Blue Smoke (4 page)

Now, though, all she wanted was another glass of water. It was almost evening, nearly seven hours after the earth quake, and since
she had awoken from the anaesthetic she had been desperately thirsty. Her broken ribs were hurting more, and the pain seemed to be wandering all over her chest. It was unbearably hot in the tent, even though the door had been propped open all afternoon, and she was starting to feel nauseous again too.

She felt a shadow on her face and opened her eyes, hoping it might be a nurse. Kepa stood with his hat in his hands gazing down at her, his dark, lined face a picture of concern and dismay. He was covered in road dust — he must have come in from Maungakakari. ‘Hello, my love. How are you feeling?’ he asked quietly, his rich, deep voice a balm to her already. Tamar reached out a hand and sighed. ‘Kepa, you’re here. I’m so glad.’ She swallowed and willed her increasing nausea to go away. ‘Did you ride all the way in from the village?’

He stroked her fingers softly and said in his formal, slightly stilted English, ‘Yes, I came as soon as I could. I did not drive — the roads are not in a good state.’

Tamar shifted uncomfortably as another wave of pain gripped her. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I did not, but this is your usual shopping day. I presumed that if you were not at any of the medical stations, then you would be somewhere else and I could stop worrying. When I arrived here I talked to the person in charge, and he looked you up on his list.’

It was on the tip of Tamar’s tongue to ask, but what if she’d been one of the fatalities? But Kepa, as he often did, read her mind.

‘I did not go to the morgue. I would have known in my heart if you were there.’ He bent down and discreetly kissed her cheek. ‘And I thank God that you were not. I am so relieved that you are safe, Tamar.’

She blinked hard as tears finally began to break through her rather tattered composure. ‘And everyone at the village, are they safe too?’

Kepa nodded. ‘A little shaken, but there have been earth quakes before. Although not as big as this one. The horses ran away, including mine, which is why I am late, and so did the pigs and the chickens, but at Maungakakari there is not much to fall down so there is little damage. The artesian well has dried up, so I have evacuated everyone temporarily, but we will be fine. But it is you I came to see.’ He noted the sheen of sweat on Tamar’s brow and the grey pallor of her skin. ‘Are you in pain?’

Tamar nodded. ‘Could you get a nurse for me?’

‘Now?’

‘Please,’ Tamar replied through gritted teeth.

Kepa was gone for less than three minutes but by the time he had returned, with a nurse hurrying behind him, Tamar’s heart had spasmed violently, just once, and ceased to beat.

James put his brandy glass down on the polished mahogany sideboard and rubbed both hands wearily over his stubbled face. His eyes were sunken and rimmed with red and he felt utterly wrung out and exhausted. When he looked up again, Lucy was watching him intently.

‘Are you feeling all right, James?’ she asked from her seat on the sofa.

‘No, I’m not bloody well feeling all right!’ he snapped back. ‘What do you think!’

Lucy flinched. She hated it when James became upset — it made him almost impossible to deal with. Grief and fear, especially, caused him to lose his temper. But she’d spent the days since the earth quake trying her best to hold everyone and everything together and she was exhausted too. She didn’t have the energy to pander to her temperamental husband.

‘I think you should at least try and make an effort to manage
your emotions, James, that’s what I
think
! You’re not the only one who’s grieving and in shock; we’re all feeling it, you know. It’s been terrible, all of it. It’s been hard for everyone!’

James glared at her, then had the grace to lower his eyes, knowing in his heart that he was being unreasonable but finding it very difficult to stop. He picked up his glass again — one of the very few not broken in the earth quake — drained it, then forced himself to take a good look around his living room. Some of the more solid pieces of furniture had survived unscathed, although anything taller than hip height had fallen over and broken, and ornaments and pictures had been smashed, as had most of the windows. The damage was similar throughout the house — the coal range had come away from the wall and its flue in the kitchen, and in the bathroom the toilet pan had cracked and the bath had travelled from one side of the room to the other. Worst of all, neither the water nor the electricity was back on yet. Fortunately the house was built almost solely of wood and had flexed rather than collapsed when the earth had buckled, but still, a lot of repair work would be needed.

He contemplated his wife, still very pretty with her ash-blonde hair and bright blue eyes even though she was getting on for forty, and sighed. She was right, as usual; he was finding it difficult to manage his emotions. And damn the repair work on the house — the past few days had reminded him very unpleasantly that there were far more important things to be mourned than the damage to four walls and a roof.

‘I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m just …’ He trailed off, thinking I should say I’m just a bad-tempered old bastard, but then Lucy already knows that. Instead he said, ‘God, I’m so damn
tired
. It’s just all been so bloody awful.’

Lucy went over to him. More and more these days she was having to be the strong one; they both knew it, although neither
would ever acknowledge it openly.

She said gently, ‘I know, but we’ll manage somehow. We always have, and we will this time too.’

‘I wish I could turn back the clock. Things will never be the same, you know.’

‘Perhaps not, but sometimes good can come out of something as terrible as this.’

‘I can’t imagine what,’ James replied shortly. ‘We don’t even have the children with us. I miss them, Lucy. Even Duncan.’

Napier Boys’ High School had been temporarily closed until the earth quake damage to several of the main buildings had been repaired, so the boys had been sent out to Kenmore, together with Drew and Kathleen. So all nine grandchildren were at the station now, with only Lachie and Mrs Heath to look after them. Erin was still acting in her capacity as a temporary nurse, and at the moment Keely was also in town more often than she was at home, keeping herself as busy as possible.

For the first few days after the earth quake, she had helped co-ordinate the relief effort for the townspeople — and there were hundreds and hundreds of them — whose homes had been destroyed. Refugee camps had sprung up almost immediately. Shocked and dazed survivors spent their first night under army-issue canvas, eating food salvaged by seamen from HMS
Veronica
and the merchant navy ships
Northumberland
and
Taranaki
, and prepared and served by volunteer helpers.

The beachfront along Marine Parade had been the most popular place to go, despite the rumour that earth quakes were often succeeded by tidal waves. There was no tsunami, fortunately, but the regular and frequent aftershocks that continued for some time had kept everyone in a high state of tension — apart from one group of children Keely had seen sitting on a fence at Nelson Park chanting gaily, ‘Here comes a
… nother
one!’ at the beginning of
every fresh tremor. Other people set up camp outside their ruined homes, sleeping under the stars on mattresses dragged outside, eating whatever they could salvage from their own pantries, cooked over fireplaces made from bricks and rubble. But almost everyone, regardless of whether their homes had been destroyed or not, chose to sleep outdoors.

By the following day the aftershocks were tapering off but the fires in the central streets still burned. Navy reinforcements — in the form of the warships HMS
Dunedin
and
Diomede
, both of which had quickly been dispatched from Auckland — had arrived at 8.30 in the morning. On board was a large medical contingent from Auckland Hospital, as well as first-aid supplies, stretchers and tents, and seamen who would be working on shore. Their efforts were added to those of teams of ex-servicemen, as well as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, extra police and other emergency services converging on Napier to begin burying the dead and start repairing the roads, railway lines and telegraph network.

Then at the end of the week came the announcement that evacuation from Napier would begin for those who wished to leave; the water supply and drainage systems were still not functioning, and there was concern about an outbreak of disease. Nelson Park had been designated as the official evacuation centre, and medical cases would be moved to Greenmeadows before being transported out of the area. Initially all evacuees would go to Waipukurau, and then on to Palmerston North or to other parts of the country. Keely, therefore, was elbow deep in paperwork, and hadn’t been home to Kenmore for two days. She was desperately tired, but grateful to be so usefully occupied. She lived on tea and cigarettes, slept when she could and dropped around to James and Lucy’s house whenever she was able to grab an hour to herself. Joseph, Owen and Erin were doing the same, as if converging there could somehow make things better.

Only Erin was there at the moment.

There was a discreet cough and James and Lucy turned to see her standing quietly in the hall.

‘Sorry to interrupt, but she’s awake and she’d like to talk to you, James.’ Erin paused. ‘Oh, and Kepa’s here too. He’s waiting outside.’

‘God,
again
,’ James said. ‘He might as well be living here.’

Both Lucy and Erin ignored him. They understood — Kepa was reassuring himself that Tamar was not going to slip away from him after all.

The doctor had worked on Tamar desperately for some minutes after her heart had stopped, and just as he had been about to tell the tall Maori gentleman — who had gripped her hand during the resuscitation as if he were having a heart attack himself — that Mrs Murdoch had gone, he’d detected a faint hitching of her chest. When he had applied his stethoscope to her breast he’d been delighted to be able to confirm that she was breathing again, and the Maori man had wept. Not loudly, but in a manner the doctor had found profoundly moving.

Kepa had stayed with Tamar all that night and the following day, and had never been far from her side since. He was sleeping at Tamar’s house on Marine Parade, which hadn’t fallen down in the earth quake, but was certainly worse for wear, and doing what he could to tidy it up in case Tamar wanted to recuperate there before she went home to Kenmore. But that seemed unlikely, with no water or electricity and the drains in the town beginning to stink revoltingly.

Lucy, Erin and Keely were all touched by his obvious dedication and his efforts to make Tamar comfortable, but James wasn’t. He deeply resented Kepa’s involvement in Tamar’s recovery, and was even more annoyed that his mother was so clearly benefiting from the old man’s ministrations. He turned up at James’s house at least twice a day, sometimes with flowers — God knew where he got
them — and sometimes with fresh fish or some other food or drink he insisted Tamar have because it would be ‘good for her heart’. Tamar ate everything he brought along, and James found it particularly galling that neither Erin nor Keely, the two nurses in the family, had told the bloody annoying, arrogant old man to stop interfering in Tamar’s recuperation.

Tamar had been transferred to James and Lucy’s home a few days after her heart attack. The doctor overseeing her medical treatment had been most concerned when she refused to be evacuated to Waipukarau with the other injured earth quake victims, and had said very crossly that if anything happened to her because she wasn’t able to receive the appropriate medical help, he wouldn’t be held responsible. But he’d visited Tamar twice since she’d been moved to James and Lucy’s, and had examined her at length both times. In his opinion the leg wound was healing well, and a plaster cast could probably be applied soon, which meant Tamar could go home to Kenmore.

But James knew that wouldn’t happen for another day or two, so he would have to put up with Kepa fawning all over her. But he dared not refuse the man access to his mother; she would be extremely annoyed, and even James had to concede that Kepa’s visits were having a positive effect on her.

‘Oh, let him in then,’ he muttered, reaching for the brandy decanter again. ‘But not for long, I don’t want her getting overtired.’

The two women gave each other a quick, exasperated look before Erin went to see Kepa in.

Tamar lay propped up against a bank of soft pillows. Her face was still unusually pale, although a little colour had finally crept back into her cheeks, and her eyes were regaining a little of their sparkle.

‘Hello, my dear,’ Kepa said. He sat down beside the bed and reached for Tamar’s hand. ‘How was your afternoon sleep?’

‘Fine,’ Tamar replied truthfully. ‘I believe I’m finally on the mend.’

Over the last two days she had been feeling better and better, physically any way, and was very much looking forward to going home.

She shifted slightly, smoothed the fine satin coverlet over her lap and added, ‘Although I have been thinking, Kepa.’

He raised his eyebrows; such a statement from Tamar usually signalled an announcement of some consequence. ‘About?’

‘Well, about the earth quake, and my health and the children and what have you.’

He waited, knowing there would be more.

‘I have to admit,’ she continued, ‘that being crushed by a collapsing building then having a heart attack has rather made me reconsider my … well, my own mortality, I suppose you would call it.’

As it would, Kepa agreed silently.

Tamar was silent herself for a moment, then looked up at his handsome face and silver-streaked hair. ‘The time that you and I have had together since Andrew died has been wonderful, you know that, and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but, really, apart from that, all I seem to have done over the past ten years is fiddle about arranging flowers, making clothes for the children and playing at doing the station accounts.’