The Trespass (54 page)

At the sight of Peters ushering Lord Ralph Kingdom into the dimly lit room Harriet supposed her heart might actually stop, so great was her shock, and then, as clearly as if she was in the room, she heard Mary’s voice:
and then just as darkness fell the Lord of the Manor appeared before her in the gloom to be continued next week.

‘Do not stay too long, Lord Kingdom,’ she heard Peters whisper, ‘I do not know how long the settlers’ meeting will last,’ and the door was closed behind the new visitor whose dark hair was almost standing on end from the wind and whose wild, wonderful eyes stared at her in a kind of exultation.

‘Harriet, you are so beautiful!’ He had never forgotten, yet it seemed, staring at her, that he had not remembered well enough. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he repeated almost wonderingly. And to himself he said at last, purity of bloodlines banished from his mind:
of course I will marry her.

She shook the extraordinary vision of Mary away and said the first thing that came into her head. ‘How did you get Peters to allow you in?’

Lord Ralph laughed before he moved to her. ‘You can always buy servants,’ he said.

And then he threw off his cloak and crossed the room and Harriet was at once clasped in his arms and he began to speak.

‘Harriet, Harriet, Harriet Cooper, you belong to me! I so nearly lost you again, how can I have been such a fool. Ben is right, it is not your fault – oh God, to see you at last.’ And for a moment he stood back, held her at arm’s length, looked at the beautiful woman he had carried for so long in his head who now stood before him in the dim light looking so beautiful and so totally bewildered that he laughed again, but this time in joy, and pulled her to him again.

‘You have grown more beautiful still, Harriet Cooper, and what you have done is a most courageous thing.’

She thought of her precious embroidery bag lying in the darkness, anybody could come upon it. She tried to disentangle herself from his arms.

‘Ralph – I don’t think you understand.’

‘But I
do,
my darling, that is the point, I do understand and I want you
nevertheless
to marry me, we shall get married here in this colonial outpost at the end of the world – tomorrow – tonight I would prefer. My brother Benjamin is here and will act as our witness.’

‘Your brother is here – in Wellington?’ Harriet felt as if shock after shock rained down on her.

‘We are here to take you back to England as part of our family at last. Oh Harriet, Harriet,’ and he pulled her strongly to him again and buried his face in her hair. That she stood unmoving, quite still in his arms, he did not seem to notice, but felt at last that she again pulled away. This time she went and sat at the table, the table where she had so lately sat with her father. She turned up the light of the lamp: there he stood, the handsome Lord Ralph Kingdom, in whose wild eyes women drowned.

‘Please, Ralph, I need to understand what is happening.’

‘No, Harriet, you do not! You do not need to understand anything at all except that I am here to protect you, and to marry you, and to take you home.’

‘Does my – does my father know that you are here?’

There was an infinitesimal change in Ralph’s manner before he said: ‘I believe not. I did not know, either, that he was here until I saw the crowds in the street outside all speaking of the Member of Parliament from England who is to address them. One boasted that he worked at the hotel where the Englishman was staying! But Harriet – listen to me, your father does not matter. I will save you, I will marry you, I forgive you.’

At that moment it struck Harriet that he knew.

The blood rushed to her face and she heard a singing in her ears. She sat there, at the table, but she could not speak, she could not look at him.
Somebody knew what her father had done.
She closed her eyes, so great was her terrible shame, so that she could not see the world.
Somebody knew what her father had done.

Ralph seemed to observe none of this, so great was his exultation. ‘Say that we shall be married tonight, my darling Harriet. I have crossed the whole world to find you. I shall not lose you a second time.’ Her eyes were still closed but she was aware of him looming above her, above the table. He pulled her to her feet, took her again in his arms and then he held her shoulders tightly, so tightly that he hurt her,
he held her like her father held her.

Somewhere in the distance a crowd was cheering.

‘My darling, you know I will protect you always, the past will seem only like a dream and you will easily forget it ever happened. Let us marry now, tonight! And you shall travel home with us and I shall take you to Kent as my wife, as the new mistress of the Kingdom estate and fortune and there you shall live in safety for the rest of your life!’

She saw the cold, high-ceilinged rooms.

She could go with him now. She could go out past Peters, out of the Barratt’s Hotel, out of her misery and her shame and her fear. In her mind she saw the embroidery bag and the cloak in the alley, under the window. All she had to do was say yes, and she could pick them up as they passed by to her new life. The handsome, wealthy, eligible Lord Ralph Kingdom would carry her embroidery bag and she would tell him that it contained her life. Still his arm held her too tightly, still her shoulders were trapped, and then, as he held her even closer, she felt the hardness of his body, pressing on to hers.

‘No,’ she said quietly.

‘Tomorrow then – or the next day! Whenever you like.’

‘I cannot marry you.’

He looked down at her: he had not heard her, he thought. He loosened his grip slightly and she was able to free herself.

‘Lord Ralph, forgive me. It is not possible for me to marry you.’

He did not believe her.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I am – I am most conscious of the honour you bestow upon me. But it would be wrong of me to marry you.’

‘But I
know
about your father. About the terrible wrong he has done you. I forgive you, Harriet.’

‘You forgive me.’ She stared at him then and he was conscious of something else, something different in her eyes, and then she repeated his words: you
forgive
me?

‘Yes. Yes I do.’

Still she stared. And then she said quietly, ‘I could not marry you, Ralph.’

It was as if she had said something absurd. ‘
You
could not marry
me
?’ His voice was incredulous.

‘I could not.’ She did not elaborate.

Still he stared at her, unbelieving.

Still she stood, in the room that held such terror for her, decided. He saw from her face that she was decided.
She had refused him.

Lord Ralph Kingdom suddenly felt his world, of which he had been so sure, smash into a million pieces. Without another word he turned, throwing his cloak over his shoulders, and strode blindly, wildly out, past Peters, along the corridor of Barratt’s Hotel, out into the night.

Peters came into the room at once. ‘Don’t think of telling your father that Lord Kingdom was here,’ he hissed across the room. ‘For I will say you had arranged it, and he will believe me, not you, you little whore.’ She heard the key turning in the lock.

For some moments she could not move.

And then suddenly, all in one movement, she opened the window and jumped down into the alley. She heard her dress tear, she felt her bones jolt, but she landed on her cloak. On her knees she felt round in the dark. Her embroidery bag was there. She threw on the cloak, snatched up the bag, and ran: ran along the foreshore, away from the crowds and the raised voices and the flickering lights of the settlers’ meeting, in the other direction towards the
pa,
the Maori village. The wind whipped at her cloak and her clothes and her hair, her mouth filled with dust and sand blowing along beside her but she ran on, her breath coming now in harsh gasps, right to the edge of the town. She tried again and again to catch her breath as she approached the carved gateway. It seemed quiet and deserted: all she could hear now was the wind and the sea. Had she seen, from the hotel, the shadows of natives gathering quietly in the darkness? She thought she saw a fire flickering in the distance, partly sheltered by a wooden palisade. She quickly entered the gateway, hurried unseeing past strange carved figures and approached nervously, but there seemed to be nobody there, by the fire. She looked about her, saw only shadows of canoes, moving in the wind at the water’s edge. There must be someone.
There must be someone. Someone must be here. I must have a horse.
She thought she could smell tobacco on the wind.

Something moved in the firelight and she jumped, let out a little gasp. Beside the fire in the shadows an old man stared up, smoking a pipe. Harriet quickly, nervously drew closer. ‘Good evening,’ she whispered. There was no answer. She looked again. Perhaps it was an old woman. The lower part of the brown face was tattooed and it looked foreign and fearsome as it stared at Harriet without expression.

‘Good evening,’ said Harriet again. Her voice shook.

Perhaps the old woman heard it. She looked past Harriet, saw that she was alone. She stared at the white visitor a little longer and then she said,
‘Tena koe.’

Harriet tried.
‘Tena koe,’
she answered and in the firelight she saw shrewd eyes studying her face. She knelt down by the fire. Still the old woman said nothing more, still the small, dark, watchful eyes in the strange, foreign-looking face observed her.

Harriet leaned towards the old woman, felt the warmth of the embers burning her face. ‘Please, if you have any heart, please help me. I want to buy a horse. I have money but I must have a horse.’

There was a sound behind her, she screamed, turned in terror, convinced it was her father or Peters or Lord Ralph. But it was a much younger Maori woman wrapped in a kind of mat. She was perhaps not much older than Harriet.

She spoke in English. ‘You came with the
pakeha
to buy a horse. You want a horse now, girl?’

‘I must have a horse,’ she heard her voice gabbling. ‘Please, I must have a horse.’ And she pulled money from her purse, held it out to the younger woman, sovereigns spilled to the ground. Harriet, scrabbling at the ground in confusion, burst into tears.

‘Oh please,’ she said, she heard her own voice saying, ‘please help me. I have used up all my strength.’ To her horror she could not stop crying. All the unshed tears of the day that had started with her wearing a blue dress and scrubbing a pot poured down her cheeks in great convulsive sobs.

‘Please excuse me, I am so sorry,’ she tried to say politely to them, still trying to collect up the sovereigns. Visions of her father holding her,
this is your punishment,
hitting her, pressing her to him, filled her head like a scream, her head screamed.
Marry me tonight I forgive you,
said Lord Ralph, pressing against her,
You little whore,
said Peters and locked the door. ‘I am so sorry, I am so sorry,’ Harriet Cooper tried to say.

For some time, from the Maori
pa,
there was only the sound of the sea breaking on the shore and the sound, somewhere in the shadowy darkness, of a woman crying. Occasionally the two Maori women spoke softly in their own language; at last the younger woman moved to Harriet and put her arm around the desperate, weeping girl so that the
pakeha,
the white girl, would have a shoulder there, to cry on.

*   *   *

‘I will apprise Her Majesty’s Government, and the Prime Minister, of your feelings.’ Sir Charles’s florid handsome face was lit by the ever-moving lights as the settlers crowded round him: energy and excitement flashed across his face as he spoke. ‘It is clear to me that self-government by people here who know the situation and live in this country is preferable to rule from thousands of miles away by those who do not.’ The crowd applauded, Sir Charles bowed slightly. He knew he would soon be gone from this godforsaken place, his colleagues might do as they wished.
Let me go now to my darling girl.
And he felt a surge of wild exultation run through his body. Then into the excited chatter of the crowd and the flickering lights a great cry filled the air from nowhere and, hearing it, the crowd shuddered uneasily and became silent and even the wind seemed to abate.

‘Tihei Mauriora!’

And the cry seemed to be answered from all around them in the darkness by other voices,
‘Tihei Mauriora! Tihei Mauriora!’
The settlers looked about them apprehensively, could see no-one, only the black hills, and yet the voices were everywhere, seeming to echo over and over in the night,
Tihei Mauriora!

And then just one Maori, an old man with a strange marked face and carrying a staff made from a tree, stalked through the crowd and climbed on to the platform. Even Sir Charles Cooper could not but be impressed just for a moment: the man was tall and the strange patterns carved on his face gave him an ominous look as the lanterns flickered all around him. He and the Lieutenant-Governor greeted each other in a curious way, hands clasping, noses touching briefly. He looked also at Sir Charles but did not offer his hand, nor did Sir Charles make any gesture of politeness to a native: for a moment the two men stared at each other and the crowd seemed to hold its breath.

And Benjamin, standing on the outskirts of the meeting, watched, almost mesmerised.
And where is Harriet?

And then the native spoke. He had a deep, resonant voice, deeper than Sir Charles’s; uttered a few words in Maori. His English, when he reverted to it, though accented, was understood by everyone.

‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. We have signed a treaty with your Queen, Queen Victoria, who has become our Queen also. We offered her our loyalty, she offered us her protection over our lands. But all over our country, all over
Aotearoa,
we are now, in great sorrow, losing our land.’ He turned now to Sir Charles and the Lieutenant-Governor. ‘I wish you both to advise Queen Victoria that her loyal subjects,
ko nga Maori o Aotearoa,
follow the teachings of the missionaries as she well knows. But we cannot forgive them who trespass against us. We will not stand by and see the land of our
tupuna,
our ancestors, destroyed, any more than your Duke of Wellington would have done when Napoleon marched to battle.’ Sir Charles shot a surprised glance at the Lieutenant-Governor and raised his eyebrows.