The air was warm and smelt of rain. It was the beginning of summer.
Her hand trembled in his; he held it protectively and it grew still. They stopped under one of the pine trees. He embraced her, bent down and kissed her for the first time. She held him tightly.
‘I want you to make love to me,’ she murmured into his neck. ‘Now.’
They moved into the shadows under the pines. He spread out his duffle coat on one of the graves. Before he embraced her again, he smelt the odour of pine sap and damp earth in the air. ‘Hold me,’ she whispered, shivering as if she was cold.
They lay down on the warm lid of the grave. The pine trees hummed above them.
Afterwards she told him that he was very good. He got up and started picking up his duffle coat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She stood up and buried her face in his chest. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so clinical. I suppose it’s my very pakeha way of trying to tell you I feel a lot for you.’
She straightened her clothes. He gave her satchel to her, and with arms wound round each other they went down towards the inner labyrinths of the city.
She told him that many men had made love to her. How many? he asked. She couldn’t remember. Ten? he said. About eight. Why did you have to tell me about it? he said, trying to free his arm from round her. You asked me. They walked in silence for a while.
‘Did you enjoy it with them?’ he asked.
‘I wouldn’t have made love to them if I hadn’t enjoyed it.’
‘Did you really enjoy it with me?’
‘I told you I did,’ she said. He pushed her away and continued walking alone.
‘You want me to lie to you? Tell you I didn’t enjoy it with the others? Is that it?’ She gripped his arm and turned him round. She wound her arms round his waist, her belly thrust up firmly against his thighs, and gazing up into his face, she said: ‘I don’t want to ever lie to you.’
7
The party was well under way when they arrived. The sitting room was crowded, rock music shook the room, and a few couples were dancing in the middle of the floor. He had been to only a few student parties before; he avoided them. He usually attended parties held by young Samoans; he went with his brother who seemed to know every Saturday where all the parties were.
She pulled him into the room and left him by the door. He noted the easy familiarity with which she went round greeting many of the people, mainly students. She kissed a few of the men.
Returning with a glass of beer for him, she asked if he was enjoying himself and then went off again to join a group of people round the gramophone at the other end of the room. He wished his brother was there, someone familiar he could feel comfortable with. He drank his beer quickly.
An effeminate young man sat on the settee in front of him, talking shrilly to three girls. To his left, leaning against the wall, were five youths dressed in scruffy jeans and sweaters; two of them had scraggly beards and one wore sunglasses. The youths stood silently watching the dancing couples. Now and then one of them refilled their glasses with beer poured from a flagon. All round the room lay, stood, and crouched a horde of students, most of whom he didn’t know. He noticed one of his history lecturers among them. The man was surrounded by six students; he seemed to be delivering one of his lectures. Opening the bottle of whisky he had brought with him, he started to drink from it. Cigarette smoke swirled lazily up to the ceiling where it shifted from wall to wall, unable to escape from the room. He hoped she would return to him soon and make him feel part of the party and the world she could move through so easily and from which he had deliberately ostracised himself.
Half an hour later she came and took him over to meet her friends by the gramophone. She introduced him; he just nodded. They tried to engage him in a conversation about Samoan politics. He didn’t say much so they continued talking among themselves. He went on drinking the whisky. She asked him again if he was enjoying the party. He nodded and tried to smile.
‘You’re not really,’ she said laughingly. He insisted he was enjoying it. She got them two glasses from somewhere. He half filled her glass. She told him to fill it to the brim. She nestled into his side and he put his arm round her. They watched the people dancing.
‘So this is where you learnt to be so detached and good at analysing people,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you join in? It’s much more fun. By the way, have you noticed how those other scheming females have been watching you all night?’ She laughed when he automatically looked round the room. ‘Come on, let’s dance before one of them puts her claws into you.’ He told her he wasn’t a good dancer. ‘All Islanders are supposed to be terrific dancers,’ she said. She immediately noticed her mistake and apologised. He took her hand and led her into the middle of the room.
As they danced, she called to him to stop being so shy and tense. Relax, she said. He hadn’t danced for a long time but, watching how happy and graceful she was, he forgot the others and eased gradually into the flow of the music.
She kissed him as they came back to their drinks. She said bottoms up. They drank until their glasses were empty. Where did you learn to drink like that? he asked. From my old man, she said with a laugh.
He admitted to himself that this was the happiest time he had ever spent in New Zealand. By loving her, he was feeling for the first time a growing and meaningful attachment to the country which had bred her. He kissed her. Someone tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Want a dance?’ said a male voice over his shoulder. He turned. It was one of the bearded students he had seen earlier. The student ignored him and asked again.
‘Is it all right?’ she asked him.
‘Are you with him?’ the student said, still not looking at him.
‘Yes, I am,’ she replied.
‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it.’
‘That’s the way I want it,’ she said.
The student turned to go. ‘Bitch!’ he mumbled.
She grabbed his arm as he started reaching out for the student. He tried to relax again.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Do you want to go now?’ He nodded.
They left.
They had come in her mother’s car. As they drove away he looked out the window, trying to hide his shameful anger from her.
‘Now I’m beginning to understand what it’s like,’ she said. She reached over and gripped his right hand.
The starless sky seemed to press down on the car as it rushed headlong into the neon lights of the city, pursuing tram rails that glittered like knife blades.
I love you.
I love you too.
(1973)
C.K. Stead, from ‘Quesada’
17
That the balls of the lover are not larger than the balls of the priest
That the heart of the miser is not smaller than the heart of Quesada
That the same sun warms the knight and the squire
That the long lance and the short sword open equally the passages to death
That the barber may wear a beard and the hangman have long life
These are the opaque equities of our world.
That the breast of Dulcinea is whiter than the driven snow
That the strength of her knight is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure
That the empire of true love is boundless and its battalions unconquerable
These are the translucent hyperboles of art.
Where was Quesada whose grapes fattened uneaten at his door
Whose fields were ripe, whose mill-wheels were always turning?
He was beyond the horizon riding against the sunspears
Remembering the foot of his lady tentative as a white pennant in the swift mountain stream.
Pictures in a gallery in his brain
Were turned facing the wall, his limbs jolted
Coming down into a valley, night coming down
Sun catching flax and pampas along a stream
A church white in the foot-hil
ls, the dead on his mind
The empty world full of their singing ghosts.
Owls in the poplar candles, a pheasant dead on the road
Thunder over the treeless mountain burned brown by summer
Thunder over the flooded fields thunder over the dunes
Thunder over the darkened ocean shafted with light
Thunder in the long line of the surf breaking against an offshore wind
Thunder in the long line
Exaltation in the defeated heart of Quesada.
Who but a Christian would sing the broken body of love?
Who but a lover would sigh to be a plaything of the gods?
(1975)
Transgression
Maurice Gee, from Plumb
It is not surprising I behaved as I did. I had believed my spiritual strength, my certainty of my self, gave me the power to gaze steadily on human depravity. Gaze; and forgive. It was not so. More than I knew, I was a man of my times. I might question religious doctrine, or struggle to alter a political system, even smile on a daughter’s irregular union; but my location was fixed in the matter of sex between men. I had never made a study of it, had prevented it from even crossing my mind. It was there all the same, a black invisible planet in a sky of stars. Many years later I opened my bible at Genesis, chapter 19, and read of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of those cities’ destruction. The margins are blank. Mitchell had said there was not an empty square inch. He had not looked there. But how had I understood what was spoken of, what that ‘knowing’ was the men of Sodom planned? Someone must have whispered it to me. (The commentary I used kept a decent silence.) Did something in myself whisper it? In any case, I knew. For the language of that chapter boiled from my mouth when I discovered Alfred and John Willis under the quince tree.
I told Edie I had sent Alfred away. I had found him sinning. And when she pressed me, said his sin was the sin of Sodom. Her calmness was extraordinary. I guessed she had known, below full consciousness certainly; but known the truth of his nature, and forgiven him. Now it was out in the open she was calm. Her love was deeper than mine. It gave her the means to forgive him fully.
I said, ‘You’re not to see him, Edie. I forbid it.’
‘You don’t have that power, George.’
‘You’re my wife, and I forbid it.’
‘George, you must listen to me. We have the rest of our lives to spend together. And so we must never talk of this again.’
And we never did. But Alfred lay between us for the rest of our days. I saw her on Saturday afternoons put on her hat and gloves and walk off to visit him. She smiled at me like a stranger. And I thought, Edie has become a pillar of salt. There was no understanding of what she was doing—not for me—and the biblical words gave me a painful comfort. They pointed to mysteries; and where mysteries were there was hope of miracle. But I could not come to her. We reached out our hands but only our fingers touched.
She met him, I think, at Esther’s place. (I wonder how Fred liked that.) Esther never spoke of Alfred to me. Nor did Robert or Meg. Willis was the only one who dared. I had made up my mind to call him Theo, but he refused to answer to the name.
‘You chose Willis dad and now you’re stuck with it. Now tell me what this nonsense is all about.’
I told him to mind his business; and that I would call him what I pleased.
‘Did you catch them in the act?’
‘Willis,’ I cried, ‘be quiet.’
‘Look dad, I’ve been on the ships. I’ve seen it all. You can talk about it with me.’
I put down my trumpet. But he simply bent close and raised his voice. ‘What were they doing? Kissing? Holding hands?’
‘Will you get out of my study.’
‘A little bit of——, eh?’ (Even today I’m ignorant of whether the word is slang or clinical.) ‘It happens quite a lot, dad. In the best of circles.’ (And today I see he meant this as a joke.)
‘Will you go away?’
‘And you turned him out for it? You old parsons really take the cake.’
‘I won’t have you talk to me like that.’
‘OK, dad, OK. I guess it’s time he got out in the world. He’ll manage without your blessing.’
‘I won’t have him mentioned, Willis. Theo. Not in my house.’
‘Banished to outer darkness, eh? Well, if that’s how you want it. But——.’ (The word again.) He laughed. ‘Poor old dad. You’ve got a lot to learn.’
A few months later he told me John Willis had come to Auckland. He and Alfred were sharing a flat. And Alfred, though he had left my sovereigns lying, had changed his name.
I said I was not interested.
For more than twenty years no one spoke his name to me again.
(1978)
Ronald Hugh Morrieson, ‘Cross My Heart and Cut My Throat’
Wilma told me a talk she had with her mother one day. ‘I’m sick of learning the violin off Mr Henderson. I want to learn the guitar off Mr Wood. He played the guitar for Josephine last night at the school social. It was beauty.’
From what I gathered, her mother answered, ‘I didn’t know Mr Wood played the guitar. I knew he played the piano and he drinks.’
Then Wilma said, ‘He can play the guitar all right. Josephine said she never sang better. She reckoned it was Mr Wood that made her sing like she did. Gee, he can play all right. All the kids clapped like mad.’
Her mother rang my mother up and made an appointment. In the murky gloom of an October dusk Wilma kept her appointment.
The night before the band had played until five a.m. (so it might be better to say the morning before); one of the biggest sessions of spanking chords on the most beat-up piano I want to forget. I could light a lot of fires with that piano.
When the bell rang there was Wilma holding a guitar case. I was on the phone booking in another job for the band when she rang. I was half asleep and I was dressed in a pair of crumpled slacks, a pyjama jacket and I remember I was wearing carpet slippers with a great big hole in the toe of one of them. I had had a bath the day before so at least I was clean, but I had forgotten to cut my toenails.
There was no-one else in our big old house at the time so I had to go to the door myself. I rolled up my pyjama sleeves and put on an overcoat. The bell rang again but I still took time out to light a cigarette before I went to the door.
And there was Wilma. I was too tired to see what a cute-looking kid she was, but I remembered the moment I saw she was carrying a guitar case that my mother had booked in my first pupil. She saved me the trouble of trying to remember her name. She said, ‘I’m Wilma so and so.’
‘Come on in, Wilma.’
Wilma followed me down a long passage and I took her into a room with the oldest grand piano in the world in it. She was so interested in the big flat piano that she put her guitar case on the floor and she leaned over to look under the raised rosewood lid. I bent down and unsnapped the clips of the guitar case.
It was October and in the Antipodes this can be the beginning of spring or it can be the heart of winter. It depended on the schools what sort of uniforms the girls wore. It was so cold this October that the pupils were in winter clothing and I guess the only thing I noticed were Wilma’s worn and badly laddered black stockings and about an inch of flesh above them.
A hangover raises your blood pressure, your temperature, and makes you as sexy as a pedigree ram. While I was undoing the second clip on the case I tipped the whole damned case over because I was so busy looking up Wilma’s legs.
My pyjama sleeves had become unrolled and were now showing around my wrists. My cigarette had falled on to the top of the overturned guitar case. It was only half-smoked so I picked it up and had a drag. Wilma said, ‘I’ve never seen a big piano like this before.’
I told her there were bigger pianos. I told her about table grands and concert grands. By this time she had stood up straight again so there wasn’t any point in trying to see any further up her legs.
Standing up must have taken a bit of the blood away from my head but I was still shaking a bit with a mixture of passion, self-control and alcoholic withdrawal.
‘Look here, Wilma, how’s about you hook out this cigar box of yours while I get myself a handkerchief.’ I could tell she was looking at my pyjama sleeves.
I went down another long passage which led to the dining-room. The decanter on the sideboard was three-quarters full of whisky. I grabbed a seven ounce tumbler and poured myself a jolt that would have knocked a horse over; but all it did to me was make me drop my cigarette again with the first gulp. When I had drained the glass my stomach was hot and I counted up to ten to hold the booze down. I could feel my don’t-give-a-damn attitude coming back. I picked up the cigarette which hadn’t even scorched the Wilton. I pushed up my pyjama sleeves. Then I went back to Wilma.
Wilma said, ‘I think it’s out of tune. Mr Henderson was forever telling me my violin was out of tune.’
That was when she told me about the conversation she had with her mother about leaving Mr Henderson. She gave it to me pretty nearly verbatim including the coda about me drinking. She grinned and I began to like her.
‘Wilma,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. I’ll put the heater on.’
To put the heater on in this music room was a fairly complicated business. It involved finding a long lead for one thing and a second jolt of whisky for another. After this I felt fine.
Just then someone started playing major scales in the next room so I knew my mother was home teaching one of her pupils. Although my mother loved me to distraction I had enough intuition to know she had a dreadful fear of me becoming an out-and-out waster. I was making good money in the band but no one knew better than she or myself that the bulk of it was going on booze. It hit me right in the guts when I remembered how happy she looked when she told me that I had my first guitar pupil. Mum’s pupil was playing the scale of D major now so I decided I could have another jolt before it got played contrary motion. Back I went to Wilma.
The first thing I did was tune her guitar. If her violin was anything like her guitar it would have made Stradivarius turn cartwheels.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 93