White Feathers, page 34
But at eleven Keely was still sitting by herself. Her face was swollen from crying, much to the ongoing embarrassment of the concierge, and she felt sick with dread that Ross wouldn’t turn up at all.
And then she was asked politely to leave. Would a taxi perhaps be helpful? Or would she like to book a room at the Masonic for the evening?
Keely, who didn’t have the money for a room, and nowhere to go in a taxi, picked up her case and walked out onto the steps of the hotel, not even turning her head when the doors were closed behind her.
She stood outside in the cold rain until her head ached, her hands were almost numb and she could barely feel her lips. And she was still crying, quietly but with dreadful persistence.
Then a man came walking up the street, the shoulders of his coat wet and his boots splashing in puddles of rainwater.
‘So he didn’t turn up then?’ Owen asked mildly.
Keely looked back at him through bloodshot eyes and shook her head.
He held out his hand. ‘Come on home, girl. Let’s call it a night.’
She didn’t take his hand but when he turned to go back to the truck she followed him. He took her case, opened the door and helped her up.
When he’d settled himself in the driver’s seat, he said quietly, ‘I have to ask, Keely. Why?’
‘Because I don’t love you, Owen.’
‘But I love you.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘And Ross McManus would have been?’
Keely closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the cab. ‘I don’t want to talk about Ross McManus.’
‘No, neither do I. I want to talk about us.’
Keely looked at him then. ‘Oh, Owen, you just don’t understand.’
‘Because you won’t let me!’
‘Because it just wouldn’t do any good.’
Owen lost his temper then. ‘It fucking well would, you know. You’re not the only one who’s come home from the war feeling lost and utterly hopeless. There are thousands of men — and yes, quite a few women too, I suspect — out there right now who don’t know whether they’re Arthur or bloody Martha because of what’s happened to them. You’re not unique.’ He shifted in his seat so she would have to look at him. ‘Talk to me, Keely, for God’s sake. I don’t give a toss what you tell me — we all did things we’ll have to bear for the rest of our lives. I killed people, ordinary decent blokes like your brothers. I don’t want to live with that but I have to. And you had to watch them die, and to protect yourself you made up a dream and fell for someone who turned out to be a right bastard. So what? I couldn’t care less if you went to bed with twenty blokes, all right?’ He was looking directly into Keely’s eyes now. ‘It was the war, Keely, and it’s over. You have to leave it behind, do you hear me?’
Keely put her hands over her face and sobbed, ‘But it’s so bloody hard to do!’
‘Yes, but you can do it. I know what you’re made of. I’ve known since that first day you told me to bugger off at the front door.’
Hesitantly, Keely turned to him and asked, ‘Will you make everything better for me?’
Shaking his head, Owen replied softly, ‘No, Keely, I won’t.’
She regarded him for a moment in silence, then turned her face away and watched the raindrops as they chased each other down the windscreen. When she moved to open the cab door, Owen grabbed her hand.
‘No, don’t run away from this. I can’t make everything better for you, but you can do it for yourself. And I can, I will, stand right beside you while you’re doing it. You don’t have to do it alone, you can always have me. You never have to be by yourself again, Keely. There’s me, and our babies, and your family. We’ll all be there. Only you have to stop running, do you understand that? Going off with that bastard McManus is just another form of running, and you can never outrun the things that live in your head. You have to make them run. Believe me, I know, I ran for a long time. But I’ve made my peace now, with those men I killed and, more to the point, with Ian.’
‘Ian?’ Keely was confused.
‘Yes, Ian. I thought for such a long time it was my fault he died. He was so young and I’d promised to look out for him, and I failed. But then I realised that if I was serious about coming to talk to you, to his family, I couldn’t make my own guilt a part of that. So I did some serious thinking, and talked to quite a lot of other veterans, and that helped me to finally put it all to rest. You have to do that as well.’
‘And you’ll stay by me while I’m doing it?’
‘Every second of the day and night, if you want me to.’
Keely thought for a moment, then inclined her head towards the steering wheel.
‘Then drive,’ she said.
EPILOGUE
It was very late when they arrived back at Kenmore — past two o’clock in the morning. But Tamar was still awake, watching from her bedroom window as the truck came slowly up the driveway.
When, by the light of the moon now that the rain clouds had moved on, she saw Owen and Keely alight from the truck then embrace tightly, she closed her eyes and murmured a very uncharacteristic prayer of thanks.
She sat for a while longer, then moved over to her small writing desk, took a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer, and began to write a letter to Kepa.
She thought it was about time she answered his question.
Further along the hall, in the darkness of the bedroom they shared, James and Lucy lay in each other’s arms. James’s hand rested protectively over the small bulge of his wife’s stomach that would be their second child, and in his sleep he smiled.
In the nursery Bonnie and Leila slept side by side in their cot, unconsciously touching hands and completely oblivious to the fact that although their mother had been away, now she had come back to them.
Duncan and Liam snored peacefully on the other side of the room. They neither knew nor cared about the tribulations of the wider Murdoch family. And why should they? For them there were trees to climb, creeks to dam and endless hills to conquer.
Thomas was dreaming. He dreamt that James had killed an entire company of his own men, and he, Thomas, had been assigned to defend him even though it was horribly clear to everyone that James was guilty. But then the vision changed and he was with Catherine, and he settled almost immediately into a deeper, more peaceful sleep.
Jeannie and Lachie were also asleep, although neither dreamed. They knew they were moving into the twilight years of their lives, but found to their surprise that they did not mind. Although times had often been difficult, and occasionally very painful, their lives together had been good and they had no regrets. When the time came, they would be ready.
In the next small valley, in the home he’d built with his own hands, Joseph lay propped up on one elbow, watching the sleeping faces of his beautiful wife and son. There would be no more wars for him, not even if the New Zealand Army did one day have to resort to recruiting men with only one leg.
He had finally come home. All those years of fighting and roaming the world and he’d found what he’d been looking for right here. He had the land, he had both his Maori and Pakeha families, and he had his beloved Erin and now William. But most of all he had peace of mind because he had done his best, and would continue to do so for as long as he lived. And that, he understood now, was true mana.
About the Author
Deborah Challinor is a freelance writer and historian living in New South Wales. She is the author of many bestsellers including Isle of Tears and the trilogy Kitty, Amber and Band of Gold, and several non-fiction titles including Who’ll Stop the Rain? and Grey Ghosts.
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Children of War trilogy
Tamar
White Feathers
Blue Smoke
Trilogy
Kitty
Amber
Band of Gold
Isle of Tears
Grey Ghosts
Fire
Union Belle
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
CHILDREN OF WAR TRILOGY
TAMAR
When Tamar Deane is orphaned at seventeen in a small Cornish village, she seizes the chance for a new life and emigrates to New Zealand. In March 1879, alone and frightened on the Plymouth quay, she is befriended by an extraordinary woman. Myrna McTaggart is travelling to Auckland with plans to establish the finest brothel in the southern hemisphere and her unconventional friendship proves invaluable when Tamar makes disastrous choices in the new colony. Tragedy and scandal befall her, but unexpected good fortune brings vast changes to Tamar’s life. As the century draws to a close, uncertainty looms when a distant war lures her loved ones to South Africa. This dramatic story — the first in a sweeping three-volume family saga — has a vivacious and compelling heroine who will live with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
WHITE FEATHERS
In 1914, Tamar Murdoch’s brothelkeeping days are behind her. Her life is one of ease and contentment at Kenmore, a prosperous estate in the Hawke’s Bay, as storm clouds over Europe begin casting long shadows.
In this gripping second instalment of Deborah Challinor’s sweeping family saga, Tamar’s love for her children is sorely tested as one by one they are called, or driven, into the living hell of World War One.
During the Boer War, Joseph, her illegitimate eldest son, fought as a European, but this time he is determined to enlist in the Maori Battalion, despite his growing attraction for his childhood friend, Erin. As loyalties within the Murdoch clan are divided, and the war takes Tamar and Andrew’s only daughter far from her sheltered upbringing, the people and experiences their children encounter will shape the destiny of the Murdoch clan for generations to come.
BLUE SMOKE
On 3 February 1931, Napier is devastated by a powerful earthquake — and Tamar Murdoch, beloved matriarch of Kenmore, is seriously injured. As she recovers, Tamar is preoccupied with the ongoing effects of the Great Depression. When her grandson threatens to leave for Spain to join the International Brigade, she feels a familiar dread — once again her family is threatened by war and heartbreak, as Hitler’s armies march.
In this final volume of the Children of War trilogy, the story of the feisty Cornish seamstress who became a brothelkeeper and landowner is brought to a stirring and memorable conclusion.
Copyright
Thanks to my husband, Aaron, who once again forked out for everything while I was writing this. Thanks also to the team at HarperCollins, to Anna Rogers for her great editing job, and to Ian Watt, who took a chance on the first book in the Children of War series.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2003
This edition published in 2012
by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
PO Box 1, Shortland Street, Auckland 1140
Copyright © Deborah Challinor 2012
Deborah Challinor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Challinor, Deborah.
White feathers / Deborah Challinor.
Originally published: 2003.
ISBN 978-1-86950-776-3
I. Title.
NZ823.3 — dc 22
ISBN: 978 1 86950 776 3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978 1 74309 729 8 (epub)
Cover design by Priscilla Nielsen
Cover images by shutterstock.com
Deborah Challinor, White Feathers
