Kitty (6 page)

Sarah glanced uncertainly at Rebecca, who whispered, ‘Niece.’

Amiria was a big girl, full-figured and sturdy. Her dark wiry hair fell free, its heaviness matched by brows arched over shrewd, slanted eyes, giving her a distinctly impish look. She wore a blue and brown striped skirt and a cream bodice, straining across her considerable bust. Her feet were bare.

‘Good afternoon,’ Amiria said, and smiled, revealing very good, white teeth.

‘Good afternoon, Amee-di…’ Sarah struggled with the pro-nunciation.

Amiria said her name slowly. ‘A-mi-ri-a.’

‘Amee-di…’

‘No,’ Amiria said, ‘A-
mi
-ri-a.’

Rebecca, anxious that no offence should be taken over the mispronunciation of Amiria’s name, said hastily, ‘Would you mind if Mrs Kelleher called you Amy? Just until she becomes accustomed to your native tongue?’

Amiria put her head on one side and thought about it, then smiled again. ‘Amy. I like it.’

Tupehu nodded his approval. ‘This is my daughter, Wai.’

The other girl came forward. She was smaller than her cousin, by several inches and at least a stone in weight. Her skin was the colour of caramel, her black hair tumbled to her neat waist, and she looked nothing like her father. Kitty thought she was rather lovely, in fact, with huge dark eyes, a wide but short nose, and full, beautifully defined lips.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Kereha.’

‘Good afternoon, Wai,’ Sarah said, managing to get this name right and not minding that Wai hadn’t quite done the same with hers. ‘Wai and
Amy, I would like you to meet my niece, Miss Kitty Carlisle. Kitty will be helping me at home and teaching the children at the mission school. Kitty, why don’t you show the girls their rooms?’

Kitty turned to lead Wai and Amy into the house, but before she could, Tupehu caused her to jump almost out of her skin by barking, ‘Stop! Listen!’

He then proceeded to rattle off in Maori what sounded like a barrage of instructions, commands and warnings to the two girls, who stood with heads bowed and their hair falling across their faces. Then, when he had finally finished, he turned to go, gesturing grandly at his entourage to follow. As he departed through the garden gate, someone gave a very muffled giggle; Kitty thought it might have been Amy.

The girls collected their kits and followed her inside.

‘I’m afraid we can’t offer you tea,’ Sarah said, ‘as we don’t yet have any firewood for the hearth.’

Wai shrugged and Amy didn’t appear to be listening anyway, too busy gazing at herself in the framed mirror Sarah had only just hung on the hall wall.

‘Shall I send Albert home to bring back some wood on the handcart?’ Rebecca suggested to Sarah. ‘Then perhaps Win can organise a supply for you later this evening. You really can’t do without tea.’

Kitty led the girls out through the back door and around to the bedrooms at the rear of the house. Unlike the skillion rooms in the Purcell home, neither of these could be accessed from inside. She opened the door to the nearest and asked cheerfully, ‘Who would like this one?’

Wai and Amy regarded the narrow bed, the single chest of drawers and the bare floor in silence.

Amy said, ‘What is the other room like?’

Kitty was slightly nonplussed: she had assumed that, being accustomed to grass huts or whatever it was they normally lived in, the girls would be thrilled with any sort of accommodation that had four walls and a proper roof. She showed them the second of the two rooms. Slightly larger, it had a dressing table, as well as a chest of drawers, and two windows.

Amy said, ‘Wai will have this room. She is the puhi.’ At Kitty’s blank
look, she explained: ‘Princess. Puhi is princess.’

Kitty stole a quick glance at Wai but couldn’t detect any indication of royal status, unless it was her dress, which was pale green, well fitted and notably smarter than Amy’s outfit.

‘Is that because of your father?’ Kitty asked.

Wai nodded. ‘And I am to be married in one year’s time, to the great warrior chief Wahoterangi Te Awarau of Ngati Tuwharetoa.’

Kitty was aghast. ‘But you’re not old enough, surely?’

‘I am. I will be…’—Wai counted on her fingers—‘sixteen years old in nine more months.’

‘Will you have to leave your family?’

Wai nodded again, this time with resignation.

‘But where is Ngati Tu…wherever you said?’ Kitty asked, imagining the poor girl all alone in some exceedingly remote part of already remote New Zealand.

‘Not where, who,’ Amy said. ‘Ngati Tuwharetoa are the people from Taupo. They are very powerful, and Tupehu wishes to forge a union with them.’

‘Have you met this man?’ Kitty asked.

‘Only once, three years ago,’ Wai replied. She shrugged. ‘It is not uncommon, it happens often. I was betrothed when I was born. It is the way things are.’

Kitty surprised herself by opening her mouth to remonstrate against the immorality of using marriage as a mechanism for social, financial or political advancement, then closed it again as she realised that her own mother would have done something very similar if Kitty hadn’t compromised herself so spectacularly with Hugh Alexander.

Amy smirked. ‘They say that Te Awarau is a fine-looking man,’ she said, and gave her cousin a hearty nudge with her elbow.

Like a child, Wai nudged her back, and they both giggled.

‘Do you have a husband, Miss Kitty?’ Wai asked.

Kitty sat down on the bed. ‘Well, no, or I wouldn’t be “Miss”, would I? I’d be Mrs. And anyway, I don’t like being called Miss. I’d rather you just called me Kitty.’

‘What does Kitty mean?’ Amy asked, sitting down herself.

‘Nothing, really. It’s short for Katherine.’

‘Mata Wiremu has a cat called Kitty,’ Wai said. ‘Is that where your name comes from?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Why, what does your name mean?’

‘My proper name is Waikamo. It means tears.’

Kitty looked at Wai. ‘Who named you that?’

‘Hareta, my mother. She knew that I would be her last child. She died when I was born.’

‘Oh. I’m very sorry.’ Anxious to get away from such a sad subject, and reminded painfully of her own father’s death, Kitty asked, ‘And what does Amiria mean, Amy?’

‘Nothing. It is after Amelia, a Pakeha woman my mother knew when she was hapu.’ Amy held her hands out in front of her belly, to demonstrate an advanced state of pregnancy.

Kitty was disappointed; the meaning of Wai’s name had been beautiful, if sad. ‘And Tupehu, what does that mean?’

Wai grinned. ‘It means to make a…a performance, to be angry. It is a good name for my father.’

Kitty cast around for another name. ‘What about Haunui?’

Wai and Amy shared a look and burst out laughing.

When it appeared that they weren’t going to stop, Kitty, giggling herself now although she didn’t know why, said ‘What? What’s so funny about Haunui?’

Amy snorted and wiped tears from her almond-shaped eyes. ‘It means—’ and off she went again, eyes streaming and quite out of control. Eventually she calmed down enough to say, ‘It means a mighty wind.’

Kitty said, ‘Oh, that’s a good name, isn’t it? Do you mean like a gale or a storm?’

Amy and Wai laughed hysterically again. ‘No,’ Amy said, ‘like this.’ And she stuck out her tongue and blew energetically, producing a long and very vulgar noise.

‘Oh,’ Kitty said, going pink as she realised what Amy meant. Then she giggled again. ‘I know what you mean. Uncle George can be a bit
like that, especially after we’ve had cabbage.’

Sarah chose that moment to appear. Clearly not having heard Kitty’s last comment, she gave a rare smile at the sight of her two new charges and her niece having such fun.

‘Albert will be back soon with the wood, so I would like to get started on supper. Kitty, when the girls have unpacked, would you please show them around the kitchen? Girls, have you been in an English kitchen before?’

Amy batted her long eyelashes. ‘No, Mrs Kereha, we do no work in a English kitchen,’ she said, her mastery of the English language suddenly deteriorating markedly.

Kitty raised her eyebrows at Wai, who merely shrugged.

‘Well, now is as good a time to start as any, then, isn’t it?’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll see you in the kitchen shortly.’

As the girls were putting their few possessions away, Kitty heard whooping and shrieks of laughter from the front of the house, and collided with Rebecca hurrying out to the verandah.

‘Albert,’ Rebecca called sharply, ‘stop that!’

Albert was lurching around the garden pushing a handcart containing a heap of loose wood, on top of which Grace and her five-year-old brother, Edward, were precariously balanced. All three of them were laughing wildly.

‘Albert!’ Rebecca shouted, more urgently this time. ‘Stop that this instant—you’ll hurt them!’

Albert slowed down reluctantly, then stopped altogether. The two younger children clambered off the cart and stood side by side, looking guiltily down at their boots, which Rebecca had insisted they put back on before they went to fetch the wood.

Rebecca marched over to her eldest son. ‘How many times have I told you to be careful with them, Albert? You’re supposed to be looking after them, not putting them in danger! Now take some of that wood into the kitchen, then stack the rest around the back. Go on, off with you!’ Shaking her head angrily, she turned back to Sarah and Kitty on the verandah. ‘I’m sorry but,
really,
that boy should have more sense!’

‘They were only having fun, though, weren’t they?’ Kitty said.

‘Yes, but if any of them were to be seriously hurt, I don’t know what I’d do. Doctor Ford’s often away, and if anything terrible should happen…’ Rebecca trailed off. ‘Mrs Williams has nursing skills, but even she can’t perform miracles. I couldn’t bear to lose any one of them, I really couldn’t.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Oh dear. I am sorry, but it does worry me sometimes, being so far away from everything.’

Sarah tut-tutted sympathetically. ‘Come inside and I’ll put the kettle on. I have to confess I’m not at all sure of the best way to light this fire.’

Kitty regarded her aunt thoughtfully. She knew full well that Sarah was perfectly able to light the fire, but was pretending otherwise to give Rebecca something to take her mind off her wayward children. Sarah didn’t often show it, but she was not an unfeeling woman, in spite of being married to George, who seemed incapable of demonstrating any compassion—or passion, for that matter—for anything other than his beloved religion.

The Kellehers’ first home-cooked meal in Paihia was a disaster, mainly because Amy, who had been given the task of stirring the pork and potato stew, went outside to smoke her pipe and forgot about it. By the time Sarah had noticed the smell, the dehydrated stew was welded firmly to the bottom of the cast-iron pot. She was extremely annoyed because she hadn’t yet had a chance to get in provisions, apart from the basics Rebecca had provided earlier in the day, and all that remained was the bacon and half a dozen eggs set aside for tomorrow’s breakfast. But she felt it too soon to reprimand Amy, as the girl had barely had time to settle in, and George, who had arrived home late in the afternoon, was in a pensive mood and would not, Sarah was sure, appreciate a sulking housegirl or a carping wife.

George had spent the morning with Reverend Williams and the afternoon with Frederick Tait and Win Purcell, discussing the mission school and the spiritual state of the Maoris in general.

‘They sound to me like a curmudgeonly lot,’ he said after Sarah
had settled him in the parlour, away from the stink of burnt food in the kitchen, and fetched him a cup of tea and one of Rebecca’s scones. ‘Quick to help themselves, and even quicker to demand payment for services they perceive to have delivered, such as worshipping on Sundays or having their children baptised and educated, when actually those services—no,
privileges
—have been provided to them.’ He shook his head disbelievingly at the perfidy of it all. ‘But that is to be expected, given that they are not yet a civilised race. Reverend Williams thinks otherwise, but perhaps he’s lived amongst them for too long. Either way, it does not matter. They are God’s children, all of them, and there is clear evidence that they are coming to understand and accept His word. Mr Williams considers that although our conversion rate is not phenomenal—and by that I mean genuine conversions, not the sort which evidently occur only when there is some form of reward on offer—it is steady, which he believes is very gratifying.’

Sarah touched the side of the china teapot with the back of her hand. ‘Is your tea hot enough?’

George glanced at her sharply, as though she hadn’t been listening. ‘Yes, it is. I myself think that, with a more rigorous application of the teachings of the Bible, together with a reduction in what I fear is a slightly
laissez-faire
attitude among our colleagues, the number of conversions could be significantly higher.’

But Sarah had been listening, and was pleased to note the brightness in his eye that always accompanied his enthusiasm for a new challenge. However, he was not, he said, looking forward to burnt stew for dinner, and suggested that someone be sent along to prevail upon Mrs Purcell to feed them once again.

‘Where are these housegirls, anyway?’ George said. ‘I suppose I should make myself known to them.’

Sarah collected Wai, who was outside at the pump scrubbing the blackened stew pot, and Amy—sulking in her room—and herded them into the parlour where George was now reading his Bible.

‘Girls,’ she said, ‘this is Reverend Kelleher, the new minister, and also of course my husband.’

George glanced up. The girls stared back, fascinated by the uncommon pallor of his skin even for a white man, the sharpness of the bony knees straining the fabric of his trousers, and the long, almost translucent fingers splayed across the black leather cover of his book.

‘Reverend Kelleher,’ Sarah continued, ‘this is Wai, Chief Tupehu’s daughter, and her cousin Amy. Girls, say “Good afternoon”.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr Kereha,’ Wai and Amy said in unison.

‘Reverend,’ corrected George, not wanting to encourage familiarity just because they would all be living under the same roof. ‘Good afternoon,’ he added, then went back to his reading.