Kehua! by Fay Weldon Page A

out for it in the post, said Lola, she had given Nopasaran
     as a forwarding address. Aunt Scarlet, who might not be very bright but at least had style, not to mention contacts, and with
     whom she was going to stay, was less likely to lose letters out of malice than was D’Dora.
    The latter had taken matters into her own hands and moved in to the home to comfort Cynara, who, what with press persecution
     and Lola’s disappearance – once she had been gone three days the police had been alerted – had been beside herself with anxiety.
    ‘Does Scarlet know of this plan?’ asked Cynara, thin-lipped because she thinks perhaps Scarlet has been egging Lola on. Scarlet
     behaves towards Lola more like a flighty sister than a responsible aunt.
    ‘No she doesn’t,’ said Lola. ‘But she soon will.’
    So that’s how Lola comes to be staying with Scarlet and Louis. And, given even more strength by Lola’s arrival, why the kehua
     are so madly and effectively fluttering their wings.
Run, run!
they are noisily beseeching Scarlet, descendant of Beverley, child of Kitchie McLean and her murderous husband, as once they
     urged littleBeverley. It seems to be working. When a child finds a mother murdered by the father it does not bode well for that child,
     or for the descendants of that child through the generations, especially if the purification rituals are not properly done.
     The kehua of the Maori, like the Furies of the Greek myths, will follow the straggler and his or her kin across the world
     if they have to. They are family, hapu, and that’s enough for them.
    The tohunga, priests, of the Ngai Tahu, in whose Southern lands the murder happened, were in no position to perform the cleansing
     ceremony. The two bodies, sullied, ended up in the morgue in Christchurch instead of in the local Maori standing place, the
     Takahanga Marae, and the pitiful remains were cursorily dealt with. So much so that some of the local kehua were obliged to
     follow little Beverley all the way up to Coromandel in the subtropical North, the land of the Ngati Whanaunga, to where she
     and her new, makeshift family, Rita and Arthur, had escaped. The kehua hoped to gather the child back into the fold; the adoptive
     parents to save the child from scandal and distress. All meant well.
    But here in Coromandel the Ngai Tahu kehua were not at ease, though they stayed. They were used to rolling pastoral land,
     not this craggy watery beauty. Their presence stirred up rival taniwha, those disagreeable monsters that rise from time to
     time from the deep dark pools of the bush to protect the iwi, or tribe. Taniwha are clad in fur and feather, grand as any
     tribal chief, both protector and destroyer, with a row of cruel spikes along the hulking backbone, great creatures with birdlike
     heads, vengeful eyes and savage, toothy, curved beaks, there behind your eyelids when you go to sleep. Whatever frightens
     you, that’s what they’ll be.
    The clustering, sheltering, rattling kehua are nothing compared to the taniwha when it comes to terror, but are lighter on
     their feetand clearly get about more. As little Tahuri suggests, the overhead locker of an aircraft will do just fine if they are obliged
     to travel, as once did the hold of an ocean liner when Beverley left her native land and came to England.

Lola’s move to Nopasaran
    It was on D’Dora’s advice that Cynara did not put more obstacles in Lola’s way when she announced that she was going to stay
     with Scarlet. D’Dora was a great advocate of tough love. ‘Never show you care’ was her motto. ‘The one who shows most love
     loses.’ And since D’Dora’s tactics had worked so well on her, Cynara, leaving her a trembling, love-sick, sexually obsessed
     wreck, with her marriage finally ended, and rumblings from senior partners that she had brought in the wrong kind of clients,
     she could see such tactics might well work with Lola. If she told Lola to go, Lola would want to come