In the Land of the Long White Cloud

not quantity.”
    Helen, for whom a sheep had always just been a sheep, had initially been bored as she listened to these speeches on breeds and crosses, but she finally began to pay closer attention to Gwyneira’s lectures. If her friend was to be believed, Howard had fallen in with some dubious livestock dealers when he bought his sheep—or he had simply not wanted to spend the money for good quality animals. In any case, his animals were wild mixed breeds from which a consistent woolquality could never be achieved, no matter how carefully one chose their food or managed their pastures.
    “You can even see it in their color, Helen,” Gwyneira explained. “They all look different. With ours, on the other hand, you can’t tell one apart from another. It has to be that way if you want to sell large batches of good quality wool and receive a good price.”
    Helen could see that and even attempted to broach the subject with Howard. He did not prove very open-minded about her suggestions, though, rebuking her curtly whenever she brought it up. He could not handle any criticism—which did not make him any friends among livestock dealers or wool buyers. He had fallen out with almost all of them by now—with the exception of the long-suffering Peter Brewster, who did not offer him top price for his third-rate wool, it was true, but took it off his hands all the same. Helen did not dare to think what would happen if the Brewsters moved to Otago. Then they would be dependent on his successor, and there could be no relying on diplomacy from Howard. Would the new buyer show any understanding or simply pass the farm over on future buying trips?
    The family already lived hand to mouth. Without the help of the Maori, who were always sending food from the hunt, fish, or vegetables with the schoolchildren to pay for their lessons, Helen wouldn’t have known what to do. Hiring extra help for the stables and the household was out of the question—in fact, Helen was now required to do more of the farm work because Howard could not even afford a Maori assistant. But Helen generally failed woefully at her farm chores. Howard admonished her sternly when she blushed for the umpteenth time during lambing instead of rolling up her sleeves, or when she burst out in tears during the slaughter.
    “Don’t act like that!” he would yell, forcing her to grab hold of the emerging lamb. Helen tried to swallow her disgust and fear to do what was asked of her. She could not bear it, however, when he treated their son that way, which happened more and more frequently. Howard could hardly expect him to grow up and make himself “useful” when it was already obvious that Ruben would not be any better suited tofarm work than she was. Though the child shared a few physical similarities with Howard—he was tall, with full, dark locks, and would no doubt grow up to be strong—he had his mother’s dreamy gray eyes, and Ruben’s nature did not fit the harshness of farm life. The boy was Helen’s pride and joy; he was friendly, polite, and pleasant to be around, and what’s more, very intelligent. At five years old, the boy could already read fluently and devoured tomes like
Robin Hood
and
Ivanhoe
on his own. He was astoundingly clever in school, solving the math problems assigned to the twelve-and thirteen-year-olds, and already spoke fluent Maori. Handiwork, however, was not his strong suit; even little Fleur was more adept at making and firing the arrows from the bows they had just carved for their Robin Hood game.
    But Ruben was more than willing to learn. Whenever Helen asked him to do something, he always made every effort to master it. Howard’s gruff tone, however, scared him, and the lurid stories his father told him to toughen him up terrified him. As a result, Ruben’s relationship with his father grew worse with each passing year. Helen could already predict a disaster similar to the one between Gerald and Lucas on Kiward Station—alas, without the fortune that enabled Lucas to hire a capable manager.
    When Helen thought about all this, it sometimes made her sorry that their marriage had not produced any more children. Sometime after Ruben’s birth, Howard had resumed his visits to her, but they never managed to conceive again. It may have had to do with Helen’s age or with the fact that Howard never slept with her again as regularly as he had in their first year of marriage. Helen’s obvious unwillingness, their