Flight of a Maori Goddess

by Lark, Sarah

  “Is she sleeping?” Kevin asked.

  Roberta shook her head. “No. She doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t want to believe it, either. But—can you really not realize you’re pregnant?”

  Kevin thought he saw a twitch in Doortje’s facial muscles. He pulled himself together.

  “Yes, Roberta, it can happen. In certain circumstances. And I, well, I’ll stay here with her. If you’d be good enough to leave us.”

  Roberta felt the old pain again. When she had been told of Doortje’s pregnancy, she had felt something almost like triumph, although she was ashamed of it. Doortje was pregnant by someone else. Perhaps she would push Kevin away. And he would forget her or seek comfort elsewhere. Roberta felt guilty about Vincent. He’d recently begun to win her over a bit, but if Kevin did turn to her now—but Roberta did not want to begin dreaming anew. She had been trying so hard to let her feelings for Kevin die.

  She stood up. “Of course,” she said stiffly. “I can come back later.”

  Roberta left the room but stopped outside the curtain. Her heart was pounding, and she was ashamed of eavesdropping. But she had to know.

  Doortje opened her eyes when she was alone with Kevin.

  “You believe me?” she asked weakly.

  Kevin nodded. “I told you that you could trust me and that I wanted to trust you. So, I believe that you didn’t know anything about this pregnancy. But what’s all this nonsense about Cornelis Pienaar?”

  Kevin pulled the chair he had taken from Roberta closer to Doortje’s bed. He had to stop himself from brushing the hair out of her face. How badly he wanted to touch her, to comfort her.

  “Cornelis isn’t the father,” Doortje said tensely. “Tell your little nurse. There’s no reason for her to doubt him.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Of course not. Doortje, you and I know how this baby came to be. And I’m so very, very sorry. But now you need to make a decision. What do you want to do? How will your future look now that you have the baby?”

  “I don’t want the baby.” Doortje sat up. “I don’t want to have it.” She bit her lip hard and balled her fists. Any other woman in Doortje’s situation would have broken out in tears, but instead, Doortje looked angry and wildly determined. “I won’t give birth to it. I—” She broke off.

  Kevin laid his hand on hers, very carefully.

  “The baby won’t ask if you want to give birth to it,” he said softly. “It’s there. You can’t change that. If we had noticed it earlier, then perhaps we could have, hmm, encouraged a miscarriage. But now, it has been growing inside you for nearly six months. It should already be moving. Does it not, Doortje?”

  Doortje nodded reluctantly. Until then she had thought the rumbling was a bellyache from the months of strange food and bad water.

  “There, you see. In three months, it will come into the world. And it will be just as beautiful as you, Doortje.”

  “Its father is a monster,” Doortje blurted out.

  “But its mother is an angel,” Kevin said. “You will love it, Doortje.”

  “I’ll hate it. I’ll take it to the veld and leave it to the vultures.”

  “Your God forbids it,” he said.

  Doortje laughed angrily. “You dare hold that against me? In this camp? In this war?”

  Kevin shrugged. “The baby can’t do anything about the war. And we two, didn’t we agree not to be enemies?”

  “It will starve anyway,” Doortje declared. “No family will take it in, and no one will take me in either. I can try to sell the farm—or what’s left of it. But the money won’t last forever.”

  “Won’t your church help you out?”

  Kevin knew the answer already. No puritan parish would support a fallen woman, whether or not the woman was at fault for her misery.

  Likewise, Doortje didn’t dignify the question. “Dr. Drury,” she said, “for me, there are exactly two possibilities. I can walk into the river like Johanna, or I can make my living like the whore the British have made me.” Deep red spread across her pale face.

  Kevin could no longer stand it. “You could also come with me to New Zealand,” he said hoarsely. “As my wife. I love you, Doortje van Stout.” He smiled, perhaps to give himself courage. “Really, you must already know. There’s nothing I would like more than to marry you.”

  Doortje looked at him uncomprehendingly. “With this baby?” she asked, choked up.

  Kevin nodded. “Of course. It would grow up as our child.” He thought guiltily of Juliet and Patrick. “If we married here, no one would have to know anything. I would recognize the child, and I would love it.”

  “Love?” Doortje spat the word out. “This? This devil’s spawn?”

  Kevin took her hand between both of his and pressed it firmly. It felt cold and delicate despite the calluses from lifelong work in the kitchen and stables. There was no comparison to Juliet’s beautiful hands with their long, manicured fingers.

  “The child is blameless, Doortje. For me, this baby will be the most beautiful on earth just because your smile will fall on it when you hold it in your arms.”

  “It won’t have anything in common with me,” Doortje cried. “It will be English and grow up English like its father.” Hate blazed again in her eyes.

  Kevin sighed. “New Zealander,” he corrected her. “And if you like . . .” He had to swallow his pride, but he would have done anything for Doortje. “If you like, we could live on a farm. My parents have one, and it’s very beautiful there. I’m no farmer, but I could open a practice in town. Then the child could grow up in the country like you did.”

  Doortje shook her head fiercely. “It won’t be a Boer,” she moaned. “It can’t be a Boer.”

  Kevin took a deep breath. “That’s true, it can’t,” he replied. Not fiercely, but too quickly. He could not hide from her that he did not regret this fact. Kevin had fallen in love with Doortje, but he still lacked sympathy for her people.

  At this, Doortje fell silent. She went to pull her hand out from under his. Kevin pulled it to his lips before he let it go.

  “Think about it, Doortje,” he said quietly, laying the book on New Zealand next to her on the sheets. “I’m not a Boer, and our son won’t be one. His country won’t be in Africa, and no one will tell him he’s God’s chosen or whatever. But New Zealand is also a beautiful country, and his grandmother knows a lot of stories about it. She’ll tell him about Papa and Rangi and their true love and about Maui who caught massive fish and tried to outsmart death. And when the Pleiades appear, we’ll fly kites. It could be beautiful, Doortje. Think about it.”

  Doortje did not answer, but she did not turn away. Slowly, she put her hand on the book.

  Outside, in front of the curtain, Roberta rubbed the tears from her cheeks. No matter whether Doortje said yes or no, Kevin would never be hers.

  Chapter 3

  Atamarie thought back on Rawiri’s friendly face often in the following months—when she despaired at Richard’s silence. No letter came from Temuka, and sometimes it was all she could do to keep from writing herself. Atamarie could not come to terms with it simply being over. They had so much in common. She could not imagine Richard throwing all of that away.

  And then, almost half a year after her forced departure from Richard’s farm, there was a letter waiting one day when she got home from the university. Atamarie ripped it open with trembling hands and felt her heart beat faster when she saw his large, boldly rounded letters. From Richard, a few words filled an entire page; this time, he needed four just to apologize for his behavior.

  I don’t know what got into me. I didn’t want to shut you out. But I just had to try to get the flying machine in gear. In truth, I wanted to surprise you, Atamarie, fly to you. And now, I’ve only disappointed you. I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore, but perhaps we could, at least, start writing letters again. Yours always meant a lot to me.

  Atamarie was surprised Richard did not write anything about his family,
but perhaps they had not told him what happened after his crash. He probably thought she had simply walked away after hearing about his stupidity. It offended her that he could believe she would act so childishly, and she was still hurt by his long silence, which he did not even mention. On the other hand, she was happy he’d resumed contact. Even if his letter did not contain any lover’s oaths. She told Heather and Chloe of the letter—and was sobered when they both advised her to throw it away at once.

  “Atamie, he didn’t write that you mean a lot to him, only that your letters do,” observed Heather. “Probably, you mostly quote Professor Dobbins. He should correspond with the professor himself.”

  “But if you do write him, be sure to tell him everything that happened,” Chloe added. “How his family treated you and how his neighbors acted. Maybe that would bring him down from the clouds for once. And don’t compromise. If he really wants you, he needs to move to Christchurch or some other big city.”

  Atamarie nodded. “If he wants to fly too,” she said wearily.

  She did write, though she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about how she’d been treated. Furthermore, the subject of flying remained taboo between them. The young man seemed to have given up his dream for the time being. The aeroplane had been badly damaged during his last attempt to take off, and Richard had lost his courage after the serious injuries. In any case, he seemed to have shifted focus to farming machines. He proudly wrote Atamarie about new patents and how even Peterson used his improved hay tedder now. He was currently working on a new type of manure spreader.

  Atamarie told him about her studies at Canterbury College. Machine construction was on her schedule, which interested her a great deal more than land surveying. Dobbins and the other instructors were introducing their students to the secrets of the steam engine—and then, near the end of 1902, Dobbins brought a surprise with him into the lecture hall.

  “Here,” he announced proudly, “gentlemen, and our lady, an Otto engine—or rather a spark-ignition engine. We’ll be occupying ourselves for some time studying how something like this works, what applications these motors have in automobile construction, and—”

  Atamarie’s hand shot up.

  “That’s a two-stroke engine, sir, isn’t it? With twenty PSI?”

  Dobbins smiled. “Twenty-four, Miss Turei. But it sounds like you’ve already had some experience with such motors. Would you like to tell us something about them?”

  Atamarie faltered a moment. “Yes—no, later. I really wanted to ask something.”

  “Go on.”

  Atamarie stood up so she could better see the compact engine.

  “How much does it weigh?” she asked breathlessly.

  “You want to do what?”

  A few days after the beginning of the next summer vacation, Heather and Chloe and Rosie stopped by Atamarie’s lodgings. They were on their way to the racetrack in Addington. The little mare Trotting Diamond was going to make her debut, and Rosie could hardly contain her excitement. Heather and Chloe had planned to invite Atamarie to go with them, but they found her already sitting on packed bags, an Otto motor in the middle of her room.

  Her agitated landladies had told Heather and Chloe all about it when they rang at the door.

  “We’ve never said anything about the oil stains on Atamarie’s clothes, even when they get on our furniture. But this hellish machine! We almost fell out of bed when she started the thing. ‘Just to try it out.’ Please talk to her. That thing has to go.”

  As for that, the landladies had nothing to fear. Heather and Chloe were flabbergasted when, by way of greeting, Atamarie at once launched into her plans for the motor.

  “It only weighs one hundred twenty pounds,” she announced proudly, “and it runs totally smoothly. It lasts too. It’s simply ideal for—”

  “Start again, Atamarie, without the technical details.” Heather sat down on Atamarie’s bed. “You want to give this to Richard Pearse for Christmas?”

  “Yes! And it was really cheap. Well, I had to ask Mom for money, of course, but I could easily—” She stopped. Not even Heather was allowed to know about the gold source on Elizabeth Station. “Well, I could earn enough if I took some job during vacation,” she corrected herself. “Dobbins says the institute is going to get a newer one next year. The things are progressing at a rapid pace. But so far, no one’s had the idea of putting one in an aeroplane. Except Richard. Only, he couldn’t afford one. But now, now we have a motor! And it’s so light. Don’t you understand? We’re going to fly.”

  Chloe shook her head. “All I understand is that you want to go back to that backwater where everyone hates you,” she replied. “To a man you haven’t seen in almost a year, though he could easily have taken the train to apologize properly in person. We already told you, Atamie: if you’re so convinced you can fly, then build your own machine. But this Richard—”

  “Is a genius,” Atamarie insisted. “Chloe, Heather, we could be the first. We could be the first to take off in a motorized aeroplane. We—”

  “And then he’ll love you?”

  Chloe looked at Atamarie. Her face was very serious.

  Atamarie lowered her head. “He doesn’t have to,” she said defiantly.

  Heather sighed. “Well then, good luck. I’ll help you get this monstrosity shipped to your ‘genius.’ After all, you cannot simply take it in the train compartment.”

  Atamarie smiled gratefully.

  “Besides, I’m coming with you,” Heather continued, at which Atamarie’s smile was replaced with dismay. “I want to see the man myself. Chloe can ride with Rosie to Addington before she bursts with excitement. I don’t know much about racing, anyway.”

  Atamarie and Heather arrived by train in Timaru. A freight company would deliver the motor. Atamarie had telegraphed Richard and hoped that he would pick up both the women and the motor in town, but Heather rented a hotel room straightaway.

  “And you’ll do that in the future if you visit him,” she advised Atamarie. “Of course, everyone will assume that you’re spending the night at Richard’s. But you have to keep up appearances.”

  Atamarie wanted to reply to that, but then she stopped. Richard’s horse team was turning down the main street in Timaru. Heather held on tightly to her niece’s skirt to keep her from running toward him.

  “Keep your composure, child,” she ordered. “Let him come to you.”

  So, Atamarie waited obediently next to her aunt until Richard had climbed down and greeted her. He behaved as if she had been gone for no more than a weekend and kissed her on the cheek like a friend.

  “Where is it?” he asked before Atamarie could introduce Heather. “And it really only weighs one hundred twenty pounds? I can hardly believe it, Atamie!”

  “The marvel still hasn’t arrived,” Heather remarked. “So, you can have a cup of coffee with us first while you wait. My name is Heather Coltrane, by the way. I’m Atamarie’s aunt.”

  Judging by Richard’s face, Atamarie had either never mentioned her family, or he had simply not been listening when she spoke of things other than technology. Now, however, he caught himself, apologized for his rudeness, and led the ladies to the nearest café, where he politely made conversation. Heather tried to sound him out a bit, but his answers were vague. Why yes, he had inherited a farm, so to speak, and now worked it. Sure, he would have rather been an engineer, but there was not much he could do about it now. He was now resigned to seeing inventing as a pastime.

  Heather did not let her feelings show but occasionally looked at Atamarie with concern. Did her niece really not see how little Richard’s plans for the future didn’t fit with her own? The young man seemed unwilling to part from his soil any time soon. Yet Atamarie sat with beaming eyes next to her friend and appeared overjoyed that he held her hand under the table. Only, Heather had seen that she had felt for his hand, not the other way around. Nor did Heather recognize any signs of his being in love with Atamarie. She attributed Richard’
s obvious excitement to the business of the motor. He could hardly wait to retrieve it from the local general store.

  As they approached, the driver was just then unloading it from the wagon, reverence all over his face. Atamarie and Richard quickly fell into a lively technical discussion. Heather turned away from their obsessing and to the driver of the freight wagon. The tall, square-built man seemed vaguely familiar to her.

  “Can I pay you, or is it better to arrange that with your employer in Christchurch?”

  The man’s grin covered his whole round face. “I’m the employer,” he declared proudly. “It’s just one of my workers couldn’t make it, madam, so I made the delivery myself. If you’d go ahead and sign the papers for me, Mrs.—”

  “Miss,” Heather said, straining to recall how she knew this man. Interestingly, he seemed to be in a similar predicament. At least, he was paying her signature an unusual amount of attention. Then, however, the decisive epiphany came when she saw the inscription on his delivery wagon.

  “Bulldog Delivery—Strong and Quick for Your Freight.”

  Heather smiled. “Bulldog? Can it be that my stepfather gave you that name when we all traveled together from London to Dunedin?”

  The man beamed. “That’s right! You’re Reverend Burton’s daughter! I slept in your church.”

  Heather laughed. “Well, not in mine. Didn’t you plan to look for gold?”

  Almost twenty years before, Peter and Kathleen had traveled to England on a matter of inheritance, and Heather had accompanied them. On the return voyage, Violet and her family had also been on the ship—in steerage, while the Burtons traveled first class. Heather had constantly worried about Violet and her little sister, Rosie, until a fifteen-year-old boy had begun to look after the two of them. Reverend Burton had called the boy Bulldog for his square frame—Heather never learned his real name. Now, the easygoing entrepreneur shrugged.