White Feathers (43 page)

Keely, on the other hand, had delivered early, two weeks before Erin. And she had produced twins. Neither Tamar nor Riria had been surprised, Owen had been delighted, and Keely had been, and still was, horrified.

They were both girls, small but healthy and with lots of hair that looked as though it might be auburn like their mother’s. After much family debate, they were named Bonnie and Leila. Tamar had thought Angharad and Aelwyd might be nice, to mark their Cornish and Welsh heritages, and James suggested Morag and Megan, but the former were declared a tad unpronounceable and
the latter, added to Morgan, would be too many ‘m’s. In the end Owen put his foot down and selected their names himself.

Although Keely had blossomed during her pregnancy, she certainly didn’t enjoy giving birth, and became irascible and withdrawn again soon after. She seemed unable to cope with the twins, could not feed them herself and left much of their care to the other women. Erin didn’t mind, although she did find three babies at once a bit much at times. Duncan and Liam were delighted, pushing the twins enthusiastically around in their pram until, on one unfortunate occasion, they tipped them out on the lawn. But the girls seemed happy, they were loved dearly by their father, and they were certainly healthy and bright. Their mother, however, spent a lot of time on her own, going for long solitary walks across the paddocks and only occasionally spending time with her daughters.

Tamar couldn’t understand why Owen continued to be so patient with her, but he was. He left her alone whenever she requested it, took the girls away at every opportunity and was largely responsible for their care in the evenings. Tamar wondered how long it would last, how long it would take for him to finally lose his tolerance for his fickle and indifferent wife and walk away.

Keely had received several letters over the past two months. They were from Ross McManus and she hid them as carefully as Tamar concealed those she received from Kepa.

Ross had returned home just after Christmas, made another attempt at reconciling with his wife, failed and left the family home for good in the New Year. He was still in Auckland, and planned to stay there to continue his medical practice. But he realised now what a terrible mistake he had made allowing their romance in England to end and he missed Keely dreadfully. He
was so sorry for the way in which he had treated her. Could she ever possibly find it in her heart to forgive him and perhaps even consider renewing their relationship?

It didn’t take long for Keely to decide how to reply. She looked at her boring but dependable husband, her sweet but extraordinarily demanding twin daughters, the empty days and nights that made up her life at Kenmore, and most of all in the mirror at her own weary and joyless face. Yes, she had enjoyed being pregnant, mainly because she felt it gave her a purpose in life, but once the twins had been born she had begun to feel redundant and had become depressed again, especially when she discovered she couldn’t feed them. And she was sick and tired of Owen telling her to take more interest in them: that he could tolerate being shut out, but they couldn’t.

So she wrote back to Ross. She
would
consider resuming their romance; she too was in a loveless marriage from which she desperately needed to escape. But how could they, when she was living in Hawke’s Bay and he was in Auckland?

Easily, he replied. He would come down and collect her — he would let her know when the time was right — and take her back to Auckland to live with him. They would build a life together there, and to hell with what anyone else thought.

So she began to prepare. She walked for miles every day and ate as little as possible to make sure that when Ross did come for her she would have her figure back. She very publicly renewed an acquaintance with a girlfriend who lived in Napier so she would have an excuse to go into town when the time came and no one would wonder where she had gone or why. Everyone at Kenmore thought this a very positive sign, which made her feel guilty. And she deliberately detached herself even further from her children so that when she did go, they would not miss her.

Finally the letter came from Ross saying that he would be down
to pick her up on the evening of the 30th of July. She was to wait for him in the foyer of the Masonic Hotel on Marine Parade where he would collect her at five, and she was to bring nothing but a single change of clothes as it was imperative no one knew what they were planning. She hid the letter with the rest of his correspondence, and began to count down the hours and minutes until their rendezvous.

On the day, there was hardly anyone at the big house when she left. So she said goodbye to Mrs Heath, who remarked on how sensible Keely was, going out on such a cold day in that lovely suit from England, and told her to have a good time and to drive carefully, although she didn’t approve of women driving and never would.

As she walked around to the shed where the car was kept, pulling on her duster coat and her leather driving gloves, Keely was startled to feel tears beginning to prick the backs of her eyes. Then, just as she was climbing into the car, she heard rowdy squeals of delight from the daffodil paddock behind the big house where Erin, Lucy, Tamar and Jeannie had taken the children to play, and she was suddenly unable to stop her tears from spilling over.

But by the time she had driven through Kenmore’s gates, she had her emotions under control. It would be best this way, easiest for everyone. Her mother would understand, eventually, and perhaps one day she would even be able to bring Ross home. They might even have their own children by then. Bonnie and Leila would be fine, there were plenty of people to love them. After all, look how well Liam was doing, and he didn’t have any real parents.

She did not know that Owen was standing on the terrace at the side of the big house, with Ross’s most recent letter crumpled in his back pocket, watching her as she drove away.

The weather was closing in by the time Owen reached Napier. Nothing too violent, he thought, just a touch of winter rain. At ten to five he drove down Marine Parade and parked a short distance from the ornate and verandahed facade of the Masonic Hotel. Then he climbed out, buttoned his coat, pulled his hat well down on his forehead, and wandered casually up the hotel steps and looked inside.

There she was, sitting in the foyer in her best suit and hat with a small case at her feet, fortunately not looking in his direction. He stepped back out of sight, thought for a moment, then went outside again. Up the street at a tobacconist’s he bought a newspaper and a packet of tobacco, then when back to his truck, rolled a cigarette, opened his paper and settled down to wait.

Keely looked at the clock above the hotel desk. Five thirty-five. Well, Ross had always been an unpunctual sort of person, except when it came to performing surgery. There was no need to worry yet.

An hour later, she did start to worry. It was raining quite heavily outside now and the concierge behind the desk was starting to give her strange glances. She had already explained that she was waiting for a gentleman friend, but now he was looking at her very suspiciously.

She blushed and called across the foyer to him, ‘He must have been held up by the rain, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, madam, I’m sure,’ came the dour reply.

By seven forty-five, Keely felt awful. She was hungry, and desperate to go to the toilet. But what if she did and Ross arrived, couldn’t find her and left without her? Twenty minutes later she decided that if she didn’t go to the toilet she would wet her pants, so she dashed into the ladies’ room, then rushed back to the foyer and straight over to the desk.

‘Did a man come in, tall, dark hair, moustache, grey eyes?’ she
asked in a rush. ‘He would have been looking for me.’

‘No, madam, I’m sorry. No one at all has come in during the past minute and a half.’

Keely sat down again, and looked around. There were several other people in the foyer now, but none of them was Ross McManus.

What should she do? She opened her bag to retrieve the letter in which he had outlined the time and place for their meeting, then realised she had left it behind at Kenmore. But she was sure she knew the details off by heart.

He was now three hours late.

At 10 p.m., Keely started to cry.

‘Look, miss, is there anything I can do for you?’ asked the concierge, a different, younger man now because the other one had finished his shift. ‘You can’t stay here all night, you know.’

Keely bit her lip and nodded. ‘Yes, I do know that, but I really am meeting someone. He promised he’d be here. Just give me another hour. He’s sure to have arrived by then.’

The concierge looked at his wristwatch. ‘Well, until eleven. But we close the doors then.’

But at eleven Keely was still sitting by herself. Her face was swollen from crying, much to the ongoing embarrassment of the concierge, and she felt sick with dread that Ross wouldn’t turn up at all.

And then she was asked politely to leave. Would a taxi perhaps be helpful? Or would she like to book a room at the Masonic for the evening?

Keely, who didn’t have the money for a room, and nowhere to go in a taxi, picked up her case and walked out onto the steps of the hotel, not even turning her head when the doors were closed behind her.

She stood outside in the cold rain until her head ached, her hands were almost numb and she could barely feel her lips. And
she was still crying, quietly but with dreadful persistence.

Then a man came walking up the street, the shoulders of his coat wet and his boots splashing in puddles of rainwater.

‘So he didn’t turn up then?’ Owen asked mildly.

Keely looked back at him through bloodshot eyes and shook her head.

He held out his hand. ‘Come on home, girl. Let’s call it a night.’

She didn’t take his hand but when he turned to go back to the truck she followed him. He took her case, opened the door and helped her up.

When he’d settled himself in the driver’s seat, he said quietly, ‘I have to ask, Keely. Why?’

‘Because I don’t love you, Owen.’

‘But I love you.’

‘It’s not enough.’

‘And Ross McManus would have been?’

Keely closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the cab. ‘I don’t want to talk about Ross McManus.’

‘No, neither do I. I want to talk about us.’

Keely looked at him then. ‘Oh, Owen, you just don’t
understand
.’

‘Because you won’t
let
me!’

‘Because it just wouldn’t do any good.’

Owen lost his temper then. ‘It fucking well would, you know. You’re not the only one who’s come home from the war feeling lost and utterly hopeless. There are thousands of men — and yes, quite a few women too, I suspect — out there right now who don’t know whether they’re Arthur or bloody Martha because of what’s happened to them. You’re not unique.’ He shifted in his seat so she would have to look at him. ‘
Talk
to me, Keely, for God’s sake. I don’t give a toss what you tell me — we all did things we’ll have to bear for the rest of our lives. I killed people, ordinary decent blokes like your brothers. I don’t want to live with that but I have
to. And you had to watch them die, and to protect yourself you made up a dream and fell for someone who turned out to be a right bastard. So what? I couldn’t care less if you went to bed with
twenty
blokes, all right?’ He was looking directly into Keely’s eyes now. ‘It was the
war
, Keely, and it’s
over
. You have to leave it behind, do you hear me?’

Keely put her hands over her face and sobbed, ‘But it’s so bloody hard to
do
!’

‘Yes, but you can do it. I know what you’re made of. I’ve known since that first day you told me to bugger off at the front door.’

Hesitantly, Keely turned to him and asked, ‘Will you make everything better for me?’

Shaking his head, Owen replied softly, ‘No, Keely, I won’t.’

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then turned her face away and watched the raindrops as they chased each other down the windscreen. When she moved to open the cab door, Owen grabbed her hand.

‘No, don’t run away from this. I can’t make everything better for you, but you can do it for yourself. And I can, I
will
, stand right beside you while you’re doing it. You don’t have to do it alone, you can always have me. You never have to be by yourself again, Keely. There’s me, and our babies, and your family. We’ll all be there. Only you have to stop running, do you understand that? Going off with that bastard McManus is just another form of running, and you can never outrun the things that live in your head. You have to make
them
run. Believe me, I know, I ran for a
long
time. But I’ve made my peace now, with those men I killed and, more to the point, with Ian.’

‘Ian?’ Keely was confused.

‘Yes, Ian. I thought for such a long time it was my fault he died. He was so young and I’d promised to look out for him, and I failed. But then I realised that if I was serious about coming to
talk to you, to his family, I couldn’t make my own guilt a part of that. So I did some serious thinking, and talked to quite a lot of other veterans, and that helped me to finally put it all to rest. You have to do that as well.’

‘And you’ll stay by me while I’m doing it?’

‘Every second of the day and night, if you want me to.’

Keely thought for a moment, then inclined her head towards the steering wheel.

‘Then drive,’ she said.

E
PILOGUE

I
t was very late when they arrived back at Kenmore — past two o’clock in the morning. But Tamar was still awake, watching from her bedroom window as the truck came slowly up the driveway.

When, by the light of the moon now that the rain clouds had moved on, she saw Owen and Keely alight from the truck then embrace tightly, she closed her eyes and murmured a very uncharacteristic prayer of thanks.