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I suppose, in this modern age of international telephone calls and telegrams, the idea of keeping letters might seem rather sentimental. My father never wrote letters beyond those required for his parish duties and the task of writing to me when I was at school fell to my mother, whose letters were as brisk and businesslike as she was. They told me what she felt that I needed to know and very little more. In that light, it seems hardly surprising that the letters I treasure are those written to me by Cousin Geillis, more precious because I didn't know that she'd written them until after my father's death. My mother had received them and kept them back from me, not thinking them important enough to send on to my school.
My dearest Gilly,
Kia ora koe from Aotearoa! Our family may call it New Zealand, but I am told that Aoteatoa is the more proper name for this island, the one it has held since Kupe discovered the land that Maui raised from the depths of the ocean. That's their history, kept by people who have lived here for much longer than the European settlers. I'm sure your father would disapprove very much, and talk about the garden of Eden, but I'm a very long way from his church now. In fact, I'm about as far as I can be - I'm on the other side of the world and everything is topsy turvy. By the time you read this, it will be spring for you, but here, it will be autumn. Summer in January is a wonderful thing, Gilly. The port is busy with ships and Napier is almost the kind of city that you would recognise from England.
I think that you would like your family here. Your Aunt Susan's eldest daughter reminds me very much of you, though she does not know Coccinella yet. Maybe she never will. Coccinella's flight has not brought her far enough yet to find these islands, so Mary Grace must learn Agathis australis and Trichosurus vulpecula instead.
Your Cousin Geillis
alive well stuck stop tell Gilly stop love Geillis
My dearest Gilly,
Well, that was an adventure; Aotearoa has given me dramatic evidence of why she is called the Shaky Islands. You have never been in an earthquake, my dear, and I hope that you never will. The earth is immensely powerful, and we forget that to our peril. England's gales and storms may reshape our landscape, but England is a peaceful and settled land beneath the crust of the earth. Aotearoa is less serene and Napier today has several miles more land than it had a month ago. The marsh is drying out, and a ship lies fallen on its side where the harbour rose up to become new land. The city that was here is entirely gone, flattened in a mere two minutes of the earth shrugging her shoulders, and a new one already beginning to be planned and built. One does what one can to help, of course, but it's time for this travelling Englishwoman to move on.
I enclose a sketch of Agathis australis - the Maori call them Kauri trees, and they live even longer than Quercus robur, with a wood that is harder, a trunk that is wider and far, far taller. See if your school library has a book that can give you the scale more accurately than I can.
With love,
Your Cousin Geillis
My dearest Gilly,
I am a little distance from Te Wairoa. The town itself no longer exists and all that is there now is a tearoom created by the new smallholders of the land; in fact it was believed that the town had been entirely lost. Many years ago, a volcano erupted and showered the town in ash. It sounds gentle, doesn't it? But the ash continued to fall, and so did hot rocks, until the weight crushed many of the buildings, and the people who were still here sheltered in low huts with the guides until they could be dug out. Now, explorers are beginning to find those buildings again. They've become part of the forest around them - no Agathis australis here, but the trees and the ferns have reclaimed the land since the volcanic eruption. No matter how man may build, nature can always reclaim, and yet our buildings become part of the landscape which reclaims them. The fence posts which once surrounded the town have grown into living Populus alba, tall trees marking the boundaries of the hidden village.
Nature always reclaims, my dear, but she gives warnings to those who look for them. For now, I am truly grateful that the earthquake in Napier did not lead to a volcanic eruption and yet the habitat forming now is so rich, so varied, that it stands as a testament to the power of nature to turn barren destruction into lush beauty.
I shall not stay here much longer. My path in this topsy turvy land is to the south, where the climate grows colder and parrots who cannot fly scratch for food in the forests.
Your Cousin Geillis
My daughters know that the letters are kept, safely folded in faded ribbon, in my bottom drawer along with the letters that William sends us from his university. Perhaps they've even read them, her stories of distant places and exotic peoples, lands that shake and reform themselves, of ghostly ships with strange names and mystical warnings, birds that cannot fly and fish that can, far more exotic to children than the small wonders of dragonflies and tadpoles that I have to share with them until they are old enough for Christopher John's stories. Goodness knows that Geillis' letters conjure up a world more fantastical than Christopher John ever created with his typewriter.
And yet, here in quiet, blessedly steady Westermain, I can still see echoes of that country across the world. No trees big enough to make a house in and no volcanoes, no earthquakes to reshape the land, but nature still moves in her quiet way to make her power known. Our stone circles may still stand, but the mansion house lies in ruins, bindweed twined around and between the few remaining stones, and the abbey in autumn is coated with luscious ripe brambles.
Cousin Geillis' padded waistcoat still fits me after all these years. Rags is an old soul now, with a grey muzzle, but he'll still join me for a walk to St Thorn if I lift his leash from the hook in the old kitchen. Christopher John is busy creating his own worlds; I'll spend a little more time appreciating the power and beauty of this one, and send my silent thanks to my mother's cousin. My namesake, the woman who opened my eyes to the everyday wonders and the patterns which they form.