‘With her cousin at Moana’s,’ he said. ‘We got to talk about her, about us … all this business … ’
‘Our lawyer’s all geared up,’ Babs said. ‘All we got to do is give her the word and there’ll be abduction charges. If it hadn’t been for Wai …’
‘No need for it.’
‘So that means you’re bringing her back then?’
‘Ah, no, not what I meant.’
‘Well?’
‘Look, Wai must’ve said …’
‘You, her father? You’re a little liar, Rua.’ Babs was whipping up dip, scraping cream cheese and yoghurt out of their containers into the kitchen whiz with a spatula, turning the machine on then sliding chopped peppers and onions off the board and into it with her ringed fingers.
‘And a thief, just wanting something that doesn’t belong to you and no business of yours.’ Amiria was spooning savoury filling into bread cases.
There was something he wasn’t understanding here and he was now regretting he’d decided not to bring Arch and Wai with him. Liar and thief? They must know, laying out celery and carrot sticks, pulling apart a difficult plastic packet to tumble chippies into a bowl, that he wasn’t lying.
‘Look I don’t know … I come to tell you I got a lawyer. I come to tell you I’ve gone for custody too, but we don’t need … look here we can sort it.’ He was grateful now that he’d taken Dion’s advice because there was something funny going on. Why would they think he’d make up something like that? He made himself keep calm. ‘We could ring Ani Wainoa,’ he said.
‘Who is a liar and cracked in the head,’ Babs said.
‘Look, look, we can sort it.’
‘Yes, easy. Bring her back here.’
‘Look … look I’m her father and she’s staying with me. You go to court, you lose.’
‘She belongs to us. She was given to us. It’s in our mother’s will. You’re the one needs sorting.’
‘She’s not earrings,’ he said, which was all he could think of saying just then. He could feel his voice rising which was not what he wanted to happen. ‘Not earrings to be dished out like when someone dies. She’s a … daughter, my daughter.’
Amiria pulled down the oven door, shoved the trays of savouries in, banged the door shut and began clawing the trimmed crusts off the cutting board and into the scrap bucket for Archie’s pigs. The dips and platters were away in the fridge, dirty dishes in the sink and Babs was washing the table down in large swoops with a wet cloth.
‘And, and it’s not right for her, arguing, scrapping over her,’ he said, ‘We can sort it.’
‘Up to you.’
‘Otherwise, all out of our hands. We got no say if the court decides.’
‘You don’t want a scrap you know what to do.’
Worse than he thought.
‘Ring Ani Wainoa,’ Wai said when he told her about his conversation with Babs and Amiria. ‘Get her father’s number from Directory—Lance Wainoa. She keeps in touch with him, or used to.’
So he was given the number by Directory Service and when he rang it Lance Wainoa was able to give him the number in Norway. He listened to the call going through knowing Ani Wainoa could lie to him.
What Ani told him was that she’d named him as father on the registration form and that his name was on the birth certificate. ‘I found it more difficult to tell lies when filling out a form,’ she said. ‘I was going to enter Stefan down as the father but didn’t know his last name, and anyway all we’d ever done together was ride bumper cars. I could’ve put “unknown” but didn’t think of it.’
She told him about Harald whom she’d met in Auckland and fallen in love with. ‘We journeyed to his homeland on this other side of the world,’ she said. ‘I’ll never return to Aotearoa because I love it here so much. I adore this salted land, the black mountains and the deep cold water that is too mysterious for me to ever step into. I love the snow and the dark winters and the way people make light. I love not knowing the time of day. The sun in summer chases itself in a little circle, just like Toss going after fleas on his tail, and there’s all the rush and excitement to be outside when the sun comes. I’m in a story here. This is my story now and I shall never return, but you are my true sibling, my utmost companion and friend deep in my heart. You would be welcome here if you would like to come and bring my niece with you.’
Her niece? He thought of Ani Wainoa ten years earlier, imagined her in a dark room in a white dress filling out the form in her perfect handwriting—Wainoa, comma, Ani. Tapaerangi, comma, Te Rua. After she’d gone there’d been something missing in the water, echoing spaces in the cove, something gone from in the trees.
Some months after she left her father she had rung Wai to say she’d gone to Auckland to meet up with Stefan. He hadn’t heard much after that except that she’d married—Harald, not Stefan—and gone to live in Norway. That much had turned out to be true.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Kid.
Her face came round the door as he woke. Black candle eyes and spider lashes.
‘School,’ she said, damp hair clipped back with hearts and diamonds.
‘Up already?’ Her lips parted, showing the tips of her teeth and her shoulders went up until her neck disappeared.
‘You better get your leg on,’ she said.
He hopped about getting what he needed, went to the bathroom and when he came out she had their cups and plates on the table, the Weetbix box on the bench and was making toast. Didn’t take much looking after for sure. Kutu was out whispering in the porch.
Clothes, shoes, clips for her hair, a lunchbox and pens but didn’t know about books or money. ‘Go down Aunty Moana’s and ask Georgie what else you need,’ he said when they’d eaten.
‘A note,’ she said. ‘Got to have a note for being away.’
Well, he didn’t know what the teachers had been told about her absence from school and thought he’d go along to Moana’s with her to see if he could find out.
Then he decided he would drop Kid and the others off at school on his way to Turanganui so he could call in and explain her absence to the teacher, find out if there was anything she needed. He could see Kid was pleased that he was taking her to school, maybe because she liked to ride in the car but maybe because she liked having a father who could take her.
‘Get a copy of the birth certificate,’ Heke Norman said, ‘and I’ll get your Aunts’ lawyer to talk them out of laying the abduction charges. If you’re the father as you say, and as the mother says, then maybe it won’t be a problem … but it would be good to have a letter from the mother too, agreeing that you should have custody. I’ll leave that to you. We don’t want this getting to the main court. If you can’t sort it between you we’ll try family conference first, where people are brought together with their respective lawyers and whanau support. We’ll try and talk things through, try to come to an out-of-court agreement. Family conference works pretty well, especially if there’s no deep animosity. Do you think The Aunties’ll come round?’
‘I think so. Not too worried. My girl wants to stay with me, and others support it, so … ’
‘I’ll get things moving. You get the letter from the mother and we’ll see if we can arrange a session before Christmas.’
He left the lawyer’s office and drove through a city that was preparing to make its mark on the new millennium. Couldn’t be bothered with it. Also couldn’t be bothered with lawyers, family conferences or any of that and believed Amiria and Babs would give up once they understood they had no one on side. They’d have to, especially once they knew about the birth certificate—unless Ani Wainoa was lying, but he didn’t think so. After all, they didn’t really want Kid. It wasn’t as though they showed any love for her. So what … Why?
As he drove past DEKA he thought of Maina who’d left there now, but wondered how it would be if he called in to see her at her father’s place. The turn-off was only a couple of streets away—someone to talk to about
all this. Or it could just be an excuse to see her, wet pup stuff?
He passed the turn-off thinking that he needed to sort his head out himself, find a place in his head, like a water place, a place of suspension where he could begin to pick his way along looking for what was missing in his discussions with Amiria and Babs who had called him a liar and a thief. He could think of her if he wanted to for a while, but mainly he had to be a father and sort out about Kid. It’s what he’d decided and what he was going to concentrate on once he’d dealt with one other matter, and that was just to get it into someone’s ear about the cray pots.
When he walked into the tent where all the workers were having lunch he saw that Maina was there sitting up the far end drinking tea with Cass, and though people kept doing what they were doing the voices quietened as he went in because of what they knew, because of what the trees had told on the morning that Cass had come to pick up Maina.
Her father was sitting just inside the tent flap tipping his head back laughing down past his tonsils at something he and Arch had been talking about.
No crays on the lunch table.
He went to greet Hani Silver, bending so they could press their noses together.
‘See there, Son,’ Archie said, ‘you couldn’t a done that without your bionic, not without falling in his lap.’
‘True, it’s true,’ he said.
‘Come on show us then, give us a demo,’ Hani said.
So he pulled up his pants leg and did a knees bend and waewae takahia, ‘And see that Matua,’ he said, ‘no toe-jam.’
‘That’s a fact,’ Hani Silver said.
‘No go for kina prickles, no stone bruises.’
‘True, no prickles, no bruises, ah.’
‘Raupa.’
‘No raupa, true.’
‘Plastic fantastic,’ Arch said with a great deal of pride.
Making his way round the inside of the tent, he stopped to greet two cousins who hadn’t been there the day before when he arrived. It was hot away from the open side, and now as he came nearer to where Maina was sitting with Cass everything was getting quieter because they were all waiting, watching him.
‘So it was you started all this, all this Y2K stuff?’ he called to her, needing to say something to break it all up as he went towards her.
‘Blame me, blame me.’ She stood and they hugged each other quickly while the noise and talk got back to normal. Bones brought him a fresh bowl of food as he sat down at the table opposite Maina and Cass. No crays.
‘How is she, little Kiri? The arm?’
‘Healed up. A few scars, but going to fade they reckon.’
‘And tell us,’ Cass said, ‘you been to your lawyer. I was telling Maina.’
So he told about his morning. ‘Heke wants us to do some more talking to The Aunties. Got it in for me those two, but we don’t want it to go to court.’
Maina stood up to go and refill her own and Cass’s cups. Eyes were on her, on him, but people were beginning to move, pick up their dishes, swing their legs over the long forms they were sitting on.
‘I want youse all to know,’ Hani Silver said for them all to hear, turning on his chair so that he could see everyone. Those sitting at the tables turned their heads towards the big voice. The ones on the move, scraping dishes or standing at the tubs, stopped talking, stopped rattling and kept their ears open, uh oh, here’s a go.
‘Want youse to know it’s not me. Not me stopping them.’
Maina, who was turning away from the tea urn with the cups, stopped and put them on a nearby table, sat and propped her elbows, resting her head on the tips of her fingers getting her face out of the way.
The old man was patting his heart. Here’s a go.
‘Nothing to do with this here, this here ticker, why she stops with me, why she give up her job, all that. If we want her to be a nun we send her to a convent, ne? Just because she give that relation of yours …’
‘Ha, have a go Hani.’
‘… that relation of yours the shove …’
‘She did true enough.’
‘Don’t mean she got to be a nun.’
‘A fact, Hani Silver.’
‘So why not? She don’t have to stop with me, no reason, free any time she likes. Or he can come down our place anytime. There’s a home there for him and his daughter anytime, else the works gets rusty, ne?’
‘True, it’s true.’
As Hani went on the heat was getting up through his neck and into his head and he wanted to be in water striking out for the deep, knew the old man wasn’t really joking. Maina had stopped leaning, wasn’t sure what to do but he could see she wanted to put an end to it.
‘Come on, come on, I’m offering …’ Hani went on.
‘Well Dad you see, there’s others … could be …’ Maina said.
‘Offering my daughter …’
‘Or there will be, should be, for sure. I mean …’
‘Not interested,’ he stood and said to save her, but also because he meant it. It popped clear out of water, clear out of his mouth and clean into silence.
Silence, when there should’ve been noise. Should’ve been five-ups, ten-ups and noise but there was something wrong. He realised they’d got him wrong, thought he meant he wasn’t interested in her, like throwing the old man’s words back at him and insulting his daughter.
‘I mean … I mean … in them,’ he said, ‘not interested in those … those whoever … those other, or whatever.’ His heart was knocking and he wasn’t saying it too good but they got it right this time and there was hee yoo, yoo hee, ha, ha, banging on the tables. You said it, slapping themselves, trestles crashing, faaar out. Up fives and tens.
‘He’s like that,’ she said as he walked back with her to her car, Hani following behind them with Cass and Archie. ‘You never know what he’ll come out with. Just one of those types … doesn’t hold back. But I was always happy living with him. When I was a kid, and when my kids were kids those were the best times. The rest? All full of mistakes and bad decisions.’
He didn’t say anything. He’d told her all he wanted her to know, a way having come for him to do it in front of everybody without it being all wet pup stuff, without it hanging anything on her.
‘Don’t trust myself any more,’ she said. ‘And for you … I mean … Also there are things I need to do, always wanted to do, just me. I reckon it’s time.’
He wanted her to know it was all right. ‘Me too,’ he said.
Arch and Cass stood with him watching the car as it went along the road and turned the corner, then they all began making their way back to the paddocks where the work was going on.
‘Couldn’t help it,’ Cass was saying. ‘Couldn’t help knowing. The two of you come out of the trees that other morning lit up like birthday candles.’
‘Where’s all the crays?’ he asked.
‘Out in the rocks and weed getting fat, you think?’ Arch said.
Cass said, ‘What crays?’
‘Two pots set out in the cove yesterday. Both full. Tried to get to them but too deep, too heavy. I couldn’t …’
Arch stopped in his tracks, then turned, swearing mouthfuls, heading for a telephone to ring Atawhai.
Chapter Twenty-eight
He half listened as Clive Redding pointed out, in the pink room where stacker chairs had been arranged in a part circle to keep them all in eye contact with each other, the reasons for a family conference such as this.
‘Opportunity for discussion so that hopefully the parties come to a satisfactory point of agreement where arrangements can be made in the best interests of the child, or children, as the case may be,’ Clive said.
Waste of time.
Clive was small and brushy. He had thick, standing-up hair which was white specked with black like seagull shit; clumps of black eyebrows; eyes close together like a flounder with a good-sized honk in between. Fit and tanned, a serious boaty in his spare time most likely. Get on with it, Clive.
Amiria and Babs were wearing their best outfits, Amiria in her dark clothes, good shark’s teeth hanging from her ears and a new curly hair-do; Babs done up pink, the colour of walls, gold bells on chains hanging from her ears and the same curly hair-do as her sister. There were rows of rings on the thin fingers of Amiria and the tube fingers of Babs, and these fingers were clutched over tops of handbags as though they clung to the tops of walls.
All adding up to serious. Ready for a fight. But why?
Wai, Arch, Tini and the rest of them were all togged up too, though not quite so wedding-looking as Amiria and Babs. Party, party. They were there to support him, so why were Babs and Amiria keeping all this up when they could see the support he was getting, when they’d been told by Arch and Wai to let Kid go. Why let it all go this far?
‘It’s about families owning decisions.’
You already said that, Clive.
But serious. He wished he’d worn better clothes, hoped he looked serious enough in his tee shirt and jeans, but then this wasn’t a court they kept being reminded. It was them as a family sorting it out themselves, but they were all having trouble getting used to the idea that it was in their own hands for now.
‘About power remaining with the families, keeping in mind the best interest of the family member under discussion. In this case the concern is the custody of Kiri. We need to bear in mind at all times the best possible outcome for the child.’
All that, all that, but they could’ve sorted this out at home. And even if they did have to go to court Heke Norman didn’t see a problem, not with evidence so far.
‘It depends what else comes out,’ Heke had been careful to say, but what else was there?
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