Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  “Mr. Martyn! Could you also not sleep? How was the reception?”

  Heather was wearing only a light dressing gown over a silk nightgown. Her breasts stood out underneath it. Freed from her eternal corset and boring old spinster dresses, her feminine figure was clearly recognizable. Her gaze was inviting, her lips trembled, and her eyes sparkled.

  William did not have to consider long. He wrapped her in his arms.

  The next morning, William hardly gave Kura time to eat breakfast. When he had returned to her bed late the previous night, satisfied from making love with Heather and drunk on whiskey, she had been sound asleep. Kura did not know jealousy. She was too self-assured for that. Though she was strongly protesting against the rushed departure, she could not get a word in edgewise.

  “He doesn’t really want to listen to you. He simply wants to ogle you,” William explained to his complaining wife. “I don’t care whether he does that or not. However, they can’t start the shearing without me. That is, they could, but I would lose respect in front of the workers. How would that look? The future master of Kiward Station hanging on the train of a would-be diva while others do the work.”

  He hurt Kura deeply with his “would-be diva” comment, which at least granted him a peaceful return trip. She maintained a huffy silence, only exchanging a few words with Heather. They made good time, as William had two cobs pulling the light chaise, and the roads had improved considerably in the last few years. It had long been unnecessary to stop for a night’s rest between Christchurch and Haldon.

  The travelers reached Kiward Station early that evening, and William reported almost triumphantly for the sheepshearing. The very next morning he would oversee the assignment of the sheep to their sheds. He began the evening with a few glasses of whiskey, however—and ended it in Heather Witherspoon’s bed.

  Heather, deeply satisfied from making love with William, did not know how to react to Kura’s complaints about the missed audition. She didn’t want Kura to go to England—at least not with William. Kura had made it clear that she would not consider leaving Kiward Station without him. However, a great deal had changed in the interim. As Kura’s confidante, Heather knew very well that Kura had not allowed her husband into her bed since Gloria’s birth. Everything that had transpired after that—in particular, Kura’s initial attempts to return her sexual relationship with William to the harmless kissing and caressing she had once enjoyed with Tiare—had not reached her ears, but she didn’t care about the details. In Heather’s opinion, Kura’s marriage to William was virtually over. Maybe Kura would, in fact, accept the reality of that and leave her husband. The audition in Christchurch could be the first step. For that reason, she tentatively advised the girl, “You shouldn’t get your hopes up too much, of course. But listening to what an expert has to say certainly couldn’t do any harm.”

  “I would have had to stay in Christchurch for that. William is so cruel!” Kura began that lament anew. Heather had already been obliged to listen to her complaints all morning. But then Heather had a stroke of genius. They should find the music for some of the pieces they had heard at the performance. Kura began to practice with determination, singing the parts of Carmen and Azucena parts over and over again.

  “I would have stabbed Carmen no later than in the second act; or better yet, the first scene,” James mumbled as the “Habanera” rang out through the salon for the third time while he was attempting to unwind after dinner.

  He was already out of sorts as it was. He had not figured William’s early return into his plans. Which had not been helped by the fact that the young man had appeared with a hangover that morning and still stiff from his ride the day before. In an ill humor, William had pushed the workers around and then set the sheep into confusion by suddenly changing the herd assignments, all of which had brought James to a boil. And now he had to listen Kura sing for hours on end about love and rebellious birds. The same pieces, over and over again.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Didn’t she say just three days ago that she desperately needed to practice her German, because she couldn’t sing Schubert’s songs in English for some reason? But now she’s singing in French, right?”

  Kura had learned French from Heather Witherspoon.

  “They heard that piece in Christchurch, and the singer is supposed to have been horrendous,” Gwyneira explained. She then went on to tell him about the audition. “Kura wants me to put a driver and a carriage at her disposal, so that she can meet this singer, this ‘impresario,’ again. But we can’t really spare anyone at the moment, except maybe William. He could have just stayed on with her there.”

  “I wouldn’t have let her audition either, had I been in his place,” James remarked grumpily. “It’s clear what that other fellow wants. Do you truly believe that he’s going to foist a girl on his other singers who has never seen the inside of a conservatory before?”

  Gwyneira shrugged. “I don’t know, James. I don’t the first thing about all that, and to be honest I don’t care. I would just like to be rid of Carmen. And to make Kura happy.”

  Kura had just started the aria again from the beginning. James rolled his eyes.

  “Not again,” he muttered peevishly. “Look at it this way, Gwyn: You’ve been trying to make Kura happy for sixteen years. Now it’s William’s turn. They should figure out how to get her to Christchurch, and if all goes well, he’ll stay there to hold her little hand while she sings. No doubt he’d prove grand at negotiating her contract and driving the others crazy when she sings too loud or quietly. But that’s not your concern anymore. It’s bad enough that neither of them looks after their child. Which reminds me, we need to tell Jack that he can’t bring the baby into the sheds during the shearing. The air in there won’t be good for her. Even if it means she cries all day.”

  Gwyneira sighed. That again! The nanny would surely resign. Gwyneira would be overseeing one of the sheds as she always did, but if Kura sang all day, making Gloria cry all day, Mrs. Whealer would quite likely lay down her arms.

  Kura sang as if possessed, and the more reliable her mastery of the lyrics and notes, the more confident she grew that she would meet Roderick Barrister’s standards. She had to get to Christchurch; she simply had to! And the week had almost passed; she only had two days left, one of which would be wasted on the trip there. Perhaps she could talk to William once more. Or more than talk. If she let him back into her bed after all this time, he would be putty in her hands. Naturally, there was a risk. But if she whipped William from one climax to another, he would promise her anything. She would simply have to take the risk. Besides, she had heard rumors among the dancers at the reception—something about a stroke of bad luck that had befallen one of them, but it had evidently been possible to straighten it all out. So, if worse came to worst, she could ask the girl how she’d resolved the matter. Or Roderick Barrister. He couldn’t have his singers and dancers running around with protruding bellies, of course.

  And so Kura did not spend her afternoon at the piano but instead devoted herself to making herself pretty for William. She did not sing again until that evening for him and Heather Witherspoon. Gwyneira and James had retired early, and Jack had barricaded himself with Gloria and his dog in his halfway-quiet room.

  Kura did not pick up her opera music that evening, but instead practiced the Irish songs that had always enchanted William. And, indeed, no later than “Salley Gardens,” she saw the light of desire in his eyes. She sang “Wild Mountain Thyme,” to rekindle his lust, and promised her love in “Tara Hill.” By the time she finished her last song, she thought him sufficiently aroused. She stood up slowly, making sure he did not take his eyes off of her, and walked to the stairs, her hips swaying.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” she breathed, filling her voice with enticement and promise. William’s breath seemed to have quickened. Kura climbed the stairs, certain that she would soon hear him knocking at her door.

  But William did not appear
. At first, Kura was not particularly unsettled. He had to finish off his whiskey and to extricate himself from Heather Witherspoon’s chatter. Heather seemed to have fallen a bit in love with him. How absurd!

  Kura undressed at her leisure, perfumed herself, and wrapped herself in her loveliest nightgown. Only then did she begin to grow impatient. She wanted to get under way soon, if for no other reason than that they needed to get an early start the next day. She wanted to reach Christchurch before nightfall. Ideally, she thought, she would audition briefly for Roderick Barrister that evening, so that they could work out a time for her to take the stage the next day.

  After almost an hour had passed, Kura had had enough. If William would not come of his own accord, then she would just go get him. She pulled on a dressing gown, combed her hair once more and stepped out onto the grand staircase leading to the salon. She wanted him to see her coming, an enchanting—and lonely—beauty in her nightclothes.

  Kura floated down the stairs.

  But William was not in the salon. Indeed, the light had been turned out, and it looked as though everyone had gone to bed. Had William really retired to his bedroom without knocking on her door even once? After that performance? Kura decided not to hold it against him and instead to feign a little remorse. After all, she had rebuffed him so often that it was understandable if he had given up all hope. It would only make her strategy that night all the more effective.

  Kura slipped with feline movements into William’s apartments. She would kiss him awake and be on top of him when he opened his eyes. But no one’s head rested on the pillows. William’s bed lay untouched. Kura frowned. The only other possibility was the nursery. Maybe William had wanted to take a look at Gloria or was comforting her while she cried. Kura had never seen him do such a thing, but she did not know where else he might be spending the night.

  A moment later, she knew. Silence reigned in the nursery, and no sound was coming from Jack’s room next door. She did, however, hear laughing and moaning coming from Heather Witherspoon’s room. Kura did not hesitate. She ripped the door open.

  “She’s gone? What do you mean, ‘She’s gone’?” Gwyneira asked, bewildered. She had come down to breakfast still a little sleepy. She and James had drunk a bottle of good wine to put Carmen behind them, and enjoyed a lovely night after that. And now, here was William, wanting something from her first thing. “Come, William, Kura doesn’t know how to ride, and she doesn’t drive. She can’t even have left Kiward Station.”

  “She was a little hysterical yesterday. She might have misunderstood something.” William hemmed and hawed.

  In truth, Kura had only cast a burning glance at him and Heather in bed, a glance that expressed something almost like hate. Or rather, disappointment, an unwillingness… William did not quite know how to gauge her expression. He had only seen it for a fleeting instant. After she had grasped what she was seeing, she had stormed out of the room. William knocked on her door immediately thereafter, but she had not answered. Nor when he tried again, or again after that. Finally, he gave up and retired to his own room, where he tossed and turned. Only at dawn did sleep finally overpower him.

  When he’d woken up, he wanted to try once again to speak with Kura. When he went to her room, however, he found her doors wide open. And she was gone.

  “Did you have a fight?” Gwyneira asked, groping for an explanation.

  “Not exactly… Well, yes, but… For heaven’s sake, where could she be?” William appeared almost frightened. Kura had behaved so strangely. And though he would not admit it, he had found a letter she had written on the table in her dressing room.

  It isn’t worth it.

  Nothing more and nothing less. But Kura would not have done anything to herself, would she? William thought with horror about the lake next to the Maori village.

  “Well, I would probably start by looking for her in Christchurch,” James said casually as he came down the stairs in excellent spirits. “Isn’t that where she wanted to go?”

  “But not on foot,” William objected.

  “Kura rode off with Tiare,” said Jack, who had just entered the room followed by his puppy. Apparently, he had already been out checking on things in the stables. “I asked if she wanted to say good-bye to Gloria, but she didn’t even look at me. Felt guilty, I bet, since Tiare was taking Owen without asking.”

  “Maybe she looked in on Gloria earlier,” said Gwyneira, in an effort to make her granddaughter not appear to be such a horrible mother.

  Jack shook his head. “Nah, Gloria slept with me. I just left her with Kiri in the kitchen. And Kiri didn’t say anything about Kura.”

  “And you just let her take the horse?” William flared up at him. “That Maori boy comes here, takes a valuable horse and—”

  “How was I supposed to know they didn’t ask?” Jack said calmly. “Tiare will definitely bring him back anyway. I’m sure they only drove to Christchurch for that absurd audition of Kura’s. They’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “That I not believe,” Moana remarked. The housekeeper had been setting the table for breakfast when William had come downstairs with the news of Kura’s disappearance. Moana had gone straight upstairs to inspect Kura’s things. She felt no need to hold back, having served in the house for forty years and having raised Marama and Paul. Kura was like a very spoiled granddaughter to her. “She took big bag, all beautiful things, also evening dresses. Looks like big trip.”

  Roderick Barrister rounded up the ensemble for a rehearsal shortly before their last opera recital in Christchurch. They needed to practice the quartet from Il Trovatore again. It had become an embarrassment, and his Azucena was only getting worse. The girl felt too much was being asked of her; she was suffering from the other dancers’ ridicule, and then there was this other business… Something would have to be arranged soon. Roderick asked himself how it could have happened. He had never impregnated any of his many lovers before. At least no one had ever told him if he had.

  The girl’s failure in Il Trovatore was still bearable—worse was the scene from Carmen. It would be best to strike it altogether from the program and look for something else. La Traviata perhaps. He could stage that with Sabina. Although then she would be overtaxed in that role too, and she did not have a suitably consumptive look about her.

  “Maybe if we place the ladies a bit further forward,” he considered, “Then a bit more of the song will come across.”

  “Or, the men could just sing a bit more softly,” Sabina commented peevishly. “Piano, my friend. That should also extend into the higher range if you call yourself a tenor.”

  The giggles of the dancers, who were slowly gathering for their entrance, mixed with the ensuing cries of protest from the man playing the role of Luna, as well as Roderick’s own objections.

  And then a sweet voice suddenly sounded from the auditorium.

  “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, que nul ne peut apprivoiser…”

  The “Habanera” from Carmen. But sung by a much stronger voice than that of the little dancer. Though this singer was not perfect either, all that was lacking was polish, voice formation, a little education. The voice itself was magnificent.

  Roderick and the other singers, in a state of excited confusion, looked into the room. Then they saw the girl—wondrous in an azure-blue dress, her hair held in place with a Spanish comb just as Carmen herself must have worn. A Maori boy waited behind her.

  Kura-maro-tini sang her aria to the end calmly and with great self-assurance—did she already recognize the amazement in the eyes of her spectators? Regardless, the singers onstage and the dancers backstage could not contain themselves. They applauded enthusiastically when Kura finished—the little mezzo-soprano who saw an end to her suffering—Roderick most of all. This girl was a dream—pretty as a picture, with a voice like an angel. And he could shape her.

  “I need work,” Kura finally said. “But it looks like you need a mezzo-soprano. Can we come to an arrangement?”


  She licked her lips lasciviously and held herself upright like a queen. Her hands played imaginary castanets. She had studied her Carmen. And she would wrap this impresario around her finger just as the gypsy had Don José.

  11

  Elaine’s determination to avoid becoming pregnant at all costs consumed her whole life. It sometimes seemed an irrational obsession, since, viewed objectively, a pregnancy could actually have improved her standing in the Sideblossom household. John, for one, did not seem to believe in pestering pregnant women with nightly visits. Indeed, he was increasingly absent as Zoé’s stomach grew rounder. His “business” sometimes took him to Wanaka, sometimes to Dunedin and even as far as Christchurch.

  When he was home, he followed Emere with his eyes and occasionally touched her possessively. Though she cast looks of barely concealed hatred at him when he did so, Elaine suspected that she always obeyed his summons at night. Whenever she lay awake herself, she often heard noises in the corridors, ghostly sounds, as though someone were being dragged outside. Though Emere always moved gracefully, with swaying hips and measured step, on the days after the sounds, she appeared a little stiff. And whenever she left the house, she played the putorino—clear evidence that it really was she who slipped outside after nightfall rather than disappearing after dinner into the shelters with the other servants.

  Emere elicited strange, almost human sounds from the exotic little instrument, which unsettled Elaine and made her anxious, as though the flute were mirroring her own torment. She hardly dared move when she heard it, out of fear that Thomas would awaken, for Emere’s music seemed always to rouse a particular rage in him. When he heard it, he would stand up, close the window abruptly, and try to further muffle the sound by drawing the heavy curtains. Though they could no longer hear the flute after that, Thomas would pace the room like a caged tiger, and whenever Elaine dared to speak to him or draw his attention, he took his rage and excitement out on her. Elaine had tried insulating the room against every sound in advance. But then the air would become sticky and hot, and Thomas would wrench the window open after having his way with Elaine. Then she had to fear Emere’s playing all over again.