At the End of Darwin Road

by Fiona Kidman

  And she introduced me to books and writers I would not have thought of reading — Simone de Beauvoir, some of the nineteenth-century French and Russian novelists, a smattering of New Zealand books, a broad spectrum of good modern fiction. I became more adventurous, trying some of the more contemporary French writers; the youthful hedonism of life in the South of France in Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse was seductive, and I was dazzled by Colette and her accounts of tough but vulnerable women who could have lived anywhere, but happened to live in Paris. It must have been about then that I encountered Duras, although my first clear memory of her work is in the screenplay of Hiroshima Mon Amour, which came later. Before long I was discussing the works of all these writers with borrowers, and recommending them.

  I had found my place. I was in love with library work, books, new ideas, the very building itself, with its long, low, lemony-coloured interior and huge French doors opening out on to a flower-filled balcony. And although my grey suit had been a selling point, Kit didn’t expect her staff to look like frumps. Most of us had our clothes made to order and these were the subject of interest to borrowers, especially when two of us introduced ‘sack’ dresses to the Rotorua fashion scene. It was just as well I had fallen so instantly in love with the job, otherwise it might all have finished abruptly. Before I left the garage, it had been arranged that Maureen and I would travel around the South Island with my parents for ten days, followed by Maureen and me going to stay with her aunt in Auckland for a long weekend. This plan had emerged after Maureen suggested she and I travel to Fiji for a holiday together. My parents were appalled, saying that I was far too young and, besides, they wanted us to go south as a family. Eventually, Maureen was included in this trip and the bookings made. Kit agreed to my taking this holiday when she employed me.

  In the late spring of 1957, the four of us toured by bus and train, stopping at Milford Sound, Te Anau, Lake Ohau and Queenstown, all remote and relatively unpopulated places then. I knew my father was dubious about Maureen coming, but things appeared to go smoothly. I thought it a lovely holiday and I was happy that everyone had got along so well. My father had other ideas.

  The morning after we came home, as I was repacking to go off to Auckland, he told me in no uncertain terms how unkind I had been to him while we were away, that I had hardly spoken to him, and had gone off with my friend on trips that didn’t include him. He had had a miserable time. I was devastated. Suddenly I erupted and told him I was leaving, that he needn’t expect me to come back from Auckland. I was sick of his criticism, sick of not having a telephone, sick of not being allowed to listen to the hit parade once a week, sick of being stuck in places without adequate transport. My mother stood by, tearfully begging and pleading with me not to do this.

  I was still fairly resolute when I left. I spent the first morning in Auckland looking at advertisements for places to rent, quickly realising that all my savings had gone on the holiday and that without a job it was going to be difficult. So I looked, too, at the jobs vacant columns without seeing anything I felt qualified to do. On Saturday night, Maureen and I went to a dance in the city, then on Sunday, wandered about without much direction. I was terrible company. The only bright spot came when we were about to step off a bus in Onehunga, as a group of black American sailors were waiting to get on. When we appeared in the doorway, they fell to their knees in the street and began singing ‘Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes’, exactly as people do in corny musicals. It was a funny moment, and I could see how American sailors got around girls so easily. There was an element of this experience in my novel Paddy’s Puzzle, when a young girl falls in love with a black Marine in wartime Auckland. Our sailors climbed onto the bus and leaned out of the windows, waving to us.

  I had wondered if Maureen’s aunt might put me up until I found somewhere to stay, but she wasn’t keen. Maureen had to go back to work the next day. She didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about because I hadn’t told her the reason for the quarrel, not wanting to hurt her feelings. It wasn’t hard to work out that my father had wanted me all to himself and resented her coming on the holiday. As far as she was concerned, too, it had been a great trip, and she thought she and my father had got along fine. Eventually she pointed out that as I had such a good new job in Rotorua, it would be a pity to lose it. She suggested that I go back and, perhaps, stay with her family for a while, until I found some accommodation in the town.

  I finished up going back with her, deciding to return to the Hannah’s Bay house to tell my mother what I planned to do. I found the atmosphere very subdued, but some changes had occurred. My father was clearly desperately sorry, and I think that, had I left, my mother might well have done too. We agreed to put our differences behind us and try again. Things were never happy again in the way they had been in Waipu, but the changes were permanent, and although we often disagreed, my father and I never quarrelled openly again. There were times when he was a surprising ally. From that time on, we began to exist as three adults in the house, and I think I was better disposed towards living my life in a more sensible way.

  Back at work, I began a correspondence course in library training, and went on a number of extra courses in Hamilton. Just a year later, I was elevated to assistant librarian, when Barbara Legge left to marry her fiancé of several years, Ron O’Connell. I was bridesmaid at her wedding. She gave both her bridesmaids a gift of orange perfume, very strong, in a small oblong bottle. I have kept this little vial, and when I prise the now perishing rubber stopper from it there is still a whiff of fragrance. Barbara has died, but there is this, the scent of orange lingering down the years.

  With Kit, I was now in charge of the library and the seven women who worked there. I was eighteen. This was a remarkable position for a woman so young, particularly as my training was incomplete. My photograph appeared in the local newspaper, and I began to earn as much as my parents in their respective jobs.

  Problems arose only when Kit was ill, and she often was. Although she demanded that her staff not take leave unless they were dropping in their tracks, and was ruthless at refusing even bereavement leave, Kit herself was frequently absent. In my first few months in the new job, she vanished for six weeks and left me to it. Some of the women I worked with were older, and at times they found it hard to take directions from me.

  The real conflicts arose from socialising. It was still a small town and on Saturday nights I went out like everyone else, but on Monday morning I donned recently prescribed spectacles, and again became the person in charge. Not surprisingly, some of the staff could not reconcile my two selves.

  I embarked on a new relationship with M, a banker. He was another rugby player, an All Black triallist, which was important stuff: his exploits were often written up in the paper. He was short, snub-nosed, neat and wore a suit during the week. He was also carrying old baggage from an engagement down south that had broken up the previous year. For a season we went to balls, a step up from the Saturday night dances, but he often took out other girls. I could hardly berate him, for there were no promises, although there was an expectation that I would be there when it suited him. I went out of my way to please him. Towards the end of the season we went to the Road Services Ball (yes, really) at the Ritz, me in a lime green chiffon dress, silver strapped shoes and elbow-length white gloves. We drank beer that had been sneaked in under the women’s ball dresses, Howard Morrison, who had moved on from Tama, sang ‘Twilight Time’. It felt like the happiest night of my life, and towards the end of it, M seemed to have come to some decision about me. Or so I thought.

  Afterwards we sat on the lakefront at Hannah’s Bay and watched the moon. Suddenly M began to shriek with pain. He could hardly drive me home. A week or two later he was in hospital after having surgery for what turned out to be a rugby injury. I visited him on a Saturday afternoon. Beside the bed sat a young woman, slim, dark and wearing a rather virtuous expression. She worked on the lolly counter at Woolworth’s, next
door to the bank. I couldn’t think why she was there, and sat her visit out. I felt embarrassed for this woman I mentally called ‘Lollies’, and her unseemly presence. When she had gone, M gave me a sorrowful, forgive-me smile.

  ‘I’ve had time to think things over while I’ve been here in hospital,’ he said.

  My heart melted at his fragility. ‘Of course you have,’ I said. I guess I was waiting for his proposal.

  ‘I think it might be better if we didn’t see each other for a while. I haven’t recovered from the engagement really. It’s just not fair on you,’ he said.

  I agreed. Of course. What else could I have done? ‘I can wait,’ I said.

  I was working in the library stack room a few weeks later when Kit came through with the evening paper in her hand. ‘Isn’t this the boy you used to go out with?’ she asked me, naming M, and looking at me hard.

  ‘What’s he done?’ I asked, expecting a new report on his sporting exploits.

  ‘He’s engaged.’ The new fiancée was Lollies.

  ‘Oh, I expected him to marry her,’ I said as airily as I could and walked out of the room. Kit didn’t mention the subject again, but I remember that she was unusually considerate to me for a while. M and Lollies began their family of six soon after their marriage the following year.

  I was deeply embarrassed by this episode, and appalled that I could have been so naïve. I was fairly certain that my innocence about this relationship had been joked about around town. I threw myself into my work, withdrew from the rugby crowd and went to fewer dances. The Pirate team members were already strangers when I saw them at Maureen’s wedding to her Pirate, where I was a bridesmaid. We bridesmaids wore wide picture hats and frilly dresses, their huge skirts supported with Elizabethan farthingales. The newspaper dubbed it Rotorua’s ‘wedding of the year’.

  It was the second wedding at which I had been a bridesmaid and, at nineteen, I was beginning to feel distinctly like an old maid. I began making tentative plans to go abroad. The big overseas experience beckoned, a rite of passage for young New Zealanders, particularly for women, before they ‘settled down’ and got married. My friend from Waipu days, Jen Gates, now a teacher, asked if I would sail to England with her, and I began to save in earnest for the trip, planned for 1960.

  Around the same time, another change of house was in the offing. Night work at the library meant long days for me, and for my mother too. The bus we caught left soon after seven in the morning, so we waited at the bus station for more than an hour before there was anyone to let us into our workplaces. My mother had by now swapped books for work in an exclusive china shop. She had an instinct for fine china and before long her advice was sought by wealthy buyers. Later, she would manage the shop and have her own key, but this was a little way off. Our busy lives, and particularly my evening work, were getting harder to manage from Hannah’s Bay. An advertisement for a large house to rent in town attracted my parents’ interest. It was decided that the Hannah’s Bay house would be rented out, and we would move to this house in Kuirau Street, owned by an out-of-town dentist, who had purchased it from the film magnate Robert Kerridge.

  This, of all the houses I have lived in, is the one I still dream about most. Surrounded by beautiful trees, it was a long white stucco building at Ohinemutu, on the edge of Utuhina Stream, just around the corner from St Faith’s Church and Tamatekapua. It had a raffish charm, filled as it was with elegant cane furniture, French doors and small sunny alcoves. A huge stone fireplace occupied the end of the long sitting room, and the ceiling was match-lined and varnished in a gable shape. In a way, it was a more upmarket version of some of the planters’ homes in Kerikeri, and I felt as if we had arrived at last. Behind the house was a private bathhouse that contained a deep Roman-style steam bath with aquamarine tiles.

  The house was ours for the time being, albeit with some financial juggling. As well as running the china shop, my mother now took in boarders. Two men, a lawyer and a broadcasting technician, joined our household. I studied hard for my library exams in the new house, and read more than ever. Kit’s lustre had rubbed off on me, and my knowledge of books and management skills were becoming respected in the same way as hers. I kept my travel plans to myself, knowing that she would be upset to learn that I was planning to leave.

  Chapter 10

  One winter’s day in 1959, I was standing at the issuing desk in the library when a local school group walked through the door with their teacher. When I looked up from the issues desk and saw the blackness of his hair and the whiteness of his grin, I stood stock still, my heart poised above the rubber stamp in my hand.

  ‘Oh,’ I said aloud. Inside me, I said, ‘That’s for me.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked the assistant at my side. She was counting change for the rental fiction.

  ‘Did you see that guy who just came in?’

  She flicked her eyes in his direction. ‘Looks like Mario Lanza, doesn’t he?’ she said, and kept on counting.

  I pushed my glasses down firmly on my nose and straightened my shoulders as I strode down the library, searching in my head for a great opening line.

  ‘Will you keep these children quiet?’ I asked the teacher, in a frosty voice.

  These were the first words I spoke to my husband-to-be, Ian Kidman. From that moment, I had no doubts or hesitations about wanting to marry him, and nor did I expect him to have them about me. He was eight years older, and one of his teaching colleagues I knew laughed when I told her I was going out with him. ‘You’ll have to be quick to keep up with that one,’ she said.

  Our courtship was brief. Ian was new to the town. A teacher at Rotorua Primary, he was living at the Maori Apprentice Hostel where he had gone looking for accommodation close to the school. Instead, he was offered the job of housemaster in return for his board. The hostel was on the other side of Kuirau Park, a few minutes’ walk from where we were living. My mother’s cooking appealed more than hostel fare, and soon he was a regular visitor.

  Ian was different from the young men I had known up until then. He listened to classical music, told endless tall tales that made me laugh, didn’t play rugby (although he had done in the past) and didn’t drink alcohol or smoke. He smelled healthy. And he dressed differently as well. One Friday evening, he picked me up after work at the library wearing a red cashmere wool cardigan and a rakish hat. This was at a time when young men had just about given up wearing hats. At the end of the street stood a group of the old rugby crowd. A couple of them called out, asking me who my well-dressed boyfriend was. I dawdled for a moment, hanging back as though looking in a shop window. But it was make or break time. I ran after Ian and clutched his arm, turning my face away from my old friends. There was no going back.

  We fell quickly into routines that included the occasional Saturday night dance at Tamatekapua, some sailing on Lake Rotorua in Ian’s Q class yacht (I was a very inept sailor) and regular attendance at St Faith’s in Ohinemutu, where he was required to shepherd his hostel charges on Sunday nights.

  My parents, however, were still concerned that I was too young to make a lifetime commitment. And there was more to it, which my mother was close-lipped about, although I knew more or less what had taken place. Ian had grown up apart from his mother. His parents had separated during a time when they lived in railway settlements along the North Island’s Main Trunk Line. Like mine, his father was an English immigrant, who had come out to New Zealand as a First World War veteran, having spent years in the trenches, and gone to work on the railways. In the King Country he met and married Ian’s mother, Ruby, a woman of Te Aupouri descent, with family connections in Piopio, but the marriage lasted only a few years. When the couple separated, their children were divided between the parents, the intention being that Ian would live with his father. This didn’t happen for a long time, as Ian’s father fell ill shortly afterwards with tuberculosis and spent nearly ten years in a sanitorium. During those years, Ian had been handed from pillar to post by at
least a dozen relatives, and attended around twenty schools. He and his mother hadn’t seen each other for many years. A woman my mother had met at the clothing factory now appeared in the china shop. She knew Ian’s family back in the railway days and had decided it was her ‘duty’ to impart gossip about his parents’ past lives. My mother sent her away with what she told me was ‘a flea in her ear’ but I knew she was discomforted. And, as I had expected from the outset, the issue of race reared its head again. Only this time it wasn’t going to stand in my way.

  In April 1960 my parents and I went north to the fishing village of Leigh, where we stayed for a week in a strange rundown boarding house called the Jolly Fisherman’s Lodge, at the edge of the sea, approached on foot over wooden bridges and gangplanks. My twentieth birthday was spent there. For most of that week, all I did was read, stopping only to watch the spinifex turning over in the sand. Ian’s letters arrived almost every day. ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he wrote, ‘two letters from me and none from you. Send me a telegram when you decide.’

  In a sequence of poems I wrote some years ago, called Wakeful Nights, there is a passage about that week of decision: