Forgiven_BooksGoSocial Historical Fiction Page 9

  excitement at being here enhancing her evident charms.

  After collecting the rest of her luggage from the van,

  everyone climbed back on the gig and after making some room

  it was back to Zelda’s for a compulsory cup of tea. All eyes

  were on Rachel and I was surprised how relaxed she seemed.

  She had removed her hat and was perched on a bow back chair,

  her saucer in one hand and her cup in the other. She seemed

  glad to be back, her luminous eyes moving from one speaker

  to another while seeming to absorb her surroundings. She

  knew that a potential mother-in-law was studying her for

  defects and if she was nervous about that, she didn’t show it. I

  know I was nervous, for it was paramount that they get along.

  Any failure on that score would have the consequences of

  absolute disaster.

  Later, we were once more opposite one another at the

  dinner table and my eyes still couldn’t get enough. I was

  feeling guilty, reduced to looking elsewhere, ‘trying hard not to

  make it obvious’ and all the while conscious that I was not

  really pulling it off. She wore an elegant evening dress that

  seemed to shimmer in the light of the kitchen lamps. As she

  moved, the folds in the material would subtly change from

  normal to darker, depending on the angle that you observed her

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  from. Over it was a matching, collarless, long-sleeved

  waistcoat, while the gathers on the sleeves of her blouse

  protruded discreetly from under the cuffs.

  Whenever she looked at me her eyes seemed to glow. She

  knew. I was drawn like a moth to the flame of a candle. I

  looked at my plate and discreetly slid my foot along until I felt

  hers touching mine. I suppose that was a bit presumptuous of

  me, but what the hell, how much trouble could that get me

  into? She made no attempt to move her foot, so a few seconds

  later I glanced towards her; her eyes smiled benignly back –

  our secret. Partners in crime. It would be nice to be alone

  awhile, but there would be no chance of that. Touching our feet

  would be the closest we were going to get.

  Rachel proved to be a captivating and endearing audience.

  She looked relaxed and seemed to shine, never talking of

  herself except in the most generic of terms, preferring instead

  to absorb and enjoy everyone else’s conversation. The effect

  she had was contagious, for the obvious success of our efforts

  to entertain her made everyone else feel relaxed as well.

  Later that evening, after the dishes had been put away, we

  moved to the lounge and sat in a semi-circle around the fire.

  The lamps were off, our backs to the door. I had stacked an

  extra-large pile of firewood on the corner of the hearth and the

  flames curled and danced, our faces illuminated by the glow

  while grotesque light patterns flickered vividly across the

  ceiling. We sat content after a good meal to recline and talk in

  comfort.

  Mother was less vocal than usual, although Agnes and

  Emma were up to the mark and Aunt Zelda was there for

  mutual support. Occasionally though, Mother would add her

  bit to the conversation by asking Rachel a question.

  “Tell me, Rachel, what does your father do?”

  “He’s owner and manager of Warner’s department store,”

  replied Rachel, matter-of-factly, just a hint of pride in her

  voice. “Jewellery, ready-to-wear clothes, cosmetics,

  dressmaking patterns and materials, evening wear, bedding,

  porcelain, large mirrors, furniture, all that sort of thing.”

  “Oh,” went Mother, trying to remember if she had been

  there with Eleanor Vance.

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  “Dressmaking patterns?” queried Agnes.

  “Yes, it’s a new thing. You can now buy readymade

  patterns and adapt them, instead of having to draft your own.

  There’s a picture on the packet so you can see what it will look

  like when it’s finished.”

  “Is it a large store?” asked Zelda.

  “Oh yes,” replied Rachel, explaining that it had three

  storeys, an elevator and a grand staircase at one end

  surmounted by a storey-high set of leadlight windows.

  Everyone went silent, trying to take that in. Warner’s must be

  almost as large as all the shops in Patea combined. I recalled

  the day I followed her there; it was a shock to realise that

  Rachel’s father owned all of that.

  Later, it was back to the bunkhouse and I began to read a

  novel by Zane Grey. By uncanny coincidence, the heroine of

  the story was called Rachel. She was a belle from Boston who

  had gone west to visit an aunt who owned a ranch in Arizona.

  Little did she know when she embarked on her journey that she

  would fall in love with a cowboy; a man of the West, the

  foreman of her aunt’s ranch.

  I was up to the part where the villains had abducted our

  heroine and departed for parts unknown. Her reputation and

  her virginity were now in imminent peril, although not

  necessarily in that order. This was heart-pounding stuff and her

  cowboy hero was nowhere in sight. He was far off in the desert

  and trapped under a rock pile, having been ambushed by the

  very same villains. Help however, was at hand, because the

  only old gold prospector for a thousand square miles was about

  to come wandering along and rescue him. Unfortunately, our

  heroine was pining for her boyfriend to come and save her. He,

  however, didn’t know he was her boyfriend, because they

  hadn’t got around to discussing it yet and anyway, he thought

  she was a thousand miles away and was not aware that she was

  missing. Meanwhile, the entire US Cavalry in Arizona was on

  alert and would have come thundering to her rescue had

  anyone only known.

  Fortunately for her, the irrevocable and inescapable truth

  was that pure and virtuous young maidens could take good

  heart. The frontier justice of Colt .45 would surely prevail and

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  terminate the careers of the villains, writing yet another stirring

  chapter of the West in the process.

  I put down the book. It had been a long day and I should

  have felt tired – but I wasn’t. I couldn’t help thinking there was

  a parallel between the characters of this story and Rachel. The

  real Rachel had also gone west to stay with an aunt (mine) and

  fallen in love with a stockman (me). The only thing missing

  was the outlaws. I idly wondered what Titokowaru and Kimble

  Bent would care to make of that.

  Unlike last time, there was little chance of Rachel turning

  up but still, I had hoped. She had certainly surprised me. The

  extent of her considerable audacity and sense of adventure was

  completely unexpected. Then I realised that tonight, with a

  potential mother-in-law in the house, it would doubly not do to

  get caught.

  Actually, Mother had already mentioned that she shouldn’t

  really be here. If Rachel’s mother and father knew what was

  going on all hell would break loose. If her folks were half as

&
nbsp; rich as we suspected they were, then only a relationship along

  formal lines would be acceptable and what was happening here

  couldn’t be more informal. Mother would be a conspirator and

  so would Agnes, Emma and Zelda. The resulting

  embarrassment would be too horrendous to contemplate. I

  should announce my intentions and put this in the open,

  although that presented me with another problem. What,

  exactly, were my intentions? I was forced to concede that at

  this point I didn’t actually know.

  Since meeting Rachel my conscious thoughts were

  dominated by her. I could not even read without her worming

  her way into it. How simple and boring my previous life was!

  I still pondered these things when there was a subtle knock.

  The door swung slowly open. Rachel came into view and shut

  the door before gliding lightly towards me, her eyes bright

  with expectation and arms outstretched. Clad only in a

  nightdress, it was shades of deja vu. I sprang out of bed and

  she glided into my arms and leaned against me.

  “Are you insane? What are you doing here?”

  “Please don’t be mad, I’m here because we need to talk.”

  There was a sense of suppressed urgency in her voice. I was

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  happy to see her of course, but she would be the death of me

  yet, I swear.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too.”

  “We can’t go on meeting once every four months. What are

  we going to do?”

  I held her, acutely aware that she seemed to fit so well.

  How natural it was to hold her like this.

  There was that lavender smell; the lightness of her.

  Excitement and trepidation soared in equal proportions –

  trepidation that we would probably get caught doing this and

  excitement generated by her nearness that was difficult to

  suppress.

  “Would you move to Whanganui for me?”

  I blinked in surprise. Was that the reason for sneaking out

  here? Unlike me, she had obviously thought this through.

  “Of course I would.”

  “That’s all I need to know. Now I’d better go, but if we get

  the chance we should talk about this tomorrow.” She gave me a

  hug and turned to leave, pausing to mime a kiss before closing

  the door behind her.

  I looked in the direction of the house and strained my ears

  for the sounds of voices, but there were none – all was serene.

  My heart stopped thumping and I flopped back on my pillow,

  my mind racing instead. Had I been manoeuvred? I probably

  had. I couldn’t stop shaking my head and grinning. To be

  honest, I would move to the other end of the country if it

  meant she would be closer to me.

  The following morning us young ones went for a walk. It

  was a calm, balmy, autumn day, cool at first with dew on the

  lawns. Here and there a blackbird hopped, stopping every few

  seconds to eye the surroundings. Starlings perched on the

  gutters and squawked their delight in the warmth of the sun.

  Off in the distance a hawk circled slowly round and round and

  beyond the hedge sparrows chattered and danced.

  The older women weren’t interested in walking and they

  had no need to chaperone, for Agnes and Emma would be

  there to ‘play gooseberry’ – to ensure we didn’t do anything

  inappropriate. Rachel wore a close-fitting suit of pale blue

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  tartan on a cream background, the jacket of which was

  buttoned up level with her breasts, but could be buttoned to the

  neck. Her matching skirt featured a fringed hem, and the

  combination was a statement of her femininity that left me

  silently gasping.

  The girls were in a playful mood. Whenever we came near

  mud they would push one another, shriek and make up jokes

  about each other. Rachel was buoyant, her eyes were bright

  and I also knew why. I idly wondered if Mother had noticed it

  too.

  That afternoon, we were lounging on the lawn when

  Mother came up behind us.

  “Rachel, can we go inside and talk?”

  The four of us were really enjoying ourselves – it was after

  lunch and we were basking on the lawn, languid in the warmth

  of the sun. Rachel was clearly happy and the last thing I

  wanted was something to come along and mess things up. But

  she dutifully got up and followed Mother towards the house

  where they ascended the front steps and disappeared through

  the door. Their heads appeared in the bay windows of the

  lounge. Was last night what this was about? Had Rachel been

  caught? I have to admit I was worried.

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  Chapter Eight

  JAMESTOWN, Cape Colony, South Africa

  It was two in the morning when we were woken. Someone was

  banging on our doors.

  “Wake up you lot, it’s the Chief Constable. Open up!

  Ferg’s been shot!”

  We leaped out of bed with our revolvers ready and

  cautiously poked our heads out to find that it was indeed the

  Chief Constable in a perturbed state.

  “Ferg was shot through his cell window!”

  We leaped into our clothes while the Chief Constable

  waited, then we sprinted in the dark to the jail, still clutching

  our weapons and ready for action.

  It was too late for Ferg though; he was dead. Wisps of

  black powder smoke still obscured the ceiling and its

  distinctive sulphurous smell permeated both cells. He was

  stretched out facing the cell window, his arms spread away

  from his sides – as if he had been standing under the window

  and simply keeled over backwards, his chest perforated with at

  least two dozen holes which covered an area no larger than a

  dinner plate. He would have haemorrhaged massively and been

  dead within a minute of hitting the floor.

  I blanched. Ferg was not a pretty sight. The damage to his

  upper body was extreme. The whole chest area from his neck

  to the bottom of the ribs was reduced to pulp. Even the

  clothing that covered his chest had been obliterated, with only

  a few threads here and there to hold the bloodied, shredded

  mass together. The blood pool was equally impressive and had

  spread around him like a halo, his eyes so unnaturally wide

  and staring; his chest cavity so shattered it looked as though it

  had collapsed.

  I was getting used to seeing dead men, mostly killed by a

  single bullet. Normally, there wasn’t that much blood for much

  of the bleeding was internal. This was different. This was

  overkill to the point that it could almost be personal.

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  “Double or triple-O buckshot,” proclaimed Potts, bending

  over him with a paraffin lamp, having got as close as he dared

  while avoiding the pool of blood. “A lot of spread in the

  pattern when you consider that he was obviously shot at very

  close range, probably no more than a yard, which means a gun

  with very short barrels.”

  Five minutes later, the constable with the stripes arrived

  with a doctor to pronounce the obvious, aft
er which we

  trooped around the back of the jail to investigate how this

  could have happened.

  The answer was not long in coming – there were

  unmistakable marks of a ladder in the dust below Ferg’s

  window, which was a good ten feet from the ground.

  “Look at this,” said Floyd, holding a lantern aloft.

  “Whoever did this used this ladder to climb the wall and pulled

  the ladder over with him, so he could use it to shoot through

  that window.”

  Whoever killed Ferg must have called him to the window

  and shot him through the bars from so close that he couldn’t

  miss, no matter how dark it was. “An’ look here; he initially

  went to the wrong window, see, an’ once he realised he had

  gone to the wrong cell he dragged it over to this window.”

  We could see the ladder he was referring to, propped

  against the high brick wall that enclosed the jail. This was

  obviously the exit point. The killer hadn’t bothered to burden

  himself with the ladder any longer and had left it behind. Dead

  men tell no tales, but the question was – what did Ferg know

  that made it necessary to kill him? There was nothing more to

  be learned here, so we reconvened in the front office where we

  sat around in silence, turning the pattern of events over and

  over in our minds, trying to figure out what the hell had

  happened. The Colonel mumbled as though thinking to

  himself.

  “There’s something really fishy about this. Ferg obviously

  didn’t tell us everything he knew. It would appear that we

  weren’t the only ones he needed to be afraid of.”

  “He was genuinely scared of us,” said I.

  Potts agreed. “The devious little sod conned us though. He

  was scared all right; but was it us he was afraid of? It may

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  have only looked that way. Was he afraid because he knew that

  if he told us anything, there would be some swift retribution? It

  seems that all the while, he was sitting on a powder keg.”

  No one spoke. I had no idea what to make of it. It was

  perplexing and shocking.

  Potts leaned back, his hands clamped behind his head. A

  smirk of irony fleetingly creased his otherwise serious face.

  “Obviously he wasn’t the smartarse he thought he was.

  Perhaps in getting caught, he had unknowingly signed his own

  death warrant.”

  The Colonel sat up straighter. “The question now is, who