White Feathers (34 page)

It could certainly have been the strain of nursing all those poor wounded buggers like himself, many of them a damn sight worse off than he’d been, but somehow he felt there was a lot more to it than that. There had been Ian’s death, of course, and then James coming home in a state the man himself had described as a ‘bloody dog’s breakfast’ — those two things alone would be enough to sour and depress anyone. But he had a strong suspicion that something deeply personal had so shaken the poor girl’s confidence in herself that she felt compelled now to hide her true feelings behind a mask of thoroughly obnoxious behaviour. He knew from James and Joseph that she hadn’t been happy ever since returning from England, and that she had come home under some kind of cloud, but neither of them had explained, and he hadn’t asked.

But by God she was a lovely girl. She had the sort of lush and welcoming figure he and the lads had yearned for night after night as they huddled in their dugouts, shivering and stinking and wondering why the bloody hell they’d ever signed up. Clean sheets — any sheets at all, in fact — and a warm, compassionate woman had been everyone’s idea of paradise. But the closest they’d
ever come to either was a mean little cot in a base camp somewhere and the services of whores — pleasant enough girls in themselves, Owen had always suspected, but sharing one with a dozen other men had never been his idea of an intimate interlude. And he hadn’t been with a woman since arriving home six months ago, fearing that he’d be very poor company with his rough soldiers’ ways and his preference for solitude, and that any intercourse with a woman, sexual or otherwise, would be a dismal failure.

But Keely Murdoch was different. She had set his pulse racing the moment she’d opened the door. He liked a woman who didn’t mince words; he couldn’t stand ‘society’ women, or men, if it came to that. Not that he’d known many. He’d had a horrible moment when he’d walked through Kenmore’s gates — would he find a family of rich, affected and arrogant squatters dressed in their fancy clothes eating those little sandwiches with no crusts and sod-all in them, and with absolutely no idea of what went on in the world around them? But then he’d remembered Ian and felt easy again — no one as open and fun-loving and as
genuine
could ever have been raised by such a family.

It was true, though, that the Murdochs had money — Owen would have to have been blind not to notice that. Their homestead was, if not palatial, then at least very spacious, well appointed and comfortable. The house was plumbed and there was hot water (usually), there were two separate bathrooms and flushing toilets, there was power from a generator fed by a nearby stream and electric lights, the telephone was connected and the house was very elegantly decorated.

Erin’s telegram arrived the following week: she would be docking at Wellington in about a fortnight’s time and expected to be at Kenmore soon after that.

Joseph enlisted everyone’s help to get the house finished in time. The roof and walls had been up for months, but the interior still wasn’t quite completed as Joseph had been doing most of the building himself in between his work on the station. Lachie had offered to pay someone to come out and do the bulk of the construction but Joseph had refused: he would rather do it himself, even if it did take up almost all his spare time. Lachie understood and was secretly very pleased that Joseph was so keen on making a nest for Erin and himself with his own two hands.

And the house was certainly no shearers’ hut, either. Nestled in a shallow valley about a quarter of a mile away from the big house, it had four bedrooms (because, Joseph had confided self-consciously, he and Erin wanted plenty of children), spacious living and dining rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and an indoor toilet, and a small study for sewing and bookwork. The design was quite simple, but Joseph had spared nothing on the quality of the wood he’d used. Now there was only the kitchen and bathroom joinery to complete, the new stove to install and the interior of the house to furnish. But perhaps he should wait until Erin came home so she could choose the furniture, carpets and fabrics herself.

He had wondered whether Erin would want to live so near her parents, but her letters had made it quite clear she was looking forward very much to having her family around her. There had been the possibility of going to live at Maungakakari, but if Joseph was to continue working at Kenmore it made little sense to live so far away from the station. There was also the question of Erin adapting to life in a Maori community; Joseph was sure she would be happy to, but it was a hard and often very mean life, and he didn’t want to subject her to that. Kepa agreed, having finally accepted that if his son was never going to be a famous politician, then he could do far worse than marrying Erin McRae and one day possibly managing Kenmore.

In fact, as a wedding present, Kepa had commissioned a very talented carver at Maungakakari to fashion an intricate, paua-inlaid wooden mantelpiece for the living room of his son’s new home. The carver was Ihaka’s older brother, a coincidence that made the gift even more poignant.

Joseph’s building efforts had also reaped another, quite unexpected benefit. While chatting with the local miller one day he was introduced to a type of native wood called
whau
, as light as balsa and very easy to shape. For some time now he’d been thinking about what to do about his artificial leg. Both it and his spare limb were extremely heavy: more than once when he’d swung himself out of the saddle the momentum had thrown him flat on his back. And the complex arrangements of leather straps and buckles that attached the prosthesis to his body were not only irritating and restrictive, but failed to hold his leg on particularly well. He frequently fell over because his stump had slipped out of the socket in the artificial leg, which was extremely painful and moderately embarrassing. Now he managed to fashion himself a new leg out of
whau
that was much lighter, easier to wear and gave him more mobility, and didn’t need so much strapping to keep it in place.

He was very pleased with it. In fact he was very pleased with life in general. He had come home from the war intact enough to live a fairly normal life, he had a good job doing what he loved, he was near his family, he had a new house and, best of all, his beautiful Erin was coming home.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

June 1918

O
blivious to the wet grass, Erin sat down suddenly on the hillside and burst into copious, noisy tears. Holding out her hand to him, she said, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful, Joseph, it’s just beautiful.’

They were looking down on their new home, and Erin thought she’d never seen anything more welcoming and wonderful in her life.

She’d arrived home too late the night before to make the short walk across the paddocks to see the new house. And no one would tell her anything about it: they’d all just sat around smiling hugely and conspiratorially, relishing the anticipation of her pleasure.

She was utterly exhausted — she had worked almost non-stop on the hospital ship all the way back to New Zealand — but nothing would keep her from visiting the house this morning. Instead of the little cottage she’d imagined, though, here was this rather splendid new home with big double-hung windows, a fancy front door, two chimneys, a verandah and a garden seat, although there was no garden yet.

‘There’s nothing in it, no furniture I mean,’ Joseph said hesitantly. ‘And no carpets. I didn’t know what sort of thing you might like so I thought we’d go into Napier when you’ve settled in and have
a look around. Oh, and Mam said we can have some of the old furniture from the big house, stuff that’s been in the shed since she redecorated, if we don’t mind used.’

Erin was blowing her nose on her handkerchief, and had to take her hand back to do it. ‘Of course we don’t mind,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘Do we? I certainly don’t. We can sit on boxes if you like, as long as we’re sitting on them together.’

Joseph laughed delightedly. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I haven’t exactly made my fortune since I’ve been home but I’ve a bit put away so we can buy ourselves a few nice new things. A new bed, perhaps.’

He felt slightly nervous saying this; it had, after all, been almost two and a half years since the first, the
only
, time they had made love. What if she’d changed her mind about marrying him? She’d never indicated that in her letters, but perhaps she was only trying to spare his feelings until she could talk to him face to face?

The idea had worried him so much that the night before Erin arrived he’d had a very nasty dream in which she had come back from over seas behaving like Keely and, even worse, not wanting to marry him at all. He’d woken in a cold sweat and had had to get up and make himself a cup of cocoa. It had been even worse than the dreams he still occasionally had about still having both legs: sometimes, in his sleep, he’d get out of bed, attempt to put both legs on the ground and fall heavily, more often than not banging his stump painfully on the way down.

And last night, Erin had been so tired after her train trip from Wellington that after a quick supper she’d fallen asleep in her chair in the parlour. Joseph had been dying to get her away from everyone else and reassure himself that she did indeed still want to become his wife, but Jeannie had woken her and bustled her upstairs and into bed, saying, while looking pointedly at Joseph, that she wasn’t to be disturbed until she awoke of her own accord the following day.

Now here they were, finally alone, and Joseph was suddenly feeling tongue-tied. She didn’t
look
dismayed at the idea of sharing a house — and a life — with him, but he knew that, like most good nurses, she was very good at hiding her true feelings.

He took her hand again and gazed into her huge eyes until he thought he might fall into them. Eventually, he asked tentatively, ‘Those things you wrote in your letters, about us spending the rest of our lives together, well, do you still feel that way? About us getting married?’

He must have unconsciously pulled a face of some sort because Erin laughed and reached out to touch his cheek.

‘That depends,’ she said, ‘on how you feel about it.’

‘I’ve never wanted anything more in my life,’ he said passionately.

Erin’s eyes closed and she sighed. ‘Oh Joseph, you’ve no idea how much I was hoping you’d say that. I had such terrible doubts about staying over seas so long.’ She dropped her damp handkerchief and lifted her other hand to Joseph’s face. ‘Knowing you were here waiting for me was the only thing that kept me going a lot of the time. I know it sounds like something you’d read in a silly romance story, but it’s true. So yes, I do want to marry you,
very
much.’

They didn’t kiss, but rested their foreheads together in silence, feeling the gentle mingling of their breath and marvelling that their dreams of each other had managed to sustain them for so long.

Erin felt weak with relief; she had been so nervous that during her long absence he might have changed his mind about marrying her but hadn’t been able to tell her. She’d been tempted several times to resign from the NZANS and come home but every time she seriously considered it, another huge influx of horribly wounded young men would arrive at the hospital and she knew she was needed more where she was.

It was a decision she’d had to make by herself, too, as most of the other nurses had told her she was a fool to stay on in England when she had a young man waiting for her at home. There were far too many girls looking for husbands in New Zealand, they’d insisted, and someone would be bound to snap him up if she wasn’t careful.

Then she would remind herself sternly that if she was planning to marry Joseph — and she was — then she would have to trust him even though they were thousands of miles apart. And then one day she had the strange realisation that it wasn’t Joseph she needed to trust, but herself. If she did indeed lose him, would she cope? Eventually, she decided she would, and with that came a sense of security and the knowledge that everything would work out as it was supposed to if she just let it.

But sometimes — when her eyes burned with tiredness and her back ached as she hunched over the sluice sink scrubbing blood and pus off her hands at the end of a long gruelling night shift — a mean little voice still whispered to her that she might miss out, that if she wasn’t careful she might lose the man she adored and who had brought colour into a life that had once seemed flat and grey. Now, though, at home at last, she knew that voice had been banished forever.

Joseph brushed his lips across hers and murmured, ‘Well,
that’s
all right then, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I think I’m going to cry again.’

‘You can’t, you’ve dropped your hanky in something unpleasant.’

‘Oh,’ said Erin, seeing that her handkerchief had indeed landed on a small cairn of sheep droppings. ‘Never mind,’ she laughed.

‘So, when then? Tomorrow?’

She stood up and brushed the wet off the back of her skirt. ‘Tomorrow would be wonderful, but I wouldn’t dare rob our mothers of the opportunity to make an enormous fuss and rush about organising everything. And Mrs Heath will need time to
make one of her world-famous fruitcakes — she’d be scandalised at the idea of having just an ordinary old cream sponge, it wouldn’t be “proper”. What about the beginning of July? That’s only three weeks away.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Joseph, would you rather be married at Maungakakari? How selfish of me.’

Joseph shrugged. ‘To be honest I don’t really care where we’re married, as long as we are. Kenmore will do, won’t it? There’s more than enough room.’

They joined hands and went down to the new house together, Joseph managing the slippery slope on his new leg with impressive agility. He pushed the front door open and ushered her proudly into the wide central hall, then gave her a guided tour of the home he had built for her. For
them
.