Landings

by Jenny Pattrick

  The raft is into the dog-leg race and around the jutting prow of the cliff-face before the men are quite ready. The logs buck like a wild horse in the high waves and twist side-on to the current. Danny loses his balance and falls awkwardly, scrabbling for a handhold on the slippery logs. Pita abandons any hope of steering and crouches, clinging to the post of the rear rowlock as the waves crash over him. Both men look fearfully to the side, where the whirlpool, larger and deadlier than either has seen it before, churns, slow and oily, in the lee of their bucking water.

  They are nearly through, coming level with the whirlpool, when Danny loses his grip and the tilting logs throw him into the water. He feels the pull of the current dragging him towards Tarepokiore’s mouth. He is a strong swimmer and strikes out wildly but can make no progress against the drag.

  ‘Danny! Dannyboy! Here!’ Pita, spreadeagled on the logs, clinging to the centre pole now, thrusts his oar out as far as he can reach. Danny feels it, grips for dear life.

  That is the way they descend the last of the rapid: Pita flat on the raft, Danny clinging to an oar, sliding under the water’s surface like a hooked fish, the raft pitching and yawing, perilously close to the lip of the whirlpool but easing past. And as suddenly as they entered the rapid they are out again, riding smooth water, the raft somehow turning itself in line with the current, the roar of the torrent giving way to the silence and peace of the gorge.

  Danny, coughing and spitting, heaves himself aboard. Both men are shaking.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Danny. ‘She was pulling me in. She wanted me.’

  Pita nods. ‘I need a drink after that, brother.’ He unties the jar and takes a deep swallow. ‘Come on, man, you need it too.’

  Danny gives in and accepts the offer, though his hands can scarcely hold the jar as he swallows. The liquor burns like fire and tastes foul. Pita smiles at his face and takes another deep swallow. He sighs.

  ‘Oh, that is good. You can’t deny it.’

  Danny feels the warmth. ‘Yes … Yes!’ And, at Pita’s urging, drinks more.

  They remove their shirts, wring them and spread the rough cloth on the wood to dry. The sun has come over the tops of the cliff s now and the going will be smooth for a stretch.

  Pita corks the jar and ties it back firmly. He is reluctant to share more with Dannyboy. They sit in the sun, letting the river take the raft at its own pace, using the oars only when they stray out of the strongest current.

  ‘Why do you not drink?’ asks Pita. ‘You don’t have to follow my sister’s beliefs.’

  Danny smiles. He feels his tongue loosened by the liquor, feels happier than he has for a long time.

  ‘It is not only Stella,’ he says. ‘My da, back in Ireland, hated the stuff. Said the devil himself dwelt in every drop of strong liquor. He scared the daylights out of me and my brothers with his tales of the terrors awaiting us if ever a drop passed our lips.’ Danny shrugs. ‘I suppose we never formed the habit of drinking.’

  Pita looks over at Danny, ready to argue, perhaps, but thinks better of it. ‘Your brothers — did they leave home too?’

  Danny laughs. ‘Don’t know. I was the first to go. Have spoken to not one of them since. My guess is they are nose to the grindstone in that dirty old shipyard, following after Da like good sons. I was the wild one.’

  Pita slaps Danny’s bare shoulder. ‘E! A little wildness … nothing wrong with that. Look around you, man. Everything here is wild. How the world should be!’

  Danny, his shoulders warm now in the sun, and the liquor still singing somewhere inside, thinks of his precious Stella, of their life spent trying to tame the wilderness. His hard-won acres of pasture and the relentless bush beyond.

  ‘Someone must provide food. Make some use of this land,’ he says. But his mood dips as he speaks. The easy freedom of his brother-in-law is unsettling. Pita has no wife, no home to call his own, no children. Danny has always considered him a wastrel. On the few occasions he has visited the farm he has drunk and slept too much and avoided any work about the place. Yet here he is, on the river, easy and happy. A good companion.

  ‘Don’t you want to have a family? A wife, children?’ he asks.

  Pita grins. His hands gesture rudely about his groin. ‘E! A bit of this now and then will do me. Who knows — perhaps there is a son of my making growing up in the world. Better off without this wandering man for a father.’

  Danny shakes his head but holds his peace. Pita has just saved his life, and the good Lord knows when assistance might be needed again. The river’s moods change so quickly. But he would like to argue. Life on the land might be difficult and sometimes heartbreaking, but Danny has stuck with the farm for five long years. He is not ready to hear his hard work belittled.

  AS NIGHT COMES the raft has made good progress but is still well short of Pipiriki. Pita has guided them through several rapids in the dusk, but neither he nor Danny will risk Ngaporo in the half-light. That rapid — one of the last big ones before Pipiriki — is wild and tricky: in fact it is three rapids in quick succession, with wide shingle beds on one side and a curving cliff on the other. The danger will be the shingle: they will need good light to avoid beaching.

  The two men guide their craft into the bank well above Ngaporo. Here the land slopes gently but the river at the water’s edge is deep enough to keep the logs afloat. Ponga ferns and kowhai lean over the water. They tie the logs fore and aft to trees and step ashore. Danny lights a small fire and they sit beside it, eating the damp bread and mutton Stella has provided. At least the blankets, wrapped in tarpaulin, are reasonably dry. Danny rolls up and lies close to the embers, happy to listen to the night sounds of the bush — the double notes of ruru the owl and the haunting cry of fossicking kiwi.

  Pita sits on in the dark, drinking.

  Ruvey Morrow, Pipiriki House

  This palatial new house, capable of accommodating 100 people, is appointed with every modern convenience, with electric light, hot and cold baths and up-to-date sanitary arrangements. The main dining hall seats 120 guests, and the upper promenade balcony (130 feet long) commands a magnificent view of the river and surrounding scenery, which is very fine, Pipiriki being situated in an amphitheatre of beautiful hills.

  Early advertisement by A. Hatrick

  THE NIGHT THOSE McPhees arrived at Pipiriki House I would gladly have given up my position and taken the vow with the nuns for a bit of peace. Bert came up from the riverboat with a face like a thundercloud, which is unusual for him. We’ve got trouble here, I thought — and was right. The manager was away for a few days, it being winter and the tourist parties smaller, so I was in charge at the House, which would normally be no problem. I was enjoying myself till the McPhees came up the steps, arguing and noisy as a gaggle of geese. It’s not what we expect at Pipiriki. ‘Enjoy the tranquillity of New Zealand’s Rhine. Take your ease in the splendour of Pipiriki House!’ is how Mr Hatrick’s poster puts it. Well, tranquillity was well short of the mark that night. One of the guests complained and I was at my wits’ end how to calm down those McPhees.

  Bert was at fault over the state of the road up to Raetihi, mind, though I never told the constable that. The blocked road should have been noted in the pigeon post. Mr Hatrick likes to know those things. Trouble is, Bert is not so neat with his writing and he cannot always fit all the words on those tiny messages. I would help, as my hand is quite as fine as a lady’s, but Bert is so proud of his beloved pigeons and their postal notes down to Mr Hatrick and up to the Houseboat that I don’t have the heart to interfere. So the McPhees all arrived and were stuck here, Mr McPhee carrying on as if he were lost in some blasted heath in the wilds of his native Scotland rather than safe and comfortable in the finest hotel in all the Dominion. I felt like giving him a piece of my mind but Mr Hatrick does not like the staff to be uppity. The guests are always right.

  The little ones were no trouble, mind. Off to bed after their early tea, without a peep. Worn out by the long day and the sights, mo
st like. I sent Mere up with the warming pan but they were already out to it, she said, pretty as little angels, all three fair-haired and milky-skinned like little lords and ladies. Life in Raetihi would soon change that.

  But Mr McPhee had to let the whole world know his rage. I was in no mood to admit that my husband might be at fault. Not to this rude man with his bristling red beard, his voice needle-sharp, his finger stabbing. On and on he bleated — he should have been notified, how could he run a business with line of supply cut, where was the manager, till my Albert laid into him with a few rough words of his own about disturbing the other guests. Mr McPhee shut up like a lamb for a good ten minutes at that. Bert laughed afterwards and said it was his brown skin did the trick. He said men like McPhee don’t know how to take it when the natives speak back. He would be right there, looking at how matters panned out later.

  Then there was the endless fussing about who might sleep where. The plain one, Gertie, who was old enough to know better — I’d judge her eighteen or nineteen — went into a sulk that would shame someone half her age. Gertie wanted a room of her own: she didn’t want to sleep with her sister; didn’t like being in a room next to the little ones because they woke early. When I explained to her that families were put this end of the balcony to leave the adults in peace, she shouted that she was an adult too and clumped away on her ungainly plump legs before I had taken breath to answer. Down the verandah she stamped, banging her hand against the railing, kicking at the deckchairs, to finally plop herself down in one at the far end, right next to a nice quiet pair of travelling ladies on tour with their husbands from Scotland. They looked most disapproving at the display; I feared there would be a complaint.

  I told the mother — stepmother it would have to be, looking at the age of her — that we could accommodate Miss McPhee in a room of her own but that there would be an extra charge, and that brought on another storm when Mrs McPhee took the news to her husband. All the while the other two McPhees, pretty Bridget and her brother, were pretending to be tourists from the home country, promenading the verandah arm in arm, putting on fancy language — ‘Oh I say, what a splendid view!’ ‘Did you see that native in his canoe?’ and so on, the cheeky devils, and giggling at themselves. They had the voices down to a T; I had to hide my own smile. Their sulky sister shooting them dark looks, then calling on them to run outside if they wanted to behave like children. As if she were the mother.

  Those three older McPhees. A family look, but then again so different. My Stella, poor soul, wanted to know about them — what they were like that first day, before the accident. They had all inherited their father’s red hair, I told her, but in different shades that made all the difference. Bridget’s long curling hair had a dark gleam to it; you wanted to touch the rich silkiness of it. She knew she was pretty, that one; knew how to use it to good effect. Several of the gentlemen tourists had their eyes on her and she would give them a sweet smile and half a curtsey. Then she’d be off pell-mell with her brother, laughing and shrieking. Halfway between a lady and a child and not playing either role properly, to my mind.

  They were a lovely pair to look at, though, she and her brother. The boy’s hair shone brighter than hers — like well-polished copper — and where it flopped around his ears lighter again. A good-looking lad, but quiet. I don’t believe he met my eyes once in the first year that I knew him. A quick glance, then away, those pale eyes sliding to the floor or out to the bush, and the flicker of a smile — gone before you could notice. Unhappy, I guessed, but not in a way that made you want to know. Not that night anyway. I was right fed up with the lot of them.

  Gertie, now — you’d have to be sorry for Gertie if she weren’t so difficult. She had the raw end of the stick every which way. The colour in her hair lacked all the fire of the other two. A dull yellowy orange, and so fine and dry it fell lifeless around her plump cheeks. I would have grown it and pulled it back in a bun if I owned such sorry locks. But then the plain face would have been on show, poor girl.

  Well, that first night it was the sulks that were on show, and in the end it got her nowhere. The father was as tight with his money as he was free with his opinions.

  ‘If you don’t like your sister, sleep outside on the verandah,’ he said. ‘I will not spend good money on your moods.’ And walked away back to his dinner, all her pouting and snorting completely ignored. I had to agree with the man at the time, but not with his manner. There was raw dislike in the way he spoke to her. He would not look directly at her but glanced quickly and away again, as if he couldn’t bear to rest his eyes on his own daughter. I saw tears well up in the poor girl’s eyes at that look. Perhaps she loved her father — there must have been some softness in the girl — but clearly any affection was not reciprocated. Mr Angus McPhee, in my book, was the sort who liked all his possessions, including wife and children, to be admirable.

  I never saw how they sorted out the sleeping arrangements, for I was needed down in the dining room. All calm and pleasant there, with the nice roast of mutton and my good cherry tart for dessert. One of the ladies remarked how fine the cutlery was, stamped with Pipiriki House, and the china special too. She hadn’t expected such refinement up here in the wild, she said — so many fine parlours, and a special ladies’ drawing room, not to mention the billiard room for the men. If it was proper to talk back to the guests I could have told her that our Mr Hatrick knew how to run a good business. When he took over Huddle’s Temperance Hotel, as it was then, it took him no time at all to build on our fine new rooms, better in every way and the most modern, Mr Hatrick says, in the whole Dominion. Huddle’s was smart enough, mind you; I worked there myself, learning the ropes. But Mr Hatrick is a great man of the world and we are fortunate to work for him.

  I’ll admit that when my Albert first brought me upriver I held a dim view of how it might all pan out. So far away from a nice town, from shops and neighbours who spoke proper English. Bert was born to it, of course — grew up in these parts, loving the river and always working on it, but it scared me, all that wilderness. I settled to it, though, what with the work at Huddle’s and then the babies born. Back when he was alive, Bert’s father was one of the few Englishmen living up this way. He ran a flourmill. Both his workers were Maori and he married one of their sisters. As soon as he was old enough my Bert worked for the River Trust until he crushed his hand. Now he works at the house with me. That’s how Mr Hatrick is — looks after his workers properly. Mind you, they are lucky to have Bert, with his river skills and his understanding of the flourmill, which is now our electric generator, run by the same water-wheel that used to turn the grindstone. And his knowledge of Maori ways. Mr Hatrick understands that. All his best riverboat captains have river Maori blood in their veins.

  Well, that night. Most of the guests were travelling up to the Houseboat next day and were full of all the sights they had been promised. Captain Jamie Jamieson came across from crews’ quarters as the gents were having their cigars and the ladies their tea. He kept them all agog with his stories of dangers and wonders upriver, and his advice to wear warm clothing. When he heard about the McPhees being stranded, he had the solution straight out. Captain Jamieson is a great one for calming troubled waters — it’s probably all his experience with the rapids.

  ‘Mr McPhee,’ he said, smiling in his easy way, ‘how about we hire you one of our draughthorses? If you are game to ride such a broad back, I’ll wager old Snowball will plod up through the mud for you. Then we can send Mrs McPhee and the children up on your cart once the slip is clear and your own horses have arrived.’

  Mrs McPhee was well pleased with that idea. The pink was back in her cheeks from a good meal and the warm fire in the grate. Clearly Pipiriki House was very much to her taste. You could see that her smile helped melt that frosty husband of hers. She had a way with him all right.

  ‘And I tell you what,’ the captain went on with a wink to the younger McPhees. (Gertie had finally come to table and was wolfing down
her mutton, which good-natured Mere had kept hot.) ‘Why don’t the two young ladies and the young gentleman here come upriver with me tomorrow? Give Mrs McPhee a quiet day with the young ones?’

  He must have noticed the argument earlier, or maybe the exhausted way Mrs McPhee dragged herself around. Nothing much escapes Jamie Jamieson. He turned his attention to McPhee, who was all smiles now at the thought of getting on the move again.

  ‘I have near an empty boat going up tomorrow and space for three coming down next day. What say we give them a free ride and you pay only for their night on the Houseboat? The trip is a great marvel, which any newcomer to these parts should experience.’

  Captain Jamieson has his head screwed the right way. Mr Hatrick himself couldn’t have done better. During winter, three more paying guests at the Houseboat is good business.

  McPhee drew his brows together at the price, but you could see the mention of a bargain opening his purse-strings somewhat. And his wife’s pleading look. But still he had to bargain for a cheaper deal, them all being children.

  Captain Jamieson wasn’t having any of that. Mr Hatrick’s river captains are proud men — not the sort you mess about with. ‘It’s a good rate as is, sir,’ he said, his smile just that bit stony now. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  Then while Mr McPhee was chewing his beard over that, my Bert put his head around the door with a problem from the kitchen. He was not dressed for serving the tables so would not enter the dining room, I was pleased to see. Times he forgets.

  ‘I’ve got that new constable in the kitchen,’ he said, ‘having a bite with the staff.’

  ‘Mercy,’ I said, ‘how did he get down here?’

  ‘Horseback. The poor beast is knackered. Mud up to his barrel, head lower than his knees.’

  Plain to see that Bert did not approve of driving a beast like that. But you have to admire man and horse who could find a way past that slip without falling into the gorge.