by Sarah Lark
“In Christchurch I was told that you know Helen O’Keefe,” he began carefully. In no time, he had a second rendezvous scheduled with the lady of Kiward Station. He would tell Gerald that he wanted to ride to Haldon the next day, and Gwyneira would offer to accompany him part of the way to take Fleur to Helen’s school. In reality, he would follow her all the way to the O’Keefe farm.
George’s heart beat in his throat. He would finally see her tomorrow!
3
If Helen had to describe her life over the last few years—honestly and without the pretty words she used to comfort herself and hopefully impress the recipients of her letters to England—she would have chosen the word “survival.”
While Howard’s farm had seemed a promising undertaking upon her arrival, it had only gone downhill since Ruben’s birth. While the number of sheep for breeding increased, the quality of the wool only seemed to be getting worse; the losses early in the year had been crushing. After seeing Gerald’s successful attempts with cattle, Howard had also tried his hand at raising a herd.
“Madness!” Gwyneira said to Helen. “Cattle need much more grass and fodder in winter than sheep,” she explained. “That’s not a problem on Kiward Station. Even counting only the land that’s already been cleared, we could sustain twice the number of sheep. But your land is meager and lies much higher up. Not as much grows up here; you barely have enough to feed the sheep you already have. And cattle on top of that! It’s hopeless. You could try goats. But the best thing would be to get rid of all the livestock you have running around and start again with a few good sheep. It’s about quality, not quantity.”
Helen, for whom a sheep had always just been a sheep, had initially been bored as she listened to these speeches on breeds and crosses, but she finally began to pay closer attention to Gwyneira’s lectures. If her friend was to be believed, Howard had fallen in with some dubious livestock dealers when he bought his sheep—or he had simply not wanted to spend the money for good quality animals. In any case, his animals were wild mixed breeds from which a consistent wool quality could never be achieved, no matter how carefully one chose their food or managed their pastures.
“You can even see it in their color, Helen,” Gwyneira explained. “They all look different. With ours, on the other hand, you can’t tell one apart from another. It has to be that way if you want to sell large batches of good quality wool and receive a good price.”
Helen could see that and even attempted to broach the subject with Howard. He did not prove very open-minded about her suggestions, though, rebuking her curtly whenever she brought it up. He could not handle any criticism—which did not make him any friends among livestock dealers or wool buyers. He had fallen out with almost all of them by now—with the exception of the long-suffering Peter Brewster, who did not offer him top price for his third-rate wool, it was true, but took it off his hands all the same. Helen did not dare to think what would happen if the Brewsters moved to Otago. Then they would be dependent on his successor, and there could be no relying on diplomacy from Howard. Would the new buyer show any understanding or simply pass the farm over on future buying trips?
The family already lived hand to mouth. Without the help of the Maori, who were always sending food from the hunt, fish, or vegetables with the schoolchildren to pay for their lessons, Helen wouldn’t have known what to do. Hiring extra help for the stables and the household was out of the question—in fact, Helen was now required to do more of the farm work because Howard could not even afford a Maori assistant. But Helen generally failed woefully at her farm chores. Howard admonished her sternly when she blushed for the umpteenth time during lambing instead of rolling up her sleeves, or when she burst out in tears during the slaughter.
“Don’t act like that!” he would yell, forcing her to grab hold of the emerging lamb. Helen tried to swallow her disgust and fear to do what was asked of her. She could not bear it, however, when he treated their son that way, which happened more and more frequently. Howard could hardly expect him to grow up and make himself “useful” when it was already obvious that Ruben would not be any better suited to farm work than she was. Though the child shared a few physical similarities with Howard—he was tall, with full, dark locks, and would no doubt grow up to be strong—he had his mother’s dreamy gray eyes, and Ruben’s nature did not fit the harshness of farm life. The boy was Helen’s pride and joy; he was friendly, polite, and pleasant to be around, and what’s more, very intelligent. At five years old, the boy could already read fluently and devoured tomes like Robin Hood and Ivanhoe on his own. He was astoundingly clever in school, solving the math problems assigned to the twelve-and thirteen-year-olds, and already spoke fluent Maori. Handiwork, however, was not his strong suit; even little Fleur was more adept at making and firing the arrows from the bows they had just carved for their Robin Hood game.
But Ruben was more than willing to learn. Whenever Helen asked him to do something, he always made every effort to master it. Howard’s gruff tone, however, scared him, and the lurid stories his father told him to toughen him up terrified him. As a result, Ruben’s relationship with his father grew worse with each passing year. Helen could already predict a disaster similar to the one between Gerald and Lucas on Kiward Station—alas, without the fortune that enabled Lucas to hire a capable manager.
When Helen thought about all this, it sometimes made her sorry that their marriage had not produced any more children. Sometime after Ruben’s birth, Howard had resumed his visits to her, but they never managed to conceive again. It may have had to do with Helen’s age or with the fact that Howard never slept with her again as regularly as he had in their first year of marriage. Helen’s obvious unwillingness, their child’s presence in the bedroom, and Howard’s increased drinking did not exactly set the proper mood. Howard now more often sought his pleasures at the gambling table in the Haldon pub than in bed with his wife. If there were women there too—and maybe some of his winnings went into a whore’s purse—Helen did not want to know.
Still, today was a good day. Howard had remained sober the day before and had ridden out into the mountains before dawn to check on the ewes. Helen had milked the cows, Ruben had collected the eggs, and the Maori children would be arriving for school shortly. Helen was also hoping for a visit from Gwyneira. Fleurette would throw a fit if she wasn’t allowed to come to school again—though she was still much too little, she was eager to learn to read so as not to have to rely on her mother’s failing patience to read aloud. Her father was certainly more patient in that regard, but Fleur did not like his books. She didn’t like hearing about good little girls who fell into bad luck and poverty only to make it through thanks to luck or chance. She would have been more likely to burn down the horrible stepmothers’, foster parents’, or witches’ houses than light their fireplaces. She preferred reading about Robin Hood and his merry men or going with Gulliver on his travels. Helen smiled at the thought of the little whirlwind. It was hard to believe that quiet Lucas Warden was her father.
George Greenwood had a pain in his side from the rapid trotting. This time Gwyneira had given in to the demands of propriety and had her horse hitched to the carriage. The elegant mare, Igraine, pulled the two-seater with élan; she could easily have won any coach race. George’s rental horse could only keep up with great effort and by occasionally galloping, which jangled George to the bone in the process. However, Gwyneira was in a chatty mood and revealed a great deal about Howard and Helen O’Keefe that was of serious interest to George—which was why he tried to keep up despite the fact that it hurt to do so.
Shortly before reaching the farm, Gwyneira reined in her horse. She didn’t want to run over one of the Maori children on their way to school. Nor could anyone pass by the little highwayman who was waiting for them just beyond the ford in the stream. Gwyneira seemed to have expected something like this, but George was properly surprised when a small, dark-haired boy, his face painted green, leaped from the underbrush with a b
ow and arrow in his hands.
“Halt! What are you doing in my woods? State your names and purpose!”
Gwyneira laughed. “But you know me, don’t you, Master Robin?” she exclaimed. “Look at me. Am I not the lady-in-waiting to Lady Fleurette, the lady of your heart?”
“That’s not right at all! I’m Little John!” crowed Fleur. “And this is a messenger of the queen.” She indicated George. “He’s come from London!”
“Did our good King Richard send you? Or do you come from John, the usurper?” Ruben inquired suspiciously. “Perhaps from Queen Eleanor with the treasure for the king’s deliverance?”
“Precisely,” said George seriously. The boy was adorable, with his bandit’s outfit and serious diction. “And I must continue on today to the Holy Land. So, wilt thou let us pass now? Sir…”
“Ruben!” declared the little boy. “Ruben Hood, at your service.”
Fleur leaped from the carriage.
“He doesn’t have any treasure,” she snitched. “He just wants to visit your mummy. But he really did come from London!”
Gwyneira drove on. The children could find their own way back to the farm. “That was Ruben,” she explained to George. “Helen’s son. Quite a bright boy, don’t you think?”
George nodded. She’s done well in that respect, he thought. He once again recalled that endlessly dull afternoon with his hopeless brother, William; the one when Helen made up her mind. Before he could say anything, though, the O’Keefes’ farm came into view. George was just as horrified at the sight of it as Helen had been six years before. What’s more, the hut wasn’t even new anymore as it had been then, and now showed the first signs of dilapidation.
“This isn’t how she pictured it,” he said softly.
Gwyneira stopped her dogcart in front of the cabin and unhitched the mare. George had a chance while she did so to look around, taking in the small stables sparsely strewn with hay, the thin cow, and the mule whose best years were far behind him. He saw the well in the yard—apparently, Helen still had to carry her water into the house by bucket—and the chopping block for the firewood. Did the master of the house see to the supply himself? Or did Helen have to reach for the ax herself if she wanted to keep warm?
“Come, the school is on the other side,” Gwyneira said, tearing George from his thoughts and already moving behind the blockhouse. “We have to go through the bush a ways. The Maori built a few huts in the copse between Helen’s house and their own village. But you can’t see them from the house—Howard doesn’t like to have the children too close by. He doesn’t like the idea of the school to begin with; he’d prefer to have more help around the farm. But in the end it’s better this way. If Howard needs somebody desperately, Helen sends one of the older boys. They much prefer that sort of work.”
George could picture that. He could even manage to picture Helen doing housework. But Helen castrating lambs or helping with a cow’s birth? Not in this lifetime.
The path to the grove was well worn, but even here George could see signs of the farm’s lamentable condition. A few of the rams and ewes stood in pens, but the animals were in terrible shape—thin, their wool patchy and dirty. The fences looked worn down, the wire was poorly laid, and the gates were at sharp angles. There was no comparison with the Beasleys’ farm or Kiward Station. Taken all together, it was beyond bleak.
Still, children’s laughter could be heard from the grove. The tone there seemed to be happy.
“In the beginning,” a high voice read in a funny accent, “God created the heavens and the earth, rangi and papa.”
Gwyneira smiled at George. “Helen is wrestling with the Maori version of the creation story again,” she remarked. “It’s rather colorful, but now the children always present it this way so that Helen no longer blushes.”
While one student talked explicitly and with obvious pleasure about the love-hungry Maori gods, George peered through the brush at the open huts covered with palm branches. The children sat on the ground, listening to the little girl read aloud about the first days of creation. Then it was the next child’s turn. And then George saw Helen. She sat, upright and slender, at an improvised lectern at the edge of the scene, just as he remembered her. Her dress was threadbare but clean and high necked—at least from this angle she was every inch the proper, self-assured governess he remembered. His heart beat wildly as she now called another student to the front, turning her face in George’s direction as she did so. Helen…to George she was still beautiful, and she always would be, regardless of how she changed or how much older she looked. This last notion frightened him though. Helen Davenport O’Keefe had aged markedly in the last few years. The sun that had bronzed her once carefully maintained white skin had not been kind, and her once slender face now looked sharper, almost haggard. Her hair, however, remained the same shining chestnut color as before. She wore it in a long, thick braid that fell down her back. A few strands had freed themselves, and Helen brushed them carelessly out of her face as she joked with the students—more than she had with William and himself, George noted jealously. Helen appeared overall more flexible than before, and the interaction with the Maori children seemed to delight her. And her little Master Ruben was obviously good for her as well. Ruben and Fleurette were just sneaking in. They arrived late to class, hoping that Helen wouldn’t notice. Of course she did. Helen interrupted class after the third day of creation.
“Fleurette Warden. So lovely to see you. But don’t you think a lady should say a polite hello when she takes her seat at a gathering? And you, Ruben O’Keefe—are you feeling ill? If not, why is your face so green? Run to the well quickly and wash up so you look like a gentleman. Where is your mother, Fleur? Or did you come with Mr. McKenzie again?”
Fleur attempted to shake her head and nod gravely at the same time. “Mummy is at the farm with Mr.…something Wood,” she let slip. “But I ran here fast because I thought you were reading more of the story. Our story, not the stuff and nonsense with rangi and papa.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Fleur, you should listen to the creation story at every opportunity. We do have a few children here who do not know it, at least not the Christian version. Sit down now and listen. We’ll see what we do afterward.” Helen wanted to call on the next child, but Fleur had just espied her mother.
“There they are, Mummy and Mr….”
Helen peered through the brush—and froze when she recognized George Greenwood. She grew pale for a moment and then blushed. Was it joy? Horror? Shame? George hoped that joy won out. He smiled. Helen closed her books nervously. “Rongo…” Her gaze wandered over the assembled children and stopped on one of the older girls, who until that moment had not been following the lesson very attentively. She must have been one of the children for whom the creation story was no longer new. The girl would have liked to be browsing the new book, which Fleur also appeared to find much more interesting. “Rongo, I need to leave the class alone for a few minutes, as I have a visitor. Would you please take over the lesson? Please be sure that the children read properly and don’t just tell stories—and that they do not leave out a single word.”
Rongo Rongo nodded and stood up. Full of her own importance as assistant teacher, she sat down at the lectern and called a girl up.
As the girl began struggling through the story of the fourth day after creation, Helen walked over to Gwyneira and George. Just as he had been in the past, George was awed by her bearing. Any other woman would have quickly tried to fix her hair, or smooth her dress, or whatever else she could to spruce herself up. Helen did nothing of the sort. Calm and poised, she stepped up to her visitor and held out her hand to him.
“George Greenwood! I’m so happy to see you.”
George’s whole face shone and looked as hopeful and earnest as it had when he was sixteen.
“You were able to recognize me, miss!” he said joyfully. “You haven’t forgotten it.”
Helen blushed lightly. It didn’t escape her notic
e that he had said “it” and not “me.” He was referring to his promise, to his silly declaration of love and his desperate attempt to stop her at the outset of what was to be her new life.
“How could I forget you, Mr. Greenwood?” she said amiably. “You were one of my most promising students, and now you have made good on your dream to travel the world.”
“Not quite the whole world, miss…or should I say Mrs. O’Keefe?” George looked at her with the old mischievous look in his eyes.
Helen shrugged. “They all call me miss.”
“Mr. Greenwood is here to set up a branch office for his company,” Gwyneira explained. “He’ll be taking over Peter Brewster’s wool trading business when the Brewsters move to Otago.”
Helen smiled bitterly. She was not sure whether that would be to Howard’s benefit or not.
“That’s…nice,” she said hesitantly. “And now you’re here to get to know your clients? Howard won’t be back until this evening.”
George smiled at her. “More than anything, I’m here to see you again, miss. Mr. O’Keefe can wait. I told you that before, but you didn’t want to listen.”
“George, you should…I mean, really!” The old governess voice. George waited for a “You are so impertinent!” to follow, but Helen held back. Instead, she seemed shocked that she had accidentally called him “George” instead of “Mr. Greenwood.” George wondered if that had to do with Gwyneira’s introduction. Was Helen apprehensive about the new wool buyer? She seemed to have a reason to be, based on what he’d heard.
“How is your family, Mr. Greenwood?” Helen said, attempting to redirect the conversation. “I’d love to chat at greater length, but the children walked three miles to come to school, and I cannot disappoint them. Do you have time to wait?”
George nodded, smiling. “You know I can wait, miss.” Another allusion. “And I always did enjoy your lessons. Might I take part?”
