Kitty Read online

  A second later it came loose and plummeted to the deck. Kitty stepped smartly out of the way but tripped and went flat on her back, her breath squeaking out of her as she hit the deck. The end of her long plait flicked across the block at the bottom of the jammed line and, freed now, the line began to run, taking her hair with it through the block and up.

  She screamed as she was yanked violently a foot across the deck, and clamped her hands to her searing scalp. Then something blurred past her, and suddenly the agony eased slightly and her head thudded onto the deck.

  Someone said, ‘Fecking Jesus’, and she opened her eyes to see Mick’s horrified face leaning over her.

  Another voice: ‘Don’t let her move.’ Hawk’s, she thought detachedly.

  Firm hands pressed her shoulders down against the deck, then the sound and the feel of footsteps running.

  She fainted.

  Then she was coming to, wanting to be sick. Bile burned her throat; she clenched her jaws until the urge went away.

  ‘She’s choking!’

  She tried to say that she wasn’t, but was rolled onto her side and held there.

  ‘My hair,’ she whispered. There was a terrible hot ache across the back of her scalp.

  ‘Kitty?’

  It was Rian, crouching in front of her, his face deathly pale.

  ‘Kitty, can you hear me?’

  She wanted to nod but couldn’t, her head hurt so badly.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Rian urged. ‘You’re all right but don’t move.’

  How could she be all right with her scalp missing? She lifted a hand to feel, but Rian pushed it down again.

  ‘My hair,’ she said again. ‘My head.’

  They were all staring down at her now, looking appalled, Wai as well. She reached out her hand and Wai took it, squeezing hard.

  ‘Is it bad?’ Kitty said, wanting to know the truth but not wanting to know either.

  ‘It is short,’ Wai replied.

  Hawk squatted; in his right hand he held his knife, and in his left Kitty’s plait, complete with the jaunty red ribbon. Kitty couldn’t quite comprehend what she was looking at.

  ‘I cut it off,’ he said, as gravely as though informing her that she had indeed been scalped. ‘I am very sorry, I could not think what else to do.’

  Kitty’s hand flew to the back of her head, and yes, most of her hair was missing. But that was all.

  She stared at Hawk as a bubble of hysteria rose in her throat, then she giggled. While the others looked on uneasily, the giggles turned into laughter and then sobs.

  Wai helped her to sit up. ‘It will grow back, Kitty, do not worry.’

  ‘I thought the back of my head was gone,’ Kitty blurted. Shock made her suddenly dizzy and she slumped forwards, still crying.

  Unnerved by her distress, Rian ordered, ‘Right, everyone, back to work.’

  ‘She be all right?’ Pierre asked, gazing worriedly at Kitty. ‘She get a proper fright.’

  ‘Well, she’s certainly finished work for the day,’ Rian said.

  Hawk glared at him; Rian looked away.

  ‘I make something good for supper, eh?’ Pierre said. ‘Something for the fright.’

  ‘Cup of tea would help,’ Haunui said. He firmly believed that tea had the power to fix most ailments.

  ‘Tot of rum’d be better,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘I have kawakawa,’ Ropata said. ‘That is calming.’

  Rian barked, ‘I said back to work! Now!’

  The men dispersed, relieved now that they knew that Kitty hadn’t been seriously hurt. Rian stayed where he was.

  ‘Help me get her below,’ he said to Haunui.

  Between them they got Kitty to her feet and down to Rian’s cabin. Wai and Hawk followed, Hawk still with Kitty’s plait dangling from his hand like a limp black snake.

  Kitty continued to cry, but less hysterically now. It was an immense relief to know that she wasn’t to be hideously disfigured for the rest of her life, but her beautiful long hair! Recognising the incongruity of the thought, she giggled again: she could easily have been killed and here she was fretting about her hairstyle.

  Haunui and Rian exchanged looks.

  ‘I think the rum,’ Haunui said as they sat Kitty down on the bed. Hawk opened Rian’s desk, brought out a decanter of rum and handed it to her.

  ‘In a glass, man!’ Rian remonstrated.

  Kitty ignored him and took a swig. She had never had rum before, only a glass or two of porter allowed by her parents. There had been no liquor with Uncle George and Aunt Sarah. She pulled a face as the alcohol burned its way down her throat, but relaxed a moment later as it began to warm her from her stomach out. She had another.

  ‘That will do,’ Rian said, taking the decanter from her and setting it on his desk.

  Wai eyed it disapprovingly; Kitty needed comforting now, not another bout of silliness. ‘Get hot water, Uncle,’ she said in an uncharacteristically authoritative tone. ‘And soap and scissors and towels. And then go away, all of you.’

  Relieved that a woman had now taken control, the men retreated. Haunui came back a few minutes later with a bucket of hot water from the enormous pot Pierre kept constantly on the boil in the galley, and everything else Wai had asked for, including a pair of the shears the men used for mending sails.

  Wai sniffed the soap. ‘What is the smell?’

  Kitty recognised it from where she was sitting. ‘Lavender.’

  ‘Pretty,’ Wai said. ‘Who gave it?’

  ‘It is Pierre’s special go ashore soap,’ Haunui replied as he went out, closing the door behind him.

  Wai turned to Kitty. ‘A wash will calm you. Then we will cut your hair, then you will sleep.’

  Kitty’s hand strayed to the back of her head. She wasn’t bald there—there was enough hair left to grasp in her fist—but her hair hadn’t been that short since childhood, and she certainly felt bald. ‘Isn’t it short enough?’

  Wai said, ‘It looks…pakaru.’

  Kitty nodded. That was definitely how she felt—broken, torn and wrecked. But a wash in hot water sounded lovely.

  Wai helped her to undress then sponged her down with warm soapy water, washing between her fingers and toes as though she were a small, grubby child. She wrapped Kitty in a ragged but clean towel and gestured for her to kneel on the floor before the bucket. ‘Wash your hair now.’

  Kitty did as she was told, dipping her head into the water while Wai worked the soap into a lather and began to massage her sore, bruised scalp. It still throbbed but the pain was easing now. When the soap had been rinsed out Wai sat her down on the wooden chair at Rian’s desk. Kitty suddenly felt overcome by exhaustion; the shock that had flooded her body slowly draining away, leaving her limbs heavy and useless. Her eyes began to close of their own accord.

  ‘No, do not sleep yet,’ Wai ordered.

  Kitty forced her eyes open again: Wai stood before the cupboard holding out a snowy white shirt, which looked as though it could be Rian’s best. ‘Put this on,’ she said, ‘the other is dirty. Then we will do the cutting.’

  Kitty slipped into the shirt, then Wai stood behind her with the shears and began to tidy up what was left of her hair. She took her time, and Kitty was almost asleep again by the time she announced she had finished.

  ‘Look in the mirror,’ she suggested.

  Kitty went to the cupboard, nervous that she might see someone in the mirror who wasn’t her any more. But then she was almost somebody else already, wasn’t she? She certainly wasn’t the Kitty Carlisle who had arrived in New Zealand a little over a year ago—frightened, ineffectual and limply heartbroken because a selfish man had taken advantage of her silliness.

  Hesitantly she opened the cupboard door, but it was her after all, albeit with much shorter hair. She had been too frightened to look before Wai had taken to her hair with the shears, but now it only came down to about two inches below her ears. At the back it felt even shorter. She looked like a boy—or rath
er, a boyish version of Kitty Carlisle.

  She turned her head from side to side, watching the way her hair moved. Her neck felt naked. She put her palms against her temples and swept the hair back off her face; it stayed there for a second, then fell forwards again in two shining black waves, too silky clean to do as it was told. There wasn’t even enough left to tie back and, now that it was drying, little tendrils were springing out in all directions, revealing a hint of curl Kitty hadn’t even known she possessed.

  She looked ruefully across at Wai, who shrugged and said, ‘Better than having no back of the head.’

  It was, too. Kitty yawned.

  ‘You go to sleep now,’ Wai said. ‘Rest. I will wake you for supper.’

  When Kitty awoke it was almost dark and she realised she had slept the entire afternoon away. She could hear someone banging around in the mess-room and guessed it was Pierre setting the table. She stayed where she was, enjoying the soothing rocking motion of the schooner as she hummed towards Australia, low and steady in the water because of her cargo of timber. Kitty wondered whether she would see the black outline of land yet if she went up on deck, but her body didn’t seem to want to move.

  Someone tapped on the door. It opened and Wai came in, followed by Pierre carrying a tray.

  Kitty sat up. ‘I can eat at the table,’ she said, feeling embarrassed at receiving such special treatment.

  ‘Non, you must rest,’ Pierre said, settling the tray on her knee. On it was a bowl covered with a lid, which he whipped off, exclaiming ‘Voilà!’ as the most delicious aroma wafted up from it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Pierre Babineaux’s famous catfish courtbouillion,’ Pierre said proudly. ‘’Cept no catfish. It is some other fish I catch today.’

  Kitty tasted it. ‘Mmm, it’s very good. What else is in it?’

  Pierre looked cagey. ‘Onion, tomato sauce, cayenne pepper, bit of this, pinch of that. It is Babineaux family secret.’

  Kitty regarded the wiry, exotic-looking little man; it seemed odd to think that somewhere in the world he had something as ordinary as a family.

  Pierre turned to go, then paused. ‘Your hair, she is très charmant.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kitty said, touched by his attempts to make her feel better.

  As he left, Bodie came in, trotting across the cabin and bouncing up onto the bed. She rubbed her face across Kitty’s hand, leaving behind a slick of something watery, sniffed the bowl of soup, then turned around three times and lay down, sighing contentedly.

  ‘She also does not mind your new hair,’ Wai commented. ‘I will have supper, then come back.’

  But when she did, she found that Kitty had gone to sleep again and that the tray and the empty bowl were on the floor beside the bed. She wasn’t entirely sure, however, whether Kitty had actually been responsible for finishing the courtbouillion. She grasped Bodie by the scruff of the neck and smelled her breath: fish.

  ‘Bad cat,’ Wai said mildly and went out again.

  Kitty slept on, only waking much later when the wooden chair near the desk creaked under the weight of a body settling into it.

  ‘Wai?’ she asked sleepily, rolling over.

  ‘Rian. Do you mind if I light the lamp?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Kitty replied warily, sitting up with her back against the wall of the alcove. A man was in her bedroom, but she couldn’t tell him to go away because it was his cabin. She wondered what he wanted—his papers perhaps, or some personal item. Either that or he had come to tell her off for being so careless up on deck.

  There was a scraping noise as he struck a flint and a smell of burning as the tinder ignited. He reached up and touched it to the wick in the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, then stood back, waiting as the tiny glow brightened.

  The lamp swung lazily in opposite time to the Katipo’s gentle heeling from side to side: Kitty watched as shadows chased themselves from one end of the cabin to the other. In the weak light Rian’s eyes were nothing but dark hollows. The sea whispered and the schooner’s timbers creaked benignly, but otherwise there was silence.

  She waited nervously for the scathing force of his criticism, but nothing happened. Perhaps he was saving it until she was feeling stronger, so he could knock her back down again.

  Eventually he said, ‘I came to see whether you were awake and, if you were, to ask you how you’re feeling now.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kitty said, feeling relieved that he hadn’t berated her—yet—and then irritated because she was relieved. ‘Well, I was asleep until you came in.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. Then, after a moment, ‘Is that my shirt you’re wearing?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  Silence again. Rian tapped his tinder box against the arm of his chair. Kitty waited, more curious than wary.

  Rian said, ‘Look, I want to apologise for treating you so harshly. The accident this morning was my fault. If you hadn’t been on deck it wouldn’t have happened. I should never have allowed it. My behaviour has been unforgivable.’

  He looked so wretched that Kitty found herself trying to alleviate his discomfort for him.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t watching where I was going. Really.’

  He shook his head. ‘It isn’t just that, although that was bad enough. No, I mean all the jobs—the ropes and swabbing the decks and everything else I told you to do. You’re a gentlewoman, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘But I asked to do all that,’ Kitty said, feeling her face grow warm at the memory of how demanding and childish she’d been during those first few days of the voyage.

  ‘So who’s been the most bloody-minded then?’ Rian said, almost smiling but not quite. ‘You or me?’

  Kitty thought for a second. ‘Could it be a tie?’

  Rian laughed, then his serious face was back. ‘I mean it, Kitty, you could have been killed this morning. And if you had, I don’t think I could have lived with it. It would have been just like…’ He trailed off. ‘It would have been very bad,’ he finished lamely.

  Kitty sat up straighter, thinking how best to explain it all to him. That was, of course, if he was interested in knowing. ‘I wanted to do the work, Rian. It was important to me, to earn my passage. When I woke that first morning, the morning after we sailed, I knew I couldn’t go back to Paihia, not for some time anyway.’ Rian raised a disbelieving eyebrow and she hurried on. ‘No, I did know it, in my heart, even though I said I wanted you to take me back. I felt…I felt I was drifting, as though I’d been cut loose and was drifting, and that was the only thing I could think of to anchor myself, to go back. I know Aunt Sarah probably wouldn’t have welcomed me after what happened. She thinks it’s my fault, you know, Uncle George and Wai. She thinks my “wanton ways” encouraged her.’

  Rian said, ‘I didn’t realise you had wanton ways.’

  Kitty ignored him. ‘But I could have lived with someone else—Rebecca, perhaps. Or at another mission station.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t have worked,’ Rian said. ‘Word travels very fast, even in New Zealand. The scandal would have followed you wherever you went.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Tupehu would also have followed you,’ Rian added.

  Kitty nodded. ‘I know. But I liked Rebecca, and the children. All of them—the mission children and my students. I was very fond of them. Even Simon, once I got to know him. He’s a very decent man.’

  Rian nodded. ‘He is. But would you really have married him?’

  ‘No, and he didn’t want to marry me. It was an arrangement of convenience so people would stop match-making. That was Aunt Sarah’s greatest ambition, you know, to marry me off. But I do miss him, just a little.’

  Rian regarded her for a moment. ‘Do you know why he didn’t want to marry you?’

  Kitty shrugged. ‘Not really. He just said he wasn’t the marrying kind.’

  ‘Well, I
hope you didn’t take it personally,’ Rian said. He shifted in his seat. ‘Simon’s a homosexual, Kitty. He’s also very honest, and therefore unlikely to marry any woman.’

  Kitty stared. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Simon’s a homosexual. A molly, a pansy, a sodomite, call it whatever you like, but he prefers the sexual company of men.’

  Stunned, Kitty said, ‘He never said anything to me!’ Thinking back, though, she suspected that he might have tried.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? It’s hardly a suitable topic of conversation for tea parties. And after that business with William Yate, I expect it would be the last thing he’d want made public.’

  A deeply disappointing possibility occurred to Kitty. ‘How do you know? That Simon’s…like that.’

  ‘I guessed. You tend to see a lot of them around ports. And then one day he said something. I think he was trying to tell me…’ Rian faltered. ‘Well, that you weren’t really spoken for.’

  ‘So you already knew he wouldn’t be marrying me, that day on the lawn at the treaty discussions, the day we left Paihia? Were you deliberately teasing me?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Another example of my appalling behaviour.’

  Kitty felt like telling him exactly what she thought of it, but decided she didn’t have the energy. She did, however, have another unpleasant notion. ‘He wasn’t…well, you know, doing that at Waimate, was he?’

  ‘If he was, he was very discreet.’ Rian shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business anyway—it’s his and that’s the way it should stay. I only mentioned it because I wanted to ask you why you didn’t want to marry him.’

  ‘I’m not the marrying kind either,’ Kitty said shortly. ‘I was telling you why I wanted to earn my passage.’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Well, when you said you wouldn’t take me back, I felt so…well, so horribly alone. I’ve never really had to look after myself before. It was always my father’s job, and when he died it was Mama, then it was Uncle George and Aunt Sarah. So I decided it was time I learned, especially given that we would be in Sydney in less than two weeks whether I liked it or not. Wai has Haunui, and she has me, but I’m going to have to rely on myself. I’m sorry, I was being childish. But I was angry, too.’