White Feathers (3 page)

Joseph watched with amusement as Ian, gesticulating vigorously, described his motor trip into Napier. At eighteen he was a fit, long-limbed young man with wavy hair the colour of almost-ripe wheat, freckles scattered across his tanned nose and a wide and infectious grin. As the youngest in the family he was still occasionally treated as the baby, especially by Tamar, and consequently went to considerable lengths to prove that he wasn’t one by throwing himself into, and usually succeeding at, every new experience that came his way. He wasn’t the brightest of Tamar and Andrew’s admittedly talented children but his disposition was perpetually sunny, he was universally popular and already sought after by some of the local station owners’ daughters. He loved Kenmore, he loved his family and he idolised Joseph.

‘So you’re definitely off, are you?’ he asked, a look of open envy on his face.

Joseph nodded. ‘Yep, to Avondale. We’re going up by train, but I’m not sure when we’re actually going over seas. I don’t think anyone is.’

‘I wish I were going,’ said Ian. ‘I suggested it to Mam the other day and she tore strips off me, saying it was bad enough with you and James.
And
she said it’ll all be over soon any way, so there’d be no point. Is that true?’

Joseph shrugged and replied truthfully, ‘Who knows? When’s James off, have you heard?’

‘On the twenty-fifth, apparently,’ Ian replied. ‘Actually, are you
staying tonight? James has got leave and he’ll be here this afternoon some time. He telephoned last night and said he and a friend are motoring up to say goodbye. Poor Mam, all these goodbyes.’

‘Really? That’s good news, I thought I’d miss him. Where’s Mam?’

‘Up the hill behind the house picking daffodils, I think.’

Joseph found Tamar on the hillside above Kenmore’s small family cemetery, standing with her back to him and staring intently at the ground. She was wearing a voluminous pair of Liberty print harem trousers tucked into rubber boots, a short jacket belted at the waist and a large straw hat with a ragged hole in the brim. She jumped as he came up behind her.

‘Hello darling!’ she said brightly. ‘We weren’t expecting you!’

He kissed her smooth cheek, appreciating the faint scent of lavender he had associated with her since early childhood.

‘Well, I’ve got some news,’ he responded, then added quickly, ‘Ian says James will be home this afternoon.’

‘Yes, he’s bringing someone with him, and I think I know who, too. Well, not
who
perhaps, but
what
.’ She gave a small smile, her eyes shining with anticipation. ‘He’s been a trifle secretive lately, has our James. I hope he doesn’t arrive early — Andrew says these trousers are dreadful and I shouldn’t be seen in them in public, so I ought to change. I quite like them, actually, they’re very comfortable. But I’m glad you’re here, dear. I seem to have lost my daffodil basket. You’re definitely going away, aren’t you?’

She turned her face away, but not before Joseph had seen the tears welling in her eyes. He put his arms around her and hugged her to him. Her hat fell off and, with her head against his chest, she watched absently as the breeze snatched it and rolled it down the hill.

‘It will be all right, Mam. I’ll come home again, I promise you.’

Tamar said nothing, and hung on to him even more tightly.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

J
ames arrived late in the afternoon accompanied by a man in uniform and a very pretty young woman.

When Tamar hurried to meet them at the front door, James introduced the man as his very good friend Captain Ron Tarrant, then announced proudly, ‘Mam, I’d like you to meet Miss Lucy Mason, my fiancée.’

Tamar smiled brightly and feigned surprise. James was a private person by nature, but he had hinted in recent months that there was someone special in his life, and she had been wondering when he might bring her home.

‘Your fiancée, James? How lovely, we had no idea!’

James smiled wryly; not much got past his mother.

Tamar stepped forward and touched cheeks with the girl. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Lucy. Please come in, and you too, Captain. Your father will be in at five, James. He’s been out in the paddocks all day.’

As she ushered James and his guests into the formal parlour, Joseph and Ian could be heard kicking their boots noisily off at the back door and skating down the polished wooden hall in their socks, Ian laughing uproariously. They came to an abrupt halt outside the parlour door when they saw there were visitors.

‘Hello,’ said Ian immediately.

James rose to shake his brothers’ hands, then grinned broadly as he broke the news about the impending end to his bachelorhood.

‘Really?’ said Ian, genuinely surprised and delighted.

‘I say, that’s good news, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, we think so, don’t we, sweetheart?’ said James, sitting down again next to Lucy and taking her hand. ‘We’re planning to marry as soon as we can make the arrangements. Here, actually, if that’s all right with everyone. We’re in a bit of a hurry, what with the Expeditionary Force leaving so soon, Mam, but we were sure you’d understand.’

Tamar allowed herself a very quick, very discreet glance at Lucy’s waistline before exclaiming, ‘Well, of course it will be all right, dear!’ The girl was not displaying any overt signs of an imminent arrival but pregnancy was not always easy to discern under the fashionably loose and high-waisted clothes women were wearing today.

Lucy Mason was very smartly dressed in a straight skirt of terracotta tweed with a matching short jacket over a cream silk blouse, worn with amber beads, beige gloves and a hat sporting a long rust-coloured feather. She looked poised and elegant but rather nervous. Her hair was an attractive shade of dark blonde and she had wide blue eyes, a small upturned nose and full lips enhanced by a subtle application of pink gloss. Her voice was educated, her manner gracious, if somewhat subdued. Tamar guessed that she came from a well-bred family, so why was she was running about the countryside with two young army officers, evidently about to be married and with no sign of her parents anywhere?

Never one to beat about the bush, she asked, ‘And will your mother and father be attending the wedding, Lucy? We’d love to meet them.’

The young couple exchanged quick glances, then James said, ‘No, unfortunately they won’t, Mam. Lucy’s father is very busy with war work at the moment but we visited them in Wellington a few days ago and they gave their permission. They understand that we want to be married before I leave.’

Tamar looked steadily at James for a moment, waiting to see whether he would add anything to his explanation. He didn’t, but he had never been a good liar and was unable to look her in the eye.

Joseph had decided fairly quickly that he didn’t like Ron Tarrant. The man looked to be about James’s age, twenty-five, or perhaps a year or two older, and was good-looking in a dark, slightly fleshy way. His hair was sleek and black and had a dent in it where his uniform cap, now balanced on one crossed knee, had sat. A large and luxuriant moustache covered his upper lip and his eyebrows almost met above a strong nose. There was a heavy gold and onyx ring on his right hand and he swung his leg as if he were just a little bored by the family tableau before him. Next to him, James, with his nut-brown hair, blue eyes and rather classical profile, his long legs stretched out before him, looked far more at ease.

Although somewhat surprised to learn that he was about to gain a daughter-in-law, Andrew took the news with good cheer and expressed hearty congratulations, but he voiced his doubts as he and Tamar dressed for dinner.

‘Is she pregnant, do you think?’ he asked, fastening his tie and frowning at himself in the full-length mirror.

‘Oh, Andrew, what a dreadful thing to assume!’ replied Tamar in an admonitory tone as she bent over to look for something under the bed.

Andrew laughed but didn’t turn around, content to view his wife’s still very shapely bottom reflected in the mirror. ‘Now don’t tell me you haven’t already had a good squiz at the poor girl’s
middle, Tamar. I know how your devious little mind works!’

Tamar stood up, her face flushed and her hair escaping from its pins. ‘I’m not devious, Andrew. You’re fully aware that these things happen and if it is the case, I’d prefer to know about the arrival of our first grand child sooner rather than later, that’s all. Have you seen my harem pants any where?’

‘You’re not wearing them to dinner, dear,’ said Andrew mildly. ‘They’re hideous. Wear one of your lovely dresses.’

Spotting a minute scrap of patterned material sticking out from under the heavy cherrywood blanket box at the end of the bed, Tamar discovered her cherished trousers crushed underneath. She shook them out and said bemusedly, ‘Now, how did they get under there, I wonder?’

Andrew said nothing.

‘Damn, I’ll
have
to wear a dress now,’ she said, and burst into tears.

Andrew whipped around, appalled by her sudden distress and ashamed of himself for having hidden the ugly pants in the first place. He took Tamar in his arms and stroked her hair. ‘It’s the boys going, isn’t it?’ he murmured gently.

‘Yes,’ she said into his shirt front. ‘I desperately want to plead with them not to, but they’re men now, Andrew. I can’t stop them and I’ve no right to.’

‘Aye, I know,’ he said. ‘I feel the same way but young men have always gone off to war, Tamar. This time won’t be any different.’ He shut his mouth before he could add that, as far as he could see, this one could well be worse than anything they had seen in their lifetime. He adored his children, and had grown very fond of Joseph over the years, but he knew he was powerless to prevent them going. At a pinch he could probably blackmail Ian by offering him the carrot of Kenmore. He believed that Keely had no interest in serving as a nurse over seas, and was convinced that going to
war would be the last thing Thomas, with his gentle and sensitive ways, would want to do, but Joseph was already an experienced war veteran and James was a professional soldier.

‘We have to let them go, dear, and support them while they’re away and when they come back,’ he said, ‘but beyond that, this is something they have to do for themselves. They’re not children any more. Now come on, dry your tears and make yourself beautiful and we’ll go down to dinner. If we are to have a new daughter-in-law we don’t want her to think we’re a pair of old miseries, do we?’

Tamar drew back, looked up at his kind face and gave him a watery smile.

In the end Tamar dressed in one of her best evening outfits, in honour of James’s impending marriage and as a gesture to her departing sons. Under a silk kimono in a mauve and black Oriental print, she wore a grey silk Charmeuse sheath dress styled on one of Parisian couturier Paul Poiret’s latest designs, which she had copied from an illustration in a magazine. On her feet were mauve satin heels with an ornate silver buckle trim. To complete the look she pinned her hair up in a series of coils that covered the tops of her ears but revealed a pair of large pearl drop earrings matched by a lustrous double rope about her throat.

Joseph and Ian both whistled as she entered the dining room.

‘You look marvellous, Mam,’ said Ian appreciatively.

‘Thank you, darling,’ said Tamar as she regarded the long, beautifully set dining table. Everyone was seated, including Jeannie and Lachie. Glancing at Lucy she noted that the girl was also fashionably attired for dinner in a lilac silk tunic over a ruched but straight skirt so was clearly not travelling light. Both James and Ron Tarrant had changed into smart three-piece lounge suits, and
next to them Ian, in his shirtsleeves, looked even more of a boy than he was. Joseph, who, unlike his father, had never bothered too much about fashion, was also in shirtsleeves.

‘Mrs Heath’s serving the first course in five minutes,’ announced Jeannie.

‘Is she? Good,’ said Andrew. ‘Would anyone like another drink?’

Avis Heath, Kenmore’s housekeeper and cook, had replaced the dauntless Mrs Muldoon upon her retirement four years ago. A small woman in her mid-fifties with apparently limitless energy, Mrs Heath cooked expertly, ran the house with extreme efficiency, thoroughly approved of good manners and proper etiquette and was therefore occasionally a little perturbed, but privately of course, by some of the goings-on at Kenmore. This afternoon she had been asked by Tamar to ‘do something special’ for dinner and had done her mistress proud, even if she did say so herself.

‘Yes,’ said Tarrant in answer to Andrew’s question. ‘I’ll have a little more of that brandy, thanks.’

For the last half-hour he had been regaling the men with amusing stories from the training camp at Trentham, although Joseph had not been overly impressed when Tarrant had begun describing the less educated enlisted men in his company as ‘oicks’. Now, he was soaking up Andrew’s best brandy as if he were a sponge, although he had said nothing else offensive and had indeed been very entertaining and quite charming. Still, Joseph felt uncomfortable for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint, and wondered what it was that drew James to Tarrant.

Lucy Mason, on the other hand, was a dear little thing. Slender and fair, and altogether too ‘fluffy’ for Joseph, who preferred his women to possess considerably more physical substance and spiritual fire, she was nevertheless rather appealing and it wasn’t difficult to see why James was infatuated with her.

As Mrs Heath bustled about serving the first course, Lachie
asked Ron Tarrant conversationally, ‘And where are you lads off to first, or is that a secret?’

‘No, no,’ replied Tarrant as he buttered a roll. ‘I should imagine everybody knows where we’re going — it’s been hinted at in the papers for long enough. England and then on to France, I’d say.’

Andrew said, ‘Pass the bread, will you, Ian. So, Captain, do you think the Expeditionary Force is in good shape? For active service, I mean?’

‘Oh, definitely,’ replied Tarrant. ‘The Territorials have been training for years, and most of the NZEF is made up of Territorial volunteers. There’s no doubt Major-General Godley’s got an effective fighting force together. At the moment we’ve an infantry brigade of four battalions, a mounted rifles brigade of four regiments, and support units of artillery, engineers and field ambulances.’ He turned to Joseph and said, ‘And there’ll be you Maori chaps, too, of course, doing garrison duty and what have you. I don’t expect you’ll be allowed to do any of the actual fighting, but we’ll all be glad of your efforts, I’m sure.’