White Feathers (33 page)

‘Keely!’ he admonished. ‘Whatever’s got into you?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied, not looking at him. Knowing she had gone too far and to hide her own embarrassment, she lifted the lid off the big silver teapot and mumbled, ‘We’ve run out of tea, I’ll ask Mrs Heath to make some more.’

When she’d rushed out of the room, Tamar said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Owen, you must think us the most absolutely awful family. She’s not usually so rude …’

Someone muttered, ‘Yes she is’ — James or Joseph, Tamar wasn’t quite quick enough to detect the culprit. She was even more annoyed when Lachie snorted into his cup of tea, but she refused to be deterred.

‘As I was
saying
, Keely isn’t usually this, well, prickly, she’s normally a very charming young lady, but she’s not long been home herself and she hasn’t quite been able to put it all behind her yet. Well, of course, you yourself will know how it is for returned servicemen and women. And then there was Ian. Losing him was an awful blow to all of us.’

Jeannie picked Liam up off the floor and carried him out.

Owen waited, then replied, ‘Oh, I quite understand, please don’t apologise. It can take a very long time to settle back into civilian life. And Ian, well, his death devastated us, so I can only imagine what it must have done to you as his family.’

There was a brief silence, then Andrew asked, ‘Do you, ah, do you know the details of his actual death? The telegram we received didn’t say much, they don’t, you know, and the letter from your
captain said he’d died a hero, but then I expect they all say that.’ He turned to Tamar for confirmation, and because he needed to know she was near him if they were finally to be told how their son had died. ‘We do want to know, dear, don’t we? What really happened?’

Tamar’s knuckles whitened around the handle of her teacup until Andrew was afraid it would shatter in her hand. Finally she said, ‘Yes, we do.’

They all turned to look at Owen, and suddenly he wished he hadn’t come. He put his plate down carefully and cleared his throat.

‘He drowned. He was trying to rescue a pair of horses from a flooded shell crater, and he drowned. We got a rope in but it was too late. I’m so sorry, but there just wasn’t anything we could do.’

And there’s sod-all else I can say, too, he reflected sadly.

Tamar and Andrew were holding hands, as if they too were drowning. Andrew nodded slowly. ‘And is he — is his body — still there?’

Owen nodded, his face despondent. ‘Yes. So many men died on the Somme it was impossible to retrieve them. And the terrain, it was so completely and utterly changed by the time we withdrew. We had a full service for him though, and everyone who could be was there. And we all drank to him on our next leave.’ He paused for a moment, then looked around at the faces gazing intently back at him and added, ‘He was a good boy, your Ian, and he loved you all very much.’

Andrew sat in silence, then put his hand over his mouth so that when he did speak his voice was muffled. ‘He ran away, you know, to join the army.’

‘Yes, I know — he said. And he said he wished he hadn’t done it like that.’

‘Did he still think he’d made the right choice, though? Going off to the war like that?’

‘Oh yes, he always believed he’d done the right thing. And he believed he was doing the right thing when he was trying to get those horses out, too. They were terrified, you see, and he couldn’t bear it.’

James said, ‘He was always good with the horses.’ He looked Owen in the eye, veteran to veteran. ‘Was he a good soldier?’

Owen held his gaze. ‘One of the best,’ he replied simply and truthfully.

‘Good.’ James’s tone implied that the discussion about Ian was now closed. He nodded at Owen’s maimed right hand. ‘Did you get that on the Somme?’

‘No, Messines, last June.’

‘Shell?’

‘Indirectly. One landed in the dugout next door and I copped a piece of flying metal. Had a month or so in the hospital while it healed and then the MO in his wisdom said I’d be useless with a rifle, so I was sent home.’

‘Can you use one now?’

‘A rifle? Of course, it was only a matter of practice. Been shooting rabbits quite successfully for the last couple of months.’

Lachie and Andrew looked at each other.

‘Did you want to stay on? In France?’ Joseph asked.

Owen shook his head with undisguised vehemence. ‘No I didn’t, frankly. I’d had just about enough by then.’

Joseph nodded and something passed between him, James and Owen, something that excluded everyone else in the room and that was all right.

‘I think young Owen’s taken a wee bit of a shine to Keely,’ Andrew said to Tamar the following week as they were getting ready for bed.

He was sitting on the edge of the mattress trying not to let
Tamar see how stiff his back was as he bent down to tug off his socks; he’d spent almost the whole day in the saddle and his old bones were protesting mightily. However, as he watched Tamar slipping a soft, lace-trimmed crepe de Chine nightdress over her head — her arms up and a standard lamp behind her emphasising her shapely silhouette — he was very pleased to note that other parts of his anatomy were still working, and rather impressively, too, if he did say so himself. He pulled on his own nightshirt and eased himself into bed, turning down the blankets for Tamar when she had finished her evening toilette. He never knew why she bothered with all that greasy cream — she was beautiful enough without it.

‘Yes, dear, I think you might be right,’ she said as she examined her face minutely in her dressing-table mirror. She definitely had wrinkles now, she noted resignedly — there was absolutely no doubt.

Andrew chuckled as he fluffed his pillows. ‘You spotted it almost straightaway, didn’t you?’

Tamar turned to look at him and smiled fondly. ‘Well, yes, of course I did. A woman notices that sort of thing, especially when it’s her own daughter.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly got to admire the man’s courage. I hope he’s prepared to be disappointed, though, you know how trying Keely’s been since she came home. Can’t say she’d be much of a prize either, given her current state of mind.’

‘Andrew, that’s a very unkind thing to say about your own daughter!’

‘Aye, but it’s true though, isn’t it? She’s been positively poisonous.’

Andrew knew that Keely had come home at least in part because of some business with a man, although he’d not been told the more intimate details. He thought she’d become exhausted by her work, had fallen prey to some predatory and unscrupulous man
and had been returned home for her own safety, a course of action he thoroughly approved of.

‘Yes, she has been a trial, hasn’t she? But she’s so obviously unhappy, Andrew, we must try and see her point of view.’

‘About what?’ Andrew grumped. ‘She did a sterling job over there and I have no doubt at all it was all very harrowing and demanding, but now she’s home safe and sound so why is she still upset?’

Tamar returned to the mirror and began to brush out her long hair. ‘I’m sure she’s experienced things you and I can’t even imagine, darling. I don’t think we’ll ever really know what she went through, and perhaps that’s a blessing. It’s the same for James and Joseph, and it will be for Thomas when he comes home too. We just have to be patient and offer them our support, and hope they can come to terms with it in their own time.’ She turned to him again. ‘Look at James, he’s getting on very well now, and Joseph has settled down marvellously. You’d hardly even know he has an artificial leg.’

‘Except for when he takes it off,’ Andrew muttered. ‘You can sort of tell then.’

‘Oh, don’t be so negative! He’s adapted really well, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Andrew agreed grudgingly, because Joseph really did seem to be getting back into the swing of things.

‘And yes, I have noticed the way Owen looks at Keely, but I’ve also noticed the way she looks back at him, as if she’s stepped in something the cat has done on the lawn.’

Andrew laughed out loud at this. ‘She does have a way of putting you in your place with just a glance, doesn’t she?’

‘Unfortunately yes. But I don’t see much evidence of Owen being put off by it. I think he’s taken the measure of Keely already.
I
think he has the gift of being able to look beneath the surface
of a person at what they’re really like inside, and I think he likes what he sees inside Keely very much.’

Owen had approached Andrew and Lachie privately about the possibility of some short-term work at Kenmore, and they had accepted his offer immediately. He rode well, knew farming, did indeed shoot adequately in spite of his missing fingers and didn’t mind hard work. He was also very personable, had a good sense of humour and seemed to be level-headed and reliable. Even better, James and Joseph both liked him and the three of them had spent several evenings in the garden drinking beer and talking about their time over seas, and it did Tamar’s heart good to see them. Owen took the occasional meal at the big house when invited, but was equally happy with his own company in one of the shearers’ huts. He demanded nothing except a reasonable wage for a day’s work, and gave of his best in return.

As for his interest in Keely, he’d made no overt overtures towards her but he wasn’t reticent either. He seemed to enjoy watching her, even when she was in one of her moods, which only seemed to make him laugh. When he did this, however, and Keely happened to notice, she became enraged and more often than not flounced off with her face burning and a selection of very unladylike words on her pouting lips.

Keely was in the daffodil paddock behind the house. Even when there weren’t any blooms she liked to come up here to get away from the rest of the family. She loved Duncan and Liam dearly, but sometimes they drove her almost mad with their incessant noise. Sometimes, she wished she had taken the offer of work at Napier Hospital, but then she wasn’t at all sure if she could have coped with wounded soldiers again either. Life at Kenmore was stifling and dull, but at least it wasn’t stressful.

It had been eight months now since her return to New Zealand, and she hadn’t heard a single word from Ross McManus. She hadn’t expected she would, but by God she had hoped. She still couldn’t believe how effortlessly he had let her go, but was finally coming to terms with the fact that he really hadn’t cared, that, for him, she had been simply a diversion. She had heard it said that there was sometimes a very fine line between love and hate, and now she understood exactly what that meant.

‘Mind if I join you?’

She jumped at the sound of Owen Morgan’s voice. ‘What?’ she responded rudely, annoyed that her reverie had been interrupted.

‘Just say if you’d rather be alone.’

Keely shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

He sat down next to her and smiled pleasantly. ‘Having a break from the children?’

‘Yes, I am actually. They’re being particularly noisy this afternoon.’

‘Mmm, children do that. It’s quite common I’m told.’

Keely looked at him sideways. ‘Know a lot about children, do you?’

‘No, nothing actually. Well, not ones that small any way. When I was teaching they were all six and above. That was young enough. Don’t you like children?’

Keely picked a stalk of grass and began to tear the seeds off the end of it. Owen noticed that the scowl dissolved from her face as she replied, ‘Yes I do, very much in fact.’

But she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that other people’s children reminded her of the family she thought she would have with Ross McManus.

Owen plucked his own piece of grass. ‘You know, you’re a very lovely young woman when you’re not frowning,’ he said conversationally.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You shouldn’t frown all the time. It makes you look like a constipated sheep.’

Keely leapt to her feet. ‘Excuse
me
!?’ she said, outraged.

‘Certainly. You’re quite striking when you’re angry though.’

She was speechless — what rudeness! She turned and marched off down the hill, a satisfyingly dramatic departure spoiled only when she shut her skirt in the paddock gate.

‘Need a hand?’ Owen called, smiling widely.

Keely ignored him, tore a hole in her skirt in her efforts to unsnag herself and disappeared into the house. Owen watched thoughtfully as the back door slammed behind her, then he carefully tied a knot in his piece of grass and poked the end of it back into the ground.

Unfortunately, as far as Keely was concerned at least, Owen had been invited to dinner at the big house that evening. They sat across the table from each other, he with his customary smile and she even more frosty than usual. Andrew raised his eyebrows at Tamar, who shrugged in mutual incomprehension; God only knew what had upset their daughter this time.

Owen was asking Jeannie, ‘When are you expecting your daughter back?’

‘We’re not entirely sure yet. We received a letter about six weeks ago saying her request to come home had been accepted — she’s been away for over two years now so there was no problem with that — but we haven’t heard exactly when she expects to be here. We hope it’s as soon as possible, of course, but we assume she would have had to wait for a ship and all that sort of thing.’ She smiled warmly, and in that smile Owen could see what had attracted Lachie to her. ‘She and Joseph are to be married when she finally does get home. That’s why he’s building the house.’

Owen knew this of course; Joseph mentioned it often enough. He glanced at Keely and said, ‘You must be looking forward to your
cousin coming back — between you you’ll have a lot of exciting tales to tell.’ He thought, but didn’t say, and some bloody awful ones too, probably.

Lachie said, ‘Yes, Erin was on the
Marquette
when it went down. She was almost drowned.’

‘My God,’ Owen said to Keely, genuinely concerned. ‘I hadn’t realised you were on the
Marquette
.’

Keely looked at her plate and answered tersely, ‘I wasn’t. I had a very safe war.’

Did you? Owen reflected. Then what was it that upset you so much while you were away? What transformed you from the lively and happy girl Ian described into the sad and bitter person you are today?