Outside the hut of cabbage-tree trunks plastered with mud (which was all Sir John had provided for her through four unforgivable years) Caroline was writing an English letter, with kakas screaming back in the grey manuka-scrub and a herd of Lovel children screaming at play round the cooking-trench—where Caroline still cooked reluctantly with gloves and a spoon so long that, declared Darien, she rarely knew what was in the pot.

“Even in midwinter,” wrote Caroline, “the sun is shining and birds singing in this happy country.” She paused with a glow of satisfaction. Never should England know what had happened to Lady Lovel dreeing her weird in the Antipodes; and already her hoodwinking of England had got her so far that she casually referred, on paper, to Sally's Roddy and Brian as her own. For Caroline, although looking as fecund as Dame Nature, said Major Henry, seemed doomed to produce only daughters, and Peregrine secretly saw the four-year-old Roddy as a future baronet and taught him history and geography in consequence.

The hoodwinking letters in praise of New Zealand were hard work, although Caroline always put on her best purple silk to aid inspiration; and so she was actually glad to see Darien, who had come for Sally's children and sat in a crumple of blue gingham skirts on the tussock. Yet Darien, tall enough at fourteen to be a young lady, should sit on a chair.

“You will soon wear your clothes out if you treat them like that,” Caroline said reprovingly.

page 60

“I haven't got spots on them, anyway,” said Darien, staring hard at Caroline's spread skirts. “And I wish they'd all wear out, then Peregrine would have to buy me more … the mean wretch. And I wish we'd never come to this hateful country with its stupid men, and even nasty brown sugar so scarce we have to cook with honey … and the only milk is goats'.”

“A land flowing with milk and honey,” wrote Caroline, seizing inspiration hastily. Then to Darien: “I hear old Mrs Faber is dead. What of?”

Caroline always wanted to know what people died of. Darien considered the usual methods of dissolution on the Beach and gave generously: “First she got drunk. Then she had a baby. Then she was drowned.”

“Land sakes!” cried Caroline, gasping. “The woman must be seventy.”

“Yes. That's why she died.”

“You are not telling the truth, miss.”

“Well, I gave you some at first. Nobody can tell truth all the time,” said Darien, feeling that no woman with such big red cheeks as Lady Lovel's should tie purple silk bonnet-strings under her fat chin. “Major Henry says you're an oleograph and Sally a water-colour by nobody in particular and I'm an oil-painting by Sir Somebody and very like Lady Hamilton. Do you know Lady Hamilton?”

“In my position,” said Caroline, bridling, “of course I know everybody. I have foregathered with earls … accompanied by their countesses of course,” she added hurriedly, for one couldn't be too careful with Darien.

“I'd have liked them better without,” said Darien, getting up to take the children home.

What a world! With creatures like Lady Lovel knowing earls, and Darien having to be content with the Beach, which ran after her as if she were a cricket ball and never knew what to do with her when it caught her.

The Graham boys clearly considered affection another page 61 word for recrimination, and trading-captains (though showing emotion when handing over the articles she wanted most out of their dingy stores) never discarded their Maori wives for her sake. As for that odious wretch, Nick Flower, he had so mortified her that she would meet him no more in the flax-gully—besides, he was never there when she went now. And Jermyn never looked at her, although she had written, “J.L. is Appolo Belvedere and all the classics besides being a gentleman,” and left it on the table when she last took the children down to Major Henry's. What more could a girl do?

A wretched life, and so full of frustrations that by the time supper was done she felt the house couldn't contain her and she doubted if New Zealand could. She went out desolately, laying her cheek against the puriri-trunk and then clinging to it tightly with a dim feeling of being Andromeda on her rock waiting for Perseus to pry her off. The vast silence pouring from the stars, the vast loneliness pouring across the untrod hills were cruelly full of negations. Even Andromeda wasn't so lonely. At least she had the dragon.

Here came Perseus, although he might have hurried more. Nick Flower or Jermyn? Darien palpitated. But it was only Sir John calling with a message to Sally on his way to the Beach. Darien went in bitterly. Men could always do what they liked but a woman mustn't even get drunk. Praise the Lord for heaven where certainly men wouldn't be able to do any of the things they liked doing now. Darien knelt down to say a thankful prayer.