar also drove, and had done for years, but preferred not to these days if she could avoid it as she no longer completely trusted her eyesight.
‘I see Uncle Lachie’s polished it to within an inch of its life again,’ Keely said, running her gloved hand along the shining yellow hood.
She glanced at her mother and they both giggled immoderately. Tamar’s brother-in-law Lachie McRae loved automobiles, and on the occasions on which he was forced to concede to the increasing stiffness in his joints that kept him off horseback and out of his beloved paddocks, he spent much of his time tinkering with the farm machinery or lovingly grooming the Chrysler, purchased
the year before last after much poring over automobile importers’ catalogues. As it could comfortably accommodate only two people it had been an extravagance, but Lachie adored it. By the time Keely and Tamar returned home that afternoon its beautiful chrome and paintwork would be covered in a thick layer of dust from the rough unsealed road between Kenmore and Napier, but at least that would give Lachie something to do tomorrow if he couldn’t ride.
Keely opened the driver’s door, stepped up onto the running board and eased herself onto the cushion. She and Tamar waved gaily to the twins, waiting impatiently on the porch for their Aunty Erin to collect them for school, then roared off down the driveway, trailing a small wake of dust behind them.
They drove for some miles before they passed the fence marking the south-eastern boundary of Kenmore. It was one of the biggest sheep stations in the Hawke’s Bay and had been owned and run by the Murdoch family since its establishment in the 1850s.
The economic depression had so far not laid its mean and fleshless hands on Kenmore. Tamar and Lachie had made some very prudent financial arrangements before the crash of ’29, and the steps they had taken since had left the station in reasonably good stead. They were not making the profits that had so characterised the decade after the Great War, but neither had they lost any of their land, or much of the money that had been committed to various investments. As Andrew Murdoch’s widow, Tamar had inherited his half of the station after his death during the influenza epidemic of 1918, and the remainder had gone to Lachie after his wife Jeannie, Andrew’s sister, passed away in 1926, so the family’s considerable wealth was still intact.
When Tamar died, her share would go to her children, including
her illegitimate first-born son Joseph, which she considered fitting and fair as he, together with her son-in-law Owen, was more or less running the station now any way. When Lachie eventually died, which Tamar maintained would be years off yet but Lachie insisted could be any day now judging by his arthritis and the age it took him to get moving in the mornings, his share would go to his daughter Erin, who was married to Joseph.
James and Thomas, Tamar’s surviving sons to Andrew Murdoch, were not and probably never would be sheep farmers. Thomas was happy in his flourishing Dunedin law practice and insisted, generously as always, that since he and his wife Catherine had not had children there was no need for them to share in the financial rewards generated by the family business. James, on the other hand, wasn’t earning terribly much as a banker, and greatly appreciated the income he received from the station. In fact he depended on it, and this worried Tamar.
She was thinking about James’s precarious financial situation, which he believed he’d successfully concealed from her but had not, when, an hour into their journey, she caught sight of something decidedly odd.
‘Keely, stop the car,’ she ordered sharply.
‘What?’
‘Stop the car. Look at that.’
Keely slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. A great cloud of dust engulfed them but as it cleared Tamar pointed across golden, drought-parched paddocks at a large flock of sheep.
‘Why are they doing that?’ she asked.
Keely stared. ‘I really don’t know.’
The sheep, hundreds of them, were racing wildly up a hill, then stopping so abruptly that many of them were losing their footing, before turning around and racing back down again. And the really disconcerting thing was the quiet; there was none of the
monotonous bleating that always ensued whenever more than two sheep were within fifty yards of one another, and the silence and obvious disorientation of the animals was eerie.
Keely eased the car back into gear. ‘Is there a storm coming?’
‘I don’t think so. How bizarre. I’ve never seen sheep do that before, have you?’
Keely shook her head as she manoeuvred the car off the grass verge and back onto the gravel.
The rest of their trip was uneventful, except for the rapidly increasing temperature, and by the time they reached Napier a little after half past ten they were hot, dusty and desperate for a cup of tea. They parked the car in Emerson Street and set off towards the nearest tearooms, grateful for the cool shade under the shop front verandahs. Somewhere close by several dogs were howling so mournfully that Tamar wondered whether they were hurt; if so, someone should attend to them. But then she caught sight of a bold display in a draper’s window, and came to a halt.
‘Look at this fabric, Keely. Is it silk, do you think, or rayon? It’s getting more and more difficult to tell, unless you actually handle it. It’s a lovely colour, though.’
‘Not for you or me, it isn’t. It would clash horribly with our hair.’
‘No, I was thinking more of Erin. The red would be gorgeous on her.’
Keely touched her mother’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Mam, let’s get something to drink. I’m parched. Then we’ll look at the shops.’
Tamar nodded, still with half an eye on the material, and turned to follow Keely.
But then something very strange happened. The air around them seemed to suddenly swell and assume such a sense of brittle expectancy that Tamar clutched at Keely’s arm in fright. But as she did, the ground beneath their feet heaved wildly and the pair of them staggered drunkenly across the footpath. A second later a
deep, subterranean rumbling began, and the telegraph pole Keely had grabbed began to sway alarmingly.
‘Earth quake!’ she shouted, and pushed Tamar out towards the road. ‘Get away from the buildings!’