by Sarah Lark
“Well, you are supposed to take in lots of fluids,” said Peter with mordant mockery. “Vomiting dries you out. I am truly sorry, Violet. And I feel a little guilty. If it weren’t for us, your father would never have come upon the idea of emigrating. We’ve already inquired if there’s still a cabin above we could book for you, but everything’s taken.”
The Burtons shared a cabin with Heather for the journey. However, the pastor was by nature discreet, and Kathleen had sewn a curtain before their departure, which created a tiny private space for Heather.
Violet nodded gratefully but did not reveal that she had made New Zealand so appealing. As for the offer of a cabin, she would have taken it, even if she could never have worked it off. She would have done just about anything to escape the moist, stinking nightmare in steerage.
“In a few weeks, it’ll be better,” the pastor comforted her. “Once we reach the Bay of Biscay, it’ll get warmer, and the seas will be calmer.”
Kathleen nodded. “But before that, a few of the toilets will overflow in steerage. Brace yourself, Violet. And try to keep Rosie halfway warm and dry. Besides that, you need to eat as much as you can. Heather will keep bringing something down for you, and the portions down here aren’t too small, are they?”
Violet shook her head. Though the food, usually a hearty soup of potatoes and cabbage, was always cold when it got to the cabins—the passengers had to pick it up in the galley and carry it to their berths—it sufficed, particularly since Jim and Fred were sticking to liquid nourishment.
“There’s hardly a passage without an outbreak of disease aboard,” Kathleen warned. “And that’s when the smallest and weakest die. So, keep an eye on Rosie.”
“If cholera does break out, I’ll smuggle her above,” Heather said. “No one will look behind my curtain.”
The weather improved after the first four weeks of the journey. As they sailed around Africa, occasionally land came into view, and the ocean sometimes lay smooth as a mirror in front of the ship. The captain was not as enthusiastic about the calm weather as his passengers. With less wind, the trip was slower, but the travelers saw dolphins and whales, which accompanied the boat.
Heather explained the peculiarities of the sea creatures to Violet, finding ever more joy in spending time with the bright girl. “They’re not fish. They bring their young into the world alive and suckle them, and they have to emerge now and again to catch their breath. Sailors tell stories of castaways saved by dolphins.”
“But the whale ate Jonas,” Violet argued skeptically, using her Sunday school knowledge.
“That needs to be viewed metaphorically,” the pastor responded, but then shied away from a more detailed explanation.
“Don’t get any ideas about preaching that,” Kathleen advised Peter, whose tendency to interpret the Bible metaphorically created difficulties with his bishop. At the request of the captain, Peter was now holding Sunday service on the upper deck. He had only offered when the passengers in steerage received permission to take part.
“God does not differentiate,” Peter had declared firmly, and immediately recruited a few Irish musicians to accompany his flock’s singing with fiddle and flute.
So, on Sunday, church service rang out with many voices from above deck—while every evening during the week, drinking songs echoed up from below. Past their first fits of homesickness, the people in steerage now celebrated their departure for a new land with music and dance in the narrow cabins. As if by a miracle, plenty of whiskey and gin always found its way there too.
Some of the crew traded in the booze secretly smuggled on board. Jim, Fred, and Eric were drunk every night, and Violet and Rosie’s inheritance was being swallowed up.
“At least we have peace at night,” mused Violet. “They come back late into the cabin. Rosie’s already asleep, and I pretend I am.”
Violet used the nights to browse through the books Heather had given her. She could hardly glean any coherent story from David Copperfield and Oliver Twist; when she had arduously made her way through one page, she had already forgotten what was on the previous one, but she tried. She desperately wished for a better life, and learning to read could only help.
Eight weeks of travel had passed, and the weather had become consistently good over the past month. Violet began to believe the Burtons’ claim that in New Zealand winter was summer and vice versa. However, heat was not much easier to bear in steerage than the cold and wet. It was stuffy, and the stench of the unwashed bodies, the still-overflowing latrines, and the eternal cabbage soup combined into an unbearable strain. The thought of the ship’s food nauseated Violet, though now she had to fight even to get her and Rosie’s share. The men had recovered their appetites, but they weren’t willing to get their own portions.
“That’s woman’s work,” Fred declared when Violet asked him for help.
It was not that much to walk to the galley three times daily, but just as her father and brother were feeling better, so were the other troublemakers on board. Every day, Violet’s path from the kitchen to their lodgings became more of a gauntlet. Young boys would wait in the passageways and demand a “toll,” and the older boys pinched the butts of adolescent girls or groped their breasts when they tried to get through with the precious food containers. The first time, Violet dropped the pot in fright, but she soon discovered that her father’s blows hurt more than the unwelcome fondling.
She had come to share her portion of food with a defender, a squarely built young brawler from London who was less interested in girls than food. He escorted Violet and other girls through the ship’s hold unmolested, and Violet paid him for it with her food. If it were not for Heather and the Burtons’ daily contributions, she would have starved.
Then, however, a fever broke out, and the passageways between the decks were blocked.
“So you don’t bring your fleas up with you,” one of the crew explained to Violet who had wanted to attend Sunday service with Rosie. “See, the doctor says that’s what carries it.”
The Burtons disobeyed the order not to visit steerage. Heather was horrified at the conditions, and Peter gave last rites to two women. Only Kathleen remained composed.
“I don’t believe for a moment that there’s a real outbreak,” she declared. “During my first passage, it was chickenpox. Fortunately, I’d already had it, and the others in my cabin too. But I think we had twenty dead during the journey.”
Peter, who had run a hospital during his time in the goldfields, agreed with her. “It’s not cholera. Keep Rosie clean, Violet, and nothing should happen.”
Indeed, the two women remained the only fatalities, and in Violet’s cabin, only Fred got sick. Violet and Rosie followed Kathleen’s advice to spend time on deck. Their London protector, whom Peter affectionately called Bulldog, which filled the lad with giantlike pride, pocketed a few coins from Heather and, in exchange, secured his best customers a sleeping place in a lifeboat. Heather sacrificed the curtain from her berth to serve as an awning for Violet and Rosie.
“Bulldog is good for other things too,” reported Violet. “The men catch fish and grill them on deck, and he makes sure we get some.”
“For free?” Heather marveled.
Violet nodded. “He’s a fool for Rosie. She reminds him of his little sister in London.”
Heather lifted her eyes and hands to the sky. “If only he’d start preaching peace and love.”
“I hope not.” Violet was horrified. “Yesterday he beat up three boys because they wanted to steal your curtain.”
“And now, what ocean is this?” Violet asked Heather after they had not seen land in more than two weeks. Violet was continually taken aback that there were several oceans, and it was a mystery to her how the sailors oriented themselves.
“The Indian Ocean,” Heather answered. “We’re sailing straight across. The sailors say this is the most dangerous part of the journey. There’s no land for hundreds of miles. But we seem to be in luck. The weather is
good. A few more weeks, and we’ll have made it.”
Indeed, the rest of the journey passed peacefully. Life on board had settled down, especially given how weak even the strongest had become under the awful conditions. Violet examined Rosie every day for lice and fleas, and Bulldog collected rainwater for the girls to wash themselves. Unfortunately, the nights grew cooler again when the ship reached the Tasman Sea, and Violet and Rosie had to move back into the filthy cabin. In Violet’s absence, no one had cleaned.
“I’m not sure if I wouldn’t prefer to freeze,” Violet unhappily mused to Bulldog.
“Go enjoy yourself on deck for a couple hours,” he said to Violet, who was just then emptying another wash bucket into the sea. “I’ll round up the lads.”
To Violet’s complete amazement, Fred and Eric appeared repeatedly on deck with full buckets. When Bulldog brought the girls back below deck, the cabin did not exactly gleam with cleanliness, but it was bearable.
“I couldn’t get your dad up, though,” Bulldog said. Jim Paisley snored in his berth. “Looks like he took his load again yesterday. Just where’s he get the money?”
Violet knew if it continued like this, they would not even have a penny to make it through the first few weeks in New Zealand. Yet the money from the sale of the house in Treorchy should have supported the family for some time, until Jim and Fred found work.
“We’re almost there,” Heather comforted Violet. “Two weeks at most. Oh, I can’t wait to hear from Chloe. No word from her in three months. She’s probably pregnant already.”
Despite their separation, Chloe and Heather had remained good friends. The postal service between the South and North Islands was good. They wrote each other regularly. In England, however, Heather had only received one letter in which Chloe had complained she wasn’t yet pregnant. Yet surely that was just a question of time. One could read between the lines that Chloe and Terrence were trying, to their mutual bliss.
“Has your father told you yet what he’s thinking of doing in New Zealand?” Kathleen asked Violet. “He knows there’s no coal near Dunedin, right?”
“Well, I’m going looking for gold,” Bulldog interjected. “They’ve got that, right?” He sounded only mildly concerned.
Kathleen laughed. “We had it. But the fields directly around Dunedin are mostly exhausted. Now, you’ll have to head to Queenstown. But it’s not all that far, unlike the coal-mining cities. Greymouth and Westport are on the other side of the island.”
Bulldog shrugged. “I prefer looking for gold to coal. I’m gonna get rich. Right, Reverend? You were in the goldfields. You know.”
Peter Burton turned his gaze toward heaven and folded his hands theatrically. “In this case, I can say the words, ‘Everything lies in God’s hands’ in good conscience. Usually I like to add that you ought to help a bit, too, but in gold mining, it’s really a matter of luck. Most of the miners are hardworking, Bulldog. Many shovel till they keel over. But few get rich. So, practice your praying.”
Bulldog shrugged. “I can do that while I dig,” he said.
The captain called all passengers onto the deck as the coast of the South Island appeared on the horizon after more than three months of travel. Kathleen again felt reminded of her first arrival—and was happy that this homecoming took a very different form. Back then, the weather had been foggy and overcast, the view of the tiny town of Lyttelton cheerless, her contractions painful. Today, it was sunny, and the coast showed off its dark beaches and bright cliffs, from behind which green forested hills greeted them. Here and there they saw small settlements, brightly painted houses, and boats from which fishers waved. Dunedin presented itself beautifully, and it was framed by shimmering blue bays, behind which Otago’s mountains rose majestically. The hills were green, but Peter told the attentive Bulldog that once they had been white with tents when on a single day sixty ships of gold seekers had arrived.
“The city could hardly manage the onslaught. The people who sold digging supplies and tents became rich within a few days.”
“And what happened to all the arrivals?” Violet asked.
The pastor shrugged. “Most of them are probably still here. Others are still moving from one goldfield to the next, but most prospectors eventually decided to seek other employment, perhaps doing what they were trained in back home. Sometimes the gold does suffice for a modest existence: a shop, a farm, a workshop. New Zealand still has room for everyone, Violet. You don’t need to worry. If your father and brother are willing to work . . .”
Violet sighed. That was precisely what worried her.
That afternoon, after spending hours gathering together her father’s and brother’s things—the two of them were so taken with the view of their new city that it did not even occur to them to clean out their cabin—Violet was once again in a more optimistic mood. She fell in love with Dunedin as soon as they left the ship.
The city was not a coal-mining town like Treherbert but not as big as London either. And Dunedin looked clean. All the buildings and streets shone as if freshly polished in the sunlight and unbelievably clear air. Violet felt she could almost grab the mountains behind the city with her hands; they seemed so near, and their contours appeared so sharp. On their peaks lay snow, which Violet admired.
“You’ll get enough of it if you stay in this region,” Heather laughed. “It snows all over Otago in the winter, but luckily it’s summer now.”
It was the beginning of February. Violet felt she was in a fairy tale for a few heartbeats. But then reality caught up to her. Her father and the two boys trampled across the gangplank, laughing at the feeling the ground was still swaying beneath them. Violet had the same feeling. It almost made her dizzy.
“That will pass in a few days.” Kathleen smiled, especially sensitive to it herself. She leaned on her husband who offered her his arm.
“Dearest, today I’ll carry you over whatever threshold you want,” he joked.
Jim, Fred, and Eric looked with hazy eyes into the clear air. Wild confusion surrounded them. A few immigrants fell to their knees and thanked God for their safe arrival while others threw themselves into the arms of friends and relatives. Most of them hauled their luggage, trying to keep their excited children under control.
Violet clung to her bag; Rosie clung to Violet.
“What’s going to become of you?” asked Heather.
She seemed a bit torn. Kathleen was already hugging her friend Claire who had come to the harbor in a delivery wagon that was painted black with gold lettering—“The Gold Mine Boutique”—to pick up the Burtons. Heather wanted to run to Claire and ask about Chloe, but she wasn’t ready to leave Violet and Rosie to a fate named Jim Paisley, who was already directing himself, Fred, and Eric to the nearest pub.
Violet tugged on his jacket. “Dad, perhaps we should look for a place to stay first. We will need a bed for tonight.”
Jim shook his head, laughing. “Nonsense. After a drink, we’re headed straight to Greymouth. Why should I pay for a hotel tonight when we want to find work starting tomorrow?” Jim seemed to believe the coal-mining towns were around the corner. “You two stay here and watch the bags, and we’ll be back in a jiffy.” Violet’s father set down his dirty duffel bag, sat Rosie down on top of it, and steered the boys in the direction of the pub.
“Is there really a night train?” Violet asked.
Heather shook her head. “I don’t believe so. As far as I know, there’s still no train to the west coast. You’ll have to go to Christchurch first, through the plains. It’s quite a long journey.”
Violet blanched at the thought of a journey organized by her father. “Can’t you take us with you?” she asked desperately.
Heather wavered. She would have been only too happy to do so, but her parents would not play along, despite the sympathetic look Kathleen was casting yet again at the girls. Violet and Rosie were minors. They couldn’t be taken from their father. And Heather could see that Kathleen and Peter were withdrawing, eve
n though they had guilty consciences. There wasn’t much Heather could do, but she did not want to leave the girls to fend for themselves. She scribbled the address of her stepfather’s parish on a piece of paper.
“Violet, if all else fails, come to us and sleep in the church. Peter often takes in new arrivals. Many come without any money or the slightest idea what awaits them. Here.”
She pressed a pound into the girl’s hand. “Take that, but don’t give it to your father. Otherwise you’ll spend all night here while he drinks it away. There are cabs, so, if all else fails . . .”
Heather kissed the girls good-bye. Then she turned and walked toward her friends and family. Kathleen and Reverend Burton waved to Violet and Rosie. The little wagon drove off.
Violet felt utterly alone.
Chapter 2
Matariki moved as quickly as she could; the cold kept her from resting too often or for too long. Her dancing dress offered almost no protection from the elements. The chieftain’s cloak kept out the cold and rain considerably better. Matariki, however, did not want to get it dirty by sleeping with it on the ground. Even when she had to slog through thick undergrowth or muddy areas, she took it off. The feathered cloak was valuable, and she hoped to make enough money from its sale to telegraph her parents and keep herself fed until someone came to bring her home.
The area Matariki was struggling through was hilly at first, but then became flatter, which seemed strange to her. After all, the city of Hamilton lay near Mount Pirongia, a forested mountain of which the Hauhau had spoken reverentially. The mountain seemed rather small in comparison with the southern peaks on her home island, but at least Matariki could orient herself by Pirongia’s peak. It had also been visible from Kahu Heke’s camp. The Waikato River flowed through Hamilton, which was built on the rubble of several Maori villages and fortresses. Kahu Heke had depicted that to his followers as a sacrilege of the whites; however, Matariki had learned that those settlements had long been abandoned when the pakeha arrived.
