Call of the Kiwi (15 page)

“On the way back we’ll take a slower route,” Jack promised on the final day of their three-day journey.

Charlotte nodded indifferently. She yearned for a bed that did not move beneath her. It was hard to believe she had ever enjoyed their honeymoon in George Greenwood’s private car. Back then she had drunk sparkling wine and laughed at the shaky bed. Now she could hardly keep a sip of tea down.

Both were relieved when they reached Auckland, but neither had a taste for the beauty of the city.

“We have to climb Mount Hobson or Mount Eden; the view is supposed to be fantastic,” Jack remarked listlessly. The terrace-covered mountains cast a lush green glow over the city. The sea, its tide calmed by dozens of volcanic islands, looked an inviting azure blue, and Grafton Bridge, the longest arched bridge in the world, completed only a few years earlier, stylishly spanned the Grafton Gully.

“Later,” Charlotte said. She had stretched out on their hotel bed and wanted nothing more than to feel Jack’s arms around her and imagine that this was nothing more than a bad dream. She was asleep in minutes.

First thing the next morning Jack set out in search of Dr. Friedman’s practice. The brain specialist resided on the upscale Queen Street, which was lined with stately Victorian houses.

Jack rode the tram, a mode of transport that had always given him a childlike pleasure in Christchurch. On that sunny summer day in Auckland, however, he was only filled with fear and foreboding. But the doctor’s manorial stone house inspired confidence—he had to be successful if he could afford such an elegant building. Dr. Barrington had already written Dr. Friedman. So when a secretary announced Jack, he didn’t have to wait long before being ushered into the doctor’s office.

Dr. Friedman was a short, rather delicate man with a bushy beard. He was no longer young—Jack placed him at over sixty—but his light-blue eyes looked as alert and curious as a much younger man’s. The surgeon listened attentively as Jack described Charlotte’s symptoms to him.

“So it’s gotten worse since you consulted with Dr. Barrington?” he asked calmly.

Jack nodded. “My wife attributes it to traveling. She’s always gotten seasick and the neck-breaking train route didn’t help. She’s suffering from increased dizziness and nausea.”

Dr. Friedman smiled paternally. “Maybe she’s pregnant,” he suggested.

Jack did not manage to return the smile. “If only God would show us that mercy,” he whispered.

Dr. Friedman sighed. “At the moment God is not exactly distributing his mercy with both hands,” he murmured. “This senseless war alone into which Europe has blundered. How many lives will be destroyed there, how much money will be wasted that research needs so desperately? Medicine has begun to make rapid strides, young man. But for the next few years it will come to a standstill, and the only skills doctors will develop will be the amputation of limbs and the treating of bullet wounds. Bring your wife to me just as soon as she feels strong enough. I don’t like to make house calls since all of my diagnostic instruments are here. And I hope with all my heart that everything proves benign.”

Charlotte still needed a day to steel herself for the consultation, but the following morning she sat next to Jack in Dr. Friedman’s waiting room. Jack had put his arm around her, and she curled against him like a scared child. She seemed smaller these days, he thought. Her face had always been narrow, but now it seemed to consist entirely of giant brown eyes, and her abundant hair was duller than it had once been. Jack did not want to leave her side when Dr. Friedman finally called her in for an examination.

He spent a fearful hour too tense to pray or even to think. It was pleasantly warm in the waiting room, but Jack felt an inner chill that not even the hot sunshine could ease.

Finally Dr. Friedman’s secretary called him in. The doctor was sitting at his desk again. Across from him Charlotte was clinging to a cup of tea. At a sign from the doctor, the secretary filled a cup for Jack, and then tactfully left the room.

Dr. Friedman did not delay with a long preamble.

“Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie, Charlotte, I’m afraid I don’t have good news. But you’ve already spoken with my very competent young colleague in Christchurch, and he did not conceal his fears from you. My examination has unfortunately confirmed his suspected diagnosis. My professional opinion is that you suffer from a growth in your brain. It’s causing your headaches, vertigo, nausea, and all the other symptoms with which you are afflicted. And by the looks of it, it’s growing, Mrs. McKenzie. The symptoms today are already much more pronounced than they were when you saw Dr. Barrington.”

Charlotte sipped her tea with resignation. Jack trembled with impatience.

“So what do we do now, Doctor? Can you cut the thing out?”

Dr. Friedman played with the expensive fountain pen that lay on the desk.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s too deep in the skull. I’ve operated on a few tumors. Both here in New Zealand and back in the old country with Professor von Bergmann. But it’s always risky. The brain is a sensitive organ, Mr. McKenzie. It’s responsible for all of our senses, our thoughts, and feelings. You never know what you’ll destroy when you cut around inside. While it’s true that cutting the skull open and manipulating the brain have been practiced since antiquity, I don’t know how many people survived it back then. Today, knowing the dangers of infection and working very cleanly, we can keep some people alive. But sometimes at a heavy price. Some people go blind or become lame. Or, they change.”

“I don’t care if Charlotte is lame. And I’d still have two eyes if she went blind. I just want her to stay with me.” Jack felt for Charlotte’s hand, but she pulled it away from him.

“But I care, dearest,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I’d like to keep living if I won’t be able to move or see and might still be in pain. And it would be even worse if I didn’t love you anymore,” she sobbed drily.

“How could that happen? Why would you stop loving me just becaus
e . . .
” Jack turned to her, shocked.

“There can be personality changes,” Dr. Friedman explained gravely. “Sometimes our scalpel seems to extinguish all feeling.”

“And how big is the danger that something like that will happen?” Jack asked desperately. “There has to be something you can do.”

Dr. Friedman shook his head. “I would not recommend operating in this case. The tumor is too deep down. Even if I could remove it, I would destroy too much brain mass. I might kill your wife in the process. Or dim her spirit. We shouldn’t do that to her, Mr. McKenzie, Jack. We shouldn’t rob her of the time that would otherwise remain.”

Charlotte sat there with sunken head. The doctor had already given her his conclusions.

“You mean, she, she has to die? Even if you don’t operate?” Jack grasped for any hope.

“Not right away,” the doctor said vaguely.

“So you don’t know?” Jack asked. “You mean she could still live a long time? She coul
d . . .
”

Dr. Friedman cast Charlotte a desperate gaze. She shook her head almost imperceptibly.

“How long your wife will still live, only God knows,” the doctor said.

“She could also recover then?” Jack whispered. “The growth could cease to grow?”

Dr. Friedman raised his eyes to heaven. “It all lies in the hands of the Everlasting.”

Jack inhaled deeply.

“What about other treatments, Dr. Friedman?” he asked. “Are there medicines that could help?”

The doctor shook his head. “I can give you something for the pain. Medicine that works reliably, at least for a while.”

Charlotte stood up slowly. “Thank you very much, Doctor. It’s better to know.” She shook the doctor’s hand.

Dr. Friedman nodded. “Consider at your own pace how you want to proceed,” he said. “As I said, I don’t recommend an operation, but if, in spite of that, you want to risk it anyway, I can try. Otherwis
e . . .
”

“I don’t want an operation,” Charlotte said.

She had left the doctor’s house holding on tightly to Jack. This time they did not take the tram. Jack stopped a horse carriage. Charlotte leaned back into the cushions, and Jack held her hand. They did not say another word until they reached their hotel room. But Charlotte did not lie down right away. She went to the window instead. The hotel offered a breathtaking view of Auckland’s harbor, Waitemata—a fitting name for this natural bay that offered ships protection from the often hefty Pacific storms. Charlotte looked out over the shimmering green-blue water.

“If I could no longer see that,” she said. “If I could no longer understand the meaning of words. Jack, I don’t want to become a burden to you. It’s not worth it. And everything about this operation. They would have to cut my hair. I’d be ugly.”

“You’d never be ugly, Charlotte,” Jack said, walking up behind her and kissing her hair while he, too, looked at the sea. Deep down he knew she was right. He would not want to live either if he could no longer perceive all the beauty around him. More than anything he would miss the sight of Charlotte. Her smile, her dimples, her clever brown eyes.

“But what should we do then?” he asked. “We can’t just sit here and wait, or pray.”

Charlotte smiled. “We won’t do that either. There’s no sense in it. The gods won’t be moved so quickly. Like Maui we’d have to outsmart the sun, and the Goddess of Death.”

“He wasn’t very successful,” Jack said, recalling the legend. The Maori demigod had tried to conquer the Goddess of Death as she slept. But the laughter of his companions betrayed him, and he died.

“He tried, at least,” Charlotte insisted. “And we’ll try too. Look, Jack, I have medicine from Dr. Friedman. I won’t have to suffer any more pain. So we’ll do all those things we decided to do. Tomorrow we’ll drive to Waitangi. And we’ll visit the local Maori tribes. And then I’d like to go to Cape Reinga. And to Rotorua, where there are still supposed to be Maori tribes that have hardly had contact with the
pakeha
. It would be interesting to hear if they tell their stories differently.” Charlotte turned to face Jack. Her eyes shone.

Jack drew hope from them. “We’ll do just that. That’s the trick Maui would use: we won’t pay attention to the tumor in your head. We’ll forget it, and it’ll disappear from being ignored.”

Charlotte smiled dully.

“We just need to believe,” she whispered.

5

L
ilian Lambert’s heartache only outlasted her departure from Oaks Garden by a few days. She was still taciturn in London, enjoying her role as the despondent lover. She imagined Ben trying desperately to find out something about her whereabouts, searching for years until he found her. She thought sadly of all the lovers in songs and stories who are driven to take their own lives after losing a loved one and are buried with a white dove on their breast. In reality, however, Lilian thought it unlikely that anyone would scare up a bird like that for her; plus, suicide made her skin crawl more than any other form of death. For that reason, she quite quickly gave herself over to her fate, and soon found her way back to her old, happy self. George Greenwood owed the most enjoyable sea passage of his life to her—in spite of all the war-related chatter among the other passengers. Lilian organized deck games that were otherwise rarely played because of the depressing wartime atmosphere, and was always in good spirits. George was happy to ignore the dispatches he received informing him of the latest hostilities and instead to ask to Lilian about her plans for the future. Naturally these plans did not involve the war. Lilian could not fathom that people really shot at each other. Such things happened in songs and stories, but not in twentieth-century Europe.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever marry,” Lilian mused dramatically. Ben’s loss might not have struck a fatal blow, but she still viewed her heart as broken. “Truly great love might be too much for one person’s heart.”

George Greenwood tried gallantly to keep a straight face. “Now who coined that phrase?” he asked with a smile.

Lilian blushed slightly. She could hardly admit that it was something Ben had whispered to her in the midst of their first kiss in that copse of trees on the Cam.

George ordered a coffee and thanked his server with a curt nod. Lilian gave the smart-looking waiter a smile that rather called into question her lack of desire to marry.

“And what will you do instead?” George inquired. “Do you want to become a bluestocking, perhaps studying as my Charlotte did?”

“Before she followed the sweet calling of the heart?”

George rolled his eyes. He did not know much about girls’ schools with artistic-creative claims, but if such ghastly poetry was included in Oaks Garden’s curriculum, then the quality of the teaching left a great deal to be desired.

“Before she met the man who would later become her husband,” George corrected her. “And she remains very much interested in Maori culture. Is there any subject that is especially close to your heart?”

Lilian considered. “Not really,” she said, biting into a pastry. Not even the Atlantic’s strong swells could dim her appetite. “I could teach piano. Or painting. But I can’t do either of those especially well.”

George smiled. At least she was honest.

Lilian licked the crumbs from her pink lips. “Maybe I could help my father with his mine. Surely he’d like that.”

George nodded. Tim Lambert had always spoiled his oldest daughter, and the prospect of finally seeing him again had helped Lilian get over the pain of leaving England more than anything else.

“In the tunnels?” George teased her.

Lilian looked at him punitively, but with a roguish gleam in her green-brown eyes. “Girls aren’t allowed down there. The coal miners say a woman in the mine brings bad luck, which is nonsense, of course. But they really believe it. Not even Mrs. Biller goes down there.

“I’m very good at math,” Lilian continued. “And I won’t put up with anything—from other girls, I mean. Sometimes you have to be a bit snippy with the likes of Mary Jane Lawson. And Mrs. Biller is no different.”

George was again struggling to hold back his mirth as he pictured little Lilian Lambert in a catfight with Florence Biller. By the look of it, Greymouth was in for some interesting times.

“Your father and Mrs. Biller will come to some agreement eventually. There’s no room for rivalry during a war. All the mines will be pressed to the limits of their capacity. Europe needs coal for its steel production. They’ll probably be working around the clock for years to come.” He sighed. George Greenwood was a businessman, but he had always been fair. It went against his nature to profit from the war. And no one could accuse him of greed. He had not been thinking of war profits when he bought his shares in the Lambert Mine.

“In any event, you’ll be quite a catch for some bachelor, Lily. Your father’s few shares in the mine will make the Lamberts rich again.”

Lilian shrugged. “If I ever marry, my husband should love me for who I am. Whether it’s a beggar or a prince, all that matters is how our hearts speak to each other.”

George burst out laughing. “At least the beggar would know how to appreciate your dowry,” he then said. “But now my curiosity’s piqued. I’m dying to know who’ll win your heart.”

Jack happily observed the energy with which Charlotte climbed the steep street to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga. Dr. Friedman’s medicine had worked wonders. For three weeks Charlotte had been pain free and filled with renewed courage. Her visit to Waitangi had been a success. After visiting the place where Governor Hobson had received the Maori chieftains in 1840 in an improvised tent, they spent time with the tribes who lived nearby. She spoke for hours with older members of the tribes, who still remembered the stories their mothers and fathers had told them. Charlotte documented the Maori’s feelings about the Treaty of Waitangi; she noted the second generation’s interpretations of it and, importantly, the differing opinions of the men and women on the subject.

“The
pakeha
had a queen!” reported an old woman. “My mother really liked that. She was one of the tribal elders and would have liked to go to the meeting. But the men wanted to arrange things among themselves. They danced war-
haka
to raise their courage. Then their envoy arrived, and he spoke of his ruler, Victoria—her name means ‘victory.’ She was something like a goddess to him, and we were powerfully impressed. She promised us protection, and how was she supposed to do that from so far away if she wasn’t a goddess? Later, though, there was conflict. Is it true that they are beginning to sing war songs over there where you come from?”

Charlotte confirmed the outbreak of war in Europe. “But we don’t come from there,” she said. “We’ve only traveled here from the South Island, from Te Waka a Maui.”

The old woman smiled. “It’s not important where you were born but where your ancestors come from. That’s where you come from and thence will your spirits return when they free themselves.”

“I wouldn’t like it at all if my soul returned to England when I died,” Jack joked when they left the settlement. “Or to Scotland or Wales. At least both of your parents come from London.”

Charlotte smiled weakly. “But London is a bad place for ghosts,” she said. “Too loud, too hectic. Hawaiki sounds nicer to me. An island in the blue sea.”

“Coconuts that grow in your mouth if they don’t fall on your head first,” Jack teased her, but he was a little apprehensive. It was too early to speak so freely of death, even if only about the mythology of the Maori. New Zealand’s natives had their origin on a Polynesian island they called Hawaiki. They had come from there in canoes to New Zealand, which they called Aotearoa, and to this day each family knew the name of the canoe that had brought their ancestors there. After a person died, according to the legends, his or her soul would return to Hawaiki.

Charlotte reached for Jack’s hand. “I don’t like coconuts,” she said offhandedly. “But I’m done here in Waitangi. Should we head north tomorrow?”

The Ninety Mile Beach and Cape Reinga, one of the northernmost places in New Zealand, offered fantastic views of storm-tossed cliffs. The Pacific Ocean met the Tasmanian Sea here—for
pakeha,
it was simply a spectacular sight to behold; for the Maori a sacred destination.

“Won’t that be too stressful for you, darling? The climb is steep, and you have to go the last few miles on foot. Are you sure you can manage? I know you haven’t had any migraines for three weeks, bu
t . . .
”

He left unsaid what worried him: despite Charlotte’s apparent energy, she seemed to have lost even more weight, which was no wonder since she hardly ate anything. Her hands in his felt like those of a fairy, and when he drew her close at night, her body felt feverishly hot. A mountain hike was the last thing he wanted her to do, but she had specifically expressed her desire to visit Cape Reinga multiple times.

Charlotte smiled. “Then you’ll just have to carry me. Maybe we can rent horses or mules.”

Jack drew his wife to him. “Very well, I’ll carry you. Didn’t I carry you over the threshold on our wedding night?”

The last
pakeha
settlement before Cape Reinga was Kaitaia, a small town that visitors only stumbled upon when they wanted to explore the northernmost part of the island. Jack took a room in a hostel and asked the proprietor about mounts, or better yet a carriage.

“It’s still a few dozen miles to the cliffs,” the proprietor said skeptically. “I wouldn’t count on your wife lasting so long on a horse. You’d be better off taking a wagon, but it’s challenging terrain, sir. You should consider whether that little view is worth it.”

“It’s more than a little view,” Charlotte mused when Jack told her what he’d learned. “Jack, we’ll never come so far north again. Don’t worry about me; I’ll make it.”

So there they were, after a long ride through a desolate, rocky landscape interrupted at intervals by breathtaking views of sandy bays and long beaches.

“Ninety Mile Beach,” Jack said. “Beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve heard the sand is used in glassblowing. I’m not surprised as it shines like crystal.”

Charlotte smiled. She had spoken little along the way, just letting the spectacular landscape, the sea, and the mountains sink in.

“There has to be a tree, a
pohutukawa
. It plays a role in the stories.”

Jack frowned. “Are you sure? The area isn’t exactly laden with trees.”

The
pohutukawa
was an evergreen that bloomed red flowers, and it was ubiquitous on the North Island.

“At the cape,” Charlotte said vaguely. Then she lapsed back into silence and remained so on the ascent to the cliffs as well. The hotel proprietor had been right: you could only reach the lighthouse by embarking on a strenuous hike on foot. But Charlotte did not seem to care. Though Jack saw perspiration on her face, she was smiling.

After several hours the lighthouse appeared in view. Jack hoped the keeper would like some company, and indeed he invited the visitors in for tea.