The Autobiography of My Father

by Martin Edmond

  He would have been quite a lot older than her?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. She wasn’t a terribly attractive person either. Men get that kind of urge, you know, when they’re round about forty, quite often. I don’t think my mother was very sexually inclined. I don’t know these things. You can’t tell. I don’t think … he never went past holding hands but it embarrassed the girl. And annoyed my mother. Which was fair enough. But the affair was so open it probably didn’t mean a thing really.

  Well, a man of such principle, I suppose, in a strange kind of way. Though quite rigid within.

  It upset me.

  What do you think of those years in Ohakune, looking back?

  I enjoyed it. I don’t think Lauris did so much. She wanted to go back to town. I didn’t.

  You’d been brought up in the city, you’d always been a city boy, but you found small-town life to your liking. Why do you think that was?

  I very much wanted to be a farmer, at one stage. [PAUSE] I applied for several jobs, country jobs, and I got that one. [LONG PAUSE] I don’t know what it was. It was very strong. [LONG PAUSE] I’ve always lived in small towns. Except for that period in Grass Street. [PAUSE] Oh, and at Heretaunga. That was ambition.

  Tell me about that.

  I wanted to be a big-time joker. I did well at Huntly. And I’d done well here. I was very ambitious. For a city school. It was the wrong thing. I didn’t do it well. I couldn’t stand the pressures very well. They were heavy at Heretaunga. Huntly was easy by comparison. They were country kids and they weren’t terribly demanding. You know this yourself. But Heretaunga was a different proposition altogether. They were ambitious kids, their parents were ambitious, wanted them to do well. And the pressure was … very heavy. And I … I couldn’t take it, that’s all. And of course in the end I lost my job.

  So looking back, what do you think …?

  Should have stayed at Huntly. Or even more, as a Deputy Principal. I was good at that.

  It’s always seemed to me that your strength was as a teacher.

  The system makes you, though, that’s the trouble. What’s your future as a teacher? Marking for forty years?

  I always had the feeling you quite enjoyed teaching.

  I liked teaching. I didn’t like all the marking and things like that. No, I enjoyed teaching, very much.

  Greytown was the last place you were a teacher and it’s where you’ve come back to.

  That’s right. I did my best teaching here. Better even than Ohakune. I should have stayed. Do you remember what happened? When I had this trouble? Over Opunake? Well, I couldn’t face it.

  You applied for the job and you got it …

  And I couldn’t face it. Took me by surprise, I had no idea it would happen.

  And yet you kept on applying for other jobs?

  Not for two years. Not for two years.

  Why do you think you …?

  Ambition. Wanted to be a big person. Important person. I can see it now, I couldn’t see it at the time. And, you know, ambition is a very dangerous business. And it was ambition, to be on top, to be big time. And it was wrong. I wanted to be President of PPTA and I did do that. I wanted to be a Principal.

  Did you feel like that when you first started teaching? Is that what you wanted to be? Or did you have a different idea?

  No, I didn’t think about grading … you know what grading is, don’t you? I didn’t think about grading for years. I enjoyed teaching, enjoyed the kids. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I began to care about grading. Getting on.

  When do you think that was?

  About thirty, I was about thirty-eight, thirty-nine. In Ohakune.

  When you’d been there, say, ten years?

  Yeah. Began to think, what’s the future?

  You didn’t want to live the rest of your life in that little town?

  No. It was bad for the kids anyhow; there was no future for kids there, that was the main reason we shifted. Who were your friends and what would you do when you finished school? And this was a better bet than that place. There were just no openings much in Ohakune for kids. You had to go away to achieve anything. And that was one of the main reasons why we shifted.

  When you lived in Ohakune you made a lot of your own entertainment. I remember there were lots of parties there and you used to get quite hilarious and have a really good time.

  Oh, yeah, there were good times, that’s right. I don’t regret those years. But to stay there indefinitely … it was pretty limited.

  So it was really for the sake of us kids?

  Oh, partly for myself too.

  And Lauris too was keen …?

  Yeah, she wanted to go.

  But once you got to Greytown, you think you could have just stayed here? Possibly?

  I think I’d have done better if I’d stayed here.

  It was in Greytown that Lauris began to pick up her career again, wasn’t it?

  I encouraged her. The kids had gone to school. She was very upset … frustrated about her life. I persuaded her to take on Massey.

  She hasn’t really looked back, has she?

  No.

  So how do you feel about your life now? Looking back?

  [LONG PAUSE] Well, I think I shouldn’t have wanted to be a Principal. I should have stayed as a Deputy Principal. I found it … the pressures too great. The pressures got too much for me. I think if I’d had any sense … I nearly stayed here, after missing Opunake, pulling out. I almost gave up. But … well, I got better, thought I’d try again. I got the first one I applied for. But I think in many ways it would have been better to have bought a house here and … tilled the garden, done local jobs …

  Virtually what you’ve ended up doing.

  That’s right.

  But with that long period that included … how many hospitalisations?

  Two.

  How much shock treatment did you have?

  About two weeks. Three times a week.

  Do you think that’s made any permanent mark on you?

  Yeah. If affects your memory. I didn’t want it. They pushed me into it. I had to sign a paper saying I’d have it. I never wanted it, I’d seen other people have it. It wasn’t good.

  Was it frightening?

  Well, no, because they gave you an injection and put you to sleep in about thirty seconds. You just woke up later, you didn’t know what had happened, just woke up and had your cup of tea and that was that. They reckoned it cured me but I doubt this. I don’t think I’m better anyhow. But, you know, that was a bad time because Lauris was giving me hell … do you want another, do you want a drink? [POURS DRINKS]

  Looking back, what is the high point in your life? What do you think you’ve achieved?

  I think the high point was being Deputy Principal here, in Greytown, when I achieved a lot. I liked the kids and the kids liked me. And I had no troubles here and I was good, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed Ohakune, but the kids were different there. But that was the high point, being here. That’s why I came back. And I think that was the real high point of my teaching. I was a good teacher – and I was a good teacher – in the classroom. And the kids were good. And responded well. I think the rest of it was ambition. Probably I should have stayed here. Fred Yule tried to persuade me to stay here. But I had this … oh, my father was very ambitious. And so was I. And I think that was the real downfall.

  Looking the other way, what do you look forward to in your old age, your retirement?

  [LONG PAUSE] I guess the main thing is being useful. I’m on five things here. And if I wasn’t I think I’d go mad. I think you’ve got … I mean I retired but I don’t feel retired half the time because I’ve got these various things I’m on and if I didn’t have those I’d be useless.

  You still enjoy the feeling of serving the community that you live in?

  Yes, I do, I do. And, you know, I like the garden. But that isn’t your whole life. I mean, people here amaze me, they play bowls and do their garden and
that’s their life. I couldn’t do that. I’ve tried bowls twice and I get bored.

  So although you’re not ambitious you still need to feel …?

  Useful.

  And you imagine spending the rest of your life here, in this community?

  I won’t shift. It’s not ideal. I mean, I miss intellectual companionship a bit, I mean the books you read and the things you watch, you can’t talk about them to many people here. Because they don’t see them the same way. But there are a couple of very intelligent guys without education that I talk to and they’re – it’s very interesting. Billy who helps me with the garden. He’s never had much of a life but he’s highly intelligent, he really is. He borrows half my books, reads them.

  I’m interested, looking in your bookshelves, to find things like A Little Anthology of Modern Verse and …

  I was keen when I was a student, I bought that when I was at Teachers’ College …

  So in your youth you read a lot of poetry …?

  I read a lot of poetry. I wrote some too. I wouldn’t show it to you though.

  Do you still have it?

  I could probably find it but I don’t want to go and see. It was terrible stuff. [LAUGHS] It was Rupert Brooke stuff, you know what I mean? He was my idol. For years. The war poems. And the other ones, before the war.

  You used to have a picture of your friend, Traff Nichol …

  Yeah, I wrote a poem … bloody awful, wasn’t it?

  No, I never thought so, it showed a very strong feeling …

  Oh, I felt strongly about Traff, he was a hell of a good guy. I wrote it to his mother actually and she got the picture framed. But it wasn’t a good poem, was it?

  Well, you know, that’s …

  At the time it wasn’t bad. That was the feeling amongst a lot of us at that time. When the war was on.

  Did you ever try to publish any of your poetry?

  It got published in college magazines.

  In those early days were you and Lauris both writing poems together?

  No, she despised my poems.

  Was she writing her own at that time?

  No, she did later.

  But she didn’t think that yours were any good?

  No.

  And you’ve come to agree with her?

  [LAUGHS] I think they were of a period of time when things were right for them, but they don’t last. I think at the time it wasn’t bad. That’s how people felt, how I felt. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t well done.

  So now you’ve got five grandchildren and probably more coming along, how do you feel about your children?

  Oh, I like my children. Yeah, I like them. They’re good. I’d like to see more of them.

  Well, would you say that you have had an interesting life?

  I think there’d be more interesting ones than mine. [PAUSE] Yeah, it’s been all right. [LIGHTS CIGARETTE]

  Do you think you have the accumulated wisdom of years to offer those younger generations?

  No. I don’t feel that confident, no. No, I made a lot of mistakes.

  Perhaps they could learn from your mistakes?

  If they listen, yeah.

  Over the years you’ve looked over, advised, many, many younger people. There must have been a sort of confidence?

  There was then, yeah. I lost a lot of it during that bad time. It was a bad time.

  So what would you want to say to those future generations?

  [LONG PAUSE] I think I’d say, live your life to the very fullest you can. And don’t get seared. As I was. I think. But none of you are scared. None of you.

  So you’d say to the younger people, don’t be afraid?

  Yeah. Don’t be scared. Have it on. Have life on.

  Greytown, 12.1.86

  129 Main Street

  The house at 129 Main Street, Greytown, where we recorded this conversation, was a big old square two-storey wooden place with a large, overgrown garden. It had been constructed out of three separate dwellings. The upstairs and the downstairs were from different houses; one had been put down on top of the other. Out the back was the oldest extant building in the town, a little wooden peaked-roof one-room colonial cottage which was attached by a corridor to the rest of the house and functioned as the kitchen. It dated back to the 1850s or ’60s.

  The house had been partially renovated in colonial style by the people who had it before you, but they hadn’t quite finished. In some of the upstairs rooms, the skirting boards simply stopped half way along the wall. All the rooms downstairs were small and dark with ceilings so low I could touch them just by raising my arm; upstairs was more spacious but you hardly ever went there. It was for guests. You climbed the stairs once a week to check things out and otherwise lived on the ground floor.

  Here was your bedroom, on the right as you came in the front door. A double bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers. A heater and a radio. Once when I visited you I took both the mattresses off the bed and replaced them with an inner-sprung one from a spare bed upstairs. You had been sleeping on two kapok mattresses which were thin and hard and lumpy; the top one always slid half way off the bed and you would try now and again to push it back on. I didn’t see how anyone could have a good night’s rest in such an uncomfortable bed. You complained about difficulty sleeping but had never taken the obvious step.

  Across the hall from the bedroom was your study, a tiny, cluttered room which held your desk and chair and not much more. Here you kept various papers relating to the voluntary community service work you did – Rotary, the Cobblestone Trust (an historical museum), the School Board, the Borough Council – along with the few things you had hung on to in the way of memorabilia. It was incredibly untidy and I never saw you in there unless it was to look for something. But you had always had a desk and it was important to you to have one still, even though you hardly used it.

  Next to the study, with a door leading through to it, was your sitting room, another tiny space, with French doors opening out onto the side veranda. It was heated by a wood-burning space heater which built up a warm fug in the room very quickly. Here was the TV, your books, one of a pair of armchairs that had come from your parents’ home – like your bed, it was extremely uncomfortable – the wicker chair you mostly sat in, a low coffee table, a few knick-knacks on the mantelpiece.

  The bathroom was across the hall from the sitting room, with a huge, old-style bath on legs, a cubicle for the shower, wash basin and cabinets. The supply of hot water was copious and instant. You could lie back in the bath and watch the black tracery of branches on the plum tree outside etched across the panes of the sash window. I think you preferred the bath to the shower but I also think you were not a particularly enthusiastic bather. You always shaved at the mirror with a hand razor and the old wooden-handled shaving brush you had had forever. The bristles were worn right down to stumps. I bought you a new one for your seventieth birthday, fulfilling a promise I’d made years before, but I don’t think you ever used it.

  The hallway ended past the bathroom door and there was an odd connecting passage leading through to the kitchen. Built to join the old cottage to the rest of the house, it had a concrete floor and faceted windows along one side. They were festooned with spiders’ webs. In winter this was the coldest place in the house and even after you installed a gas heater, it still felt as if all the warmth leaked into there and was lost. The washing machine, the tubs, the deep freeze, tools, paint, rubbish for recycling, were all kept here.

  The deep freeze was prodigious. It was vast and full to the brim with all sorts of things – frozen vegetables, both home grown and packaged; frozen meats of unknown age and description; packet after packet of frozen pastries; fish-fingers, bacon and egg pies, sausages, saveloys and more. When you went shopping, you bought things without any idea of when or even if you would eat them, so into the deep freeze they went. Occasionally, you would rummage around and bring out something to be cooked. But, by and large, once something was in the deep freeze, there it s
tayed.

  In the centre of the kitchen was a kauri table and around it stood half a dozen straight-backed wooden chairs that had always been at home. Perhaps they had been your parents’ too. They took up almost all the available floor space. Around the walls were the fridge, the bench, the stove, the sink. A free-standing glass-doored wooden cabinet for the plates and cups was against one wall. French doors led out into the garden and at the end of the room was a wood stove. It had been a coal range but you’d replaced that with another space heater. The other armchair was in the corner by the fire and a few more knick-knacks gathered dust on the mantelpiece.

  There was an old wall safe above the stove. I remember once opening it and finding it completely full of pots of jam. Greytown being the kind of place it was, everyone made their own preserves and various kind souls had given you samples. Each one of them had been opened, used once or twice and then forgotten. They stretched away into the dim recesses of the safe, a fascinating anthology of moulds of varying size, texture, colour and age.

  Under the bench was the booze cupboard, usually stocked with whisky and gin and occasionally a bottle of something more exotic like a liqueur. In the fridge would be the beer and the cardboard cask of white wine. I never knew you to drink red wine by choice, always these cheap, sour whites. In the early days it had been sherry, your mother’s drink, but it was rare at 129 to find you drinking a fortified wine. Probably only if you’d received a bottle as a gift.

  The fridge was a bit like the deep freeze and the safe combined – full of nameless concoctions in various states of decay, pushed to the back and forgotten, unless one of your children came and cleaned it out for you. I’m speaking now of the time before your beloved Dot came in as housekeeper.

  And then there was the garden.

  You were always a wonderful gardener. In Ohakune you grew enough potatoes to feed a family of eight, as well as all the other vegetables that graced our table. I think it may have started out of perceived economic necessity, but it became more than that. The elaboration of a skill and a source of pride. I still remember the tone of knowledgeable enthusiasm you would use to talk about the different varieties of potato, for instance.