Authors: Essie Summers
She said quickly: “Have you no relations to look after them? I mean won’t the children be with their grandmother or an aunt or something?”
His voice was a little grim. “We haven’t any relations except each other. Neither has Morris, Nan’s husband. We were all brought up in the same orphanage.”
“How strange. So was I. I lost my mother when I was about ten, and my father had been killed in the war.”
“You’ve had tough luck in more ways than one, then. At least I had my sister. She’s quite a bit older than I am—she made a home for me as soon as ever she was able to support us. That’s why I must get home to see if I can in any way look after the kids?’
“It’s going to be a problem, isn’t it? The school children won’t be so difficult, out for most of the day, but the wee one will be. What are you going to do? Put him—her?—in a day nursery or something?”
He chuckled, though ruefully. “There aren’t any nurseries where I’m working. I’m at the back o’ beyond. Right out in the buhai. It couldn’t be more remote. I’m a surveyor with the Ministry of Works Department on a major project. We’re hacking a road through dense bush, out on the West Coast, to link up, South Westland with Otago, through the Haast Pass. Westland is the province on the Tasman Sea side of the Southern Alps. It’s something like a logging camp. Not the sort of place where you can get daily help. I’m trying to sort it out in my mind. No woman in the place could take three extra kiddies. I often have to be away at night, camping with the advance parties, and
the
houses are all small, joined up in sections, from huts. You’ll know the type of thing. No housekeeper would look at it.
“We aren’t even at Haast township, which is the one at the end of the Pass, where it strikes the coast. We’re miles further out in a small camp, partly engaged on helping with the construction of the road up to Westland, but mainly on a subsidiary project, pushing a minor road up into a valley.
“It will be a blind end, but it’s got great possibilities. It will mean deer carcases could be brought down from several otherwise inaccessible valleys. At present the deerstalkers and cullers can only hump out the skins. We’re hoping it will start a new New Zealand industry in a world where meat protein is so desperately needed. And earn us overseas funds. It would be exported, frozen, to Asia. It’s a grand life for men but the hell of a life for women.”
He shrugged. “Till now that hasn’t bothered me. The children are with a neighbor temporarily. But Nan will be terribly worried about them. Because of her own childhood, she almost has a thing about family life. She’ll worry about the effect on the kids. And I know she won’t let Morris know. This is his big chance, he’s on a scholarship in his own particular line that will make up, eventually, for the studies he’s missed through being an orphan. But there must be some way I can help. If only I could find it.”
“You have,” said Kirsty. “
I’ll
come. It sounds like heaven to me, after all I’ve been through. The uttermost ends of the earth.”
Their eyes met, his blue ones under the thatch of chestnut hair kindling with interest. Then the light died out of them.
“It’s a gallant offer,” he said reluctantly, “but you haven’t any idea what it’s like. Talk about the saying: ‘Sydney to the Bush’—well, that’s it exactly. You couldn’t conceive what it’s like.”
“Why not tell me?”
He grinned. “Well, you know the South Island of New Zealand consists mainly of a wide strip of plains on the east coast, with a mighty chain of Alps with very few passes dividing it from the narrow fringe of land that’s the west coast?
“Well, there is just the Lewis Pass in North Canterbury, Arthur’s Pass direct west from Christchurch, with a railway line beside it, running through the gigantic Otira Tunnel, and far south a road tunnel through the Homer Saddle to get through to the glorious fiordland there. Well, the Haast Pass Road, between the last two, has just been put through. Now, recognizing the tremendous tourist value of a round trip, they are pushing the road on up north to link up with South Westland.
“Even short stretches can take years to build. The hazards are unbelievable. It’s practically impossible country—rain forests. It has to be carved through gorges, through solid rock barriers, over rivers and valleys. We’ve had to bypass a main earthquake fault in our preliminary surveys. It’s been the challenge of a lifetime to the men who planned it. You’ve been brought up in a city whose population equals that of the whole of New Zealand. You’d be round the bend in a week. It’s no place for a city girl.”
Her eyes met his levelly. “I don’t really belong to any city. Ancestry counts for something. I’ve often been strangely nostalgic for the country. You see, my mother grew up in the Wanaka district... isn’t that on the route to the Haast? And my father was a high country shepherd. She went to Teachers’ College in Dunedin, he took a course at the Agricultural College—is it Lincoln College?”
He nodded.
“They met at some students’ conference, eventually married, and were settled in as a married couple on a farm, hoping some day to own one, when war broke out. Mother took a house in Dunedin and went teaching. Father was killed and she kept at that for some time, but then was offered a position on an Australian sheep station, as governess to four children. Three years later she died and there was nowhere to go for me but the orphanage. Those years on the sheep station were the happiest of my life.
“My mother must have been very homesick for New Zealand, at times. When I was eighteen and able to fend for myself, I was given all her possessions. Mother was fond of poetry—she wrote a little herself—and one poem written by a Molly Howden in the
Australian Woman’s Mirror
I found underlined in one of her scrapbooks. It made me determined to come back to New Zealand for a—holiday—to see it for myself. My husband and I had planned to come, but since—well, I thought I’d still come. I brought the clipping with me.” She opened her new bag, took it from one of the pockets, handed it to him. This man didn’t seem like a stranger now. He’d had much the same background as herself.
He read:
“I hadn’t heard a tui’s note for many years, it seems;
The raupo and the taupata are wrapped in childhood’s dreams...
Boronia and waratah, the flaming coral tree,
The jacaranda and the vines hold out their gifts to me.
I take them all and love them all; but sometimes, when it’s still,
I see two sturdy little feet go skipping down a hill
To where the briar roses grow all scented by the way.
And in among the tufty grass the timid rabbits play.
The dusty metalled road is edged with splendid kowhai trees,
Their gold-brown flowers hung pendulous like drunken bumble-bees.
I hear a tui call his mate—her answer from afar—
And then I wake to Sydney streets and some loud clanking car.
O hills of home! O rain-drenched ferns and sweet konini trees.
Waft me a little breath of you across the Tasman Seas!”
As she too read it with him, a little of the old anticipation stirred Kirsty’s pulses. Perhaps Gilbert hadn’t robbed her of everything.
“I see,” said the man beside her, and something in his voice suggested he felt moved.
Kirsty said, “I hope you do. I hope you see that the New Zealand I want to see isn’t one of cities and macadam roads, but one of briar roses and rain-drenched ferns. I don’t seem to have much of a past ... and the future I’d hoped to have is gone. The only work I’ve really been trained for is looking after children—I kept on at the orphanage as a house mother. I’d like to continue doing the work I know, and while doing it to touch fingers with the childhood I’ve mostly forgotten.” She looked up at him, “I’d not want a large wage, you know. Little more than my keep, really. I’ve got enough for long enough. And I do so need a purpose in life.”
“Done,” said her companion, and before he could say more, the hostess’s arm came over her shoulder and distributed the forms of entry for filling in.
He grinned, “We’d better get these over and done with, then go into the matter.”
He bent over his, began writing rapidly, with the confidence of the travelled.
Kirsty gazed at hers in dismay. Of course ... between New Zealand and Australia you didn’t need a passport, but they had to have some document for checking arrivals and departures. Now what? Her ticket had been issued as Mrs. Brownfield. She’d have to continue like that.
She wrote “Kirsten Jane Brown—” and stopped suddenly, aware that her seat-mate had his eyes on the paper.
“I’m sorry,” he grinned, sure of her forgiveness. “I was just about to ask your name and give you mine. I discovered you were writing it. I’m Simon MacNeill, Mrs. Brown.”
She managed to respond, then, as he returned to his own filling in, she put a hand over hers, finished writing Brownfield and folded it quickly. It would at least correspond with the aircraft’s records.
Dinner was served, ironically at the very moment when a voice on the intercom warned them of turbulence ahead and seat belts to be fastened,
“This is going to make supping soup something of an adventure,” laughed Simon MacNeill. “Hope it won’t upset you.”
Kirsty shook her head. “It never does, l once had it very rough going to Perth.”
She was surprised to find herself hungry, and it was a delicious dinner, piping hot. It was difficult managing the conveyance of food to mouth as the plane dipped and soared, but it made everyone laugh. Most gave up the attempt to balance peas on their forks and took to their spoons. The moment they finished the meal the flight became perfectly smooth again.
Kirsty had the queer, crazy feeling that all this wasn’t happening to her. That she was merely seeing an incredible adventure unfolding on the television screen. She had suddenly been hurled from a dream-world-that-should-have-been into another life.
But she mustn’t think this way. This was reality. This man beside her represented a roof over her head for the next few weeks, a chance to work, something to occupy her.
She turned to him. “I’ve just thought of something ... there won’t be television, will there?”
“No ... will you miss it too much? Nan has one in Dunedin. I expect the kids will miss it.”
“I think it will be absolute heaven sitting children down to homework without feeling a spoilsport when there’s something good on the screen.”
“Geordie is nine,” said Simon MacNeill, “earnest, spectacled, a born scientist, but not in the least a namby-pamby. He’s most mischievous. To make it worse he looks so angelic. Everyone wants to mother Geordie, and he doesn’t need it, believe me. Rebecca is a sturdy wee soul. A mixture of the practical and the dreamer. Mark is just over two and—according to Nana’s letters—gloriously uncomplicated. Every woman’s dream of a baby, she says. Easy to train, eats everything he should, steadily increases his weight, sleeps all night.”
Kirsty said shrewdly, “Then the other two aren’t so uncomplicated?”
He grinned back. “I don’t want to scare you off. They’re by no means problem children, but Geordie’s a poor eater. He just pecks. Always has. To be quite candid I think Nan, has made too much of it. Left to himself a bit more, without fuss or anxiety, he’d probably be better.”
“Yes. But all of a sudden the pickers settle in to eating properly. It can be sheer contrariness ... though I think every child should be allowed a dislike or two, same as grown-ups. And Rebecca’s particular problem?”
“You can discuss that with Nan. Nan isn’t particularly ill—only it’s a complicated break and will take a long time to mend. Rebecca is a bit highly-strung ... something that’s behind her particular trouble, I suppose. That’s why Nan will be worried about this change in their lives. She’ll be fine when she knows I’ve found someone from an orphanage to look after them.”
Kirsty smiled to herself. Rebecca’s trouble was probably bedwetting. Naturally a single man wouldn’t feel like discussing it.
Simon MacNeill added: “That is, if you stay. You may not be able to stand the isolation.”
“Other women face it. Why shouldn’t I?”
“They’re doing it for love. I imagine it makes a difference.”
“Will we fly straight from Christchurch to Dunedin tonight?”
“No. It’s too late. Although this only takes four hours normally, you’ll have noticed we’re now bucking a head wind. And you’ve forgotten, I think, that as Enzed is two hours ahead of Sydney, it will be later than it seems. We’ll be putting our watches on soon.”
“Then what will we do?”
“I’ll book in somewhere. I’ll try the Clarendon first.” The protest was wrung from her before she thought. “Oh, no ...
not
the Clarendon!”
He got the idea immediately. Heavens, she had planned this trip with her husband ... he must have died very suddenly. They must have even had their bookings in for the Clarendon.
“Oh, sorry. I see. Well, anywhere else. Plenty of places. And before we leave the Christchurch Airport at Harewood I’ll book us a flight for early tomorrow morning.”
The Clarendon. A suite reserved. By morning that hotel would be abuzz with speculation.
She wished she had the courage to ask for Simon MacNeill’s paper, but she was afraid. There might be photos. Something to link her, in the mind of this man, with the girl beside him.
Kirsty leaned forward, took a magazine, began to read. In less than five minutes she was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.
Half an hour later she awoke, astonishingly refreshed. Knowing she had a place to go, a job, had done that, she supposed. She lay with her eyes closed. She didn’t want to be a talkative nuisance to her future employer. He seemed a compassionate man, as witness his concern for his nephews and niece, but she must not trade on that.
When she did lift her lids, it was to look straight at the headline: “Bridegroom left at altar says he has no idea why.”
Kirsty stared unbelievingly. But Gilbert’s Yorkshire wife was going to turn up with the police! If she wasn’t going to be able to contact him, she was going to work through the Brisbane police. Kirsty had thought they would charter a plane, and get there quite soon after the ceremony should have taken place. What could have happened? Had the police taken some convincing? Had they thought it might have been a hoax? But the woman had said she had proof with her! These papers would have been early editions, but even so, they carried quite a bit of the story ... the aftermath of the cancelled ceremony. It must have been in time for some hint of the reason why!
Without moving her head she read on. She didn’t want Simon MacNeill to know she was awake, was reading it.
It said the frantic matrons-of-honor had tried to contact the bridegroom as soon as they had found the note. They had missed him by seconds. He had gone on to his best man’s before the ceremony. Some guests had already reached the church when he arrived to find the attendants and the minister, all in a state of bewilderment.
It was a complete mystery to him. He had last seen his bride-to-be at lunch time the previous day, and she had rung him, just to tell him she had the ring still, that very morning. It must have been less than an hour before she disappeared. The Press, naturally, had interviewed Patty and Nicola, who spoke in highest terms of the bride. There were no relations who could throw any light upon it, but only close friends, who were guests at the wedding. The bridegroom was described as alternating between anger and despair. Oh, it made good reading all right. A real tear-jerker.
There was a photograph of Gilbert, conferring with the minister. One of Patty and Nicola, surrounded by reporters. None, thank goodness, of herself.
Not yet.
Kirsty tightened her hands till her nails dug in. The blame was all being laid at her door. She’d thought it would have read that Gilbert had been arrested, that his wife had explained her frantic effort to save Kirsty from a mock ceremony, and had told her, by telephone, to cut and run from all the commotion. What could have happened?
Her imagination worked overtime. She supposed the woman had been ringing from a call box in a post office. Had she, by some foul mischance, emerged to go to the nearest police station and been involved in some street accident, perhaps rendered unconscious? She would be so distraught she might not have exercised caution in crossing the road.
Or had she taken ill, distressed in mind and body? If either of these things, then it would be only a matter of time before it was cleared up. A woman wasn’t going to chase a man halfway across the world and then let him go.
Meantime, Kirsty would just have to keep quiet till her action was vindicated. She just couldn’t bear to be interviewed by a horde of reporters and police. And it would mean, if she did do something about it, that this man would not be able to face taking her to his sick sister, to propose she take charge of her family, when she had been involved in something like this, however innocently.
It would all come out in time. By then she would be settled in this remote camp, and Simon would probably feel he couldn’t get anyone else, and let her stay. Surely the sympathy of the public would be with her when the whole story came out!
He wasn’t asking for references—she’d never be able to get another job without any.
She finished reading it, closed her eyes, then pretended to stir.
Simon MacNeill glanced at her. “Oh, hullo, Mrs. Brown. Awake again. Feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you. Much. How long have I been asleep?”
“More than half an hour. Not long now till we’re over New Zealand. I was going to wake you. Thought you’d feel cheated not to see the coastline. We’re going to get in while it’s still light. Only just, but enough for you to see the west coast and the Alps. We’ve a longer twilight than Australia, though in Christchurch it’s not as long as Dunedin.”
He tapped the paper with his knuckles. “Ever read anything like it? Girl not turning up for her wedding? Bet he’ll never marry her now—he’ll never trust her again. Can you beat it? She’s all ready in her wedding dress and skips it! She simply leaves a note to her bridesmaids saying please forgive her, she can’t marry him. No time to explain, she has to get away. I’d say this Christine Macpherson wants her bottom smacked. A spoilt, pampered brat, no doubt. I suppose she was marrying him for his money, then couldn’t face it. He’s had a lucky escape! Though he must feel lower than low at the moment.”
Kirsty’s heart was knocking against her side. She dared not even say: “But surely there must be some mitigating circumstance.” Better just to agree with the general reaction.
Simon MacNeill said, “Do you want to read it?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to miss anything now we might be nearing land.”
To her great relief he folded it up and tucked it into the pocket of the seat.
Well, thought Kirsty wryly, much as she hated it at the orphanage when they had called her Christine instead of Kirsty, now it was a blessing. Christine Macpherson didn’t sound in the least like Kirsty Brown! The first matron at the orphanage had had the kindly thought that little girls liked more fancy names and she’d thought Kirsty old-fashioned. Children didn’t protest about such things ... they accepted them dumbly, and by now, with Uncle Dick and Aunt Mandy gone, there had been no one left to call her Kirsty.
Simon MacNeill leaned forward and looked out of the window. “Here we are, New Zealand living up to its Maori name, what? Aotearoa ... the land of the long white cloud. The first navigators in their canoes called it that. You don’t always get the effect so strikingly by air as you do this way—approaching the Alps from the west. Look at that line of cloud above them.”
Kirsty saw the land of her birth below, and beyond her a narrow stretch of coastline, indented and fretted where the sea cut into the land and where rivers pouring down from the valleys joyously entered the Tasman. Beyond the foam-frilled edge great jagged snowy peaks thrust up with a line of cloud like a limitless strip of white swans-down, pulled tightly across.
Within minutes they were above the Alps. “Not as much snow at this time of year, of course. Look ... before we lose sight of it, away south, Mrs. Brown. Haast is down there, almost to Fiordland.”
She had a brief and tantalizing glimpse of bays and forests stretching into infinity, then there was nothing below them save the mountains, remote, inaccessible, range upon range.