White Lies Page 5

  ‘It is too dangerous. You could die, along with the baby.’

  ‘You’ve been playing me along.’ Rebecca Vickers rose and adjusted her clothes. ‘I don’t like to be treated as a fool.’ Her anger was all the more intense for being so contained. Not a flicker of it disturbed the stillness of her face. ‘Maraea will pay you for your consultation. She will give you a cup of tea before you leave.’ Her reflection locked gaze with Paraiti, and the room filled with eyes from all the mirrors.

  Of course it wasn’t as easy as that for Paraiti.

  The following day, while she was feeding her animals at Waituhi, she saw the local constable, Harry McIntosh, approaching her gate, huffing and puffing. ‘What have you done now, eh?’ he asked.

  She must go with him to Gisborne for questioning. ‘Were you in the vicinity of Waterside Drive yesterday? If so, were you invited into the home of Mrs Rebecca Vickers? She has reported that her servant took pity on an old Maori woman who appeared to be faint from the heat, and that her servant gave her something to eat. She left the woman for a moment to talk to the gardener. Now a diamond bracelet is missing.’

  Paraiti was taken to the Gisborne jail. For two days she was imprisoned in a cell: a small room, with one square window, a pallet to sleep on and a hole in the ground to crouch over when you wanted to answer Nature’s call. There were three other cells containing a scatter of men who watched her curiously as she was locked in; one look at her scar and they turned away.

  This was not the first time that Paraiti had been imprisoned. Sometimes, jealous Maori whispered about her clandestine medical activities, which led to arrest and incarceration. On such occasions, Paraiti would think of her parents. ‘I am getting off lightly compared with them,’ she would say to herself. ‘My father was imprisoned for two years, my mother died in jail.’

  On the third day, she was dozing when she heard approaching footsteps and someone rapping on the bars of her cell. ‘You have a visitor,’ Constable McIntosh said.

  Dazed from sleep, Paraiti saw that it was Mrs Vickers, her face hidden behind a dark veil, which was sucked in slightly by her breath whenever she spoke. Her eyes were glowing, triumphant. ‘So, Paraiti … there are more ways than one to skin a cat. I have come to offer you your freedom.’

  Behind her, head bowed, was Maraea. ‘Please do as she says, takuta,’ she pleaded. ‘It would be better for all of us.’

  ‘It is dirty, shameful work,’ said Paraiti. ‘No person would do it.’

  ‘I will pay you handsomely for your work and your silence. If you do what I have already asked of you I will drop the charges.’

  ‘They are false and you know it.’

  ‘Who do you think the authorities would believe?’ Rebecca Vickers smiled. ‘Someone like me? Or …’ — her tone was mocking — ‘someone like you?’

  ‘Keep your money,’ Paraiti said angrily. ‘Constable?’ she called. ‘We’ve finished our korero here.’

  ‘I will say when our conversation begins and when it ends,’ Mrs Vickers hissed between clenched teeth.

  Paraiti turned her back to the young woman. ‘Get out,’ she said.

  Rebecca Vickers raised the veil and stepped closer to the bars. ‘You doctors,’ she continued, ‘Pakeha or Maori, you’re all the same, kei te mimi ahau ki runga ki a koutou.’

  Paraiti gasped, shocked at the precise cultured voice articulating the Maori words. She turned, took a few steps towards Mrs Vickers and peered closely at her.

  ‘Yes, medicine woman, take a good look.’ Mrs Vickers turned her head this way and that for the inspection. Paraiti noted again the flawless skin and the cleverly applied make-up. She caught a glimpse of something else: beneath the powder the surface was glazed, as if it had been treated by some whitening agent.

  Paraiti took a step back. ‘Aue, e hine,’ she grieved.

  Rebecca Vickers’ eyes widened with anger. She had been expecting some other reaction, some acknowledgement of her cleverness. ‘What an ignorant woman you are, Scarface.’ She smiled mockingly. ‘I expected you, at least, to understand.’ She lowered her veil and left the cell.

  Maraea followed her, but suddenly turned to Paraiti. ‘She will kill the baby,’ she said, angrily, ‘make no mistake about it. If she kills herself in doing it, well — if the baby is born, her life will be destroyed anyhow. Mark my words, you will be as much to blame if you do not help her.’

  You doctors, you’re all the same, I urinate on all of you.

  Paraiti asked the question, even though she already knew the answer. ‘He Maori ia?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maraea answered. ‘She is Maori.’

  ‘But the painting in the house … is that not her mother?’

  ‘Yes, it is her mother,’ Maraea said.

  ‘Then how …’

  But Maraea had already gone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It is another dawn and Paraiti drags her old bones up from sleep.

  She raises her hand in prayer, ‘Kororia ki to ingoa tapu, glory be to Thy holy name,’ and praises God again for the gift of life and the joy of another day. What greater blessing could humankind receive than to be able to live and breathe, here, on the bright strand between earth and sky?

  Of course, the charge against Paraiti could not be sustained. Despite Rebecca Vickers’ insistence that Paraiti remain in jail, Harry McIntosh said that an exhaustive search of the two-room kauta at Waituhi had failed to find the bracelet.

  As soon as she was released, Paraiti began her travels.

  And now three weeks have passed since Paraiti was in Ruatahuna.

  On her last day there she had presented Horiana with the bloomers she had bought for her in Gisborne. Horiana had loved them: ‘They’re so pretty, it’s such a shame to wear them under my dress! Why don’t I wear them on the outside?’

  Pulling Kaihe after her and with Tiaki on guard, Paraiti had visited the sick, wounded and elderly of Ruatoki, Waimana and Murupara.

  Then, her heart lifting, she set off for Te Kuiti.

  It was so wonderful for Paraiti to be back among the people who had given sanctuary to her and Te Teira those many years ago. No sooner was she seen entering the village than young children ran up to her, yelling, ‘Paraiti! Scarface! You’re back!’ Even the old chief, Whaturangi, came forward to greet her and tell her to pitch her tent close to Te Tokanganui a Noho, the great Ringatu meeting house.

  ‘Your father would be cross with us if we didn’t acknowledge you,’ her cousin Peti growled, ‘and there are enough angry ghosts floating around us as it is.’ Just as Horiana had been Paraiti’s assistant in Ruatahuna, so was Peti in Te Kuiti, and she was just as bossy.

  Later that evening, in Paraiti’s honour, a special remembrance service was held for Te Teira. Sitting in the meeting house, within the latticed walls and with the beautiful painted kowhaiwhai rafters soaring above her, Paraiti again honoured the morehu, the loyal remnants of Te Kooti’s followers, survivors in a changing world. And always, she thought of her beloved father and his stories of the prophet Te Kooti.

  Te Teira spoke in the words of the Old Testament, likening Te Kooti’s exploits to the great exodus and the flight of the Israelites from the lands of Egypt into Canaan. It was all metaphorical talk, but Paraiti was moved by its grandeur and imagery. ‘In the end Te Kooti was pardoned,’ Te Teira had told her one day. ‘I will tell you how. The government wanted to run a railway line through the King Country, and issued a general amnesty to all criminals, no matter what they had done, to secure the land. The prophet was saved by the iron horse!’ he laughed.

  ‘It was 1884 when that railway opened,’ Te Teira went on. ‘You and I were travelling to some Ringatu gathering or other. I can’t remember which one, but you were my right-hand man, do you remember? We came across some Maori boys bending over the rails listening. We got off our horses, too, and bent down and listened. And your eyes went big and wide and you said to me, “Papa, the rails are singing a strange waiata!” Then suddenly, around the corner ca
me that iron horse, a huge ngangara, a monster, belching smoke and roaring at us. Our horses started to buck and bolt, but, resolute in the face of the ngangara, you raised your rifle and fired a shot at it.’ Te Teira laughed. ‘I suppose you were still trying to protect your papa, ne?’

  Paraiti’s shot did not bring the ngangara to the ground. But as it swayed and slithered past, she saw the many men and women who had been eaten by it, imprisoned in its intestines. She raised a tangi to them, a great lament. Of course, she had been mistaken. The passengers in the train were very much alive — and the ngangara was just another monster eating up the land.

  It was in Te Kuiti that Paraiti had grown into womanhood. Although Te Teira would have wished for her to marry some kind farmer or fisherman of the tribe, raise children and live a happy life, those choices were closed to her because of her kanohi wera, her burnt face. No matter that he was revered as a tohunga; even his great mana could not obtain a husband for her. She was twenty-four and already habituated to rejection when, in a terrible moment of truth, she asked, ‘Papa, what man, in the moment of ecstasy when making love to me, would look upon my face and not wish it was someone else’s?’ Te Teira himself acknowledged that his daughter was destined to become a spinster, with no provider once he was gone.

  But the lives of father and daughter were happy. The only serious threat came when Te Teira had to go underground as legislation was passed against ‘charlatan’ tohunga. He continued to practise covertly, and he taught his daughter the arts of healing so that she could earn her own living. In particular, he bequeathed to her the rare skill of Maori massage, and the patience to work deep beneath the skin and move muscles and bones and tissue to their proper places, should they be broken, torn or out of alignment.

  And when Te Teira was dying of the flu, Paraiti was still massaging him and trying to keep his circulation going long after he became cold.

  ‘Please don’t leave me, Father. Please …’

  A stream of patients waited for a consultation, with Peti at the flap of the tent.

  A child with chronic asthma will now breathe more easily if he follows the regime of herbal inhalants and exercises that Paraiti has given his anxious parents. The child’s young mother had prevailed upon her husband to travel by car from Rotorua on the basis of Paraiti’s reputation. ‘You took him to the Pakeha doctors and only now you come to see me?’ Even so, she grumpily began her diagnosis and, satisfied with it, trickled manuka honey down the child’s throat. ‘This will soften the mucus.’

  She instructed the parents to construct a makeshift sweat tent and fill it with constant steam by boiling water inside the flaps; all the while she continued to trickle the honey — the child sucked on Paraiti’s finger as if it was a teat. Oh, to have been a mother!

  Three days later, Paraiti put the hook of her little finger down the child’s tiny throat and pulled, and strings of softened phlegm came with it. ‘Go out into the world now, child,’ she blessed him, ‘and claim it.’

  A young girl was brought in covered in pustules; Paraiti looked after her during the night, using her poultices to draw out the pus and her soporifics to bring down the girl’s fever. And if Paraiti was not able to cure all those who sought her help, at least she had tried to make them more comfortable.

  One night, Paraiti was woken by the arrival of a cart. In it, lying on blankets, barely conscious, was a man, probably in his early forties. ‘Takuta?’ he murmured. ‘Help!’

  Although Maori don’t like people arriving in the evening, Paraiti woke Peti so that they could treat the man. ‘Bring the light closer,’ she said to Peti, who held a Tilley lamp. He was extremely handsome, with curly hair and an open, strong-featured face; he was muscular and tall, with sturdy shoulders.

  Two friends had brought him in. ‘He has had an accident,’ one of them told Paraiti, ‘at the mill. We were cutting down a tree and it fell the wrong way and landed on top of him.’

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked him.

  ‘Ihaka,’ he answered.

  When she lifted the blanket she saw that one of his legs was broken in two places. ‘You should go to the Pakeha hospital in Hamilton,’ she told him.

  He moaned and opened his eyes. ‘I can’t afford it,’ he replied. ‘Won’t you help? I will give you anything.’

  ‘Anything?’ Paraiti smiled.

  ‘Well …’ he said, looking her up and down.

  She laughed. ‘Think a lot of yourself, don’t you!’ Then she nodded. ‘I will do what they would do,’ she told him. ‘I will try to save the leg.’ No use trying to pretend. ‘If I can’t, I will have to take it off.’

  Ihaka raised himself on his elbows in terror. His face was filled with panic and there were tears of pain in his eyes. ‘I need to work, e kui, for my wife and children, and who will employ a one-legged man?’ He clutched Paraiti tightly.

  At his touch, Paraiti gave a sharp intake of breath: to be touched by him, so strongly, in such an unguarded moment. ‘I will do my best,’ she said. She had felt … his goodness. She gave Ihaka a piece of wood to put into his mouth so that he would not bite his tongue. ‘You must be brave, Ihaka,’ Paraiti said. ‘This is going to hurt, and no amount of herbal painkiller will help you.’

  He cupped his genitals; his simple modesty affected Paraiti, and, as she set about the work of resetting his broken bones, she could not help the surge of desire — was it? — that coursed quietly through her. Who would not be affected by such beauty? He began to groan; sweat popped on his forehead.

  ‘Go back to your proper places,’ Paraiti said as she began to apply her herbal medicines to his leg and to massage the bones and muscles beneath the skin. Throughout the ordeal, Ihaka tried his best not to cry out, but, when Paraiti started to push and reassemble and manipulate, saying ‘Go back! Return, I say!’, he gave a loud agonised cry, bit the wood almost in two and became senseless. ‘It is better this way,’ Paraiti said to his white-faced friends.

  All night Paraiti and Peti worked on Ihaka’s leg, applying the massage deeper and deeper. Paraiti’s fingers sought the fractured bones — three places, yes, three — sensing where she should push them before they would knit and click into place. Over and over she and Peti worked, with immense patience. ‘No, don’t stop,’ she told Peti, when her assistant began to tire.

  Finally, however, she was satisfied. ‘Prepare the needle and thread,’ she said.

  Sewing the skin, Paraiti also splinted the leg with palm tree splints and wrapped it with kahakaha bandaging. She sang a song to her needle, telling it to sew sweetly and tenderly and not to scar Ihaka’s strong thighs. ‘Let his wife look upon him again and not see your pathway,’ she sang.

  How fortunate that Ihaka was so strong of body, spirit and heart.

  And Paraiti poured her great aroha into the young man. Never had she known a man, any man, and so she treated him as the lover she might have had, if she had ever been pretty.

  By dawn it was over.

  When Ihaka revived, he looked thankfully at Paraiti and kissed her hands. ‘You saved my leg?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I have no money to pay you,’ he said.

  ‘That is all right,’ Paraiti answered. ‘Let my work be a gift to you. You still have a long road to take before you recover fully. Peti will look after you as you convalesce, giving you the massages I will teach her. May your future be blessed.’

  With her work over in Te Kuiti, Paraiti said her farewells.

  She cut across to the lands of Te Whanau a Apanui: Te Teko and Whakatane. At one point she saw many birds hastening above her head as if escaping some danger, and then she smelt smoke in the air.

  ‘Titiro,’ Paraiti said to Kaihe as they reached the top of a mountain ridge. In front of them the entire forest was on fire; Pakeha were clearing the trees to provide more land for the growing river settlement. With an involuntary gesture, Paraiti put a hand to her face as if to protect herself. She wheeled Ataahua and Kaihe away from the blaze, skirting it w
hile embers fell about her. She found a small stream, and, soaking the fabric of her tent, draped it across her horse and mule to protect them from hot ash. Then she slogged on, wrapping a scarf around her face, her eyes watering from the smoke, until she had gained the safety of the lands of Te Karaka.

  From there it was only a short ride to Ohiwa, where she rested.

  And then it was back to business. More patients, more successful diagnoses and treatments, and always humour, as people laughed in the face of their illness or impending death. Like the old kuia who was wasting away. When Paraiti examined her, she was horrified: ‘E kui, you are all skin and bones.’ A strong herbal painkiller, and her skilful massaging hands, gave a few more precious days to breathe and to praise the Lord.

  Then, just after leaving her clinic at Ohiwa Habour, Paraiti had a disturbing dream. It was a jumble of chaotic images. A face on fire — it was her face. A ngangara bearing down on her; she took up her rifle and shot at it. As the ngangara went by, Paraiti saw a woman with auburn hair coiled within its slithering entrails. What was this? Charlie Chaplin came walking in his familiar way, twirling his cane — how did he get into her dream? He was in a hut and it was see-sawing on the edge of a cliff. But it wasn’t Charlie Chaplin at all — it was Paraiti herself. Suddenly, as the hut slid over the cliff, Te Teira appeared, put a hand out and pulled her to safety. Suspended in mid-air, he cupped Paraiti’s chin in his hands and wiped her face clear of the scar. He did this again and again. Below, Paraiti saw the hut smash to pieces in the snow.

  Paraiti woke up puzzled and anxious. What did the dream mean?

  The dream gnawed at Paraiti as she travelled around the coastline from Opotiki to Omaramutu, Torere and Maraenui. Wherever she went, she performed her healing duties. And when she rested, she took Tiaki, Ataahua and Kaihe down to the sea where the horse and mule could soothe their legs in the surf.