The three older children did their best to ignore her, pretending they didn’t know what she was on about.
‘Run for it,’ she yelled, cracking into her brother who gave her an unfriendly shove. ‘Lovers,’ she tried again, then she shut her mouth. Her father had her by the arm and he was shushing her. There was something here she wasn’t getting quite right.
Amiria and Babs saw the remaining people on to the home track then returned to the house to find out what it was that Tamsin’s father was shutting her up about. What they saw was Kid asleep, Rua asleep, the door open, all the windows half falling out and that silly Jase stretched out there on the floor. They hurried after their friends and thought no more about it, not until weeks later when they realised how it could seem, what they could make of it all.
When Rua and Kid woke the sun was shining. They went out to sit by the creek in the steaming grass while they waited for Jase to get up. The rain had not been enough to get the creek moving and the banks were high and dry. After a while they decided to wake Jase so they could all go home. There was work to do, there was plenty to talk about and he was eager to have a good look at the boat they’d acquired.
Rua lifted the sheet off Jase. He’d seen this before, knew his cousin wasn’t dead but knew he wouldn’t be able to wake him, knew that he could die. He sent Kiri for help to carry Jase home.
It took some weeks, but Jase did get to float his version of these events beamwards.
Chapter Thirty-two
Because of all else that happened, the hangi that had been planned to come up just after midday wasn’t ready until evening. This didn’t matter and turned out for the better since campers were only beginning to get themselves up for their first cups of coffee by midday.
Early in the morning, at fire lighting time, there were only the older men and a couple of teenagers at the site arranging the wood and the stones in a pile above the hangi pit. The men were just about to light the fire when Bones, Eva, Moana and Dion came out of the bush all hyped up and with a story to tell.
So the men postponed the lighting of the fire while the young ones went with Archie to lift his boat off its trailer, hitch the trailer to the station wagon and take it up river to the ramp to wait for Jackson, Joeboy and this new boat.
When they arrived back they could see that they needn’t be in a hurry to get the hangi down, so they went to shower and change and have breakfast. They had returned to the site and were again about to light the fire when Kiri came telling them something they were all too busy to listen to at first. ‘Rua wants you. You got to come and carry Uncle Jase.’
‘What’s that, Baby, you want to mind away.’
‘Someone got to help Rua.’
‘We all busy, Girl.’
‘Rua, my Dad.’
‘Where’s he?’
‘Up the bush?’
‘What doing?’
‘Bringing Uncle Jase.’
‘All right Girl, you better mind away.’
‘Dead.’ She thought it might be true, knew it would catch an ear.
‘What you say?’
‘Dead, Uncle Jase.’
‘Who said dead?’
‘Nobody.’
Everything came to a halt again. The boys went running along and up into the trees while Arch went to ring Atawhai and to let people know what might’ve happened. People left what they were doing and hurried along to the bottom of the track to wait.
This could be it, the end of all this camping business.
Over.
Jase.
Soon afterwards Atawhai arrived, hurrying up the track to meet the men coming down.
‘Out to it,’ Rua said to Atawhai. ‘Can’t bring him round.’ Atawhai took a look at Jase then came back out of the trees to where there was enough signal for him to be able to phone for the helicopter.
The fire was eventually lit in the afternoon. This was after Tini and Cass, who had accompanied Jase to hospital, had rung back to say he had recovered consciousness and was going to be all right.
Campers were all up and about by then—swimming, fishing, off sightseeing—or just hanging about taking photos of the sweaty men, the fire, the white-hot stones, their dinner in food baskets going down on top of the stones, the covers going on and the whole lot being damped down, dirt being piled over everything to keep the steam in. Well I’ll be darned.
Though there was no first-hand camper input, everyone’s version of everything got to the rafters eventually.
Chapter Thirty-three
It was a long two weeks. There was all that was going on in the planned game as well as the drama going on round the sidelines. Host energies were stretched, especially as after the first week their numbers dwindled, some people returning to their other homes and their other work. Jackson and Joeboy left on business but said they’d return for the clean-up and the party. Atawhai had made sure that nephews Brad and Horomona had really gone back to Australia this time. Information that he’d given to the Ministry of Fisheries was likely to lead to the bust of a significant cray smuggling racket and he’d managed to do that without having the good boat taken away or any of his relatives implicated. So far.
There was Jase in hospital, making a recovery then coming home.
They saw the last of the visitors off, thankful that that part of the business was over. Now they’d have a break before talking about how they were going to get Dining Room Two Thousand up and running.
Amiria and Babs were the only ones with tears in their eyes as they said their goodbyes to visitors. They had notebooks full of names, addresses and phone numbers from all over the country, all over the world. America.
They had invitations to call, to visit, to come and stay, and they were going to do it too they promised their friends and promised themselves. They were going to save their money, go on holiday, make their way north, go south maybe. Go to America. After everyone had gone they began to fill the hole left in their days and their lives by writing letters and sending off cards.
The clean-up and the party were hardly over before Amiria and Babs began lobbying among members of the whanau to have the campers back the following year, but there was little enthusiasm for the idea. From some quarters there was downright opposition.
‘No way,’ Wai said. ‘It was a oncer. We got our money, that’s it.’
The Two couldn’t understand Wai. This was an opportunity to put their little settlement, their end of the beach and, most importantly, their side of the inlet, on the map. This place of theirs was full of history that people all over the world were interested in. Why not share it?
They had ideas, too, for additional activities that they knew would interest visitors, such as guided tours, bush treks and boating activities. There could be social evenings with disco, karaoke or live bands. Although there’d been a few nick-nack stalls this time, these could be extended to stalls for more traditional crafts—along with demonstrations of carving and weaving. Another idea was to get some of the young girls to dress in piupiu, bodice and tipare and be available to have photographs taken with tourists. These tourists would then have something of the genuine culture to take home with them. There could be tee shirts with a picture of the meeting house on them, and calendars depicting the bay at sunrise.
Well, it seemed some people just weren’t interested in progress, Babs and Amiria sniffed, but they didn’t give up. They took the trouble to speak to some of the business people round town, and found that the local garage and bottle store were keen on it all happening again. Other proprietors were not quite so enthusiastic since they felt they’d had potential custom taken away by food stalls and all that underpricing. Amiria and Babs were selective as to what information they used to support their case.
Most of the letters that they sent out to new friends went unanswered, though they did receive a handful of notes and cards sending thanks and good wishes. Once or twice a photograph of themselves slipped from an envelope, sometimes accompanied by a request
for bookings for next summer. They felt abandoned on the whole, but anyway they armed themselves with these requests and took them to wave under Wai’s nose in an effort to persuade her.
‘Forget it,’ Wai said. ‘We got a building to put up.’
‘Look here,’ they argued, ‘we got these new loos and showers, good camp sites. What use are they?’
‘For our own families coming back for holidays,’ Wai said. ‘Then they won’t have to camp on our front lawns, won’t have to squeeze into our houses and we won’t have to look after them because they’ll look after themselves. We won’t have to collect their rubbish, clean their loos and showers, feed them. Holidays can be for holidays.’
Wai was hopeless.
In among all of this Babs and Amiria hadn’t lost sight of other important matters which they were waiting to hear from their lawyer about. When Cath Wyman eventually called them to meet with her, they found that it was with the intention of persuading them not to take their custody application to court. Cath thought it unlikely that they would win considering there seemed no doubt that Rua was the child’s father, and that he had an agreement from the mother regarding him having custody. And though a full report from Martin Henderson, who was acting for Kiri, showed that either party was capable of caring for her, it did show that Kiri was happier with her father and strongly preferred to be with him. It was also the case that Rua had full support of other family members including elders.
‘So,’ Cath Wyman said, ‘unless there’s anything further that you think might strengthen your case, I wouldn’t advise that you continue. You’d be much better off with an out-of-court agreement. That way something can be drawn up between yourselves and the father that could give you some access, depending on what you can all work out.’
This treacherous lawyer in whom they had put trust, with whom they were on first-name terms, and to whom they had brought peanut brownies on more than one occasion, had given up on them, just like that.
Abandoned.
Again.
But The Two wouldn’t give up that easily of course, being far too hard-boiled for that.
‘What do you mean by “anything further”?’ Amiria asked.
‘It would have to be evidence of neglect on the part of the father, or something serious to do with the father’s behaviour, doubt about his suitability, skeletons in closets,’ Cath said.
Well, if it was neglect that she wanted to know about, bad behaviour she was interested in, or suitability, skeletons in closets, The Two knew they could come up with plenty. Plenty, if they put their minds to it.
It was enough to cause twitches even among old, hard-bitten beams once the rafters got wind of it.
Chapter Thirty-four
He was about to go to bed after a day of laying concrete for the new building when Heke Norman rang. It was work that he could do now that his hands and arms were free—a day working with others, hard work with men that he’d enjoyed.
Taku and Shania and half a limb.
It had taken him long enough to be ready for the half limb, long enough to need the missing piece, long enough to be able to do without the ghost bit, the fish-shaped gap with its shadowy flap and knobs and its moving shadow parts, but now he was glad.
‘Thought I’d better give you a ring,’ Heke Norman said.
There are same-age cousins who are too close to you ever to be brothers and sisters. Older brothers and sisters have grown more than what you have, younger ones have grown less, neither have ever grown the same—which means you can never be equal.
But your same-age cousins are joined by the shoulders to you, and have same-age thoughts and understandings. There are strings that loop from head to head of you, heart to heart, and you realise that it would be possible to fall into their skins and be them.
Between your same-age cousins and you, you have languages. There is one that grows word by word in all of you at once—ah and ga, ma and ta, ha and haa, wha and far, kaa and car. The other is a secret language, which is secret only because others don’t know of it. It has no words, or it has ghosts of words, mists of ideas that creep into all of you at one time. There are same-age eyes seeing from a same level and time, and memories storing on same-age shelves. The same tides run through all.
Born together doesn’t mean you die together.
It had taken time for him to be willing to interrupt ghosts, to allow himself to detach himself from the space about his shoulders, the space below the knee, the gone people and the chopped-off piece. He’d spent all those months expecting someone to do something about Kid when he now realised he should’ve been the one to do it, but he’d had an attachment to a space which had allowed some part of him to keep on being a child himself, or at least had stopped him from being a father.
The cove, a physical life, minder of people’s fish? He’d thought living alone was the right thing then, that surviving on his own freed him and was proof that he stood on his own … what? Ha … Bullshit. Hiding himself from himself.
Kid.
He thought of her stalking him, her spider eyes watching him and the boiled arm forcing him.
Also he thought of Maina, the fire times, and the night of the party when there’d been no need of fires, when Archie had been hunched over his uke, racing it, one twist of sweaty hair loose and swinging on his forehead, knees jumping and feet going toe to heel. Songs creaking out of Arch, out of his satchmo, with Amiria and Atawhai on guitars, starting in on the golden oldies as Maina came in with her family.
There’d been a move forward to bring the family in, a stir and a whoop as the singing continued and they came in shifting their hips, their arms, their hands and their eyes: Kei te awhi to tinana, Aue Aue, E te tau tahuri mai, all of them with rocks of teeth. Hani had led the family in their round of greetings, While you sleep, The spirit goes walkabout, And the heart, Goes on pumping.
After they’d been round people had made room on the long forms for them while the guitars were moved on to Jase and Joeboy. He’d gone across to sit with them and held little bits of conversation with her in among songs, not fire and candle conversations but talking mainly about Kid who at that time was out playing on the marae in the dark with her cousins. She had come in not long afterwards to sit with him.
In a while Eva and Moana had come in carrying flowers and packages, one of which looked like a giraffe wrapped in red paper.
‘We got some formalities,’ Wai had announced. ‘Before you all get off your faces we got some thank-yous.’ In among all the woos and hoos she’d given a brief account of progress of plans for Wharekai Two Thousand and then had presented the lampstand, the flowers and the CDs to Maina for her and her family. Everyone had got up to support Wai’s song, those who’d gone to sit outside coming back in to sing, joining in the actions—something else he could do now that he hadn’t been able to do for some years.
Hani, taking his turn to speak, didn’t look like someone who’d been sick, with his big head and shoulders, his even-coloured skin, his eyes lit and black. At the end of the speech they’d had to wait for his song while he retuned the guitar, wired it the way he liked it, loose and tinny, on the edge of off-key, on the edge of out, pick and pick, jangle, then singing big and scratchy.
Maina’s turn. She’d spoken briefly, given her thanks then taken the guitar and passed it to her son, waiting while he tightened it up again. Wide face, like her father’s, hard hair pulled back in a big clip—hair hard, that twisted hard and trapped your fingers, her eyes a dark weed colour with a flick of fish. Chunks of earrings and a sleeveless dress that could’ve been blue or black, breasts flattened by the cloth of it and pulling against the front buttons. Big arms as she leaned, the armholes of the dress cutting in against her underarms, the dress draping loose from the top, down over the fatty rest of her. The voice, starting from a deep place, came loose and caught him, had him pulling his breath in, pumping his chest to make room for his heart. They’d kept her there a long time, and finally let her go, bowing
, laughing, big spread arms coming down.
Later she’d told him and others around them that she had a trip coming up, in a week, to Taiwan, then would be home in time to do bookings for another group who were going to Japan.
A-hula a-hula a-hula to the ten guitars, Englebert was a cuzzie bro if only he knew it.
‘Lucky you, lucky you.’
A-haka a-haka a-haka to the ten guitars. A-boog it a-boog it a-boog it to the ten guitars, until it was time for her to go, time to get the old man and his pacemaker home.
‘You could stay,’ he’d said. ‘I could take you home, tomorrow, whenever,’ making room for his heart.
So she’d gone to tell her family she was staying, and Hani had gone off with the others laughing and calling out, ‘Look after my daughter, all youse. Have another one of these shindigs when the roof goes on.’
They’d gone home leaving Kid asleep in the wharenui with Tini, Moana and her cousins.
He’d been looking forward to the work again the next day when they’d be taking away boxing, maybe starting on frames, but now here was Heke Norman on the phone saying he needed to see him urgently.
‘Something’s come up. Bring a couple of the aunties or uncles,’ he said.
‘Can’t be that bad.’
‘Bring them,’ he said.
‘What I’ve got here,’ Heke Norman said, ‘is notes from Amiria and Toi’s lawyer regarding what The Two are saying, that is, what they intend going to court with. We need to go through it. They’re now putting less emphasis on who has the right to be Kiri’s main caregiver and are concentrating on suitability. In other words they want to bring a case that will show what they believe is Rua’s unsuitability to be a father.’
‘There’s the report from Martin …’
‘They want to dig dirt, go in for a bit of character assassination … Here, I’ve summarised. We’ll go through … The first here is to do with ah, drugs, the second to do with what they’re calling theft or intended theft.’
Dogside Story Page 21