by Fiona Kidman
‘When would we get the time? Me, look, I keep a good section and two jobs —’
‘All I was going to say,’ broke in the other, frantically chewing his white hot sweets, ‘was that if you cleared the blackberry, you could grow potatoes, pay the rates and all make a profit.’
Mrs Heremaia extracted cigarettes and matches from her muu-muu pocket, and lit a cigarette. She leaned her back and the tip of an elbow on the counter, shook her hair from its scarf, so that it fell down her back in a shower, and she rippled in sighs as she gazed out the door at the teeming asphalt in the February sun.
He was not a man for poetry or fancy thoughts, Mr Wellington-Crosby, his digestion took care of that. But it did occur to him that the council might have been spared the great sum of money they had paid for that Lindauer to hang in the council chambers. One look at Mrs Heremaia and you had an impression to keep in your mind as long as any painting. A woman who could be loved, and he wished he had love in his soul. And oh how hot it was.
‘Council buy us the seed?’ she said, over her shoulder.
‘Oh no, you’d have to buy the seed yourselves,’ he said.
‘Council’s got plenty of money.’
‘Not that much.’
‘Bring you a sack of spuds.’
‘No deal.’
‘Your missus’d be pleased.’
‘I have no miss — I am not married.’
She drew long on the cigarette. ‘Tuhoro man.’
‘Yes Rebecca.’
‘We’d better think of selling that land.’
‘Good idea that.’
‘It was my mother’s land.’
‘It was the land of all of us, so she said. What we were to have for our own, but she swapped fifty acres for this. That is our inheritance, this land she has divided amongst us. I cannot feel for an acre of land in city streets.’
‘Strangely said, city man,’ said his sister-in-law, still gazing down the street.
‘It might be more valuable than the fifty acres,’ interjected Mr Wellington-Crosby.
Mrs Heremaia nodded, and left. It was not a time for speaking. As Mr Tuhoro followed her out, the rates clerk felt himself subside with relief. It really was simple, she had brains that woman, and courage too. He would not have dared suggest they sell the land.
The following day, he mentally added speed of action to her qualifications. She must have moved quickly amongst her relatives, for in the morning, soon after the doors had opened, she was there, this time with a tiny woman leaning half on a stick and half on her arm.
‘This is Auntie, Mrs Hatu,’ said Mrs Heremaia, indicating the tattooed bundle under the black shawl, and there was a note of weariness in her voice.
He nodded gravely across the counter to her. Gravely because he appreciated that there was a new turn of events, and, like his mother had said, oh how long ago, a gentleman must always respect the feelings of others. And again he wished his name was either Mr Wellington or Mr Crosby, for in this matter he might then be spared responsibility.
Auntie did not nod back. She did not do anything except hold her ground and peer across the counter.
‘Auntie can’t write,’ said Mrs Heremaia, determined to be done with it.
Mr Wellington-Crosby looked down at the enlarged peppercorn resting its chin on his high gloss counter, and was not surprised.
‘Auntie just made a mark on the title papers. Well she says she didn’t actually, but somebody did.’
‘Well if she didn’t, who did?’ he implored.
‘Maybe my other auntie. That is, my great-aunties they are really. This one’s sister. They can’t write, none of them. So they make a mark.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well this one, she says it’s not her mark, she knows her mark, an’ it’s not her mark.’
‘But surely the Maori Land Court has a record of whose mark it is?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. But that don’t make any difference.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘She still says it’s not her mark, an’ now her sister’s dead. Mister you prove it is her mark. Some fellas have a handle you’d recognise anywhere, but all she’s got is a mark. What’s your name?’
There she stood, five storeys high, handsome, waiting for her triumph. He blushed, he stammered, and at last he said it.
‘Wellington-Crosby, Alphonsus Wellington-Crosby.’ And waited, tense, geared up, ready to go on anger.
He’d got her at last. She subsided, curiously soft round her wide mouth.
‘All I mean, mister, is that we’ll have to sort this lot out before we can sell. An’ that could be a long time, eh Auntie?’
Only Auntie’s chin quivered with agitation.
‘So what I mean is, I dunno, mister. I just dunno, mister, who is going to pay them rates. Do you?’
She slumped, the effort of a hard night’s bargaining plain to see.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Mrs Heremaia, I just don’t know either.’ He shuffled his papers together on the counter, and checked to see that he had changed his date stamp. Through the glass he saw the familiar tormenting sun rising towards the ten o’clock sky, and he sighed again. Mrs Heremaia, and even Mrs Hatu, sighed too.
Mrs Heremaia gathered herself and the black bundle on sticks together, and made for the door.
‘See you, man,’ she said over her shoulder.
‘See — er — see you,’ he said, and ate a peppermint. He was starting early today.
Mrs Heremaia gently pushed Auntie into the battered blue Chev. With a crash and a rattle to show she was displeased, she reversed out of the council’s parking lot and, accelerating fast, roared through town.
‘You ever seen this bit of scrub you and I are supposed to own?’ she yelled to Auntie.
Auntie shook her head. Mrs Heremaia slowed down, and looked thoughtful. More quietly she did an illegal U-turn and drove back towards the centre of town, then branched off to the best suburb in the city. She stopped the car in a neat avenue. Well — quite a neat one. Asphalt drives swept through wrought-iron gates, past well-laid lawns and flowering shrubs to big houses. Colonial styles and ranch styles, cedarwood and sundecks, and, not only were they architect designed, but the architects themselves even lived in some of them.
And there was this acre of land. This wild acre of land where the blackberry grew and the thistles proliferated and the puha thrived. There were clear patches in the wilderness where protest committees had been at work, but for the most part it was a jungle. High and low, wherever one looked, the blackberries shone, velvet, blueblack, hanging in great clusters. Auntie gave a snort.
That was not all either. There were figures in this landscape. People. Bare brown legs twinkling among the bushes, quick fingers picking, picking, and small children cramming their mouths with berries till the juice squelched from the corners and ran down their Superman T-shirts.
‘Hullo there, that’s Hine Ngata, my ol’ man’s cousin. You know her?’ Auntie nodded. ‘And her mate Molly that married Rau, you remember?’ continued Mrs Heremaia.
She cooee-ed out, and before long they were in the party. What a grand morning. Auntie dozed in the car, and every now and again Mrs Heremaia came and popped a ripe blackberry into her mouth, which made her happy.
After they had all gone, Mrs Heremaia stood by her car, and looked at the acre, of which she owned a one-eighth piece. A woman came down one of the wide-swept driveways with her Pekinese at her heels and shook her head resignedly as she looked at the Chev. She straightened her shoulders purposefully, with an air of being determined to ‘do something about it’ in her bearing and strode back to the house.
Mrs Heremaia gazed thoughtfully after her.
‘I’ll bring the kids an’ the ol’ man here tonight.’
Auntie stirred herself. ‘About that fifty acres of ours.’
‘What fifty acres would that be, Auntie?’<
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‘Eh? Oh never mind.’ She shook her head drowsily.
‘You know, I’ve a good mind to pay them rates myself,’ said Mrs Heremaia.
Auntie’s eyes opened like a lizard awakening in the sun to see brightness. ‘I’ll go you halves,’ she said.
Mrs Heremaia chuckled softly as she got back into the Chev. She patted Auntie’s arm and fed her a berry.
‘Tomorrow I’ll take Alfie a billy of blackberries.’
‘Alfie?’
‘Mr Wellington-Crosby. He’s got his head screwed on all right.’ And she laughed.
On the Train
RATTLING TOWARDS THE CITY. It’s a navy-blue morning, which is an extravagant way of saying the sun is shining on the distant sea.
I have boarded the train with great care, the way I’ve been taught to. My own special seat awaits me for, as nearly all the passengers know me, they leave it empty. It’s the one at the end so that I’ll be the last to show my ticket, then I can have a word to the conductor when he comes along. Otherwise he’s too busy and busy people get cross, but the ones that are regulars are usually pretty friendly. Actually, I have the whole seat to myself. I go in every day, after the workers have gone, so it’s mostly young mothers and grannies going to do their shopping. You might think I’ve got a sweet job going in late like that.
Well, it’s true I suppose. I do have short hours and down at the workshop they’re very kind and if my head is hurting I just sit down for a while and nobody worries, but for all that, they rely on me. I look after the newcomers and comfort the lonely ones, the ones who don’t fit in so well. Can you imagine that?
And they do talk to me there, they know I’m all right in lots of ways and there’s much that I’m helpful with, because you know everything that’s happened to me is marginal. Some of me is fine. You could say that makes it harder.
Of course on the train, I’m the lonely one until May gets on and then I’m often so busy looking after her that there’s no time to feel sad.
Anyway, I was telling you about my seat where I sit like a king up there on my own. It’s one of those seats that runs along the side of the train and not across it so I can see all the passengers as they get on. Most of the people are shy of me, even though my mother dresses me well and takes me to the barber and I haven’t had a fit in public for years. But you know how it is, word gets around. The grannies remember me from when I was little and of course they wouldn’t dream of sitting with me, ‘because if anything did go wrong, I wouldn’t know what to do my dear, you know I’m too old for that sort of thing.’
The young ones are frightened too, in case I should try to talk to them and, in some mysterious way, they’d be linked with me. Naturally I smile around at everyone when I get on the train and they smile dutifully back, having learnt, I suppose, from bearing children and suffering husbands, that one must think of the feelings of others.
But they don’t sit beside me. It’s true I might talk to them. My tongue runs away with me sometimes. They also think I lust after them. You see they don’t know I’ve had my body explained to me with a big chart showing a man’s body cut through the middle so that it doesn’t look like me at all, with all those great veins that should be dripping blood if they’re cut like that and I know I’m not allowed to touch the women and that if I’m patient any strange feelings I have will go away, like my headaches I guess.
So really they’re quite safe, though they don’t know it. If you asked them, they would never admit their fears. To the grannies, with their neat grey pintucked hair, they’d say it was because of the children. ‘He could lay a hand on the children,’ they would say, ‘and if he did that, then I’d forget to be kind.’ Maybe you can’t blame them.
My mother says I’ve lots to be thankful for. In her day they would have pointed me out in the street and called me ‘Simple Dick’ instead of just ‘Dick’. So you see, people have come a long way.
Then this blue day, the one I’m telling you about, the train stops and a girl gets on. Right away I call her Blossom to myself. She sits down in the seat opposite and facing me, crossing her ankles neat and quick, rather bony ankles, they look fragile above the chunky red shoes. You think I wouldn’t notice things like that? Oh my word, yes I do.
Moving up, I see that she is narrow in most places, except the right and best ones; that her hands, which wear no rings, have that paper-like quality, fluttery pale ones with blue ripples along their tops and long thin fingers with big knuckles. So then, slowly, I look at her face, which I have already taken in in the first glance but which needs a longer, better viewing. It’s got the bony look too, high wide bones in her cheeks which, surprisingly, are sprayed with freckles, slant eyes and a wide mouth which has the lipstick carefully painted inside the edge of the lips, which makes me guess she doesn’t like her appearance as much as I do.
I smile and nod to her and she smiles back, trying to recognise me, but as she’s new on the train, me smiling at her is puzzling. She sits there trying to work it out, pretending she’s looking at the view behind me, but of course her eyes keep straying back. I try not to grin because somehow that gives the show away, just sit ramrod still letting her take me in. Then I see the shutter fall and I know almost for sure that she’s guessed. I don’t know how they tell. I stand in front of my mirror at home and look and look at myself, trying to work out which feature it is that hurts the eyes. Everything’s in its right place and the right shape and I don’t pull faces unless my head is hurting, even then they’re not bad faces. No worse than people yawning with their mouth uncovered or pulling their noses or picking their teeth with their lips all curled back. So what is it? Something there in the composition of skin, tissue and muscle that I can’t see but this girl can.
I am seized with the desire to ask her what it is. I am sure she would be kind. I wouldn’t right away, not the first time I spoke to her, but maybe if I got to know her, maybe if she was going to come on this train, at the same time, often, I would get into a few familiar routine comments and one day I’d pluck up my courage and I’d slip across and sit beside her and we could have a good talk.
Well, as usual, I’ve got a long way ahead of reality in my thoughts.
‘Nice day,’ I venture, loudly above the noise of the train.
Her eyes travel over the other passengers, seeking help. I feel the frost of their disapproval, angry because I have invaded their tolerance by speaking to this stranger who now demands their protection. The grannies’ glasses mist up as their temperatures rise in indignation, the young mothers hold more firmly on to their very normal children.
The train slows down to another station and picks up May. I’m ashamed of what I do next but I can’t help it. I pick up my newspaper which I buy every day and hide behind it, making out I’m someone else. The people on the train think I can’t read the newspaper but I can, quite a bit of it, and very interesting it is too.
So that May doesn’t see me and sits down well away. She’s a mongoloid, and goes to the workshop every day too. She gets planted on the station by her family and has been trained to wait. I mean trained because this is all you can say for May; whereas I am taught to do things like catching a train, she is trained to obey her reflexes. They’re safe enough leaving her there though, because she likes her train ride and knows if she waits it will come for her, so perhaps I’m overlooking that there’s a power of joy hidden somewhere inside. At the workshop I’ve heard them talking about her and they say she’s a very bad case, and she’s old too, past the age when, but for the miracle drugs, she could reasonably be expected to be dead and comfortable. I know they (I know a lot about what people say, I’m always listening see), the good, enlightened doctors, want to keep people like May alive because they can keep discovering new things to help the next ones that come along and make their lot a bit easier. But I notice the Mays of this world don’t get a medal for staying alive and helping science. Life’s hard for May. I hope I never get like that.
Getting
on the train is a performance in itself for her. Helped by the stationmaster, a slow ascent of the steps, each foothold carefully sought, reluctantly yielded. Then there is the long rumble as the concession ticket is found and when she has produced it, she does not sit until the conductor has told her many times that all is well. Finally, with laboured breath whistling over extended tongue May, resplendent as always, with a new ribbon bow perched on top of her head, finds a seat. Usually I help her through this, but not this morning as I’m being a coward.
For you see there’s still a chance that Blossom might smile again. I can see I’m worrying her, she’s young and not quite certain of her impressions about me, and I feel she’s still concerned in case I’m all right and I’m someone she should know, or worse still, ought to be kind to. I feel a little sorry for her because I know how precarious her position is. She might be being awful; on the other hand she could disgrace herself in front of the whole carriage by appearing to be familiar with me. I have it worked out that if I let on about knowing May it’ll resolve all her doubts, that’s why I sit quiet, just to keep her guessing.
In order to make things easier for her, I stare over her shoulder now, looking at the scenery as the train rattles on towards town.
The old familiar sights wear strange colours this morning as I look over Blossom’s shoulder and I’m moved to all the poetry my heart can muster.
Poetry? Oh yes, once there was a magic woman one year at the workshop, a wild witch woman with a strange bell-ringing voice, who read poetry to us in the late afternoons when we wearied of our work. Some said she was one of us but I did not believe them; others said she came to do her own soul good and I cannot tell whether she had gotten enough good from us, or whether there was none to be found within our walls, but at any rate, after a while she came no more and no one seemed to notice, only me. But me, she left tongues of fire to taunt my soul with what it knows and yet knows not. As I said I am marginal.
I peer deep into the heart of shops as we go, whisking past the little suburbs, alleys full of dresses and pretty things, a supermarket, shiny tiers of tins, bright-labelled, full of peaches, pears, cherries, lobsters, Elastoplast, and detergent, not that I have time to see, but I know them well; how I love to help in the buying of food. Food! We jolt past houses where the pale, tired women hang out double sheets and flapping nappies, side by side, swollen hands clawing space as they reach up pegs, straining backs of varicosed legs; little children on trikes, dirty still with breakfast marmalade; a ghetto of dark-skinned people who sing in the night and have their own problems when morning breaks; tired old men sitting on benches unshaven, passing a bottle, and I wonder did anyone call any of them ‘Simple Dick’ before the world was full of understanding and sympathy and tolerance for the afflicted; and there is an old lady I know, on sticks, each step a splinter of agony as, with pursed and fretful mouth, she follows a piece of paper despoiling the frontage of her ruined property.