‘Aw, gidday, Bill. Aw, not so bad. Heat gets yer. Gets all mucky, under me helmet …. What’s that? Gubberment? Well, whaddya expect with them jokers down a Wellington …. Hey! Hey, you! And where do you think you’re going. What? For a walk? Like that? All uncovered on ya top? Ya not decent! Cover yaself up, quick and lively. All a yas! Cover yaselves up!’
He lumbers off, muttering: ‘Think this is a nudiest colony, a something ….’
And the men comply with towels until he has moved on, when bare flesh again emerges to barks of laughter, but not so that Robbie can hear, for he is greatly admired and respected on the beach.
‘Ya gotta hand it to him, though,’ is the universal tribute, ‘proper ole dag ….’
The golden day seeps on; no thoughts but warm, no talk but trivial, until the sun fingers the eyeballs dead ahead—the sand cools, and the beach slowly empties.
On Sunday nights in the summer, we have tea on the glassed-in verandah facing Rangitoto. My mother prepares a mountain of sandwiches and out they come, mounds of them, on a jingling trolley. There we sit in the summer, while the day ends in gold explosions on the horizon and the lower borders of the sky are suddenly drenched in pink, as though a full brush had been slapped round the rim. Below us on the beach, people are strolling and the thin rarefied tinkle of their voices floats up to us as they approach, then a sudden blare of coherent sound ….
‘So I said to Phyllis, what’s the use? Why don’t you finish with him, for good and all ….’
Will Phyllis give him up?
Or this, in a high, fluty voice:
‘Well, I went to her house and everything on the line was silk and I thought, Mmmm-mm! Mine’s cotton ….’
Or an urgent foreign voice:
‘But Hans, why did you do it? What were you thinking of … ?’
What had the man done, so far from home? … Huge questions, teasing the mind for ever. Laughter like a rocket burst, hanging on the still air in showers of sparks ….
Tonight, we have guests and, as always, we scream for charades as soon as it is dark. The signal given, the evening falls together like old ritual. My brother and I perform a few curtain-raisers like ‘hen-peck’ and ‘hand-cuff’, acting out the first syllable, the second and then the whole word. Then we politely ask the guests to perform, some shrinking and terrified, looking for the nearest sofa to hide under; others consent and perform with a touching bravado and sit down, looking sheepish, so we applaud with vigour, saying ‘Jolly good’ in a kindly way, so they won’t feel too shown up, later. For we are only waiting for the supreme moment when we can ask our father to play. He looks at us over his glasses, thoughtful and mischievous; we rush at him in an agony, each seizing a knee and pulling it outwards with our entreaty, as if to split him. After a moment of torturing indecision he consents and retires; from the kitchen comes the rattle of utensils. We giggle, nudge each other and throw knowing looks at the guests.
In bursts my father, swivelling round corners, Chaplin-wise, bowler-hatted, frock-coated, holding a bulging and jingling carpet-bag. He advances on his victim, the light of self-abandoned frenzy in his eye, speaking in a voice of comic heaviness and briskness:
‘Come here, come here, come here! Don’t like your colour! Looks like a bad case of hydrangea! Put out your tongue!’
He seizes the organ delicately, shakes his head. His eyes gleam with a terrible zeal.
‘Oh ho ho ho! This is serious! Convolvulus has set in. We must operate at once!’
The victim is hustled off his chair, screaming with laughter and thrown flat on a table; tries to rise, but the mad doctor presses his head. The patient crumples. A fearsome jingling from the carpet-bag.
‘Now, now, what’s best for the incision? Ah ha! The very thing. My tenon-saw. Don’t worry, don’t worry! It’ll only tickle!’
The victim struggles to sit up: the doctor flattens him with an imperious gesture. He saws furiously, making a ghastly, ticking scratching sound.
‘Now that didn’t hurt, did it? Stop laughing! Pin back the flaps … that’s the way …. Now we have to dig. Get at the root of the trouble. Where’s my garden trowel?’
He drops the saw, seizes the trowel, makes great swooping motions with it.
‘Intestines? No use to you. Better without them.’ He throws them over his head. In horror, we see long loops and festoons of them sailing round the room, lodging on the clock, hanging on the pictures, whirling round and round the light bracket.
He digs again, ferociously.
‘Heart? Lungs? Kidneys? Liver? Useless lumber. Out they go.’
He throws them at the wall: we hear a hideous squelch. He looks down at his patient, benevolently.
‘Why, you’re looking better already. Now, we’ll sew you up. Here’s my skewer. Thread it with a piece of string, and away we go!’
He becomes a maddened seamstress, frenziedly sewing, the skewer flying in and out. He dusts his hands, dismisses his patient.
‘Go thou, and sin no more.’
He bows to us, cold and dignified.
‘Adieu. Adieu! Remember me!’
He grabs his carpet-bag, whirls on one leg, stops suddenly.
‘What’s this on my lapel? A stray kidney? Tt-tt-tt.’
He flicks it off with a lordly air and whirls off on some other fearsome errand.
Gasping, we scream for more, but there is always only one. In a moment, he returns as himself, looking at us over his glasses with the mildest of airs and we gaze at him with astonishment and awe, that beneath that genial mask there lurks, crouching to spring, that ferocious doctor.
The guests depart and we prepare for bed, the wind faintly rustling the trees outside, platoons of moths hurling themselves at the lighted panes and the moon coyly showing a gleaming finger-nail paring above the dark mass of Rangitoto.
(1959; 1962)
Ruth Dallas, ‘Deep in the Hills’
Once I thought the land I had loved and known
Lay curled in my inmost self; musing alone
In the quiet room I unfolded the folded sea,
Unlocked the forest and the lonely tree,
Hill and mountain valley beach and stone,
All these, I said, are here and exist in me.
But now I know it is I who exist in the land;
My inmost self is blown like a grain of sand
Along the windy beach, and is only free
To wander among the mountains, enter the tree,
To turn again a sea-worn stone in the hand,
Because these things exist outside of me.
O far from the quiet room my spirit fills
The familiar valleys, is folded deep in the hills.
(1953)
Ruth Dallas, ‘Milking Before Dawn’
In the drifting rain the cows in the yard are as black
And wet and shiny as rocks in an ebbing tide;
But they smell of the soil, as leaves lying under trees
Smell of the soil, damp and steaming, warm.
The shed is an island of light and warmth, the night
Was water-cold and starless out in the paddock.
Crouched on the stool, hearing only the beat
The monotonous heat and hiss of the smooth machines,
The choking gasp of the cups and rattle of hooves,
How easy to fall asleep again, to think
Of the man in the city asleep; he does not feel
The night encircle him, the grasp of mud.
But now the hills in the east return, are soft
And grey with mist, the night recedes, and the rain.
The earth as it turns towards the sun is young
Again, renewed, its history wiped away
Like the tears of a child. Can the earth be young again
And not the heart? Let the man in the city sleep.
(1953)
Denis Glover, ‘Arawata Bill’
The Scene
Mountains nuzzle mountains
&nb
sp; White-bearded rock-fronted
In perpetual drizzle.
Rivers swell and twist
Like a torturer’s fist
Where the maidenhair
Falls of the waterfall
Sail through the air.
The mountains send below
Their cold tribute of snow
And the birch makes brown
The rivulets running down.
Rock, air and water meet
Where crags debate
The dividing cloud.
In the dominion of the thorn
The delicate cloud is born,
And golden nuggets bloom
In the womb of the storm.
Arawata Bill
With his weapon a shovel
To test the river gravel
His heart was as big as his boots
As he headed over the tops
In blue dungarees and a sunset hat.
Wicked country, but there might be
Gold in it for all that,
Under the shoulder of a boulder
Or in the darkened gully,
Fit enough country for
A blanket and a billy
Where nothing stirred
Under the cold eye of the bird.
Some climbers bivvy
Heavy with rope and primus.
But not so
Arawata Bill and the old-timers.
Some people shave in the mountains.
But not so
Arawata Bill who let his whiskers grow.
I met a man from the mountains
Who told me that Bill
Left cairns across the ravines
And through the scrub on the hill
—And they’re there still.
And he found,
Together with a kea’s feather,
A rusting shovel in the ground
By a derelict hovel.
It had been there long,
But the handle was good and strong.
The Search
What unknown affinity
Lies between mountain and sea
In country crumpled like an unmade bed
Whose crumbs may be nuggets as big as your head
And it’s all snow-sheeted, storm-cloud fed?
Far behind is the blue Pacific,
And the Tasman somewhere ahead.
Wet or dry, low or high,
Somewhere in a blanketfold of the land
Lies the golden strand.
Mountain spells may bind it,
But the marrow in the bone
The itch in the palm
The Chinaman’s talisman
To save from harm,
All tell me I shall find it.
These mountains never stir
In the still or turbulent air.
Only the stones thaw-loosened
Leap from the precipice
Into shrapnel snow-cushioned.
An egg-timer shingle-fan
Dribbles into the pan
And the river sluices with many voices.
The best pan is an old pan
—The grains cling to the rust,
And a few will come from each panning,
The rust brown, and golden the dust.
But where is the amethyst sky and the high
Mountain of pure gold?
A Prayer
Mother of God, in this brazen sun
Lead me down from the arid heights
Before my strength is done.
Give me the rain
That not long since I cursed in vain.
Lead me to the river, the life-giver.
A Question
Who felled that tree,
And whose lean-to
Is melting now into that snow?
Barrington or Douglas perhaps
Left these faint tracks
As I, Bill,
Leave my cairns on the hill.
But the mountains on the rim of day
Have nothing to say.
Am I stealing their gold
As a gipsy steals a child,
Am I frisking their petticoats
Camping in the wild?
What do the peaks prepare
For a usurper camping
Where they hold the air
And the river-bend no friend?
The River Crossing
The river was announcing
An ominous crossing
With the boulders knocking.
‘You can do it and make a fight of it,
Always taking the hard way
For the hell and delight of it.
But there comes the day
When you watch the spate of it,
And camp till the moon’s down
—Then find the easy way
Across in the dawn,
Waiting till that swollen vein
Of a river subsides again.’
And Bill set up his camp and watched
His young self, river-cold and scratched,
Struggling across, and up the wrong ridge,
And turning back, temper on edge.
The Bush
Sullen dark bush lies over
The upper reaches,
Thick as a nigger’s head
In the coloured pictures
—And no scrub for a bed.
There’s nothing yet in my canvas bag
As heavy as this swag.
The door of the valley
Swings shut behind.
But in the next gully
Who knows but I’ll find
The colour to make all tongues wag.
Evening hush falls on the bush.
A camp fire on the river stones
Will warm my bones.
Incident
The constable said one day
‘Wata Bill’s too long away—
If you’re going up by Deadman’s Hut
Just look around for a bit.
The route he went,
You’ll probably find him stiff
At the foot of a cliff,
Or dead in his tent.
But don’t bury him,
Just cover him up.
Leave the body to me—
It’s my duty to have the last look.’
When Cashmore saw two legs
Sticking out of a tent
With no camp smoke,
He dragged at them heavy-hearted.
And the sleeper awoke.
Camp Site
Earth and sky black,
And an old fire’s sodden ashes
Were puddled in porridge clay
On that bleak day.
An old coat lay
Like a burst bag, worn
Out in a tussle with thorn.
Water ran
Through a hole in the rusted can.
The pass was wrapped
In a blanket of mist,
And the rain came again,
And the wind whipped.
The climbers had been there camping
Watching the sky
With a weatherwise eye.
And Paradise Pete
Scrabbling a hole in the sleet
When the cloud smote and waters roared
Had scrawled on a piece of board
RIVERS TOO DEEP.
Wata Bill stuck his shovel there
And hung his hat on the handle,
Cutting scrub for a shelter,
Lighting wet wood with a candle.
By the Fire
By the fire he thought of the days
When he was young
And let the world go hang—
At the age of twelve
Running away to the bush.
At the homestead that night a hush
When the lanterned men went out.
They found a fire by a cave,
And two young bushrangers brave
Discussing plans to dispatch
The guard and capture the coach
&n
bsp; With a Halt, and a fusilade,
And maybe a bit of a cattle-rustling
On the side.
But they haled them back to work
And the bright dream died.
Dreams don’t pay:
There’s no gold the easy way.
The embers faded to grey
And the fire was dead
And the moon clanged down
On the metal mountains ahead.
His Horse
Over forty years of my life
In a kingdom where wind is wife
And all my discourse
Addressed to this old pack-horse,
So strong in patience, so clever,
So wise in the ways of the river.
In the Township
Said Lizzie the big blonde barmaid, ‘There,’
She said to the man at the bar,
‘There he is still—it’s old
Arawata Bill off looking for gold.’
With grub in his saddlebag
And baccy in his pouch
Arawata Bill headed for the Woodhen gulch.
‘He’s half-crazed y’know,
Always on the go
—But the only gold he’ll ever pan
Is the glitter in his eyes
If you know what I mean.’
Where is the river flat
Where colour shows in the shovel
And nuggets as big as berries are found
Burgeoning in the gravel?
‘—Comes in with an ounce or two
Sometimes, and goes on the spree,
But there’s no talking to the man
He’s that far away,
Except with one or two in,
When he’ll sing and he’ll holler
As good as the best,
Dancing to the victrola.’
Now I’ve never tried
From the head of the Arawata
To the divide and down
To the Dart on the other side.
‘Next day he’d go, whether it
Rained or froze.
You’d almost believe
There was something in those
God-forsaken hills he couldn’t leave.
Yes, he’s a queer one
And not what you might call
Sociable-like—and truth to tell
I expect there’s a woman behind it all.’
Arawata Bill led his horse up the slow hill
And his shovel was lashed to his pack.
Living off the Land
Catch your kea. That’s easy,
Waving a rag on the end of a stick,
Stew him for three hours, and
It’s as good a meal as you’ll get.
You can always trap eels
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 60