Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

  ‘In front of me,’ said Clive, ‘are reports filed by Cath Wyman, solicitor representing Miss Amiria Rapira and Miss Toi Rapira, by Heke Norman representing Te Rua Tapaerangi, and there’s a brief statement from Martin Henderson for Kiri Te Rina Wainoa. While I am not here to present cases, but rather to act as a facilitator, my suggestion is that I give a summary of the three documents by way of beginning discussion, if that suits everyone?’ He had a good big smile and he was doing his teeth in all directions. Rolled sleeves, a happy tie.

  ‘It’s all for user-friendliness,’ said Dion at the tea break. ‘All this too. Tea, coffee, Shrewsberry biscuits.’

  ‘In brief,’ said Clive, ‘Rua has taken exception to what he sees as poor treatment of Kiri who he claims is his daughter. He has presented evidence of fatherhood in the form of a copy of the birth certificate which names him as the father of Kiri, as well as a letter from the mother.’

  ‘A liar all her life,’ said Babs out of her duck-bum mouth, with Amiria glaring her down.

  ‘And now wishes to claim parenthood and to have custody of his daughter. The report from Cath Wyman points out that her clients, yourselves, Miss Amiria and Miss Toi, have had full care of Kiri since her birth when your mother first brought her home as a newborn baby. There’s a statement regarding the relationship of yourselves, Miss Amiria and Miss Toi, to the child, which I believe is known to you all. So …’ He put his eyes around, put his smile around, ‘so I don’t need to … Amiria and Toi have given reasons why they believe Kiri has been well cared for by them.’

  Since when? He wants to call it out but is aware of Dion’s hand on his arm.

  ‘And the interim statement from Kiri’s representative, who however has not yet had the time to make conclusive judgments, does not contradict anything that they have claimed so far.’ But that’s not the opinion of Wai, Arch, Tini, Atawhai—or anyone at home. He wants one of them to say something.

  ‘I have to emphasise that the discussion is over to you. My role is as overseer. I can help in matters of law interpretation, and I’d like you to know I have had several years’ experience in matters of custody and in meetings such as these. I’m not here to make judgments.’

  User-friendly teeth.

  Now Arch was up on his feet thanking this Clive on and on, thanking him first, then remembering this building from the old days when it was Maori Affairs and he used to come to visit his uncle who worked there. Brought eels in for his uncle’s lunch, his uncle who is still alive today.

  Life of uncle.

  History of the building’s insides, which have all been refurbished now. Refurbished, refurbished, he could tell Arch liked the sound of the word. Big noisy fans in the ceiling back then. Clive was waiting, nodding, showing user-friendly. Arch walked along the riverbanks sometimes with uncle during lunch time, this uncle chewing eel.

  Come on, Arch.

  One time the river came up and crossed the road, Arch remembers. He remembers the winter of which year, but came back at last to thanking User Friendly and getting to it, getting to it at last.

  ‘I want to talk to our nieces here.’ The two were looking down at rings. ‘We know, we know, all of us older ones here, it was you two done everything. We know that. Everything for your mother, everything for the baby she come home with. Even with your mother still alive it was you two.’

  On and on praising them up—their sick mother, their cooking, their cleaning, their life history. They could’ve done all this at home without Clive and his palmy tie. ‘Always you.’ Praising them up, all that, then at last, ‘Now we think it’s time she went to her father.’

  Babs and Amiria looked up from rings, not looking at Arch, but staring hard instead at pink walls, and at the floor that had been sanded down as far as insect tunnels.

  Hard as boards.

  Wai spoke in support of her brother. Atawhai spoke in support of his two cousins. Nothing at all was said about the burnt arm, about Kid being left like that, or about her being locked out in the dark. Tini was peering round at faces but saying nothing, there to support him but it was all half-arsed as far as he could see. Made him wild.

  ‘We see she’s happy with her father,’ Arch said, which was more like it, more like it.

  ‘We see he’s serious, able to look after her,’ Wai said. More like it, but nothing they couldn’t have said among themselves at home. ‘And we’re all here to see to it.’ OK but didn’t need to be in a place like this to tell it.

  ‘No way.’ The Sisters’ eyes were up off floorboards, away from walls and latched hard onto Wai. ‘No way.’

  ‘Her father, we all know it,’ Arch said.

  ‘A snatcher and a thief.’

  Atawhai’s hand was on his arm keeping him quiet. Dion’s mouth was by his ear shutting him up and Clive was butting in. ‘One of my roles of course is to help keep discussion on track, not that we want to prevent talk from taking place. If you think the pathway that we’re on at the moment needs further exploration then … go there by all means. I’ll just point out that allegations of abduction could be set aside from matters of custody, could be separate to final outcomes regarding Kiri.’

  ‘Given to us,’ Babs said.

  ‘Now he wants her,’ Amiria said.

  ‘Thinks he can, thinks he can …’

  ‘Your mother …’ Tini said, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Was dying,’ Amiria said. ‘And she brought the baby home to us. Kiri was given to us.’

  Given to me, given to me, but he wasn’t being allowed to say it. Atawhai was talking hard in his ear, telling him to bite his tongue, but how could he?

  ‘My nieces, my darlings …’ Tini said, which meant she was about to say something hard into the hard faces of Amiria and Babs while they all waited, waited, waited, ‘Your mother treated you the way her father treated her sisters.’

  ‘She loved us, she loved us,’ said Babs out of her round mouth while her ball of fist hammered against her chest.

  ‘She gave us everything,’ said Amiria with her teeth unclenched and her throat opening. ‘Ai-ii, Ai-ii Ai-ii,’ came off pink walls, off insect floors, off the ceiling where the fan used to toddle round and round.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Babs shouted, accusing Tini, accusing Clive, accusing them all.

  But why?

  Then Babs sagged onto the handbag and rings joining in the Aii, Aii, Aii, while Tini and Wai moved to put their arms round the two of them. Nothing about Kid, nothing at all.

  ‘I suggest,’ said Clive, ‘a break for lunch or … or … we could call it a day.’

  Waste of time. And anyway if he wasn’t allowed to say anything he might as well go home.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The mural Te Whakawhititanga o Ngarua, much to the annoyance of some of the people, had become a noticeboard. Weren’t there other walls, plain walls, that could’ve been used for the display of calendars, timetables, brochure samples, lists, budgets and rosters? And now today a big drawing had been put up which had coloured spots all over it and which covered most of the canoe and half of Ngarua.

  ‘Ah shame you know, all that painting, all that good work done by our tamariki,’ someone said. ‘And now look—Sellotape, pins. One stuck right in the bum of Maraenohonoho’s horse.’

  ‘Ugly horse anyway,’ someone else said.

  ‘Nnnn, come to that whole thing’s blimmin’ ugly.’

  ‘Paint it over after this I reckon, mmm, after all this lot comes down.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Look here, that there’s work done by our own kids.’

  ‘Had it. Scabby.’

  ‘Well, a bit flaky. Mmm, cracking up but just needs doing up that’s all, her face, her hair, all that whole door.’

  ‘Uh not if I get there first with a big paint brush.’

  ‘Look here …’

  But these were only mumbles, nothing rafter-worthy, nothing much different from what had been expressed from the time the painting was co
mpleted twenty years earlier. It was just people talking, settling themselves while waiting for Wai to start the business. Since when did they need all this paper anyway? And what was this latest sheet, taking up half the mural, all colours?

  ‘Site plan,’ someone said. ‘Stickers showing all the places that’s been booked up already.’

  ‘Aaaay?’

  ‘Well that’s something.’

  ‘All them coming here?’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s something.’

  During the meeting with PC on that Please-release-me-day, the day the hui went huri haere, Wai had picked up on some of the things that the crook relation of theirs had said about bringing in extra funds. She was a little concerned because registrations had slowed down recently and later she’d talked matters over with Maina.

  ‘See, looks like there’s a bit of resistance at the moment,’ Maina said. ‘Maybe all the hype, all the advertising about bringing people from all over the world to this part of the world so they can be the first in the world to see the Y2K sun, or dawn, or whatever, is scaring some people off.’

  Wai thought this might be true. Talk of huge crowds, inflated prices, everybody drowning, being in slow traffic, having car accidents, being mugged by yobbos at midnight could be keeping a lot of people at home.

  So they revised their plans, deciding to keep the registration prices down but to think about what they could provide on site for the holidaymakers.

  ‘Get them here first, then fleece them, you mean, like our relation told us?’ someone asked.

  ‘Well, more like, if we have the stuff for them here they won’t have to bring it themselves or keep going off somewhere else for milk, bread, whatever,’ Wai said.

  ‘Ah, so we could order in, keep it cheap, sell to them.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘We could cook.’

  ‘Put a hangi down.’

  ‘Live music. You know, get Eddie’s band along.’

  ‘Fishing contest.’

  ‘Barbecue.’

  ‘Bonfires.’

  ‘Well, ah, in that case,’ Maina said, ‘I think we need to sort out a new message.’

  The building of the toilet and shower block was now completed and all the cleaning and weed-eating and site preparation had been done. All looking good, and the least of their worries, Wai thought. There was to be food available from the refrigerated truck—milk, butter, eggs, bottled water, drinks. But also there’d be space in there where campers could keep their own supplies.

  Frozen goods, such as meat packs, packaged ice-cream and ice-blocks had already been delivered and stored in Arch and Cass’s freezer, which they’d set up under a canopy with a lead running to it from the wharenui.

  In other freezers, cut up and packed down for the hangi, were two of Archie’s pigs, mutton that had been donated by the Confederated Land Block, and chickens that a nephew had been able to get cheap from the factory where he worked. All of this didn’t leave much space for the bait packs that Rua and the kids had made up ready for the fishing competition, and they’d had to stop collecting at least until after hangi day when there’d be room again.

  Later that day stalls were to be put up for the sale of crafts, hotdogs, Amiria and Babs’s cakes and bread. The Two had been hard at it baking and freezing in case ‘fresh daily’ supplies ran out. All this made them smile and rush about, wheelying round the place in their gold-top car.

  The new Internet advertising that Maina did for them showed a picture of a full sweep of the bay with breakers coming in in loose curls onto a shadowy early morning beach, and the red-eye sun coming up out of the sea winking stripes across the water and blood-shotting the whole big sky. This is what visitors could hope to see on the first new millennium morning, that is if it didn’t rain. New information sheets made known the privacy and safety of the location, the availabilty of refrigeration, good facilities, food and meals as well as planned family activities. There would be no inflated prices.

  There hadn’t been a lot of time to get the new message out, do all the preparation and find all the help they needed for the added services they were providing that would bring in dollars. Well, Wai’s point of view was to bring in dollars. Everyone else, it seemed to her, had forgotten about fundraising and the dining room and were all buzzing about their cakes, their bonfires and hangis and fishing, and everyone having a good time.

  ‘The putea, the putea,’ she kept reminding them. ‘Of course run a good show, give them all a good time, but don’t forget what for. Dollars. We’re not doing all this for nothing.’

  Now, with Christmas Day behind them and only two days to go before the arrival of the first lot of campers, Wai was hoping they’d get through this last meeting, this nuts-and-bolts stuff, without too much time being wasted on unimportant matters. However right now an argument had sprung up about whether or not to charge campers for fridge space for their kai. The home people wouldn’t hear of it and they were stuck on that when there was so much else to be discussed.

  ‘Charging our guests for space. Space is nothing.’

  ‘And the truck cost nothing.’

  ‘Except petrol to get here. Except power to run it.’

  ‘All you ones from the city, what you need to do is come back home for a while and get your ideas straight.’

  ‘Nobody said overcharge but …’

  ‘Look here, it’s our visitors we’re talking about.’

  ‘Fine, long as they know they’re our visitors, which makes us their hosts, not their servants, running round after them for bugger all.’

  That came from big-mouth Dion who had no respect for elders, people thought. He had some support from round the room though, mainly coming from city cousins who all had funny attitudes. No aroha.

  On and on, all the usual stuff, but although Wai wanted to get on to some of the more major items she was wary of cutting anyone off, needing to keep everyone on side.

  ‘How about koha then?’ someone said. Ah, compromise. ‘Put out an ice-cream container. Those who want to give something will give, others won’t. Write “koha” on it …’

  ‘But, you know, these people coming are mostly Pakeha, Hapanihi, Merikana, Tiamana and don’t know about this koha business, don’t even know the meaning of the word.’

  ‘Well write “donation”…’

  ‘But, but, but why? Why should we compromise our language … ?’

  Usual stuff. Wai waited.

  ‘Ahh, come on man.’

  ‘Compromise our language … for Americans, for … ’

  ‘Give us a break, Cuz.’

  ‘But he’s got a point.’

  ‘Yeah, come on, give us a break. Half the morning gone and we’re stuck on refrigerated truck.’

  ‘True, kei te haere te taima.’

  ‘Let’s agree on koha,’ Wai said, taking her chance, ‘Koha, and whoever’s organising the space, whoever’s looking after the fridge truck can decide what gets written on the box. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We move on. Barbecue packs. Another hundred?’

  Nothing too rafter-worthy in all this. Ah um, from rafters, with two days to go.

  It was like watching a great and animated version of the coloured stickers, which over the previous weeks had gone up on to the site drawing in the wharenui. Caravans, trucks, camper-vans and cars of all colours, some dragging boats and trailers and loaded to the windows, made their way along the beach road, through the newly formed gateway backing in between the pegs that marked out the sites allocated to them. Out of the vehicles came people in this summer’s shorts, tees and hats, with their shades, sandals, sunblock, insect repellent and water bottles. There were kids taking up boogie boards because indeed there were waves, yesss.

  Who were they all?

  Well, while it was true that a few of the visitors were from Japan, America and Germany as the planners had mostly in mind and who they often mentioned, most were from Auckland or Wellington or som
ewhere in between. These were regular campers, some of whom had been annoyed to find that the free beach sites that they’d been going to every summer for many years were now being charged for. They got huffy about that and decided that if they were going to pay they’d pay elsewhere, and had come across this place on the Net, which looked great, sounded great and wasn’t too expensive. They had come to sus it out. Now they were here and it looked as if the advertising was all true so far. Great bay and surf, good loos and showers, cool storage for your beers and stuff.

  Tents of all shapes and sizes and colours grew, along with the additional awnings, windbreaks, umbrellas and gazebos. To furnish all of this, out of boots, back seats and from off roof racks and in no time at all, came stretchers, tables, chairs, camp stoves, chilly-bins, bowls and buckets, cartons, and lamps on poles.

  By New Year’s Eve the camp ground was full of geared-up families all looking as equally colourful and crowded as the sheet of paper in the wharenui that represented it.

  Among the arrivals were twelve-year-old Leanna and her eleven-year-old brother Max who weren’t Hapanihi, Merikana or Tiamana, but who had come up from Palmerston North. Arriving at the same time in an adjacent camp site were eleven-year-old Ryan and his eight-year-old sister Tamsin from Papakura.

  While the adults were busy unloading and setting up, these two sets of kids were sniffing at their parents for bringing them all this way, all day in the car to here, to this place, and there was nothing, not even one shop, not even one street (where they could walk up and down in their hibiscus shorts and tees and hats, their cargo pants, their Body Glove outfits).

  ‘The beach,’ their parents reminded them.

  ‘So what? So what when we’re not even allowed to go swimming,’ was the general moan.

  At the same time as they were expressing all their dissatisfactions, the three older ones in particular were eyeing each other up across camp sites and luggage making noises and speeches meant mainly for each other. ‘Faaar, when are we having tea, when are we going swimming? Gaaar.’

  ‘Later, soon. If you stopped moaning and flopping about and gave a hand for a change everything would be done a lot quicker,’ their parents said.