The Colour, page 5
She and Joseph had looked at what had happened – the loss of Beauty and of almost all their hens, the donkey grown thin and tormented by coughing, the tin roof of the Cob House buckled and leaking – and seen their own responsibility in these disasters, their own ignorance.
‘We’re fools,’ said Joseph. ‘We’re blunderers. We’re geese.’
He thought in his panic and pessimism that they wouldn’t survive the winter. It was Lilian, with her belief that only the well-to-do could succeed in the world, who suggested the journey to Orchard House. Drying Beauty’s tartan coat by the range, so that it could be put on to the suffering donkey, she sniffed and said: ‘The only people who will set you straight are the Orchards. You will have to go cap-in-hand to them.’
Cap-in-hand? Joseph thought that all of that had been left behind in England. He’d seen how the squires of Norfolk had looked down on his father, the livestock auctioneer, and how few of them had bothered to attend his funeral or even send a condolence letter. He rounded on Lilian and snapped: ‘I am never again going cap-in-hand to any living soul!’
‘Well,’ retorted Lilian. ‘Then you are more of a fool than I took you for. Wulla.’
That night, in their calico room, Harriet took Joseph in her arms. She said she had always wanted to visit the Orchards so that she could see what grew in their vegetable plot and learn how they irrigated it in summer. She reminded Joseph that Dorothy Orchard, virtually alone in a world of men, was a woman who might enjoy discussing with her how to make a carrot cake or poach an eel.
It was a long time before Joseph said anything. On the edge of sleep, he muttered: ‘You are not travelling all those miles alone.’
‘Yes I am, my dear,’ replied Harriet, wide awake. ‘The donkey and I will go at a very slow trot, taking the cart so that I can return with some milk. We shall rest there for a day and a night, or a little longer. I will see what has been planted on the edge of the Orchards’ pond.’
She travelled almost due south. When she reached the Ashley River, she stopped and stared at the hectic, jade-green water. A raft made of kanuka trunks, worked with ropes and pulleys, took carts and passengers across the Ashley, and this contraption was waiting there, under the charge of a ferryman, chewing tobacco and spitting into the water.
The ferryman saw Harriet hesitating. ‘Bring him on, Miss! Bring him on!’ he shouted. So Harriet tried to lead the terrified donkey to the water’s edge, where the raft fretted at its mooring. But the donkey wouldn’t go on. He attempted to rear up between the shafts of the cart. He brayed to the sky.
‘Cover his head!’ yelled the ferryman. So Harriet took off her cloak and tied it round the animal’s face and thought that in this way he would go on, but blind as he was, he could feel the cold of the river and the tilt of the raft and again he tried to rear up and the cart tipped and almost fell and the ferryman swore and one of the shafts slammed into Harriet’s elbow.
Trying not to cry out with pain, Harriet turned the donkey and led him in a circle on the dry bank, stroking his neck under the cloak and trying to soothe him with human words. He started coughing and she felt him shivering and some of his fear passed into her and she began to feel cold, but she had to bring him back to the river and this time the ferryman loped off the raft and helped her to pull the animal on, keeping his head low so that he wouldn’t rear and trying all the while to steady the cart.
And so the donkey had a footing at last and Harriet held tight to the animal’s neck, while the ferryman, always chewing, with his jaw muscles moving and twitching, tugged on the pulleys and the raft floated out into the surging river.
Harriet saw long-legged birds land on the further bank and stare at the approaching apparition. And she thought how, if everything capsized and all of them were drowned, the accident would go unregarded, except by birds she couldn’t even name, and she said a prayer that she wouldn’t die here, because she knew that her future life would contain wonders and she wanted to remain alive to see them.
The ferryman swore again as the rope tightened on its opposite mooring and burned his blistered hands. Harriet could see the water becoming shallow, and lifted her head when the birds flapped clumsily away.
The raft was nudging the bank now. It was tied up and Harriet coaxed the donkey on to the shingle and uncovered its head and then put on her cloak and pulled it round her. She rested for a few moments and ate some of the dried fruit she’d brought for the journey and let the donkey graze on a patch of straggly grass. She waited until her heart was still again before going on.
She arrived at Orchard House as dusk was falling. Eight-year-old Edwin, who had made his own house in a titoki tree, was the first person to see her, this stranger driving a donkey cart and the animal’s head drooping from weariness, and he climbed down and ran to bring her in.
‘Mama,’ he said, as he escorted her into the sitting-room, where Dorothy was doing her household accounts, ‘this is Mrs Blackstone and her hands are very cold.’
Dorothy Orchard looked up at Harriet, who was struggling to pile her brown hair back into the neat knot from which it had escaped, and said: ‘Ah. Oh yes, what a nuisance long hair is in this country! What I advise is, cut it off. I broke my arm on a ride and could not, could not dress my hair, and so I gave Toby the scissors and . . . oh but my goodness yes, your hands are frozen solid. Come to the fireside. And Edwin, take Mrs Blackstone’s horse to the stables, dearest, and give him some oats.’
‘It’s a donkey, Mama,’ said Edwin.
‘Oh, a donkey. Well, take the donkey then, sweet boy. You rode a long way on the donkey, Mrs Blackstone?’
‘No. There’s a little cart . . .’
‘You crossed the Ashley?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were not swirled away? They pretend that raft of theirs is safe, but of course there have been drownings. Now come along to the fire and I will call our maid, Janet, and she will bring us some brandy wine.’
Harriet looked at Dorothy Orchard, whose hair was indeed cut short and stuck out at a rebellious angle from the nape of her neck. Her face was wide and square and slightly flat, as though her jawbone were a sail, set squarely to the wind, but her eyes were large and beautiful. When Harriet began apologising for arriving unannounced, Dorothy said: ‘You were not unannounced. That is to say, we heard from our cadet, from whom you bought your mutton, that you had built a house near the Okuku and that you were high up and I said to Toby when the snow came: “I think we shall see the Blackstones as soon as there is a melt”. So I was not wrong, except that you came alone.’
She went to the door, then, and began calling to the maid: ‘Janet! Janet!’ then turned to Harriet and whispered: ‘Her name is Jane, but we never call her that. It is very peculiar of us.’
Harriet smiled at Dorothy. Then she allowed herself to look round the large room. In its degree of spaciousness and comfort, it reminded her of places where she’d worked as a governess, places which she had never expected to see again once she’d set sail for New Zealand. She wondered how long it had taken the Orchards to create a room like this, with heavy curtains at the windows and a fine gilt mirror above the fireplace and newspapers folded in a rack.
‘Now,’ said Dorothy to Janet, who had come silently in, ‘bring some brandy wine and three glasses, and some milk for Edwin, then make up a bed for Mrs Blackstone, and . . . what are we to eat for supper?’
‘Pigeon pie,’ said Janet.
‘Very well. Make sure there is enough for us all.’ Then she turned to Harriet as Janet slipped away. ‘Troublesome to shoot, the pigeon,’ she said. ‘Flight like a spinning top. But Toby could shoot a flea. Sit down, Mrs Blackstone. Put your feet on this little stool and warm them.’
The pie was large and cumbersome. A whole flock of large pigeons seemed to fill it up, clustering together in a red gravy.
Harriet, yawning with hunger, noticed that Toby Orchard’s enormous hands cut the pastry with surprising delicacy, as though he knew he had been put on earth to be the steward of everything physical in the world, whether these things were flying about, or growing at a creek’s edge, or dead in a pie. She watched him as he cut the first triangle of pastry and laid it on top of the pie and scooped up the spicy meat with a heavy spoon, then transferred the pastry to the brimming plate that he handed her. Compared to Joseph, Toby Orchard was a giant. His hair and beard were yellow and wild and his face had a high colour, as though he had just run a race or fought with a tiger. His clothes were noisy as he moved inside them.
When he had served out all the portions of pigeon and mumbled a grace, he fell triumphantly upon his food. He tore bread in his hands and drenched it with gravy and swallowed everything down – pigeon flesh, pastry, potatoes, sauce and bread – so fast that the pattern of roses on the plate seemed hardly to have been covered up before it appeared again, shiny and clean. And Harriet understood that while Toby was in this first euphoria of his eating, he expected no one to talk to him. Dorothy smiled benevolently upon him between her own meagre mouthfuls. Edwin quietly recited to his mother a poem he had made up that day; it was about a hippopotamus. Harriet savoured the food and the fire in the room and waited to tell her story of the death of Beauty in the snow.
When she began her tale, the three faces stared at her as though at a waterfall, wondering at its downward precipitation. She supposed they were trying to imagine what kind of ignorant people could put a rug on a cow. Edwin’s eyes were sorrowful as he asked: ‘Why did you not put Beauty in her shed?’
‘Because there is no shed,’ said Harriet.
‘That was the trouble,’ said Dorothy gently, ‘as it is with sheep when a southerly blows like that. There is never enough shelter.’
Toby Orchard began slapping crumbs from his coat-front. He did this impatiently, tidying himself up before beginning to speak.
‘When we began here on the run,’ he said at last, ‘we lost livestock with every southerly gale. Sheep can be blown clean off a hill or they can cough till their hearts burst or cluster under the river-banks and drown. But what I said to Dorothy then, and what I say to you now, is never give up. Keep building. Make a barn with cob. Roof it with ti-ti leaves. Anything. You’re high up near the Okuku, and the southerlies will bring in more snow this winter than you ever saw in Norfolk. Consider the latitude of the South Island of New Zealand! Nigh on fifty degrees south. Spend money on another milk cow and you will lose her too – unless you bring her in under your own roof.’
While Dorothy nodded and Edwin watched his father gravely, Harriet tried to imagine what Lilian would say about sharing the Cob House with an animal. (‘I simply will not do it, Joseph. So why do you not put the cow in my bed and I will go out and sleep in the snow!’)
A smile touched the corners of Harriet’s mouth as Toby continued.
‘We can sell you milk,’ he said. ‘In this kind of cold, it will keep fresh for quite a few days. When you’ve made the shed, scythe last year’s tussock instead of burning it and dry it on the dry winds. No straw on the flats, of course, but tussock will do and cows must have plenty of it to keep them warm.’
Harriet nodded.
Edwin said: ‘Poor Beauty.’
‘No fleece on a cow,’ Toby went on. ‘And nostrils too large. Breath freezes and blocks the air passage, then they try to breathe through their mouths and the cold burns their throats. You must wait until spring in October.’
Harriet said: ‘Joseph thought he knew livestock . . .’
‘No use,’ said Toby, ‘no use at all, unless you also know the weather.’
The maid Janet removed the remains of the pigeon pie and brought in a trembling white blancmange, which she placed without hesitation in front of Dorothy, apparently knowing that a blancmange was not a real or pungent enough entity to engage Toby’s attention. When served his portion of this confection, Toby wrapped his big hand around a spoon, lifted a few morsels to his mouth and then abandoned it, pushing his plate away and wiping not only his mouth, but his nose and his eyes with the table napkin. Dorothy regarded him watchfully.
‘Toby is out on the run from sunrise to sunset,’ she said softly to Harriet, ‘and by supper time he is very tired.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Blackstone,’ Toby Orchard said, getting to his feet and stretching. ‘I shall go to bed now and listen to the night birds.’
Then to Dorothy, he said: ‘Perhaps you will show Mollie to our guest?’
‘Certainly I will, dear,’ said Dorothy.
‘Good-night, Papa,’ said Edwin.
Toby came round to where his son sat, still eating his helping of blancmange, and put his wide hand tenderly on Edwin’s head. ‘I heard your hippopotamus,’ he said. ‘I thought him very good.’
Dorothy and Harriet sat in front of the fire, into which they both stared.
‘You will discover,’ said Dorothy, ‘what a minute world you have come to. Vast outside. So vast it takes our breath away. But our concerns are so very small: the health of the sheep, a dry shipment of chestnuts, firewood that doesn’t spit, a servant girl who can make mashed potato without lumps . . .’
‘Oh,’ said Harriet, ‘but when I stand by my creek and look towards the mountains . . .’
‘Precisely,’ said Dorothy, ‘they are grand. Nature is grand here. But too grand. To survive in New Zealand, we all have to re-create, if not the past exactly, then something very like it, something homely.’
Harriet saw the branch of apple wood she was watching break and fall and a high flame spring up and begin to consume it. She said: ‘Our Cob House is not like any home I have been in.’
‘Not yet,’ said Dorothy. ‘But if your farm prospers, then your husband will build a larger house, a house like this one, and you will serve tea in it, tea from China, but the rest of the world will have clean vanished from your head.’
‘Well then,’ said Harriet, ‘I hope we may stay always in the Cob House, always listening to the river, always walking out at night to see the stars . . .’
‘No,’ said Dorothy. ‘Take my word for it. We are not strong enough for rivers and stars. We think we are at first, but we are not.’
‘What do you mean, Mrs Orchard?’ asked Harriet.
‘I think you might call me Dorothy and I shall call you Harriet, if I may? What do I mean? I mean that inevitably we make a small world in the midst of a big one. For a small world is all that we know how to make.’
Harriet was silent. Here in this room was indeed a comfortable little piece of England reassembled. It was pretty and welcoming and outside were English trees moving in the dark.
‘But then,’ she said, ‘we are not tested.’
‘Now it is my turn to ask you what you mean.’
‘Well, I am not sure I know what I mean. But when I am working in my vegetable garden, on my own, and I look up at the mountains, that is where I long to go.’
Dorothy Orchard ran her hands through her cropped hair. She looked at Harriet, at her muddied skirts and her slender feet in their brown boots, and tried to guess her age. ‘The mountains, as you call them, the Southern Alps are as fearful in their way as anything in the world. I’ve heard them called “the stairway of hell”. If you don’t want your children to lose a mother, then stay away from the Alps.’
‘I have no children,’ said Harriet.
‘Ah.’
Dorothy paused for an anxious second or two, but then went hurriedly on: ‘But you have a husband and you would not want him to be left alone.’
‘No,’ replied Harriet. But it came to her at that moment that there was a part of Joseph which, even in their bed, remained resolutely alone. This was not a thing they would ever speak of, but it was nevertheless true.
Dorothy stood up. ‘It is getting late,’ she said, ‘and we shall go to bed, but Toby made me promise to show you Mollie, who, at the moment, is a resident of the airing cupboard.’
The two women went slowly up the stairs of Orchard House, Dorothy leading the way with a candle burning in a silver candlestick. They arrived at a landing from which they could hear Toby snoring.
Dorothy opened a small door and a warm, acrid smell made Harriet’s nostrils flare. ‘Toby is very proud of the airing cupboard,’ Dorothy whispered. ‘Heat from the range rises and warms the stones, so this is where we dry clothes and air the sheets and now if I shine the light down a little, you will see Mollie.’
Harriet saw two yellow eyes staring at her over the rim of a rushwork basket.
‘Mollie the collie,’ said Dorothy. ‘Edwin named her and of course Toby thought this very droll. He used to make Edwin say “Mollie-the-collie must not be mollycoddled!” But now look beside her, there. Two pups. Born eight days ago, so we let her live in here with them until she weans them.’
Harriet knelt down and gently put a hand out to the dog. The pups came clustering to the edge of the basket.
‘Good girls,’ said Dorothy. ‘Brave girls.’ Then to Harriet she said: ‘Mollie is the cleverest dog we’ve had. Knows every inch of the run. Knows which sheep are the strayers and the slowcoaches. Toby will keep one of the pups – the one Edwin has named Baby – and train her. But we never keep more than two dogs. We shall find a home for the other.’
In among the dogs’ pungent warmth, Harriet’s hand caressed them gently. She thought affectionately of her father’s old wolfhound, a grey stumbling creature who was never fond of walking or running but preferred to lie all day across his master’s feet in their heavy, polished shoes, with one eye closed and the other on its own reflection in the fender. Without thinking further, she said: ‘May I ask Joseph if we could buy the other puppy?’
The snoring in Toby Orchard’s room stopped suddenly and Harriet imagined that he might at any moment appear – to deny her request, not wanting a dog of his to live in so poor a place as the Cob House, a place where animals died because the people were too new to the landscape and had no understanding of the sky. But the snoring resumed more quietly and Dorothy merely said: ‘Yes, by all means ask and I will ask Toby. But collies must work, you know. They must work or they are not happy.’
