The Runaway Settlers (9 page)

The gift of dried shark was brought the following Sunday afternoon by two Maori boys in a canoe. Mrs Phipps was called down to the beach to receive it. She thanked the bringers very nicely, in spite of her private doubts as to whether her family would enjoy the shark.

But there was no doubt about the canoe. It was the first time any of them had taken a close look at one, and before long it had shot out of sight beyond the Pinnacle, with Jack trying his hand at the paddle. At Rapaki Bay he practised over and over, up and down, to the encouraging shouts and laughing comments of the Maoris on the beach—Miria and Eita among them. When at last he beached the canoe, a very dignified rangatira, Mr Mahurangi, came forward.

‘Your hand is well fashioned for the paddle,’ he said.

‘It’s a capital canoe, sir,’ said Jack, returning the compliment.

‘You have a need of a boat. I see you passing with many burdens.’

‘Yes, we’re saving money to buy one. We’ve got seven pounds and we’ll need ten. There’s the potatoes still to dig—but we don’t know. Some of the money‘ll be needed for the winter.’

Mr Mahurangi pondered this problem. Then he said: ‘There are Pakeha who cannot paddle even a light canoe. Such a one would sell a good boat at a small price. Tell your
mother to be ready with her offer.’

Jack ran home and eagerly passed on the message. He took these mysterious words to be a promise, but his mother was not at all sure. When Bill suggested Jack should go back and ask Mr Mahurangi what he meant, she forbade him firmly. ‘They have their own kind of pride,’ she said. ‘If it’s a promise, it will be fulfilled in good time; and if it’s not, we’ll be none the worse off.’

The next day they began digging the potatoes. It was a fine crop, but as the pile grew, so did the problem of getting it all to Lyttelton. Mrs Phipps spoke of engaging one of the Lyttelton watermen to bring a good-sized boat with a punt in tow; but this would mean taking money from the savings to pay for someone else’s boat. The more Jack thought about this, the less he liked it, and he made up his mind that next Sunday he would ignore his mother’s orders and seek out Mr Mahurangi.

Then his little plan was spoiled because on that Sunday he had to go looking for Jim and Emma, who had not come in for midday dinner.

They were not on the beach where they had been playing. They could not have gone far along the shore, because it was high tide right up to the banks, and the trees where they often made houses or swung on the supplejacks were deserted. It was very strange. Mrs Phipps set everyone to looking in the most unlikely places.

In mid-afternoon, the anxious mother came back to find the lost children sitting in the sun by the door.

‘We’re hungry,’ announced Jim.

‘Where have you been?’ she scolded. ‘Dinner was long ago! You go without.’

‘We’ve been in the boat,’ said Jim happily, as if it were well worth missing a meal.

‘In the boat!’ echoed Emma.

‘What boat?’ demanded Mrs Phipps.

‘He said it was our boat and you’re to see if you like it.’

‘Who is
he,
Jim?’

Jim only grinned, jumped up and darted down the track with Emma running after him.

On the bank sat Mr Mahurangi with a boy called Taroa. They were contentedly watching the water on which floated a new-looking double-ended dinghy. Mr Mahurangi rose when he saw Mrs Phipps following the children, and introduced himself politely.

‘You will have heard my message from your son, Mrs Phipps. Here is a boat waiting for your offer.’

So it
was
a promise! Mrs Phipps didn’t know what to say.

‘You did not believe it would come so soon?’ said Mr Mahurangi.

She did not like to say that she had not believed at all, so she said: ‘Why, Mr Mahurangi, it’s the very boat we want! But I’m a gardening woman and I don’t know what price I should offer.’

‘The owner paid ten pounds for it, but it is not worth ten pounds to him because he can only row it in circles and run it into the bank. Moreover, it has no sail. I think he would be pleased to receive seven pounds.’

‘That’s exactly the money I have saved!’ said Mrs Phipps.

‘I have promised to bring back either the money or the boat. Now I will leave the boat. Jack has tried his skill with
the paddles, but this boat has oars. Taroa will show him how to row it.’

‘Jack? But Bill is older!’

‘It is Jack who has love for the sea.’

He was quite right. Jack, though only thirteen, was the one to be entrusted with the boat.

‘I shall go and fetch the money,’ said Mrs Phipps.

While this wonderful deal was being arranged, Jack was knocking on doors farther up the Bay to ask if anyone had seen Emma or Jim. When everyone had said no, he made for home, and found his mother at the cottage.

‘They’re found, I suppose!’ he said, very annoyed.

‘Yes, they came home.’

‘By themselves! I hope they got a good hiding for running away!’

‘They didn’t exactly run away.’

‘They spoiled my day, the little tikes!’ shouted Jack.

‘D’you think your day is spoiled, Jack?’ said his mother with a gentle smile. ‘Go down to the beach.’

He saw the mischievous twinkle in her eye and his anger began to go down. Where was everyone else, anyway? And what was at the beach?

Jack ran out and down the path, and there were Archie and Jim wading through the water. But Taroa from Rapaki was there too and he pushed them back, calling out:

‘Not your turn, not your turn! Look, Jack! This your boat!’

Before the potatoes could be loaded on to the boat, which was romantically named the
Garden Queen,
the boys had to build a landing. They cut away the bank to make a level platform just above high tide mark, and extended it with logs. A light sledge could be hauled by ropes on a sloping track leading down to the landing. Then it took several journeys and much hard rowing to land the whole crop at Lyttelton, but once that was done, they could use the boat to go fishing. The catch was much better well out on the harbour, and sometimes they went beyond Quail Island for cockles and oysters.

Buying the sail would have to wait for the spring. The potato money was needed for more seeds and fruit trees, grain for the hens, the first cow—and a puppy for Archie. The collie was to be trained; but Archie had dreams of teaching him to jump and do tricks as well, so he called him Wallaby, or Wally for short.

The future looked promising for the second year at the Bay. Yet, although Mrs Phipps never spoke of it, she knew well that they lived under a double danger. It was still possible that Stephen Small might trace them and demand the right to rule his family. He would have the law on his side, for they were runaways after all.

Also they were living on land from which they could be turned off at any time. Sooner or later they must buy it, or pay rent on it. But Mrs Phipps kept well away from Cashmere.
She had heard that Mr Cracroft Wilson was busy with public affairs, and her few acres were nothing to the thousands on his expanding sheep-runs. Let him come in his own good time and she would have all the more to show him.

Summer brought flowers into bloom until the cottage was almost hidden. Archways and pyramids of supplejack were built to carry the honeysuckle, jasmine, sweet peas and climbing roses. A wide border began with mignonette and mounted through tall yellow daisies and blue larkspurs to hollyhocks touching the thatched roof. There was profit as well as beauty in these flowers, which were in demand for the Lyttelton hotels.

And then those once-neglected young trees produced their first cherries. Jim carefully counted them.

‘Thirty-seven,’ he said. ‘I think it makes thirty-seven. It might be thirty-eight. Will they be worth a lot of money, Mother?’

‘If you can work out how many we would each have, Jim,’ she said smiling, ‘we shan’t sell them. We could have a little party.’

When she counted them herself, it came to thirty-nine, because Jim could not see the top ones. To divide thirty-nine by seven was beyond Jim’s powers, but he was not to be beaten. He collected thirty-nine shells from the beach and arranged them in seven heaps. There were five shells in each heap but he could not think what to do with the four that were over.

‘I think we will give an extra cherry to the four youngest,’ said Mrs Phipps.

‘Jack’s not a nipper—we should toss for it,’ protested Bill. But before Jack could answer back, Bill’s mouth opened and his face froze; he swung round and fled down the track to the
beach. Looking to see what his brother had seen, Jack gave a yell and followed.

‘It’s the Nabob!’ he shouted as he ran.

They were not really afraid, but they wanted no reminders of those wretched weeks at Cashmere. Archie, Jim and Emma would not have moved for anything: they almost forgot the cherries in their admiration for the gentleman with the silvermounted riding-crop sitting with such dignity on his beautiful horse.

Mrs Phipps looked down at her muddy gardening boots and decided not to worry.

‘Welcome to your property, sir,’ she said. ‘You must do me the honour to step inside and see the cottage. Mary Ann! Put the kettle on and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

Mr Cracroft Wilson was surprised to hear Mary Ann’s name called, for he remembered nothing about a daughter left behind in Sydney. He was even more surprised to find himself stepping beneath an archway of roses into a room so sweet-smelling and colourful that he did not even notice that the furniture was made of bush logs, packing-cases, flax and sacking.

‘I commend your industry, Mrs Phipps,’ he said, watching Mary Ann’s capable hands, ‘though I don’t know what you are—tenant or squatter.’

‘You could call me a caretaker, or a guardian, or a manager, as you wish.’

‘A caretaker would hand in reports. I have had no direct word in all the months you have been here.’

‘I’ve been writing the report every day. You can read it for yourself—in the house and the garden.’

He stared at her, puzzled, so she went on:

‘We came to a hut with two small rooms full of rats and
litter and with leaking thatch; and a potato patch the size of a pocket-handkerchief half ruined by the wild pigs. You see a cottage enlarged and in perfect order, a garden, an orchard, a fowl-run and grazing for a cow. All this without a penny of your money or an hour of your supervision. You will appreciate this, sir, being renowned for your own capability in managing your estates.’

The Nabob was quite baffled by this little speech. Was she being properly respectful, or was she laughing at him? He was both master and guest in the cottage and he had to act accordingly. He nodded gravely.

‘Your report is satisfactory,’ he said, as he took the cup from Mary Ann and drank without noticing that the tea had a flavour of biddy-bid mixed in to make the tea-leaves go further.

When Mr Cracroft Wilson looked over the section it was empty of children, for Archie, Jim and Emma had gone to join their brothers. It appeared all the tidier for their absence. There was no doubt that his property was improving under her care.

‘Clearly you desire to stay, Mrs Phipps,’ he said. ‘It’s time we drew up an agreement for rent.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ she said, ‘making allowances for our improvements, I have no doubt.’

What was the Nabob to do with a woman like that? He said stiffly: ‘You can discuss that with my lawyer. He’ll attend to it. I’m a busy man, Mrs Phipps; and you need not expect to see me very often.’

This was perfectly true.

It was a good summer. The
Garden Queen,
equipped with a sail from the money for the spring produce, sped up or down the harbour according to the wind, and had to be rowed only one way. Real windows were put into the house, and a mangle for the clothes was set up under a lean-to porch. Still, Mrs Phipps would spend no money on extra clothes or luxuries, because they depended for everything on her own skilful work in the garden. And what would happen to the children if she should fall ill, or die? They must have some extra way of making a living.

In the autumn she bought four head of young cattle: two heifers and two bulls.

The other farmers in the Bay were working in English style with crops of wheat and barley, and ploughed-up pastures sown in English grasses. They paid no attention to the open tussock-land high on the hills. From their experience in Australia, the Phipps family grasped the chance to obtain cheap grazing leases and to run cattle for beef. As there were few fences, the stock were branded; and if they strayed on to someone’s property, word was passed to the boys at school. Then Mrs Phipps would go out with Archie and his dog Wally to hunt them back again.

When Jim began school he chummed up with George Bloor, whose father was a farm labourer working for Mr Parsons. One sharp July morning, when even in Governors Bay the frost was white, Jim went down to the beach to look for a frost-fish. George was there before him, with the same idea; but a quite different discovery, an alarming one, sent him rushing up the track, and the two boys almost knocked one another over.

‘Jim! Your boat! The
Garden Queen!’

‘What’s the matter? Stolen?

‘No—’

‘Wrecked?’

‘No—it’s sunk!’

‘If it’s sunk, it’s wrecked, isn’t it?’

‘No it isn’t.’

There was only one way to work out this puzzle. Jim raced to the landing and saw, directly below the surface of the falling tide, the charred framework of the dinghy.

‘It’s burnt!’ he said in an awed voice. ‘Who did that?’

‘They did it last night,’ said George, ‘because the tide’s been over it, see.’

‘Must’ve been before midnight.’

‘But the landing didn’t get burnt, only the boat.’

‘They must have burnt the
Queen,
special!’

‘Your mother got any enemies, Jim?’

‘It’s Jack’s boat. We’ve got to tell him!’

The boys hurried up with their shattering news, and in a few minutes all the Phipps family were there to examine the ruined boat. Jack, in a mixture of grief and fury, threw out questions at everyone. Who had been playing there? Had anyone been around the beach last night? The
Garden Queen
was still there last time water had been brought from the spring. It had
happened in the darkness, that was certain. Had anyone been heard prowling then?

‘Mother—what do you think?’

For once, there was no answer. Mrs Phipps was not even there. She had left them without saying a word.

‘I’ll go and ask her,’ said Mary Ann swiftly.

She was more alarmed at her mother’s going than about the boat. Never had Mrs Phipps been dismayed by a trouble, or run short of advice about what to do. Mary Ann hurried into the cottage and found her staring into the fire.

‘Mother! Are you ill, Mother?’

‘No, Mary Ann, I’m quite well.’

‘Then why did you come away? Was it so terrible a shock?’

‘I think
he
must have come,’ said Mrs Phipps very slowly.

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

‘You mean,’ cried Mary Ann, appalled, ‘our father has come and burnt the
Garden Queen?’

‘Who else would do such a thing to us?’

‘That’s what none of us can understand.’

‘If he has come, what will we do, Mary Ann?’

‘Mother,
you
are asking
me?’

Mrs Phipps poked at the fire with a long stick and warmed her hands at the rising flame.

‘More than two years we’ve worked here, at peace with ourselves, and put the hard times behind us, Mary Ann. Oh! I can manage everything without him, but him I cannot manage at all. What should we do? Hide? Or go away? Or stay here and wait?’

‘Where should we hide; or where could we run to? Why,
Mother, we
must
stay! And can you be sure it is him?’

‘It would be so like him,’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘But you are right; we can only wait and see.’

‘Should we, perhaps, tell the police? Some ruffians might be hereabouts.’

Mrs Phipps thought about this.

‘I have never been near the police, or the law, since we came here. They might ask questions which I must answer truthfully. What if there are inquiries made for Mrs Small of Berrima?’

‘I can hear the children coming,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Mother, do go and lie down. I’ll tell them you’re not well.’

‘Put the kettle on, and we’ll have a cup of tea,’ said Mrs Phipps, more cheerfully; and she went to the quietness of her bed.

Now it’s
my
task, thought Mary Ann, as she set the water to boil; and I must tell the others.

Over the porridge and milk, with hushed voices, they talked of this new fear.

‘Let him come,’ said Bill bluntly. ‘I’ll wager I’m as big as he is, now, and a deal stronger.’

‘If you strike him, Bill, he’ll have the law on you.’

‘But we can go at him if goes at us; that’s defence,’ said Jack, who had a score to settle already—and the loss of the
Queen
made it a double score.

‘We could stack a lot of stones inside, and bolt the door,’ said Jim.

‘You’d most likely pitch your stone at poor George Bloor,’ said Mary Ann, scorning this idea too.

Emma, who was four years old now but did not remember her father, broke up the argument by bursting into tears. All this talk of bolting doors and fighting people and a scarifying
stranger was too hard to understand. ‘You mustn’t hurt George Bloor!’ she wailed.

The boys burst out laughing in spite of themselves; which made Emma cry all the harder, and Mary Ann had to take her up and comfort her. In the midst of the confusion, Mrs Phipps appeared again. She had recovered her usual calmness, and was smiling.

‘Now hush, Emma, my dear! We’re foolish to be afraid. Nothing bad will happen to us if we keep together! We’ll ask God to protect us.’

The children were silent as she said a short prayer. Then Archie said:

‘Mother, what will we do if somebody comes?’

‘You will come inside the house straightaway; or, if you’re on your way from school, you’ll hurry away and not speak. Make haste, now! Goodness, look at the time!’

Bill, who had passed seventeen, was finished with schooling. When his brothers had gone, Mrs Phipps said:

‘You must walk to Lyttelton, Bill, and ask the shipwrights about another boat, and let me know the price.’

‘Is there enough money, Mother?’

‘I was saving it to buy more cattle; but the boat has to come first.’

‘They’ll ask what’s happened to the
Garden Queen.
What will I say?’

‘That there’s been a mishap. Nothing more. I don’t want the police hereabouts.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe for him to go?’ broke in Mary Ann. She was not sure if she was relieved to have her mother take charge again, or alarmed at this recklessness. Mrs Phipps answered with a firmness that no one dared question: ‘We are in the Lord’s
hands. I don’t give my trust and take it away again!’

Soon Mrs Phipps was working outside as usual, pruning the fruit trees. Bill went to Jack’s bunk and drew out, from the groove between the rail and the wall, his brother’s latest handiwork—a stock whip. Long and strong, it would protect him better than a prayer, he told himself.

However, he saw nothing unusual on the way to Lyttelton. At the shipwright’s he had the luck to meet a sailor from the last ship to arrive from Australia. Bill got him talking about the passengers and soon was sure that Stephen Small could not possibly have been among them. Of course, he could easily have come by some other way, through Wellington or Nelson; he could even have spent months in the North Island—but Bill felt heartened by this talk. As for the stock-whip, people chaffed him for carrying it and he brightened up his long walk home by flicking seed-heads from the tussocks.

That night the doors on the cottage were bolted. Next morning Bill and Jack went out early to examine the garden and the tracks. There had been another frost, and any footprints would have stood out clearly; but there were none. The daily round began as usual.

In the middle of the morning Emma came racing to her mother where she worked among the fruit trees.

‘Somebody’s coming! Somebody’s coming!’

‘Run in to Mary Ann,’ commanded Mrs Phipps—as if Emma needed telling. She was at the door before her mother had gone ten steps, and come face to face with George Bloor’s father.

‘Why, you gave me a start, Mr Bloor!’

‘Beg pardon, Mrs Phipps, I’m sure. I came about the boat—they told me you had interference.’

‘Yes? What have you heard, then?’

‘Only what George told me—that he found the boat burnt at the water’s edge.’

So the story’s out, thought Mrs Phipps to herself. She had warned her own boys not to talk but she could not check young George. Mr Bloor went on:

‘I’m thinking there’s larrikins in these parts. Mr Hodgson lost three pigs, three fine young’uns he did, with the pen broke down so it couldn’t’ve been no accident. There’s tools gone from Mr Dobbs’s barn.’

‘But why should they burn our boat? If they were thieving, they’d more likely set it adrift.’

‘They could’ve stole it, and returned it, and burnt it to destroy some evidence, maybe? Did Bill tell the police yesterday?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Phipps.

‘No? Mr Hodgson’s been up about them pigs and they’ll come around asking. You’ll not mind me telling about the boat, in case it’s all one crime?’

All one crime!

With these three words Mr Bloor, without knowing it, swept a great load from Mrs Phipps’s shoulders. Suddenly she felt sure that the stranger was not Stephen Small. A brutal husband and father he might be, but he was no criminal. It must have been some ‘ruffian’ as Mary Ann had said; and she was not in the least afraid of any ruffian.

‘Yes, Mr Bloor, to be sure,’ she said. ‘A woman doesn’t always understand these things.’

Mr Bloor felt flattered by this remark. ‘I’m ready to help anyways I can,’ he said warmly.

To the children, the thought of thieves was only a trifle less
alarming than the thought of their father; and so the doors were bolted again that night. But as the week went by, the panic appeared silly. Emma, who had stayed close to the cottage all day, went down to the beach to play; and in the evenings, as they gathered round the fire, Mrs Phipps told stories and sang songs as gaily as ever. Only she hated taking eleven pounds from her savings to buy a new boat, with a sail. She could never feel the same about the
Phoenix
as she did about the
Garden Queen,
which had been found for her out of the gratitude and kindness of her Maori neighbours.

Nobody ever found Mr Hodgson’s pigs, or Mr Dobbs’s tools, or solved the mystery of the burnt boat. New Zealand was a large empty country where a thief might easily melt away, and settle down with his stolen goods to live like an honest man. Besides, soon there was a fresh excitement.