Call of the Kiwi (52 page)

“Your farm horses and Welsh cobs don’t. But Princess is largely Thoroughbred. These horses soak through if it rains long enough. So, please bring the horse inside.”

Wilkenson laughed, and Gloria realized that he had been drinking. From the looks of it, the other men who were now looking over at them from the barn weren’t sober either.

“And if I do it, Miss Pocahontas? What do I get out of it? Will you come back in a grass skirt?”

Laughing, he reached for Gloria’s wet hair and twisted a strand between his fingers.

Gloria felt for her knife, but she’d forgotten to take it out of the pocket of her old leather jacket and stick it in her raincoat. Gloria cursed her lack of foresight. She had just begun to feel safe. A mistake.

“Get your hands off me, Mr. Wilkenson,” she said, in as stern and composed a tone as she could—but her voice trembled.

“Oh, and what if I don’t? Will you cast a curse on me, my little Maori princess? I can live with that.” With lightning speed he clasped her arm. “Come now, Pocahontas, one kiss, and I’ll fetch your little pony.”

Gloria bit at the man as he laughingly pushed her onto some straw bales. Nimue and the young dogs barked, and Ceredwen pawed the ground anxiously, first with one hoof then the other. The men in the barn hooted.

Suddenly the door was ripped open from the outside. Jack McKenzie stood in the entrance, Princess prancing on a lead rope. For a fraction of a second, he stared at the confusion in the stables. Then he dropped the rope, crossed over to Gloria in two strides, spun Wilkenson around, and landed a perfect right hook.

“You’ll get nothing,” he said. “You’re fired, effective immediately.”

Wilkenson seemed briefly to consider striking back. But he held back and grinned.

“Who’s to say that the little honey didn’t want it?” he asked.

Jack struck again. So quickly that he surprised Wilkenson a second time. Gloria reached instinctively for the knife that hung near the barn door for the purposes of opening the hay bales. A strange gleam filled her eyes. She turned to Wilkenson as he was struggling to his feet.

“Hey, sweetheart, we can talk about this.”

Gloria seemed to be miles away. She slowly approached him with knife drawn as if on a sacred mission.

Jack saw the expression in her eyes. It was all too familiar. Men had leaped out of the trenches with that same fanatical yet empty gaze—with no other thought than to kill.

“Gloria, Gloria, this scum isn’t worth it. Gloria, put the knife down.”

Gloria did not seem to hear Jack. And Jack had to make a decision. Gloria knew how to throw a knife. Jack had watched her practice. He had to stop her. But he didn’t want to fall into her hands, nor under any circumstances to be the next man who attacked her or touched her without her permission. Jack stepped between Gloria and Frank Wilkenson.

“Gloria, don’t do it. It’s Jack. You don’t want to do anything to me.”

For the length of a heartbeat, he thought she didn’t recognize him. But then her eyes made it clear she registered Jack.

“Jack, I . . .” Gloria sank into the hay bales, sobbing.

“Everything’s all right,” Jack spoke softly, but he still did not dare to touch her.

Instead he turned to Wilkenson.

“Taking your time? Get your ass up, and get off this farm.”

Wilkenson did not seem to have fully appreciated the danger. He was still staring angrily at Jack. “If I go, I’ll be taking at least three men with me.”

He turned to Taylor and his other drinking buddies.

“Do you mean those bastards? Don’t even bother. I’m letting them go too, you see. I heard their cheers. Now get out, all of you. Help your fearless leader up and onto his horse. Then away with you.”

Jack waited for the men to get up, grumbling.

“Come on, we need to catch Princess,” Jack told Gloria. “She’s run off.”

Gloria trembled.

“I, first I have to unsaddle Ceredwen,” she whispered.

“I’ll fetch Princess then. Will you be all right alone?”

Gloria grasped the knife and looked at him. Then she said quietly, “I was always alone.”

Jack once again fought the urge to take her in his arms. The lost child—and the woman of shame. But Gloria would not want that. Jack did not know what she saw when she looked at him, but he knew that she still didn’t trust him.

9

Y
ou were brave,” Gloria said to Jack on the way back to the house. They were soaked through. Jack was exhausted after bringing all the horses into the stables, feeding them, and caring for the remaining sheep and cattle. And now he had to break it to his mother gently that he had just let go most of her remaining workers. Only a few
pakeha
had not belonged to Wilkenson’s clique, and he hoped they would show up for work the next day. Maaka was in Christchurch. Tonga’s people were boycotting Kiward Station, and it was raining buckets. Jack did not even want to think about the storms in the foothills. Despite all that, he felt satisfied, almost happy. Walking along beside him, Gloria was quiet but appeared to have relaxed.

“I was at Gallipoli,” he reminded her with a crooked smile. “We’re heroes.”

Gloria shook her head. “I read your letters.”

Jack blushed. “But I though
t . . .
”

“My parents forwarded them to me.”

“Oh.” Jack no longer remembered every word he’d written, but he knew that he would be embarrassed by a few passages. He’d still thought of Gloria as a child when he’d written them.

“I didn’t even send the last letters,” Jack said, relieved. Those last letters—from the hospital in Alexandria and then from England—were the worst. Gloria had been missing for months by then, and he had written them to a girl he believed to be dead.

“No?” Gloria asked, astounded. She only had two unopened letters left, which she had put off reading after his last report from Gallipoli. But they had stood out to her because the handwriting on the envelopes was in another hand. Less fluid, rather awkward. Roly must have addressed and stamped and sent them. Gloria was suddenly in a hurry to get to her room. She had to read those letters.

Dearest Gloria,

It’s senseless to write you since I know you’ll never get this letter. But I cling to the hope that you might still be alive and thinking of me. At least I now know that you thought about all of us, even if in anger. I’ve since become sure that you never received my letters to you in England. Otherwise you would have called for help. And I, would I have come? I lie here, Gloria, and ask myself what I could have done differently. Would anything have saved Charlotte? Would it have saved you if I had not forgotten one love over another? I wanted to believe that you were just as happy as I was, and in doing so, I betrayed you. And then, after Charlotte’s death, I ran away. From myself and from you, into a foreign war. I fought and killed men who did nothing but defend their homeland and, in doing so, I betrayed my homeland.

As I write, I hear the muezzins calling to prayer. Five times a day. The other patients say it’s driving them crazy. But for the people here it makes life simpler. “Islam” means “submission.” Take things as they come; accept that God does not stick to rules.

She dropped the letter and picked up the next.

England—now I’ve ended up here, too, and I think of you, Gloria. You saw the sky here, the green of the meadows, the giant trees unknown to us. They say I have consumption, though a few doctors have their doubts. But it’s certainly not entirely wrong since I do feel that I’m being consumed, that I want to be, that it might be easier to die than continue living. I now fear nothing more than returning to Kiward Station, into the emptiness after Charlotte’s death and your disappearance.

You’ve been gone so long now, Gloria, and even though my mother won’t give up and keeps hoping you’ll turn up on Kiward Station, they say that “as far as anyone can tell” you are no longer alive. The police in San Francisco have given up the search anyway, and none of the detectives my mother and George Greenwood have hired picked up even the smallest lead. Perhaps it’s senseless, even stupid to write this letter, almost as if I wanted to reach your ghost. Only the thought that God is taking “as far as anyone can tell” ad absurdum gives me strength.

Gloria held the letters in her lap and cried. More than she had since that night in Sarah Bleachum’s arms. Jack had written to her in England. He had always been thinking of her. And he was ashamed too. Perhaps he had done worse things than she had.

Gloria hardly knew what she was doing. As if in a trance she ripped her drawings from her pad and placed them in the last collection of Charlotte McKenzie’s notes on the mythology of the Ngai Tahu. Before migrating with the Maori, she had read all of Charlotte’s writing, and the last folder still lay on her bookshelf. Jack knew she still had it, so he was sure to go looking for it eventually.

Gwyneira paced fretfully in the salon, listening to the wind and rain outside the window. She dared not think about what it looked like in the highlands. She regretted her decision to have the newly shorn sheep herded out there, but nothing could be done now. She would not be able to find capable men on short notice to bring the sheep back, especially without the help of Frank Wilkenson.

Gwyneira nevertheless cursed herself for not having let him go long ago. Jack had been right to fire him without notice, but she should have recognized herself the way he tormented Gloria. She would never be able to look Gloria in the eye again. Gwyneira poured herself a whiskey and mulled over where she’d gone wrong.

The piercing ring of the telephone interrupted Gwyneira’s gloomy thoughts. The operator announced a call from Christchurch, then George Greenwood’s voice came on the line.

“Mrs. McKenzie? Actually I wanted to speak with Jack, but could you please just tell him that Charlotte’s records need to be ready soon? The expert is coming from Wellington the week after next.”

George’s voice sounded cheerful. “And guess who he’s bringing with him? I don’t think much of all this secretive business, so I’ll just tell you. The university is sending Ben Biller, and Lilian will accompany him. The boy has no idea about the family connection. Lily is leading him just as blindly as Elaine is Tim.”

Gwyneira’s mood brightened somewhat. “You mean Lily is coming here? With little—what’s his name again?”

“Galahad,” George replied. “Strange name. Celtic, right? Well, anyway, yes, she’s coming. And most likely Elaine and Tim. So you’ll have a full house.”

Gwyneira’s heart leaped with joy. A full house. A bouncing baby, Elaine and Lilian’s teasing. And Lily had always managed to make even Gloria laugh. It would be wonderful. Perhaps she should invite Ruben and Fleurette as well.

“Oh yes, and I have something for you to tell Maaka as well,” George continued, though now in a more businesslike tone. “You should send out Wilkenson right away to herd the sheep back. The meteorologists and Maori tribes in the highlands are predicting heavy storms. Why did you even send the sheep out, Mrs. McKenzie? It’s so early in the year.”

Gwyneira’s high spirits were instantly extinguished. She said good-bye to George and drank another whiskey. Then she did what she had to do.

Jack knocked on Gloria’s bedroom door. He had not been able to find Charlotte’s last folder, and he knew that Gloria had been the only one to look at the notes.

And perhaps Gloria would be amenable to a short conversation. Jack felt lonely after the unpleasant talk with his mother. Gwyneira had appeared understanding, even guilty, about having let Frank Wilkenson stay on so long, but she also looked old and overwhelmed by the sudden lack of help.

Gloria only opened the door a crack.

“Do you have Charlotte’s last folder?” Jack asked gently.

She handed the folder to him through the narrow opening, hardly letting herself be seen. Jack caught only a glimpse of her flushed face. Had she been crying?

“Is something the matter, Gloria?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. “No. Here’s the book.”

Gloria shut the door before he could ask more. Jack left, shaking his head. He took the book with him to his room, opening it in the light of the new electric lamp.

What he saw made him shiver.

A dark city towering in front of a starless sky. In the gaps between the buildings, the devil laughs—and a ship is leaving harbor. It is flying a flag with a skull and crossbones, but in the place of the skull is a naked girl. A boy is standing on deck, staring at the devil, who appears warlike, sure of victory. Tears flow from the dead eyes of the girl on the flag.

Then a girl in the arms of a man—or is it actually the devil from the previous picture? The artist did not seem able to decide. The man holds the girl tight, possessively, but she does not look at him. The couple is lying on the deck of a ship, and the girl’s gaze is directed out to sea—or at an island in the distance. She is not defending herself, but she is also not enjoying the man’s company. Jack blushed at the sight of the oversized member stabbing between the girl’s legs like a knife.

And another city. Different from the first. Among a sea of low buildings is what looks like a teahouse. The man is drinking with the devil. And between them, prepared like a fish on a platter, lies the girl. Knives lie at the ready beside her. The devil—easy to recognize this time—is pushing money over to the man. This time the girl is not naked, but her short, revealing dress makes her look even more defenseless. Her expression is uncomprehending, frightened.

After that the images reflected naked horror: the girl chained in hell, surrounded by dancing devils plaguing her from every direction. Jack blushed at the sometimes shocking details. Some pictures had been crossed out, while others showed evidence of where the pen had broken through the paper. Jack could feel her rage.

Finally, after a seemingly endless row of harrowing drawings, the girl is lying on a beach. She is sleeping; the ocean lies between her and the devil. But on the other side of the beach new monsters await. The next pictures depicted yet another odyssey through hell. Jack was shocked when he saw the girl’s shaved head, which increasingly resembled a skull from one picture to the next. In the last few, the girl’s face has been reduced to bones and empty eye sockets. The girl, represented as a skeleton, is wearing a dark outfit with a pale high-necked blouse. She is finally boarding a ship and looking again toward the island that was discernible in the first picture.