In the Land of the Long White Cloud (39 page)

Gwyneira wondered whether she should ride home at this hour. It had long since turned dark, cold, and foggy. On the other hand, Lucas and the others would be worried to death if she didn’t return. And what would Howard O’Keefe say when he arrived home, most likely drunk, to find a Warden in his house?

The answer to the latter question seemed about to present itself. Someone appeared to be busy in the stables—though Howard O’Keefe would hardly have knocked at the door of his own house. This visitor was apparently intent on announcing himself politely.

“Open the door, Dorothy,” Helen ordered, bewildered.

Gwyneira was already at the door. Had Lucas come to find her? She had told him about Helen, and he had reacted kindly, even expressing a wish to meet her friend. The feud between the Wardens and the O’Keefes seemed to mean nothing to him.

But it was James McKenzie, not Lucas, standing in front of the door.

His eyes lit up when he saw Gwyneira, though he must have already seen in the stables that she was there. After all, Igraine was waiting there.

“Mrs. Warden! Thank God I found you.”

“Mr. McKenzie…do come in. How kind of you to come pick me up.”

“How kind to come pick you up?” he asked angrily. “Are we talking about a tea party here? What were you thinking, being gone the whole day? Mr. Warden is crazy with worry and conducted excruciating interrogations of us all. I told him about a friend in Haldon that you might be visiting. And then I rode here before he could send someone to Mrs. Candler’s and learn…”

“You’re an angel, Mr. McKenzie,” Gwyneira beamed, oblivious to his admonishing tone. “Not to mention if he knew I had just helped deliver his archenemy’s son. Come in! Come meet Ruben O’Keefe.”

Helen looked a touch embarrassed when Gwyneira led the strange man into the room, but James McKenzie behaved impeccably, greeting
her politely and expressing his delight at little Ruben. Gwyneira had already seen this light in his eyes many times before. James McKenzie always seemed overjoyed when he helped bring a lamb or a foal into the world.

“You managed that on your own?” he asked, impressed.

“Helen also made a negligible contribution,” Gwyneira said, laughing.

“Either way, you pulled it off wonderfully!” James beamed. “Both of you. Nevertheless, I would gladly accompany you home now, miss. That would no doubt be best for you as well, madam,” he said, turning to Helen. “Your husband…”

“Would certainly not be pleased that a Warden had delivered his son.” Helen nodded. “A thousand thanks, Gwyn!”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Maybe you’ll be able to repay the favor sometime.” Gwyneira winked at her. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so much more optimistic about being pregnant soon, but all the new information had given her wings. Now that she knew where the problem lay, she was certain she could find a solution.

“I’ve already saddled your horse, miss,” James said. “We should really be going.”

Gwyneira smiled. “Let’s hurry, then, so my father-in-law calms down,” she said, realizing only afterward that James had yet to say a word about Lucas. Wasn’t her husband worried at all?

Matahorua followed her with her eyes as Gwyneira left with James McKenzie.

“With that man good baby,” she remarked.

“H
ow wonderful of Mr. Warden to think of throwing this garden party,” said Mrs. Candler. Gwyneira had just brought her invitation to the New Year’s party. Since the new year fell in the middle of summer in New Zealand, the party would take place in the garden—with fireworks at midnight for the climax.

Helen shrugged. As always, she and her husband had received no invitation, though Gerald had probably not honored any of the other small farmers with one either. Nor did Gwyneira give the impression that she shared Mrs. Candler’s excitement. She still felt overwhelmed by the job of running Kiward Station’s manor, and a party would demand still new feats of organizational prowess. Besides, at that moment she was occupied with trying to get little Ruben to laugh by making faces and tickling him. Helen’s son was now four months old, and Nepumuk the mule shuttled mother and child on occasional excursions into town. In the weeks following his birth, she had not risked the journey and had found herself once again isolated, but with the baby, her loneliness had not been as acute. Early on, little Ruben had kept her busy all hours of the day, and she was still delighted by every aspect of him. The infant had not proved troublesome. Already at four months he generally slept through the night—at least when he was allowed to stay in bed with his mother. However, that didn’t suit Howard, who would have liked to resume his nightly “pleasures” with Helen. Whenever he approached her, though, Ruben began to cry loudly. It broke Helen’s heart, but she lay there obediently until Howard was finished. Only then did she worry about the baby. Howard disliked both the background noise and Helen’s obvious tension and impatience. As a result, he usually retreated when Ruben began to
cry, and when he came home late at night and saw the baby in Helen’s arms, he went straight to bed in the stables. Helen felt guilty about it but was thankful to Ruben all the same.

During the day the baby almost never cried but lay quietly in his cradle while Helen taught the Maori children. He didn’t sleep but watched the teacher seriously and attentively, as though he already understood what was going on.

“He’s going to be a professor,” Gwyneira said, laughing. “He takes entirely after you, Helen.”

At least in terms of appearance, she was not far off the mark. Ruben’s eyes, which had started out blue, had turned gray like Helen’s, and his hair seemed to be turning dark like Howard’s. But it was straight, not curly.

“He takes after my father,” confirmed Helen. “He is named after him, you know. But Howard is determined that he’ll become a farmer and not a reverend.”

Gwyneira giggled. “Others have made that mistake before. Just think of Mr. Warden and Lucas.”

Gwyneira was reminded of that conversation as she handed out invitations in Haldon. Strictly speaking, the New Year’s party had not been Gerald’s idea but Lucas’s—born from a desire to keep Gerald happy and busy. The mood at home was palpably tense, and with every month that Gwyneira did not get pregnant, the tension only heightened. Gerald now responded to the lack of offspring with naked aggression, even though he didn’t know which one in the couple he should hold accountable. Gwyneira now kept more to herself, having gradually gotten accustomed to her household duties and, therefore, providing Gerald with few avenues of attack. Besides, she had a fine sense for his moods. When he criticized the muffins first thing in the morning—washing them down with whiskey instead of tea, which happened more and more often—she disappeared straightaway to the stables, preferring to spend the day with the dogs and the sheep rather than playing lightning rod for Gerald’s low spirits. Lucas, on the other hand, faced the full force of his father’s wrath, almost always unexpectedly. Gerald frequently ripped his son away from whatever
task he was immersed in without compunction and pushed the boy to make himself useful around the farm. He even went so far as to tear up a book Lucas was reading when he caught Lucas with it in his room while he should have been overseeing the sheep shearing.

“You don’t need to do anything more than count, damn it!” Gerald raged. “Otherwise, the shearers charge too much! In warehouse three, two of the boys just got into a fight because both laid claim to the pay for shearing a hundred sheep, and no one can arbitrate because no one was comparing their counts. You were assigned to warehouse three, Lucas! Now go see you put things in order.”

Gwyneira would have been glad to take over warehouse three, but as housewife, the food, and not the oversight of the migrant workers who had been hired on to shear the sheep, fell to her. For that reason, outstanding care was taken of the men: Gwyneira appeared again and again with refreshments because she could not get enough of seeing the shearers at work. At home in Silkham sheep shearing had been a rather leisurely affair; the few hundred sheep were sheared by the shepherds themselves over the course of a few days. Here, however, they had thousands of sheep to shear, which first had to be fetched from the extensive pastures and then penned together. The shearing itself was the work of specialists. The best work groups managed eight hundred animals a day. On big operations like Kiward Station there was always a competition—and this year James McKenzie was well on his way to winning it. He was neck and neck with a top shearer from warehouse one, even though he was also responsible for supervising the other shearers in warehouse two. Whenever Gwyneira came by, she took over the supervision for him, lightening his load. Her presence seemed to redouble his energy; his shears moved so quickly and smoothly over the sheep’s bodies that the animals hardly had time to bleat in protest at their rude treatment.

Lucas found the handling of the sheep barbaric. He felt for them when the animals were seized, thrown on their backs, and shorn, often getting cuts on their skin if the shearer was inexperienced or the sheep fidgeted excessively. Lucas also couldn’t stand the overwhelming odor of lanolin that pervaded the shearing warehouses. As a result, he
was constantly letting sheep escape instead of pushing them through a bath after the shearing, which was supposed to clean out any cuts and kill off parasites.

“The dogs don’t listen to me,” he said, defending himself against a new fit of anger from his father. “They answer to McKenzie, but when I call—”

“You don’t call these dogs, Lucas! You whistle for them,” Gerald exploded. “There are only three or four whistles, all of which you should have learned long ago. You think so highly of your musical abilities!”

Lucas recoiled, insulted. “Father, a gentleman—”

“Don’t tell me a gentleman doesn’t whistle. These sheep finance your painting, piano playing, and so-called studies.”

Gwyneira, who caught this conversation by chance, fled into the nearest warehouse. She hated it when Gerald took her husband to task in front of her—and it was even worse when James McKenzie or the other farmworkers witnessed the confrontations. They not only embarrassed Gwyneira, but moreover, they seemed to have a negative effect on her and Lucas’s nightly “attempts,” which went awry with increasing frequency. Gwyneira had taken to viewing their efforts together only as the first stage of reproduction, since ultimately it was no different from what took place between a stallion and mare. Yet she harbored no illusions: luck would have to be very much on her side. She gradually began thinking of alternatives, though the image of her father’s old ram—one that he had had to retire due to a lack of success in mating—came back to her time and again.

“Try with other man,” Matahorua had said. Every time Gwyneira recalled those words, she felt a pang of guilt. It was inconceivable for a Silkham to cheat on her husband.

Then came the garden party. Lucas devoted himself energetically to the preparations. Planning the fireworks show alone required days, which he spent poring over the catalogs before placing the order in
Christchurch. He took on the landscaping of the garden, as well as the arrangements of the tables and chairs. Instead of a grand banquet, lamb and mutton were going to be roasted over the fire; vegetables, poultry, and mussels would be prepared on cooking stones, according to Maori tradition. Salads and other dishes rested on long tables and were to be presented to guests on request. Kiri and Moana had mastered this task and were once again to wear the uniforms that had been made for them for the wedding. Gwyneira made them promise to wear shoes.

Otherwise, they kept out of the preparations; between father and son, it required great tact and diplomacy to get any decisions made. Lucas enjoyed the preparations and longed for recognition. Gerald, however, felt that his son’s efforts were “unmanly” and would have preferred to leave everything to Gwyneira. Nor did the workers approve of Lucas’s domestic occupations, which did not go unnoticed by Gerald or Gwyneira.

“Limp dick’s folding napkins,” Poker Livingston replied when James McKenzie asked him where Lucas was hiding this time.

Gwyneira pretended not to understand. She had developed a rather precise idea of what the term “limp dick” meant but could not fathom how the men in the stables were drawing their conclusions about Lucas’s failures in bed.