‘They’re sisters, I can tell you that,’ she reports. ‘All three horse-faced, all tall as men. And old. I swear you can hear the oldest one’s bones rattle when she walks. Little speckled eyes like a lizard, the old one — no wonder the Kingi kids are scared. And you can forget about your neighbourly chat.’ Vera shakes her greasy locks back and forth. ‘Goodness knows I’ve tried. The middle old lady — I’m guessing middle here, but that’s the way I read it — doesn’t seem quite right. Sits on the back porch in a chair, even on a wet day, taking not a blind bit of notice of anything or anyone. I saw a couple of George Kingi’s pig dogs tearing strips off each other, terrible racket, right under her nose on their back lawn. She didn’t turn a hair. Nor thank me when I put the boot into them.’
‘Go on!’ says Bull or whoever else might be listening. Everyone is interested in the old ladies and it’s frustrating to know so little.
The McAnenys drove in to Manawa five months ago in a black and shiny Austin Princess. The same day, a furniture van arrived, and most of the locals found a reason to pass by and size up the good oak furniture and the upright piano that went into the old house behind the macrocarpas. Bull had known Smiley Goodyear, who owned the place for years — a hunter and a recluse who died in the back bedroom, unmissed for three weeks, leaving no family that anyone knew of. The house stayed empty, like half of Manawa’s houses, till the old sisters arrived.
No one has discovered yet that the middle McAneny sister — the one on the back porch — is officially a Goodyear. Delia McAneny married Bert Goodyear, a butcher’s assistant, in 1939. After a few months of marriage — not a Good Year at all — her husband joined up and sailed for the war, where he died, blown up by his own side, leaving his wife with two hundred pounds’ worth of debts and no children. Delia Goodyear, a failure on all fronts, slipped back between her sisters and faded away. She never knew that her husband had possessed a brother, Smiley, until a lawyer tracked her down and handed her the deeds of the house in Manawa.
‘We will move to Manawa,’ announced Miss Munroe McAneny, the oldest sister. The others agreed as they always did. Roe McAneny, at ninety years old, treats Delia (seventy-nine) and Aureole (seventy-eight) as somewhat wayward children. A righteous and sternly ordered life — in other words, a life according to the rules of Roe McAneny — is, in her eyes, the only path to salvation. Roe prefers her sisters to call her Miss Roe, as a sign of her seniority in all matters. Mostly they comply.
The prospect of a move to Manawa was the most exciting event in a decade. The street in Auckland where the sisters — and their parents before them — had lived all their lives had gone downhill. Twice louts had lobbed stones through their porch windows. Their elderly neighbour had been attacked and robbed and left bleeding. They were frightened. The quiet little settlement of Manawa, close to the mountain, seemed a safe and a fitting place for the last of the McAnenys to end their days.
Aureole swings down the road past the magpies. She covers the ground all right, her thin shanks sliding under the silk, but the gait is angular, disjointed, as if some frames of the movie of her have been cut out. On the back porch, she flourishes her scarlet flowers in front of the dozing Delia.
‘Look!’ she says with a misty smile. ‘Poppies for the fallen brave!’
Her sister opens her eyes but doesn’t look.
‘And one for Mr Goodyear,’ says Aureole, ‘though are poppies right for the Second War?’ She is in a chatty mood today. ‘Of course it would be the wrong season in Gallipoli,’ she adds. ‘Why do we have poppies for Anzac, Delia, do you think?’
Delia doesn’t comment.
Aureole turns to go inside, then stops with a little cry. Her foot is poised over the carcass of a rabbit. It is skinned and gutted, the flesh firm and pink, and laid on a piece of newspaper. Clearly an offering.
‘Delia! A rabbit! Who brought it?’
Delia is no help at all. Aureole bears everything inside. First she arranges the poppies in a silver vase. The silver and the polished mahogany of the table gleam faintly in the light from the one cracked and rotting window. She calls down the dark passageway.
‘Miss Roe! Miss Roe, come and see!’
For a moment there is silence. Aureole waits. First her sister must gather the strength to rise, then she must rock back and forth to gain momentum, then she will lever herself, frail hands braced against the arms of the chair, until the knees and hip joints are in a position to take over. Once upright, Roe McAneny will breathe a few times waiting for the pain in the hips to subside, before creaking down the passage, ready to take control of whatever situation has arisen.
She inspects the carcass. Smells it.
‘A rabbit,’ she says. Roe McAneny makes pronouncements rather than conversation. ‘Cook it,’ she adds.
‘But who can have brought a rabbit? We don’t know anything about it.’ Aureole is excited. The poppies and the rabbit. Two events in one day.
‘It will do,’ says Roe. ‘Pot roast with herbs.’
She takes up her stick and proceeds outside. Aureole follows. Roe stabs with her stick in the long grass, showing Aureole which herbs to pick. In the past someone has had a good vegetable garden here. Sage and thyme bushes, woody but aromatic still, fight it out with wild mint, parsnips — all head and no root — feathery dill and its twin, the poisonous hemlock. It is important to get it right.
A young man is digging in the garden next door. He raises his spade in a cheerful salute. Roe turns away, tapping Aureole with her stick to remind her of the work in hand.
Back inside, Aureole dares to speak out. ‘It might have been him! Miss Roe! That young man might have brought us the rabbit!’
‘He did,’ says Roe, pursing her lips tightly.
‘Oh, Miss Roe! We should thank him. He looks friendly enough.’
But Roe has turned her back and is rattling her way down the passage towards her chair in the front room.
A few minutes later there is a stamping of boots on the back porch and a smart rap on the door. Aureole gasps as the young man comes in, grinning and casual as if he belonged.
‘Hi! I’m Donny. Would you like spuds to go with the rabbit? Mine have gone wild all over the place.’ He lays a handful of muddy potatoes in the sink.
‘Thank you,’ says Aureole faintly. She keeps hold of the kitchen knife.
The young man is dark, maybe Maori. His body — there is a lot of it showing — is well muscled. Stubble darkens a strong jaw.
‘Whoo hoo, that smells good!’ The young man steps forward and Aureole, really alarmed now, backs away. His presence seems to fill the whole kitchen. She looks down at his curly mop of hair as he bends to sniff the chopped herbs. Perhaps Miss Roe will hear and come?
‘Would you put those with the rabbit?’ asks the man. ‘To be honest I’m not a great cook, and Nightshade …’ He turns to look out the open door towards his own place, suddenly caught, it seems, by some other thought.
‘Would you show me how?’ he asks after a pause.
‘I don’t …’ says Aureole.
Delia comes in from the porch. Sits at the kitchen table without a word. There is a moment’s silence as the man looks at the sisters, back and forth. His eyes ask a question.
‘She’s not well,’ says Aureole.
‘Oh,’ says the man. He smiles at Aureole. ‘I’m sorry.’ He seems to be waiting for something.
‘Thank you for the rabbit,’ says Aureole. She puts down the knife. Clears her throat.
The man leans back against the table, apparently ready to chat. ‘I’ve been away a bit,’ he says, looking at the floor, ‘but I’m back now. Did you hear about me?’
Aureole shakes her head.
He seems relieved. ‘Okay. Anyway, we’re neighbours and we should be friends, right?’
Aureole nods. ‘Yes.’
From across the back fence comes a torrent of angry abuse, and then a baby’s cry. Donny goes to the door; looks out; turns back. He’s breathing heavily. ‘Pans
y is living with me for a while,’ he says. ‘We had a baby.’
‘Oh,’ says Aureole, ‘how lovely.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, if you’ve got work around the place I’d be glad to do it. Cheap rates. Eh?’ His smile is anxious.
‘Well,’ says Aureole, ‘I’d have to ask …’
But Roe is already there, standing grim in the doorway. She taps her stick. Even the cocky ease of the young man wilts. He nods at Roe, straightens and makes for the door.
‘Let us know, anyway. I’m quite strong.’ He stops and grins at the frail old lady from the safety of the back porch. ‘My name’s Donny Mac. Well, that’s what they call me. My real name is Donald Munroe McAneny.’ He steps into his gumboots and stomps off.
The McAneny sisters, stock still, listen as his whistle travels down the drive, out on to the road and in at the next gate.
‘Miss Roe!’ says Aureole at last. ‘Did you hear that!’
‘He’s taken my name.’ Roe’s tone suggests theft.
‘But we must be related! We must be!’ Aureole’s downy faded skin is flushed with excitement.
‘There is no point in getting excited.’ But Roe’s stick, tapping the floorboards, is as agitated as Aureole’s hands. ‘We know full well that we are the last of the McAnenys.’
Delia turns her head to look at them both. She hasn’t spoken for a month.
‘It seems we may have been mistaken,’ she says.
Next morning, Donny Mac is summoned by an excited Aureole to the dark house behind the macrocarpas. They sit in the front room. No one speaks until Delia has poured tea and offered shortbread. There is an unusual light in the eyes of all three sisters as they watch Donny Mac sip.
Aureole speaks. ‘We would like to employ you to make repairs to the house, but first my sister would like to ask you about your background.’
Donny Mac sighs. He scratches his head. ‘Yeah? References, you mean?’
‘Family background.’
‘Yeah? Look … did someone say …? I got in a bit of trouble but it wasn’t …’
Roe clears her throat and stirs in her chair. Donny’s words tail away. Everyone waits.
‘Who gave you your name?’ she asks.
‘Donny Mac?’
‘Munroe McAneny.’
‘Munroe? It’s just a family name. I’ve got a cousin Munroe, and my granddad was Munroe.’
The sisters draw breath.
‘How can it be?’ whispers Aureole. The tears are flowing already.
‘Munroe McAneny,’ says Roe, ‘this is important. Where are you from?’
‘Well,’ says Munroe, with some pride, ‘on my mother’s side I’m Ngai Tahu, though I’ve also got—’
‘Your father’s side.’
‘What is all this? I don’t get it.’
‘My name,’ says Roe, her lizard’s eyes glaring, ‘is Munroe McAneny too.’
‘Whoo hoo!’ murmurs Donny Mac.
There is silence in the room. Aureole dabs at her eyes; Delia is watching Donny closely. Suddenly the boy jumps up, goes to the window and looks into the macrocarpas as if the answer is in their tangled branches.
‘I reckon! Yeah! I reckon … you’re my great-aunts!’ He frowns for a moment, thinking. ‘Or maybe great-great?’
‘We are the last of our line,’ says Roe. She has said it many, many times.
‘Like smoke! You had two older brothers, right?’
Aureole’s tears flow harder. She flaps a hand towards the photograph of the uniformed young men. ‘Poor dear Munroe and brother Harry! Killed in the war.’
Donny turns from the window. ‘No! No, they weren’t! Munroe was my great-grandfather. Granddad McAneny told me the story.’
He stops in his telling. One big hand turns upward and he looks at the palm, perhaps seeing something in it. ‘Granddad used to talk to me,’ he says, as if remembering a wonder. ‘He owned the place over there where I live now. He told me stories.’ Now it is Donny Mac who has tears in his eyes. ‘He took me hunting and told me all sorts of things.’
Roe clears her throat again. Her voice threatens. ‘His name was Munroe McAneny?’
‘Yeah. His dad, another Munroe McAneny — the one in that photo, I guess — went to the war all right, with his brother. Both got wounded, one trying to rescue the other. They were good mates, those two young fellers. After a while in hospital they got better and were sent back, Granddad said. Back to the war. Back to the trenches. Granddad said it was cold and muddy and your toes rotted off and there were rats as well as all the shooting. The worst kind of life. Then his dad got wounded again. Both of them! Or gassed or something and sent home for a break. That’s when the brothers deserted together. Ran off to Australia.’
The shock dries Aureole’s tears. ‘They deserted?’
‘That’s what Granddad said. Their family back in New Zealand — your family — decided to forget them. Why would they do that?’
Donny looks at the three sisters. ‘Granddad’s dad came back here but your family wouldn’t speak to him. He was a good bloke, Granddad said. Not to be ashamed of. Then he married a Catholic. That was worse than death to the McAnenys, Granddad said.’
‘Oh!’ cries Aureole again. She glances nervously at Roe, whose flinty eyes glare at the big boy.
Donny is into his stride now, indignant over his family’s treatment. ‘Any letters they sent home to tell the family they were okay and married never got a reply. Someone posted their letters back unopened.’
Roe begins to slap the arm of her chair as if she is beating the story back into oblivion.
‘Roe!’ cries Aureole. ‘Did you know? That they deserted?’
Roe won’t look at her sisters. ‘They died,’ she says. ‘They were dead. I was given the Munroe name in the dead one’s place. Our father bestowed on me the name.’
‘Oh shame, Miss Roe! You knew! All these years!’
Roe McAneny faces her sisters. In her rigid back, her stony eyes, clenched old hands, there is no sign of repentance. ‘They were deserters. Shameful. Dead to the McAneny name.’
But here is her young namesake, his broad shoulders and strong arms solid in their room full of old furniture and memories. A big, simple boy telling a story that won’t be put back into any box or photograph.
There is silence again.
Aureole doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘All those wreaths! Every year I laid one. Every year. Oh, Munroe! Oh, Harry!’ It is difficult to relinquish her dead heroes.
But Delia has no difficulty. For the second time in two days, she speaks.
‘They were right to desert. Poor boys. And what about your father, Donny Mac? Our great-nephew? Where is he?’
Donny hangs his head. He doesn’t want to tell the story of coming here to Manawa with his parents when he was eleven. How his mother and father disappeared after only a week, leaving a note for Granddad which the old man never showed to him. The boy has not heard of them since.
‘He shot through,’ he mumbles. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘Well then,’ says Delia, recognising, perhaps, the hurt. Another McAneny disowned, forgotten. ‘And now we have a baby in the family. Have you named him?’
‘Nightshade — Pansy — doesn’t want a name yet. She’s …’ Donny sighs. ‘I guess you hear her.’
Aureole’s hands flutter around her shoulders. She would like to hug the big solemn boy but doesn’t know how. ‘Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. She’s very sad, isn’t she? The mother. Or is it angry? Can we help?’
Roe looks sharply at her younger sister. ‘Aureole, we are too old to help. We have no experience in such things. Be sensible, if you please.’
But Donny Mac seizes on the offer. ‘Maybe … maybe one day when I go to work, I could bring him over here? He cries and Pansy gets angry and then he cries more. All he wants is a feed. But she just gets mad at him. And I’m not there to stop it …’ His voice fades away. The women are too daunting. Especially the old one.
Roe wi
ll not look at him, is not ready to acknowledge the great-grandson of a deserter. ‘We cannot help,’ she says, her eyes fixed on a point above his head.
But here is Delia, speaking again. ‘Nonsense, Roe,’ she says. ‘Nonsense.’
A small cry escapes from Aureole; she’s thrilled and amazed at this subversive statement.
‘Great-great-nephew Donny McAneny,’ Delia continues, her rusty voice distant as an echo, but firm, ‘we will try to help the baby. Our old arms can surely hold a bottle, rock a child. Surely. For an hour or two. Bring him tomorrow and we will see.’
Donny’s granddad’s first memory was of fire — great swirling flames tearing across a dark sky, the thick rolling smoke, and shouts and running feet. Donny loved his granddad’s stories, but this one always frightened him for the haunted look in his granddad’s eye when he spoke of that fire, the memory of it still burning, still a horror.
‘I wouldn’t of been five — maybe three or four, Donny. We lived close to the mill, see, where my dad worked. Just around the corner from here, near the railway. The whole mill went up — the shed, the stacks of timber, the trash. Then the bloody wind drove the fire down the row of workers’ houses — ours included — and on to the shops. That terror has stayed with me till this day — couldn’t find Ma and Pa, couldn’t breathe, screams and shouts outside somewhere. And the explosions! Like a war it was, like guns going off. I found Ma and Pa in the kitchen. Pa huddled in a corner with his arms over his head, Ma tugging at him to get up. Jesus, I howled to see the two of them. It was the war, see, that done that to him — put that fear into his head. He could never stand loud bangs or even a bit of a barney between two men. Pa had to have a quiet life or he went kind of crazy.’
Donny’s granddad sucked in his cheeks, then coughed, the rumble of it shaking his whole skinny body. ‘That fire! You wouldn’t want to know, boy.’
Manny Mac, Donny’s beloved granddad, was born in Manawa in 1922 when the town was still a bustling, lively place — a town hall, post office, three general stores, several boarding houses, two drinking clubs, a school, a champion rugby club, not to mention hockey and even a jazz band. And in the general area eight mills logging the red totara and pale beech, the dark tough matai and the beautiful rimu — all woods in great demand for weatherboard and joinery and flooring and fencing — and the blond kahikatea useful only for boxes or burning. Once the timber was cut and milled and loaded onto railway wagons, the trash was burned off and the rich volcanic soil laid bare for farming. Oh yes, in those early days Manawa was an energetic, rowdy kind of a place, known for its Saturday dances and its fierce rivalry with Ohakune.
Heartland Page 5