A day later, after refuelling at Lyttelton, they sailed into Wellington, on the North Island, the end of their voyage on the Constellation. Mr. Cliffe the screenwriter came up on deck that morning looking radiantly happy. Elsie asked him what had happened to make this change and he said, “Lalla Rookh!”
“Of course!” cried Elsie, and Julia said, “For us, that name will belong to you forever.”
Then it was Kay’s turn not to know things, but Elsie kindly told her, aside, that Lalla Rookh was a terrible junky Oriental-romance poem, very old and stale, that she was better off not knowing. Kay felt forgiven.
The bustle of disembarking took them all unprepared, even though they’d seen the land approaching for a day. The girls rushed down to finish packing, and Kay went after them more slowly, having less to pack. The air was sweet and clean here, and it would be good to get off this boat.
At the poste restante in Wellington, as well as the bank draft Francis had promised, there were letters from Nova Scotia, one for Kay and another for Aren. Thea’s blue-spiked handwriting gave Kay a deep sway of vertigo, from missing her sister, however much she dreaded opening the letter.
Dear Kay, although it pains me to call you “dear” at this moment, for I am very gravely disappointed
There she had crossed out disappointed and written Angry, with a capital A.
Angry with you. With Francis too, believe me, but I will not speak of that.
And with Aren, for agreeing to this very foolish plan, and for leaving his post in Halifax. It took considerable arranging for Francis to find him that berth and it reflects badly on him when Aren drops everything to run to the other end of the earth on a wild goose chase.
It is all so useless! you don’t know what pain you may be letting him in for, or how sad you will cause him to be, perhaps for the rest of his life. I do not know why you can never be persuaded to leave well alone but always must go prying into things and trying to discover the roots of things.
But that is not at all what I want to tell you.
Since you have done this ill-judged thing, you are to keep a close guard over Aren and never leave him, nor abandon him to the good graces of some strangers.
Kay laughed at the irony of that, and again at Thea’s furious, oblivious underlining, which had scratched right through the paper.
If I could come haring after you, I would, but I cannot leave Francis nor Roddy—and then there is Aunt Lydia, who needs sameness and quiet and good nursing.
She won’t get that from Lena Hubbard, Kay thought. But she was glad (wasn’t she?) that she had not told Thea about Lena manhandling the poor old body.
You will remember that I have been writing to Dorothy Fruelock all this time—she is back in the village of Pangai, widowed now; her daughters married one after another, and only Pansy is left to keep her mother company.
I did not mention it before, and have only mentioned it to you now, but before Rev. Fruelock passed on, they spent some intervening years in the Diocese of Papua, serving on Palau and the Sonsorol islands, one of which you will remember is Pulo Anna. She has news of Aren’s people. I have written to ask her to talk to you if you think it wise to see her.
And I do beg you to consider well whether or not it is wise. Aren has a loving family and home in us, and for good or ill we are the only family he truly remembers. We have seen him through sickness and health, and have loved him all this time.
Well, Kay would not argue with Thea about any of that. Good intent—was it enough? Kay did not think so any longer. What news could this be, that Mrs. Fruelock had?
Thea expostulated and condemned and lectured and prayed—even wept, it looked like from the blots on page three—and finally arrived at acceptance of the journey, exhorting Kay to make certain that Aren had suitable clothing and was well supplied with every ointment and remedy for malaria, coughs, fevers, bruising, et cetera. Aren had been given a similar list to supply to Kay, including making sure that she ate her greens and roughage, “for otherwise her system simply ceases to function,” and recommending Jervin’s cod liver oil for such an eventuality.
Kay wrote her sister a careful reply, promising to take every care of Aren and to make certain he knew that they were his real family—which she knew to be both wrong and true. She wrote down all the things she had been thinking as they sailed, until it seemed to her that she could write nothing more. She signed the letter affectionately, knowing it would be many weeks before Thea could read her reasoning, and hoped, in a postscript, that my dearest sister will forgive me, if I cannot agree with your thinking. And then added another, p.p.s. And that you will also forgive me if you cannot agree with mine.
Aren came in to find her in the hotel’s writing room, and handed her a sealed letter to enclose in her packet. “I have promised to keep you regular,” he said. He caught the ink-eradicator bottle she threw at him, and went off whistling.
She did not know whether or not to tell him what Thea had said about Mrs. Fruelock. She would think about that.
They had a week to wait in Wellington for the next steamer, the Tofua, which would take them to Nuku’alofa, then up to Ha‘apai to Pangai, to meet Mr. Brimner. If he had got Kay’s cable and was still alive, which she told herself was not sensible to think about. Doing them one last favour, Captain Hilton had cabled ahead to reserve a cabin on the Tofua for Kay; the returned fare for Aren’s passage from Halifax paid for his. He consented to a cabin, but he handed Kay fifty dollars, his pay for working on the Constellation, and would not take it back. With the bank draft Francis had sent and the money she had left, that would let them find some way onward, Kay felt sure. Although she could not yet imagine what way.
Aren had come out of the ship’s refrigerator rooms in a deeply filthy condition. The first order of business was to get him thoroughly cleaned. The little town of Wellington had proper steam baths; Kay looked him over the first time, and sent him through again.
As they were walking up Cuba Street after Aren’s second time through the baths, they met Elsie and Julia.
Kay saw how surprised they were to find her with a young man, and for a flashing instant also saw, in the angled window of a shop—as if outside her body, as if through Elsie’s eyes—herself and Aren standing together on the grey street, the same height, with the same guarded expression. A compact, nicely made young man with a cap of clean black hair and a calm face, standing with a girl he knew and trusted. Her short, free hair and the quietude she had learned from him made her look like him, like someone who could be trusted.
Strengthened by that, she grinned at the girls, saying, “This is my brother, Aren—Aren, Julia and Elsie sat at my table on the Constellation. Aren worked his passage over in the engine room,” she added, daring those girls to say something wrong.
“Well, Aren!” said Elsie. “Pleased to meet you!”
“Captain Bathurst mentioned your brother on the very first day,” Julia said, smiling. “But I instantly forgot—how nice to meet you finally,” she said. She put out her hand.
All right, they had done pretty well. We can still be friends, Kay thought.
“Do you plan to stay in New Zealand for some time?” Aren asked, after the hand shaking had been accomplished.
Elsie made a face, and Julia said firmly, “Yes, we do.”
“Because Julia wants a rest from seafaring,” Elsie said, “and I have to file some copy with my paper or I’ll lose the whole reason for coming.”
“And also the payment,” Julia reminded her.
“So we’re here for a month, but then—on to Samoa!”
“We have never been to Samoa,” Aren said. “I envy you.”
“We’re going to Tonga on the Tofua, a week from tomorrow,” Kay said.
“Oh, Tonga! And Fiji too? Our ship—what is it, Julia? the Matua, I think?—stops at both islands, but we won’t stay on. We’re heading for Stevenson’s grave, you know.”
Kay did know, having been told early in the voyage what the end point was, but Aren had never heard. “Why Stevenson?” he asked Elsie.
“Oh—everything! His life, his vision, Treasure Island!”
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for me,” Julia said.
“I learned to read from Treasure Island,” Aren said.
Julia said, “It is a very good primer.” She took Kay’s arm and they all set off to walk together along the broad pounded-dirt sidewalk. “Are you staying at the Royal Oak?” That was the hotel where the Constellation’s cart had deposited passengers after disembarking.
“We must move today,” Kay said. “It is above our budget.”
Elsie clapped her hands and said, “Come with us, then! We’re moving up into the hills this afternoon, to a small inn called the Blue Moon, recommended by a woman at my paper. It’s a quarter the price and all-found, and it looks sweetly pretty, as my aunts would say.”
The landlady looked doubtful about a coloured guest at first, so that Kay wished to smack her face, but with Julia and Elsie’s introduction (and perhaps at a higher rate—Kay could not tell and decided not to ask) they were able to get lodging at the Blue Moon. Kay and Aren had two little rooms side by side, each almost filled by platform cots with mosquito netting, like beds in Bali. As soon as he’d dropped his sea-chest in a corner, Aren took himself off into the garden out the glass door that showed a path into the hills, and Kay let him go.
Julia and Elsie were waiting in the shadowy hall when she came out of Aren’s room.
“Mrs. Thorpe was horrible,” Julia said.
“There is a lot of that around,” Kay said. She wondered what Julia had to say about it.
“It’s worse in the States,” Julia said. “But things are going to change.”
“Oh yes?”
Elsie looked at her. “You’re prickly about it, of course. Was your brother adopted, or are you blood relations?”
Kay looked at her. “It does not matter which, but he was adopted.”
Julia said, “It does not matter which.”
And then Kay went to her own room and lay down on the little bed and thought of as little as she could for a while.
While they waited for the Tofua to steam down, they spent their days paddling up the small river near the Blue Moon. Elsie and Julia said it reminded them of England, overhung with willow trees and lined along the banks with wattle fence. The view along the water beneath the willow branches did look like pictures Kay had seen of the joys of punting on the Thames.
Elsie boasted of her skill with little boats, and indeed she did not upset hers. When the flatboat wallowed in a shallow stretch, a couple of small boys came out and helped Aren tow them up the rapids. On the way back, Elsie made them stop for tea (which came with hot buttered scones, as if they really were in England) in a tea house set back from the bank of the river. Most of the people they met in Wellington still called England home; yet most of those had been away from England twenty or thirty years and had no idea of going back. Used to the same sort of thing in Nova Scotia, Kay had no sympathy with this colonial view. She thought the sooner these New Zealanders got over making their country a copy of England, the better. The American girls thought it was awfully quaint.
They saw only a few Maori people. The one or two they passed walking on the roads looked to Kay like people she had known in the West. For a few nights she dreamed of being back at Blade Lake, until in one dream Miss Ramsay chased her and Annie down the upper hallway, where they found Mary—she woke then and would not think of it again nor dream again, although she could not go back to sleep.
After a while she got up and went out the glass door into the garden and walked slowly upward in the very early morning, before dawn was even picking at the edge of the mountains. The mountains loomed over everything here; that too reminded her of Blade Lake, although here they were even closer. Little, big: it was as if the mountains had zoomed in closer while she was sleeping, and had got into her dreams that way.
Aren stayed at the hotel peaceably enough, but he would not go for walks with Kay. She could not fault him for this. Here, he would not be taken for a Maori, or even for a Tongan, but for a Bornean or a Fijian—and decent clothing might not be enough to keep him from trouble.
She wished the boat would hurry up.
One afternoon, Elsie came in from a solitary row in the boat with a sad bruise on her cheek, telling a miserable story: “I’d moored at a bridge to walk up on the bank and have my tea, and just as I was getting back in to float away again, something hard hit me on the side of the head. It hurt, and I looked down—and there was a large stone in the bottom of the boat!”
Aren was angry. He wanted to go back to the bridge and find out who had hurt her, but Elsie would not let him go; she would not even tell him which branch of the little river she had been on.
“I was angry too, at first, and frightened,” she admitted. “But true pilgrims are often stoned in foreign lands.”
It was such a strange thing to have happened. Kay worried that it was because Elsie had been seen being friendly with Aren.
The day after the stone-throwing incident, the American girls decided to take the train to Auckland, planning to meet the Matua there instead. Elsie’s desire to reach the gravestone of Robert Louis Stevenson baffled Kay, however much one might enjoy Treasure Island. In a rush of affectionate embraces, both promised to write to Kay and visit “when she was back at home” whenever that vague time and wherever that place might be.
She stood on the hotel steps watching them climb into the pony trap, thinking, Goodbye, then, who cares about you. But when their luggage was all loaded in and they turned to wave, she ran down the steps and kissed each one in turn, calling, Goodbye, goodbye! as the trap sped away.
Things were more peaceful after they left; she did not miss them after all. But she was surprised to hear herself saying things in their voices, or rising from a chair the way Julia did. She was a copycat, with no instinct for womanhood of her own.
Aren said they were good, kind girls she would do well to emulate, and would not listen when she told him how silly they often were. He wrote a long letter to Roddy with illustrations, including one of Elsie’s boat with a great hole in it from the stone, with indignant imprecations at the stone thrower, so that Kay wondered if he might have liked Elsie, and was glad he was too young for her—because how might that have gone, between them?
Finally, the morning came for their own departure. Kay woke at dawn and went for a long walk in the pretty valley, and then sat on at the breakfast table among the eggshells, smoking a thin cigarette as she had learned to do from Julia. Her suitcase and the blue valise stood in the hall waiting for the cart.
At last she heard the wheels on the driveway, and Aren came with his sea-chest, and they rode down to the docks as the Tofua steamed up the bay.
The Tofua had a master rather than a captain. It did not matter, though, because passengers had no reason to speak to the officers of that ship; it being a dedicated passenger ship, they were kept quite separate. Aren and Kay became acquainted with several of the men, though, because one of their old friends was on board, Jimmy Giles from Christchurch, New Zealand, who had joined the Morning Light many years ago as a boy, after Arthur Wetmore was lost, and was now second engineer on the Tofua.
In his off-hours they had a good visit with him, in his preferred spot in the saloon bar, right at the rear of the ship on the top deck. The Constellation had had no such amenities. As they talked about Aren’s work on the refrigerators, Jimmy invited them both down to the engine room to have a look around.
It was nothing compared with the sail system of a barque, of course, but the Tofua was very interesting below decks, even though Kay could not make herself go down into the shaft tunnel. She peered into it obediently when Jimmy opened the hatch: a long, reddish-dark hole showing the whole structure of the hull, with the ribs and the actual bottom of the ship clearly visible. She put her hand out to a great round coupling with big bolts, until Jimmy Giles said “Hot!” and she snatched her hand back.
The coupling joined parts of the shaft together; Aren showed her how. “It must be very accurately aligned so there’s no movement—the shaft is in a direct line from the engine crankshaft to the propeller.” He was interested in all this! She had not understood that before.
They went back up to the saloon bar and Kay had another cocktail for the relief of not being in that long, rusted hole. It was good to see Jimmy firmly settled in the South Pacific now, happy on this banana boat run, with one brother to visit in Wallis and Futuna and another he saw more often, who lived in Ha‘apai on the island of Lifuka, near Pangai village. Jimmy knew Mrs. Fruelock well, and was acquainted with Mr. Brimner. Both Jimmy’s brothers were married to island women, and running fishing boats.
Jimmy told them about the Tofua’s life as a troop transport during the war, a thousand soldiers crammed into the space a hundred passengers now knocked around in. He was glad to hear that Francis had come through the war and was in good health, more or less. “More or less is how it is with most of us, Ma’am,” he told Kay. He would not stop using Ma’am for her, which made her uncomfortable but clearly felt better for him.
The refitted Tofua was proud, even grand, for a small passenger ship. Each cabin had eiderdown quilts in tidy rolls on two bunks, which could be folded out of the way by day to make more room. The natty little cupboards and closet fitted Kay’s clothes perfectly, and each room had the comfort of running water in a little hand basin. She was sad that this would not be home for very long, because she liked it almost as well as her cabin on the Morning Light.
The music room, which served as the main lounge, was nicely furnished with sofas and chairs made of sycamore wood and upholstered in rose-pink raised velvet. The ladies’ lounge was also pinkish, and usually full of women playing cards—contract bridge was an addiction on this run. The dining room was plain but well lit, with white linens on small tables, room for a hundred passengers with no necessity for double seating. There was a barbershop, a clothes press service, a library and a doctor on board. And nothing to do but enjoy this opulence. Except, of course, it was not real luxury: this was the South Pacific, after all. Cockroaches and little green lizards raced over Kay’s bunk, and she expected that at night rats would hold revel up and down the black-and-white tiles of the hall.
After her exploring, Kay fetched up at the starboard railing, staring east, away from the land, into the afternoon indigo of the waves in case she might see a whale or two, now they were in leviathan waters again.
Aren had gone below to be introduced to a few fellows by Jimmy Giles; Kay was all alone for the first time in a good while. She had not exactly belonged with Elsie and Julia, but they had been good company, and she did not expect she would ever know any people like them again. She turned from the rail and climbed steel stairs to the highest deck where passengers were allowed, and sat on the farthest forward bench she could find, taking off her hat to let the wind play in her cropped hair as it would.
It was not long before Aren found her there and sat quiet beside her. He put a hand to her elbow after a while, saying, “I keep looking for whales, but I have not seen any.”
“We haven’t been keeping watch—you were working too hard, on the Constellation, and I was distracted by those girls.”
But they were likely to see some now. She scanned the waves, looking for darker patches.
He said, “I like it when your eyes squint because you are looking at far distances. Perhaps you need spectacles, though.”
“Or a pair of smoked glasses, like Mr. Brimner had.”
“You are beginning to look like yourself again,” he said.
She hated it when Thea said that! But she did not mind it at all from Aren. That was unfair, except she knew Thea saw some imaginary self, the docile child she had never been except when sleeping, and Aren was seeing her without pretense. She smiled at him, her wind-chapped mouth stretching. “Let me guess: sunburnt and disapproving?”
He stood and reached for her hand. “Come take a turn around the promenade deck before dinner—five times around equals one mile,” he reminded her.
So they walked two miles, and sat down to their brown soup with a good appetite.
They were not alone at their table; the stewards gave them different company each night. Tonight it was Miss Vera Pike, a tall, thin, mild and elderly Canadian, retired from teaching at the celebrated Bishop Strachan School in Ontario, on her way to Fiji to teach literature in the Anglican girls’ school in Suva, and her arthritic older sister, Miss Pauline (introduced by Miss Vera as “the well-known watercolourist”), who would also teach, as an auxiliary. They seemed to see this next part of their lives as a reward for service, and were extremely cheerful—most interested to hear that Kay had lived at an Anglican school for the first part of her life, and even more intensely keen to know what it had been like to minister to the Indians.
Kay did not like talking about the school, and would not have disclosed it except that she hated to feel ashamed of it either, or to hide the facts of her life.
“Do tell us what it was like to live right amongst the Indians! I expect you had some grand adventures in the wilderness, and came to know some of them very well.”
Kay’s mind slid into the wolf willows, trailing after Annie, Annie turning and laughing, her face all soft, smooth lines, so much loved. She did not think of her so often anymore, her dear friend who had helped her to live, so it was good to say, “I did, yes, very well.”
Miss Vera intervened. “We must not pester her, Pauline.”
Kay did not dislike these exclaiming old ladies as she did the Krito-sophians. At least these two were trying to do some practical good, however strange it might seem, when you thought about it, to teach watercolour and English poesy to Fijian girls. And maybe some of those girls would love painting and poems.
“I have heard it said,” Miss Pauline said, “that when the child lives with its parents, who are of course—” She broke off, and looked doubtfully around the table. “Forgive me. I forget what I was going to say.”
“That is a very widely accepted view,” Miss Vera said. “That Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, put in schools removed from their families and the desperation of their lives, where they may acquire the habits and modes of thought—” Then it was Miss Vera’s turn to break off.
The truth was, Kay saw (and it was strangely easier to see it here on shipboard than in the close confines of Yarmouth, where she had a thousand reasons for resentment)—the truth was that these ladies could see perfectly well that Aren was a human like themselves; only at a distance could they believe that he would be better off made into something different.
“I imagine the Plains Indians to be the noblest of all the heathen races,” Miss Pauline said. “From what I have read in the mission news, they are bravery itself, pitting their little ponies against those great buffalo.”
“Now, Pauline, that places a burden upon Miss Ward, who can hardly say that they are not, whatever her own experience may be.”
“I don’t know about bravery or nobility. I only know—the people I knew,” Kay said. “The people I knew were kind and clever, and loved their families, and loved the country around them, where they have lived for thousands of years. I only knew children who had been taken away from their people, and were frightened and lonely.” Perhaps she should not say this to Christian women, but Miss Vera and Miss Pauline seemed sensible. “I do not think the school was a good place, even though my father and my sister worked hard to make it so.”
Knowing that Aren watched her, she was aware that she had never said so much out loud in front of him. She had told him about Annie, and Mary and the others, and Miss Ramsay once or twice, after a bad dream; she had talked a little about her father too. But maybe he did not know what they had done there. The habit of silence about the bad winter when so many children died had been deeply instilled in her—and his own tuberculosis and the circumstances of their taking him away had made it seem strange and even cruel to talk about the school in front of him. Because the school was strange and cruel.
“My sister Thea had a great love of the people, and could tell you more about them,” she said. “I was only a child; perhaps I saw the thing through the wrong lens, the wrong end of the telescope—being so close, and having friends among the children. But I now think it is not natural or good for children to live in those conditions.”
“Oh well, of course! Well, yes!” said Miss Vera, and both sisters nodded quickly.
“Our school,” Miss Pauline added, stumbling in to please, “is a day school.”
By their nervousness, Kay knew that she had been too strong in her opinions yet again. She thought she might like to turn all the tables upside down and run through the dining room shouting.
Meanwhile, Aren watched them all, eating his vol-au-vent with neat elegance.
The contract bridge fad among the ladies made for a quiet run up to Auckland. After supper, Kay was inveigled into a four with the Pike sisters before she could wriggle out of it, and then was outmanoeuvred by the pug-faced lady who marshalled the table, who directed her to sit on the sofa. Being short already, she hated sinking on the sofa side—it made her feel like a child. Although she enjoyed bridge played with speed and skill, she was not Miss Vera’s partner but was paired with Miss Pauline, a nervous, fluting player. And the talk round the table was tedious. The pug-faced lady, Mrs. Robinette, was very keen, and inclined to instruct. There were many such tutelary women at sea, Kay thought.
“Third player plays high,” Mrs. Robinette told Miss Pauline; and after she flubbed a trick and wanted to change her mind, “At my table, a card laid is a card played.”
Instead of playing another rubber, Kay said she must write to her sister, and escaped to a writing table away from the bridge games—and since she had thought of it, did write to Thea, giving the details of this new ship.
…Aren relented and took a cabin in second this time; his is near enough to mine that we can halloo out our portholes to each other. Some people from the islands choose a cheaper ticket, which entitles them to deck-space only—they sing in the evenings and it is very reminiscent of our olden days, and I think quite beautiful. You will not be surprised to hear that some of the English people complain.
Tell Francis we were surprised to find Jimmy Giles on board the Tofua, he is second engineer on this voyage but hoping to make first next time. He invited us down to the engine room to have a look around, and we came back to dinner smeared but happy. I saw the shaft tunnel!
Aren continues in good health and good spirits, as I am myself. I hope to meet Mr. Brimner in Ha‘apai, because this banana boat stops there. I wrote to ask him if he could come over to see us, and I will see if there is a photographer to take a snapshot of us three to send back to you.
I miss you very much, being back at sea. I hope you are not missing me too much.
your loving sister, Kay
The Misses Pike had disturbed her thoughts, asking about the school. It had always troubled her that Thea in some way believed that Aren was sent by God to—what? To try her, to offer redemption or forgive her for all those deaths?
Well, she could post the letter in Auckland. She went to her cabin for an envelope and then set off to find Aren, knowing he would be listening to the singers on the deck. He was—he looked, at least—happy and calm. She slid into a space on the rail beside him.
It was a beautiful night. The Milky Way was a long, glimmering snail trail winding up the sky. It reminded her of a night on the Morning Light, somewhere along the forties on a still night, the stars bending near the earth, the Milky Way incandescent. She had stood at that other rail, on that other ship, asking, What is infinity?
Thea had said it was all God’s love et cetera, Mr. Wright talked a little astronomy, and Kay herself stared into the reaches of the blackness, the universe stretching out on either side, every side, into never a border, no end to it, because what would be outside? Turtles all the way down, each ancient turtle carved with Captain Cook’s initials, scars so old that they mean nothing among all the other scars…
She was tired. She hugged Aren’s arm for a moment, and took herself off to bed.