The Trespass (57 page)

‘Why is that?’

He answered her in a low voice, as if they could be overheard, although there was no-one near.

From the window the Lieutenant-Governor’s aunt saw the girl’s head whip round suddenly so that she was staring at her suitor.

‘What did you say?’
said Harriet.

He repeated the words. ‘I shot your father. He did not deserve to live, he had no right to live. He has destroyed my happiness and I have no regrets about what I have done.’ He continued to stare outwards.

She simply stared, white-faced herself, at the white face of Lord Ralph Kingdom, one of the sons of England, and at the wild eyes where, they said, women drowned.

It was as if the barbarous country made barbarians.

Her hands began to shake. For some moments she held them across her mouth and rocked backwards and forwards slightly and he heard that she made little gasping sounds. But if he feared she would run screaming to the house he gave no sign. After some time she stopped shaking and her hands returned to her lap.

‘Who else knows this?’ she said in a low, low voice.

‘About last night? Only my brother Ben. And he knows the reason. Lucy told us.’

‘Lucy?’

‘She was afraid. She guessed your father might be here. She thought I should know—’ he still did not look at her, ‘what your father did to you.’

There was a long, long silence. Some small birds with tails like open fans flashed past them and into a big tree in the corner of the garden. Distantly, from the harbour, men shouted and carried barrels and logs across the sand. The Union Jack made a hollow sound as it suddenly flapped against the flagpole.

At last Harriet felt able to speak. ‘Forgive me, Lord Ralph, but
why
is Lucy with you?’

‘She was coming to New Zealand of her own accord, to bring you your dog.’

Harriet made a small, odd sound. Lord Ralph did not know if she was crying, or laughing. He would not care, he told himself as he watched the sea, either way. Tomorrow he would be gone from here.

From the window, the Lieutenant-Governor’s aunt saw Harriet lean across so that her head was very close to her companion’s although she was not looking at him.

‘Ralph, I have to explain something to you,’ Harriet said in a low voice. For some reason she wanted to speak truthfully to him, to try and explain something to him, perhaps to make him understand. She perhaps owed that to the man who had crossed the world to find her, and then saved her life, even if she did not love him. She paused as if to gather unspeakable words together; he waited as if transfixed, suddenly staring at her:
had his action made her change her mind?

‘Ralph, you must understand that I have never, never spoken about this, about – my father – to another living person. Even with my sister Mary, she knew of course, there was no need for words, and there were no words for this. I did not know that Lucy guessed. If I have the courage to talk to you now of what is, literally – unspeakable – it is because – of what you have done.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘And because, now, we both have – secrets.’ She felt him staring at her, she took his look, swallowed several times and continued doggedly.

‘Ralph – I would like you to understand something. I think my father has damaged me. Not in the way that perhaps you have—’ she stopped and then made herself continue, ‘imagined – but in another way. I think he has made it impossible for me to—’ she felt her face flush but still she forced herself go on, ‘to wish to – perform my duties as a wife.’

Her words shocked him: this was not how any respectable woman spoke, or thought. But something in her face touched his heart, made him understand that she was bravely pushing away the way women spoke, because she was trying to tell him the truth. For just one moment he let down his guard, as if her honesty had triggered his own.

‘Something happened to me on the journey here, Harriet. I was happy.’

For just a moment their eyes met in something like closeness. And then as if he had already said too much he moved away from her slightly. This time at least she would remember him as a gentleman.

It never occurred to him for a moment that she would remember him as a murderer.

They sat in silence and watched the harbour. The
White Princess
was already loading, small boats plied to and fro from the shore’s edge, carrying flax and timber. It was Harriet who finally spoke.

‘Peters knows you came ashore last night. I would not trust Peters.’

‘I will employ Peters, and he will remain grateful,’ said Lord Ralph. ‘I know how to manage people like Peters.’

The timber and the flax crossed the sand, a group of native women laughed with some of the crew from the
White Princess,
the laughter echoed upwards.

‘You will return to England of course? Your father will have made provision for you.’ Harriet saw that he spoke matter-of-factly, there was no irony in his words. ‘Your brothers will be responsible for you. You will need the protection of your brothers.’

She answered him slowly. ‘No, Ralph. I want to stay here.’

Again she had shocked him.
‘Why?’

She paused before she answered and then she said, ‘I feel at home here. There is something about the space and the air that makes me feel as if I belong.’

‘But you belong, surely, in England, in a civilised country. You could not be happy here for long.’

‘I shall try.’ And she smiled at him, that old remembered smile that lit up her face, and he turned away in pain. He could not know what she was thinking.
In this uncivilised country I have become free.

They sat for some time on the bench in the garden. Dusk was falling. He could not help himself.

‘You will always remember me,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question.

She nodded. ‘Yes, Ralph. I will always remember you.’

So at last he said, ‘It must be reported then, that you have refused me.’ With a touch of his old panache he added: ‘They will not believe it.’

‘No,’ said Harriet gravely. ‘They will not believe it.’

A little later, watched from the drawing room, the two of them walked slowly, not arm in arm but close together, towards the Government House. They made an extraordinarily handsome couple. The wind caught Harriet’s hair. She put up one graceful arm to the side of her head, walked with her hand beside her pale face, holding back her dark hair.

From the window Benjamin, looking out at last as a frisson of excitement shivered over the drawing room at the couple’s return, thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as Harriet Cooper at that moment.

He turned away.

THIRTY-FOUR

Two things were arranged, even if the hoped-for betrothal was not: Sir Benjamin Kingdom would not be returning to England in the meantime, he would walk into the interior of the southern island and see if there was any sign of the existence still of the fabled tall bird, the
moa.
And Lucy was employed, until she got to know the new country and found ways of finding her own dreams, as Harriet’s maid.

The Lieutenant-Governor’s aunt felt extremely angry at Miss Cooper’s foolishness and made so bold as to mention to the world in general that London society might never forgive her. Surely to refuse the proposal of the mighty Kingdom family was unforgivable?

‘I dare say, ma’am,’ said a banking official recently arrived from London, ‘that her brothers will have inherited a great deal of money. Sir Charles Cooper was a very rich man and Miss Cooper will have friends enough.’

‘Not,’ said the Lieutenant-Governor’s aunt in her grandest manner, ‘the people who matter,’ and Mrs Burlington Brown nodded sagely.

Edward Cooper, loyal Edward, bemused by everything that was happening, bowed coldly to the aunt.

‘My cousin will always have the support of her family, ma’am,’ he said stiffly, ‘and her decisions are her own affair.’

*   *   *

Harriet did not go down to the harbour to farewell the
White Princess
on its way to Sydney. Such was the disappointment of her hosts, the Lieutenant-Governor and his wife (not to mention the disapproval of their aunt); such was the incredulous disbelief of Mrs Burlington Brown and Miss Eunice who had never known such an extraordinarily handsome man as Lord Ralph Kingdom, that Harriet deemed it more politic to stay in her room in Government House. (Mr Burlington Brown felt some kind of personal glow, his protégée would stay under his personal care and guidance.) But the others all seemed to imply that it was her
duty
to marry Lord Ralph, she had failed in her duty. They tried to be kind, they tried to put her unfeminine behaviour down to grief; tried to understand that she might want to stay, however briefly, in the country where her father was buried. But everybody felt she had made a most terrible mistake in not accepting Lord Ralph Kingdom’s proposal of marriage, one he had travelled so far to offer. Her cousin Edward particularly, despite his public support, remained uneasy: he felt that there was something else in all this, in the extraordinary appearance of the Kingdom brothers, in Lord Ralph’s pale silence, in Harriet’s containment, that he did not understand. He hurriedly wrote page after page to his family, letters to be sent with the
White Princess,
trying to make sense of all that had happened in the last days. He wrote letters of condolence to Richard and Walter on the loss of their father, to add to Harriet’s brief notes.

And all the time Miss Eunice Burlington Brown watched Edward, hoping for some small sign, her hopes fading as she saw he simply did not notice her. She had read from the newspaper to him, that delicious intimacy: they had been happy. She jealously wondered if Hetty Green still languished round the harbour, her arm tied to a cricket bat. But then she pulled herself up. What was she thinking of? How could she feel jealousy over a
servant?
Edward would not, of course, be thinking of a
servant:
he was kind merely, he had healed her arm. But she had understood that the strange idyll in the little house (it seemed to her an idyll) had bewitched them: all of them in that small rough room in a storm, Harriet seeming to think she could speak of ‘women’s rights’, Hetty drying her hair. Her brother was quite right (and Miss Eunice’s mouth pursed in disapproval): it was
even more important
in a colonial situation for standards to be maintained, for the lower classes to be kept in their place. At least so she tried to comfort herself. But slowly, as Edward did not notice her, as he made plans for his move north to his new piece of land, her hopes faded; miserably she turned her thoughts to living forever, more and more a spinster, with her brother and his wife in this godforsaken, miserable colony, and in private she held her arms around herself, and wept.

*   *   *

On the shore, as they were being loaded, as Quintus ran everywhere, barking with delight (but keeping well away from the sea), the boy George began to scream. He simply refused to go back on the water, nothing could make him set foot in the small boat that rowed them out to mid-harbour: when Ralph tried to lift him he fought and kicked and screamed like an animal possessed.

Finally Benjamin said, ‘Leave him, Ralph, for God’s sake. He is terrified of the sea. I will arrange something.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Ralph, ‘he must learn to be a man. That is what I will teach him.’ And he nodded to the big, burly boatman in waterboots, who picked up the screaming boy bodily, placed him under his arm, and walked out to sea. George was unceremoniously dumped on the bottom of the boat beside a portmanteau of clothes; his piteous screams could be heard as the man rowed imperviously onwards to the
White Princess.

Ralph and Benjamin embraced. They did not speak, for there was too much to say.

*   *   *

Benjamin and Edward stood together on the beach, hearing the capstan begin noisily to raise the anchor, seeing the white sails fill with wind. They waved as the barque turned; Edward thought of his letters, making their way to his dear family; Benjamin thought for a moment of the boy George, back so soon on board ship; waved again to the small, almost invisible figures on the
White Princess.

Somebody called and they turned away from the harbour. The natives were to take Benjamin south that day, the stores were being loaded on to a schooner, there was some question to answer. The two friends shook hands, then Edward went off to arrange nails and Benjamin, his business completed, walked back to the Government House with the Lieutenant-Governor, then excused himself to find Miss Cooper and say goodbye

She sat by the flagpole, watching the
White Princess
intently: did not see or hear Benjamin until he sat beside her.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Benjamin said, ‘What shall you do now?’

‘Lucy and Quintus and I are to join my cousin Edward. He has been given new land.’

He nodded. ‘Edward seems very relieved at another chance to settle. I am glad.’

‘So am I,’ said Harriet. ‘But I will have to learn many things.’

The same bright fantails darted across from tree to tree in the Lieutenant-Governor’s garden; still the flag flapped at the flagpole; Quintus could be seen in a far corner, chasing something with delight.

Then Benjamin said softly, ‘Will you be – all right?’

She looked up at the grey eyes, remembered at once how he had asked her that question in the bookshop in Oxford Street, in another life.

She smiled at him: the smile that took away the strain, and the pain, of what had happened to her.

‘I think I will be all right,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your – kindness to me, Ben. Then. And now.’

They called for Benjamin and he was gone.

And Harriet, shading her eyes from the white Wellington light, watched from the seat in the garden above the harbour the sails of the
White Princess;
saw the barque, tiny now, turn towards the heads and the open sea and then quite disappear. She turned her head slowly towards the hills behind the town, where the rough cemetery lay.