White Feathers (2 page)

But perhaps even more remarkable was the fact that they were all so comfortable in one another’s company. It was not common for Maori and Pakeha to mix socially, and particularly not in public, as Joseph was reminded by the covert sidelong stares from other hotel diners, but no one at his table had been concerned about social propriety or public opinion for years, and were blithely ignoring the interest they were attracting. But it was more than just a matter of race. Andrew accepted Kepa’s infrequent but continuing presence in Tamar’s life with consistently good grace. Parehuia, too, knew of the history her husband shared with Tamar, but had philosophically relegated the episode to the distant past, although from time to time Joseph had sensed some unvoiced competition between the two women.

And then there was Keely, who had been raised in a monied and privileged Pakeha home but who was so proud and fond of her part-Maori brother. He remembered with amusement and anger the day some years ago when they had been shopping in Napier together and a middle-aged woman had approached them and announced to Keely that she should have more pride than to walk out in the company of a Maori man, even if he was dressed in
fancy European clothes. Joseph had thought for a horrible moment that his sister would strike the opinionated creature, but she had controlled her temper, quite a rare feat, and simply suggested that the woman mind her own business. Keely was headstrong, very self-confident and, if everyone were honest, spoilt, but she was unerringly loyal to her family.

Joseph knew, therefore, that she would support him in what he planned to do next. It was time to tell the family of his news. He took a small sip of wine and cleared his throat.

‘I have an announcement to make,’ he declared, looking around the table at the faces of those who loved him most. ‘I’ve come home to enlist. I’m going to war again.’

There was a prolonged silence. War. There had been talk of little else since the news of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo in June. New Zealand had followed Britain in declaring formal hostilities against Germany on 5 August, and ever since the press had been full of the preliminary arrangements for the raising of a New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Kepa banged his fork sharply onto his dinner plate, splattering his front with gravy. ‘For God’s sake, boy!’ he exploded. ‘You have already been to one bloody war!’

People at neighbouring tables turned to look.

‘Yes,’ replied Joseph calmly, aware that his father’s belligerence spoke of love and fear, rather than anger, ‘and now I’m going to this one. I was thinking of enlisting in Australia but I’d rather go as a New Zealander.’

There was another silence. ‘At least this war has a little more merit than the one in South Africa,’ said Andrew. ‘By all accounts that bloody Kaiser Wilhelm has stepped well beyond his boundaries.’

Tamar pushed a slice of carrot around her plate briefly, then said without looking up, ‘I suppose there’s no point in asking you this, Joseph, but do you really feel you must go?’

Joseph looked at his mother with tenderness. ‘I’m sorry, Mam, but yes, I do.’

‘Why?’

Joseph had pondered the answer to this question for some weeks now, and he still hadn’t been able to adequately explain, even to himself, his need to go to war again. ‘I’m not sure. I can’t put it into words. After the last one I came home feeling as if there was something I hadn’t finished, or something I hadn’t done. So perhaps this time I’ll actually do whatever it is I’m supposed to do.’

‘And what might that be?’ demanded Kepa sarcastically, wiping gravy off his waistcoat with his linen napkin. ‘Die?’

Joseph shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Papa. This is coming from my heart, not my head. You and Mam have always told me to listen to my heart, and that’s what I’m doing.’

Kepa looked across the table at Tamar as if such advice had never passed his lips and therefore she should take full blame for their son’s latest folly, but she pointedly ignored him.

‘Well, you’re a grown man this time, Joseph,’ she said. ‘We can’t prevent you from following your heart, and neither should we, but think carefully about your decision, won’t you?’

‘I have, Mam, and I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Well, that’s that then, isn’t it?’ declared Keely cheerfully, knowing that her brother would never change his mind to suit someone else, not even his mother and especially not his father. ‘You’ll be a hero all over again.’

‘I wasn’t a hero last time,’ Joseph said sourly.

Oh dear, so that’s the problem, Tamar thought astutely. ‘Well, I’m sure you will be this time, my love,’ she said, patting Joseph’s hand placatingly. ‘Just as long as you come home safely,’ she added.

Andrew shook his head. For such a shrewd and sophisticated woman, his lovely wife could be very naive sometimes, especially when it came to her children.

‘I’m afraid this war looks as if it could be on a much larger scale than South Africa, dear,’ he said. ‘All of Europe could be involved, they say.’ He felt Joseph’s boot nudging him under the table and countered, ‘No, Joseph, we have to be realistic about this. You, us, Bill Massey, King bloody George, everyone. It could go on for years.’

‘Erin hopes so. She’s thinking of volunteering,’ said Keely blithely.

‘Erin volunteering? What for?’ Andrew asked in astonishment.

‘The war. They’ll be calling for our nurses to serve over seas if it goes on for longer than a few months, and Erin’s considering putting her name forward.’

Andrew and Tamar glanced at each other across the table in dismay. Erin was Keely’s cousin, the only child of Andrew’s sister Jeannie and her husband Lachie McRae, who also lived at Kenmore. With only eighteen months between them, Erin and Keely had grown up together and were both at Wellington Hospital completing their training as nurses.

‘Surely not!’ said Andrew, outraged. ‘Do Jeannie and Lachie know about this?’

‘Well, of course not, Da. They’d just try to talk her out of it, wouldn’t they? And please don’t say anything to them just yet. But why shouldn’t she go? Plenty of women have been to war, you only have to read the history books.’

‘We have some very famous
wahine toa
,’ said Parehuia unhelpfully.

Andrew said, ‘Aye, but Erin’s hardly soldier material, is she?’

‘No, but she wouldn’t
be
a soldier, would she? She’d be a nurse,’ replied Keely. ‘I don’t think they’re planning to send women to fight just yet.’

Joseph said, ‘This doesn’t sound like the Erin I know. I realise I haven’t seen her for four years but I’ve always thought of her as
the kind of girl who would rather sew and arrange flowers and read books than get her hands mucky. I can’t believe she’s changed that much.’

Keely gave her brother a withering look. ‘Well, she has and she’s an excellent nurse. Matron’s always saying so and the patients love her.’

‘And she didn’t say anything at all to me the last time I saw her,’ Joseph continued. ‘In fact, she was so shy it was embarrassing.’

Yes, well, there’s a reason for that, reflected Keely, although she had no intention of divulging it. Not here, any way.

‘I take it you’re not thinking of volunteering yourself, Keely?’ said Andrew rather pompously. ‘It would be out of the question, of course. And I very much doubt whether Jeannie and Lachie will let Erin go, either.’

‘She’s twenty-four. I can’t see how they could stop her. And anyway it’s just something she’s thinking about.’

Andrew made a humphing noise, picked up his dessert spoon and concentrated on his poached pear. Only Joseph and Tamar noticed that Keely hadn’t answered her father’s question.

The trip by train from Wellington to Napier took over nine gloomy, rain-sodden hours, most of which Kepa used to try to persuade Joseph not to enlist. By the time they reached their destination, however, Kepa had resigned himself to sending his son off to war for a second time, and during the wagon ride to Maungakakari, the Ngati Kahungunu village north of Napier, he finally, reluctantly, gave his blessing. He wanted everything to be well between himself and his son, just in case something untoward did happen. They had been close when Joseph was young, although the boy had been raised by Kepa’s sister Mereana, and their relationship was a good one, but they were
both stubborn and there had been several prolonged differences of opinion resulting in temporary estrangements. Those episodes had blown over, but when Joseph had been away for so long after the Boer War, Kepa had come to realise how much he loved and valued his eldest son. He also dearly loved the two children he had fathered with Parehuia, but Joseph was Tamar’s son, and despite Kepa’s deep affection and immense respect for his wife, Tamar remained uppermost in his mind and in his heart, even after more than thirty years.

The inhabitants of Maungakakari had gathered to greet Joseph after his long absence and a small feast had been prepared in his honour. He greeted his
whanau
with undisguised fondness, hugging Mereana fiercely and engaging in a heartfelt
hongi
with Te Roroa, his ageing grandfather and the village chief. Te Roroa’s health was failing rapidly, and Joseph reflected sadly that he could well be over seas again when the old man died and the chief’s cloak passed to Kepa. He had not been present at his great-uncle Te Kanene’s
tangihanga
fourteen months ago, and was loath to miss that of his grandfather as well, but sometimes such things could not be helped.

Joseph was also very pleased to see Wi and Ihaka, his two closest boyhood friends. Both had taken wives and Wi now had two young children, but Joseph could still see the spirit and sense of adventure that had bound the three of them together in their youth.

Ihaka, always the most vociferous and bellicose of the trio, clapped Joseph heartily on the back and asked in Maori, ‘So what has brought you home this time,
e hoa
?’

Joseph contemplated the bulging muscles of his friend’s thighs and the straining width of his chest and arms. ‘The war has, Ihaka. I have come home to enlist.’

‘Ah!’ Ihaka exclaimed excitedly, his heavy eyebrows shooting up over his rather protuberant eyes. ‘Then we will do that together!
Wi and I are volunteering as well. We are fit and we are ready!’

‘Is married life not suiting you?’ asked Joseph, grinning slyly.

Wi, physically slighter than both Joseph and Ihaka, and much more given to jokes and a steadfast refusal to take anything too seriously, laughed. ‘He married Miripeka Huriwai, remember,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

It did. Joseph recalled Miripeka, a good-looking and intelligent woman but with a mind so much her own it was doubted she would ever find a mate. Only Ihaka had dared court her, and he was evidently now paying the price.

‘Yes, married life suits me,’ replied Ihaka huffily, ‘but this is an opportunity for
war
! You have already proved yourself as a warrior, Joseph, but we have not. Now it is our turn.’

Joseph nodded. During the Boer War he had enlisted as a Pakeha: officially no Maori had been permitted to serve during that conflict, but his pale skin and European name had encouraged the recruitment officer to turn a blind eye and he had been accepted into the First Contingent.

‘Papa told me that the Government may not allow Maori to fight,’ said Joseph carefully, not wanting to disappoint his friends.

Ihaka flapped his hand dismissively. ‘Then your father should not believe everything he reads in the newspapers, or wherever that came from. The Maori members of Parliament sent telegrams to the Government offering the services of our warriors overseas as soon as the war was declared, and it is true that the offer was declined, but the Government will change its mind,’ he said confidently, crossing his arms over his chest aggressively. ‘Will you be coming with us, Joseph, or will you be serving with the Pakeha contingents again?’

‘With my own people, Ihaka,’ replied Joseph without any hesitation at all. ‘With my own people, this time.’

Ihaka’s face was suddenly illuminated by a wide and rather fierce
grin. ‘Then we will have two celebrations tonight! One to welcome you home and one to celebrate the birth of our war party!’

As he trotted up the long, tree-lined lane that led to Kenmore homestead, Joseph struggled to put together in his mind what he needed to say to Tamar. The British Government had agreed that a Maori contingent could be raised to go to Egypt and to German Samoa for occupation duties, and Joseph, Wi and Ihaka had enlisted immediately. Now he was on his way to say goodbye to his mother, to Andrew and to his half-brother Ian before he left for the training camp near Auckland. There would be no opportunity to see James, Thomas or Keely as, with luck, he would be leaving for camp very soon, although he hoped that if the contingent departed from Wellington he would perhaps catch up with Keely and James there.

Slowing his horse to a walk, then finally coming to a complete halt at Kenmore’s imposing iron gates, he paused to survey the Murdoch family home. The elegant two-storeyed masonry house with its chimneys and porticos, grand balconies and verandahs, and expanse of beautifully manicured garden always awed him — not because of its grandness, which meant little to him, but because his mother, the daughter of an impoverished Cornish miner, had managed to find her way here. She deserved it, of course, and she deserved even more the love and support of a man as kind and as generous as Andrew Murdoch, but to Joseph it still seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

Urging his horse on, he followed the carriageway around the side of the house to the stables, then dismounted and tethered his horse next to a water trough to rest and drink. Inside a large shed sat Andrew’s new motor vehicle, a 1911 Ford Model T tourer painted a gleaming midnight blue.

‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’

Joseph glanced over his shoulder to see Ian standing behind him. ‘Absolutely. Been out in her lately?’

Ian replied enthusiastically, ‘Yes, Da let me take her into town the other day. Did the trip in just over two and a half hours. It’s incredible, really, when you think how long it takes by wagon or horseback.’