Displaced by Cristina Sanders

Author:Cristina Sanders [Sanders, Cristina ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760653361
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

It took them nearly a month to get back to Napier. They were held up in Waipukurau for over a week in Mr Wix’s tight hovel while Mr McCreedy ran provisions out to the farms and got caught up on business, and then another week when the wagon lost a wheel in a deep muddy rut and needed a replacement sent from Napier. Mr Wix refused to let them go on to Napier unaccompanied, and now that the urgency of the quest was over, both girls felt drained.

The minister tried to be accommodating, but he was a severe man and especially critical of Martha and her unconventional behaviour. “She hasn’t tied her bonnet!” he scolded Eloise, as if she could possibly be angry with Martha for such a trivial thing, after all Martha’s bravery and steadfastness on the road.

His tiny house was unfit for three people; they were constantly tripping over each other and got on one another’s nerves terribly. The days were clear and sunny, so the girls spent their time outside with Mary or Hemi, who was waiting in town for Mr McCreedy’s return and had been put to work by Mary in digging a vegetable patch behind the shack. Martha and Hemi worked side by side, companionably clearing around the neglected orchard of peach and plum trees that served the new ministry. Hemi taught her to milk the cow, an activity for which Eloise thought Martha completely unsuited with her jerky movements and dislike of unpredictable things, but the boy was patient, the animal placid, and Martha was proud beyond measure of her first pail.

Eloise spent nearly all her remaining money in Waipukurau’s shops and a local farm. She bought woollen blankets and boots and a dozen live chickens in a raupō basket, which she loaded onto Buttercup and sent with Hemi back to Lars’s family in Norsewood. She wanted to send them a cow, but Hemi reminded her there was no grass and it would die. So she added bags of grain for the hens, a sack of clover grass-seed, a trowel, two wooden buckets and a tin tub for washing. In Hemi’s pockets she placed two small cloth dolls with smiling embroidered faces and button eyes for Britta and Lenne, donated by a woman of the parish.

Eventually they turned north and began their journey back in the rain, but by Waipawa, first Martha then Eloise got sick, their weeks in wet clothes and harsh conditions taking their toll. They stayed a further week with a Scotch woman, a widow who kept a neat house and cooked well for them, hot broths of stored grain and greens that grew like weeds in her small garden.

Hemi came with them as far as Waipawa, cared for Buttercup and saw them off with Mr McCreedy when they were well enough to travel. He gave them sweet, early strawberries wrapped in a twist of paper. Mr McCreedy sent him back to Waipukurau with a consignment of furniture.

Martha left him without

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