Amber (26 page)

They followed her at some distance all the way along Waterloo and Victoria Quadrants, then into Victoria Street itself. At the intersection of Victoria and Queen Streets, they had to stop and clutch at each other like lovers snatching an illicit cuddle in the shadows when Flora slowed and glanced over her shoulder, then walked briskly on.

Kitty and Simon held their embrace for a second or so longer, in case she looked back again, then moved apart. It was then that Kitty started giggling, and when she glanced at
Simon she saw that he was having to make a supreme effort himself not to laugh. Kitty snorted loudly and was forced to wipe the back of her gloved hand under her nose. Simon looked quickly away, refusing to meet her eye, but she could hear him uttering a series of short, stifled whimpers as he struggled to contain himself.

‘
Shssh
, she’ll hear us!’ Kitty hissed, then was overcome by another fit of giggles.

‘Sorry,’ Simon blurted, his eyes watering and his face red. And then he was away again.

Flora had by now crossed Queen Street and was striding off into the deepening evening gloom.

‘Quick, we’ll lose sight of her!’ Kitty croaked, making a mighty effort to settle down.

Still giggling, they crossed the street, hurried past the wooden stocks outside the town gaol and negotiated the somewhat precarious bridging across the Ligar Canal, just in time to see Flora disappear around a corner into Albert Street. By the time they reached the corner themselves, she was entering a modest house tucked between the premises of a carpenter and a general merchant a hundred yards down the street.

‘What’s in there?’ Kitty wondered.

Simon shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

Kitty edged closer to the house, whose front door opened almost directly onto the street. There was a carriageway running down one side, towards what looked like a stable at the rear. ‘It looks like an ordinary house to me. Nothing like a school!’

‘You can study the Bible in a house, you know,’ Simon pointed out.

But Kitty wasn’t to be dissuaded. ‘Why don’t you knock on the door and find out?’

Simon looked appalled. ‘Me? What if it
is
a brothel?’

Kitty said crossly, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right.
You’re
not likely to be tempted, are you?’

‘But what if someone sees me?’ Simon said worriedly. ‘A missionary, banging on the door of a house of ill repute?’

‘It’s dark, no one will see,’ Kitty assured him. ‘Go on. Say you’re looking for someone you thought lives around here.’

Much against his better judgement, Simon did as she asked. Looking nervously in all directions, he sidled up to the door of the house and knocked timidly. It was answered a few moments later by a mousy-looking girl in what appeared to be a servant’s uniform.

‘Good evening, sir,’ she said. ‘May I help you?’

Simon removed his hat. ‘Er, good evening. I’m looking for a friend of mine, by the name of Mick Doyle. I was told that this is his residence.’

‘No, sir, there’s no one here by that name,’ the girl replied flatly.

‘Oh. But this
is
someone’s residence, isn’t it?’

A short pause. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘And do you hold Bible studies classes here?’ Simon asked, feeling increasingly ill at ease as the exchange went on.

A very odd expression crossed the girl’s face. ‘No, sir, definitely not Bible studies.’

‘Oh, well, obviously I’m mistaken,’ Simon said, flustered. He didn’t know what to say next so he thanked the girl, jammed his hat back on his head and marched smartly off.

‘Is it a brothel?’ Kitty demanded from her hiding place behind a fence several doors down.

‘A servant said it
is
someone’s house,’ Simon replied, ‘but no one said it was a brothel.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’

‘There are no classes held there, either. Can we go home now?’

‘No, we can’t. What time is it?’

Simon dug in a pocket for his watch. ‘Half past eight. Why?’

‘I think we should wait another thirty minutes, just in case.’

Not even bothering to ask in case of what, and knowing better than to argue, Simon crouched against the fence and settled down to wait.

The moon was almost full and the wind sharp, and they both suspected they could hear rats scurrying busily about somewhere nearby. A night bird hooted eerily in the scrubby trees across the street, and Simon complained that he was getting cramp in his legs.

But twenty minutes later, a sleek one-horse gig driven by a man in a long dark coat, wearing his hat low on his forehead, turned off Victoria Street, passed them and then turned into the carriageway alongside the house Flora had entered.

‘Who was that?’ Kitty said, intrigued.

‘How should I know?’ Simon replied, massaging his aching calves.

Several minutes later the gig re-emerged and turned again in their direction. As it neared their hiding place, it slowed, then stopped.

Flora, whom Kitty barely recognised, was sitting on the seat next to the driver. Her spectacles were nowhere to be seen, her hair was pinned up in a gleaming cascade and she was wearing the black dress, which was indeed scandalously low at the neckline. A cape was draped over her shoulders and Kitty saw the glint of jewellery at her throat and ears. She looked devastatingly alluring and nothing like the woman who took her evening meals at Mrs Fleming’s dining table.

Clearly amused, Flora leaned out of the gig in a cloud of expensive perfume and said, ‘Kitty? Yes, you guessed correctly. I am in the business of, shall we say, entertaining gentlemen, but
only a few, very wealthy, ones. And don’t let that cat of yours play in my wardrobe again, if you don’t mind. I sneezed for hours the other night.’

Then she gave Simon and Kitty a very gracious smile, arranged the hood of her cape over her head and signalled to the driver to continue on.

Speechless, Kitty could only stand in the street and stare after the gig as it disappeared around the corner.

Later that week Kitty, consumed with curiosity, summoned the courage to knock on Flora’s door one night and ask her about her ‘evening employment’.

Flora was sitting on her bed brushing her hair. ‘Well, all right, but I’m only telling you this because you caught me out,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘which I quite admire, because no one else has managed to do that yet.’

Flora had begun work as a prostitute six months after her arrival in New Zealand and exactly four months after she had realised she would never make her fortune helping Mr Demmell to repair and sell watches. She had looked around for more lucrative employment but, in a new town, there was very little for a single woman that paid well, and she had no wish to marry just to guarantee a roof over her head and food on her plate. Kitty, who had once faced the same dilemma, sympathised. So one night Flora had gone to the house on Albert Street, which was widely rumoured to be a brothel, and asked for a job, although she had refused the madam’s offer of working from the Albert Street premises. Flora wanted only one or two clients, and only those who could pay the large fee she intended to charge. So the madam had arranged some suitable introductions and thereafter, for a mutually agreed percentage of Flora’s earnings, had allowed Flora to ‘prepare’ there before she went out to her regular twice-weekly assignations.

Kitty, worldly-wise though she was these days, felt oddly disconcerted talking to a young woman with two vastly different lives, which she was clearly managing to juggle very successfully.

‘But I would prefer you to keep this to yourself,’ Flora added. ‘I like living here, it suits me for the moment, and I rather suspect that would come to a very sudden end if Mrs Fleming were to become aware of my, er, after-hours activities. Is your friend Simon likely to say anything?’

‘No, I’m sure he won’t.’

‘Good, because I don’t want to move on until I’m ready.’

‘I do have one question, Flora,’ Kitty said, ‘if you don’t mind my asking.’ Kitty actually had plenty of questions, but Flora, she was coming to realise, was a self-assured, intelligent and rather calculating woman who preferred to play her cards very close to her chest.

Flora parted her hair and began to plait it, ready for bed. ‘What’s that?’

‘Why do you keep your clothes here, if you get ready at the house on Albert Street? Wouldn’t it be easier, and safer, to keep everything there?’

‘Yes, it would, but I don’t trust the girls who work in the house an inch. They’d have their mucky hands on my lovely, and I might add very expensive, dresses the minute I was gone. They don’t like me, you see. I make considerably more money than they do, for far less work.’ Flora deftly tied a ribbon around the end of her plait and regarded Kitty candidly. ‘Now, no more questions. I can see that you’re bored and you miss your man, but as a woman with plenty of secrets of her own, Kitty, I’m sure you appreciate my need for privacy.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, during which Kitty realised that her companion wasn’t just talking about Bodie, and suddenly appreciated how very perceptive Flora Langford
was. But she felt somehow more at ease; as though their secrets were a sort of shared bond.

‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ she said.

When she had described what it was she wanted, Flora tapped her top lip thoughtfully and asked bluntly, ‘Can you pay?’

‘Yes, whatever is required.’

Flora nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Then, in a gesture that was very unusual for a woman, she offered Kitty her hand. Kitty hesitated for a moment, then shook it firmly.

Chapter Eleven

May 1845

T
he press was full of the preparations for war. The twenty-eight-gun frigate HMS
North Star
had arrived in Auckland at the end of March, followed by the brig
Velocity
carrying two-hundred-and-eighty men of the 58th Regiment. A month later, the barque
Slains Castle
also beat into the harbour with a further two-hundred-and-fifteen men of the 58th. Immediately, an expeditionary force of almost five hundred men of the 58th, 96th, the Marines and Auckland Volunteers set off for the Bay of Islands.

It had also been widely reported that the great chief Tamati Waka Nene had become so enraged by Heke’s actions at Kororareka that he now pledged to destroy him. This brought a modicum of relief to the people of Auckland, who surmised that imperial troops would have an even better chance of defeating Heke if they were aligned with pro-government natives. Despite a complete lack of evidence that Hone Heke was moving south, those living in Auckland continued their increasingly panic-stricken efforts to protect themselves. The Albert Barracks were hastily being built on the ridge above the town, and Point Britomart, with its grim scoria buildings, became Fort Britomart. Several blockhouses were erected, the windows of St Paul’s were bullet-proofed to create a haven for women and children, and the price of almost everything rose drastically as people rushed to stock up on provisions. Others had left Auckland for the south
or sold their properties and fled the new colony altogether. There were also grave fears that the unrest among the northern Maoris would spread to those in other parts of the colony, such as the Waikato and the Arawa tribes, although level-headed observers pointed out that Auckland’s Ngati Whatua were still trading perfectly peacefully and showed no signs of rebellion.

There were also loud grumbles from Aucklanders about the behaviour of some of the Bay of Island evacuees, who had gone from being ‘unfortunate refugees’ to ‘that damned Kororareka rabble’. It seemed that a significant number of them had no interest in finding gainful employment for themselves, preferring instead to spend their days getting drunk in Auckland’s grogshops. Women were no longer able to shop in Shortland or Queen Streets unchaperoned, and no self-respecting lady would even consider venturing along the waterfront, accompanied or not.

Kitty, however, who had slipped into such a state of agitated melancholia that Simon was becoming seriously alarmed, barely noticed what was happening around her. Rian had proved to be a less than enthusiastic letter-writer; Kitty had received only three from him since she had arrived in Auckland, and they had been only short notes, informing her he was well and she shouldn’t worry. When she had opened and read the most recent letter, she had hurled it at Simon and shouted, ‘Not worry? Not
worry!
’ and burst into tears. He was so concerned for her, in fact, that he was considering taking her back to the Bay of Islands, regardless of Rian’s wishes. But then something happened that both delighted and appalled him, in roughly the same measure.

Shopping on Shortland Street on the first day of May, Kitty had rounded on him. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone, Simon? You don’t have to follow me
everywhere
, you know!’

‘I do, actually. It isn’t safe at the moment,’ he replied.

‘Well, I don’t care,’ Kitty snapped. ‘You’re making me feel like a prisoner in my own…clothes!’ She had been going to say
‘home’, but Auckland wasn’t her home, was it? The
Katipo
was, and she was missing the schooner and being at sea so much she ached. ‘For God’s sake, why can’t I have just an hour to myself? I’m sure no one will accost me.’

Simon was fairly sure of that, too—the thunderous expression on Kitty’s normally very pretty face would no doubt be enough to keep anyone away.

‘If I do, will you promise not to go far?’ he pleaded.

At his obvious concern and discomfort, Kitty’s face softened. ‘I promise. I just want some time alone with my thoughts, Simon. You understand what I mean, I know you do.’

Simon nodded, although he still had plenty of misgivings about leaving Kitty on her own. He looked at his watch. ‘Shall I meet you back here at, say, midday? And then we could have some lunch, perhaps.’

‘Yes, that would be nice,’ Kitty said. ‘I’ll see you then.’

She watched him walk along the street until he was out of sight, then went into the nearest general store where she purchased a sturdy pair of trousers, a man’s work shirt and a pea jacket.