‘So you do know something about it?’ Chris asked.
‘Ah, that was a sneaky way of finding out.’
Chris didn’t deny it but I couldn’t be bothered telling him off anymore.
‘OK,’ I said. I hesitated briefly and then went on. ‘If you really need to know so badly then yes, I was a Catholic but now I’m not. I finished with the Church when I was fifteen. Happy?’
I sounded so sure, so definite. I believed it myself.
Chris nodded. ‘I’ve never been religious,’ he said. ‘I think it’s good if people can agree on things as basic and as critical as that, especially if they’re going to be close friends.’
‘Is that what you think we could be?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d like us to be.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Just don’t called me a lapsed Catholic, or anything else. I don’t like being pigeonholed.’
‘People always pigeonhole,’ agreed Chris. ‘Like, I didn’t play much sport so I got labelled as gay.’
‘You know what’s it’s like to be different,’ I agreed.
‘We’re the same,’ said Chris.
‘The same,’ I said. ‘But different.’
Belonging
By that stage it was already mid afternoon and we hadn’t gone terribly far along the track. We packed up the remains of our lunch, had another drink and a few more warm kisses before continuing upwards. On the
way we passed a plantation of pine trees growing thickly down one side of the hill.
‘Yuck,’ I said. ‘Why couldn’t they have planted natives?’
Chris said, ‘We’re not natives either.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re part Irish,’ he said.
‘And a tiny little bit Scots and Polish,’ I added.
‘And I’m part ancient Greek,’ he said.
‘And completely mad,’ I said, as kindly as I could.
‘It all depends on what you feel you are,’ he said.
‘To tell the truth, I’ve never really thought about it that way,’ I said. ‘I mean, I know I’ve got connections in Ireland, not that Dad talks - or my Gran ever talked - much about them, but I was born here so . . .’
‘So, do you feel at home here?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you?’ I countered.
‘No,’ he said. ‘For years I’ve always thought that when I was old enough I was going to leave New Zealand.’
‘And go where?’
‘Europe,’ he said. ‘Greece. Italy. England.’
‘Everyone does that,’ I said. ‘The Overseas
Experience. The big OE.’
‘Yes, that’s true, but I had something more permanent in mind. Those places are where the history is and where I want to be.’
‘There’s history here too,’ I pointed out. ‘These
hills have been here for millions of years. The Maori
gave them names before the Europeans ever did.’
‘It’s not my history,’ said Chris. ‘Not yours either.’
If you thought about it long enough it almost
sounded like a roundabout invitation. One that made my heart beat faster without having to slog uphill. Even though I didn’t necessarily agree with him about whose history was whose, Chris had suddenly made me think about the future. Instead of treading water as I’d been doing lately I wondered if I might have started swimming for some distant shoreline.
‘But since we were born here,’ I persisted, contrary as ever, ‘then this has to be part of our history. Part of us.’
‘A small part,’ Chris conceded.
‘As big a part as you let it be,’ I argued, but maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t belong here. Maybe the differences I’d always felt were the reasons why not. Maybe I could never belong here. Go to Ireland when you get the chance and discover your past, Gran had suggested to me. Go to Rome. See The Creation of Adam for yourself.
‘Look,’ I said, pointing to a board we’d come to. I read the notice: ‘These pine trees are the first stage in a hundred year project to re-establish native bush. See,’ I said, ‘the pines will all be gone one day.’
‘We won’t be around to see the results,’ Chris said. ‘Unless you plan to live to be a hundred and . . . how old are you now Andrea?’
‘Seventeen, next week,’ I said.
‘I’m eighteen in September,’ said Chris. ‘No-one gets to be one hundred and seventeen, or eighteen.’
And for some perverse reason I said, ‘But I’m planning to live forever.
Extracts from Chris’s notebook
On the drive home Andrea invited me for her birthday
next week. She told me what day it was on. March 17. St Patrick’s Day. I should have guessed!
There was going to be a St Pat’s party at the home of a family friend, somewhere out in the countryside. Andrea jokingly referred to it as her birthday party, one they have every year in her honour.
Dear Andrea,
I was a bit pissed off with dad tonight. I mentioned that you had invited me to your ‘birthday party’. He said he’d been thinking about us. He described you as ‘that girl you’re going out with.’ I reminded him you had a name. And that we’d only been out the once!
Anyway, what it boils down to is that he’s just a bit worried. You know what parents are like. And in my case he’s the only parent and I’m the only progeny so he worries more than most. ‘This is a big year for you,’ he said. ‘Don’t be distracted. You’ve got plenty of time. Lots more fish in the sea.’ All the usual stuff parents say I suppose.
He’s always had big ambitions for me, that’s true, but I’ve had them for myself as well. He’s always said I should keep my options open. But I can’t see how spending time with you will change any of that. That’s what I told him.
I don’t think he believed me but so what? I’m not going to let his opinions bother me.
Part Three: The Glorious Mysteries
STRANGE MEETING
‘I never really disliked him you know. Not until . . .’
‘Best not to talk about it,’ says Chris.
‘But because of him . . . ’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘It can’t be swept under the carpet. That day you told me, I felt like I could have chopped you up into little pieces and carried your head home.’
‘Like what happened to poor old Pentheus in The Bacchae?’
‘Exactly like him.’
‘I remember you took it calmly. Wisely.’
I have to change the subject.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So what next? Will you go back, study some more?’
‘Maybe. I’m feeling drained right now. Jaded. But I will, probably, eventually. If I do a PhD I’ll start it in New Zealand. Dunedin, perhaps.’
I nod.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘I can read you like a book though. It’s all over your face.’
‘Well, is it a life?’
‘I don’t live in the past,’ Chris insists. ‘I never have. Not completely. And besides, your past is just as important to you as mine is to me.’
‘Ah, but it’s not the same thing intirely,’ I say, putting on a mock Irish accent. ‘Mine’s personal, family history stuff. Yours is . . . well, different. I don’t mean it’s less important, to you, it’s just that you can never have as much stake in it, the same passion.’
‘Who says?’
‘Well, can you?’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘But where’s the point in arguing about it?’
‘Arguing? Who’s arguing? This is a debate. I used to enjoy them at school.’
I think: this was, still is, the crux. We will never be able to completely understand each other. Some-times being different is not enough.
Chris allows himself a grin. ‘You and I did have some passions in common. The candle vigil, remember? I think it was the first time I really got passionate ab
out something other than the ancient world.’
‘What about Chloe and Daphnis?’ I ask him. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?’
‘Daphnis and Chloe,’ he agrees. ‘But it was on a different level entirely.’
Dreams
I had weird dreams. Maybe it was because of eating too much pizza too quickly. Or perhaps I slept restlessly because I’d stupidly forgotten to take sun block on the walk and my pale Irish skin got burnt as a result. Anyway, I dreamt Chris and I were still kissing passionately in amongst the tussock when Becs suddenly came strolling by. I was really surprised to see her because I knew she hardly ever chose to walk anywhere and so I guessed that she had followed us on purpose to spy. She had a wicked gleam in her eye and, as Chris and I rolled apart, she pulled her statuette of Priapus from her jeans pocket and waved it under our noses. ‘What’s his like?’ she said. ‘Come on, you can tell me.’
I woke up in a sweat, panicking like on the night
Gran had died. Unlike then, I must have gone back to sleep almost immediately because next Gran herself appeared in my dream, running up the track like a well-oiled athlete. She was waving something but she was still too far away for me to see what it was.
As she came closer we heard her shouting, yelling at Becs to leave us alone. Becs took one look at the thing Gran was waving and hared off in the opposite direction.
‘Gran!’ I said. ‘Thank goodness you came.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ she said. ‘Thank God.’
And then I saw she was brandishing her rosary beads, warding off evil. She made Chris and me kneel beside her and pray. ‘The first glorious and colourful turning point,’ she intoned. ‘The first mystery of human attraction.’
And then she faded away, as she had when she died, raging against the dying of the light and I woke up a second time, in tears.
Dance party
It wasn’t really a dance party, not in the proper sense. It was a party, and there was dancing, and it was loud and energetic and some of the people there were probably high on the dark stuff, but it was on St Patrick’s Day, my birthday, and there was an Irish bash.
Now, there’s Irish and there’s Oyrish. The first is the real thing, the other is the equivalent of green beer and plastic leprechauns. Most of the stuff that happens on St Pat’s Day falls into the second category but my family has always celebrated the day, not in any flash nightclub or synthetic Irish bar, but in a genuine Irish couple’s house, twenty minutes out of the city, in the middle of green-belt. How
appropriate.
They were friends of my parents from way back and each year they invited us, and many others, to join them in marking the day. They put up a marquee on their back lawn and because they were musicians, they played for us.
Old sentimental songs, the sort Gran had loved. Old rebel songs, my personal favourite. Modern Irish folk. Modern Irish folk-rock. The works.
We’d all crash there for the night, in sleeping bags in the big tent.
I loved the party although as a really small child I hadn’t been allowed to go. Mum and Dad abandoned me the evening of my birthday, after having also celebrated it in style I hasten to add, leaving me at home with Gran.
I wondered whether Gran would have wanted to be there rather than babysitting me so I asked her but she shook her head vigorously, took out her rosary beads and put on a CD of the Pope chanting the various Mysteries, perhaps in the hope of getting me to sleep quickly!
Much as I loved Gran, you can see that I was glad - overjoyed! - when I was finally old enough to celebrate St Patrick’s Day properly.
‘You won’t want me there,’ Chris said when I invited him. ‘I’d just be an impostor.’
‘Don’t tell me what I want!’
‘Sorry. I forgot.’
‘Stop forgetting that you can’t read my mind. You’re just trying to get out of it. You’ll be with me, that’ll be enough to make you an honorary Irishman for the night.’
‘I’m no good at dancing,’ he said. ‘Any sort of
dancing.’
‘That’s the only sort we dance.’
‘And I’m not a connoisseur of Irish stout.’
‘Neither am I,’ I said.
‘I won’t have to do anything will I?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Get up and sing or tell a story or anything like that?’
‘Oh yes. Everyone has to tell a story and sing. You won’t be able to get away with not doing either of those.’
‘Then I’d rather stay home.’
‘I was kidding Chris. Read my lips. KIDDING.’
‘I hoped you were,’ said Chris.
It was dusk and little solar lamps were starting to light up the lawn as we walked over to the marquee.
‘Stop a second,’ he said.
We paused in the middle of the lawn, letting the olds get on ahead. A spotlight from the big tent fell on us like a radiant beam from the Happy-Forever-After place.
‘Happy Birthday,’ Chris said, handing me a small package.
‘What is it?’
‘A birthday present of course. Open it and see.’
I opened the gift-wrapped square. Opened the greenstone-coloured box. Not rosary beads please I said to myself remembering, with a sense of shock and loss, the sapphire present Gran had once given me.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, picking up the hook-shaped bone pendant.
‘I was thinking about our conversation on the hills,’ Chris said. ‘About you being part Irish, Scots
and Polish and me being part ancient Greek,’- (‘Mad’, I said again) - ‘but you were right too, I realised, we do live in New Zealand so what better thing than a Maori pendant to unite us. Remember where we started.’
‘But we’re not Maori,’ I said.
‘It’s symbolic,’ he said.
‘And what do you mean ‘started?’
‘Everyone has to start somewhere,’ he explained. ‘You said you were going to live forever. Well, you can’t.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s why we have to do as much as we can of what’s important to us in the time we’ve got,’ said Chris. ‘Go places, see things, live.’
‘We?’ I said.
‘Anybody,’ he said. ‘That’s what I meant. I wasn’t assuming anything.’
‘I don’t think I would have minded if you’d assumed this time,’ I said. ‘Meant us.’
‘Us then,’ he said. ‘You contrary individual.’
‘It’d be nice if we were able to do lots of things together,’ I said. Then I grinned. ‘Like dance,’ and I grabbed his arm and started hauling him over to where the big tent puffed in the wind, from where we could already hear guitars, drums, mandolins and fiddles beginning to colour the night air.
Lord of the dance
The dancing was wild and free. I know I also felt wild, exultant and free. I hoped Chris experienced the same vitality. We certainly let ourselves go. Drained ourselves of energy and then discovered it had magically renewed itself.
What we had been, what we were, what we
might become were all, that St Patrick’s night, mixed up together in a delicious brew that was as intoxicating as liquor.
I had turned seventeen, at last I was in love and anything could happen.
Overheard
I had to make a dash for the loo and when I came back to the marquee I saw that Mum, Dad and two of their long time friends, Kristy MacGowan and her partner Shane Moore, had come outside as well and were sitting at a table together.
‘Enjoying yourself Andrea?’ Dad asked.
I nodded and smiled.
‘Haven’t seen much of you. Why don’t you come and talk to us instead of hobnobbing the whole night long with that boy of yours?’
‘Leave her alone,’ said Mum.
I wasn’t bothered. I knew Dad was only kidding.
‘We’ve got lots to talk about,’ I said. ‘When we’re not dancing. And your conversatio
n wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. Sorry. See youse later.’
I went back inside, pausing however, just inside the tent, nosey to know what they were talking about. Chris and me, maybe? But no, nothing as riveting as that. I wasn’t absolutely sure but I worked out it was religion, of all things.
‘It’s a load of shite,’ Shane said. ‘We gave up years ago. Can’t think why the two of you haven’t.’
Kristy said, ‘Leave them be, they can do what they like.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Shane. ‘But didn’t you tell us your Andrea’s left?’
‘She has,’ I heard Mum say.
‘Sensible young thing,’ Shane commented.
‘She has to find her own way,’ Dad said. ‘That’s what we all had to do.’
‘You should meet some of the women in my group,’ said Mum, to Kristy I assumed. ‘Real powerhouses and most of them over sixty. I’m one of the youngest.’
‘I wish more people would actually take notice of them,’ said Kristy. ‘Trouble is, no one does. They might as well be hiding underground for all the impact they have.’
‘Don’t you go having second thoughts,’ said Shane. ‘A mid-life conversion.’
‘Re-conversion,’ said Kristy.
‘I think the impact’s going to come from individual conviction,’ said Mum. ‘That’s where it’s going to count.’
‘Take it to the streets,’ said Shane. ‘If you want anything to happen, that’s where to do it. Man, you guys used to be so good at that.’
‘There are ways and there are ways,’ said Dad.
‘Come along to a meeting,’ said Mum.
‘Maybe I will,’ said Kristy, defiantly I thought.
Shane grunted. ‘I’ll get us another drink,’ he said.
As I heard him get up I vanished back into the marquee.
The Tower of the Winds
We stayed in our dusky corner of the tent. The dancing continued. Mum and Dad were back in the thick of it. It was getting late, or early, depending on how you looked at it.
‘Still enjoying it?’ I asked Chris.
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