Settling the Account (88 page)

‘Thank you,’ she whispered to the warm night
and to the heavens above it.

A light appeared on the verandah,
startlingly bright to her dark-adjusted eyes.

‘Ma? Are you out there?’

‘Yes, Dave, I’m here,’ she called back.

David closed the door on the light streaming
from the parlour and came down the steps, finding Amy by the
direction of her voice. ‘Are you all right, Ma? What are you doing
wandering around in the dark?’

‘I’m just enjoying the night and the stars
and everything. Isn’t it lovely tonight? Did you ever see such
stars? I’d forgotten how beautiful they can be.’

She saw his mouth curve into a grin. He put
an arm around her. ‘You’re a funny little thing sometimes, you
know, Ma.’

Amy gazed up at him. ‘How did I ever come to
have such tall children?’

David’s body felt delicious against hers as
he shrugged. ‘Tall father, I suppose.’ He looked down at Amy,
frowning slightly. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, coming
out here in the dark by yourself and everything. You’ve been funny
all evening, come to that. You’re not upset about anything?’

‘Upset?’ Amy laughed aloud in sheer delight.
She stood on tiptoe to fling her arms around his neck and kiss him.
‘Davie,’ she said as she released his lips, ‘what on earth have I
got to be unhappy about?’

The Waituhi Valley and Ruatane will not be
found on any map of the Bay of Plenty. They are my own inventions,
though their descriptions are coloured by places that were familiar
to me in childhood. The characters and their stories are likewise
my own creation; any resemblance to real people is
coincidental.

The broader setting of
Promises to
Keep
, however, is the real New Zealand of the period. Events
referred to are actual, historical ones; from such major events as
the Tarawera eruption, the baby farming scandal and the extension
of the suffrage to women through to relatively local events such as
the great Bay of Plenty floods of 1892.

I have attempted to be true to the period
covered. The coastal steamers named, for instance, are among the
ships that served the Bay of Plenty during those years, and the
details of family life and farm work are as authentic as I could
make them.

An area where I have compromised between
strict historical accuracy and avoiding confusion for the reader is
in the size of families. The average family size during the period
of the book was six surviving children, so Frank and Lizzie’s eight
would have been respectable rather than remarkable. An affectionate
couple like Arthur and Edie would be more likely to have had six or
seven children than their four. But families of this size for all
the families in Amy’s generation would have led to a plethora of
names and frustration for the reader. For the same reason, I have
minimised the naming of children after parents and grandparents
that the Victorians so delighted in.

The almost total absence of Maori from the
book may puzzle some readers. During the period covered by this
work, Maori and Pakeha were comparatively isolated from each other;
certainly in parts of the Bay of Plenty, where large tracts of land
had been confiscated so recently, Maori and Pakeha typically did
not worship together, nor were their children educated together.
Seeing a Maori would have been no novelty for Amy; exchanging more
than a word or two with one certainly would.

The ease with which Sarah was able to access
her own original birth certificate and to trace Amy might surprise
New Zealanders brought up during the period of closed adoptions.
Such strict secrecy about adoptions is, in fact, quite a modern
phenomenon, dating from 1955. Even the policy of issuing new birth
certificates for adopted children, carrying the names of the
adoptive parents instead of the birth parents, did not begin until
1915.

Several Maori words appear, mostly as
placenames and names of plants. For readers interested in the
correct pronunciation of these words, a pronunciation guide can be
found at
www.maori.org.nz/Kotereo
.

My heartfelt thanks go to my husband for his
never-failing support and encouragement during the long process of
writing this novel. He was my inspiration for the very finest
aspects of Frank’s character.

Shayne Parkinson

The sequel to “Promises to Keep”,
A
Second Chance
, is available at Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2855