In the Land of the Long White Cloud (33 page)

“Irish stew is with cabbage and mutton, right?” she asked.

“What else?” grumbled Gerald.

Gwyneira had the vague impression that you layered them one atop the other and then cooked them.

“Mutton we have, and cabbage…is there cabbage in the garden, Lucas?” she asked uncertainly.

“What do you think the big green leaves are in the shape of a head?” Gerald grilled her.

“I, uh…” Gwyneira had long since discovered that she was no better at gardening edible plants. She simply did not have the patience to wait until the seeds turned into cabbage heads or cucumbers or to spend endless hours in between pulling weeds. She only rarely paid the vegetable garden any attention—Hoturapa would see to it.

Moana looked confused when Gwyn gave her the task of cooking the cabbage and mutton together.

“I made never,” she explained. Cabbage was completely new to the girl. “How it should taste?”

“Like…well, just like Irish stew. Just cook it, and you’ll see,” Gwyneira said and happily fled to the stables, where James had already saddled Madoc for her. Gwyneira now alternated between the two cobs.

The pups performed superbly, and even Gerald was full of praise when half of the shepherds returned with Gwyneira that afternoon. The sheep had been gathered successfully, and Livingston and Kennon were herding them back into the highland with the dogs’ help. Cleo loped happily alongside her mistress and Daimon trotted next to James. Now and then the riders smiled at each other. They enjoyed their work together, and sometimes Gwyneira felt she could communicate as wordlessly and naturally with the brown-haired farmworker as she otherwise only could with Cleo. James always knew exactly which sheep she had her eye on, whether for separating or bringing back into the fold. He seemed to anticipate her every move and often whistled for Daimon at the very moment she was about to request help.

Now he took the stallion from her in front of the stables.

“Get going, miss, or you won’t manage to change before lunch. Which Mr. Warden is so looking forward to…he ordered a dish from the old country, isn’t that right?”

Gwyneira nodded, though she started to feel a bit sick. Was Gerald really so obsessed with this Irish stew that he was telling the farmhands about it? She hoped he would like it.

Gwyneira would have liked to check on the stew beforehand, but she was running late and only just managed to swap her riding clothes for a house dress before the family gathered for dinner. In principle, Gwyneira considered all this changing of clothes wholly unnecessary. Gerald always wore the same clothes to lunch that he wore when supervising the work in the stables and pastures. Lucas, however, preferred a stylish atmosphere at mealtime, and Gwyneira did not wish to fight. Today, she wore a lovely bright blue dress with a gold border on the skirt and sleeves. She had halfway straightened her hair and put it up with a comb into some sort of decent hairstyle.

“You look charming today as always, my love,” Lucas remarked. Gwyneira smiled at him.

Gerald eyed her hair, pleased. “Like the purest turtledove!” he said happily. “So, we’ll soon be looking forward to some little ones, eh, Gwyneira?”

Gwyneira did not know how to respond to that. They wouldn’t fail for lack of effort. If what they did in her room at night was how you became pregnant, then all should be well.

Lucas, however, blushed. “We’ve only been married a month, Father.”

“Well, one shot’s enough, isn’t it?” Gerald said, booming with laughter. Lucas seemed embarrassed, and once again Gwyneira did not understand what was going on. What did shooting have to do with pregnancy?

Kiri now appeared with the serving bowls, putting an end to the embarrassing conversation. As Gwyneira had taught her, the girl placed herself properly to the right of Mr. Warden’s plate and served the master of the house first, then Lucas and Gwyneira. She performed
capably; Gwyneira found nothing to criticize and returned Kiri’s imploring smile when the girl finally took up her position dutifully next to the table, ready if called.

Gerald cast a disbelieving eye over the thin yellowy-red soup, in which were floating cabbage and hunks of meat, before exploding: “What the devil, Gwyn? That was first-class cabbage and the best mutton on this side of the globe! It cannot be so damned hard to make a decent stew out of that. But no—you leave everything to this Maori brat, and she makes the same thing out of it that we have to gulp down every day. Teach her how to do it, if you please, Gwyneira.”

Kiri looked hurt, Gwyneira insulted. She thought the soup tasted quite good—if, admittedly, a bit exotic. What spices Moana had used to achieve that flavor were a complete mystery to her. As was the original recipe for mutton cabbage stew that Gerald so obviously cherished.

Lucas shrugged. “You should have looked for an Irish cook instead of a Welsh princess, Father,” Lucas said mockingly. “It’s obvious that Gwyneira did not grow up in a kitchen.”

The young man coolly took another spoonful of stew, whose flavor did not seem to bother him either, but Lucas was not much of an eater anyway. He only looked truly happy when he could return to his books or his studio after meals.

Gwyneira tried the dish again and attempted to remember the taste of Irish stew. Her cook at home had rarely made it.

“I believe it’s made without sweet potatoes,” she told Kiri.

The Maori girl frowned. Apparently, she could not imagine any dish without sweet potatoes.

Gerald roared irritably. “Of course it’s made without sweet potatoes. And you don’t bury it to cook it or wrap it in leaves or whatever else these tribal women do to poison their masters. Make that clear, if you don’t mind, Gwyn! There must be a cookbook around here somewhere. Maybe someone could translate that. They were pretty quick about doing it for the Bible.”

Gwyneira sighed. She had heard that Maori women on the North Island used underground or volcanic sources of heat to cook their food. But Kiward Station had nothing of the sort, nor had she ever observed
Moana or the other Maori women digging cooking pits either. But the cookbook translation was a good idea.

Gwyneira spent the afternoon in the kitchen with the Maori Bible, the English Bible, and Gerald’s late wife’s cookbook. Yet her comparative studies met with limited success. In the end she gave up and fled to the stables.

“Now I know what ‘sin’ and ‘divine justice’ are in the Maori language,” she told the men, thumbing through the Bible. Hardy Kennon and Poker Livingston had just returned from the mountain pastures and were waiting on their horses, and James McKenzie and Andy McAran were cleaning their saddles. “But the word for ‘thyme’ is nowhere to be found.”

“Maybe it would still taste good with frankincense and myrrh,” James remarked.

The men laughed.

“Just tell Mr. Warden that gluttony is a sin,” Andy McAran advised. “But do it in Maori just in case. If you say it in English, he may bite your head off.”

Sighing, Gwyneira saddled her mare. She needed some fresh air. The weather was far too lovely to be wasted poring over books.

“You lot aren’t any help to me either,” she chided the men, who were still kidding around as she led Igraine out of the stables. “If my father-in-law asks, tell him I’m gathering herbs for his stew.”

At first Gwyneira had her horse go at a walking pace. As always, she savored the panoramic vista of the land, which extended in all directions before the breathtaking backdrop of the mountains. Once again the mountains seemed so near, as though they could be reached in an hour’s ride, and Gwyneira enjoyed trotting toward them, with one of the peaks as a goal. After not getting perceptibly closer after two hours, she turned around. This was what she liked in life. But what in the world was she going to do about the Maori cook? Gwyneira without question needed female support. But the next white woman lived twenty miles away.

Was it even socially proper to pay a visit to Mrs. Beasley only a month after getting married? But maybe a trip to Haldon would
suffice. Gwyneira had yet to visit the small town, but it was about time. She had letters to post, wanted to buy a few things, and above all was eager to see some new faces that did not belong to her family, the Maori servants, or the shepherds. They had all gotten to be a bit much—with the exception of James McKenzie. He could accompany her to Haldon. Hadn’t he just said the day before that he had to pick up the goods he’d ordered from the Candlers? Gwyneira’s spirits lifted at the thought of the excursion. And Mrs. Candler would certainly know how to make Irish stew.

Igraine was happy to gallop homeward. After the long ride, she was looking forward to the feeding trough. Gwyneira was hungry herself when she finally led the horse back into the stables. The aromatic scent of meat and spices emanated from the workers’ quarters. Gwyneira could not help herself. She knocked, full of hope.

It seemed that she was expected. The men again sat around an open fire, and a bottle made the rounds. An aromatic stew was simmering over the flame. Wasn’t that…?

The men were all beaming as though they were celebrating Christmas, and Dave O’Toole, the Irishman, held out a dish of Irish stew to her. “Here, miss. Give this to the Maori girl. These people are very good at copying. Maybe she’ll manage to figure it out from this.”

Gwyneira thanked him gratefully. Doubtless this was just the dish Gerald had hoped for. It smelled so good that Gwyneira would have liked to ask for a spoon and empty the bowl herself. But she got a hold of herself. She would not touch the delicious stew until she had given Kiri and Moana a chance to sample it.

She set it down safely on a hay bale while she waited on Igraine and then carried it carefully out of the stables. She almost ran into James, who was waiting for her at the stable doors with a bouquet of leaves, which he handed over to Gwyneira as ceremoniously as though they were flowers.

“
Tàima
,” he said with a half grin, winking at her. “Instead of frankincense and myrrh.”

Gwyneira took the strands of thyme and smiled at him. She did not know why her heart beat so frantically as she did so.

Helen was delighted when Howard finally announced that they would go to Haldon on Friday. The horse needed to be reshod, which was apparently always the reason for trips to town. She realized that it must have been during a visit to the blacksmith that Howard had learned of her arrival.

“How often does a horse need to be shod?” she asked carefully.

Howard shrugged. “It depends, but usually every six to ten weeks. But the bay’s hooves grow slowly; sometimes a shoe lasts him twelve weeks.” He patted his horse approvingly.

Helen would have preferred a horse whose hooves grew more quickly and could not stifle a remark. “I’d like to be around people more often.”

“You could take the mule,” he said generously. “It’s five miles to Haldon, so you’d be there in two hours. If you set out right after milking, you could easily be back by evening to cook dinner.”

Helen knew Howard well enough by now to know that he would not go without a warm meal under any circumstances. Still, he was easy to please: he gobbled down flat bread as readily as pancakes, scrambled eggs, and stew. It did not seem to bother him that Helen could hardly make any other dishes, but Helen still planned to ask Mrs. Candler for a few new recipes in Haldon. The meal rotation was becoming a little monotonous even for her.

“You could slaughter a chicken sometime,” Howard suggested when Helen mentioned it. She was horrified—just as she had been at the idea of having to ride to Haldon alone on the mule.

“Now you can look at it that way,” Howard said calmly. “Or you can hitch up the mule.”

Neither Gerald nor Lucas had anything against Gwyneira joining James on the trip to Haldon. Lucas could hardly fathom why she wanted to go.

“You’ll be disappointed, my love. It’s a dirty little town, just a store and a pub. No culture, not even a church.”

“What about a doctor?” Gwyneira inquired. “I mean, in case I sometime really…”

Lucas reddened. Gerald, however, was excited.

“Is it time already, Gwyneira? Are you showing the first signs? If that really is the case, of course we’ll send for a doctor from Christchurch. We don’t want to take a chance on the midwife from Haldon.”