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

by Sarah Lark

  Violet rubbed her temples. Sean kept flipping through the notebook.

  “It’s a question of what we’re going to do now,” he said finally. “Shall we go to the police? Or to the horse breeders’ association? We need to put a stop to Colin’s swindling, but, to be honest, I’m also a bit hesitant about the scandal. It’d blow back on Chloe. She wouldn’t come out of it unscathed. When I think of the press and now her relationship with Heather—”

  “Why don’t we just take a tenner and put it on the horse that will win?” Roberta asked innocently. She had so far been quietly sitting nearby, listening to the adults, if apparently not quite understanding them. “You will lend us a tenner, won’t you, Mr. Coltrane?”

  Sean smiled. “Two even, Roberta, but what you have in mind is not exactly fair, you know. Betting is like a game. You can’t decide ahead of time who’s going to win.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Roberta,” Violet said coldly. “Mr. Coltrane says that because he’s always been lucky in this game of life. But this game isn’t fair, Roberta, and unfortunately, it’s almost always determined before a race who’s going to win. People like us can only try to make the best of it, when now and again we’re dealt a joker. Like this book. I’m sorry, Mr. Coltrane, but I can’t just throw it away as you would probably think right. Or Mrs. Coltrane. I have to do something with it. It’s the only inheritance Eric left his son. But you’re welcome to come with us, Mr. Coltrane.”

  Violet stuck the book in her bag, left the summerhouse, and went to the racetrack. Sean followed her without further question. The track was deserted. Violet entered the racing club.

  “Might Mr. Tibbot still be in?” she asked some boys cleaning harnesses.

  A few curious horses stuck their heads over the stall doors. Sean stroked their noses.

  The girl trotted obediently behind her mother, but she ducked her head in front of the horses. When they passed the stall of a somewhat nervous stallion, Roberta reached fearfully for Sean’s hand. Sean was touched and held her hand tight.

  “Who’s Mr. Tibbot?” Sean asked Roberta.

  “Mr. Tibbot trains the harness racehorses,” Roberta said in her somewhat stilted, formal tone. “He’s Mr. Coltrane’s chief competitor.”

  A child to whom Violet had read the dictionary in the cradle. Sean had misgivings. Meanwhile, Violet had located the trainer. A short, square man with a red, open face and small blue eyes. Assuredly Irish in origin. Sean greeted him politely. Roberta curtsied.

  “Mr. Tibbot.” Violet formally extended her hand.

  Tibbot bowed over it. “Once again, my heartfelt condolences, Mrs. Fence. If there’s anything I can do for you.”

  “That you can, Mr. Tibbot,” Violet said calmly, even though she wasn’t at all sure Mr. Tibbot’s offer was genuine. “I’d like you to take on my son as an apprentice. He’s still a bit young, I know, but the jockeys do always start young, and I know that your apprentices live in your house and your wife cooks for them. I would like that for Joe, if it would please you.”

  “Mrs. Fence, I don’t know. I already have two apprentices, and Joe, he’s rather tall and heavy. He won’t do as a racer.”

  “He can drive, though,” said Violet. “Or train. Or clean out the stables, or I don’t know what all. But I’d like him to work for you and not for Colin Coltrane. I’d like—”

  The matter was visibly uncomfortable for Mr. Tibbot. He wiggled like an eel. “Mrs. Fence, I, I don’t mean to speak ill of your husband and Mr. Coltrane, but those two have already heavily shaped Joe. I would not be able to rely on his discretion. And I can’t risk him immediately talking in the neighboring stables about everything he sees and learns here.”

  Violet drew the notebook from her bag. “This would come with my son, Mr. Tibbot. And if you use it properly, there won’t be a neighboring stable anymore.”

  Mr. Tibbot and the still-young trainers, riders, drivers, and breeders of harness racehorses did not want a scandal any more than did Sean and Chloe. Therefore, Eric Fence’s notebook did not end up in the hands of the police or the press. While its contents did reach the trainers and horse owners in rumors, the bet rigging was never proven. It was, however, punished, and more harshly than the legal system of the scandal-mongering press ever could have done.

  Tibbot dutifully said a prayer for Colin Coltrane and then passed the notebook to a bookmaker in Invercargill. This man then handed it on to other representatives of his profession in Christchurch and Dunedin. The men needed a few days to calculate their losses. Then their troop of executors appeared at Colin Coltrane’s—and collected.

  Chapter 11

  Atamarie Drury’s first word was “mommy,” her second “granny”—that was what she called Amey Daldy, like the step-grandchildren among whom she was raised. But her third word was “petition,” for that encapsulated most of her mother’s work since Atamarie’s birth.

  “I’m coming, love. I just have to write this petition.” “Atamarie, go straight to Mrs. Daldy and ask her if she’s already signed this petition.” “No, sweetie, we can’t go to the beach Sunday. I need to collect signatures for Kate Sheppard’s petition.” After the third word, Matariki stopped keeping track, but she was quite certain that “women’s suffrage” counted among the first ten words in her daughter’s vocabulary.

  Matariki had begun her work with Amey Daldy as a teacher and intermediary between the pakeha and Maori, but since the fight for the right of women to vote had entered its crucial phase, she was occupied almost exclusively with that, even though she found the work boring.

  “Elsewhere the women take to the streets and attack the police with their umbrellas,” she complained to Lizzie and Michael when they visited her in Auckland. “And they’re locked up, singing hymns in jail. At least there’s action in that. And what do we do? We write petition after petition after petition. All told, more than seven hundred, not counting all the letters to individual parliamentarians. We’ve probably cut down half a forest for all that paper.”

  Michael and Lizzie laughed. They were in high spirits. Lizzie wore a bold little hat atop her increasingly gray hair and with it, one of the new dresses from Kathleen’s collection. She had put on a little weight in the last few years and was happy not to have to wear a corset anymore. Now she was sipping the champagne Michael had ordered as an aperitif and looking forward to a fine meal in one of the best restaurants in Auckland with Matariki and nine-year-old Atamarie. Matariki had protested because she thought the restaurant was much too expensive. Lizzie would not be dissuaded. If they were going to be in the city, Lizzie wanted to go someplace with a large and refined wine list, although it was becoming difficult to find a restaurant that served alcohol. Paradoxically, the Temperance Union met with success precisely where alcohol abuse rarely occurred. Whereas pubs continued to spring up from the ground like weeds, family restaurants ceased pouring beer and wine.

  “Well, half a forest or a whole one, I feel better, anyway, having you running around and writing petitions. I can’t come visit you in prison,” Lizzie teased her daughter.

  “Not to mention all the bail fees we’d have to pay to get you out again,” Michael said, smirking. “We couldn’t bear the responsibility for letting our beautiful granddaughter grow up in prison if you end up there.”

  He cast a content glance at Atamarie, who was sitting between her grandparents and studying the menu. Michael could hardly get enough of looking at the child, which prompted a few pointed remarks from Lizzie. Atamarie did not owe her clear skin and golden hair to her Maori ancestors. They contributed only the exotic features: her darker complexion and nut-brown eyes with flecks of amber. Otherwise, the girl resembled her paternal grandmother, the love of Michael’s youth, Kathleen Burton. Today, however, Lizzie had other things to do than chide her husband. She studied the wine list intensely.

  “I think we’ll stick to champagne for the crab cocktails,” she decided. “Then, if we get the lamb, the ’eighty-seven Bordeaux. Or do you want
fish, Matariki? In that case, Chardonnay.”

  Judging from Lizzie’s expression, she would have liked best to order both sorts of wine. Since she was no longer trying to grow grapes for heavy red wines, concentrating instead on light white wines whose grapes simply flourished better in Otago’s climate, her results had been thoroughly drinkable.

  “Chardonnay, Mom, but please don’t strangle me if I drink it out of a water glass.” Matariki grimaced. “Mrs. Daldy would kill me herself if she found out I drank alcohol. Worst of all in public.” Amey Daldy was a strict teetotaler and also demanded that her coworkers not drink. Another thing that Matariki liked to get worked up about. “We’d long since have had the right to vote if it weren’t tied to this prohibition disaster,” she said. “Most men don’t care if we vote, but when you tell them that we’re going to shut the beer taps, they kick up a fuss. Even John Ballance is supposed to have said that he supports our right to vote, but women vote for the conservatives because there are more teetotalers among them.”

  Giving up alcohol did not matter much to Matariki, but she did not see it as the root of all evil. The McConnells, her tormentors in Hamilton, had been strict teetotalers, but that had not made them good people. Meanwhile, Reverend Burton, for example, had done good his whole life and nevertheless capped his day with a glass of whiskey.

  “There is the Women’s Franchise League, without ‘temperance’ in its name,” said Lizzie.

  Matariki nodded. “Yes, they finally did something sensible in Dunedin. And the new signature gatherings for women’s suffrage are showing phenomenal results. Last month, we took twenty thousand signatures to Parliament.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Sheppard really did push a wheelbarrow,” Atamarie told them. “And we all went with them and painted banners and sang. Only we couldn’t go into Parliament. John Hall did, though, and Uncle Sean.” Apparently, there had been a fairground atmosphere.

  Lizzie took notice. “Sean Coltrane?” she asked. “Are you in contact with him?”

  Matariki nodded. “Of course, but mostly by letter. Last month, though, we were in Wellington and met with him. We had a good time, didn’t we, Atamarie?”

  Atamarie told them enthusiastically about the capital and their meeting with her uncle. Michael listened, full of pride, although it had at first seemed suspect to him that Sean—the son of an Irish rebel—now sat in Parliament with the Brits. He had moved past it. There were no Irish and English here anymore, just New Zealanders. And Sean did more for the simple folk than the Drurys in Ireland had ever done. Sean probably would have maintained that supplying the population with bootleg whiskey was not even a particularly socially minded deed. He had never really taken after his birth father, the freedom fighter.

  Lizzie was motivated by very different concerns. “Isn’t that young Maori also in Parliament in Wellington? Kupe, right? How is he doing?”

  Matariki chewed her upper lip. It was typical of her mother to bring the conversation around to acquaintances. Lizzie was a little worried about her future. She surely would have liked more grandchildren, but the way things looked, she would have to wait until Kevin and Pat married, which could take a while. Both of Matariki’s brothers were attending university in Dunedin. Not that Matariki was opposed to new acquaintances. Colin had not broken her heart as badly as Lizzie feared, nor had she been abstinent during her first years in Auckland. Back then, she was often a guest among the Maori tribes, and she had occasionally given in to the urging of one of the young men after sitting for an evening around the fire with her people, drinking and telling stories about Parihaka. However, she had not fallen in love with any of them, and she had ceased these adventures, too, when Atamarie was big enough to pick up on something and perhaps tell Amey Daldy about it. Despite her openness to Maori customs, the strict Congregationalist expected complete abstinence from her teachers, and Matariki could only be kept on as a pretend widow. Although Matariki had stopped her Sunday prayers for her departed husband once Atamarie began to understand more, she did not establish new contacts with pakeha men. Not that there was much opportunity to do so, anyway. Matariki’s work was mostly with women. She occasionally met male politicians who supported women’s suffrage, but apart from Sean Coltrane, they were all married, and under no circumstances would they have indulged in even a little flirting with a women’s rights activist.

  “Kupe doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” she told her mother regretfully. “I wrote to Pai once. She and Kupe were together in Parihaka and then in Wellington. She wrote back, saying he didn’t want to read my letter. He still holds it against me that I fell in love with Colin and ran away with him. Yet Kupe wasn’t even in Parihaka anymore then. They arrested him beforehand, even though Colin tried to stop it.”

  “Did he really?” the keen-witted Lizzie inquired. “Or did he have a hand in it? Maybe he saw Kupe as a rival and had him cleared out of the way? By the way, Chloe left him.”

  Matariki nodded, not overly interested. “So I heard. Good for Chloe. They say he’s sold the house and the horses and everything? Which she never saw a penny of, though. But please.”

  She gestured discreetly with her chin at Atamarie. The girl was not to hear too much talk concerning her birth father. Lizzie sometimes wondered what she even knew. According to Maori custom, Matariki ought to have informed her daughter about her father, but Atamarie had to play the half orphan for the pakeha.

  “I’d be happy to meet Kupe again,” Matariki said, returning to the original subject, “but he’s obviously avoiding me. Maybe when we’ve passed women’s suffrage. Then I’ll be devoting myself more to Maori affairs. Those are still in disarray, after all.”

  Matariki intended to resign her job with Amey Daldy in the near future. Recently, Meri Te Tai Mangakahia, whose husband had just been elected premier of the Maori Parliament, was creating a stir. Matariki had gotten to know her in Christchurch and liked her immediately. Meri was just a little younger than Matariki, had likewise enjoyed a pakeha education, and was a chieftain’s daughter. Her father was only elected ariki of his tribe in 1890, so she had been spared the strange customs of some of the North Island’s tribes and the Hauhau. Now, she was fighting not just for women’s suffrage but also for female representatives to be allowed in the Maori Parliament.

  Matariki yearned to work with young people again instead of the sometimes-fossilized ladies around Amey Daldy. There did not need to be street battles with police, but Matariki did want something more than letter writing from her political engagement.

  However, she had not expected that her meal with her family would catapult her into the center of events. Nor did she sense anything amiss when Amey Daldy called her to her office the next morning. Her boss received her in the living room but did not offer her a seat in any of the plush armchairs. Mrs. Daldy sat at a little secretary where she tended to manage her private correspondence. It was very tidy there, whereas in Matariki’s office, petitions piled up and law books were scattered about.

  “You were at the Four Seasons yesterday?” Mrs. Daldy asked sternly.

  Matariki nodded. The Temperance Union had its eyes everywhere. “With my parents,” she said conciliatorily, “and I only had a little wine.”

  “It was alcohol in public, Matariki. I’ve had two gentlemen speak to me about it. You drank champagne, wine, and cognac. And you laughed.”

  “Surely laughing in public isn’t forbidden,” Matariki said, astonished. “And I only sipped the cognac. My mother said I had to try it. My mother—”

  “According to my informants, the man was also not your father,” Mrs. Daldy said. “And your mother was described as an exceedingly frivolous person. Assuming she really is your mother. Matariki, this is not acceptable. We who are fighting for the right for equal treatment of women must be models of virtue and abstinence. With you, that’s already questionable. True, you made no secret that Atamarie is a child born out of wedlock. However, we had agreed that, given the circumstances, you would present yo
urself as a widow. Now Atamarie’s saying Sean Coltrane is her uncle.”

  It was so complicated that Matariki decided it best to dive in headfirst. “Sean Coltrane is her uncle on both sides. That is, he’s my half brother through my father, Michael Drury, who, as you correctly determined, is not my biological father, while Colin Coltrane is Atamarie’s father and Sean is Colin’s half brother—”

  “And the child is aware of these relationships?”

  “More or less. Well, I don’t believe she knows that Sean is Michael’s son. But—”

  “Matariki, this is unacceptable,” said Amey Daldy. “I’ve always looked the other way for you, and you do exceptional work. But if Atamarie were to begin spreading the word that her father isn’t even dead—”

  “I can’t force her to lie,” Matariki responded. “I can tell her she should keep it quiet, but she’s so proud of her uncle Sean, and she does also look like him, you know.”

  “Which further complicates the matter,” Amey Daldy said. “There have been rumors about you and Sean Coltrane since the delivery of the last petition to Wellington. You were seen together—”

  “We didn’t drink any wine,” Matariki assured her. “And of course we were seen. We were in a large restaurant.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Moderation and abstinence must define our entire lives, Matariki. I’ve been thinking about this a long time, and I don’t make this decision lightly. But with this business last night, I’ve decided to end our relationship, Matariki.” At least she looked her assistant of many years directly in the eye as she said it.

  Matariki was silent for a moment. “Me too,” she then said. “That is, I actually wanted to resign. But just now? How will you manage everything, Mrs. Daldy? The goal for the next petition is thirty thousand signatures. The law has to pass next year, and Mrs. Sheppard is counting on us. Who’s going to write all the letters and send all the telegrams and—”