The Book of Secrets (26 page)

The minister was very tall and leaned towards them from the pulpit, his light hair already thinning, steel-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his high-humped nose. He had a piercing voice which made Maria uncomfortable. She was sitting at the end of the pew against the wall and she leaned her face against the cool planed wood, as if it might block out at least a half of what was being said. She longed to look around but dared not. The unconfirmed presence behind her made her restless, so that she had to restrain herself from squirming in her seat. Perhaps it would help if she were to concentrate on the sermon?

She raised her eyes towards those of Kenneth Falconer, and it seemed as if he were leaning forward to address her directly. Clearly others in the congregation thought so too, for although they were trying not to look in her direction, imperceptibly their eyes were being drawn.

‘Timothy
Chapter Two,’ intoned the Reverend Falconer.

There was a rustle amongst the people. ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold … or pearls … or
cost
ly
ar
-ray …’

Up and down the pews, flashing looks across the aisles now, the
old people remembering the word of the Man. Or God. Wearily, Maria supposed that you could take your pick. They were one and the same, were they not?

The faces around her had taken on an alien look. They were no longer the faces of the people she had known all her life, but set countenances, with eyes looking across snow and ice and storm-driven seas, eyes set in networks of fine wrinkles, the women with mouths drawn and sucked in to small tight lines, the men stern and ramrod straight, grown like strangers. She wanted to duck their eyes, to look away from them, but she was afraid that if she did she might be seen to be looking at the man she knew now was sitting behind. The man who had come to look at her.

Instead, she held their gaze.

Afterwards they would say she looked back at them as bold as brass, as a brazen woman would.

‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection,’ said Kenneth Falconer. ‘I suffer a woman not to teach, not to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’

Beside her, her mother’s face was pale as glass and her eyes like those of a frightened animal. Maria reached out with a small gesture, which she hoped was inconspicuous, to take her mother’s hand, but what she touched was cold and unresponsive, shaking like the hand of someone who has lain asleep on a limb and woken to find it beating round wildly and without feeling.

Kenneth Falconer’s voice was very soft now, drawing them all in so that they listened to every word. ‘For Adam was first formed, then Eve …’

Not a word was spoken now in the church; there was only a silence that seemed as if it would never end. Then Maria heard someone scrape past a pew behind her, breaking the silence and scrambling to leave. Footsteps rang on the wooden floor and every eye except hers and Annie’s followed his departure.

Kenneth Falconer raised his chin slightly, his eyes which were a washed-out grey seeming to glint and shine a little more brightly behind the polished spectacles. ‘And if a woman has no man in her immediate family, an unfortunate situation which some people sadly, through death or circumstances, should find themselves in, until the time when she is taken in holy wedlock to be spiritually guided by the rightful head of her household … and her
Bo-
dy,
then she must
take counsel from those who are close and dear to her, and from the influence of the community which has nurtured her. Let me recommend the reading of
Timothy
1 to all of you who might fall into this un
us
-ual category of people. Of course,’ and here he flashed a sudden smile of wintry light around him, ‘I have known this flock for only a short time. It may be that there is no one to whom the wisdom of Timothy particularly applies at this moment, but still it is worthwhile for all of us to reflect upon such matters, and all those women amongst us who are of fruitful years may take comfort from the concluding words of that chapter, in which we are reminded that the woman in transgression shall be saved by childbearing, if she should con
tin
-ue in faith and charity and holiness and sobriety, Glory be to God Amen.’ With this flourish he concluded his sermon and Murdoch MacKenzie who was layreading stood up to give the notices. It was over, or so Maria thought, for the rest of the proceedings passed her in a blur of sound of which she was no part, just a fly against a wall, and the figure of Kenneth Falconer was the giant spider with his eyes magnified and multiplied behind his glasses.

As they rose to file out, Annie appeared to have recovered herself. She held her head high and her step was firm. She strode from the church, looking slightly to the left and right and nodding good morning to her neighbours, as if what had occurred was of no account to her at all.

At the door she stopped and shook Kenneth Falconer by the hand as was her wont. ‘A fine sermon, Mr Falconer.’

‘Thank you, Mrs McClure.’ He nodded his head gently up and down.

Trapped now, Annie could not leave without saying more. ‘It reminded me of the old days and the Man himself. Well, you’ve heard speak of the Man here, of course.’

‘Indeed, oh yes I have,’ he agreed.

‘I was reared at his table,’ she said stiffly, as if he had not understood her connection.

‘Really? Well, no one ever told me that.’

‘Why then, you must come to lunch, and I’ll tell you more of it,’ said Annie. ‘I’ve fresh bread baked last night, and cold meats prepared yesterday.’ She wished him to be aware of her consideration for the Sabbath, and that she knew how the old people did things.

He was dismissing her with such smoothness that for a moment
she might have thought there was a hint of warmth in his voice, but in the unusual quietness of her friends, who were pretending now that they were not listening to the conversation instead of engaging in their usual lively Sunday discourse, she knew that she had imagined it and that she was alone.

But still there was Maria who must pass Kenneth Falconer. Now the forced conversation around them fell completely away. Maria could nod her head and pass with downcast eyes and they might yet forgive her. Especially those who had always known her and remembering her as a small and shining child without a father might recognise in her the troubled woman whom they could yet protect. They were close enough to put out their hands and hold her.

Instead, she stood in front of the minister and looking into his multi-faceted eyes, said, ‘My mother is a widow, and a good woman. Did you deliberately set out to cause her pain?’

‘Miss McClure, I do not understand you.’

‘Was it the way of Christ to inflict public humiliation on a defenceless woman? Really, Mr Falconer, it seems to me that whatever business you may think you have to do with my mother and me, and in my opinion you have none, that it should be conducted in a courteous and private manner.’

‘I was discussing the scriptures in my sermon. And I do not think that women, young women such as yourself in particular, are fitted to discuss the scriptures, Miss McClure.’

‘Minister, I do not agree with your view,’ she said, lifting her chin.

‘I have nothing more to say to you. Good day, Miss McClure.’

‘Oh Mr Falconer, but it is not for you to decide when our conversation is to end. Who pays your stipend? Is it not we, the people?’ Maria opened the bag hooked to her wrist, and drew out three pence from it. ‘Mr Falconer, I despise you,’ she said, and threw the money at his feet.

Under the tree outside, Annie stood clutching its trunk. Those near her resumed their talking to cover what they had seen but nobody came to join her. Across the distance that separated them, Maria looked at her mother and turned to walk away. She will follow me, she said to herself, it is the only way, I have broken with them all, but she will not break with me. We
are tied to each other and beyond that to the grave; to Isabella my grandmother, and to all women who
have suffered and borne children and succoured each other. She will follow me down the road and I will tell her goodbye, that I must go with Branco, who has returned for me.

Under the tree Hector McIssac had at last joined his sister. His sons William and Neil and their wives stood uneasily for a time watching their cousin before moving away from the crowd. William, the elder, looked apologetically at his wife, as if to ask forgiveness for having embroiled her in such a family mess. Neil, however, smaller and always quieter and quite unlike his brother in appearance, with eyes and nose akin to Isabella’s, looked over his shoulder after Maria with an anxious frown. Beside him his new wife Stella, tiny and bubbling with the excitement of the drama that had been unfolding before them, clung to his arm. He appeared not to notice her and continued to watch after Maria. At last he raised a puzzled shoulder and shook his head as if dismissing what he had seen.

Coldly Hector was offering Annie his arm.

‘The roadmender was in church,’ he said.

She nodded, and a way between the people parted to let them through. The horses stamped their feet and their carriage drew away in the opposite direction to that which Maria had taken, detouring by a back road as he bore his sister towards his home.

The sun was high and burning as Maria walked. She was surrounded by the bright clear light that fills the north in summer; a time when the surf beats on the long line of the beach known as the Cove; when out at sea a purple haze lies over the Hen and Chicken Islands, and all along Bream Bay from the Head to the Tail the fishermen cast their lines or gather shellfish. The blazing pohutukawas had spilled their spiked petals over the banks above the sand, the grasses moved in a soft and constant rustle and only the stands of bush, increasingly isolated by the advance of the axeman and the fire, offered cool refuge.

She faltered. In the bright light and the quivering gold air she seemed to be walking into black spots. Red lines raced before her eyes and she thought she would fall. She knew, without looking, that her mother would not follow her now.

A carriage passed her, and another. In the carriages were girls, young women she had studied with at school, riding beside their parents. Their eyes were studiously averted; they were putting more
effort into avoiding the sight of her than she ever remembered them applying to literature or needlework.

She reached a stand of totara and stepped into the trees. The air was filtered and green where the beginning of a clearing had been made. She sat on the ground and put her head between her knees. She did not know why she had behaved as she had. Indeed, reviewing the past few months of her life, she did not understand any of it. She thought about Branco, who had come back to look for her as she expected he would, and there was an odd dead weight inside her, as if he was untidy luggage that she would like to find somewhere to put down. Since the beginning of winter she had carried the thought of him around, brooding on him every moment of the day, and now she did not want to do so any more.

The revelation was frightening in its implications.

It appeared that she had just divorced herself from her own community on account of a man she no longer wanted to know. She turned the idea of him carefully over in her mind, trying to work out why she felt so disinclined towards him and whether in fact she had ever cared for him at all.

Is it the difference of him, she wondered. Perhaps it had got to her at last, the way people looked down on the gumdiggers. For a moment she felt ashamed.

Then it occurred to her that it was difference that she had sought. It was neither race, nor the faith of either of them, nor occupation, nor language which separated them; it was all of these things, but it was also these considerations which had drawn her to him. If this was what using someone was, then she had used Branco to drive herself to make a declaration of her independence from the community.

Now, it seemed, she had finished with him.

Sitting under the tree, away from the gaze of passersby, she was less than impressed with what she saw in herself.

The black spaces accumulated.

‘He was there to look on you with your airs and graces, wasn’t he? Well, answer me. Wasn’t he?’

Her uncle’s pink face, rimmed with frosty whiskers, was thrust towards hers. She could smell his breath, heavy with a sourness she could not identify. Behind him, in her old chair but like a guest in
her own house, sat her mother. She really is old, Maria thought. Not just getting old, the way she’s always talking about it, but an old fat tired woman.

‘I couldn’t have stopped him from coming. It’s a public place of worship.’ Wanting to placate her now, ready to give in to anything in order to win back her love.

‘And you’re not ashamed that he defiled it on your account? You would know he’s a Papist?’ Hector’s jowls quivered with indignation.

Looking from one to another, Maria felt herself slipping into the darkness again. Part of her wanted her mother’s forgiveness, but another part of her was suggesting that it was time to shake the dust of Waipu off her shoes. She had dreamed of the wider world; now might be the time to find it. Even if it was no further than Auckland, that would be far enough. She could learn to dance, and be presented at Government House; she would like to walk in wide streets and look in shop windows; perhaps she might even study at the Institute some higher form of learning, as she had heard young women were doing these days.

It began to crystallise in front of her, a gleaming prospect.

‘Maybe he wants to change his faith,’ she said wearily.

‘You have been seeing him then? You know what’s in his mind?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Then what are you saying, pray?’

‘There’s no need to set on him, on me. It’s nothing. Give me a chance and I’ll show you.’

‘A chance. We’ll give you a chance.’ Her mother and her uncle exchanged heavy looks across her head. Maria started towards the door in involuntary escape but her uncle stood to bar the way.