5.

Akaroa,

19th September, 1840.

Ma chère Maman,

We have been uplifted! The Bishop Pompallier is with us. He journeyed from a settlement in the north of the northern island of New Zealand on his ship “Santa Maria”, once he learned we were founding a French colony here in Akaroa. He is to remain with us for some time while repairs are undertaken to his ship by Captain Lavaud’s men. Two French priests are also here as missionaries to save the souls of the natives and tend to our spiritual needs. One, F. Comte, speaks the native tongue and will accompany the Bishop further south on his mission before returning to Akaroa. The other, F. Tripe, is to be our parish priest. It has been a blessing to attend Mass and to receive the Holy Sacrament. I no longer feel so bereft, so alone, but connected once more to my homeland and loved ones. I imagine you and the children kneeling with Papa in your Sunday best. Here we do not yet have Sunday best, just clean clothes and soiled. One day we will have here a House of God, I trust, but I doubt it will ever have the beauty or riches of Our Lady of Tears. But perhaps it will be beautiful in its own way.

It is easy to feel that God created this wild and beauteous place and then forgot it; that He is too busy with great works – Kings and Queens, Nations and Generals – to have time for a few French men and women struggling to survive at the end of the earth.

I am told it is spring. It is hard to know, as the trees here keep their leaves throughout the winter. The days are longer and, although we have heavy rain from time to time, the dry, sunny spells are of greater duration. We are no longer ankle-deep in mud and are able to prepare some of the ground we have cleared for planting. This is my task. Vegetables first.

In determining where to position this first garden, we have spent long hours by the light of the oil lamp sketching and planning the use of our land. My husband, of course, is the one with experience in such matters and I defer to him, but he does seek my views and has regard for them. I am lucky, Maman, to have such a good husband. I am learning not all the men are so. Only last night I heard through the thin walls of our tent (we have individual tents now!) our neighbour, M. Girot, berating his poor little wife, Cécile. She was unable to look me in the eye this morning.

We have decided to build our cottage – eventually – on land yet to be cleared toward the rear, on a slight rise, leaving sufficient ground behind for a potager and an orchard. From this vantage point, there will be a good view of the harbour. We will grow our produce to the front of the lot where it will reap the full benefit of the sunlight. At some later stage, I may be able to commandeer it as a flower garden.

There is urgent need of fresh produce in our settlement, not only for our own consumption, but also for sale to the whalers, and I hope before long to be able to take advantage of this. Unfortunately, it is too late to sow wheat this season. We have saved potatoes from our rations to use as seed potatoes. It has meant going without now, for future gain. The Company has seeds that were brought from France – cabbage, beans, lettuce, corn – which we will sow.

Did I tell you we have no animals or fowl? They all died in passage. Therefore, we have no meat, eggs or milk, and a very restricted and uninteresting diet as a consequence.

I have high regard for Captain Lavaud and his men. They have worked tirelessly beside our people, helping the older folk and the sick to clear their land. They are also creating gardens, one in the centre of the settlement and the other on the far side of the harbour, to grow victuals for themselves. They have taken axes and saws and led teams of men further into the bush-clad valleys and hills, where the taller trees grow, to fell timber which will be used for building and for repairs to the “Comte de Paris”, which must soon return to whaling. Tree felling is difficult and dangerous work, especially since there are no oxen to assist.

There was a meeting on the foreshore last evening after supper. Captain Lavaud has decided that M. Belligny is to be official administrator for our community, but our men demanded the right to elect our own mayor and councillors. Captain Lavaud was outraged! He thought us more than presumptuous, impudent, to think that we should have some say in the administration of the settlement. He said our men are uneducated ruffians and reminded us that, in France, they would not be permitted to vote. Indeed, so angered was he that he made an example of one of our more vocal men by putting him in irons on board “L’Aube”! We were helpless to prevent it, and most disappointed, of course, by Captain Lavaud’s attitude. I had to hold tight to my husband and whisper firmly in his ear to prevent him from being too outspoken. I did not want him thrown in irons, also.

We had thought, Maman, this was to be our country, and that we would have a say in how it is run. So, tonight’s debacle is most disappointing.

Captain Langlois is understandably offended at having M. Belligny appointed over him, and we support his position. He has been a good shepherd to us since our departure from France, while M. Belligny, as the representative of the Company, although a gentleman, seems sometimes somewhat unsympathetic to our plight.

But my hopes are high. How I long for a time when I will stroll in my own garden, smell the marigolds and lavender and harvest grapes from our own vines. And, in good time, be mistress of my own house.

We celebrated our first marriage a few days ago, under canvas because of the weather. Jacques Benoît wed Louise Terboulie, with F. Tripe presiding. It was a joyous occasion with musicians from “L’Aube”, singing and dancing, and while the food did not vary significantly from the usual, aside from a pig shot by one of the sailors, the alcohol flowed. With a little practice, my Claude could become a passable dancer, Maman! One or two of the unmarried men became a little free with their hands and a scuffle broke out when Madeleine’s husband felt he needed to defend her honour. But it was all taken in good humour. Even if Captain Lavaud thinks of us as “ruffians”, I find the company very agreeable, and an event like this draws us together as one big family.

I think of you all, in summer still: the hot smells rising from the paving, bright flowers in the window-boxes and the languid cry of gulls from the harbour as the fishing boats return from sea.

All my love,

Your Bibi

23rd September, 1840.

The potatoes are planted! Lying in neat rows, east to west, across our land, soil heaped over them as Claude instructed. Now we must be patient.

Sue spent the rest of the day in a frenzy of activity, attacking jobs she had been intending to do for weeks, avoiding an image of her husband looking into the eyes of another woman, running his fingers tenderly over skin that was not hers; pining for her doe eyes – a small part of her could not take the idea seriously, wanted to make fun of him, diminish him, ridicule his lust for another; for she could not think of it as love.

She chose activity over reflection. If she were busy enough she would not be able to think. And if anger threatened to break the surface, the energy could be put to good use. Until she was too tired to feel or care. She sighed. This was a new experience, one she had never anticipated. Infidelity overtook others, not her and Ben. They had promised to love each other for ever, and had meant it; she still did. Life was not an “excuse me” waltz to either of them. Although Sue’s love for Ben had changed, she had not fallen out of love with him, and it had never occurred to her that he might fall out of love with her. Were there signs she had missed?

Never had Sue felt more able to confront chaos of a physical nature. She started with Jason’s bedroom, working like a whirlwind: flinging open windows, getting rid of dirty clothes, stale coffee mugs, plates encrusted with an assortment of dehydrated foods. Jason would complain, but that was too bad; if he did not want her messing with his things, he should keep them tidy. Sue felt numb, her mind strangely dislocated from her body, her limbs working of their own volition. She watched herself from somewhere up in the corner of the room, cleaning out his cupboard and drawers, dusting, vacuuming. Eventually a hollow ache in her stomach told her it must be well past lunchtime.

The energy which had overtaken her subsided as abruptly as it had arisen. Sue moved listlessly from fridge to pantry and back. She stood at the bench, nibbled a Ryvita, sipped tea and gagged. Ben. Her Ben. The hollowness, she realised, had nothing to do with hunger. She was empty: a rag doll with no stuffing. She collapsed onto a chair. Her world had been jolted off its axis, her place in it lost, those in orbit around her suddenly unknowable. Nothing made sense. Sue shook her head. The familiar looked unfamiliar, distorted, silently menacing. A deep sadness enveloped her but she could not cry; she felt dry, shrivelled. She had put such trust in Ben. Relied on him. Taken him for granted, perhaps. They had been so much a part of one another. How had he allowed some other woman to insinuate herself?

Their love was not the stuff of romance novels, Sue supposed, never had been, if she was honest. But it had been solid, affectionate. It would be a stretch to say Ben had swept her off her feet all those years ago. He had been too shy, hiding behind his fringe and his books. So it was Sue who sought the relationship initially. Still struggling with her mother’s death, she had felt drawn to Ben, felt a compulsion to be with him; his quiet certainty about things was reassuring when she was still trying to make sense of a world she no longer understood. Sue would happen to be in the varsity library at closing time. ‘You don’t need to walk me home,’ she would say, knowing Ben would then insist. ‘There’s a good movie at the Regent,’ she would announce. ‘I’ll give you some tips for your essay afterwards.’ And Ben would decide he could forego a few hours of study to be with his tutor. A sisterly peck on the cheek. A casual brushing of hands.

At first Ben’s interest seemed to be in her intellect rather than her body. It was refreshing for a while. ‘Most guys are only interested in one thing,’ she had said to Annie, trying to disguise her impatience. She tossed her dark poodle curls and stretched her hand-knit sweater low over rounded hips. She did not understand his reticence. In her fantasies, he was a sensitive lover, and her skin rippled to his imagined touch as she lay under the covers in the room in which she had slept since childhood. The compulsion to be in his company morphed into a compulsion to feel his fingers on her skin. Her stomach lurched when she saw him; she felt light-headed, almost ill. The sensations alarmed her; she had seen herself as a practical young woman, self-sufficient, disdainful of lustful, grappling youths. Gradually, Sue had encouraged Ben into more intimate realms and her wish was proven correct: he was a sensitive and considerate lover. They had learned together.

As early scenes and sensations came to Sue now, in her kitchen, in middle age, after nearly half a lifetime together, she thought perhaps she should revise her view of their romance; perhaps Ben had swept her off her feet; perhaps that was what the expression meant. And Ben had seemed to grow in stature in her company, as if she gave him something he needed, she did not know what, but it somehow had made her feel real.

And now …

Sue thought she should be weeping, rending her hair, but she could not squeeze out a tear if she tried. ‘How dare he?’ she shouted, slamming a fist on the kitchen table. ‘If he’s having an affair, I’ll … I’ll …’ No threat seemed strong enough. She had been struck out of the blue; she could see the comic book illustration: Bam! Pow!

Ben had always been so dependable; Sue had needed him to be dependable. They had shared an image of him as an authority on all that mattered in their lives, and had been united on most things. Lately she had been noticing more and more that her opinion diverged from his, though she did not always say so. Perhaps, Sue wondered, she might, in the past, have given in rather than agreed; a thin dividing line there.

Tao eyeballed her across the table, a lime-green, unblink-ing stare.

‘What do you think, Mister?’ she asked. He squinted.

Sue continued her cleaning spree, but now her mind was busy, developing a strategy. She had shifted from feeling to planning and was regaining a sense of control. This poem may be of no consequence, she reasoned, and confronting Ben might merely risk driving him into another woman’s arms. Better to wait and see. She knew how to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself.

That night, Sue said nothing about her discovery. She clamped her mouth closed on the multitude of questions that demanded answers. But she found herself in an unfamiliar state of high arousal. Ben’s every word, every gesture, had acquired new meaning; every sigh, every pause significance. Their relationship was no longer transparent. In the swirling, murky depths, unfamiliar shapes were coalescing, not yet decipherable, and all the more frightening for that. Sue tried to ignore them, but suddenly they would leap up and threaten to drag her down.

But she carried on as normally as possible. She steeled herself. ‘How’s work?’ Casually.

‘Fine.’

Silence. She would give him rope. ‘Anything new?’

‘Ah … no. Nothing to speak of.’ What might there be that he could not speak of? Ben propped his elbow on the side of the sofa, splayed fingers a muzzle across his lips. Sue turned away and stared at the television, registering nothing. What is love? she asked herself. She felt the graze of Ben’s long fingers burning tracks on her thighs; his index finger in the notch at the top of her sternum, running down over the beauty spot marking the midline and into the cleft below – Happy Valley, he used to call it. Not that they made love with the light on any longer; not for so many years she had lost count. Perhaps it was for the best. Time was not kind; at forty-something, they both looked better with clothes on, no doubt about it.

Doe’s eyes. Coffee coloured skin. Sue shivered. She would bet Ben’s muse was not over forty.

‘The – er – Department’s beginning-of-year party is coming up. Saturday,’ Ben said.

‘And?’ There was an edge in her voice.

‘Ah, I don’t suppose …’ Ben ran his hand over his face. ‘Do you – ah – want to go?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? We always go.’ Was there some reason he did not want her to go?

‘Well, I just thought … I could go on my own, if you like.’ Ben was so transparent.

‘That’s very considerate. But, no, I wouldn’t miss it for worlds.’ Sue could sense Ben’s sidelong glance, but did not allow her gaze to falter from the television. She was doing a mental rollcall of women in the Sociology Department: their friend, Aroha; Delia and Mel in the office; Lee Lee, the Asian postgrad from last year; any new postgrads, of course; and all the Department wives. It could be any or none of them.

It took all Sue’s self-control to stick to her plan not to berate Ben and demand to know what was happening. ‘Who is she?’ she wanted to scream. And: ‘Why? Why? Why?’ She wanted to fall on Ben, to beat him or to ravage him, she was not sure. ‘Don’t you love me any more?’ she wanted to ask, though uncertain that she wanted to hear the answer. She had thought they were in this together, for the long haul. For better or for worse. Forsaking all others. Vows and clichés. But they had meaning. Sue had upheld her side of the contract. She had given and given, even when so exhausted she felt she had nothing more to give. Had she not? She was finding she was no longer certain of anything; she felt she could no longer trust her own judgement.

Sue thumbed through the telephone book. “Identity Services”, that is what they called Births, Deaths and Marriages these days. The telephone rang for so long she was about to hang up.

The previous evening, she had rifled Charlie’s art supplies for a large piece of thick, white paper, while Ben was secluded in his study and Charlie she knew not where. Music thumped from Jason’s room – he was obviously studying. Sue had been reasonably confident that she would not be disturbed – discovered – in her activity. What she was doing felt private, personal somehow. Besides, she did not want Ben offering his advice or criticism. She might get angry and where might that lead? She wanted to maintain her resolve not to confront him. At least, not now; not yet.

She had spread the paper on the dining table and placed beside it a 2B pencil, a soft eraser and a ruler. At the bottom of the page, in the middle, she wrote her own name and date of birth, and Jayne’s. Above that, her parents’ names, Sarah Jayne Campbell and Albert Charles Dujardin Austin, with their birth dates. Beside her mother’s name, Sue wrote ‘d. 1980’. She connected the names with a series of short black lines, indicating kinship. Bonds. Attachments.

Her family had always been small; no cousins, uncles or aunts in New Zealand. Her mother had come from England as a young woman, not long before she met Sue’s father, and her Dad was an only child. Sue was startled to realise she was uncertain of her grandparents’ full names or her grandmothers’ maiden names. She knew something of her mother’s family: Nana and Pops had come to New Zealand from England, Tunbridge Wells, after her mother had settled here, leaving her older brothers behind. Most of Nana’s family still lived in Kent. Nana had encouraged Sue to correspond with a cousin, Emily, but the pull of real friends was more compelling. Sue and Ben met Emily and other relations, four years after they married – their honeymoon, they called it. Poor Antipodean students, handed on from one household to another. And, of course, they had spent time with Jayne, who was living, working and studying in London.

But her father’s parents Sue knew little about, aside from the facts that they were born here in New Zealand and that her grandfather died in the Second World War, his wife not long after – of a broken heart, her father used to say. He had spent the rest of his childhood with an aunt, now long dead. Sue knew of no other relatives; perhaps there were some out there. She wished she had talked with her father about the past a few years ago. But the past had not been of interest then; Sue had been too firmly rooted in the present.

‘Glenda speaking. How can I help you?’

‘Ah, ah, I’m not sure,’ Sue stammered into the telephone. She should have planned what she was going to say. ‘I’m wanting to find out about my family, my ancestors, you know. Find out who I’m related to, back as far as I can. I thought this might be the place to start.’ Her request seemed so vague that Sue wanted to apologise and hang up.

‘We have a lot of requests of this nature,’ said Glenda.

Reassured, Sue added in a rush, ‘I think I might be descended from the French who sailed from Rochefort in 1840 and settled in Akaroa.’

‘How interesting,’ said Glenda, sounding as if she meant it. Sue found herself smiling. ‘Our archives are not held here. The Central Library has the registers on microfiche. But you’ll find the early entries are often incomplete.’

‘Oh,’ said Sue.

‘The original documents may have additional bits of information, and you can order copies for a price.’

‘Thanks so much, Glenda. Now I know where to start,’ said Sue.

Anticipation bubbled in her chest and her step was light as she went off to meet Annie.

Although they had spoken on the telephone, Sue had not seen Annie since the negative results from the breast biopsy. Annie held her for a long time. Tears welled in Sue’s eyes and threatened to spill; the drought had broken. She brushed them away briskly, terrified that if she started to cry she might never stop. There seemed so much to cry about; even the happy things. She could see that Annie, too, was struggling to hold back tears.

‘I knew you would be all right,’ said Annie, her tone only half-convincing.

‘I didn’t. It almost came as a shock, I was so convinced. But a good shock – really jolted me. I felt I’d been given a new lease on life.’

‘So what are you going to do with it?’ Annie folded her arms and waited.

‘I thought you would ask that.’ Sue grinned. ‘I’ve started already,’ she said, teasing. She felt excited, though she could not say exactly why. It was like being on a treasure hunt, only she had no idea what the treasure would turn out to be.

‘Come on. Started what?’

‘Researching my genealogy – Dad’s side of the family.’ Sue was like a schoolchild with a new project, one that she hoped would please her teacher.

‘Good for you,’ said Annie. ‘What have you learnt so far?’

What had Sue learnt? She had learnt that her husband might be having an affair; how could she get beyond that fact? Nothing else had importance by comparison. Her veneer of excitement drained away, replaced by a feeling of dread. She wanted to tell Annie, but it felt disloyal; also it felt as if telling would make it true.

‘What’s wrong? Your face,’ said Annie, reaching out and gripping her shoulder. ‘What has happened?’

Sue could not hold it in. So much for loyalty. This big amorphous thing was pushing to come out. ‘He’s having an affair,’ she blurted.

‘Who? Your Dad?’ Annie’s look was disbelieving.

Sue shook her head vigorously, too devastated to find it funny. Her throat constricted, as if to prevent any more of the thing squeezing out.

‘You’re not making sense, Suzie. Now, from the top …’ Annie waved her arms like a conductor. Sue allowed herself to be led through her discovery: Ben’s poem on the computer, her reluctance to confront him, his reluctance for her to go to the Department party.

‘It might turn out to be nothing, like the cancer scare,’ Annie said.

‘You always think the worst.’

‘I have to,’ said Sue. ‘If I don’t, it might sneak up on me when I’m not looking.’

‘That’s sheer superstition,’ said Annie.

‘It’s happened before.’ Sue was not to be persuaded. Experience spoke loudly. She had not let herself believe her mother would die; but she did. And this tragedy was only a little less monumental. She was being tested again; she would not be responsible this time.