by Cowley, Joy
‘Do you want me to take you up the hill on the four-wheeler?’ Erueti asks. I suspect that the tap has been an excuse to keep him inside until we arrived.
‘No, no,’ says Diddy. ‘We’ll hike. We need the exercise.’
‘I don’t need exercise. Speak for yourself,’ I say and she gives me a dirty look. When I said exercise, I didn’t mean. What did she think? Last night? Oh heck, you know, you just can’t win around Diddy. I think it would be lovely for Erueti to show us around the farm but she’s determined that we walk on our own, so that’s the way it is, and as soon as we finish our tea, we are off with Diddy wearing Riparata’s Nikes and a straw hat and me carrying a bottle of water in a backpack. Donna is a practical woman. She thinks of things like water and sunblock.
I tell Diddy that the Rawiri’s old poultry farm is also now a vineyard. As a poultry farm it was never big enough to support two families and in the 1980s Erueti’s work for Dad grew from casual labour to farm manager. When old Mr Rawiri died in 1991, his Italian wife, ill with diabetes, moved to Napier. By then Dad had decided he would never get a son-in-law to take over the farm and he suggested that if Erueti and Donna wished to buy the land, he could leave most of the finance in it. After Mum died, the family were always over, looking after Dad. It was a logical step for them to sell the poultry farm when Dad went into the nursing home, and move into the house.
‘Do they still do crop-dusting?’ Diddy asks.
‘Crop what?’
‘Oh. You call it aerial topdressing. Do they have that? I notice there’s no windsock.’
‘That’s been gone for years. Just rotted and fell to bits. Topdressing changed, you know. Farmers formed a co-operative to buy bulk fertiliser. There were bigger planes coming in from the fertiliser works. Remember Uncle Jack’s Tiger Moth?’
‘It wasn’t his,’ she says. ‘It belonged to the aero club.’
‘I never did get that ride he promised.’
The grass is as we have always remembered it, summer-dry and populated with small blue butterflies that rise in front of our feet. Diddy wants to know how old grass plants get to be.
‘How do I know?’
‘You’re the horticulturalist.’
‘Was,’ I tell her. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘We probably ran barefooted over this same grass. Oh my goodness! The poplar trees! Remember when they were little itty-bitty things with shivering leaves?’ She strides ahead of me and throws her arms wide against the trunk of a poplar. ‘You know what’s tucked inside one of these trees. Your doll’s shoe. I hid it in a tiny hollow.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know. Why did we ever do anything? Oh Bea! The woolshed!’ She turns and runs like a greyhound.
I follow, aware that my jeans are ten sizes larger than hers, and we go through the small side door of the woolshed, breathing in the smells of childhood. The lower floor is all gloom and dust, racks of timber, overalls and rusted tools hanging on nails, stacks of paint cans, plastic canisters of sheep drench and dip. I put my hands over my head as we duck under some of the lower beams. There are cobwebs everywhere.
‘Look, Bea!’ Diddy is lifting up the corner of a large tarpaulin covered with sheep droppings which have fallen from the floor above. It’s a heavy canvas cover of a type I haven’t seen. Not for years and years. Underneath is the car.
‘The old Chevvy!’ Her voice is almost a whisper. ‘Oh Bea, it’s so rusted.’
‘Dad had it out under the trees. Erueti towed it in here. He thinks he might be able to restore it.’
I hold the cover up while Diddy wrenches open the door. In the dark it’s hard to see detail but the smell of it fills me with the time when cars smelled like cars and not plastic toys. We stand in silence, inhaling the oil, metal, wood, fabric, and riding memories to Foxton Beach. We arrive at that same point where she and I sat in the back seat, staring at the embers of the bonfire and wanting the world to end. She did it deliberately. I can still see the way she got out of the car and walked across the sand to Dad, her hands on her hips. I still remember her words. Does she know the extent of it? What damage she caused?
‘Great old car,’ she says. ‘I hope he gets it back on the road.’ She closes the door and we lower the cover, releasing a stream of dry sheep pellets over ourselves.
‘Shit!’ she says and then laughs, brushing her hair and shoulders.
The upper floor has changed, different shearing machines and a new wool press. The smoko room has another table and by the wall there is a freezer chest full of dog meat. The window still has a lace curtain of cobwebs. It still frames a view of sun-dry hills and a pole where a windsock once hung.
As we walk up the farm track, I ask her again about Lal. ‘Didn’t you ever think of getting married?’
She laughs. ‘I’ve told you. It’s not that kind of relationship. We have separate lives.’
‘You’re obviously very close. You live together. You work together. What does he do, exactly?’
‘He was a bookbinder,’ she says. ‘Mostly, he restored old leather volumes. He even did his own Florentine marbling for the endpapers. There was no money in it, of course. Lal is wise in most things but not where a dollar is concerned. Eventually they went broke and he came to work for me.’
‘They?’
‘His partner Byron moved to Chicago. Lal’s been with the firm nine years now. He does almost all of the measuring, the specifications. He’s very thorough. Slow, but utterly reliable. He often works with Philippa who’s our architect.’ She turns to look back at me. ‘Who else is there? Regus? He’s our flooring expert but he’s having a month off on maternity leave. That’s why Aaron and Lal were sending me up over the black marble. Then there’s Mark. He’s like Aaron, another exceptional artist but with wood. He’s a big soft guy. He walks like a bear. He did an apprenticeship in reproduction furniture but he doesn’t stop there. He can make anything. It’s in his hands. Have you noticed that? How people carry their art in their hands? It’s as though the hands are directly linked to the soul and the head is somewhere else entirely. That’s how she played.’
I shrug. ‘I missed out on those particular genes. She said I had no ear.’
‘She said the same to me.’
‘But Diddy, you played the piano beautifully.’
‘Not like her. My hands can pick music from a keyboard. The music was in her hands. She carried it around with her and when she took it to the piano, she made the piano a oneness with her. You know what I said about riding a horse? She was a centaur with that piano.’
There is something like a sadness in her face which makes me say, ‘Diddy, you could have been the same. You were brilliant. You just put your time into your art instead.’
She shakes her head. ‘I wasn’t anything near brilliant at either. Bea, I haven’t got what it takes. Originality? The creative fire in the gut? I don’t know. I was an executant artist in both music and painting, technical competence but as hollow as an Easter egg. No, no.’ She lifts her hand to stop my protest. ‘I don’t belittle my skills. I’m just pleased that I recognised what they really were, early in my career.’
‘I thought you were so gifted,’ I tell her. ‘You could do wonderful drawing and painting. You played the piano. I really, really envied you.’
‘Oh Bea! What a waste of time! I assure you, my appreciation of the arts has always far outweighed my talent.’ She laughs, then suddenly is serious. ‘I envied her, you know. I wanted so much to be like her. No, not like her. To actually be her. But then that wasn’t entirely about music.’
I nod and wait for more. It doesn’t come. I think we both feel. Like coming to the edge of the deep river. One more step and you get swept away in the current you knew once and now avoid at all. So you turn away. At all costs.
‘There’s a good view from here,’ I remind her.
We stop on the track while she takes off her cotton jacket and ties it around her waist. Then she changes her regular glasses for
the ones with the tinting lenses. Below us we can see the farm out to the road, spread like a stage set. I imagine the actors, four people going back and forth, speeded up like a fast film. She is in her Sacred Heart uniform, running down the drive ahead of me to the school bus and I am screaming at her to wait. I was always yelling that. Diddy, Diddy, wait for me. Dad is on the same drive, walking, hobbling, running. Did he yell too, when he saw her lying near the gate? Yes, there are changes, but our ghosts are still everywhere. It’s not the dead that make ghosts. It’s the living.
‘You know her piano is in my spare bedroom?’
‘You haven’t sold it?’ she says, surprised.
‘I haven’t sold anything. I couldn’t. Not until you.’ I start walking again. ‘Do you want it?’
‘A grand piano?’ She laughs. ‘I’ll need an extra suitcase.’
‘Diddy, I’m serious. Do you want the piano?’
‘Seriously, no,’ she says. ‘Even if I did spend the earth to ship it and even if I did destroy half the apartment to get it in, it’s old. It’s past its use-by date. There’s a limit to the cost of sentiment, Bea.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’
She smiles. I can’t see her eyes but her mouth twists up at the corners. ‘Sentiment is not a good reason for doing anything. That’s why I couldn’t go to his Rosary the other night. You were upset. I was spaced out with travel. I failed to make an adequate explanation. It was everything to do with a personal freedom which is very important to me. You know, I have to let go of some things. I suffer from some kind of emotional claustrophobia. I always have.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I can’t stand all that old stuff. It drives me crazy.’
I stop right there on the path. ‘Don’t knock it, Diddy.’
‘Look, I’m not knocking it.’
‘I love what you call old stuff. It’s me. It’s my life. It’s.’ My voice always betrays me. It swims off in tears, for no good reason, and I turn away from her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know how you feel. Please, can we talk about this without getting into an argument?’
I nod and she walks a few steps towards to me. For a moment we look down the slope ridged with grass and sheep tracks, then, with a quick movement, she sits down at the edge of the track. She pats the space beside her. I wipe my nose and hear myself sigh. I hate sitting on the ground. It takes so long to get down and even longer to get up again.
‘I didn’t say thank you for yesterday,’ she says. ‘There is something. I felt it. I remembered. But God, Diddy, it’s so top heavy, buried under a ton of ball and chain. Politics, politics. It’s all that old boys’ business that I can’t stand.’
‘The Rosary isn’t old boys’ business.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘How can you say that? Mary is more powerful than the Pope. Just about the entire spiritual experience of the church is feminine.’
‘We weren’t talking about spiritual experience,’ she says. ‘We were talking about structure and an old-boys’ club which diminishes women.’
‘Well, yes, I know, Diddy. But then they have to have that.’
‘They don’t have to have it. Women have been lobbying for change for twenty-five years and where has it got them?’
I shake my head. ‘Take the structure away from the church and what would be left for the men? Women are lucky, Bea. We are. Spiritual things come so naturally. Men have to work really hard to get. You know, it’s like scaffolding. Their rational processes. Take it away and their faith falls down.’
‘Ha-tiddly-ha,’ she says.
‘I think women are kind of liquid. We just flow around the structure and it doesn’t bother. We fill in the gaps.’
She snorts. ‘We fill in the gaps! That’s a good description of the role of women. No vote. No authority, not even over their own bodies. For crying out loud, Bea. Having celibates rule on sexual function is like having teetotallers judging brands of whisky.’
‘All right, Diddy! We’ve all heard it. It’s an old drum. I mean, it’s not the most important.’ I lie back on the path and clasp my hands under my head, aware that at any moment she’s going to start a tirade about four centuries of witch hunts. ‘I have to admit I’ve always been a bit of a failure. You know, as a feminist. I can’t help feeling sorry for the men. They’ve got so lost somehow in this women’s movement.’
‘Because their roles are defined by the subservience of females.’
‘That’s not what I was going to say. I know there have been extremes. Injustices. But they cut both ways. How do we know it’s all men? Just because some women say so? I value freedom too, and it’s never been men. They’ve never stopped me. If there’s ever been an enemy, it’s been another woman.’
She is quiet. I wonder if she thinks I am referring to her. I wasn’t. But I can’t find a way to say so without her thinking I was. I go on, ‘Men are so different. They have this sense of duty and chivalry. They are so protective of women. Suddenly, all that honour has become a crime. It must be like a mother having her baby attack her.’
Diddy is still seated, her back to me, that same stiff posture that Mum used to get. She turns, resting back on one arm, shaking her head. ‘Do you realise how strange this sounds to me? None of the men I know conform to this image you have of their gender. You are not describing men, Bea. You’re describing the fabricated models put forward by religion for no other reason than patriarchal control.’
‘No. No, I’m not. It’s not a religious or cultural thing. Men are different. They think differently. And they have this problem. Poor things, they are so fixated on the size and shape of their. You know. They’re all convinced they’re abnormal.’
‘Oh nonsense,’ says Diddy.
‘They do. If women had to think about their sexual organs as much as men, we’d all have –’
‘Tunnel vision?’ suggests Diddy.
‘I was going to say nervous breakdowns. Seriously, Diddy, I think men have a hard time. And don’t laugh. I wasn’t trying to be funny. Men do their best to understand women but women make no attempt.’ I stop because she is bowing towards me, pretending to play a violin. I feel a small sense of satisfaction. When we were children, she always did this sort of thing when she was losing an argument.
At the top of the hill, we stand against the sky, arms spread to catch a breeze so small and new that it barely ruffles our hair. Diddy looks down to the river and beyond, the mountain range which puckers the horizon. ‘I don’t remember this,’ she says. ‘I always thought it was much bigger. The river. The ranges. I guess it’s been nearly forty years.’
‘Since what?’
‘Since I last stood here.’ She removes her glasses and squints into the sun. ‘When I came home there was never time for gallivanting around the farm. Dad wanted me to come up on the back of the motorbike once. That was – oh, I can’t remember. I wish I had.’ She points. ‘What’s that?’ She puts her glasses back on.
It takes me a while to see it. A sheep near the bottom of the hill, lying against a fence.
‘Is it dead?’ she asks.
It answers her question by kicking. We see the legs and body jerk, the head lift and fall back on the ground. ‘No, just cast,’ I say unnecessarily. ‘We’ll tell Erueti.’
‘All it needs is for someone to roll it over on its feet,’ she says, starting down the hill.
My legs ache. I don’t want to go all the way down there for a big lump of fatty mutton. ‘He’ll come up on the four-wheeler. He’ll attend to it. Diddy?’
‘Come on,’ she calls. ‘I can’t do it by myself.’
We lose the breeze and walk into the oven of midday sun. The track is harder downhill. Our shoes slip in the dry dirt and scuff dust over our jeans. A flock of sheep, spread across the hillside, stare at us and then run away, rear ends bobbing, dags rattling like castanets. The noise alarms the ewe lying against the fence. She kicks and bleats blah-blah sounds.
As we get c
loser, we realise that she’s been there for some time. The grass has been worn away by her kicking and there’s a spinach-coloured morass of droppings by her tail. She rolls her eyes at us, terrified.
‘How are we going to do this?’ says Diddy.
It isn’t easy. The animal’s back is downhill, pressed hard against the fence and we have to avoid her flailing hooves. We edge our way in, feeling the heavy heat of her wool, our nostrils full of the sharp smell of her fear. Her legs flail uselessly and she twists her neck, trying to see what we are doing. Blah-blah-blah.
Eventually we are wedged between her and the fence, her body pressed against our legs, the barbed wire at our backsides as we bend over. We take a grip on her wool and heave. Blah-blah.
‘Further down!’ I tell Diddy. ‘Let’s get our hands under her.’
We try again and this time we roll the ewe upright. She’s heavy, a dead weight against us. She doesn’t know what to do with her legs. Just as I think that maybe she’s too far gone, she kicks her feet, somehow gets them positioned, and stands up. We watch her limp down the hill to the river.
‘I’ll bet she’s got a thirst,’ I say.
Diddy brushes the legs of her pants and then puts her hands to her face. She sniffs, grimaces. ‘I used to hate the lambing beat. I didn’t mind the lambs but the process of acquiring them always seemed so messy and barbaric.’
The old ewe is now in the shade of the willows, drinking from a shallow ditch at the edge of the river. We turn and begin the journey up the hill. On the steeper parts I push my knees with my hands to make them work. Even Diddy stops regularly to admire the view.
‘The hardest thing,’ I say, ‘was not having children. I wanted. A big family. Six or seven.’
‘Bea! No!’
‘Yes. I did. I couldn’t. My tubes. They were blocked. Must have been. An infection. In those days. There was no.’ I stop and straighten my back. ‘Nothing they could do.’