Authors: Essie Summers
“Ye gods, what a summing-up! Well, it takes two to make a sudden marriage. Some girls don’t take to being swept off their feet. You have to bide your time.”
Lexie pounced. “You mean you did meet someone? A nice Canadian girl? Have you prospects?”
Simon laughed. “An incurable romantic!” He jeered. “I met dozens of charming Canadian girls. And ditto of lovely Australian damsels ... but I’ve intentions of wedding a Kiwi, thanks.”
Lexie’s bluish-green scanned his blue ones. “I mean you
have
met someone? There’s a girl on your horizon? Will she do for—”
He held up a hand, laughing. “Not so fast, my dear scatterbrain. You’re about to say: ‘Will she do for up here?’ Give a chap a chance! I’m not the impulsive bloke you make me out to be. I’m not rushing her. And that’s all you’re going to know. And you needn’t prime Mac up to do any delving, either.”
“I know better than that,” said Lexie gloomily. “Men!” She said to Kirsty, “When you lay the fire, turn the chimney damper upright to let it draw, and pull out this one above the oven. When it’s going well, turn this one back as far as you need without cutting off the draught entirely, and the same with the oven one. The oven won’t heat if that damper is left open, of course.”
Simon went over for the dinner soon. The children, enchanted with their new quarters and seeing nothing of its lack of finer touches, enthusiastically assisted Kirsty to set the table. Becky found a gay flowered cloth of her mother’s, put the pansies in the middle.
Geordie rootled round in the boxes Mrs. Bryn-Morgan had given them, emerged triumphantly with a huge jar of pickles. “I like pickles much better than vegetables,” he announced. “I’ll have these instead.”
Kirsty sighed inwardly. At the orphanage they much preferred greedy children to fads. “Nobody is going to have any pickle with their meat till they’ve mopped up their vegetables. And it’s the same between meals. If you get in from school hungry and eat so much you can’t get your dinner down later, the next day you don’t get a snack. Those who have eaten their dinner the day before do. And I make nice snacks. Not just biscuits and things but cheese and nut fingers, and dips. Ever have dips?”
“What are they?” asked Geordie suspiciously.
“Well, my mother’s aunt came from Northumberland and she always made my mother dips. Long fingers of crusts crisped in the oven, then dipped in hot stew or gravy. Or sometimes for our after-school snacks we had pancakes with golden syrup and lemon-juice.”
“They
sound
good,” said Geordie,” but I don’t like vegetables.”
Kirsty took no more notice of him.
Pickles
after
vegetables had worked in the orphanage, but Geordie seemed a tough nut to crack. He carefully a heaped the despised vegetables on one side of his plate and glanced sideways at Kirsty. Taking advantage of a moment
when she was assisting Mark to scoop up the last of his dinner, he reached out for the pickles.
Kirsty’s free hand came across the table swiftly and removed it out of his reach. “I think you’ve forgotten, Geordie, the others have eaten their vegetables, you haven’t.”
Geordie said in a tone of discovery. “Neither I have. I’d not noticed.”
“Fancy,” said Kirsty in a we-are-not-deceived tone. “Well, of course it’s over to you, but I’m removing the pickles any moment because I’m bringing in the pudding. I don’t like to smell pickles when I’m eating sweets. I’m funny that way.”
Geordie scowled horribly. “It must be because you’re a Naustralian! Nobody here minds.”
“I’m a New Zealander. Born in Dunedin,” said Kirsty lightly. “Becky, take out the plates, dear, we’re
all
finished.” Geordie shot her a suspicious glance. He’d show her! Putting him in the wrong over Australia! He wouldn’t have either vegetables or pickles! Pity they made your mouth water so much. And that was chow-chow. Lovely bits of cucumber in it.
But the pudding was good, a sort of baked apple roll with lashings of golden syrup over it. Jimsy seemed a good sort. He’d wander over after and see if she wanted any old pickle jars cleaned out. He bet she wouldn’t tell the men to eat up their vegetables! No, sir. They’d not stand for it. He bet they could reach out for the pickle jar whenever they liked. Funny about Kirsty. She didn’t
look
a dragon. Just wait. She’d soon give in!
Lexie dropped in. “Chris has had his sleep and I wondered if I might take all the children off your hands and take them for a walk to the beach. It would give you a chance to get on undisturbed. Oh, and here’s the morning paper.”
Kirsty looked at it apprehensively. Later on, she opened it, scanned it, wondered wildly if she might be able to have an accident with it if it contained the item about the flight the missing bride had been on. It was the one thing calculated to link things up for Simon, that.
She didn’t need to destroy it. The item had probably been in the Christchurch papers the day before same as the Dunedin ones, and there was nothing whatever about the runaway bride. She worked with a lighter heart.
They set the beds up, covered them with the cottage weave spreads from the Dunedin house, set the crockery in the cupboards, Simon got fruit cases from the cookhouse and tiered them to make bookcases for the children. “I’ll make some decent ones at the workshop, but these will do temporarily. I’ll put Nan’s books on the middle shelf of the dresser, Kirsty, if that won’t cramp you for other things?”
“No, I like books about me.”
“And I’ll bring over my radio from my single hut tomorrow. Doesn’t matter tonight.”
One more day of news-free tension.
Simon unpacked some posters of Australian wild flowers and birds and animals he had brought back with him and tacked them up in the children’s rooms.
He said, “I’ve a couple of New Zealand lake scenes I’ll put up in your room. I hate bare walls, don’t you? One is Wanaka. Have you any photos you want tacking up?”
“Just one,” said Kirsty. She rummaged in her suitcase, brought it out.
He looked at it searchingly. The man was in uniform. “Your mother and father?”
She nodded.
He hung it, turned round only slightly, said, “Haven’t you another to hang? Or is it a stand-up one?”
She knew exactly what he meant.
“No, no photo I find it better to do without reminders.”
He turned right round. “Kirsty, isn’t that a foolish attitude? Do you have to take it that way? It’s bottling it„ up. As a sort of engineer I believe in outlets. You aren’t natural, you don’t talk about it. Perhaps you think it’s easy for me to talk, that I’ve not lost my nearest and dearest. I’ve known bereavement of course, in my early years, just as you did. But this smacks of the situations that used to come about in other generations. The mother losing an adored child and locking up the room. You can’t lock up your heart. Your Gilbert is gone from this life, but if you never mention his name except in your sleep when your subconscious refuses to deny him, then it will remain a permanent grief. You’ve
got
to allow it to heal, to accept it. Perhaps it’s still too recent as yet. But life hasn’t finished for you, you know.”
She hardly heard the last sentence or two. Her mind fixed on the alarming thing he had said. “What did you say? I—I said his name in my sleep?”
“Yes ... all at once you said it three or four times, calling for him. I had a mind to waken you, but I thought it could have been a happy dream.”
He had heard her say Gilbert and still hadn’t connected it with the flight from a wedding! The names must not have registered. Yet a woman would have leapt to it, she thought.
Suddenly, with a stab of shame, she knew why. Simon MacNeill was in the habit of believing people.
She turned away, said in a voice purposely devoid of feeling, “We all react differently, Simon. This is simply my way of getting over it.” She went on, crisply, “Well, we’re as straight as we can be at this stage. I’ll press the children’s school things. And for now I’d like to go and look at the sea. Get myself orientated.”
“I’ll go with you, I’d like to show you round. I guess tonight the boys will be dropping in. I saw Lexie coming back with the kids. I’ll drop over and ask her to keep them while we ramble. We need a spell from them.”
It was cooler outside with a glorious sea-breeze to fan her cheeks. It had been hot with the stove going, but Kirsty had been terrified to let it out, sure she’d never get it going again.
Their progress was slow, interest was evident. Jimsy was sewing her curtains at the window of her own quarters of the cookhouse. She came out, said, “Very sensible to have a walk. There’s always another day. The children are enjoying themselves. They took a picnic snack down to the beach. Lexie came over to see if I had any pickle. It seems young Geordie is crazy on pickle sandwiches.”
She looked amazed when they both burst out laughing.
“Round one to Geordie,” said Simon. He explained.
Mrs. Jimson nodded. “They give up sooner or later. I had a battle with my boy over the same thing. The girl would eat anything. Oh, well, even if I hadn’t won, the armed forces would have cured him. That or boardinghouses, but he was home, working, till war broke out.”
When they walked on Kirsty said, “Where is her son now?”
“He didn’t come back. He was lost on a bombing raid over Germany. She gets a great kick out of cooking for other women’s sons. A great sort. Doesn’t mope, though I guess she has her moments. She worked hard till she saved enough to visit his grave. It was rather hard to trace. A German mother helped her. Helped her because her own son, a civilian, had been killed the same night.
“It’s quite a story. They recognized each other for kindred spirits, though this woman was older. The son’s wife was killed too, leaving a little boy she brought up. He wanted to be a bridge builder, and he also had itchy feet, wanted to travel. Through Jimsy he got a chance to come in on this project. The grandmother came out too, just a couple of years ago, with a widowed friend. They live in Cromwell. The men had got very fond of young Wilhelm—Bill, we call him—and they raised the money between them to bring the two women out.
“Jimsy is the right woman for this job—not easily shocked, yet she stands no nonsense. The boys love her, not just her cooking. To them she is home. A good many are far from their homes, a Norwegian, an Italian, two Dutchmen, an Australian—plus, of course, New Zealanders of both kinds,
pakeha
and Maori. As far as that goes most of the others are New Zealanders, they’ve been naturalized.”
They crossed the road that was being pushed up north to link up with the Westland road and crossed over the sand-dunes to the shore. It seemed limitless, running north and south. Kirsty gazed north. “Somewhere, up there, we crossed the other day?”
He swung her south. “There, where the beach curves, is Jackson Bay, a remote outpost, the end of the road south. A perfect bathing beach an hour or two’s journey away—if you can fight the sandflies off—beyond that, no roads. That’s Fiordland. We’ll take you there by air some day. Your Norwegian blood may stir with some old race-memory when you see the fiords.”
The beach was gleaming almost-white shingle, glinting with mica, with great combers rushing in to roar up the beach and then retreat with sucking noises. Not a safe beach for swimming. Driftwood was piled up with a bleached beauty all their own.
Kirsty said, “Can you pick up some of this driftwood for the open fire? Not that I suppose we’ll need one tonight. But I love driftwood, the blue and the green and the coppery flames, making you wonder what substances it has touched in its journeyings to make it those colors.”
Simon picked some up. “You’ll do Geordie, even if you are as bad as his mum over meals! He’ll tell you what substances. In fact, after a month or so of his company you’ll be bursting at the seams with knowledge. I’ve been thinking about his eating habits, wondered if I might be able to appeal to him through his love of things scientific ... go into detail about the elements needed for refuelling our bodies, the chemical reactions, the way our digestive juices act on what we give them ... bone-building, muscle-toning and so on. What do you think?”
“A jolly good idea. Try it out, anyway, not too obviously.”
Geordie warmed to the subject. In fact he went on pursuing it with such enthusiasm that Kirsty suddenly realized to herself, with inward mirth, he’d thought this a sure way of postponing his bedtime. Nine little orphans had made her a little dubious over children’s higher-seeming motives.
At last, however, Geordie was a pyjama-clad figure ready for bed. He came in, hair neatly slicked down, face incredibly clean, smelling of toothpaste, to kiss them goodnight.
He stopped at the door, turned round, a choirboy primness sitting upon him.
“Uncle Simon! You didn’t tell me how an intake of pickles affects our structure. Will you do that tomorrow night?”
“All right,” said Simon with commendable control, something that rather deflated Geordie. “Goodnight, Geordie ... sleep well.”
It was almost nine before the men trooped in, all of them. They fetched in a couple of forms with them.
As Kirsty ushered the last one in she said smilingly: “I think I’ll go over and visit Lexie. You’ll want to talk shop with Simon.”