Toward the Sea of Freedom (41 page)

Claire let the boys climb into the wagon and handed them the little girls.

“When your mommy makes some money, she’ll sew you a sailor’s suit,” Claire promised Sean. Once everyone had finally sat down, she snapped her mule’s reins and they were off.

Kathleen shook her head. It was a crazy idea. No one would pay her for her sewing. And surely she would regret this “shopping stroll”—no matter how happy it made her.

The first thought quickly proved wrong, the latter correct.

Starting in Mrs. Broom’s shop, their clothing met with praise. Two customers immediately showed excitement about the designs and, a short time later, they bent over the fashion journals Claire had brought in anticipation. Both found the dresses of their dreams within, but neither trusted herself to sew it.

“Kathleen will do that for you,” Claire suggested, “though not for free, of course.”

Kathleen blushed deeply, hardly daring to name a price when the women asked. “I don’t know, a pound?”

Claire was just as perplexed, but now fat, gossipy Mrs. Broom interceded. She was best known for dispensing advice, but she was also a businesswoman.

“A pound? Do you mean to insult the woman? The men’s tailor, Mr. Peppers, wouldn’t thread his needle for that!” she yelled at her customers. “No, no, Mrs. Coltrane, don’t do that. You can’t make that dress for less than two, more like three, pounds. If someone can’t pay that, she’ll have to try to sew it herself.”

Mrs. Broom gave her two customers a look that immediately put their reputations as well-off citizens in question, so they quickly ordered the dresses.

“I can’t make the corsets for them, however,” Kathleen explained carefully. Both customers had decided on dresses for hourglass figures.

“I’ll order those from England,” Mrs. Broom said. She winked conspiratorially at Kathleen as the two customers left happy. “And you can make this one for me,” she declared, pointing at a sophisticated black lace dress that had caused a furor in Paris. “But for one pound—after all, I just got you two customers.”

“While selling cloth and two corsets for you,” retorted Clair. “We really ought to get some of those profits. No, if Mrs. Coltrane gives you a discount, then no more than two shillings.”

The women finally agreed that Kathleen would sketch the dress designs from the fashion magazines and leave the pictures with Mrs. Broom. For every customer she acquired this way, Kathleen would give her a discount of one shilling on her own orders.

“You’ll end up sewing her that dress for free,” Claire said. “And she’ll look horrible in it. Like a cream pie in mourning. But she’ll provide you with more customers than you’ll know how to handle.”

The next stop was the parsonage. “Reverend Baldwin is getting his hopes up about Christchurch as a diocese. Could you tell him you’ve already done work for, what do I know, the wife of the pope?”

Kathleen crossed herself. “One, I don’t lie, and two, Catholic priests can’t marry,” she said distractedly.

Claire furrowed her brow, obviously thinking of an alternative. “But they wear rather spectacular robes, right? A ball gown for the Bishop of Ireland?”

Kathleen categorically refused to tell any lies, especially one that involved blaspheming against her church. As a Catholic, she was even a little ashamed to pay her respects to the Anglican priest, but the reverend’s scrawny wife and fat daughter each ordered a dress. Claire rejected Mrs. Baldwin’s attempts to negotiate as shrewdly as Mrs. Broom.

“Although it would not be bad to place a few fashion magazines in the church,” she considered on the way back, “or at least in the parsonage. Old lady Baldwin would do it if she could get her dresses made more cheaply, but I think the reverend would say no.”

Claire insisted they celebrate their success with tea at the Crown Inn. She entered the tearoom with the assurance and grace of a well-bred lady. But Kathleen was uncomfortable among the heavy, expensive furniture, the baroque curtains, and the silver chandeliers. Though she kept her head lowered, she received admiring looks. Claire was cute, but Kathleen’s beauty outshone that of all other women and girls in the room, despite her shyness. Claire watched with a smile as the waiters tried to outdo each other in serving Kathleen. Male guests pulled her chair out for her, and all the other women looked at her jealously.

Only Claire did not begrudge her the luck, which her friend could not properly savor.

“Well, smile at least,” she instructed Kathleen. “You’re something special here. Everyone’s admiring you.”

The attention made Kathleen so uncomfortable that she felt as if she could barely keep down her tea and cake, so she focused instead on feeding Heather and Chloe small bites of the pastries. Sean ate a piece of cake very properly. He tried to use the dessert fork as naturally and skillfully as Claire did. He said please and thank you and tried to show perfect manners. Colin stuffed pastries into his mouth. Even though he showed poor manners, he smiled through it all, winning over the people in the tearoom.

Colin had certainly garnered a lot of attention, but Claire couldn’t help but feel as though everyone was suppressing a “but why do they dress him like that?” as Colin proudly reached for his checkered jacket when they were on their way out of the tearoom.

Claire had knowingly deposited it at the tearoom’s wardrobe, hiding it under the other coats. “Here, it’s better we don’t say you’re a tailor,” she whispered to Kathleen.

As Kathleen expected, news of her trip to Christchurch quickly reached Ian. He came home in a rage, and by the end of the evening, he had beat Kathleen black and blue and taken her customers’ advance payments for himself.

“Whore’s wages!” he screamed.

The next day, Kathleen sobbed to Claire about the lost money. She would need to sew for a month without receiving a shilling for it.

“I thought I could save something, to send Sean to university.”

“And you will. Something like this won’t happen to us again.” Claire hugged Kathleen and spread cooling balm on her bruised face. “I’ll bring in the next orders myself, and you hide the work when Ian’s home. And it’s best you show Colin as little as possible, the little traitor.”

Kathleen looked at her indignantly. “Colin is only five.”

Claire arched her brows. “But he brags about his adventures. You hear the fantastical things he reports from his excursions with Ian. He told his beloved daddy every compliment the waiter at the Crown Inn paid you, guaranteed. You know very well what Ian makes of these things. And Colin knows what Daddy wants to hear. Yes, even at five. Don’t fool yourself.”

The new arrangement worked well. Claire drove to Christchurch once a month, delivering finished dresses and bringing in new orders. She also asked her mother to send a new batch of fashion magazines. They weren’t needed too urgently, for Kathleen had been inspired to create her own designs ever since she had sketched the dresses during that first visit to Mrs. Broom’s shop. Claire was enthusiastic about her designs, and their customers even more so.

Soon Kathleen had to refuse work because she could not keep up with all the sewing. That was in no small part because she could only pick up the needle at night when she finished the farm work and Colin was asleep. Kathleen didn’t want to admit it to Claire, but she, too, noticed that the boy was acting as Ian’s spy at home.

In the meantime, the sheep were shorn, fortunately without precipitating a new crisis in Kathleen’s marriage. Claire had sent the shearers over on one of the few days when Ian was at home, and Kathleen did not set foot outside. Ian used the opportunity to sell their leader a horse.

“That means we’ll have to find different people next time,” Kathleen said, sighing. She glanced at the lovely fleece and the animals properly freed of their wool. “The man will soon notice that the gelding is lazy as sin and lame on top of that. But maybe we won’t have any sheep by this time next year.”

“Oh, we will!” said Claire.

The Edmundses did not change their livestock continuously, and in contrast to Kathleen, who only saw the sheep as runaways and manure factories, Claire rather liked the animals. She was also on the best of terms with the sheep shearers and had even shorn two sheep herself. Now she was eager to learn how to work the wool. Kathleen showed her, and it was not long before Claire achieved some skill in spinning. She offered her wool for sale in Mrs. Broom’s shop—and the town’s women loved it.

“I told you we’d do well with the wool,” Claire said, packing another load into her wagon. “Teasing wool and dyeing and spinning it—you can’t do it in a town house, and it’s really only worth it if you have your own sheep.”

Kathleen and Claire sold the whole wool yield of both their farms—and were happy their husbands didn’t think to demand the money from them. Neither Ian nor Matt had ambitions to become a sheep baron. For Ian, the animals were merely burdensome things that ate money; he was trying to sell them as soon as he could. And Matt rode back and forth between Christchurch and Lyttelton day after day. He did good business transporting the settlers’ belongings to the plains or merchandise from the plains to the ships. It must have occurred to him that he was loading more and more wool for England. Either he did not think his own dozen sheep worth mentioning, or he simply did not take interest in the goods he moved.

There were indeed strong indications of this lack of interest, as Matt appeared increasingly bored and in a bad mood. The absence of high praise for the wonderful, humorous, and tender Matt Edmunds was an indication of Claire’s disenchantment with her husband.

Claire was unrestrainedly happy about the money she and Kathleen made, though. “We’ll be rich yet, Kathleen.” She smiled, but then grew serious. “We’ll run away together.”

Kathleen looked up, surprised, from her money. She was just counting it all again, hardly able to comprehend her fortune. But this ripped her out of her trance. Claire Edmunds was thinking of escaping her marriage?

“They say,” whispered Claire, who seemed finally to need to express herself, “well, the women in Christchurch, they say Matt has a lover in Lyttelton.”

Kathleen laid her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “That can’t be true, Claire. It’s surely just gossip.”

“But it might be true,” Claire said bitterly. “After all, in the first few years, the sea was rarely so rough that he had to stay overnight in Lyttelton. But now it happens all the time. I see it, too, Kathleen. I’m not blind, you know.”

“But do you not let him into your bed anymore?” Kathleen asked, blushing. “I mean, you haven’t gotten pregnant again.”

Claire wiped the tears from her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t let him,” she said quietly. “He just doesn’t want to. Matt is so . . . I don’t know what makes him so dour and unhappy. I do love him, even though he’s so different than he used to be. But well, I think, I think, for all he cares, the sooner I’m gone the better.”

Claire Edmunds, the eternal optimist, broke down in tears.

Chapter 5

Kathleen Coltrane’s and Claire Edmunds’s marriages didn’t grow any happier over the next few years, but their business together developed into an unexpected success. Kathleen couldn’t keep up with all the orders she received for dresses and even evening gowns. They hired two women in town to do the sewing, and Kathleen concentrated primarily on the clothing designs and cutting the patterns. Claire focused on weaving filigreed wool cloth, and she was very skillful at creating new effects with different shades of coloring. She worked nearly all the wool from her sheep herself, and she took Kathleen’s yield when the Coltranes had sheep during shearing time.

Certainly Claire contributed to the family’s income, which was bitterly necessary.

Claire complained about how Matt’s business never flourished. While the other boatmen and fishermen had already acquired bigger and more modern boats, Matt had made no progress. The money he earned he drank away either in the taverns or in boats with friends.

Even Ian grumbled occasionally about Matt: “He entertains the whole tavern with his sailor’s stories. But those won’t catch him any fish or carry any loads—and there’s less and less of that to do the more they pave the Bridle Path.”

Coaches could now travel along the pass, and when Ian was away for several days and took Colin with him, Kathleen and Claire gathered up Sean and the girls and ventured to make an excursion to Lyttelton. Kathleen wanted to see her Maori friend Pere again, and Claire, who had been seized with ambition when it came to wool, hoped to learn about fabric dyes from the native woman.

Naturally, Pere was overjoyed. She raved about how big Sean had grown and spoiled him and Heather and Chloe with sweets. Kathleen marveled at how the primitive settlement of Port Cooper had developed into the large town of Lyttelton. She enjoyed being able to talk with Pere’s husband, John, and learn more about their new country’s course of development.

“They found coal in Westport; they’re starting to mine there,” John explained. “But more important than that, they found gold in Otago. All the madmen and adventurers are rushing to the gold sites hoping to make a fortune. Not many are going to manage that, but it’ll bring people to the country. Unfortunately they’re not exactly the best sorts, but they’re founding towns too. Dunedin on the coast in the south—settled by Scots mostly. Blenheim in the north—bunch of Germans around there. So the land’s slowly filling up.”