Captive Wife, The (17 page)

Don't, he said, as if he was going to cry.

I felt unkind then. Besides, I hadn't worked out a wish for myself. My heart was still sore over Hine, but nothing could bring her back, and now with David coming over to us, I had got most of the wishes I had asked for in the past.

So we were off to New Zealand again.

Jacky rounded up a whaling gang while I gathered warm clothes. It would be winter. I bought long flannel underpants for Jacky and David at Spyer and Cohen's. I noticed their stocks were low.

We'll have you back any day, Mr Spyer said. You brought a smile to people's faces.

I'll teach
you
to smile, I said, which was one of our favourite jokes, for he had a solemn little face. People often behaved around him as if they were at a religious ceremony. Smile please, Mr Spyer, I'd say to him, as if he was having his portrait painted.

It is you who is the oil painting, he would say.

But though I felt concerned for him, whereas once I would have added a little extra to the bill, I knew now I must be careful with our money. That was another of our games: I would give him extra and he would give me a little refund when Mr Cohen wasn't looking, so the rubber was more or less squared, but usually in my favour. This time I settled the
account down to the last penny; it was all business.

We left in late April. I dressed in a blue dress of heavy cotton for I knew that we would be in warmer weather for a day or so, but I had a plaid dress in my cabin portmanteau for when we sailed further south.

The
Harriet
had now done several voyages across the Tasman and a number to South America. Going aboard her was like stepping in a carriage with sturdy horses and a safe driver. All told, there was thirty-two of us aboard, no other women. Charley and David were there, but apart from them, the men were a rough lot, those who hadn't been able to find work. Jacky didn't have much to choose from, as the season was almost upon us, and most of the ships had their crews signed up well beforehand.

Nothing went amiss for the first few days at sea.

David was seasick for the first day or two. He had never been on board a boat before except the rowboat when our father drowned. After he recovered I had to tell him to keep out of the sun. He was inclined to sit towards the bow of the ship with his face raised to the breeze, a dreamy expression in his eyes. It was difficult to describe to him how different New Zealand was from Australia, though I did try. I told him about the Maori people who lived there, and also that there were certain ways he must behave, if we were stay on good terms with them.

Will they eat me, he asked in mock horror. That they might do so was beyond his understanding. I think about David now, and wonder if he really was slower than other children, if that was why life was so hard for him. But it was more that he had a different way of seeing some things. He had trouble learning to read and write at the orphanage. When he looked at words he seemed to see them backwards from the way I did. And yet he had an amazing memory, and he knew every street and lane in Sydney, as if he was a navigator.

On that last day of our journey he said, We are nearing land now.

I saw gulls wheeling above us, and knew I should have seen them first. He had only my description of a voyage to go by, but he had remembered that we would see the birds first, before we saw land.

It was a beautiful day. Later, as the sun dropped, the sea looked like it was fire. As night fell, we began the run down the Taranaki coastline, heading south for home. In the morning we would be there. The word home tripped off my tongue so easily now. I felt the old familiar excitement that I always did when returning to New Zealand, even though I knew I would find only the ruins of our house. I regretted, in particular, the loss of my beautiful green-and-white meat-dish that I'd bought when we were in the money. Funny the things you hanker after.

But the bay would be the same, and the islands that lay in the harbour mouth. I had come to love the country as if I had been born to it. As dark closed in we saw the green-black bush pressing towards the shore, and here and there the glow of a fire and smoke on the horizon. On our right were the Sugar Loaf Islands, their shape as the name suggests, though the Maori name for them is Moturoa. On their black crags stood the remains of a small whaling station. A pakea man by the name of John Oliver lived there. Jacky knew him. We saw, too, the peak of Taranaki. It is a most beautiful mountain that rises gradually and evenly to a spire above a wide surrounding plain of land. This is the area from where Te Rauparaha had been driven years before.

But then, as we seemed to be gliding through the dusk, there was a sudden shift in the weather. A south-westerly came out of nowhere, a smudge of fog across the ocean, and then the wind hit us, catching us full on, and we were driven towards shore. The ship turned about, and we headed back to sea, for it is a rocky and uninviting stretch of land that would have holed us in a trice. Before the fog closed in, I had glimpsed the high faraway firelight of two great pa that stand on sentinel sites at the lower reaches of the Taranaki. A small beach of gravelly sand
lies beneath high cliffs; deep ravines run between the two sites. I always looked out for them when we were passing, trying to imagine what it must be like to live so high up there, and see so far out to sea.

But now the shroud of mist had fallen, and there was nothing there, just the air like damp flannel against our cheeks, and the cold turned biting and cruel.

Get below and make the children secure, Jacky said, as if I needed to be told. There was such a pitching and rolling in our cabin, I could scarcely stand, let alone hold on to the children. I called out for David, who had followed me below, and between us we got John into a bunk. I crawled into mine and held onto Louisa.

This weather will pass I said to David, who was a nasty green. Go on, get yourself out of here. I did not want him being sick in the cabin, I had enough on my hands with the children.

And the weather did die down, though the ship heeled in the water several times, as if we might roll over, but I told myself, this ship had seen worse weather than this. Gradually the sea settled, and whoever was at the wheel must have been lulled into thinking it would be all plain sailing ahead.

The children and I were asleep when the hull was ripped open. It happened so quickly: one moment we were peaceful, the next, on the floor, rocks slicing through the side of the ship as if it were a sugar crust. It was around four in the morning; we were five miles south of the cape of Taranaki.

Jacky waded through the cabin in his thigh boots. I hadn't changed out of my blue dress and it was sodden and trailing in the water. Jacky scooped one of the children under each arm.

There is no time to be lost, he said, as I looked in vain for my portmanteau, which was now sailing around in a sea of its own beneath the bunks.

Getting ashore was easier than I expected. We were so low in the water, I was able to step out onto the rocks. Jacky saw every
last man got off the ship. The weather had worsened. The seas were furious and huge, sheets of white water bucketing down one after another. All we could do was huddle against the cliffs, hoping none of these immense waves would catch us and sweep us away.

As morning broke, we saw a desolate landscape behind us. At least we discovered a small break in the rocky cliffs. We were able to follow this gully a little way in, away from the worst of the roaring water. But if our scratched and filthy band had hoped for salvation, there was little to be had. The earth was naught but a thin skin on the rocks and what vegetation there was, low and scrubby. A streamer of blue sky appeared beneath cushiony clouds, as if taunting us with fair weather to come, but the sea was still running high.

The men went back to ship, holding onto each other as they inched across the rocks in an effort to rescue as many of our belongings as possible. I saw David struggling for a foothold on the rocks, spiky as devil's teeth. I wanted to call him back, but if he was to become a man among men, he must work with them.

The results of this expedition were laid out on the shore to dry: ten muskets, a small quantity of sails, a whaleboat, some food and a baling pail. As soon as the sails were dry, the men went about turning them into rough tents. Later in the day, another two of the ship's boats were brought ashore, but everything else was whipped away, bobbing and sailing in the boiling surf, while the shattered hull of the
Harriet
was cast up, further along the rocks. This was the second ship we had lost in a few months. It will be the ruin of us, I thought. All the toil and hardship of these last five years come to nothing.

At least, Jacky said, we might be able to patch up one of these boats enough to sail down the coast to Cloudy Bay. It wasn't a happy prospect, but it offered hope. The weather had changed yet again. Torrents of rain began to fall. Jacky and I shared out rations of salted pork, and the men washed it down
with rainwater collected in the pail. The rain collapsed the sail tents against us.

I asked Jacky if he knew where we were, and if there were any Maoris nearby and what we might expect if they turned up.

He believed that we were just north of the pa of Te Namu. The head chief was Te Matakatea of the Taranaki tribe, famous for holding off Waikato invaders, the previous year. His name meant ‘clear-eyed' and he was considered a crack shot with the musket. About twenty miles south were the twin pa of Waimate and Orangituapeka, and these too were strongholds of Te Matakatea.

These were the great fortresses I had seen the night before. Taranaki and Ngati Ruanui, who lived at the twin pa, had banded together to fight off their enemies.

And us? What will they do to us?

We will just have to wait and see, Jacky said, and I did not like the way his mouth tightened around the words. They don't have many muskets, but what they have they will use well. On the other hand, he said, Te Matakatea had had good dealings with white men, and perhaps he would spare us.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask whether these tribes were enemies of Te Rauparaha, but in my heart I already knew the answer.

David was blue and shivering, his breathing shallow. I brought him in under the tent with us. I'm sorry David, I whispered, so that the others would not hear, you would have been better off in Sydney.

I would rather be with you he said, which I thought brave of him. I would have liked to pull him close to me for warmth, but could not do so without bringing shame on him. I could hardly understand what he was saying. I thought him delirious, but after awhile I recognised an old prayer of Granny's, one she had learned from a ship's chaplain on one of those several ships that brought her from one side of the world to the other. I said the words with him because remembering Granny gave me strength.

After that, I thought he had stopped breathing, but then he began again, more easily, as if rested in himself. I fell into another patchy sleep, praying the weather might clear so that work could begin on the boats.

I was rewarded at least by clear skies, but it was too late. The news of our shipwreck had travelled.

The hour is late and the governess dozes. Perhaps she's not as old as I thought. Fifty at least, but that is not truly old. My husband Jacky is already in his forties. I never thought of him as old, but now I'm twenty and he has moved into middle-age, a man full of brooding thoughts, I've begun to see him in a different light. I think back just the space of eight years when Granny foresaw him as my husband, and of the girl I was then. I believed he would take care of me, but he could have been my father, and a father was what I lacked. I am all but penniless now, but I have a rich and desirable body, something I didn't know when I married him, and I yearn for a touch that I might return. Sitting here in the Australian dark beside my teacher, I believe I have learnt more than she can ever know, in spite of all her gods.

The fan I gave Adie has slipped from her fingers. All evening she has waved it back and forth but all it has done is stir the heavy air. Her upper lip is beaded with sweat like rainwater on the edge of a drain, her mouth twitching open, allowing tiny snores to escape. She stirs and seems to smile. Perhaps a dream drifts by,
passionate blue and silver, like the gifts I bring her. She wakes and shakes her head, as if to clear her thoughts, but her eyes are heavy. I don't know what she hears, but I talk on quietly anyway, for now I've begun I can't stop.

I talk of how we fell out on that rocky shore, as raiders from the pa fell upon us, demanding whatever they could lay hands on, and when we didn't give it up, taking it from us. Of the impudent way they laughed in Jacky's face. E, Haari, they mocked, who is in charge now?

Where is Te Matakatea? Jacky asked.

He is at Waimate, they said.

Does he know we have been wrecked?

The men from Te Namu laughed in his face. You are a big man, Haari, why do you need protecting? You have always had your own way.

The crew were divided, wanting to save their own skins first. This should have come as no surprise, some of them being violent thieves and murderers to begin with. When Jacky's back was turned two crewmen, Thomas Mossman and James Johnson, gave away some of our provisions and much of our gunpowder to Te Matakatea's men. They did this behind our backs. We could not understand why Mossman and Johnson and several other men began walking off with the tribesmen.

It will be all right, Haari, said one of the Maoris. We will treat them well. And he laughed.

That will be the last we see of them, Jacky said, and then their theft was revealed.

I will go after them and kill them, Jacky shouted. He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling as if his heart would burst.