Anna of Strathallan (21 page)

Her laugh was derisive. 'Oh, Calum, how absurd can you get? Who ever heard of purple eyes?'

'I said purply-brown. Like those pansies of Kitty's by the back steps. They're supposed to be brown, with golden edges, but in reality they have a purple tinge. When the sunlight's right on your eyes they aren't brown and they aren't black, they're pansy-coloured.'

Anna was giggling helplessly. 'It doesn't sound old- ladyish enough.'

'Well, I'll concede that perhaps you'll be a little stiff in the joints, because you've spent so many springs in wet paddocks at lambing-time, and your knuckles might be a little knotted too, and you'll have the brown spots of age on the backs of your hands, but you'll always grow young again when spring comes back to Strathallan. Like Kitty you'll always be out eagerly looking for the first primroses, the first violets, for the return of the dotterels to the river-beds; looking to see if the starlings have built again under the water-tank, and of course they will have. Generations of starlings will never disappoint you, Anna.

'And your grandchildren will gather round your chair in front of the kitchen range for you to hear their spelling and to help them look up information in the encyclopaedias, and stick their stamps in their albums. That's how you'll be when you're eighty, Anna; and you'll still dip into long- loved books of poetry before you go to bed, so that your dreams will always be pleasant.'

Her grandchildren? But for that there'd have to be a grandfather. Who would he be?

The main road was ahead of them now, so they turned left to join the stream of traffic from the south, and passed over the Tokomairio River to come into the township of Milton, where the streets had the name of poets loved long ago....

'This was the town Anthony Trollope and his wife were very glad to reach that snowy winter August night in 1872. It was here they were given great kindness, dry stockings provided for Mrs. Trollope in front of a huge fire, and they were given a good hot dinner, and brandy-and-water.'

They stopped beside the waters of Lake Waihola where sometimes world championships for rowing were held, to drink scalding coffee and sample Kitty's shortbread beside the wide spreading waters that drained the hillsides. Not a blue, snow-fed lake like the ones that drained the mountains further inland, but cool, pewter-silver waters fringed with bullrushes and weeping willows.

Just over half an hour and they were driving through Dunedin, a graciously architectured city, now inevitably becoming sky-lined with square concrete blocks of buildings that indicated progress, and over the Water of Leith to climb a hill and take a main highway that dipped and swung round some quite massive hills, some of them heavily forested.

The vast expanse of Blueskin Bay and the Pacific beyond came suddenly into view, a shimmering diamond-bright sea that reached out limitlessly. Anna caught her breath at its sheer, glimmering beauty in the early morning sun, its restlessness and freedom freeing her spirit. Calum let her gaze her fill in silence. They dipped down into the Waitati Valley and suddenly, among the
totaras
and
kowhais
by the boulder-strewn stream, there was a flash of white and a soaring.

'Heavens,' said Calum, 'I'd have thought it was too late for one of those, but it is. Anna, this must be put on specially for you. It's a white heron, the
kotuku,
so rare that its name means the pure white heron of a single flight. But now they are heavily protected their numbers are increasing. But we see them here mainly in winter - this side of the Alps. By November they'll all be over in Westland at the Okarito Lagoon, where they return every year - even from the North Island - to nest in the same
kowhai
trees there.'

He laughed. 'There's an old legend, though I can't vouch for its truth, that the year you see your first
kotuku
means you get your heart's desire before it ends. How about that, Anna?'

The pang that tore through her was almost physical. Heart's desire ... this could be the year she had to witness the wedding of the man she loved, to another woman. This year, or next year?

'We turn east here, beyond Waitati, to the shore road on the north of this big curving bay. Some day we'll stop short of here and IH take you to Doctors' Point, so called because so many of the medical bods in Dunedin have weekenders there. It's the most glorious beach.'

The road they took twisted and curved back over the main south railway line, following the contours of the hills, and had farms whose emerald paddocks ran right to the edge of the cliffs and
kowhais
golden with pendulous blooms drooped graceful branches earthwards. Gnarled old
ngaio
trees leaned away from the east winds that swept up from the sea, and sprinkled the sward with fragile daphne-like flowers from among their five-fingered leaves.

They came up over the top where the famous Truby King's original Karitane Hospital stood, for the care of the not-so-strong babies, and again Calum ran the Avenger into the side of the road so she could drink her fill of contoured beauty.

The Pacific here curved into the land in twin indentations, one bounded by a crumbling long razor-edge of cliffs that reached out an arm to shelter the Karitane River sweeping out to sea, and on the far side of the second curve was the pinkish bluff of the Waikouaiti Headland.

'As far as I'm concerned,' said Calum, starting up, 'this has everything, the surf on this side of the razor-ridge, rocks to scramble over, shells for the children to gather, hills to climb, a great stretch of shore for riding on if you can get hold of a horse, and the boat harbour at the other side with the fishing-boats coming in over the bar, through the channel, and a very safe lagoon type of beach there for the children. Ian and Betty bring the children here whenever they stay with her mother in Dunedin. In fact if ever I can afford it, I'll buy a holiday house here myself.' He would bring his and Victoria's children here.

They swept down towards the beach, turned up a narrow lane and ran through a stand of magnificent blue-gums to the back entrance The front one, Calum explained, was just a hillside path of boulders that served as steps down to the boat-house.

Anna loved it from the moment Calum took an enormous key and unlocked the door. It was a darling house. It was wide-set because it had to follow the line of the hill and it was steep. It was a curious and fascinating blend of the old and the new. Whoever had modernized it had done it with great taste. They'd exposed the beamed ceiling and restored the wood to its natural state after some Philistine had painted it. Two rooms had been thrown into one, so the sitting-room end was slightly above the dining end, and they had put wide landscape windows each side of the French windows so that almost the whole wall was glass. These opened out on to a long planked verandah, with a rail to it that looked like teak, Anna said.

'It is teak,' said Calum. 'Old Captain Bluenose who built this house got it from a ship that was being broken up.'

'Captain Bluenose? Oh, surely that wasn't his name?'

'No, his name, believe it or not, was Gamaliel Macallister. Don't you think that's a most euphonious name? He was a seafarer from Nova Scotia. Bluenose is a name for Nova Scotians. You know, like they call people from our West Coast the Coasters, or the Tynesiders Geordies. He had a sister in Port Chalmers who was widowed, long before the days of adequate pensions. So he came here and built this to satisfy his love of the sea but was a chandler at Port Chalmers, so he could support her and the children. The beginning of the century, it was. My friend Doug Fenton bought it, and he and Marjorie restored and modernized it. She's almost as good as Victoria. I must keep an eye on the tide. Anna, it's incredibly early for lunch, but in terms of how long since breakfast, we're well past our time How about it?'

Her eyes sparkled as they looked over the sea. 'Yes, of course. Anyway, it's gloriously mad once in a while to turn the timetables upside down. You said you packed some food last night. What?'

He brought out cold sliced mutton, farm-grown, therefore as tender as chicken, early tomatoes, curls of lettuce, mayonnaise, cheese, some of Kitty's home-baked rolls, butter, jam, tea-bags.

They stacked the dishes to do on their return. Calum said, 'I come here often. It may be cool on the water. Doug's wife said for you to help yourself to anything of hers you may need. In Fiji the winds blow from the Equator - here, from the South Pole. What about this over your top?' He handed her a sea-green sweater in a bulky knit. She pulled it over her head, shook her hair free.

He picked up a yachting cap, set it on his crisp black hair. It was the first time she'd seen him in anything but the old woollen cap he wore for lambing. It really did things for his profile, that peaked brim. She turned away, lest her eyes reveal too much.

The sun was so hot, beating on them from the north as it worked towards its zenith, it didn't seem possible it would be cool on the water. Calum took her hand to help her down the sandy boulders, covered with slippery pine-needles from the giant trees overhead. There were just a couple of flowerbeds against the house, blazing with geraniums and marigolds in a glorious clash of colour, and the rest, to make it easy to look after, was matted with ice-plants, carpeting it with yellow and crimson and cyclamen.

The white wicket gate led to a public beach path. They jumped down a natural formation of rock steps to the boat- house. The launch was well kept, with beautiful lines. A couple of fishermen came along, recognized Calum, gave him a hand, and in a few moments they were heading out along the well-marked channel.

Anna recognized immediately that Calum knew how to handle a boat, that this was something he must have grown up with. The hours spent on the water were unalloyed delight. They skirted round the coast for Calum to point out various features and he promised her she could explore them closer at hand, from the land, when, during the summer, they always spent some time here as a family.

She shivered as he pointed out the scene of a long-ago massacre, Goat Island, which wasn't quite an island, but was joined to the mainland by a narrow neck, only wide enough for one warrior to traverse at a time ... there was a deep blow-hole on one side, and a curving scimitar of a beach on the other, and it jutted out into the open sea. They had guarded that narrow bridge ... not knowing that in the mist of a swirling snowstorm, the raiding tribe had come upon them from the sea and scaled the cliffs…

She said, 'It seems incredible on a day like this, all blue and gold, and almost cloudless. A scene of peace.'

She looked up as a soaring gull's wings caught the light in its flight. 'Perhaps that's why they keen so sadly. Never a sadder sound than that. Keening over limitless stretches of water.'

He nodded. 'Didn't some poet long ago write of that... the bird singing of "Old, unhappy, far-off things"?'

This was true companionship. Something Anna had missed all her life. Most other girls had had fathers who had shared that sort of thing with them.

He took the wheel from her, his hairy forearm brushing hers, warm from the sun. He pointed out a rock. 'I've never found out if it has a name or not to the local inhabitants. It must be the last, hardest peak, of what was once a headland, reaching out into the bay. Back on the shore, it looks like a bust of Queen Victoria. So I always call it the Empress Rock. I wonder how many thousands of years it is since that headland was here, with turf on the top, and native bush thick with singing birds? I wonder if a
moa
ever roamed there. See those great jagged spires rising out of the sea under the razor-back? I suppose some day their softer rock will be eroded away, and they'll be just the size of the Empress. I wonder who'll look at them then and wonder about them as we've done today? A time when we and this boat and all our dreams and hopes will be dust and ashes.' He gave a short laugh. 'What a ghoul I am! Why think of mortality on a day like this?'

She smiled, standing beside him, braced to the swing. 'I don't call that ghoulish. When you realize this sea has pounded those cliffs for millions of years, one is more conscious of continuity. It makes me feel at one with all who've ever lived here, the moa-hunters, the small Morioris, the spirit of all those Maoris who leapt into the cruel sea on that day of snow and violence, their happier years, the eeling parties, the years of peace when tribe ceased to war against tribe, when generations of children, European and Maori, played together on these beaches. Later these same beaches must have seen crowded troopships, with
pakeha
and Maori soldiers on board, sail past here from Port Chalmers to fight in European tribal wars... waging them in France and Italy and the Middle East and the Islands of the Pacific.

'But the best memory of all, for me, will be of old Captain Bluenose, who built a sturdy house on a steep hill and left me, someone he never knew, the legacy of a happy, happy day, with salt spray on my lips and the feel of a wheel under my fingers. Oh, goodness, I never talked like this to anyone in my ,life before! Calum, why don't you stop me?'

His hand touched hers briefly. 'Don't get all reserved on me, now, Anna. We didn't get off to a good start, though it's only hilarious to recall now, but we've become so - such friends. I'm glad you voiced your thoughts about continuity. I've never believed that some day earth will be no more, that God will destroy it all eventually. It makes Him out to be an arch-vandal. How could a Creator destroy? I think He's more likely to bring Heaven down upon Earth. Ever think about that? With all Earth's war-scars healed.'

Anna was enchanted with the idea. 'Oh, Calum, why don't you express that to Sophy, she'd find a text for it and preach on it, I'm sure.'

'I came across a text once that bolstered up that belief of mine, but I've been too shy to mention it to anyone - till now. It's in the Book of Revelation. The first verse of a chapter. Twenty-one, I think. "And I saw a new heaven
and a new earth."
' He laughed, said, 'I dare not finish that. I've just realized how it goes on.'