by Sarah Lark
“An acquaintance of mine helped them open a bank,” he explained. “He owns a bank in Wellington and wanted to talk them into a branch of his bank, but they wanted to do everything. They certainly do have some smart ones among them. Money transfers function seamlessly.”
“They have a bank?” Matariki marveled. “With a Maori manager, Maori tellers?”
The banker nodded. “Yes. White people are welcomed as visitors, but only Maori can live and work in Parihaka. They have their own police, craftsmen, and industrial agriculture.”
Matariki wondered what her parents might think of it, but she was curious herself. In the evening, to meet with the students at the university, she put on a simple dress and braced for anything from a haka to a Bible reading. Nothing of the sort awaited her. The seven students, four boys and three girls, met in a tiny apartment the boys shared.
“It was cheaper than rooms in a boardinghouse,” Hori, the oldest, explained. “Plus, those are hard for us to find.” He pointed to the tattoos on his face. Hori and Eti had many, and they twined around their eyes, nose, and cheeks. The other boys were decorated with fewer moko. Of the girls, two had moko around the mouth.
“Girls are only tattooed around the mouth to show that the gods gave women the breath of life,” Kanono explained, grinning, “not men, as the Bible says.”
Matariki laughed. She hadn’t expected to like the young people. They had welcomed Matariki and Kupe graciously and happily shared beer with them as they talked.
“The Ngai Tahu rarely tattoo themselves anymore,” said Matariki.
“We don’t do it much anymore in Parihaka either,” said Kanono, “particularly since it’s not without its dangers. Our doctors and nurses complain whenever they have to treat another screaming child with inflamed moko.”
Kanono studied medicine. She wanted to be a doctor in Parihaka.
“It’s a shame, though,” said Arona, a tall girl with black hair that fell straight down her back. “It’s something of ours; it’s part of our tribal rituals, tikanga, you know. If we don’t do it anymore—”
The others groaned.
“Arona is our tohunga when it comes to tradition,” Kanono teased. “If it were up to her, she would spin flax while she reads Shakespeare.”
Arona was studying English literature.
“Someday people will also read our poets and study our customs,” Arona said. She was not easily perturbed. “Pakeha and Maori art and literature will stand side by side, of equal value. We’re fighting for that in Parihaka as well.”
“For a Maori Shakespeare?” asked Matariki. “And for that you need to study English?”
“She’s already studied Maori,” Keke, the youngest of the girls, said. Keke was very pretty and not tattooed. She was lighter skinned than the others. Perhaps one of her parents was pakeha. Matariki liked her most. “Arona really is a tohunga. She’s the daughter of a matauranga o te”—a high-ranking priest or priestess—“and she studied with her mother before she came here. During the powhiri, she lets out the karanga in the marae of the Ngati Pau.”
Matariki eyed the girl with newfound respect.
“We’re all pretty young in Parihaka,” Arona said. “The old aren’t going to leave their tribes, but many of us were sent by our elders. My mother wanted me to represent the Ngati Pau. Others come on their own because they want to try something between the Maori and pakeha, the best of both worlds.”
Kupe glanced at Matariki. She looked impressed.
“But it’s not a religion?” Matariki asked.
Keke shook her head, scratching Dingo. “No, you can follow any religion you want. The philosophy is naturally influenced by various religions, though, especially Christianity.”
A few of the others booed her, but Keke would not be deterred. Philosophy was her passion, although she actually studied law. “Te Whiti says things like, ‘When a pakeha hits you, don’t hit him back.’ Do you really believe he would have come up with that without reading the Sermon on the Mount first?”
“Who is this Te Whiti, anyway?” Matariki asked. She still had her reservations about the charismatic leader of the Parihaka. She kept thinking of Kahu Heke and the dependence of his preaching on Te Ua Haumene. He, too, had jumbled together Christian and Maori traditions.
“He’s a chieftain’s son,” explained Eti, “from the Ngati Tawhirikura. His father was not an important ariki, but he had his son educated by Maori elders—by Maori who could read and write—and then by a Lutheran missionary, too, a German. Te Whiti was chosen chieftain, fought in Taranaki, but it became clear to him that bloodshed is not a solution.”
“Certainly not when the others have guns,” said Matariki.
Arona laughed. “A good ariki is also always a good diplomat,” she said. “Te Whiti might have had that very thought, but he did better not to speak it. The Romans had more spears than the early Christians. And who won?”
“But we’re not the chosen people, are we?” Matariki rolled her eyes.
“Of course,” Keke giggled, and passed the beer around. “Especially those of us in Parihaka. We’re going to change the world.”
Chapter 11
Violet had tried hard to make the house in the miners’ settlement halfway habitable, but she couldn’t do anything about the fact that it was a primitive hut without ventilation, a latrine, or a bathtub. They could have gotten a washtub, but Jim and Fred didn’t much care, even though they returned from the mine every day black with the greasy coal dust. In Treherbert, Ellen had always had a bowl of hot, soapy water waiting for them. When Violet did likewise on the first evening, she earned only curses and a slap instead of praise. Water had to be carried from a central location, and it was expensive. The alternative was the river, but it was half a mile away, and the wastewater from the camps, the town, and the mines was deposited there.
“Could you wash up at the mine?” Violet asked shyly. They could not go without cleaning themselves. Violet thought of her mother’s cherished linens, which she had brought along. If Jim and Fred went to bed as they were, the sheets would be black within a night.
Jim Paisley laughed. “In that mine? What a joke, Violet. This mine is a shithole. Biller runs the business as cheaply as he can. No washrooms, hardly any lamps, and the ventilation is miserable. I don’t know if I want to grow old here, sweetheart. There has to be something better, and I told the foreman that too.”
Violet groaned. Problems from the start. Her father should have expected that the working conditions in Greymouth would be worse than in Wales. One only had to look at the settlement and compare it with the simple but solid mining houses in Treherbert. Violet would never have thought that she would look back with nostalgia on her life there, but she was already at her wits’ end.
Worse still was having hardly any furniture. Violet had scrubbed the old table and two chairs, but the primitive wood beds were simply too filthy to use. She had made herself and Rosie a nest of blankets, but she needed to figure out something better. She thought of curtains, like those Heather had in the cabin on the ship and the ones Clarisse and her friends had in their house. A little privacy would be nice, but she couldn’t get money from her father for that.
Jim and Fred were never too tired or poor to go to the pub. Without a word of thanks, they spooned down the vegetable soup Violet had cooked on the open fire, and then they went on their way. Neither the rain nor the long road to town bothered them.
Violet watched them go, and she thought how unusual the quiet was. She hardly heard any voices, let alone fighting. In Treherbert, you always heard the neighbors, and you could hear every noise coming from the ship’s cabins, but in Greymouth . . .
Violet closed the door anxiously when she realized that most of the men in the settlement simply had no one with whom to argue. Other than her own, there were only three families with women and children. The men lived alone or shared a hut with a friend. In the evening, hardly any of them were at home; they thought of the pub as their l
iving room.
When they came back, it could be dangerous for the girls. Violet decided to invest a bit of her money in a good padlock—even at the risk of her father beating her for not getting up fast enough to answer the door when he returned home at night.
Neither the passing of time nor trying to adapt improved life in Billertown. Violet continued to suffer from the filth, the stench, and the long distances. She had to go to town daily to shop, and her father made her beg for every penny she needed to take care of them. Often he would not even cough that up until he came home to no food on the table and then punished Violet for her negligence. Walking to town in the evening, however, was worse than the slap. She had to leave Rosie alone, and although Violet usually made the trip there with Jim and Fred, who were heading for the pub, on the way home, she was alone. She fled fearfully into the woods on the side of the road whenever men approached. Thankfully, they weren’t usually drunk at that hour, so nothing more happened than a few catcalls. Occasionally, there were even polite greetings.
Not all the miners were idiotic drunks. Actually, it was mostly the opposite. Most of the boys had departed England and Wales to seek their fortune in New Zealand. They had saved money and gathered their courage and strength to work hard, seek a wife, and start a family. They had no way of knowing what awaited them in the new country, but still, most did what they could to get closer to their dream. They went to the pub, too, but only for a beer or two. Like Clarisse, they saved the rest of their money for a small house or a business in town.
There was a serious boy who always joined Violet on the way to church and told her about his plans for the future. She ignored his offer to formally escort her to church, just as she ignored the double entendres and flattery of the more forward boys. No foreman or craftsman from town ever chatted with her. Probably she looked too young for the men from better circles.
You only have to make it through a few years. Just don’t fall in love. Take care of yourself. Kathleen and Clarisse’s warnings shot through Violet’s head every time she saw a young man, and she was determined to heed those warnings.
A few months after her arrival in Greymouth, Violet’s money had run out. Her last coins went to medicine. The whole spring had been rainy, and Rosie had been fighting a bad cough for weeks. One of the three small children in the settlement had died of the same cough in October, and the thought of the same thing happening to her sister made Violet panic. Children did not die from a cold, but Rosie was running a high fever. Violet took her to the gravedigger’s wife, who worked as a midwife and doctor’s assistant. People joked that she helped her husband’s business, but Violet had a good impression of Mrs. Travers, who was professional and friendly. She examined Rosie gently and carefully, and then gave Violet sage tea and cough syrup from the blossoms of the rongoa bush.
“I grow the sage myself, and the cough syrup is a Maori recipe,” she said. “Make her tea, give her the syrup, and most of all, keep her warm and dry. See if you can’t come upon a flue for your hut. Smoke is the worst. It settles in the lungs. And give her plenty to eat. She’s still all skin and bones. You, too, of course.”
Violet desperately made a hole in the roof of the hut herself. It did not help much, particularly now that the rain got inside, which made the fire smoke more. But, at least in dry weather, the air in the hut was slightly improved.
How she was supposed to feed Rosie better, however, Violet did not know. Her father was not willing to put out more money than he did for food even though there was hardly enough for bread, a few sweet potatoes, and bones, with which Violet made soup for the men. Jim and Fred demanded something warm in their stomachs after work, but they complained about the soup. What they did not eat, Violet gave to Rosie. She mostly went to bed hungry herself. Violet did not need Mrs. Travers to tell her that it could not go on like this. With her own money long gone, she contemplated how she could help feed the family. While trying to fish for trout, which were supposed to be plentiful in summer, she came upon Clarisse.
“You’re not even curtsying anymore,” Clarisse said in a tone between questioning and teasing when Violet gave her a tired greeting.
Violet stood barefoot in the freezing stream, watching the occasional fish rush by. How was she supposed to catch them?
“No time,” Violet sighed. “Can you fish, Miss Baton?”
Clarisse sat down on the bank of the stream and smiled. “No. I only know that the Maori do it with traps and the pakeha with hooks. They’re good at it here. We always get fresh fish.”
Violet could imagine what the fishers got in return. But that no longer shocked her. She wondered about asking one of the well-mannered boys about his knowledge of fishing.
Clarisse played with the ferns on which she had sat. “You don’t look well, dear,” she said sympathetically.
Violet soldiered on with her fish catching. She thought a trap was a good idea and held her shawl in the water, hoping to catch a trout that way. Clarisse did not think it likely.
“Why didn’t you ever come visit us?”
Violet shrugged. “There are only three women in the camp,” she said bitterly, “but they’re replacement enough for all the gossipmongers in Treherbert. If I visit you, they’ll tell their husbands the next day, and then my father’ll hear it during his next shift.”
Clarisse nodded knowingly. “And he’s just looking for an excuse to take his mood out on you, isn’t he?” She noticed a swollen blue area under one of Violet’s eyes.
Violet did not respond.
“Does he touch you?” asked Clarisse.
Violet furrowed her brow.
“Does he touch you or Rosie, um, improperly?” Clarisse reformulated her question.
Violet shook her head.
“You’re lucky,” the older woman said.
Violet looked up in disbelief. That was the first time anyone had viewed her father as a stroke of luck.
“It could always be worse,” said Clarisse. “Believe me.”
She sounded as if she had experience with that. Violet did not inquire further.
“Mine did it from the time I was six,” Clarisse continued, “and Mother kept quiet. For the family’s honor. I don’t come from nothing, you know. My father was a cabinetmaker in Christchurch. He made good money, could have stuck to corner girls when my mom did not want to. But they were too old for him.”
“Didn’t you tell anyone else?” asked Violet, stepping out of the stream.
It wasn’t worth freezing her feet off for the tiny chance of catching a fish. The ferns on the bank were warm from the sun.
Clarisse shrugged. “The priest. Afterward I had to pray five Our Fathers first; then my father made me really beg for mercy. People don’t believe these things. Especially not from girls of ‘good’ families.” She spat the last words out.
It was becoming clear to Violet why Clarisse was determined not to fall in love and to start a brothel rather than a family.
“I need work desperately,” Violet said quietly, sitting next to Clarisse.
“A moment ago, you were scared to even visit us, and now you want to join us?”
Violet shook her head. “No. No, I, I can’t. My, my mother was an honest woman.”
Clarisse sighed. “And you don’t want to mar her memory. I understand. Besides, your father’d kill you. So, why are you asking?”
Though still ice-cold, Violet’s feet were dry now, at least. She put her stockings back on while trying not to let Clarisse see the multitude of runs in them. Clarisse was dressed a bit unreservedly, but cleanly and properly.
“I thought you would perhaps know of something else,” she said.
Clarisse shook her head. “Nothing, I’m afraid. You could have asked the baker. He’s making deliveries nowadays. But his son is going to marry Grace.”
“Really?” Violet was happy for the dark-haired girl.
Clarisse nodded. “She’s over the moon, and his mother’ll come to terms with her. Either Grace or no
grandchildren. The choice of possible daughters-in-law isn’t big. So, they have enough workers in the bakery. There’s a bed free at our place.”
Violet didn’t respond directly. Instead, she asked, “When will the hotels be done? They’ll need maids, for sure.”
Clarisse made a face. “That may be a while. You could knock on the doors of the mansions. The Billers just built a palace outside of town. And the Lamberts, they own the other mine; they have a mansion. It could well be that they’re looking for maids. True, they usually take Maori, but if you can recall your nice curtsy and your ‘Yes, sir, no, sir’—”
Violet beamed. “I’ll try,” she said, and curtsied. “Thank you very much, Miss Baton.”
Violet put on her best dress, braided her hair, and left Rosie at home, though she cried pitiably.
“If I take you with me, they’ll never hire me,” Violet said. “Just sit here and play with your doll and don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll be back before Fred and Daddy get home. And if I get a job, I’ll bring home something to eat.”
The promise was a bit daring. There was no reason to believe she would get an advance. But she knew the thought of sugar rolls would soothe Rosie.
Violet was so worried about leaving Rosie alone that she almost ran the entire way to the Billers’ house. She was out of breath and overheated when she finally reached the magnificent compound. The two-storied house stood in the middle of an unfinished but extensive garden, bordered from behind by the river. The villa was a country home, but it would have fit in a city as well. Perhaps Joshua Biller anticipated that the growing town of Greymouth would someday incorporate his house.
Violet almost lost her courage. Could she really knock on the mine owner’s door and ask for a job? Just then, she saw a short, stocky man working in the garden. Violet approached him and curtsied.
“Pardon me, I, I wanted to speak with Mr. or Mrs. Biller. I—”
The gardener turned toward her, and Violet startled at his round, tattooed face. He pointed to a path around the house.
