Blue Smoke (3 page)

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, it isn’t funny really, but you should see yourself, Keely. You look a fright. Not your usual impeccably groomed self at all.’

Keely turned to her husband for confirmation. ‘Do I?’

Owen gazed back at her, turning his hat around in his hands. Joseph, at his side, smiled at his sister with rueful sympathy.

‘Well, yes, darling, you are a little, um, untidy,’ Owen admitted.

Keely’s hair was sticking out wildly and caked with brick and plaster dust, her face was grimy and all traces of her carefully applied make-up had long since disappeared. Her smart town dress was torn and filthy, her silk stockings in tatters and her shoes nowhere to be seen. She made an ineffectual attempt to smooth her hair and pinched her cheeks to bring a little colour into them. Then she looked down at her bare feet, and burst into shocked, exhausted tears.

O
wen handed her a mug of steaming hot tea and went on rubbing her back. ‘Are you sure you want to stay?’ he asked gently. ‘I know you want to help, but you’re needed at home too.’

And that was true. With most of the Kenmore adults volunteering their services in town, and Tamar injured, there was only elderly Mrs Heath to look after the five children out at the station. Lachie was there, of course, but Bonnie and Leila were quite capable of running rings around the old man, and God only knew what would happen after a day or two of that. And there were also Erin and Joseph’s children — Billy, only a few weeks older than the twins, Ana aged ten, and nine-year-old Robert — all three of whom, although generally better behaved than Bonnie and Leila, weren’t above kicking up their heels when they could get away with it, particularly Ana, who often took her cue from her cousins.

The children’s little country school — which had in fact sustained some structural damage, although Owen had neglected to tell Keely that — would have to close until repairs were assessed and carried out, so there was no chance of foisting them off on their teacher in the foreseeable future.

And there was also the matter of the appalling and widespread devastation in town. As a war veteran Owen had seen some deeply
disturbing things, but had never imagined he’d see such sights again in the place he had come to call his home. He was extremely worried that what had happened here today would revive in Keely all the horrors of war she had finally managed to put to rest.

On their way through the Napier streets, he and Joseph had watched in dismay as people — some still alive but others clearly beyond help — were pulled out of the rubble by furiously digging rescue workers. They’d stopped to help several times, and had already ferried five injured people in the farm truck here to the emergency hospital. The main shopping areas of Emerson, Tennyson and Dickens Streets resembled a bomb site; familiar landmarks had been reduced to piles of shattered bricks, the three-storeyed Government Building at the bottom of Shakespeare Street had split in half, and the Clarendon Hotel next to it had collapsed completely. Napier Technical School was a heap of bricks and splintered wood, and everywhere smaller shops and buildings had disintegrated.

And the fires — they had started almost immediately after the earth quake. Owen and Joseph, approaching the city from the north-west, had been awed by the huge pall of smoke already settling over the central business district, darkening the skies and bringing an unnatural, premature dusk. A brisk wind had risen and cajoled hungry flames through city blocks baked dry after months of hot rainless weather, and almost all the central city was burning. The Napier Fire Department, even with dozens of volunteer helpers, was pushed well beyond its capability. Wooden buildings had been worst hit, but even the solid Masonic Hotel, where Keely had once sat for hours one long rainy night waiting for a man who had never arrived, had been thoroughly burnt out.

She took a final puff on the cigarette Owen had lit for her and replied frustratedly, ‘I want to stay and do something. I feel so … God, I don’t know what I feel!’

Owen empathised. ‘Is it the wounded?’

‘Yes, it reminds me so much of …’

‘Ssshh.’ Owen placed his fingers gently on his wife’s lips. ‘Don’t say it. I expect all the returned men and women are feeling the same way. But this isn’t a war, it’s a natural disaster. There will be an end to this.’

‘But I want to
help
!’ Keely blurted childishly, her normal confidence and sense of equilibrium apparently deserting her.

‘Look, love, you don’t even have any shoes,’ Owen said sensibly. ‘At least go home, get cleaned up and see to the children. Then you can come back.’ He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘In fact, before you do come back in, why don’t you call on a few of the neighbours and see if they have anything they can contribute? People will have to be fed and they’ll need bedding and probably clothes and all that sort of thing. I heard food depots are being set up, I think the navy’s helping with that, and they’re bound to want meat and vegetables.’

Keely’s face lit up. ‘Yes, I could do that, couldn’t I?’ Then she had a rather dismal thought of her own. ‘Oh, but the car, we parked it in Emerson Street. The fires … what if it’s been destroyed?’

Owen had seen for himself the crushed and burnt-out wrecks of automobiles on his way through town, but the fact that Lachie’s cherished Imperial Roadster might be one of them hadn’t occurred to him.

He considered for a moment. ‘Take the truck. Joseph and I are going back into town to see if we can lend a hand, but I’m sure someone will give us a lift. We’ll look for the car later.’

Keely got to her feet, which were rather sore now.

She was filthy and stiff, and covered in bruises and grazes, and the idea of a decent bath at home was very appealing. But something still niggled at her.

‘But what if there aren’t enough nurses?’

‘I think there will be,’ Owen replied. ‘The girl doling out the tea said she’d heard that civilian medical teams are coming from Gisborne and Taupo, and even Wellington. Apparently the navy’s been onto everyone with their wireless link.’ He didn’t mention, however, that the state of the roads into Napier could seriously hamper many vehicles trying to get in or out of the area. ‘The navy’s here, the army’s on its way and so is the Red Cross, so everything will be all right. Go home, Keely, please. We’ll keep an eye on your mam. I’ll see if we can track down James and Lucy and they can help as well. The bank’s now a great heap of rubble so I doubt even James will be at work today.’

Keely drove home to Kenmore, Erin went to work at the Nelson Park emergency dressing station and Owen and Joseph thumbed a lift into the town centre where they joined the volunteers fighting to contain the fires.

At Greenmeadows, Tamar lay on her cot, dozing and trying to ignore the gnawing pain in her leg and all the other bits of her ageing body which were protesting mightily over their recent trauma. The surgeon had returned briefly and explained that although the break in her leg had been set, the limb had not yet been encased in plaster to allow the wound to heal, hence the heavy brace to prevent movement. She would not be able to go home to Kenmore until the plaster had been applied, so she could either stay at the temporary hospital at Greenmeadows, which would be fine with him as he wanted her kept under observation any way, or stay somewhere else suitable in town, if she absolutely must go. Did she have somewhere where she would be appropriately cared for?

Tamar thought; there was the little house on Marine Parade she had bought years ago when she had first come to Napier, and
which she still used often when she was in town — providing it was still standing, of course. Or, failing that, she could stay with James and his wife Lucy at their house in town. She preferred the former plan, but then she would have to look out for herself. She hated being fussed over but really didn’t think she would be able to cope alone, at least not while she couldn’t even get out of bed. She could ask Erin to stay with her, she supposed — and no doubt her niece would offer any way — but as a trained nurse she was very much needed by others, and Keely had the children to attend to.

No, it would probably have to be James and Lucy’s admittedly very comfortable and well-appointed home. They would welcome her, she knew that; it was just that she sometimes found it almost impossible to refrain from saying what she really thought to her second eldest son.

First, there was the matter of how James and his own son Duncan got along, or rather, did not get along — a problem that had dogged the family ever since James had come from the Great War, and worried Tamar constantly.

Duncan, now a big, handsome, confident sixteen-year-old, boarded at Napier Boys’ High School. The school was only a couple of miles from his home, but everyone, not least Duncan himself, had agreed he’d be better off boarding, given that he and his father appeared to be so incompatible. And there were the other children too — Andrew, aged eleven and named for his grandfather (although he was known to all as Drew), and Kathleen, aged ten. In Tamar’s opinion neither was always at ease with the atmosphere in the Murdoch home — the angry exchanges between Duncan and their father, the shouting, the subsequent frosty silences that sometimes went on for days — and although they loved their older brother, they were relieved when he became a boarder and relative peace descended on the house. Lucy clearly mourned her son’s absence, but he came home most weekends and, providing
James wasn’t in one of his moods, those two days could be relatively calm and pleasant.

Poor James. As a young man he had lived for his career as a professional soldier, but he had been terribly traumatised by his war experiences and had been discharged, although honourably, from the army after an appalling incident involving the death of another officer. The family never referred to it, even after all these years, but they all knew that James still lived under the shadow of what had happened that day on the battle field. He had never quite recovered — although he was better these days than he had been when he had first come home — and was still prone to mood swings and not infrequent irrational and aggressive behaviour. Unfortunately, he took much of it out on long-suffering Lucy who, although essentially a generous and empathetic soul, had begun to compensate for her husband’s behaviour by focusing on less emotionally hurtful things, such as what wear to social events and the colour of the curtains in their living room. The naive and gentle young girl, already pregnant when a very different James had proudly introduced her to his family in 1914, had grown into a wary and slightly embittered woman. Their marriage had been characterised by disagreements, silences and sometimes even fear on Lucy’s part. Privately, however, Tamar was convinced that they loved each other quite fiercely and that James depended on his wife far more than he would ever admit.

The disharmony between Duncan and James had always been present. Certainly, Duncan had never really overcome his anger at James for coming home halfway through the war and taking his mother off him. It hadn’t been like that at all, of course, but James had been extremely unwell and Lucy had been forced to attend to her husband rather than their small son, who had been the centre of attention until then. James had resented the demands Duncan had made on Lucy, seeing in the whining, frightened and
unhappy child the same traits he believed himself to have displayed under the stress of combat. It had all been too much for the little boy to comprehend, and now that boy was almost a man himself and all too ready and willing to stand up to a father who was still moody and unreasonable and, if everyone were completely honest, occasionally a bully.

So here they were, James and Duncan, lacking the humility and understanding to set aside their differences. In truth, they were very similar characters, both in looks and personality, and Tamar wondered if they would ever make their peace. She loved them both, her son and grandson, but sometimes it was all she could to stop herself from banging their stubborn heads together. And she knew that should she stay with James and Lucy for any length of time, she would be unable to refrain from lecturing James yet again on his inability to get along with his son.

But at least Duncan had the company of his cousin Liam, who was also attending Napier Boys’. Liam’s father Ian, Tamar and Andrew’s youngest son, had died on the Somme in 1916, never knowing he had fathered a child. At the age of three months, Liam had been deposited in Kenmore’s kitchen garden following Ian’s memorial service, presumably by his mother, a woman who had chosen to remain anonymous. Tamar had raised Liam as her own, grateful to have such an unexpected and precious reincarnation of her youngest son. The boy was fifteen now, uncannily like his father, and had been delighted to go to school with Duncan, whom he had always idolised, even if it did mean having to spend much of his time away from Kenmore Station, which he loved. Tamar would have liked to have kept him at home, but he was a bright boy, and she couldn’t bring herself to deprive him of a good education just because she would miss him. And Kenmore was just too far from town for the children to travel in daily for school.

And then there was the other matter over which Tamar and
James were entirely unable to see eye to eye — her relationship with Kepa Te Roroa, her lover for the past twelve years. Tamar knew that James hated the idea of his mother having a liaison with anyone other than his father, and especially with Kepa, who was a respected and very powerful man, but also Joseph’s father. James and Joseph usually got on very well, but Tamar wondered whether James wasn’t sometimes jealous of Joseph’s position in the family. She also suspected that he was ashamed that, at her age, she still had physical and emotional needs that could be satisfied only by a man. But after the death of her beloved Andrew, Tamar had thought very hard about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She had loved Andrew dearly, and had been absolutely devastated by his unexpected loss but, as her lifelong friend Riria Adams had pointed out at the time, a woman’s life did not end just because her husband’s had. And, as a widow of many years, Riria was certainly in a position to know.

So when Kepa, a widower himself by then, had asked Tamar if she would consider rekindling the short but intense love affair of their youth — one which had produced Joseph and almost broken Tamar’s heart — she had accepted his offer. She had not expected a resumption of the passion they had once shared — although she had been very pleasantly surprised to discover that their physical attraction for each other had not dimmed — but she did want a companion. Someone with whom she could talk about the station and her family, and on whom she could rely for emotional support. Kepa was certainly that someone, and of course Joseph would always be a very strong bond between them. And, over a decade later, their private and extremely discreet arrangement was still working very satisfactorily, despite her continued refusal to marry him.