Tamar (24 page)

‘Before Christmas? No one as far as I can recall,’ lied Tamar. ‘Except for the work gangs, of course, but you were here then. Why?’

Peter ignored her. ‘What about when I went to Paratutae to load the timber?

‘No. No one.’

Peter was silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ Tamar snapped, agitated and alarmed. ‘I get so few visitors I’m sure I’d remember when and who they were.’

‘I’ll ask Riria.’

‘Do that,’ replied Tamar as she went into the bedroom and closed the door. She changed into her nightdress and climbed into bed, worried Peter would come in and question her again.
But within twenty minutes she was asleep and did not hear him open the bedroom door, look in at her for some time, then close it again quietly.

Peter walked silently down the short hall and out the back door, stepped down off the porch and relieved himself on the grass. When he had finished he stood for some minutes in front of Riria’s small room. He listened for a minute then opened the door gently.

He crept in with exaggerated care, closed the door quietly and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. The room was quite bare, containing only a bed, a washstand and a rail across one corner holding Riria’s one spare dress, her winter coat and her backpack. The curtains were open, a bright bar of moonlight falling cross her bed.

He observed with pleasure her long hair spilling across the mattress and the inviting shape of her body under the thin cover. Squatting beside the bed, he carefully placed his hand over Riria’s mouth. She woke immediately and attempted to sit up but he pushed her back.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said quietly, his face close to hers. Her eyes were big with fear and the whites glinted. He felt her jaws begin to clench. ‘Bite me and I’ll hit you so hard you won’t know what’s happened.’

Riria relaxed her jaws. She knew she was strong but he was much stronger, and she could tell from his breath he had been drinking. She had seen his drunken rages many times and did not want to provoke him.

‘I want you to tell me something,’ he breathed in her face. ‘And if you lie, I’ll make you very, very sorry, do you understand?’

Riria nodded. Peter removed his hand.

‘Has that black bastard Kepa Te Roroa been sniffing around?’

‘Who is Kepa Te Roroa?’ asked Riria.

Slightly appeased, he said crudely, ‘Maori bastard, about six feet tall, long black hair, tight trousers with a cock the size of a bull’s.’

This described most of the men Riria knew, but she thought it unwise to say so. She shook her head. ‘I have seen no one like that. Not here.’ Riria lied easily, her eyes never leaving Peter’s.

He stood up and looked down at her. ‘If I find out you’re lying, I’ll kill you.’

Riria believed him. The look of anger in his eyes was replaced by one of anticipation as his eyes wandered over the outline of her body. He sat on the edge of her bed. ‘I think it’s time you started giving me my money’s worth, my beautiful brown girl,’ Peter said slyly, inching the cover off her. Underneath she was naked, as he had hoped.

She grasped the blanket and spat, ‘Fuck off.’

Peter laughed. ‘Oh, you know how to swear in English. How charming.’

Riria slapped him hard across his face. He slapped her back, equally hard.

‘I like that,’ he said, leering drunkenly. ‘I like a bit of spirit. Tamar’s a sweet wife, but she has no passion. She did once but I don’t think she likes me much any more. And she doesn’t understand me. I thought at the beginning she might, because Anna never could. Still, she can have babies and I’m sure she’ll be a fine mother. But while she’s doing that, there are things I need, and I want you to give them to me. Let go of the blanket.’

As Riria reared up to slap him again, he pushed her down with his forearm across her throat so she could not breathe and grabbed a fistful of her hair.

‘Now,’ he said menacingly, his face inches from hers. ‘You can be nice to me, or I can tell Tamar you threw yourself at me. She’ll be heartbroken. I know what great friends you are and it would be awful if you had to leave, wouldn’t it?’ He lessened the pressure
on her neck. ‘And anyway, what does it matter? I know what you Maoris are like. What’s one more man? And I’m an Englishman, that should be a treat for you.’

Riria had no intention of telling him that if he raped her he would be stealing her virginity. And he did rape her. Brutally and quickly. She lay limp as he humped and grunted on top of her, her gazed fixed on the black branches of the tree outside her window. He was heavy and, in her eyes, obscenely hairy, and stank of sweat and alcohol. When he lifted her legs and pushed them to her chest to accommodate himself better, she winced in pain as his long penis thrust roughly inside her. She felt humiliated, lying folded almost in half like a bird trussed for a
hangi
. He did not take long, groaning his way to a jerking climax after four or five minutes. She remained still as he rolled off her, sat up and pulled his trousers back on, then left in silence.

She lay unmoving for the next thirty minutes until she was sure he would not return. Opening her door she let herself out into the moonlight, naked and shivering, and walked quickly to the water pump. She washed herself for the next twenty minutes, scrubbing frantically to remove the stink of him. Off her face where he had kissed her, her breasts where he had slobbered, but most vigorously between her legs, sore and slick with his semen. Then she leaned forward and vomited violently onto the grass.

July 1881

Tamar’s labour pains began early one morning. Mistakenly thinking she needed to move her bowels, she sat for some time on the privy before she realised what was happening. When she called out, Riria came to help her inside.

Peter was away on the coast but expected home later that after
noon. Riria offered to ride into Huia for the midwife but Tamar, terrified of being left alone, begged her to stay. ‘You’ve helped deliver babies. Please don’t leave me, Riria,’ she pleaded. ‘What if something goes wrong and I’m by myself?’

‘Nothing will go wrong,’ replied Riria. ‘You are fit and young. Women your age can have their babies in a field if they need to. Maori women can, anyway.’

As the morning progressed, Riria sat with Tamar while she rested between contractions, and walked her around when they came, explaining that lying down slowed the process. The bedroom had been prepared with several sheets on top of sacks spread across the quilt, and a pile of fresh towels folded at the end of the bed. There were smelling salts and some brandy on hand, and a large pot of water boiling on the range, but there was little else Riria could do until it was time for the baby to be born.

At two in the afternoon, when Tamar’s waters had broken with a gush and her contractions were fiercely regular and four or five minutes apart, Riria helped her into the bedroom and into a nightdress. As she lay on the bed with her back propped against a pile of pillows, Riria washed her hands and asked Tamar to part her legs.

‘I need to see whether you are opening up enough. The baby could come soon or in a few hours but you need to be ready when it does. If it does not look like you will be, I will have to get the midwife.’

She carefully inserted her fingers into Tamar’s vagina, a look of concentration on her face. ‘I think the gap is opening,’ she said eventually. ‘And the baby’s head is in the right place. It should be soon.’

The next two hours were the most physically painful Tamar had experienced. The baby was large and she was not and she feared it would become stuck and they would both die. Her contractions
and the horrendous, grinding pain were increasing but nothing felt as if it was moving.

At around three in the afternoon they heard the front door open and a minute later Peter looked into the bedroom. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, his face blanching.

Riria went to the door. ‘Go away,’ she said, pushing him out. ‘The baby is almost here.’ She locked the door after him.

They heard him rummaging around in the sideboard, looking for something to drink. They glanced at each other, a silent message passing between them; he would be blind drunk by the time the baby arrived.

After another long, sweaty, painful sixty minutes in which Tamar decided she didn’t care whether she lived or died, Riria announced she could see the baby’s head. ‘Can you get onto your knees?’ she asked.

Tamar nodded and Riria helped her kneel so she was facing the bed rails. Riria went behind and knelt down. ‘You have to push now,’ she urged.

Tamar took a deep breath and, her knuckles white around the bed rails, pushed as hard as she could. She cried out as she felt a monstrous tearing sensation, as if the opening of her vagina had torn all the way to her anus, then a disconcerting feeling of something giving way very quickly.

‘The head is out,’ Riria said behind her. ‘You must keep pushing.’

Tamar grunted again and pushed the baby out. Riria placed her hands deftly under the bloody, slimy little bundle.

‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ swore Tamar, panting heavily and beginning to cry, her red, sweaty face collapsed against the pillows. Behind her, Riria bit and tied the umbilical cord as the baby opened its tiny mouth and let out a lusty cry.

Tamar turned and subsided onto her back. ‘What is it?’

‘A
tama
, a boy,’ replied Riria, passing the infant to Tamar who
placed him on her bare and wobbly but considerably flatter belly. They both scrutinised him for a minute.

‘What colour do you think he is?’ asked Tamar nervously. ‘Is he white?’

It was hard to tell. The baby, still streaked with blood and covered with greasy, white
vernix caseosa
, had an abundance of black hair. He was the creased, purple colour of many newborns, his skin colour not yet obvious. ‘Wait for a while. This purple colour will fade,’ replied Riria.

Peter rapped urgently on the door and when Riria opened it, he asked hopefully, ‘Is everything all right? Has she had it? Is it a boy?’

Riria stepped back to avoid his whisky-laden breath. ‘Yes. We have not finished. Stay out,’ she replied tersely, shutting the door in his face and re-locking it.

She returned to the bed, dipped a cloth into a basin of warm water and began to sponge the blood and muck off the infant as Tamar lay him on the mattress beside her. He whimpered and when he was clean and wrapped in a soft blanket, Riria placed him in Tamar’s arms. ‘He needs to go on your teat,’ she said.

Tamar undid the buttons at the neck of her nightgown and opened it to expose her breasts. She held the baby against one and lifted it so he could grasp the nipple. He tried to suckle but nothing happened. ‘There’s nothing,’ said Tamar, surprised.

‘It will come. Keep him there.’

Tamar looked tenderly at the infant, his lips puckered around her nipple and his eyes screwed tightly shut. She smiled, her face and body relaxing as he suckled vigorously. ‘He’s strong,’ she said, looking up at Riria who was also smiling.

Then her face contorted as she was racked by another contraction. ‘Oh God, what’s that?’

‘The
whenua
, the afterbirth. Push again when it hurts like that.’

Tamar held the baby for another few minutes then lay him
beside her. She leaned back and bent her knees to assist the expulsion of the afterbirth while Riria firmly massaged her lower belly. The shiny, bloody sac slipped wetly out and lay between her legs, the purple-coloured umbilical cord trailing from it. Riria picked it up, wrapped it in a cloth and put it to one side.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Tamar, a look of distaste on her face.

‘It must be buried to mark his
papakainga
, his home.’

Peter knocked loudly on the bedroom door again but they ignored him.

The baby, who had been in the world for almost an hour now, slept and did not stir when Tamar opened his blanket. Both women stared silently at the tiny body. The purple tinge to his face, limbs and body was fading. He was dark, far too dark-skinned to be mistaken for a European child. ‘What am I going to do?’ whispered Tamar.

‘I do not know,’ replied Riria, remembering Peter’s insistent questioning on the night he assaulted her. ‘We must not let him in,’ she said, inclining her head towards the door.

‘We’ll have to or he’ll know something’s wrong.’

At that moment a loud crash shook the bedroom door, then another. They heard Peter yelling from the other side, ‘Let me in! I want to see him!’

There was another crash, the flimsy lock splintered and the door flew open. The noise woke the baby and he started to wail. Tamar and Riria froze as Peter strode over to the bed, a glass of whisky slopping in his hand. He looked down at the infant then asked, ‘Why is he so dark? Christ, he looks like …’

He stopped, an expression of sickly realisation stealing across his face. He looked first at Tamar then at Riria. Then, very quietly, he said, ‘It isn’t mine.’

Tamar’s look of stricken terror told him all he needed to know. Peter carefully placed his glass on the dressing table and walked
out of the room. He returned almost immediately, his rifle in one hand.

‘Whose is it?’ he asked in the same, quiet, measured voice. He raised the rifle. When the two terrified women maintained their silence, he sighed heavily and rubbed his hand across his flushed, bristled face. ‘You’re a pair of lying whores,’ he said conversationally, his eyes glittering dangerously. ‘I knew that bastard had been here.’

Tamar moaned with terror and clutched the baby to her breasts, her hand protectively over his delicate skull.

Peter waved the barrel of the rifle at Riria. ‘What did I say I would do if you lied to me?’

‘You said you would kill me,’ replied Riria, her voice steady but her eyes wide with fear.

‘That’s right. So get outside and start running.’

Riria looked from Peter to Tamar. ‘Mrs Montgomery needs help,’ she said. ‘She cannot be left alone.’

‘
I’ll
look after Mrs Montgomery. Now get outside, you scheming Maori
bitch
.’