‘Fighting?’ Tim Naylor was intrigued by this new slant to the accident.
Rangi laughed. ‘Not big fighting — push shove, you know how sisters can do?’
‘At the top of the rapid?’
‘Surely. Eh, Eru?’
Eru seemed less sure. ‘No, boss, I was watching captain for a sign. I dint see no fight. But the girl was there sure. Then we was busy with the rope.’ He turned to Rangi. ‘E, Rangi, you think the sister push her in?’
Rangi shrugged. ‘Maybe. Anyway she’s right now, eh, boss?’
When the constable told them the girl was not right in the head — couldn’t speak — the two men were reluctant to say any more. If this was going to be a serious police matter they would rather not remember further details. But both were sure that Bridget McPhee had been on board after the log raft had done its worst and the captain had regained control of the Wairua.
SO NOW, HAVING managed to coax his unwilling horse past the many washouts and muddy spots on the Pipiriki–Raetihi road, and having found no guidance in his police manuals, Constable Tim Naylor has the unpleasant duty of informing Mr Angus McPhee that he sees no benefit in prosecuting any party for the accident. Indeed, on the contrary, it is rumoured that Mr Alexander Hatrick is on the warpath and has the McPhee sawmills in his sights.
The McPhees’ Raetihi sawmill is only a short distance out of town on the road to Ohakune, but even so Naylor saddles his horse. After the last few days’ storm any progress on foot through the sea of mud that blankets Raetihi is an effort. Mrs Punch at the Waimarino Hotel has declared that she will not cross the ‘ridiculously wide’ main road until summer is come. Only yesterday the Hoddle family’s five-year-old daughter fell into the muddy drain just outside their butcher’s shop and was stuck there, only her head above the mud, until her father came to dig her out. A delegation of landowners has petitioned anyone prepared to listen but the roads in and out of the district remain a disgrace.
Naylor edges his horse around a suspiciously smooth patch of mud. If his mount’s leg is broken, policing will come to a standstill in this sodden part of the dominion. He thinks of Pipiriki — the gentle sloping fields and beautiful tree-ferns, a handful of pretty houses looking out over the calm bend of the river. Nothing could be more different from the raw town he now picks his way through. Ahead and to his right, ramparts of unfelled bush crowd darkly against roughly hewn fields. To his left the felled hillside looks even more threatening: ugly spears of half-burnt trunks stand among a mess of fallen timber and the muddy scars of the fellers’ tracks. Clearly the landowner has despaired of finding a sawmiller willing to clear the logs, and has burned off the lot.
Even here in the township timber is left lying. There is simply too much of it. Further south and down in Wanganui they are crying out for timber, but here, the problem is transport: how to get it out? Naylor has seen one landowner walk away, unable to meet his bills. Investors have bought blocks, hoping to lease them to sawmills and thus clear the land for later farming, only to find that even the tough breed of frontier sawmillers cannot find a cheap enough way to get the timber out. Until the railroad is opened, only those serving the overnight needs of the tourists are making much of a living. The railway is the lifeline everyone is holding out for. Next year, surely, they will complete it. A dreadful setback that it will go through Ohakune, not Raetihi as originally hoped, but a branch line has been promised, and in the meantime the road to Ohakune is reasonably flat; the tortuous Pipiriki road is closed yet again with slips.
He passes the grounds of the new school — awash; the tiny Church of England cannot be approached on foot; fences are half finished; soft, sticky, clinging mud is everywhere. Raetihi in the winter of 1907 is a sorry town for most of the inhabitants.
But Tim Naylor is pleased enough. He asked for a frontier placing and the challenge of policing this vast, rough area excites him. His only worry is that if he does not find a wife soon his superiors will move him to a larger station. One-man stations must be staffed by a married policeman. That is the rule. Then the wife can keep the station open while the husband is away on patrol. To date the only unmarried woman he has met has been the frightening McPhee girl. He hopes to avoid her now. The conversation with her father will be awkward enough without the complication of her presence.
POOR ROADS WILL never slow down a McPhee enterprise. Angus McPhee, mud-spattered to his knees, pipe pluming between clenched teeth, stands under a makeshift lean-to that bears a roughly painted sign: McPhee and Son Sawmills. He is supervising the unloading of newly felled totara logs. The giant trunks have been hauled from the nearby bush, along wooden rails. Other mill-owners have laid iron rails but McPhee is in a hurry and the iron is expensive to transport up the river and then from Pipiriki. So his line of six draughthorses must struggle to pull the heavy truck. Naylor, watching the straining horses, hopes that the abundant groundwater will at least lubricate the rough wooden rails.
‘Can you spare a minute?’ he shouts over the racket of the mill.
McPhee looks over, registers the police uniform and nods, none too pleased, it seems, at the interruption. You would think he might be eager for news of his daughter at least. He shouts instructions to his mill-hands and leads the way to his office at the back of the lean-to. Close by, a newly finished house stands in a paddock barren of any blade of grass or shred of foliage. A fence of fresh totara posts encloses the empty field and house. Beyond the fence the great rampart of dark bush looms.
McPhee seems to expect congratulations. ‘Clap your eyes on that!’ he says, pointing with his pipe stem at the stark and lonely homestead. ‘Finest house in town, and completed in two weeks. That is what good planning and hard work can accomplish on this earth. Take note, young man.’
Naylor is not sure whether the admonition is meant as warning or encouragement. He nods and follows McPhee into an icy-cold room, bare of any furniture except a desk and a chair that McPhee immediately inhabits.
‘Well now,’ he says to the standing constable. ‘Well now.’
Tim Naylor is annoyed by the brusque treatment, the lack of even a rudimentary welcome. He clears his throat and comes to the point perhaps more abruptly than he had planned. As McPhee’s red eyebrows lower and meet above his sharp blue eyes, the constable gives his reasons for prosecuting no one in the case of his daughter’s accident.
‘Indeed, sir,’ he finishes, ‘it is common knowledge on the river that it was your own offer that led to the loggers attempting to float down. It is said that Mr Hatrick is contemplating laying charges.’
‘Common knowledge?’ McPhee’s voice rises in pitch to match his anger. ‘It is said? Are these the terms a police constable is taught to use these days? Where is your evidence, young man? Where the sworn statements? Did my mills in Wanganui buy floated logs? Did they?’
‘Ah … I am sure Mr Hatrick will ascertain —’
‘Mr Hatrick has no leg to stand on. He will unearth no transaction concerning floated logs. He charges exorbitant amounts to bring our supplies upriver. He favours his precious tourist trade above us worthy settlers. And he would dare to press charges against me? I think not, Constable. Now, I at least am busy, even if you have nothing better to do than bring me tales of hearsay and tattle.’ McPhee stands, terrier-like, his head thrust forward, red beard jutting.
Tim Naylor stands his ground. ‘There is news of your daughter’s accident and of her well-being, Mr McPhee.’
‘I will gather my own news, if you don’t mind. How can I trust someone who listens to rubbish?’
Angus McPhee strides out of the little room, shouts angry instructions at someone unlucky enough to be within earshot and returns to his noisy mill.
While Tim Naylor is still shaking his head over the fiery Scot, his son, Douglas, slips quickly into the room. Perhaps the boy has been listening. He is clearly embarrassed by his father’s outburst. He looks at the floor. Clears his throat.
‘Sorry,’ is all he can manage. ‘Sorry,
sir.’ And then ‘Ah …’
Naylor waits.
‘Ah … Did you … did you say there was news of Bridget?’
Naylor nods. ‘T ere is news, son. I don’t know if it is happy news. The Sisters at Jerusalem say she is well … and happy in a way. But her condition is unchanged. She seems not to understand more than a small child might. The Sisters are trying some of Mother Aubert’s famous remedies. They suggest she stays with them for a little longer. Can you tell your stepmother this?’
Douglas nods. He stands there, shoulders drooping.
Naylor is not sure whether to offer his other news, but in the end speaks, perhaps out of a desire to see some reaction from this boy, who is as annoyingly spiritless as his father is fiery.
‘The deckhands have reported,’ he says, ‘that your sister was still aboard some time after the collision. They both saw her with — Gertie — at the head of the rapid.’
If Naylor wished to provoke a response he certainly succeeded. Douglas’s head shoots up. ‘With Gertie? My sister?’
‘Yes. They say there was an argument. Some pushing and shoving, they said. It is possible that she fell overboard at that time.’
‘Oh,’ says Douglas. He is breathing hard, his eyes bright. ‘Oh.’
‘I have told your father that I do not consider prosecution is in order.’
‘Does Gertie know this?’
‘Presumably she has always known it.’
‘No but … have you told her?’
Tim Naylor watches as the boy’s pale cheeks flush with what looks like a deep pleasure. What a strange family this is!
‘No,’ he says gently, suspecting that the sister has been persecuting this withdrawn fellow. ‘Perhaps you would tell her from me?’
Douglas cannot keep his pleasure hidden. ‘Yes. I will. Thank you.’ He looks directly at the constable for the first time. ‘Did you see Bridget?’
Tim Naylor smiles at the memory. ‘I did, yes. She is walking now — in fact wandering more than the Sisters would like. And has a smile for everyone. But you must be prepared for a change in her. The Sisters think that since she has not improved in her speech or childish ways after two weeks, perhaps the damage is permanent.’
The constable had enjoyed his ride down to Jerusalem on a rare sunny day, the river sparkling and the banks lush after the recent storm. The Sisters had welcomed him with a splendid meal and taken him on a tour of their many enterprises. ‘Our little Bridie’, as they called Bridget, had walked with him, often holding his hand in a way that somehow disturbed him — the touch was so childish, but the hand so soft and adult. And to look in her face — which he did only once — also unnerved him. She was beautiful, calm, and yet beyond that beauty — nothing. No spark of give and take, no teasing pressure of fingers, no show of fear or anger. Simply a pleasant smile — and what did that signify?
Tim Naylor does not speak of this impression to the boy. ‘You should visit her,’ he says. The Sisters had been puzzled by the lack of interest the family seemed to take in their beautiful, simple Bridie. ‘Perhaps you can help her to remember her old life.’
Douglas smiles — an odd, lost expression. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to remember,’ he says. ‘She might be happier.’
‘Buck up, lad,’ says Naylor, irritated by the lassitude that seems to blanket the lanky boy. ‘Go down and see her. It will do you both good.’
‘I won’t be allowed,’ says Douglas flatly. He has a thought. ‘Could you take me down with you when you go next? Could you tell my father?’
‘No,’ says Naylor. ‘I have other areas to visit next. You’ll have to tell him yourself. Or just go. Hape is taking his bullock train down tomorrow. There’s a load of supplies to be brought up to the railway camps. He might be glad of a hand with a shovel over the slips.’
The lad nods, but the constable has not much hope that he will act on the advice. He leaves Douglas to his thoughts and walks back to his horse. It is raining again.
Riding back to the station, the constable sees a notice pinned to the new Social Hall. He leans down to read it.
Anti Asiatic League
Local Branch meeting Saturday October 5th 6.30 pm
Come and hear Mr Angus McPhee speak on what we must do to contain the spread of the Yellow Peril within our frontier town.
Signed A. Nicol, Branch Secretary
Tim Naylor is intrigued. How does the worthy Angus McPhee deal with the fact that Charlie Chee, one of the dreaded ‘Yellow Peril’, possibly saved his daughter’s life?
BACK AT THE mill Douglas, trembling but for once resolved, faces his father.
‘I am not cut out for this life,’ he says, the words tumbling out before his courage fails. ‘Engineering is what I like, Father, and the river. I will do well there. I will only fail at sawmilling.’
‘You young puppy! Don’t you dare speak to me like that! You’ll do what I say!’ Angus McPhee’s rage is prolonged and white hot. A day earlier Douglas might have submitted to the rant: the demand to follow family tradition, to feel some pride in his father’s work and gratitude for the sustenance it has afforded him thus far. And so on. But this day Douglas simply walks out. Turns on his heel, marches away from his raging father and the mill, runs across the field and up to his room, where he gathers clothes into a sack. His stepmother watches from the doorway but makes no plea for him to stay.
The younger ones are at school. ‘Say goodbye to them for me,’ mutters Douglas to his silent stepmother. Then, breathing quickly, dizzy with excitement, he charges downstairs in search of Gertie. He finds her in the dining room, laying out a paper pattern on new cloth for a dress. He watches her for a moment. She’s aware of him but doesn’t bother to turn.
He shouts at her back. ‘The accident. You knew it wasn’t me. You knew all the time. You pushed her yourself!’
‘What rubbish.’ Gertie is never one to admit fault. ‘Who told you such nonsense?’
‘The constable. He said the deckhands saw it and reported to him.’
That stops her in her tracks. Gertie grows pale. The piece of cloth she’s cutting falls to the floor. ‘Tim Naylor? He said that?’
‘He said for me to let you know. He said he would not be pressing charges unless someone laid a complaint.’
‘Oh.’ Gertie turns away from him. Douglas thinks she might be in tears for the first time that he can remember. Rages, tantrums and shouting matches, yes, but tears never. ‘Oh,’ she says again. And then, in a terrible cold rage, ‘Go away.’
And he goes. Out of the house and down to the bullocky. ‘I’m going to be a riverman,’ he says proudly. ‘Will you give me a lift to Pipiriki?’
‘If you’re handy with a spade and don’t mind muddy shanks, you’re welcome,’ says Hape.
Douglas doesn’t look back.
Summer 1908
Danny’s Obsession
NO ONE TALKED much about Danny’s obsession. At first, of course, no one knew. He lived way upriver, off the beaten track. He would come down to the landing at Maraekowhai with his wool clip or to collect supplies, would laugh and chat with the river men, would sometimes stay to sing with his wife for the tourists; that was about it, as far as Danny’s social life went. Once a year his wife brought him to church at Jerusalem (if they were lucky and no emergency at the farm presented itself). He would sit in his pew, hair neatly trimmed, threadbare suit freshly pressed; he would sing the hymns in a voice that rose above the rest, then shake hands with Father Soulas and tease the Sisters until they blushed like children. Everyone on the river liked Danny — for his charm and for the fact that their own Stella loved him.
Behind his back, though, they were less admiring. Stella deserved better; why was the farm not prospering? Where were the children Stella so longed for? Stella’s lack of new clothes was observed. It was whispered that she still cooked on an open hearth. That she wore cast-off shoes donated by the Houseboat captain’s wife. Danny, who longed to shower gifts on his wife, who dreamed of
showing off his wealth in extravagant ways, noticed the way their eyes slid sideways sometimes when he talked. He didn’t fit, down at Jerusalem; he had been brought up Catholic, true, but Irish Catholic, a good few steps down the ladder from the sophisticated Europeans who led the river missions. At any rate Danny had left his religious ways back home in County Cork: he had not been to Mass in all the years he wandered. When he married into the Morrow family his appearance was expected at Mass for Easter and Christmas at the very least, naturally, but faith ran very shallow in Danny’s veins, that was plain to see.
Down at Jerusalem Danny could not keep up his high-spirited blarney. He became uneasy when his wife chatted at length with the Sisters and exchanged news with friends she had grown up with. Most of these people had been to school, could read the newspapers and follow what was happening in the world. Danny, who could not read or write well, felt ill at ease in this literate company. He would smile, friendly enough, but the river folk noticed that he was always first back in Bert’s motor-waka for the trip back to Pipiriki and Sunday dinner.
Poor men were not unusual in these parts: Danny was not alone in that respect. He was pitied sometimes for his poor farm and his bad luck, as were many others, but Danny was known to be a good husband at least, neither drunkard nor violent. More than a few farmers upriver went to the bad one way or another when hard times hit. Or killed themselves — the coward’s way out, as Father Soulas would point out from the pulpit — abhorrent to God and earning damnation of the soul.
Danny would never take the coward’s way out of his troubles, you could be reasonably sure of that. He soldiered on, cheerful enough. A naturally sunny nature, all agreed, and likeable. So when people began to notice his strange behaviour they kept it to themselves at first, thinking that they had been mistaken or that there was another explanation. When he was seen more often down at Jerusalem the river people thought maybe he had come to help with the building there. And his visits to Pipiriki were put down to family concerns — keeping an eye on his inlaws’ well-being.
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