Beneath the Kauri Tree (The Sea of Freedom Trilogy Book 2)

by Sarah Lark

  Violet thought nervously of the domestic storm Eric would unleash if she joined a suffragette movement. But on the other hand, who would tell him? Sunday was race day for the main races; he would be looking after the horses and betting the last shilling to his name.

  Violet was determined to risk it.

  On Sunday, Violet set out for the meeting. It would not be easy to carry Roberta and often Joe, too, the whole way to Christchurch, particularly as Joe was always whining. Despite the meager meals, he was a strong little boy and insisted on his right to walk on his own. That was impossible for over two miles, and his tiny footsteps slowed Violet down. She came close to screaming at him when, for the second time, he fell down and pulled himself up on Violet’s skirts with dirty hands. It was the dress Heather had given her, and she still wore it.

  Although she had given birth to two children, except for across the bust, Violet was hardly any more full-bodied than the fourteen-year-old girl from back then. Julia Stuart admired her slender physique, which the burgundy velvet dress particularly emphasized. Julia wore a simple taffeta dress herself—of good material but dark and modest. Glamor, she explained to Violet with slight regret, was not compatible with her husband’s religiosity. Violet was slowly coming to understand why Carrie somewhat derogatorily called her neighbor a church wife. Julia’s frequent moralizing often got on her nerves as well.

  Still, she was happy to have her with her. Julia Stuart did not have any children yet, although she wanted some, and she was crazy about Joe. Violet found the delicate Roberta, who now had smooth, rosy little cheeks, adorable pink lips, and giant blue eyes, much cuter than Joe. She carried her in a sling in front of her chest and was grateful for Julia’s efforts with Joe. Julia let him walk some more before picking him up and was ultimately over the moon when he fell asleep on her shoulder. This also pleased Violet.

  “Now we can finally get moving,” she observed. “At Joe’s rate, it would have taken three hours.”

  Julia did not give the impression that this would have troubled her. “Well, Rosie isn’t that much faster,” she asserted, which simply was not true.

  Violet held Rosie’s hand, and the little girl followed easily as always, and without a word. Violet was worried about how she would react to a large gathering of people, but it would only be women. In general, Rosie was less afraid of them than men.

  “There are always a few men who come,” Julia noted when Violet expressed her thoughts. “My husband, for example. We all have the same goals. I don’t know about this Kate Sheppard. She’s rather radical in her views. Women’s right to vote, I mean.”

  “Do you not think you could do it?” asked Violet.

  Julia looked at her, taken aback. “That’s not the question. The question is rather: Is it what God wants? I mean, he created Eve from Adam’s rib, and the very first decision she made was wrong.” Julia crossed herself.

  “Maybe that’s the reason,” said Violet.

  Julia frowned. “Hmm?”

  “Perhaps that’s just it. Because she, um, from the man’s rib, if God had made the effort and used a little extra clay, or lopped a little off Adam’s brain instead—”

  Julia crossed herself again. “That is blasphemy, Violet Fence,” she said, outraged.

  Violet shrugged. “I think it was a little negligent. But just because Eve wasn’t the brightest doesn’t mean that all women make bad decisions. Adam and Eve’s daughters, for example—they must have had some of Adam’s reason.”

  Julia Stuart clearly did not want to get into such blasphemous contemplations. Instead, she told Violet a bit about Kate Sheppard.

  “She has a young son around Joe’s age. She’s originally from Liverpool. And she’s supposed to be religious. Even if she has these rather radical views. ‘All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhumane, and must be overcome.’ That’s her motto.”

  “That’s really lovely,” Violet said.

  Julia snorted. “A world where all are equal? What would become of us?”

  “We’d all have enough to eat,” Violet said.

  “Or everyone would starve,” Julia crowed.

  Violet thought about it. That could not just be brushed aside, though it surely was not the sense in which Kate Sheppard meant it.

  Violet and Julia were a bit late to the meeting. The hall was already almost full, and some fifty women were already singing the movement’s hymn, “Give to the Winds Thy Fears.” Julia Stuart was wondering whether they could even enter, when Rosie began staring at a strange occurrence: two bicycles came rolling along—elegant penny-farthings like those Violet had seen in London just before her passage to New Zealand. Then, men with tall hats had ridden the bicycles; here, however, two women were approaching, one of them riding smoothly while the other occasionally wobbled.

  The woman in front turned around. “There, you see, Harriet? It’s easy to learn, it contributes to bodily strength, and it’s quite enjoyable. And it’s considerably cheaper to acquire a bicycle than a horse and buggy. What’s more, you don’t have to feed it. Now, it just needs a child’s seat. And for that corset not to bother you so.”

  The woman stopped her bicycle gracefully in front of the meetinghouse and smiled at Violet and Rosie.

  “You may try it if you like,” she said to Violet, “although you do have much shorter legs than I. I’m not sure if you can adjust it for that.”

  Violet blushed. Not even Carrie Delaney would ever have used the word “legs” so unabashedly in public.

  “Harriet, are you coming down from there?” the woman asked her companion.

  This Harriet seemed unsure about how one dismounted a bicycle. She was, however, much shorter and heavier than her friend who was imposingly tall and slender and needed no corset to accentuate her figure. Nor did she wear one. Violet blushed again when she recognized that reality.

  Meanwhile, the woman eyed her friend’s bicycle. “You could try that one,” she said to Violet, “but only after the meeting. They must be nervous that I’m running so late. I’m the keynote speaker, you see.”

  She smiled, checked whether her hair remained up beneath her jaunty little hat, and turned to enter the hall. Her friend was still putting her bicycle away. Violet helped her.

  “There, you see, you’re a natural talent.” Mrs. Sheppard smiled, leaving open whether she meant Violet or her friend.

  Violet slipped behind Mrs. Sheppard and into the hall. She pulled Rosie with her without looking back at Julia. Following Mrs. Sheppard, for whom the crowd naturally parted, she quickly made it to the front. Julia followed her, and Carrie Delaney came after them. She offered to take the children.

  “I’ll look after them in the back, where I’ve got crayons and picture books. Then there won’t be any crying, and the mothers can relax and listen to the speakers.”

  Mrs. Sheppard smiled with satisfaction at the young woman from the podium when Joe, who had just woken up again, toddled after her. Surprisingly, Rosie loosed herself from Violet’s skirt and followed. Usually, she never went with strangers. Violet marveled once again at her sister: she knew that Rosie felt something like responsibility for Joe, but she would not have thought that she would take such a risk just to keep an eye on him.

  Violet forgot her son and his silent protector when Kate Sheppard began to speak. Mrs. Sheppard greeted the gathering, apologized for the delay, and began to present her points.

  “Since mankind was driven out of paradise, it has struggled with God’s help for the overcoming of sin, the cultivation of the world, and the seeking of happiness and justice. Much is said about this last point in particular, and much has been achieved since antiquity. We no longer have any slaves, we no longer judge sinners arbitrarily. Instead, we have laws and courts, and we care for the poor and sick. Human rights are being defined and, at least within modern states, recognized. Nevertheless, in practice, human rights are still men’s rights. Men have work; men have money. The husband manages the wealth of a fam
ily, even when the wife brings the money into the marriage. And he may also keep de facto slaves: once a woman says ‘I do,’ she can hardly get out of the marriage to him again. He can beat her, starve her, force her to give birth to one child after another. Even if he kills her, the punishment is often mild, assuming he can portray it as an accident. If a woman pushes for a divorce, she loses her belongings and her children. Custody is almost always granted to the husband, even if he was the one who shattered the marriage by beating the children and drinking and gambling away the money with which he was to support his family.

  “Surely all of you are, like me, of the opinion that this must be changed. We need new, more just laws, but we will not receive them because men make the laws. Only they may vote; only they may go as members to Parliament. And they react with total outrage when we ask them why this is so. Why, when it comes to voting rights, are women equal to the mad and criminal, who also are not allowed to determine the country’s fate at the ballot box? They offer many arguments. We women are too sensitive, they say, too weak, too in need of protection, too emotional, too sentimental to make hard, difficult decisions. I hear some of you laughing bitterly. But we must stop suffering in silence. We must prove that we can do more than pray and, with our loving support, pave the way to heaven for our husbands. That, after all, is what one concedes to us: a high moral feeling, a natural dignity that ought not to be sullied with disgraceful, earthly political nonsense. These equate us with madmen, the others with angels. Both come to the same thing, for naturally angels cannot vote.”

  Julia furrowed her brow, vexed, but Violet and most of the women in the hall laughed.

  “I do not need to provide any evidence that we are not angels, but our political opponents also have said that the intelligence of women does not exceed that of children, the mad, and convicts. In other circumstances, they concede understanding to us. The laws made by men, my friends, likewise apply to women. They concede we can enter into valid marriages and, at least in limited capacities, perform business. Perhaps a bank will not lend money to a single woman, but if it does, the woman has to pay it back without reference to her sex.

  “Men and women are already equal here in our country and in all others—however, only when this equality serves men’s interests. Where the women might use them, suddenly completely different laws apply. That is not just. And that cannot be the will of God.”

  “But would it be so if God did not want it so?” a woman behind Violet asked. Violet turned around and saw a careworn woman in a threadbare dress. The woman continued. “Mustn’t we submit to his will?”

  Kate Sheppard smiled at her. “God gave men and women reason and will to fight against evil, although it sometimes takes time until mankind recognizes that something is wrong. Just think of slavery. Even that lasted for many centuries. Many desperate prayers were directed at God before mankind saw that his neighbor’s skin color did not make him a beast of burden. But even there, God did not send thunder or an angel with a flaming sword. He only kept his hands over those who fought, and so they triumphed. God loves and supports the just, but he has no time for the weak and hesitant who merely curl up and cede the field to the evil and unjust.

  “We don’t want to clip the wings with which men strive toward heaven. But we’re tired of them standing on our shoulders to do so. We want equal rights for all. We want reasonable divorce laws, welfare laws that prevent children from starving. We want schools for boys and girls, for the children of the middle class and of workers. We want medical care—free medical care. No woman should ever die again in childbed because her husband drank away the money for the doctor.

  “So far, my friends, the only right of a woman, the only domain in which she has been equal, has been her right in church to say ‘I do.’ Now we would also like to be able to say ‘no,’ and there’s only one way to do that: we want, we need the right to vote.”

  Violet could hardly stop clapping when Kate Sheppard stepped down from the podium.

  Julia Stuart was less enthusiastic. “My husband doesn’t beat me,” she said as Mrs. Morison climbed onto the podium in Kate’s place to speak against the dangers of alcohol and in favor of prohibition.

  “That’s nice for you,” Violet replied icily, “and one can see that he doesn’t make you have a baby every year either, but I’m afraid you’re rather alone in that.”

  “Violet?”

  The gathering ended, as always, with a communal teatime. Violet had just summoned enough courage to inch in the direction of the group of women around Kate Sheppard, when Carrie Delaney approached her.

  “It’s about Rosie. I think you should come see for yourself.”

  As Violet turned around, Kate Sheppard noticed Carrie and greeted her. Carrie took the opportunity to introduce Violet.

  “We met briefly outside,” Kate replied with a smile. “Mrs. Fence was interested in my bicycle. Would you like to try it out now? It really is quite a lovely innovation, and it allows a woman to constantly prove absurd the arguments of male ignoramuses that ‘women are not suited for bicycling due to their bone structure and physical disposition.’ Apparently, we’re too fragile to pedal. And these people call themselves scientists, doctors no less. I always wonder if they were ever present for a birth. Probably not, otherwise they’d forbid childbirth. After all, compared to bicycling, there they might have a point.”

  Violet would gladly have kept listening to her, but she was worried about Rosie. What might have happened? And who was watching the children with Carrie here?

  Kate Sheppard noticed her unease. “Well, whom am I telling? You already have children of your own as I saw outside. Are all three yours? Heavens, when did you start?”

  Violet blushed, but Carrie explained quite matter-of-factly that Rosie was Violet’s sister. “And she’s somewhat disturbed. She does not normally stir; she’s very quiet. But today, well, perhaps you should see for yourself.”

  Violet wanted to die of shame at this offer. How could Carrie trouble this woman with her affairs? Kate Sheppard did not seem offended.

  “Catatonia, you mean?” she asked.

  Violet shook her head. “No, she moves. It’s more”—she sought the word she had taken from Caleb’s dictionary—“more that she’s mute.”

  “Persistent silence without any underlying physical causes of the muteness? Did a doctor diagnose her?”

  Violet shook her head. “No, it’s just that—”

  “I’d love to see for myself,” Kate said.

  She followed the younger women to the back of the room where Carrie had been watching the children and where Julia Stuart had taken over. She was sitting on the floor, playing trains with Joe and two other little boys while Roberta and two more babies slept nearby. Rosie sat at one of the tables, very still, but highly agitated. She had a focused, even grim expression, and she held a crayon.

  Rosie had not colored since Caleb had left for England. Violet couldn’t afford crayons. Now she looked with curiosity at her sister’s work. What she saw shocked her. Rosie was pressing the crayon so hard while coloring that the cheap paper was ripped in several places. Violet saw four more pieces of paper similarly torn. In quick, almost enraged movements she continued. The crayon was already broken; she was coloring with the stump.

  “For heaven’s sake, Rosie, the table, the crayons. You’re breaking everything. That costs money.” Violet sounded critical, but at heart she only felt naked, ice-cold fear. Rosie seemed to have gone completely crazy. And everyone could see it.

  “What are you doing there, Rosie?” Violet heard Kate Sheppard’s calm voice. “Do you want to tell us what that is?”

  Rosie scrawled across another piece of paper while Kate waited patiently. Then she raised her head and stared into nothing.

  “Red. Blood,” she said suddenly, then lowered her head and began to cry—silent as ever. After a while, Rosie stopped. She seemed to have fallen asleep.

  “At least she said something,” Kate remarked.
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br />   “She should see a doctor,” Carrie said.

  Kate shook her head. “Just because someone doesn’t talk, it doesn’t mean that person’s sick,” she said. “Maybe this is just Rosie’s way of saying no. She was overwhelmed by our world. So, she sought a different one.”

  Julia shook her head, and Carrie looked confused. Violet understood.

  “We don’t need to change Rosie; we need to change the world,” she said. “Thank you, Mrs. Sheppard. Where can I sign up? I’d like to become a member of the Women’s Temperance Union.”

  Kate smiled. “Don’t forget the ‘Christian,’” she said. “We need God’s help.”

  The next Saturday, Violet met with twenty other women. While Julia watched the children, the women sang hymns and waved banners in front of the Racehorse Tavern.

  “Ban alcohol! Renounce the devil! Bread instead of whiskey!”

  When Eric saw her there, he dragged her home and beat her black and blue in front of a horrified Julia. The next day, he told Violet that he had ended the rental contract for the little house because they could not afford it, which, of course, Violet had said often enough herself. They moved into a shed behind Brown’s Paddock that was hardly big enough for a dog. No one would have considered placing one of the valuable racehorses in there.

  “You can even earn a little something yourself.” Eric laughed. “Brown’ll let you clean the pub tomorrow.”

  Violet cleaned the Racehorse Tavern, although she could have died, it was so disgusting. Nevertheless, on Saturdays, she took the children to Julia and made her way to Christchurch alone. The Temperance Union demonstrated in front of different pubs every weekend.

  Though Eric still disapproved of Violet’s engagement with the opponents of alcohol, he was not going to sacrifice his Saturday night in the pub to look after his wife. Violet took her chances. Sometimes she was home before him and could pretend already to be fast asleep. Sometimes she had bad luck, and Eric caught her with her banners. Then she let herself be beaten. After all, the children were safe and sound at Julia’s. Eric came to her bed drunkenly again, but to her astonishment, she did not conceive any more children. She was small and undernourished, and she was still breastfeeding, which, according to one of the women in the group, was supposed to help prevent conception. The women around Kate spoke candidly about men and children.