Tamar (43 page)

‘And so are you, if you keep behaving like this. I’ve made my choice, and there’s no more to be said about it,’ retorted Andrew, and set off to find Tamar.

She was in an upstairs bedroom, stretched out on a chaise by an open window, staring at the ornate plaster centrepiece in the middle of the ceiling. Andrew came and sat at her feet. ‘Are you not feeling well?’ he asked, concerned.

Tamar transferred her gaze from the ceiling to his worried face,
sat up and put her feet on the ground. ‘No, I’m fine. But Andrew, I feel so foolish. You could have told me.’

‘I’m sorry, darling, I just didn’t think it mattered.’

‘Well, no, it doesn’t, but you could have said
something
.’ She picked up her straw hat and fanned herself with it. Looking him directly in the eye, she added, ‘I think you’d better tell me anything else I might need to know. I thought we’d agreed there were to be no secrets between us.’

‘And there won’t be, I promise. What is it you want to know?’

‘Well, I’m not sure. I don’t want to pry,’ she answered primly.

Andrew smiled, leaned forward and kissed Tamar on her red nose. ‘You’re a funny woman, Tamar Murdoch.’

Before dinner Andrew showed Tamar the surveyors’ maps of the Murdoch sheep station. The block was huge — 14,577 acres of flat and hilly land supporting 19,000 sheep, mostly Romneys, some English Leicesters, a few Cheviots imported from the Scottish Highlands, and a handful of Corriedales he was trialling. Andrew and Jeannie’s parents, James and Adele Murdoch, had emigrated in 1850 from Scotland, where their families had been landowners for more than two hundred years. Andrew had been born in 1851, followed by two more children, one in 1853 and another the following year, who had both died, then Jeannie had arrived in 1858. A fifth child born after Jeannie had also died.

In 1855 James Murdoch had purchased 9000 acres in the Tutaekuri River area and, seven years later, an adjacent block of 5577 acres. The current homestead was the third house, the first two having stood on exactly the same spot. The first had burned down in 1857, and the second had been razed in 1870 to make way for a much grander home once the family’s financial situation began to consolidate. James himself had died in 1879, followed
quickly by his wife in 1880, neither having lived to see their two surviving children marry. Jeannie had met Lachlan in 1882 and married him two years later. At Andrew’s invitation Lachlan had come to live at Kenmore to be with his new wife and to help Andrew to run the station.

Two full-time shepherds and their families also lived on the station, and an extra nine or ten men came out for the shearing season. Although Andrew used the latest shearing equipment and the new hollow-top shearing tables, shearing 19,000 sheep was a long, arduous and expensive job and he was looking forward to someone inventing a machine that would do the job in half the time. He’d read recently that someone in Australia was working on a prototype fuelled by wood and sheep dags, of all things.

Most of his profits, he told Tamar, came from wool exports, although in 1882 he’d been one of the first to export frozen sheep and lamb carcasses when the new refrigerated ships were introduced. The deepening depression had indeed had an impact on his profits, but there was plenty of money in the bank and, due to the scale of his operations, he was still doing very well. Andrew also explained that although title to the land had been transferred to him when his father had died, as it had been assumed Jeannie would marry, he’d regularly shared the profits with her and ensured the land would go to both his and her children on their deaths.

Later, resisting the urge to wear her most flamboyant outfit, Tamar dressed for dinner in a stylish, pale grey satin gown and pulled her hair back in a simple style, fastened with two clips decorated with jet beads. At the dinner table, she commented on Jeannie’s gown, which was an attractive deep burgundy. She wondered if Andrew’s sister had made a special effort to impress her.

‘Is the fabric in your gown crepe de Chine, Jeannie?’ she asked
conversationally. ‘It’s a lovely shade. And it’s bespoke, isn’t it? Your seamstress should be complimented.’

‘Oh,’ Jeannie replied, momentarily flustered. ‘Yes, it is bespoke. A woman in Napier does my sewing. My special outfits anyway.’ She stopped and her hand flew to her mouth.

Ah, I knew she’d dressed deliberately, thought Tamar. Andrew and Lachlan glanced at each other, aware that something had passed between the women but completely mystified as to what. They put their heads down and concentrated on their food.

‘You sew then, Tamar?’ asked Jeannie.

‘Yes, I’m a trained cutter and seamstress and I did quite a lot of sewing in Auckland.’ She did not elaborate.

‘I’m not a very good seamstress myself,’ Jeannie replied. ‘I can crochet, tat, knit and embroider, but I’m hopeless with garments, I have to admit. Nobody will wear anything I make.’

‘Perhaps I can help you, if you’d like,’ volunteered Tamar. She knew Jeannie did not like her, but there was no point in feuding, especially if they were going to live together. ‘I can’t cook, and this meal is wonderful. Perhaps you could teach me to cook in exchange.’

Andrew looked shocked; he hadn’t realised Tamar couldn’t cook. But then he smiled as he caught on.

Jeannie nodded. ‘No doubt we can work something out that suits us both.’

Tamar wondered if her new sister-in-law was referring to the domestic arrangements, or to their relationship.

Sitting in bed later, Tamar said to Andrew, ‘She doesn’t like me.’

‘Och, give her time. She can’t not like you forever. Who could?’ he asked, sliding next to her under the cool linen sheets. ‘I think she was surprised you didn’t polish off the decanter of sherry before dinner and burst into bawdy songs after the pudding. She’s had a sheltered life.’

‘She doesn’t seem naive to me.’

‘No, she isn’t naive, but she hasn’t seen as much of the world as you.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ Tamar agreed.

Andrew leaned over and kissed her and she let herself succumb to the lovemaking she’d decided she was more than happy to become accustomed to.

The following day, Andrew gave Tamar a guided tour of the house, which was indeed splendid, and the equally beautiful gardens, then took her riding.

Tamar hadn’t been on a horse for years and felt particularly unsafe balanced precariously on a side-saddle wondering when, not if, she was going to fall. She had ridden in Cornwall, but only shaggy little pit ponies. She did not end up on the ground, but did get into a terrible tangle with her skirts, her single stirrup, her crop, and the reins. And her hat blew away. Andrew laughed.

‘You’re going to have to get the hang of it, my dear. People do a lot of riding around here. There are some places you still can’t take a wagon safely — especially between homesteads. Well, not if you want to get there before midnight. And I’m planning on doing a lot of socialising.’

After that she practised surreptitiously in one of the back paddocks, but still felt uncomfortable. The horse Andrew had given her was not particularly flighty, but had a tendency to take the bit between his teeth when he galloped.

The following week Andrew announced he wanted to have a dinner party to introduce Tamar to his friends, and decided she and Jeannie should deliver invitations to some of their closer neighbours by hand. Or rather by horseback.

‘Perhaps you could get to know each other a little better on the
way!’ he suggested cheerfully. Both women gave him dirty, sideways looks. He was aware they had come to some sort of truce, but was still conscious of a barrier between them.

On the appointed day, Andrew and Lachlan set out early to check the station’s western boundaries, leaving Tamar and Jeannie to themselves. They were standing together in the yard waiting for Rathbone, Kenmore’s elderly gardener-cum-stablehand, to bring the horses around. The father of one of the shepherds, Rathbone was a dour little Irishman. He never said much to anyone, unless asked to discuss some aspect of the gardens. He lived for his herbaceous borders.

He silently held Jeannie’s horse as she mounted, then led Tamar’s over to the mounting block. She clambered on, then got straight off again.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Jeannie, I just can’t ride in this skirt. It’s absurd. Rathbone, please put a proper saddle on my horse,’ she said, and went inside. She emerged fifteen minutes later, wearing a pair of Andrew’s work trousers and one of his shirts, carrying a shoulder bag in which she’d stuffed her visiting clothes. Rathbone, holding Tamar’s re-saddled horse, took one look at the trousers and averted his eyes, utterly scandalised. Andrew’s trousers were rather tight on her curvaceous bottom, leaving little to the imagination. Jeannie took a brief look, then turned her horse in the opposite direction and concentrated on looking between its ears. Even Tamar’s horse shied.

‘Hold him still, please, Rathbone,’ she said as she stepped onto the mounting block. ‘I can’t get on if he’s jumping all over the place.’

Rathbone gripped the horse’s bridle, staring determinedly at his boots.

As Tamar placed her left foot in the stirrup and energetically swung her right leg over the horse’s back, a low, soft, ripping noise could be heard. Tamar froze, becoming suddenly aware of a light breeze playing over her buttocks.

She got slowly down again, careful to keep her backside facing away from Rathbone, who had frozen in his tracks. ‘Jeannie?’ Tamar asked quietly. ‘Did you make these trousers?’

As she looked at her sister-in-law, she was appalled to see she was crying, her hands over her face and her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

Tamar thought, oh God, this must be the last straw. ‘Jeannie, I’m so sorry. I’ll get changed straightaway. The last thing I want to do is embarrass you.’

Jeannie removed her hands from her face, threw her head back, and brayed with hysterical laughter. Tamar stood stunned. ‘That,’ said Jeannie, ‘was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.’

Years later when she looked back, Tamar recognised the incident for what it was — the starting point of their lifelong friendship.

Part Two

Joseph

1887–1902

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

August 1887

T
amar had been living at Kenmore for almost eight months when Andrew took her into Napier to select new bedroom furniture, insisting Tamar should have something more feminine.

They were walking down Munroe Street when they passed a Maori woman leading a small boy. Tamar glanced at the well-dressed pair briefly, then stopped when something suddenly registered deep within her. The child had green eyes. She turned and saw them standing in the dusty street, staring back at her.

Her heart leapt wildly as she walked towards them. The woman stared directly at Tamar, an odd and not altogether friendly look on her strangely familiar face.

‘Excuse me,’ Tamar said, her pulse still racing. ‘May I ask the name of your child?’

The woman hesitated, unable to ignore the striking resemblance between the boy and this
Pakeha
woman, then replied reluctantly in excellent English, ‘He is Kahurangi-o-te-po Kepa.’ She rolled her eyes as the child yanked energetically on her hand, adding, ‘He is also known as Joseph.’

Tamar squatted in front of the child, ‘Hello, little man,’ she said softly, then looked up at her husband, her eyes swimming in tears.

‘I think I’ve found him, Andrew.’

The boy, suddenly shy, hid his face in the woman’s skirts.

Tamar said to her, ‘My name is Tamar Murdoch. Are you Mereana?’

‘Yes.’ The woman hesitated again while she extricated the boy from her skirts, smoothing his hair gently as he leaned against her thigh, all the while keeping his small hand tightly within hers. ‘Have you come to take him back?’ she asked, her eyes reflecting fear and the beginnings of a deep sadness.

Tamar looked at the distress on the other woman’s face, and the bewilderment on that of the little boy. She swallowed the painful lump in her throat and stood up. ‘No.’ She blinked hard and turned to Andrew. ‘May I have one of your cards?’

She waited while he found a business card and handed it to her.

‘May I give this to Mereana?’ she asked quietly. Both women watched as half-formed shadows of fear, then resignation, chased each other across his face before he nodded.

Tamar turned back to the Maori woman. ‘This is my husband, Andrew Murdoch. We live at Kenmore Station. Can you please give this to Kepa? There are things we need to discuss.’

Mereana nodded. ‘
Haere mai, tama iti
,’ she murmured to the child, then glanced at Tamar. ‘I will tell Kepa we met.’ She gave a small smile that failed to reach her eyes. ‘Good morning to you both.’

Tamar watched as they walked away. The little boy turned around and stared curiously, then they rounded a corner and were lost from view. Tamar took Andrew’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze before they walked on, both lost in their own thoughts.