Call of the Kiwi (48 page)

Gwyneira fixed him with a wild look. “Yes, why don’t you all just retire?” she roared at him. “Sometimes I get sick of it, Jack. Sometimes I just get sick of it.”

Neither Jack nor Gloria appeared for breakfast the next morning. Gwyneira was embarrassed after her outburst. She learned from Kiri that Gloria was in her room and seemed to be busy smashing all her handmade Maori goods to pieces. Jack had left on horseback to spend the day at the circle of stone warriors. Kiri and Moana informed Gwyneira what had really transpired in the village.

“Tonga wanted marriage with Wiremu and Glory. Had told whole tribe. Only not Glory and Wiremu. They did not want marriage,” Kiri said.

“Wiremu did,” Moana corrected her.

“Wiremu wanted
mana
. But he coward,” Kiri explained. “Glory very angry because he not sleep with her but he pretend.”

Gwyneira cursed her mistrust. She should at least have given Gloria a chance to tell her version of events. When the girl appeared at dinner that evening—in the spinsterish outfit she had worn to greet Gwyneira in Dunedin—she expressed her remorse.

“I was afraid, Glory. I thought you’d fallen for Tonga’s tricks. Kura was close to doing that once.”

“I’m not Kura,” she said angrily.

“I know. Please, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Jack said appeasingly. The tension between the two women almost scared him. Gloria seemed to hold Gwyneira responsible for all her troubles, and he wondered what had happened to the girl. Just how long had she traveled alone? What had she done to earn her passage back to New Zealand? He had gleaned one thing from her reaction to the rustling in the bushes: Gloria had lived through her own war.

“No, it’s not all right,” she yelled. “Don’t speak for me, Jack. It’s only all right when I say it is.” She paused. “It’s all right,” she said stiffly.

Gwyneira sighed with relief.

After dinner she stopped the girl, who wanted to go straight back to her room.

“There’s something for you, Gloria. A package from your parents. It came a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t want anything from my parents,” she said angrily. “You can send it back to them.”

“But they’re letters, child,” Gwyneira replied. “Kura wrote that she was sending you your mail. Kura’s agent collected it all and gave it to her in New York.”

“Who would have written to me?” Gloria asked testily.

“I don’t know, Glory. I didn’t open the package. Why don’t you have a look? Then you can burn them if you want.”

Gloria had built a fire in front of the stables that afternoon and thrown her Maori dress into it.

Gloria nodded.

Back in her room, she opened the envelope. The first letter that fell out had been opened. Her mother must have read it. Gloria looked at the sender: Private Jack McKenzie, ANZAC, Cairo.

Dear Gloria,

I’d hoped to be able to write to you on Kiward Station. After all, you finished school and Mother was so full of hope that you’d finally come home. But now she’s told me about an American tour with your parents. No doubt a very interesting experience you’ll prefer to our old sheep farm. My mother is very sad about it, but it’s only for a few months.

As you’ve surely heard, I have decided to leave Kiward Station for a while to serve my country as a soldier. After the death of my father and my beloved wife, Charlotte, I wanted to do and see something else. As for the seeing, I’m definitely getting my money’s worth. Egypt is a fascinating country. I’m writing you from the shadow of the pyramids, so to speak. Tombs that rise up like castles to hold the dead fast. But what sort of immortality is that, if you wall up the soul and carefully hide the body in a burial chamber beneath the earth to protect it from corpse robbers? Our Maori would not understand, and I, too, would prefer to picture Charlotte in the sun of Hawaiki than in eternal darkness.

Gloria let the letter fall and thought of Charlotte. Gloria could hardly remember the Greenwoods’ youngest daughter. What had suddenly inspired Jack to write her such a long letter? Or could it be that he’d always written? Had her school intercepted his letters? Why? And who would have done that? Gloria scanned the rest of the envelopes in the packet. Aside from a few missives from Grandmum Gwyn and two cards from Lilian, they were all from Jack. She eagerly opened the next envelope.

. . .
Modern Cairo is considered a great city, but it lacks government buildings, squares, and palaces. People here live in closed-off, boxlike stone houses, and the streets are narrow alleys. The life and goings-on in the city are hectic and loud. The Arabs are exceedingly business minded. During maneuvers there’s always a swarm of men dressed in white offering refreshments. It drives the British officers crazy. Apparently they’re afraid that even during combat we’ll be counting on there always being a melon seller nearby. In the city the natives try and sell us antiques that are supposedly from the burial chambers of the pharaohs. Given the quantity of these objects, that’s unlikely. The country could not have had that many rulers. We take it that they simply carve the idols and sphinxes themselves. It sends a shiver up my spine to think of people actually robbing the dead—the custom of burying people with goods is a strange one. Sometimes I think about the little jade pendant Charlotte wore around her neck. A
hei-tiki
carved by a Maori woman. She said it would bring luck. When I found Charlotte at Cape Reinga, she did not have it anymore. Maybe her soul is wearing it to Hawaiki. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Gloria—apparently Egypt’s not doing me any good. Too much death all around me, too much past, even if it’s not my own. But we’re being relocated soon. It’s getting serious. They want to attack the Turks at the entrance of the Dardanelles.

Gloria involuntarily reached for her own
hei-tiki
, but then she remembered she had thrown it at Wiremu’s feet. Better that way; let him take her Maori soul elsewhere.

. . .
I will never forget the beach, how it looked in the very first light of morning. A small bay, surrounded by rocks, ideal for a picnic with a woman you love. And I will never forget the sound of that first shot. Though I’ve heard hundreds of thousands of shots since then, that first one destroyed the innocence of a place that until that moment God could only have looked upon with a smile. We changed it into a place where only the devil laughs.

Gloria smiled wearily. There was no doubt the devil had a lot of fun in this world.

Suddenly she had no desire to continue reading. But she carefully hid the letters beneath her laundry. They belonged to her, and no one else was to find them—Jack least of all. He might not think it right for her to read them now. After all, he hadn’t spoken of his experiences at Gallipoli. And besides, Jack had written to a different Gloria. He must have had a child in mind when he colorfully described how he had ridden camels and chastised big, heavy men for letting themselves be carried through the desert on tiny donkeys. On the other hand, some sentences seemed only too pointedly directed at the woman Gloria now was. Marama would probably have said that the spirits had guided Jack’s hand.

Gloria lay down but could not sleep. It was not dark yet, and she stared at the bare walls of her room. She stood up and retrieved her old drawing pad from the furthest corner of her chest of drawers. When she opened it, she found herself staring at a colored picture of a weta. Gloria ripped the page out. Then she drew the devil.

5

Y
ou didn’t go out to herd the sheep back with the others?” Jack asked.

He hadn’t thought he’d see Gloria at the breakfast table that morning. The shepherds had set out before dawn to herd the sheep in the highlands together and then back to the winter pastures. Almost four weeks sooner than usual, as a cold and rainy fall had followed the wet summer. Gwyneira was afraid of losing too many sheep, and of an early onset of winter.

“All alone with that horde of wild rascals?” Gloria asked him sullenly in turn.

Jack bit his lip. No, of course they couldn’t send Gloria off into the highlands with the shepherds, though it occurred to him that she may have gone if he had ridden out too. He looked over at his mother and saw the silent accusation in her eyes. Gwyneira felt he was shirking his duty by not going—as did the
pakeha
shepherds. What the Maori thought, no one knew. But his mother and her men did not accept his continuing weakness. He was healthy. He could ride if he wanted. And Jack knew that too. But he could not bear to think of the tents, the campfires, the men’s pompous speeches, which would bring back memories of the laughing, overly confident boys who had died at Gallipoli. And a little of Charlotte, too, who had ridden along during the herding once or twice and managed the food wagon. They had shared a tent, retired early, and lain in each other’s arms while the rain beat down on the tent or the moon shone brightly.

Gloria hadn’t given any thought to whether Jack was participating in the herding. She was too distracted by her own dilemma. When she had shown up at the stables offering to work with the cattle and the sheep on the farm, the men had proved stubborn. No one gave her any tasks or was willing to work with her. Gloria now understood that migrating with the Maori had been a big mistake—returning in native clothing all the more so. The
pakeha
among the workers laughed behind Gloria’s back and called her Pocahontas. Her instructions were not followed, and her questions answered curtly. She could no longer count on their respect.

The Maori shepherds were not much better. Though they had certainly gained respect for Gloria—speeches like the one she had given in the
wharenui
impressed the tribe—the men pointedly kept their distance. Passive resistance against their often overzealous chieftain was one thing, but screaming at him and throwing a statuette of the gods at his son’s feet was taking it too far. For the Maori of Tonga’s tribe, Gloria was
tapu
, and people avoided her.

Though Gloria was used to being ostracized, it gnawed at her, and she did not know how to occupy herself. When she tried to train the whelps in the yard, she made mistakes and heard the men laughing when a little collie did not obey her. It was no different with the young horses. She cursed the years she’d lost studying art instead of learning farmwork.

Increasingly, she returned to her room in the afternoon and opened Jack’s old letters.

We’re digging in. You should see the trench system here. It’s almost like an underground city. The Turks across the way are doing the same. You could go crazy thinking about it. We just sit here, each lying in wait for the other, hoping that some idiot on the other side will get too curious and take a peek over the wall. We then blow that guy’s head off—as if that would change the course of the war. A few of the better heads in our ranks have developed a periscope. With the help of a pole and two mirrors, we can now look out without any danger. They’re also at work cobbling together a shooting contraption.

But the Turks have the upper hand. They hold the high ground in the mountains—if their weapons had more range, they could shoot right into our trenches. Fortunately that’s not the case. But how we’re supposed to conquer this country is beyond me.

These days I think a lot about courage, Gloria. A week ago the Turks risked an assault with completely unbelievable bravery. We mowed down thousands of them, but they still kept leaping out of their trenches and trying to storm ours. In the end two thousand Turks were dead. Can you imagine, Gloria? Two thousand dead men? We eventually stopped shooting—I don’t know whether someone ordered it or if our humanity compelled us. As soon as the Turkish rescue troops had fetched the dead and wounded from no-man’s-land, another assault wave began. Is that courage or idiocy, Gloria? Or desperation? After all, it’s their land, their home they’re defending. What would we do if our homeland were at stake? What are we doing here?

Gloria’s heart beat wildly as she read those lines. Would Jack perhaps understand what she had done to make it back to Kiward Station? To distract herself, she once again took up her drawing pencil.

After the sheep had been herded back, Kiward Station was full of life. Animals stood everywhere in their paddocks, which were constantly being cleaned out and restocked with food. Gwyneira worked on an elaborate plan to make use of available pastures as she watched the meager stockpile of hay dwindle. Both Jack and Gloria remained locked away in their rooms.

In desperation, Gwyneira brought the matter up with Maaka, who merely said he did not need the girl.

“She’ll only scare off my men,” he said. Gwyneira did not press the issue with him. She tried to talk to Gloria about it but once again showed little tact. Instead of asking Gloria about the incidents Maaka was alluding to, she made accusations. Outraged, Gloria rebuffed her and ran to her room. Gwyneira had no idea that Gloria was in there crying in anger and helplessness. Gloria needed support, but her great-grandmother always seemed to side with her opponents.

Gwyneira sometimes thought she might go mad. She still insisted on family dinners, but Jack and Gloria merely cloaked themselves in silence when she brought up the hay shortage or her concerns about the animals. When Gloria had offered a few suggestions early on, Gwyneira had rebuffed her ideas.

“The land around the circle of stone warriors isn’t
tapu
,” Gloria said. “If there’s a scarcity of fodder, the sheep could graze there; it’s almost five acres. Naturally it would be nicer if the sacred site stood on untouched land, but the grass will grow back. The gods don’t care, and Tonga should not act as if they did.”

The idea had outraged Gwyneira—after all, she had been granting the Maori their sacred sites for decades, and she did not want to rock the boat. Gloria, however, felt betrayed anew and held her tongue.

Shortly after Christmas, Jack surprised his mother and Gloria by announcing that he was planning a trip to Greymouth for Roly’s wedding. Jack was dreading visiting the town where he had celebrated his honeymoon with Charlotte. But he owed it to Roly. After spending a few days learning to operate Gwyneira’s car, he rumbled off to Christchurch and caught the train to Greymouth. Elaine and her sons greeted him radiantly at the station.

“You look good, Jack. You’ve put on some weight. Watch out, I’m going to fatten you up.”

Jack informed her that he would rather stay in a hotel than impose on her hospitality. Elaine seemed disappointed, but she quickly recovered her good spirits and teased him.

“Just not the Lucky Horse, Jack, I won’t be held responsible if you stay there! Roly is insisting on celebrating his wedding there, of all places. Tim and the rest of their regular group are thrilled, but a night there would put your virtue to the test.”

Jack ended up taking a room in one of the upscale hotels on the pier and spent several hours staring at the waves before Roly and Tim came for him.

“Bachelor party.” Roly laughed. “Farewell to the single life. We’re going to have one more good go of it, Sergean
t . . .
” He grinned. “Beg your pardon, Jack! Sorry, Mr. Lambert.”

Tim Lambert laughed. “Roly, what you call my—how are we related again, Jack?—in any case, what you call Jack is none of my business. Besides, if this night goes as festively as planned, we’ll all end up on a first-name basis anyway.”

Jack liked Elaine’s husband and tried to make a joke himself. “I believe Elaine is my niece. But don’t worry, Tim, you don’t need to call me uncle.”

Greg McNamara bore his fate with more composure than Jack had imagined he would. At least he did that evening when the whiskey flowed in streams. As a wounded veteran, Greg enjoyed hero status. While it was visibly embarrassing for Jack and Roly when the first glass was raised to the heroes of Gallipoli, Greg beamed and never tired of recounting the adventures at Cape Helles that had cost him his legs. Much later in the evening, a girl appeared who took a seat on Greg’s lap.

“This is really a brothel,” Jack observed, confused, to Tim, who was chatting with Madame Clarisse, the owner of the establishment.

“He figured it out.” She laughed. “Where’d you round this one up, Tim? The last sheep pen in the Canterbury Plains? I thought you’d been to war, Mr. McKenzie. Didn’t you ever, well, let’s say, seek distraction with one of the heroines of night?”

Jack blushed. He would not admit it, but he had not so much as embraced a woman since Charlotte’s death.

“Hera, why don’t you come see to this man?”

Hera was a stout Maori girl with brown eyes and long, black hair. Jack managed to exchange a few friendly words with Hera before retiring early.

“Tired already?” the girl asked, surprised. “Well, it’s smart not to drink yourself into oblivion the night before the wedding. Someone should say a kind word to the groom on the subject. But we have beds here too.” She smiled invitingly.

Jack shook his head and took his leave. He slept fitfully in his luxury room, dreaming of Charlotte and Hera, whose faces merged into one. In the end, the girl he kissed was—Gloria.