Survivor (3 page)

She was a happy soul with a simple
philosophy that as long as she had her beloved family around her, enough food to eat
and a roof over her head, nothing could hurt her. At fifty-nine she still had the
energy of a woman ten years younger. She might wear glasses now, her hair might be
snow white and her face wrinkled, but she was still a force to be reckoned with.
Even now, when banks were foreclosing on mortgages and there was a worldwide
depression, she remained optimistic, convinced nothing bad was going to happen to
them.

‘It’s
the years before the children settle down with children of their own that worry
me,’ Belle said. But she said it with a smile because, with Mog and Etienne
beside her, she mostly felt invincible.

As the three of them sipped their
brandy, Mog looked at Belle appraisingly. At thirty-six Belle was still a very
beautiful woman, her curly hair as dark and luxuriant as it had been at twenty, and
the few laughter lines around eyes, and the few pounds she’d gained in the
last few years, added to rather than subtracted from her attractions. She was a
woman men lusted after, and because of that some of the matrons of Russell watched
her like hawks. But they didn’t need to, Belle’s heart was firmly in
Etienne’s keeping, she had eyes for no one else. Belle was safe with him too,
he had no interest in other women, and only a complete fool would dare risk
Etienne’s wrath – one look at his cold blue eyes, the faint scar on his cheek,
was enough to know he wasn’t a man to upset.

Mog could remember only too well her
reservations when he first turned up here to find Belle. He might have been a hero
in the war, but the way he’d lived before that didn’t bear close
scrutiny. But she saw the light in Belle’s eyes when she looked at him, sensed
that he was her destiny, and so Mog had to accept him.

She loved him like he was her own son
now. And he had proved himself again and again. He was strong, dependable, loving
and faithful, with a wonderful sense of humour that never left him even in the most
difficult times. Whether he was fishing to bring food to the table, doing building
work, clearing land, or rocking one of the babies to sleep in his arms, he gave it
his all. So maybe his plan of planting a vineyard had failed – something some of the
more spiteful people in Russell liked to remember with delight – but, on balance,
he’d been a good provider, and he was well liked in the community.

‘What are
you thinking about?’ Etienne asked, looking at Mog with one fair eyebrow
raised quizzically.

‘Only how glad I am that it worked
out for you two,’ she said. ‘We all did the right thing in coming to New
Zealand, didn’t we?’

‘We certainly did,’ Belle
said with a smile. ‘When I despair of us ever getting electricity here, modern
plumbing and decent roads, I think of how cold and wet it would be back in
England.’

‘Times are going to get harder for
us all, though,’ Etienne warned. ‘It’s two years now since the
Wall Street crash, seven million out of work in America, and things are getting as
tough here. With farmers getting nothing for their produce, and factories in
Auckland folding, the ripples will soon spread out to us.’

‘It won’t stop rich people
coming here to fish and sail, though, will it?’ Belle asked. Over the last ten
years, they’d seen a big increase in the number of people arriving for the
summer, mainly due to the American writer and sportsman Zane Grey coming to Russell
in 1926 to catch marlin. The Duke and Duchess of York had spent a few nights in the
harbour on HMS
Renown
the following year, and there had been scores of
other rich and important people coming ever since. Mog and Belle had benefited from
these visitors, mostly carrying out alteration work on clothes they’d brought
with them, but Belle had sold quite a few hats and Mog had made shorts, skirts and
blouses for wives who found their clothes were too formal for Russell.

As for Etienne, he’d taken out
countless fishing parties on his boat, whole families wanting to picnic on a beach,
and acted as a ferry boat for holidaymakers. Earlier in the year, the road from
Russell to Whangarei had been completed, and this summer was the first when visitors
would be able to arrive by road, even if it was as winding as a corkscrew.

‘Maybe rich
people will still come, but the little campsites all around here are already feeling
the pinch now that people in the cities are losing their jobs,’ Etienne
pointed out. ‘We may have to tighten our belts before long.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Mog
said firmly. ‘We might not have any money in the bank, but we have no debts
and all three of us can turn our hands to anything. But what we should be doing now
is deciding how we are going to handle Mari. By tomorrow she’ll have forgotten
what a close shave she had, so she ought to be punished in some way to remind her
how serious it was. She is also a little too big for her boots. Miss Quigley was
right in saying she’s defiant, and that isn’t good in an
eleven-year-old.’

Belle bristled. ‘She’s just
confident, that’s all. I won’t bring her up like you and Annie raised
me, virtually a prisoner.’

‘That’s unfair,
Belle,’ Etienne spoke out. ‘Mog had to keep you close as a child because
there were dangers all around you in London. Mog doesn’t want to do that with
Mari.’

‘Of course I don’t,’
Mog said. ‘All she needs is some gentle curbing. She’s been coming and
going as she pleases for some time now. She should be helping around the house more,
learning cooking and sewing, not climbing trees and playing ball with boys all the
time. Another four years and she’ll be a young woman, and I don’t have
to tell you, Belle, what dangers that can bring.’

Belle pursed her lips.

‘Oh, don’t give me that
holier-than-thou look,’ Mog said impatiently. ‘Let’s face it,
between the three of us we know every last kind of trouble young people can get
into. There’s a lot less temptation here than there was back in London, or in
Marseille. But it may be too dull for our youngsters. That will make them look for
mischief.’

Etienne grinned. ‘You are right,
Mog, as you always are.
I’d be
happier if Mari daydreamed of having a hat shop, or becoming a ballet dancer. But as
that is unlikely, then we’ll just have to steer her towards something safer
than becoming another Joan of Arc.’

‘Who told her about Joan of Arc
anyway?’ Belle looked accusingly at Etienne.

He did one of his Gallic shrugs.
‘I tell the boys about King Arthur, so I tell Mari about a peasant girl who
led her countrymen into battle. I thought you wanted equality for women?’

‘I did. I do. But once you have a
daughter, you just hope she’ll marry a good, kind man and live happily ever
after.’

‘I hope for that too,’
Etienne agreed. ‘But I also want Mari to aspire to bigger things. She is
clever, maybe her path is to be a doctor, a lawyer, or to succeed where I failed,
with her own vineyard. We must do all we can to channel her strengths in the right
direction.’

Mog was in the workroom sewing pearls on
to a wedding veil when Mariette came in, dressed to go out. She was wearing the
green and white candy-striped dress Mog had only recently made for her, and she
looked a picture.

Mog had always maintained Mariette would
become pretty once she grew into a young woman, and she’d been proved right.
At eighteen, five foot six, with an hourglass figure and stunning long, curly
strawberry-blonde hair, she was the envy of her girlfriends and, no doubt, an object
of desire to most men. Today she had her hair pinned up at the sides with two green
ribbons.

‘I don’t think you should be
gadding about on a Sunday afternoon,’ Mog said. ‘I was never allowed to,
when I was a girl.’

Mariette laughed. ‘Oh, Moggy!
That’s so quaint and Victorian. What’s wrong with going for a walk on a
lovely day? I bet Jesus didn’t sit about on Sunday with his nose in a
book.’

‘They didn’t have books
then,’ Mog retorted ‘Besides, I thought you were
going to help me. I’ve almost finished this veil,
but there are hundreds more pearls to sew on the dress.’

‘I’ll help you with that
when I come back. I just want a bit of exercise and some fresh air.’

‘But you told your parents the
reason you didn’t want to go over to Paihia with them today was because you
were going to help me.’ Mog looked at Mariette suspiciously. ‘Are you
planning to meet a young man?’

‘No! Why do you and Mum always
think I’m meeting boys?’

Mog noted Mariette’s flushed
cheeks, and the false indignation in her voice, and knew her suspicions were
correct. ‘There isn’t much your mother and I don’t know about
young girls,’ she said tartly.

She adored Mariette but she wasn’t
blind to her faults. The girl was self-centred, devious and manipulative, with,
seemingly, none of Belle’s compassion – or her father’s capacity for
hard work.

They could all be proud that she was so
bright, and her lovely face would melt a heart of stone, but Mog was very afraid
that she would get herself into serious trouble one day.

She had helped Dr Crowley deliver
Mariette, and from the moment she held her in her arms and looked down at that angry
little red face, she’d felt an enormous surge of love for her. She had loved
Belle just as much, as a baby, when she’d had sole charge of her. But Mog had
been just the maid then, and because she knew that Belle’s mother, Annie,
could have thrown her out on her ear at any time, she’d learned to stifle her
feelings and to keep her mouth shut until Annie asked for her opinion.

But both Belle and Etienne thought of
Mog as their baby’s grandmother and, as such, she had no need to hold anything
back – not her help, her opinion or her devotion to their little girl. But loving a
child so much was a double-edged sword. Mog might have the joy of knowing she was as
important to Mariette as her parents, yet with that came the fear of something bad
happening to her.

Belle had been abducted by evil men when
she was only fifteen, and there had been times in the two years she was
gone when Mog felt she would lose her
mind with the agony of not knowing her precious girl’s fate. While it was
unlikely such a thing could happen to Mariette, there were many other dangers for a
young girl to walk into. Mog felt it was her duty to keep her safe, and if she
failed because she hadn’t taken a firm enough line with her, then she’d
never be able to forgive herself.

Once, that had meant merely making sure
Mariette didn’t play in dangerous places, ate the right food to keep healthy,
and knew how to tell right from wrong. But then – and it seemed to have happened
overnight – she turned into a young woman, and suddenly Mog saw new dangers. She
couldn’t keep an eighteen-year-old locked away, conceal those womanly curves
or make her smile less dazzling.

Neither could she warn her what some men
were capable of – not without telling her how she knew. Belle believed that Mariette
was entirely safe in Russell, that no man would dare take liberties with her
daughter out of fear of Etienne. Maybe she was right, but Mog knew Mariette was a
little madam and she could very well be the one that did the leading on.

‘Well, if you must go out, be back
by four,’ Mog said reluctantly. ‘We need daylight to sew the pearls on
the dress but, with just an hour at it together, we could finish it.’

Mariette agreed and hugged Mog. Then,
before she got any further lectures, she snatched up a cardigan and raced out of the
door.

Mariette
was
meeting someone.
As she walked towards Flag Staff Hill to join him, she was afraid. Her fear was not
because she’d lied to Mog – she’d told Mog and her parents so many lies
in the past couple of months that she was beyond guilt – but because she had to end
it today with Sam, and she expected him to turn nasty.

She’d first
met him a year ago, when the cargo ship he worked on anchored out in the bay for
some minor repairs. All the crew came into Russell and created quite a stir by
getting very drunk and rowdy. Sam stood out because he was young, tall, blond and
very handsome; the rest of the crew were short, tough-looking men with bad teeth and
mainly well over thirty.

Mariette only spoke to him once. He
asked her what there was to do in Paihia, and if it was worth getting the ferry over
there. She told him it wasn’t as pretty as Russell, and he laughed and said he
was only interested in pretty girls, not scenery.

After the ship had left the bay, she
heard her parents talking about the crew’s bad behaviour. Not only had there
been a fight in the Duke of Marlborough with chairs and windows smashed but several
women and girls had been accosted, and the whole town was indignant.

Her father appeared to have some
sympathy with the men. He said they’d probably heard that Russell was once
known as the ‘Hellhole of the Pacific’, and they were disappointed to
find it had turned into such a sober place, with no loose women and not even a dance
hall.

The image of that handsome sailor, whose
name she didn’t even know then, stayed with her. She kept remembering the way
he’d looked at her, like he was seeing right through her clothes, and how it
had made her feel all fizzy inside.

For the remainder of last summer,
she’d found herself thinking a great deal about boys. She had no shortage of
admirers – she was, after all, said to be the prettiest girl in Russell – but they
were just boys she’d grown up with, and not one of them made her feel the way
the tall, blond stranger had. She practised on a few of them, led them on enough to
kiss her, but it didn’t set her on fire the way she’d read about kissing
in books.

Mariette read
every book she could get her hands on and, because of what she’d read about
big cities and other countries, she considered Russell very dull. In her opinion it
had nothing to offer other than its beauty. Apart from the odd dance now and then,
the occasional film show or picnic, there was nothing to do. If she could go out
fishing and sailing with her father every day, then she’d be happy. But he
couldn’t take her with him very often, and the owners of yachts that
frequently needed a crew would never think a mere girl was capable.

As for old friends from school, she felt
she’d outgrown them. They were content to help their mothers with the chores,
to sit about giggling and gossiping; not one of them had dreams of travelling the
world or doing something dangerous and thrilling, as she did.

She’d heard the sailor was an
Australian, and so she never expected to see him again. Yet, to her surprise and
delight, two months ago, he’d come back to Russell. He was no longer a sailor
but was working as a truck driver for a timber company, collecting loads of timber
from various forests in the North Island, which were then shipped further
afield.

Mariette ran into him at the post
office, and his broad smile told her he both remembered her and liked what he saw.
They had a brief chat, and she flirted with him, but she knew her parents would
never agree to her walking out with a grown man of twenty-five who was just passing
through, so she didn’t dare agree to meet up with him that evening.

She held out for three days, stopping to
chat and flirt with him, but it was only when she heard he was moving on elsewhere
the next day that she knew it was now or never.

Men always hung around the Duke of
Marlborough, waiting for it to open at six, so she made sure she walked that way,
wearing her prettiest dress. His eyes lit up when he saw
her and the fizzy feeling she’d felt when she first
met him all those months ago came back stronger than ever. In their brief chats she
had been a little disappointed that he was somewhat coarse, using swear words and
making crude remarks about her figure and legs. His worn checked shirt and moleskin
trousers were a bit grubby too, but he had beautiful blue eyes and long dark lashes,
and she couldn’t resist the whiff of danger that seeped out of his sunburned
skin.

That day she’d already taken the
precaution of telling her parents she was going to a friend’s house, and
readily agreed to go for a walk with him. She was convinced he was already smitten
with her because he didn’t appear to care that he’d miss the six
o’clock swill in the pub, and few men would pass that up.

Once they were away from the town and
any prying eyes, he kissed her, and it was all Mariette had hoped for and more. She
lost all track of time in his arms; he made her heart race, her knees go weak, and
there was a strange yet wonderful tugging sensation in her belly that made her lose
all sense of caution.

Yet he pulled back. ‘I can’t
do this with you,’ he said. ‘You’re too young, and I have to go
away. It isn’t fair on you.’

He left Russell early the next morning,
and he hadn’t even said if he would be back. But those last few words had
convinced her he was a gentleman at heart, and his coarseness was just because he
wasn’t used to being in women’s company.

A fortnight went by before he returned,
and for all of those fourteen days she’d thought of nothing but him and his
kisses. She’d had to hide it away, not even daring to tell one of her friends
in case they passed it on.

When he did return, he told her that
she’d been on his
mind the whole
time he’d been away, and that he had fallen in love with her. What girl
wouldn’t believe that claim? And how could she not let him make love to her,
when she believed she was in love with him too?

That first time was up on Flag Staff
Hill, behind some bushes, and she knew as he pushed her down without any thought for
her comfort that she’d made a mistake. She had wanted something romantic and
beautiful, but all she got was prickles in her bottom, bruised thighs and
disappointment. Then, when he said he had to get back to the pub to meet a friend,
she’d felt cheated and humiliated.

But, like a fool, she thought it would
get better. She’d read several books where the heroine felt like she did the
first time, and it always came right in the end. Once, when he’d left Russell,
not telling her when – or if – he’d be back, she even managed to convince
herself he’d behaved that way with her because he was afraid of loving
her.

Without having anyone to confide in, and
also terrified her parents would find out, she was in a state of perpetual anxiety.
Sometimes she even hoped Sam wouldn’t come back to Russell, and then she could
forget him. Yet, a week later, when she spotted him from her bedroom window, leaning
against the tree at the shore end of Robertson Street and looking up at her house,
she felt she had to rush out to meet him again.

Stupidly, she thought she could change
him by trying to make him just talk to her, kiss and cuddle her, without anything
else.

‘I’m not too happy with the
way you’ve been with me,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you, get to
know all about you. So can we just go for a walk and do that, without
the …’ She hesitated, not really knowing what to call it. ‘You
know, the thing?’

He stroked her
cheek in what she thought was a really tender way. ‘Look, sweetheart,
you’ve been on my mind ever since the last time,’ he said earnestly.
‘I want you so badly. Don’t do this to me?’

Looking back now, it was obvious that he
didn’t care about her at all, that all he wanted was sex. But she didn’t
see that then; all she saw were his pleading eyes, and so she went along with what
he wanted.

By the fourth time, he was becoming even
rougher with her, tossing her down on the ground and forcing himself upon her. After
he was done, he degraded her still further by telling her to run along home as he
had to see someone about some business.

Mog had an expression she used when she
suddenly realized the truth about someone or something: ‘The scales fell from
her eyes.’ Mariette had often laughed at it, saying only fish had scales. But
she finally understood what the expression meant ten days ago, the last time Sam had
been in Russell.

He had been really vile to her.
He’d pushed her down on to her knees in some bushes and entered her from
behind like a dog. There hadn’t been even one kiss. As he buttoned up his
trousers afterwards, he told her to meet him there again a week on Sunday – and she
wasn’t to be late.

It was like having a bucket of cold
water thrown over her, but it did finally bring her to her senses.

Since then, she hadn’t stopped
smarting with shame for allowing him to treat her in such a callous manner. She
fervently hoped that he wouldn’t come back to Russell ever again, and that
could be the end of it.

But that wasn’t to be. Yesterday,
as she was walking along the Strand, there he was, waiting for the Duke of
Marlborough to open.

He was very dirty,
he smelled of stale sweat, and it wasn’t a smile he gave her but a leer, which
said everything he felt about her.