The Wives of Henry Oades

He woke asking for his wife, his children, Cyril Bell. The aide on duty told him he was better off resting now.

All the staff cajoled. “‘Tis always darkest before the dawn,” said the Irish nurse with Meg’s blue-gray eyes. She came on duty early and was the kindest of the lot. “We’ve a lovely porridge this morning, Mr. Oades. You’ll do your poor children no favors by starving.”

He asked, “Have you any news today?” The nurse took advantage of his open mouth and shoveled in the tepid, mealy paste. It came straight back up, along with his own sour bile.

“I’m not hungry just now,” he said, embarrassed.

She clucked and mopped his gown with a rag. “I’m praying for you,” she said.

Most gave up on him fairly quickly and went on to the next bed. The ward was full. The overflow suffered outside in the hall. The groaning and sobbing never ceased. Henry closed his eye, letting the din wash over and through his ineffectual self.

On Sunday he begged the homely missionary woman who came around to read Scripture, “Please, will you find Mr. Bell?” She promised she would. He, in turn, endured her biblical gush, feigning comfort. He did not see her again.

Mr. Freylock, Henry’s immediate supervisor, came the following week. He entered the ward with his hat in his hands, his mouth twitching with sympathy. “They tell me you’re not eating,” he said.

Mr. Freylock was a career man, one of the first of the distillery men to arrive in New Zealand. “The place suits me,” he’d once said. Henry recalled feeling both vaguely envious and disdainful of a man who found true contentment behind a desk.

He looked up at Mr. Freylock, his good eye filling. The eye wept constantly. He’d been given drops, but they did little good. A brown spider ran along the windowsill. He dabbed at the eye with a corner of sheet, thinking how spiders frightened Josephine.

Mr. Freylock touched Henry’s sleeve. “You’ve had an abysmal time of it.”

Henry cleared his throat. “Is there any news, sir?”

“Only that the scouting trip was unsuccessful.” Mr. Freylock fiddled with his felt brim. “Six men went out, myself included. The governor sent out four more. We rode together for a day and then split from them, thinking we’d cover more ground that way. I’m sorry, Henry.”

“My family could be anywhere then?” Henry’s dry lips cracked with speech. “Anyone might have them?”

“If you mean white men, no, not likely. The arson, you see, the snatching itself. It smacks of utu.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mr. Freylock sighed. “It is the heathen’s word for revenge. The governor believes your family was taken in retaliation for last month’s flogging. The whipping would have brought dishonor to the entire bloody tribe. Utu of some sort was inevitable. I sincerely loathe being the one to tell you.”

The Maori lad had been no more than fifteen. Henry had walked away before the lashing even began, repulsed by the gawking onlookers. “I assume another search is under way, sir?”

Mr. Freylock shook his head. “Not at present, I’m sorry to say.”

“Why not?”

“Simply put, Henry, it would do no good. The trail went cold scant miles out. We were but a handful of family men against a sodding band of savages. Sorry to say it. The odds weigh too heavily.”

“And the governor’s men?”

“They’ve since returned empty-handed as well. That is not to say you should relinquish hope. That is not to say you shouldn’t continue to pray. All of Wellington is praying for your wife and children.”

Henry’s eye ran, salting his stinging lips.

“Ah, Henry. I’m only adding to your distress.”

Henry pleaded, “Will you help locate Cyril Bell?”

Mr. Freylock took out his watch and flicked open the lid with a thumbnail. “Poor fellow had a bit of a breakdown, smashed a good bottle at McFadden’s, started a brawl. They locked him up for his own well-being.”

“When will he be released?”

Mr. Freylock glanced down at his watch. “Sooner rather than later, I’m sure.”

“Will you ask him to come round?”

“I shall, Henry. First chance. I must be off. I’m sorry the news isn’t better. Your post is being held indefinitely, if it’s any small consolation. That’s what I came to tell you.”

Henry struggled to remain civil, to issue his senior a proper farewell, but all before him had eclipsed. As if a cupboard door had just been nailed shut, and he’d found himself inside.

She Speaks to Me Day and Night

IT WAS LOVELY HERE, green and tranquil. Meg was decked out in her wedding frock, an ivory lace and satin affair with complicated buttons that were hard to undo. She nattered quietly, asking after his tea. The light shifted, the temperature fell, just as she offered a fresh cup. Henry opened his good eye to find Cyril Bell standing over him. Bell sucked on his cigar and hacked a rough cough.

“Are you awake, mate? Are you in need of anything?” Bell’s cheek was bruised, his swollen lip split in two places. “Shall I call the lazy nurse?” He clamped the cigar between his crooked yellow teeth and tugged on Henry’s pillow. “It’s caught in the rail. There now. Much better, isn’t it?”

Henry sat up, groggy, dream-addled. “What brings you?”

“You asked for me,” said Bell, looking wounded. “I came when I heard.”

“I did, didn’t I? Sorry. Thank you.”

Bell smiled a sad smile. “Birds of a feather now, aren’t we?”

Bell wore black gloves and a mourning armband; he carried Meg’s mother’s ginger jar as one would a baby, in the crook of his arm. He offered it now. “Thought you might like a memento of happier times.”

Henry took the lidded jar, a grinding fear clenching his bowels.

“Not a crack, not a singe,” said Bell. “Queer what a fire will leave behind.”

“Is there news?”

Bell shook his head, soft cigar ash falling, breaking on the white sheet. “They’ve gone to a far better place, my friend.”

A vision of his children laid out in death swamped him. Henry’s pained cry roused the sleeping patient in the next bed. “They’ve been found?”

Bell put a finger to his lips. “Hush now, Oades. Calm yourself. No, they haven’t been found. But where the tree is felled that’s where the chippings are.”

“Jesus Lord,” said Henry. “What does that mean?”

“Do you recall the poor Hagstrom family?”

“No,” said Henry. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“Six or seven years ago,” Bell went on. “There was a spate of snatchings around the same time. The Hagstrom children, eight little towheaded angels, were all the talk. The old grandfather looked for years. Then one fine day he put his rifle to his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe.” Bell bent close. Early as it was, he smelled of gin.

“I didn’t quit, Mr. Oades. The others gave up. Not I. I covered miles of ground in every direction.” He straightened, dropping his soggy cigar into the beaker of cold tea. “If they were let go alive I’d have found them.”

“It’s only been two weeks,” said Henry.

“It’s been nearly four, sir.”

“It cannot possibly be.” In his mind Henry attempted to line up the days and prove Bell wrong, but it was no use. Some days stood painfully sharp in his memory; others he couldn’t begin to account for. “I’ll pay you to go out again.”

“You’d be wasting your money,” said Bell. “You’ll want to make peace with it is my advice. The sooner you do the better off you’ll be.”

Henry begged. “Please, sir.” His good leg cramped. “They cannot all be gone. I refuse to believe it.”

Bell regarded him with flat pity. He was clearly finished. He’d dispatched his family to heaven and now no doubt wished only to dispatch himself to the nearest public house.

“I still hear my wife!” Henry often felt her beside him, the pressure of her warm hip against his. “She speaks to me day and night.”

“Mrs. Oades was your first?”

“She is,” said Henry.

Bell nodded. “She’ll do more than speak to you. Her face will show itself when you least expect it. You’ll swear it’s her down at the docks. She’ll come to you at all hours, shed of her nightie. That’s the worst. There’ll be times you’ll want to take a working gun to your own head and have it over with. That’s how it was with Libby, my first. Mim’s my second. Childbed fever took Libby. The baby didn’t stand a chance with the top of his wee head missing.” Bell’s cut lip pulsed; his red-rimmed eyes puddled. “I was given a look. A boy.”

John came to mind, fat and howling, a perfect lusty lad, missing nothing.

“I’m truly sorry for your loss, Mr. Bell.”

“I’m sorry for yours,” said Bell, blinking back tears. “You’ll learn to live with it after a while. It’s a promise, Oades. You’ll learn to tolerate. You’ll have no choice.”

The amputee two beds away moaned, as if grieving for the baby with a missing head. The entire ward seemed to join in at once, caterwauling off-key. Behind the cacophony Meg soothed, whispered. There now, sweetheart. Rest a bit. You’ll be all right.

Henry set the ginger jar on the medicine table and turned his cheek to the pillow. “I refuse to believe it.” Meg went on coddling, telling him to sleep, just sleep.

Henry closed his eye, waiting for his family. “Forgive me, Mr. Bell. I’m rather tired right now.”

Bell stood in silence a moment longer. “I’ll be going then,” he said finally. He left Henry with Josephine. She was reaching with the sweetest smile, putting her tender skinny arms about his burning neck. Dad, was all she said, all he needed to hear.

Meg and the children rarely showed themselves again after that day. His dreams became peopled with misshapen intruders, no one he recognized. Drunk on laudanum, Henry called out to his wife. The night nurse regularly scolded him. “That’ll be enough now. You’re disturbing the others.”

He was discharged from hospital on a sunny day in late May. He was ready to go. He’d had more than enough of the place. Mr. Freylock came for him, along with two grim-faced colleagues. They brought a change of clothes, were seemingly pleased with their selection. “You’re not an easy fellow to fit.” There were grunts, a comment on his drawers. “Good God. It must be the same pair he arrived in.” As if Henry weren’t present. It didn’t matter. He felt next to nothing.

They dressed him in a suit of mourning and fixed an armband to the sleeve. The doctor came in and wished him well. “My condolences, sir. You’re to remain off the leg another month at least.”

Outside, the doctor helped lift the wheelchair with Henry in it. They loaded him onto a buckboard that had had its seats removed. He sat above the other three men, like a freak of nature on parade. They said little. Henry said nothing.

He could not say how long they rode. A stream of foliage went by, shops and horses, dogs and people. He untied the armband and tucked it inside a breast pocket. If they were dead he’d know it; he’d know it in his bones.

They came to the Freylock home, where he and Meg had once gone to tea, fifty years ago it seemed. The wife and two children, a freckled boy and roly-poly girl, came out to greet them.

“You are welcome to stay as long as you wish,” said Mrs. Freylock, an anxious woman. “We’ve prepared a room downstairs for you, Mr. Oades. It’s rather small, but we cannot very well bring you up the stairs.”

His vision cleared as she spoke. He became simultaneously aware of the potted geraniums, the pump of his own heart and lungs, the pimples and fuzz on the Freylock lad’s chin. How he’d indulged himself in the sorrow. It was time to think straight, to plan. Henry doffed his hat, acutely sensitive to the cool breeze parting his hair. “Thank you. I shan’t put you out a moment longer than necessary, kind lady.”

The music room had been converted into a sickroom. Henry vaguely recalled the green and gold wallpaper border, painted to look like fringed drapery. The piano was gone now, replaced by a cot. There’d been other instruments on display at the time, two violins, and a lute perhaps. Meg had been delighted. “A musical family,” she’d said. “How lovely the evenings must be.” Those were her exact words. Henry remembered vividly everything she’d ever said.

He was left alone with Mr. Freylock. “Would you like to lie down now, Henry?” He spoke carefully, as if addressing an unpredictable lunatic. “I’ll draw the curtains.”

It was not yet two in the afternoon. “I’m fine here,” said Henry. He sat close to the glassed bookcase. There were history books galore, biographies, books on animal husbandry, but no novels for Meg.

“Well then,” said Mr. Freylock. “Duty calls. I’ll be getting back to my desk. You know how it is.” He gestured toward the small bell on the side table. “Don’t hesitate to ring.”

“I’d like to arrange a posse,” said Henry.

Mr. Freylock removed his spectacles, blinking. “Henry, Henry, Henry.”

“I’ll pay.”

Mr. Freylock brought out his handkerchief and polished the lenses. “That’s not the issue.”

The anger thickened Henry’s voice. “What would you do in my place, sir?”

Mr. Freylock held the spectacles up to the window for inspection. “I’d be every bit as distraught, I’m sure. I’d propose infeasible schemes. It’s only natural. We turned over every last bloody stone looking, Henry. Do you remember my telling you?”

“I do, sir.”

“We almost lost Tom Flowers.”

“I know Tom.”

Mr. Freylock returned the spectacles to his face, blinking still. “Of course you do. Good lad. Quick with a joke. Fifth child on the way. I didn’t tell you before. Didn’t want to add to your distress. Nothing you could have done for him. Nothing any of us could have done, except perhaps turned back straightaway.”

Perspiration trickled down Henry’s spine. The room was warm, as stifling as a summer greenhouse. “About Tom?”

“He sliced his hand,” said Mr. Freylock. “Nice and deep, but manageable. This was the fourth night out. We stayed gone a week, you’ll remember, the better part of eight days, actually.”

Henry heard a scratching outside the door and pictured his children standing on the other side, eager to surprise him. His mind playing tricks, he realized.

“…We weren’t surgeons,” Mr. Freylock was saying. “We wrapped the wound, thought, well, a cut’s a cut, isn’t it? None of us could have anticipated infection. They took his writing arm at the elbow. Poor man.”

“Yes,” murmured Henry. “Poor Tom. I’m sorry to hear it.”Tom’s pretty wife suffered a clubfoot, an odd thing to remember now.

A Freylock family photograph hung on the opposite wall, the parents and children posed as he and Meg had posed not long after the twins were born. Were his babies rolling over yet? Josephine was a veritable little acrobat at five months, their age now. God, how he missed them all.

Mr. Freylock came to him, laying a hand upon his shoulder. “We’ve done all we can, then. Everything within reason. Do you see that we have?”

Henry nodded. There’d be no help here.

“It wouldn’t be disloyal to acknowledge their passing, Henry. I’ll arrange a memory service if you’re ready.”

“I’m not,” said Henry, beginning to plan his escape. He’d had enough of this place already.

HE DREAMT of John that night. His son came walking out of the bush, steady and sure. Henry took it as a sign they’d be returned to him. He lay awake in the dark, cursing himself for having had doubt. In the morning he proposed rebuilding the cottage. “Just as it was,” he said.

Curiously, Mr. Freylock heartily agreed. He slapped the breakfast table, rattling the cutlery. “Capital idea! Isn’t it, darling?”

Mrs. Freylock smiled and passed the last rasher of bacon Henry’s way. “Yes, indeed. It’s a splendid plan. Aren’t you smart to think of it, Mr. Oades.”

“We’ll get started straightaway,” said Mr. Freylock, dribbling red jam.

Henry had not expected such enthusiasm. Perhaps they simply wished him gone. He gave it no further thought. Having the cottage restored was all that concerned him just now. Otherwise, how would they find their way back to him?

THE OWNER of the property gave his permission. A new lease was signed. Dozens turned out to help, colleagues and strangers both. Henry had never laid eyes on some of them. He sat in his wheelchair, beneath the shade of a ladies’ white parasol. The men sawed, hammered, and painted; the women served from overflowing hampers, vying to bring Henry a plate. The cottage was finished in six days. The donated furniture inside was different, but the outside was nearly identical, down to the green shutters and red door.

Mrs. Freylock asked about flowers.

“Roses,” said Henry. “And blue hydrangea.”

He watched the flowers go into the ground.

“He’s smiling,” someone whispered. “He’s bearing up well.”

On Sunday Henry attended evening services. Everyone seemed to expect it of him. He got through it. A bachelor colleague, Simon Reed, brought him back to the cottage afterward. “You’re not equipped to see to yourself, Henry.”

“I am, Simon,” Henry insisted. His family would come. They’d see to him, and he to them. Things would right themselves. They’d all be fine. He believed it wholly.

Simon pushed him up the new ramp and inside, muttering under his breath. “A man in your state shouldn’t be left alone.”

“I shall get on fine here,” said Henry.

Simon lighted a lamp and set it on the table.

“If you’ll light the others, please.”

Henry had him light every lamp, seven in all.

“Where would you like them, Henry?”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Henry. “You’ve done enough. Go on home now.”

Alone, Henry maneuvered the wheelchair without difficulty. He put one lamp in his lap and rolled himself, setting the lamp in the side window, returning then for the next lamp. Lamp by lamp, he turned the room bright, as gay as a ballroom, making himself visible ten miles out.

He ate hard cheese and opened the brandy someone had left, putting out another goblet. Meg enjoyed a nice brandy. He rolled himself to the front window again, restless, excited. But they did not come. Not that night, nor the next. A quiet week passed, then another. He sat on the porch daily, his eyes fixed on the road. He went inside eventually and sat there, a useless stump by the window. Sweet Jesus. Every bloody day.

He rose one morning and limped unaided to the grave out back. He stood over the mound until his leg would no longer support him, then sat alongside and began to dig. He hadn’t planned to do it; but once started he could not stop.

Almost before he pulled aside the sheet he knew. He brushed dirt from the skull, recognizing the sharp little tooth way back in her head, pointed, darker than the others. Henry cried out and began to cover her again. He scooped great handfuls as fast as he could, tamping down the crumbly dirt, beating it hard. He fell back exhausted, sobbing, struggling for air. He calmed after a while, but did not, could not, move. For months he’d felt her about, alive, and now he did not. He could no longer pretend. Meg was gone, lost to him forever. He lay stunned, face to the sun. He’d thought they had all the time in the world.

No Worse than Here

HENRY FOUND flat black seeds lying loose on a pantry shelf and planted a few at the foot of Meg’s grave. He watched faithfully, witnessing the first shoot, the subsequent withering and dying. He gave thought to starting over, but knew the same would happen. He’d never had much luck in a garden. So he quit, and his days turned that much longer.

Mr. Freylock rode out at the end of June. “Good God,” he said straight off. “Have a flock of filthy sheep been run through here?”

Henry said nothing. A bit of dust, a dried rat turd or two hardly warranted comment.

Mr. Freylock clucked like a woman. “There’s no excuse for squalor. Even for a chap on his own.” He dropped a slim packet of envelopes on the table. “A spot of comfort from home for you, Henry.”

Henry didn’t get up. “Her parents?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He picked up Henry’s urinal and went outside to pour it over the porch rail. Henry watched without interest from his usual place by the front window. Recently he’d moved from the wheelchair to an armless ladder-back and felt less the invalid for it. He was able to move about as necessary, using the broom as a crutch.

Mr. Freylock came back in. “Have you written her loved ones?”

Henry studied his fingernails, broken and blackened from tending her grave. He hadn’t written to her parents or his own. He hadn’t the words. “I’ll get round to it in due course.”

“You should inform them immediately. They’ve a right to know.”

“A right to know what precisely?”

“The facts, boy.” Mr. Freylock pumped water and rinsed his hands, drying them on the only dish towel. “You know in your heart of hearts they’re gone.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” said Henry. “Show me my dead children, sir!”

Mr. Freylock ran last night’s plate under the water. What had he had to eat? Henry couldn’t remember. “You’re in a bad way, Henry. I’m sorry. I won’t say any more about it.”

Henry spoke to the window, the one thing he kept cleaned. “What do the savages do with them?” Hideous images too frequently rose from a black hell in his mind, visions of his maimed children screaming his name.

Mr. Freylock said softly, “What are you asking?”

Henry looked at him. “They wouldn’t consume a tiny innocent, would they?”

“Oh, Christ, Henry. Please. Don’t torture yourself. They’re past their suffering now.”

Henry’s voice quaked. “They wouldn’t.”

“It isn’t healthful, you know. Sitting out here all alone, with only your morbid thoughts for company. You’d be better off in town, in my opinion.”

Henry turned back to the window, resuming his vigil.

Mr. Freylock offered to put the kettle on. Henry shook his head, willing the man gone. “Work is what you need,” said Mr. Freylock. “Why not ride back with me now. Have you a decent shirt and trousers? You cannot go out as you are.”

Hot tears rose in Henry’s eyes. “Would they kill them first? Surely they wouldn’t boil a live screaming child…”

Mr. Freylock threw up his hands. “Henry, Henry. For the love of God, don’t dwell on it. Think of them at peace with Jesus, will you? Think of your children quit of all adversity.”

“They’d shoot them first,” said Henry decisively.

Mr. Freylock sighed. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Henry put his face in his hands, depleted. “I’m going mad, sir. And it’s not doing my kids the first bit of good. There’s no reason to believe they didn’t escape. My boy’s as clever as they come.”

“Ah, Henry. They—”

“You don’t know him,” said Henry, cutting him off. “John’s sharp as a needle. The lad reads the night skies as well as you do the gazette.” He stood with the aid of the broom and hobbled toward the back room, planning his next move. There were men in town he might call upon to help, resources he’d not yet thought of. It was merely a matter of keeping a rational mind, resisting the panic. That’s all. He managed yesterday. He’d manage today.

He changed his clothes, and then wrote a note while Mr. Freylock waited.

Dearest children, you’ll find a cord of good wood round the side and a large ham in the larder. You’re to contact the distillery immediately. Your always loving and devoted father.

Outside he turned, scanning the forest, the road in both directions, looking for them.

MR. FREYLOCK DROVE, breaking the silence with small talk every mile or two. His wife’s brisket was mentioned, the new accountant with a penchant for the bottle. “Tom Flowers is coming along well,” he said, interrupting Henry’s reverie yet again. He’d been thinking about the babies, wondering what John was doing to feed them. It took a moment to recall Tom’s amputation.