In the Land of the Long White Cloud

Helen. Whenever he approached her, though, Ruben began to cry loudly. It broke Helen’s heart, but she lay there obediently until Howard was finished. Only then did she worry about the baby. Howard disliked both the background noise and Helen’s obvious tension and impatience. As a result, he usually retreated when Ruben began tocry, and when he came home late at night and saw the baby in Helen’s arms, he went straight to bed in the stables. Helen felt guilty about it but was thankful to Ruben all the same.
    During the day the baby almost never cried but lay quietly in his cradle while Helen taught the Maori children. He didn’t sleep but watched the teacher seriously and attentively, as though he already understood what was going on.
    “He’s going to be a professor,” Gwyneira said, laughing. “He takes entirely after you, Helen.”
    At least in terms of appearance, she was not far off the mark. Ruben’s eyes, which had started out blue, had turned gray like Helen’s, and his hair seemed to be turning dark like Howard’s. But it was straight, not curly.
    “He takes after my father,” confirmed Helen. “He is named after him, you know. But Howard is determined that he’ll become a farmer and not a reverend.”
    Gwyneira giggled. “Others have made that mistake before. Just think of Mr. Warden and Lucas.”
    Gwyneira was reminded of that conversation as she handed out invitations in Haldon. Strictly speaking, the New Year’s party had not been Gerald’s idea but Lucas’s—born from a desire to keep Gerald happy and busy. The mood at home was palpably tense, and with every month that Gwyneira did not get pregnant, the tension only heightened. Gerald now responded to the lack of offspring with naked aggression, even though he didn’t know which one in the couple he should hold accountable. Gwyneira now kept more to herself, having gradually gotten accustomed to her household duties and, therefore, providing Gerald with few avenues of attack. Besides, she had a fine sense for his moods. When he criticized the muffins first thing in the morning—washing them down with whiskey instead of tea, which happened more and more often—she disappeared straightaway to the stables, preferring to spend the day with the dogs and the sheep rather than playing lightning rod for Gerald’s low spirits. Lucas, on the other hand, faced the full force of his father’s wrath, almost always unexpectedly. Gerald frequently ripped his son away from whatevertask he was immersed in without compunction and pushed the boy to make himself useful around the farm. He even went so far as to tear up a book Lucas was reading when he caught Lucas with it in his room while he should have been overseeing the sheep shearing.
    “You don’t need to do anything more than count, damn it!” Gerald raged. “Otherwise, the shearers charge too much! In warehouse three, two of the boys just got into a fight because both laid claim to the pay for shearing a hundred sheep, and no one can arbitrate because no one was comparing their counts. You were assigned to warehouse three, Lucas! Now go see you put things in order.”
    Gwyneira would have been glad to take over warehouse three, but as housewife, the food, and not the oversight of the migrant workers who had been hired on to shear the sheep, fell to her. For that reason, outstanding care was taken of the men: Gwyneira appeared again and again with refreshments because she could not get enough of seeing the shearers at work. At home in Silkham sheep shearing had been a rather leisurely affair; the few hundred sheep were sheared by the shepherds themselves over the course of a few days. Here, however, they had thousands of sheep to shear, which first had to be fetched from the extensive pastures and then penned together. The shearing itself was the work of specialists. The best work groups managed eight hundred animals a day. On big operations like Kiward Station there was always a competition—and this year James McKenzie was well on his way to winning it. He was neck and neck with a top shearer from warehouse one, even though he was also responsible for supervising the other shearers in warehouse two. Whenever Gwyneira came by, she took over the supervision for him, lightening his load. Her presence seemed to redouble his energy; his shears moved so quickly and smoothly over the sheep’s bodies that the animals hardly had time to bleat in protest at their rude treatment.
    Lucas found