by Sarah Lark
“Atamarie’s aptitudes cannot be adequately developed in Parihaka,” Kupe said.
It would take a bit for the principal to get used to the sight of him. She tried to maintain decorum and under no circumstances to stare at his tattoos.
“Her best friend, Roberta Fence, will be living in Dunedin and attending this school starting next academic year, so it seems a good idea to enroll our daughter here,” Kupe added.
“She can spend her weekends with my parents,” Matariki said, “and my tribe. I would welcome her spending more time with Ngai Tahu. We’ve not yet lived in a marae together.”
Miss Partridge’s gaze now wandered from her former student and her husband, whose careful form of expression stood in stark contrast to his martial appearance, to their daughter. She eyed Atamarie’s blonde hair, her by no means dark complexion, and her golden-brown eyes. Aside from the girl’s somewhat slanted eyes and slightly exotic features, she would never have recognized the Maori in her.
“Is she your real daughter?” she asked Kupe. “I mean, she—”
“Oh yes. Atamarie Parekura Turei,” Kupe said with absolute surety.
Miss Partridge sighed. She, too, felt returned to twenty years earlier.
“And a, hmm, child of the stars?” she asked with a slightly drawn mouth.
Atamarie shook her head and joined in the conversation for the first time. Until then, she had only observed with fascination how this old lady managed to intimidate her mother.
“No,” she said energetically. “You’ve misunderstood. ‘Matariki’ has to do with the stars. ‘Atamarie’ means sunrise. One of my grandmothers says it’s very beautiful. Although, she always calls me Mary.”
Miss Partridge had to smile, even against her will. She did not know where this Maori warrior with a law degree fit in, but Atamarie was, without a doubt, Matariki’s child.
“How many grandmothers do you have, Anna-Marie?” she asked.
Kupe suppressed a laugh. Matariki had told him about her own interview for this school, in which she had told Miss Partridge she had sixteen grandmothers.
“Two,” Atamarie declared firmly, and Matariki sighed with relief. Atamarie had Lizzie and Mrs. Daldy in mind. Though she recently had gotten to know Kathleen Burton, she didn’t yet grasp the familial relationships.
“That’s progress, anyway,” Miss Partridge said curtly, and played with her glasses in a way that made Matariki think the woman wished for her old lorgnette. “Although, I take it that will change once you’ve spent more time with your tribe.”
“Do I need to take an exam now?” Atamarie asked eagerly. “My mother says she had to read and do math with you when she was my age. I can do those really well. And writing. Most of all, I like to make banners for demonstrations.”
Miss Partridge frowned.
“You’ve recently adopted a student government here, isn’t that right?” Kupe asked amicably. “To practice democratic decision-making, election processes, and all that? That is important to our daughter.”
“It is also very important to us,” Miss Partridge said firmly, and seemed to become twenty years younger. “Now that we women finally have the right to vote and are gaining influence. We are proud of Elizabeth Yates. You do know she has been elected mayor of Onehunga? Just a few months after women gained the right to vote—and we have the first female mayor of the British Empire.”
Kupe and Matariki smiled at each other. Apparently during Roberta’s interview, Sean and Violet hadn’t informed Miss Partridge about what had occupied all of them for years.
“We know Elizabeth,” Matariki said confidently. “For a while, I worked with her in Auckland on the suffrage efforts. We even drove to Onehunga to congratulate her.”
Atamarie nodded with shining eyes. “Mrs. Yates is very nice. She gave me a camellia.”
Miss Partridge gave her former and her future students the first open and enthusiastic smile of the day.
“So, surely you want to be a mayor someday too, Atamarie,” she said.
Matariki noted with delight that she pronounced her name correctly this time. Atamarie also seemed to find herself in tune with the school’s principal and beamed at her conspiratorially.
“Premier,” she corrected her.
Miss Partridge indicated a bow and cast another glance at the name on Atamarie’s registration form. “We will do everything we can, Atamarie Parekura, to help you with that.”
Matariki smiled. No one would ever call her daughter Mary.
Afterword
With a law for women’s suffrage in 1893, New Zealand proved itself the forerunner of progressive social legislation. In England and Germany, the suffragettes did not succeed until 1918 and 1919, respectively. Success with the passive voting rights of women, however, would not arrive as quickly as Atamarie hopes in this novel. Although they were allowed to participate in municipal politics practically as soon as the general right to vote was achieved, women first received the right to occupy the House of Representatives as representatives in 1919. The upper house (New Zealand Legislative Council) remained closed to them until 1941. The first female deputy prime minister was Helen Clark in 1989; the first prime minister was Jenny Shipley in 1997. Since then, several women have occupied the post.
This novel deals in many respects with emancipation. It spans a wide arc from the Maori Wars, to the general lack of rights and forlornness of women in the coal-mining settlements, and to the legislation of 1893, which made the sexes formally equal. As always, I have tried to set my fictional characters within a background that is as authentic as possible. Here is some additional information regarding certain plot elements:
Kahu Heke’s role in the Hauhau movement is based on the historical figure Patara, who is occasionally also called the “true founder of the Hauhau.” Like my fictional character Kahu, Patara was knowledgeable about pakeha society and deeply discontent with its dominance over his people. He ultimately committed to the Hauhau movement and went with a group of warriors to Opotiki to take revenge on the whites for a typhus epidemic that they introduced. In so doing, he killed the missionary C. S. Völkner, leading to hostilities between him and pakeha troops. Innocent Maori were killed, which made Patara controversial among his own people. There could no longer be a question of a serious office as a representative of the Maori people. The man hid himself away for a long time, whereby the kingi granted him asylum. Ultimately, his trail became lost in the darkness of history.
It was characteristic of the Hauhau to revive old Polynesian customs and mix them with confused ideas from Christianity. Among other things, they tried cannibalism—the atrocities portrayed did take place. I have tried to describe the customs of the Hauhau movement as correctly as possible, but nothing with reference to Maori customs can be generally applied. Myths and spirit summoning differ from tribe to tribe.
Kahu Heke’s idea to carry over the traditional function of the chieftain’s daughter as a warrior goddess to his construction of the Hauhau movement is completely fictional. There is no evidence that girls were involved in the rites of the Hauhau.
In contrast, all my descriptions regarding life in Parihaka and the downfall of this model settlement are precisely documented. Te Whiti was unequivocally a pioneer of nonviolent resistance, even if he did not attract the worldwide attention Mahatma Gandhi did later. It must be bitter for the Maori people that Mahatma Gandhi is today celebrated as a hero of peace whereas Te Whiti and his comrades have nearly been forgotten. Nevertheless, Parihaka was indeed rebuilt, and a historical site exists to this day. People still tend Te Whiti’s grave there. Once a year, the area serves as the locale for the Parihaka International Peace Festival with music and rallies.
In the assault on Parihaka, volunteers and members of the Armed Constabulary were employed; among them I have placed my character of Colin Coltrane. Armed constables were a mixture of police and soldiers. In New Zealand, they recruited a large number of young men, mostly in the context of the Land Wars and Maori
Wars. A certain hysteria no doubt played a role in the amassing of these troops. In relation to other colonial wars, the confrontations between the pakeha and the Maori cannot really be called wars. Rather, one can speak of battles or engagements, which rarely cost many lives, even when the parties met in the field with thousands of fighters. In the Battle of Ohaeawai on July 1, 1845, there were thirty dead to mourn. At the Wairau Affray on June 17, 1843, there were twenty-six.
By 1872, there was only a minimal need for armed constables. Aside from the few men who found work as police, the troops were employed constructing bridges and railroads, including the Midland Line. Julian Redcliff, the leader of the construction workers is, however, a fictional character. Devoted readers will perhaps recognize him from Song of the Spirits as the husband of Heather Witherspoon.
I found the fewest historically documented facts on the history of harness racing in New Zealand—namely, the development is impossible to establish chronologically. This is because reporters concentrated more on stories than on history. When and where the first race was run with sulkies instead of riders, or when precisely which racetrack was opened and by whom, however, was difficult to research. Brown’s Paddock, the location of the first races in Woolston is, for example, just a name handed down. Whether a resourceful stable owner really did recognize the sign of the times and build a racetrack—which Colin Coltrane then mimicked in Invercargill—can be deduced from the name “paddock” but is not documented. The racing clubs mentioned in the text did exist. Some of them were, however, later closed, and the towns do not seem to have been so proud of them that they receive special mention in the city archives.
What is certain, however, is that in the time in question, there were racetracks in Woolston as well as Invercargill where regular and harness races took place. Harness races also occurred more or less as described. It was entirely normal for the milk truck’s horse to race a shepherd’s pony. In the very beginning, harness races were also held on public streets, but my charity race in Caversham is fictional. I do not know if there was anything comparable in New Zealand or elsewhere.
For those interested in horses, it should be noted that the auxiliary rein called a checkrein is still used in harness racing and gaited horse sports.
Without a doubt, Chloe and Heather Coltrane form the most unusual couple in this book, and to this as well I would like to offer some background information. Naturally, there has always been same-sex love among women—just as among men. While male homosexuals, however, were mocked and often persecuted, the love between women was rarely so. Sigmund Freud and his successors were the first to stigmatize it as unnatural and a form of hysteria. Outside of the avant-garde—artists like Rosa Bonheur were open about their lesbian relationships—the phenomenon seems barely to have been known. Neither was there a generally applicable term.
Only around the turn of the twentieth century did words like “lesbian” come into common use. Thus, the men and women in my book did not yet know them, which is why I also did not use them in my narration. Were the love between two women in bourgeois circumstances to become public, husbands may have reacted similarly to Colin; friends and relatives, however, may have reacted as liberally as Sean and Matariki. In the nineteenth century, it was entirely common for women to be very loving toward one another. The borders around the display of tenderness between friends and lesbian love were fluid.
Finally, a few words on that first women’s movement of the suffragettes, in which both Matariki and Violet engage. Here I have portrayed Kate Sheppard, Amey Daldy, and other historical personages. A few times, Matariki butts heads with Amey Daldy. From today’s perspective—as well as from the perspective of Matariki, who is strongly shaped by Maori traditions—Daldy the feminist seems sanctimonious and narrow-minded, nothing comparable to the attitudes of the lively multiculturalism of the modern women’s movement. Amey Daldy was, however, for her time an exceedingly liberal and progressive woman, although she, like many suffragettes, particularly in New Zealand, came from the milieu of the Congregationalist Church and the temperance movement. These women were shaped by the strictest moral principles from youth, and they also saw in their social work with women and children the horrifying effects of alcoholism, which was widespread in the poorer classes in the New Zealand of their time. Violet’s path to the women’s movement is much more typical than that of the “child of the stars,” Matariki. Strict adherence to the conservative image of women by Mrs. Daldy, Meri Te Tai, and others is understandable and should not be condemned. On the contrary, their fight for the right to vote is all the more admirable. They had to swallow their pride regularly.
Femina was writing her first feminist articles in 1869. Her husband was a member of the Nelson Provincial Council and would certainly have mounted the barricades if he had known of her activities.
Mary Ann Müller wrote anyway.
Acknowledgments
As always, many people helped me with this book. The collaboration with my first reader, Melanie Blank-Schröder, and my original editor, Margit von Cossart, was as exceptional as ever—thank you both!
Klara Decker was again helpful as a test reader and internet researcher with regard to driving horse trailers and harness racing. I thank Judith Knaggs for advice in the matter of coach lighting and authentic methods of killing with the help of a sulky.
A special thank-you to everyone who helps bring my New Zealand novels successfully to readers! From translation and editing to cover design and marketing to sales and distribution—really, all of your names belong on the bestseller list!
And naturally, nothing at all would happen without my wonderful agent, Bastian Schlück, and all his colleagues at the agency. Here again, a thousand thanks!
Sarah Lark
About the Author
Photo © 2011 Gonzalo Perez
Born in Germany and now a resident of Spain, Sarah Lark is a horse aficionado and former travel guide who has experienced many of the world’s most beautiful landscapes on horseback. Through her adventures, she has developed an intimate relationship with the places she’s visited and the characters who live there. In her writing, Lark introduces readers to a New Zealand full of magic, beauty, and charm. Her ability to weave romance with history and to explore all the dark and triumphal corners of the human condition has made her a bestselling author worldwide.
About the Translator
Photo © 2011 Sanna Stegmaier
D. W. Lovett is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, from which he received a degree in comparative literature and German as well as a certificate from the university’s Center for Translation Studies. He has spent the last few years living in Europe. This is his fourth translation of Sarah Lark’s work to be published in English, following In the Land of the Long White Cloud, Song of the Spirits, and Call of the Kiwi.
