The Book of Secrets (35 page)

A
man arrived
at Maria’s door towards dusk on a winter afternoon. It had been a bright day, cloudless and sunlit in spite of the season. The first stars were appearing like pin-points against the hollow shining sky. The grass glittered with a hint of frost.

The man was elderly, dressed in baggy trousers tied with twine at the waist and ankles. Around his shoulders he wore a cloak made of sacking.

‘You must come, Miss,’ he said, gesturing across the paddocks.

She shrank back into the shadow beside her door.

‘Come where? I can’t come anywhere.’

‘You must.’ Behind his stubble of beard, the man’s race was indeterminate, but she could see that his features were very dark. He held his hat in his hand, turning it over anxiously. It was so threadbare and worn that the brim seemed about to part from the crown. His bald head shone like polished kauri wood. Trying to summon up some explanation for his appeal he stammered and had difficulty with his words. She saw then that he was shaking. She was not sure whether it was from fear or illness.

‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door wider. At least this one would not be staying a month. He took an anguished look over his shoulder, as if he were seeing the light for the last time, and stepped over her doorstep. The kettle was boiling. She emptied it into the teapot. It is my answer to everything, she thought. But at least the sight of such ordinary activity, and the offer it implied, calmed the man. He started to speak again, his teeth, where there were any, were almost worn to his shrivelled gums.

‘We have the ’flu with us,’ he said, and suddenly she recognised his accent.

‘You are Dalmatian?’

He nodded. ‘A Dally, yes.’

For an incredulous moment she looked at him, but it was not Branco. What am I thinking of, she asked herself, this is a really old man, and the man I am remembering would only be a little older than I am. She handed him a cup which he took and drank thirstily.

‘We have the ’flu,’ he said again.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The epidemic. The plague. It is here.’

She shook her head. Despite his agitation, the man appeared to believe that he had told her all that was needed.

‘A sickness? Yes?’

He mustered himself with a considerable effort. Clearly he had decided she was simple, and he was no longer afraid of her. As he leaned forward, earnestly trying to make her understand, his cloak fell forward and she saw that he wore an odd little bag around his neck. She noticed a pungent odour, much more refreshing than his appearance suggested. Now he fingered the bag.

‘It is the camphor bag we have been given. It is to keep away the sickness. Many people ill. The sickness, some say, come off ships, some say it is for God, for wars.’

‘What do you think?’

He shook his head violently. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I am Milan, very old man. I know nothing. Only that people are dying, and my son and his missus, they are dying in the cottage and no one will come to them.’

‘No one? That’s not like Waipu. They take care of each other.’ For in spite of her circumstances, she knew this to be true. Nobody need perish untended, if they asked for help.

He shook his head again. ‘Mebbe, mebbe they come, Miss. But me, Milan, I do not know who to ask. I thought, mebbe, Miss, that you come to help them.’

‘I would not know what to do. I know nothing of this illness.’

‘Very hot. Great fever. All over the country, people, pakehas, Maori, my own people, they all die. There is no time to bury the dead and nobody want to bury them … Except …’ He stopped, and gave her a crafty look.

‘Except what?’

‘Eh? Oh I tell you, Miss,’ and she knew he was changing his tack, ‘the heat so great people jump into the river to cool off and then they sicker than before. My daughter by marriage is so sick and I have to hold her, stop this mad jump into the river. My son, I think he will die, and I cannot stop her jump on my own. I come here while she sleeps a little.’

Maria’s head was spinning. She stood with her hand on the
bannister of her steep staircase, considering what to do. She could still take flight to her room upstairs and barricade herself in until Milan went away. That was what she would like. It would be safer up there. The world could not get to her unless they came and burned down the house and smoked her out.

And why her? Did he know something about her which she imagined forgotten by now? Out there, who would still remember that the witch had once lain in the fields with a man who was not her countryman. Perhaps he knew; it was just possible.

By the fire the old man hunched himself forward. He turned his face towards her and she could see that he was ill too. So that was why he had come; the son and his wife would soon have no one to tend them at all, and he must find someone to replace him as their guardian as quickly as he could. She guessed it was already too late to protect herself from what lay outside, and that the fatal touch of illness had entered her house as quickly as she had learned of its existence. But she was reassured to know that his need was desperate and real, and not contrived around some aspect of her past.

His whole skull was shining, waxen-skinned in the light, and his eyes had receded into his head. He spoke with tremendous effort. ‘What if she takes the bubba in the river with her?’

‘There is a child?’

‘Yes.’ He looked as if he might topple forward on her hearth.

‘I’ll get my cloak.’ She took it from its peg behind the door. ‘Come now, you must tell me where I’ll find these people.’

‘You won’t find them, it is too hard.’ His breath came in short panting gasps as he staggered to his feet.

‘You’re too ill for this. I know these parts. It is near the river? Yes. In trees? Near the sea?’

‘Not far. Among trees. Near the river.’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Promise you will go to them?’

‘I give you my word. Now stay by the fire, keep warm.’

She was casting round in her head trying to think how to equip herself to deal with a dying family. She collected two blankets from the cupboard under the stairs and a towel, filled the billy with tea, and with a last despairing look around her, set forth towards the unknown.

When she walked out of sight of her house, little appeared to
have changed. In the half-light every blade of grass and every tree, every stump from the old fires which had swept the land, every clump of toi-toi looked the same. Some things were larger, perhaps, and by the river the small wild rose was now slung in tangles over many bushes and the hawthorns loomed taller than her, spiked and glowing with berries. She came upon a lemon tree laden with winter fruit and marvelled that such bounty lay so close to her without her knowing it. From down river the sound of bagpipes wafted but she could not see from where the sound came. Her heart turned over. She had told herself many times that the silences in her head were amply filled by birdsong and the wind in the trees, but hearing this nearly forgotten sound reminded her that she missed many things.

For a moment she was tempted to keep on walking towards the bagpipes. She could get help for the stricken family, and when she had done that she would board a coastal steamer and sail away to Auckland, just as she had once planned when she was a girl. At the time of Branco.

She shook her head to clear away this image. The old man had brought too much back in a few painful minutes. She hurried on. It was almost fully dark. The trees loomed ahead in the gloom and again she remembered them as a patch of low-growing young ground cover. Everything was still around the trees and it was only when she was nearly upon the cottage that she saw a chimney and the edge of a roof. As she approached a dog began to bark with violent, angry yaps.

There was a path leading through the trees and she followed it to a very small and almost derelict cottage. Although the building was tumbledown it was not the one she remembered, and she supposed it had been built as a temporary dwelling, as Branco’s shelter had been. But the dog, a yellow and black mongrel, was springing at her, its teeth bared as it aimed at her throat. It was tied by a rope to a tree and as she stepped off the path to avoid it she tripped and fell on a branch, grazing her leg.

There was no sign of life and it occurred to her that the people inside might already be dead. Or that this was an elaborate plan to lure her into a place of punishment for all her past sins.

The dog stood across her path, barring her way back. Its territory seemed to have grown larger. She doubted that she could pass it again.

The door swung open at her touch and the stench of illness and human excrement came out to meet her in a wave. She felt as if it would drown her. Yet nothing was out of place in the room. In the open fireplace stood two polished pots. The hard-packed earth floor had been swept. She could see this by the light of a candle flickering on a table.

Maria gingerly pushed aside a curtain which hung across one side of the room. On a wooden slatted bed covered by a thin mattress lay three people. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, and as she held the candle above the bed she was able to see that it was a man, a woman and a small girl. The woman’s eyes stared back, her face ravaged and exhausted with the aftermath of high fever. The man lay on his side with his knees drawn up under his chin. In his hand he held an empty cup.

The candle guttered in its tin lid, very close to the end of its wick. Now she held it over the woman and the child. The girl stirred, stretched, and looked at her. Maria saw that she was a healthy child with normal breathing. She drew a sharp breath herself. No wonder Milan had been so desperate to find someone. He had hope for the child, left in the midst of death.

‘Hullo,’ said the child.

‘Hullo,’ said Maria, startled.

‘Mummy and Daddy are sick.’

‘I can see that,’ said Maria, putting out her hand with care, afraid that she would frighten the girl. But she responded, accepting Maria’s grip and sat up. Beside them, the woman’s breathing was shallow.

‘Who are you?’ the woman asked in a hoarse whisper.

‘Maria McClure. I live in the old house not far from here.’

The information did not seem important to the woman. Perhaps she already knew.

‘I didn’t expect you to speak English,’ said Maria. A warning bell sounded in her head. It was a long time since she and Branco had tried to converse. Truly, another century. Maybe things had changed.

‘I’m not a Dally,’ said the woman. She turned her head to the wall. ‘My name’s Hoana.’

Maria looked round desperately for another candle. Without one, she was lost. If she was not already. She disengaged her hand from the child’s and went in search. Fumbling in a rough cupboard under a stand for the water basin, her hand closed around what she was
looking for. She lit one candle from the other, and pushed the fresh one down in the stub of melted wax.

With light flaring round them again she returned to the bed. Hoana said nothing, but Maria could see she was indeed Maori, or descended from Maori.

The woman’s proximity alarmed her. She had never been so close to a Maori before. But there was no time for reflection or wonder. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked, turning to the child.

‘Christie,’ said the little girl and held up her arms to Maria. Maria lifted her over the body of her father and, placing her on the chair, wrapped a blanket around her.

The man had soiled himself as he died and the smell which had assailed her when she entered the cottage filled her nostrils as she pulled the blankets back. The woman looked at her impassively. Trying not to breathe in, Maria leaned over and touched her forehead. It was unexpectedly cool and dry.

In her head Maria had been wrestling with the possible illnesses which might have laid siege to the countryside in the way Milan had described. Typhoid was the only plague she knew of that moved fast and killed many people at once. But this was not typhoid and whatever it was, although the woman was very ill and weak, the worst of it had passed.

‘It won’t be long,’ Hoana whispered.

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Maria, surprised at her own briskness. ‘If you can get onto your feet I’ll clean up here and put you back to bed. You’ll get your strength back.’

‘What do you know?’ The woman’s lips barely formed the words but there was sudden hope in her eyes. She looked towards her husband and crossed herself.

Maria shivered again. She was touching Papists. There is no God, she reminded herself. But she wondered what Annie would have made of it, all the same.

Hoana was on her hands and knees on the bed, trying to raise herself. She slid one foot over the edge and placed it gingerly on the floor but her weight held.

‘Good, good, keep the blanket over you. Now sit down. By Christie, that’s right. You’ve got to get better. She needs someone to look after her.’

A ghost of a smile hovered on Hoana’s face. ‘She’s a good girl,
aren’t you?’ She put her arm around the child with the surprising and familiar name.

Maria had filled the bowl with water from the bucket. It was cold, but it would have to do. She wondered if she should have made the fire up first, but it was impossible to think of everything with the body and the smell in the room. Although Hoana was, for the moment, willing herself to survive she could sink away again. Maria believed it was possible for her to recover, but her strength was fragile. Already she was slipping sideways in the chair.

She worked with a fierce possessed energy. Her stomach kept heaving to the roof of her mouth as she cleaned the body, but it forced her to work faster, emptying the basin outside, over and over again, and refilling it with fresh water. Finally, when the body was clean she wrapped it in a blanket, rolling it from side to side, pinned the cloth with safety pins and pushed the man onto the floor. The body was very heavy, for the husband had been a well-built young man with great muscles in his shoulders. He fell with a sickening bump and Hoana winced and softly moaned.

Maria wondered what to do with him next. She could not put the body outside for fear the dog would break loose. Every now and then it howled at the butter-nut moon that shone through the window. The child was observing everything she did with solemn dark eyes; she thought, that is the child’s father I am rolling around like a sack of grain on the dirt. With an effort she heaved the body over twice so that it lay against the window. She considered putting another blanket over him, but the whole bed was soiled and there were only the two blankets left that she had brought with her.