The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature

by Jane Stafford

  ‘Good joke, eh?’ she gasped, while I tried to force my knees to keep me upright, ‘funny, eh?’ And she gave my shoulder a thump that sent me sprawling into the kitchen like a new-born lamb. From now on, I told myself afterwards, rubbing salt into my wounds, you’re going to mind your own darn business. But the next morning when I came on duty, the milk jugs were waiting in the servery. Alice had been to the freezer before me.

  After this Alice and I got on like a house on fire, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the staff saw what was happening and started giving me advice. It might have been because they didn’t like Alice, or because I was a new chum and as green as they come and they thought I needed protecting, but whatever the reason, several of them took me aside and told me Alice was a woman with bad blood, a treacherous character with the worst temper on God’s earth, and the kind of friend who would turn nasty over nothing at all. Soon after, I found out what they really meant and why Alice was the terror of the kitchen.

  It had been a particularly trying day, with the thermometer climbing to ninety degrees by mid-morning and staying there, and everybody got so irritable they didn’t dare look each other in the eye. I was the last to finish in the servery, and thought I’d pop into the kitchen and say goodbye to Alice before I went home. The huge cavern of a place was nearly empty and uncannily quiet. The cooking coppers round the walls had boiled all their strength away, the big steamers that stood higher than a man had hissed their life into the air around them, and the last tide of heat was ebbing slowly from the islands of ovens in the middle of the floor. Alice was alone with her back towards me, mopping the red tiles with long swinging movements, never going over the same place twice, and never missing an inch. As I watched her from the doorway, the little man who worked in the pot-room slipped through a side door and cat-stepped it daintily with exaggeration over the part Alice had just washed. She leaned on the mop and looked at his dirty footmarks with an expressionless face. A minute later he was back again, singing in a weak nasal voice through the top of his head.

  ‘Ah’m a leedool on the lornlee, a leedl on the lornlee sahd.’ He brushed against Alice, and blundered into her bucket so that the soapy water slopped over the sides. ‘So sorree,’ he backed away, but he was too late. Alice had him firmly by the coat-collar, lifted him off his clever feet, and shook him up and down as I would shake a duster. As she threw him half the length of the kitchen through the door into the yard, I crept down the corridor, remembering the freezer and feeling that thump on the shoulder again.

  But the next day I found out something much more important about Alice than the quality of her temper. She came and asked me if I would write a letter for her. I was a bit surprised and wanted to know why she didn’t do it herself. She couldn’t. She had never learned to read or write. At first I was incredulous, then as the full significance of the fact sank in, I was horrified. Words like progress, civilisation, higher standards, and free, secular, compulsory, sprang to their feet in protest.

  ‘Why, Alice, why?’

  ‘My mother was not well when I was a little baby so she gave me to my Auntie who took me way way out in the country and the two of us lived there on Auntie’s farm. My Auntie was a very good woman, very kind to me but she could not read or write and school was too far away so I never learned. I just stayed at home with Auntie and fixed the farm. But one day when I grew big Auntie said to me we’ve got no more money Alice, you must go away and work and get some money and bring it back to fix the farm. So I did. And now I am writing to Auntie to say I am getting the money fast and will come back very soon.’

  I tried to guess Alice’s age once more, decided on thirty again, and reckoned that ‘Auntie’ would be twenty when Alice was ‘given’ to her. That made her at least fifty now—getting a bit old for fixing farms.

  ‘You read and write, Jacko?’ That was the name she liked to call me.

  ‘Oh yes, I read and write.’

  ‘You pretty clever, eh Jacko?’ she asked wistfully. ‘You better show me how.’

  And so, every afternoon for the next two or three weeks, I tried. The two of us were working the same broken shift from 6.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. with an hour for lunch and three hours off in the afternoon. We started with writing, but I had to give it up, I just couldn’t take it. It was far worse than working in the pot-room. Alice would grip the pencil as though it were a prison bar and strain and sweat and grunt and poke out her tongue, and I’d sit beside Alice and strain and sweat and grunt and poke out my tongue. I rummaged around the bookshops down town, and eventually found an easy learn-to-read little book, strictly unorthodox, and not crammed with highly coloured pictures of English villages and stiles and shepherds in smocks and meadows with ponds and oak trees and sheep with the wrong kinds of faces and bluebells at the edge of the wood. Our book was illustrated in red, white and black, and the few words on each page were put in little boxes, and you jiggled them round so that each box had a slightly different meaning though the words were the same. I would say—

  First box: look! here is a dog; second box: the dog’s name is Rover. And Alice would repeat it after me slowly, pointing at the right box and looking intently at the words and the picture, and then she would roar with laughter and slap the book and very often me too. It was fun for both of us at the beginning, and Alice went ahead like nobody’s business, but towards the middle of the book the boxes got bigger and the pictures fewer, and the game became hard work. One morning I noticed Alice was looking pale and very glum. Her work in the kitchen was as good as usual but she dragged her feet listlessly and kept her eyes down even when I spoke to her. In the end I asked her what was the matter. At first I thought she wasn’t going to answer, and then she burst out—

  ‘That damn dog, Rover! All night I tried to remember what he did when he jumped over the gate, but it was no good, I couldn’t think. All night I tried to remember and I got no sleep and now I’m tired Jacko, tired tired.’ And to my dismay the immobility of her face broke for the first time, wrinkled up like a child’s, and a tear slipped down her cheek.

  ‘Oh Alice,’ I said, feeling smaller and meaner and more helpless than I’d ever felt before, ‘you don’t want to worry about a silly old dog or a book or reading or anything,’ and I steered her into the corridor where the sharp kitchen clowns couldn’t see her crying. ‘Look. It’s a lovely day, let’s have a holiday this afternoon, let’s have a good time. Let’s pretend it’s someone’s birthday, it must be somewhere. Oh bother, we can’t, it’s Sunday. What can we do, Alice?’ I waited while she struggled with her voice.

  ‘You do something for me, Jacko? You take me to church tonight, eh?’

  She was waiting for me after work. I took one look at her, closed my eyes, and opened them again carefully. She was looking happier and more excited than I had ever seen her, the trouble and tiredness of the morning had quite gone, but so had the neat uniform. She was wearing a long pale pink garment that looked suspiciously like a nightgown, and round her neck she had tied a skinny mangy length of fur that even a manx cat wouldn’t have looked at twice. But it was the hat that took my breath away. I had only seen such a hat in old photos or magazines about Edwardian England. It was a cream leghorn, with a wide flopping brim, dark red roses round the crown, and a huge swaying moulting plume that almost hid her face. I didn’t have a hat with me, but I reckoned Alice’s would do for the two of us.

  ‘I think I’ll go home and see Auntie for a little while. I’ve got some money for her and when I’ve fixed the farm I’ll come back again.’ She showed me her suitcase. ‘I’ll catch the 10.30 rail-car tonight.’

  We were a little late for church, and as we crept in, all eyes swung in our direction, and stopped. That’s right, I thought, take a good look, you’ll never see another like it again. The summer evening sun streamed through the clear glass window, and showed up mercilessly, like strong electric light on an ageing face, all the drabness of the grey unadorned walls, the scratches on the varnished pews, the worn pa
tches in the faded red carpets, the dust on the pulpit hangings, and the greenness of the minister’s old black suit. ‘Remembered streams I could not keep,’ I thought, seeing it all for the first time without a child’s glasses.

  ‘For all the saints, who from their labours rest,’ squeaked the small huddle of people like someone locked up in a freezer. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and leaned against the pew in front of me. Ahmmmah, droned Alice happily above everyone else, except the big-bosomed, purple-gowned, over-pearled organist who pulled all her stops out and clung to the top notes like a determined lover. Alice was holding her hymn book upside down.

  After the service I took Alice home for supper. She seemed a little lost and rather subdued in our sitting-room, and sat stiffly on the edge of a chair with her knees together and her hands gripping each other in her lap. I made several unsuccessful attempts to put her at ease, and then I noticed she kept glancing sideways at the piano that stood in the corner.

  ‘Would you like to play the piano, Alice?’ I asked, remembering the natural musical ability Maoris usually have. She jumped up immediately with a delightful grin and walked over to the music stool.

  ‘Dadadaeedeeda,’ she sang on one note, and thumped up and down the keyboard. Fifteen minutes later, she turned to me.

  ‘Pretty good, eh? I know plenty more. You like some more?’ And she settled herself down for the rest of the evening before I could reply. My mother got up hastily and went out to the kitchen to make the supper. When the time came to go, Alice looked very solemn, and I feared a repetition of the morning crisis. But I was wrong.

  ‘I got something I want to show you, Jacko,’ she said. ‘I’ve never shown anyone before.’ And she handed me a folded piece of old newspaper.

  ‘That’s a picture of my uncle. He went away before my Auntie got me. My Auntie says he’s the best man she ever knew and one day he’ll come back and look after me and Auntie and get money to pay for the house and fix the farm. He’s got a good, kind face, eh Jacko?’

  I peered at the blurred photo. A group of men were standing behind a central figure sitting in the foreground, and underneath, the caption read—

  This is the last photo to be taken of the late Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada, well-known throughout the English-reading world as the novelist, John Buchan.

  My mother looked over my shoulder.

  ‘But surely you’ve made—’ I stopped her with a sharp dig in the ribs. ‘Yes, Alice,’ I stammered, ‘I’m sure he’ll come back, he’s got such a nice face.’ And immediately I was ashamed of the weak lies. If only one could sometimes find the courage to tell people things they don’t want to know.

  It was bright moonlight at the station. Small groups of people stood around waiting to see others off in a rail-car that looked much too small and toy-like for the long journey round the foot of the hills that lay to the north-west of the town. Alice gripped my arm till my eyes watered, and then she mistook that for something else, and gripped harder still.

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ she waved out of the window, the plume shedding feathers over everything near her, ‘see you soon, Jacko, goodbye.’

  But I never saw Alice again. I stayed on at the hospital for the rest of the summer, and then went south to another job, and Alice hadn’t returned before I left. Auntie must be sick, I thought, or maybe it’s taking her longer to fix the farm than she expected. Several months later I received a letter from my mother. ‘I’ve got some news for you,’ she wrote. ‘Alice came back not long ago, but her place in the kitchen was taken, so they found her a job in the laundry. She got on all right at first, but soon there was more of the old trouble, and when she nearly strangled one of the other women, things came to a head, and they had her put away quietly. There was quite a bit about it in the paper, but of course she wouldn’t know that. Poor Alice. Do you remember how she played the piano that night and showed us a photo of John Buchan? And oh, my dear, till your dying days, will you ever forget that hat?’

  (1955)

  Apirana Ngata, ‘Maori Songs’

  My introduction to Maori poetry came through a fancy, which grew with the years into an obsession, to learn the songs which pervaded the life of the Maori people living in the Waiapu Valley. Here, let it be emphasised, the chief and the almost fatal obstruction was the course of education to which the policy of New Zealand committed the children of both races. That policy was enthusiastically approved by the elders of my tribe, Ngati Porou. Indeed Rapata Wahawaha, one of the fighting leaders of the tribe in the Maori wars of the 60s and one of the most accomplished men in things Maori, pinned his faith to Pakeha education for the rising youth of the race. He was responsible for the Waiomatatini and Akuaku schools planted, characteristically, among the sections of Ngati Porou to which he belonged immediately after fighting ceased. For many years these two schools catered for the Pakeha education of the youth of Ngati Porou. A determined man, whose word was law among his numerous kinsmen, all the young folk of my generation were herded into the schoolroom to begin with the rudiments of the monumental wisdom of the Pakeha.

  Thus began the process of absorbing knowledge by eye, by reading on blackboards or in books, by associating sounds with letters by making all calculations in writing. But our teacher, a Mr Green, who achieved great success at Waiomatatini and at Waikouaiti in the South Island, resorted now and again to the ancient Polynesian method of teaching through the ear. We sang the multiplication tables up to twelve times twelve, in chorus. The singing or recitation worked to a climax, so that passers-by, our parents and elders, suspended their work or journey, until the crashing finale: Tuero tamu tuero a hanarete who te who! English songs and hymns were taken in our stride, the words perhaps imperfectly and the airs toned down as a compromise between the short intervals of the native music and the wider and rigid intervals to the tonic-sol-fa scale. But the English songs were new, were of the new type of knowledge we were supposed to acquire and they came most readily to the ear. And on many evenings we were assembled in the long, low wharau to demonstrate the new songs for the entertainment of the elders and the children not yet of school age.

  The result? In my case my education in the music and singing of the songs of my own people was short-circuited. The years that followed at Te Aute almost completed the suppression of any taste or desire for prized accomplishment in the society to which my kin belonged and in which I was predestined to spend most of my life. But there came an interruption in the years of schooling, when my father decreed an interval of two years, during which I knocked about at home in the Waiapu Valley or in villages along the coast where relatives lived. There was a period of eight months my younger brother and I spent with our parents at Otorohanga in the King Country, with occasional visits to Waikato and Auckland. Those two years remedied many shortcomings in my education as a Maori in the things that belong to him, including its basis of acquiring knowledge through the sense of hearing and retaining it by the faculty of memory stimulated by the lack of resort to written records.

  I learnt one outstanding feature in the education of a Maori, that he must know a thing in one lesson; in two lessons, if his teacher is indulgent. To learn a song in one lesson, words, air and all its graces seemed an impossible feat. But it was demonstrated in many cases within one’s knowledge. There were illiterate elders among my relatives in the sense that they read with great difficulty and could barely sign their names to paper. But they could memorise genealogies, land boundaries and strange songs with ease. They took no written notes, showed in fact from the commencement of any narration or recitation that they were committing to and holding the matter by an effort of memory. In that way they acquired the expression, the intonation, the rhythm, all the graces which reveal the meaning of the composition in its many shades. Words received their full signification from the stance of the bodies, the play of the eyes and the movements of the heads of the singers.

  There were the song leaders, who attained to that position by a
process of selection in practice. A fundamental feature of recitation or singing in Maori is that there must be no hitch of any kind. So a leader must not only know his matter, but must also remember it in all its phases. A fault was an aituā, a presage of ill-fate, even of death. Then the leader must lead in a way to bring out the most pleasing volume and best interpretation from the group he led. This meant that the note he pitched must be one to suit the average of the many voices in his group, a pitch he would normally strike to suit his own voice, and with which he could devote himself to the expression, the acting it might be and the many graces of the most agreeable singing. And withal he would have the other gifts of leadership, personality, inspiration, and the quality of evoking the best in those he controlled.

  Ngati Porou in those days had a great reputation for their singing, a flame which went far beyond its tribal limits. The hapū or subtribes with whom I was immediately connected were not surpassed by others. Indeed the Whanau-a-te Ao of Tokomaru and the Whanau-a-Rakairoa of Akuaku were accounted amongst the sweetest singers, especially of difficult airs. My father was a first-class singer with a very extensive repertoire, and my mother, a member of the Whanau-a-Rakairoa hapū, sang in a pleasant voice the songs current in the district. As a young child, before entering school, I lived and was nurtured in an atmosphere which favoured the development of the song complex of my kith.