Finding, p.6
Finding, page 6
Suddenly I felt so full of love for them all that I thought I might burst out crying. But I didn’t, because Little Angus had just started bawling his head off.
For an hour, we sat on the lawn, close together, while the ground twitched and muttered. Angus had stopped crying, but he wouldn’t let go of Mum’s apron. I stared at the house. The kitchen was wrecked. The front porch and nearly every window had gone. But we’re all right, I kept telling myself. We’re all right.
‘Whina?’ Mum asked after a while.
‘She’s OK. She was heading home. We lost a sugar-bag, though. It fell in the river. Sorry. The rest are still in the orchard.’
My mother smiled. ‘I think we can manage without the sugar-bag.’
‘Huh!’ grunted Angus. ‘I was looking forward to some plums. Girls are useless!’ He gave me a wobbly grin.
The shakes were further apart now, and less powerful. The trees and hedge had stopped swaying. Blackberry or Raspberry gave an ‘I’m all right; how about milking me?’ moo from the paddock.
Dad stood. ‘I’d better check the fences. Let’s have a look inside the house first.’
We can already look inside a lot of it, I thought. The rest of us followed my father as he limped towards the back door. He turned the handle, pushed, and the door fell flat onto the kitchen floor. Total silence for a second, then we were all gasping and laughing.
Every shelf in the kitchen had collapsed. Broken jars of fruit and jam lay everywhere. ‘Oh well, the stove still looks all right,’ sighed my mother. I remembered that column of black smoke rising down the valley. Whose place was it?
Dad put an arm around Mum; nodded at the splintered walls. ‘We’ve certainly got plenty of firewood for it.’ The ground shook again; Angus gripped my hand.
More time passed. I helped Mum make a pot of tea. ‘I hope the chooks aren’t too scared to lay eggs,’ she muttered. Nana Aggie’s groping hands found a loaf of bread. ‘I baked that just yesterday,’ she announced, blowing dust from it.
Dad stood in my parents’ half-wrecked bedroom, chopping at the beam that lay across their bed. He lifted the axe, wiped its gleaming blade with his palm. ‘Knew I was right to hang onto this. I’ll have to tell Hahona.’
He and Angus and I lifted the bed out onto the lawn. Mum came through the gate from the paddock, holding half-a-dozen speckled eggs in her apron. ‘The hayshed’s all right. Just one bale fallen down, and Blackberry’s already eaten half of it, the greedy thing.’
Nana Aggie was peeling potatoes at one end of the kitchen table, where it stood with the summer sun glowing down on it. ‘We can sleep in the barn, then. That’s what John and I did, the first few years we were married.’
Horses’ hooves scrunched on the road. A voice called. Whina.
She came hurrying through our front gate. Wrong: she came hurrying through the gap where our front gate used to be. It lay flat on the ground, just like our kitchen door. The fence on either side was a buckled line of leaning white pickets. Her mother Ahorangi followed close behind.
My friend hugged me. ‘Told you we’d find you.’
Ahorangi meanwhile was embracing my mother and Nana Aggie. The little green pekapeka bat around her neck glowed in the sunlight. I looked, and yes, Mum was wearing her bracelet.
‘We rode across the river just up from the pa,’ Whina told me. ‘There’s a whole lot of willows fallen and blocked the old bed. But we managed.’
My mother held Ahorangi’s hand. ‘You’re women! Women can manage anything, remember?’
‘They can’t manage to bring the plums home,’ Angus piped up.
My father shook Ahorangi’s other hand. Then he shook Whina’s. I’d never seen him treat her so like an adult before. I guess she and I had both grown up a fair bit in the past couple of hours.
‘Rawiri?’ Dad asked. ‘Hahona? And the pa?’
‘They are safe,’ Ahorangi told him. ‘So are most of our whares.’ She nodded towards our wrecked home. ‘They are not as heavy as your pakeha houses. They do not break things if they fall.’ She placed a hand on my sore forehead. ‘Whina has said how you crossed the bridge. Brave girl.’
‘Two brave girls.’ Nana Aggie’s unseeing eyes smiled at me.
‘We came to see if you need anything,’ went Ahorangi. ‘Is there—’
My father was laughing. He shook his head as we stared at him. ‘My grandfather — Big Angus — used to tell us stories about how they would all have starved when they first landed in New Zealand, if it weren’t for the Maori people helping them. Half a century on, and it’s still the same. What would we do without you?’
Whina and I wandered across the lawn, and stood staring into my ruined bedroom. ‘It looks like a bomb went off.’
The ground shuddered once more. Our house’s (our half-house’s) side wall sagged further towards us, and we both jumped back. From the paddock, Blackberry or Raspberry gave another ‘Mooo!’
Mum made more tea, pushing broken bits of house into the stove. She and Ahorangi and Nana Aggie began sorting through the mess of spilt things on the kitchen floor, Nana’s hands searching expertly through the rubble.
The rest of us carried clothes and blankets to the hayshed. ‘It’s going to be like a picnic!’ Little Angus exclaimed as he staggered along with a tin basin of soap and toothbrushes. ‘Bags I sleep on the bales up under the rafters!’ Whina and I rolled our eyes at each other.
We’d drunk our tea, some potatoes were boiling on the stove, and a few mutton chops that Mum had saved from the smashed meat safe were cooking in a pan. She and Dad were planning to take Nana Aggie up to the cemetery, to see if our great-grandparents’ graves were all right. ‘And to show them we’re all right,’ said Nana.
‘Will you stay for dinner?’ Mum asked Whina and Ahorangi, just like any polite posh lady. ‘I’m sorry I can’t spread the best table-cloth.’ Everyone laughed. It had been a day of jokes as well as terror.
Ahorangi took my mother’s hand again. ‘No, thank you. Rawiri and his mother will start worrying about us.’ She turned to Dad. ‘Rawiri rides to town tomorrow, if he can. He will send telegrams to tell people we are safe. Do you—’
My father nodded. ‘Yes, please. Could he send one to Jess up in Auckland? Tell her we’re safe, too.’
Nana Aggie chuckled. ‘Perhaps the earthquake was Jess getting angry with some politicians? That daughter of mine can usually make the ground shake.’
Another voice called from the front gate — the front gap. ‘Hello? Anybody home?’ Whina and I glanced at each other. She started brushing the dust from her dress, and I started trying to tidy my hair. I saw Mum and Ahorangi smiling at us.
Robert McDougall came around the wrecked side of the house. He stared at it, then at us. He held a big brown paper bag. ‘Dad said to come and see if you’re all right. We’re fine — except he stabbed his finger with the nib of his pen when the quake came.’ Robert gave a shaky laugh. ‘And our kitchen caught fire, but we put it out.’ I remembered that black smoke as I stumbled across the bridge.
He looked taller. It sounds silly, because I saw him just about every day at school. But he looked more … more like a man, somehow.
Dad was shaking his hand, just like he’d shaken Whina’s. ‘Glad you’re safe. Tell your mother and father I’ll come to see them tomorrow. We all need to stick together just now.’
Robert held out the paper bag. ‘Mum said to bring these. They all fell off in the quake.’ He saw our puzzled faces, and explained. ‘Plums.’
Plums. I thought of the orchard, the vanished sugar-bag. I began to laugh, and knew I was nearly crying. Mum put her arms around me. Robert stared.
‘See?’ Little Angus was exclaiming meanwhile. ‘Told you it takes a boy to manage some things!’ Robert stared at him, too. He must be thinking the quake had driven us all nuts.
The ground was still. The sun had slid lower. The afternoon was warm and quiet. I could hear magpies warbling somewhere. Probably telling their cousins how they’d started the earthquake to scare us humans away.
Happiness brimmed up in me. Yes, happiness. The house didn’t matter; we’d fix it or build another. I’d lived through the scariest thing I could imagine, and I was fine. So were the people I loved, and that was such a … a treasure.
Robert McDougall gave me a smile, then glanced away. Gosh, I hope — I hope it’s not my best friend that he likes!
ALAN 1957
* * *
It had been raining for a week. Sheets and curtains of rain pouring down on our valley. Ridges had slipped onto side roads, and farms up in the hills were cut off. Creeks flowing into the Waimoana had burst their banks, or were dammed up by slips. In some places, only trucks and tractors could get through.
That wasn’t a problem for Mum, since she can drive a truck or a tractor. ‘I’m a woman, remember, Matiu?’ I heard her saying to my dad this morning. ‘We can do anything.’
I knew Dad was grinning as he replied. ‘Florence, I’ll never forget you’re a woman. You go out there and show this weather who’s boss.’ So she’s heading off today sometime to check on old Mrs Ross up the valley.
The rain was incredible. Mum booted my cousin Tipene and me out of the house for an hour on Monday afternoon, when it was just streaming down and not crashing down. The Waimoana charged along, all brown and powerful. Branches whirled on its surface, crashing into the rocks just upstream from the swing-bridge, then hurtling on again. We could hear the booming water from fifty yards away. As we stepped onto the deck and peered over the side, there were other noises, too: a grinding and rumbling, deep down in the river.
‘Boulders,’ Tipene went. ‘The river’s shoving them along.’
I nodded. ‘Imagine Grandad Duncan trying to get across there today.’
My grandfather almost cut his leg off about 40 years ago, when he was chopping down bush to start our orchard. He says Grandma Lily and Great-aunt Jess saved his life. He’s still got the axe, by the way. Well, sort of. I’ll tell you more about it later.
Mum told Tipene and me the story a couple of days ago, as the rain thrashed down. I’d heard it before, but I was so bored after being stuck inside (during the holidays, too!) that I’d listen to anything. And she’s a good story-teller.
Tipene and I are second cousins, six times removed, says Mum. We’re related way back. We’re best mates, too, just like our mothers. Our birthdays are in the same month; we both turn thirteen at the end of this year. My mum and Auntie Whina have known each other since they started school. For a while, they even liked the same boy — our teacher, Mr McDougall Junior. Hard to imagine a teacher being a boy. Even harder to imagine girls liking him. But Mum says he was really good-looking and thoughtful, and she started thinking Whina and she might end up fighting to see who got him. I’d like to have seen that!
Then my father, Matiu, arrived. Mum took one look at him, and that was it. ‘Well, I was so handsome,’ Dad grinned. ‘And charming. And clever. And—’ Mum punched him in the ribs. ‘—and lucky, dear,’ he went. So Auntie Whina married Mr McDougall Junior — Uncle Robert — and Mum married … Dad.
My father used to live where a lot of people in our pa came from, ages ago. He’s called Matiu Fergus Hohepa, because his own father was Maori and his mother was Scottish, from the families that came out here, ages ago, too. My mum says that when they were married, in St Peter’s Church not far from the pa, one of Mum’s uncles got ready to play his bagpipes as she and Dad came out. As soon as they saw the pipes, Nana Ahorangi and other old people stuck their hands over their ears and started laughing. There’s a story how when people here heard bagpipes the first time, they thought it was a taniwha — a monster.
‘Fair enough,’ Dad said. ‘Your mother reckons I’m a monster.’
My father came to our valley because he’d been at university, studying archaeology: ancient history and old ruins and stuff. He started hearing the legends about treasure maybe hidden in the swamp beside the Waimoana, so he wanted to talk to the old folk at the pa, and maybe do some exploring.
Then he met Mum, who was visiting Whina. ‘And that was the end of my archaeology, Alan. You make sure you study something where you don’t meet any gorgeous young women.’
I haven’t a clue what I’ll study. I like farming. I like reading. I don’t like girls much; they’re a pain. I’m glad I don’t have to put up with a sister like Tipene does, though I suppose Finola’s not too bad. But I wouldn’t have minded a brother. Anyway, I won’t worry about what to study until I start high school next term. Tipene wants us to take the same subjects. ‘We mongrel guys gotta stick together!’
Mongrel? Dad’s half-caste: part-Maori, part-Pakeha. Mum’s all Pakeha, so that makes me quarter-caste. Auntie Whina is Maori, and Uncle Robert McDougall is Pakeha, so that makes Tipene half-caste. ‘We sound like fruit salads!’ Finola said when we were talking about it one time.
Their parents got married before mine did. The bagpipes played again, and no taniwha rang up to complain. But soon after, Uncle Robert got called up to fight in World War Two. He was an artilleryman in the North African desert and in Italy. Auntie Whina told Mum she felt terrified every time someone knocked on the door, in case it was a message from the Army to say he was wounded or dead. Nana Ahorangi gave her the greenstone bat then, to protect them both.
But Uncle Robert (I try not to call him that at school) did come home safely. Phew!
The rain was falling even harder. At our place, Tipene and I had played all the card games we knew: Snap, and Sevens, and Five Hundred. At his place, we’d read books and listened to wireless serials: Dad and Dave, about life on an Australian outback farm; Dossier on Dumetrius, a spy story. Tipene taught me some more Maori words. He and Finola have learned lots from Auntie Whina. She taught our class some.
There’s no Maori language taught at high school, which I reckon is pathetic. There was an argument in the paper about it. One woman wrote that Maori was a dying language and not spoken anywhere else in the world, so kids should be taught Latin instead. My parents and Tipene’s wrote a letter saying Latin wasn’t a dying language; it was a dead language, and if New Zealand schools taught Maori, it would help make that language healthy again. The letter had all their names on, and it looked really good.
Since I’m quarter-caste and Tipene’s half-caste, there are some things we can’t do. If he ever becomes an All Black (and he’s really good at sport), he won’t be able to go to South Africa, because black people and white people can’t play sport against one another there. They’re kept apart other ways, too. Well, even in New Zealand, there are places that don’t like having Maori or part-Maori people. We had trouble one time in town just a few months back.
‘You feel more like a Maori or a Pakeha?’ Tipene asked yesterday — Tuesday, when we wandered down to the river again. The rain had lifted a bit, and Auntie Whina had chucked us out, just like Mum did on Monday.
I stared. ‘Dunno. Neither, really.’ Most of the time I just feel like … like Alan Hohepa. I’m Pakeha, and I’m Maori, and I’m OK being both.
Tipene’s darker than me, but we’re the same height, and people seem to guess we’re related. ‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you feel like most?’
He shrugged. ‘Depends.’ We stood at the start of the ridge, watching the river storming past below. A chunk of bank had been ripped away; a raw gouge of clay the size of a house glistened.
Tipene gazed upstream towards the swamp, where floodwaters gleamed among the flax and reeds. ‘Sometimes I feel mostly Maori, like when Nana Ahorangi and Grandad Rawiri are telling me about special places like that.’ He jerked his head at the swamp. ‘Or in bad ways, like that milk bar. And sometimes I feel more Pakeha, like when we’re doing Maths and stuff at school. Or when I’m with some useless sort-of-white guy called Alan.’
So I punched him on the shoulder, and he punched me on the arm, and we both laughed. We gazed down at the roaring Waimoana. ‘Wonder if that was how the river at Tangiwai looked that time?’ I said. ‘The Whangaehu?’
Tipene nodded, and we both stood silent for a bit. A black tree-trunk showed for a second in the racing current, then vanished. No, not a tree-trunk: a dead cow. Dad had been telling Grandad Duncan on the phone this morning how the creeks and rivers were getting higher every hour. Some sheep and cattle had been swept away. I wouldn’t want to be in the river today.
The rain had started again, although the sky looked a bit lighter in the west: dark grey instead of black grey. We turned to head back towards the house.
My Uncle Angus was killed four years ago. ‘Little Angus’ Mum called him, even though he was a tall, strong guy. ‘Big Angus’ was my great-great-great-grandad; he’s buried up in the cemetery, with lots of my other rellies.
My uncle was on the night express train heading to Auckland, on Christmas Eve 1953. He’d met a woman in Auckland while he was studying up there (he wanted to be a soil scientist, and help farmers grow more without harming the land), and they were planning to get married. He’d been down to visit my parents and grandparents, show them her photo, tell them all about her.
It was late at night, and his train was passing near Mount Ruapehu. What nobody knew was that the crater lake on the mountain had filled with so much water that the crater walls couldn’t hold it back any longer.
About an hour before the express train was due to pass, the crater collapsed, and a huge torrent of water, ice and boulders went hurtling down the side of Ruapehu and into the Whangaehu River. It tore downstream ‘like a battering ram’, the papers said, and smashed into the bridge where road and railway crossed. The bridge broke apart and was swept away.
A man driving north reached the bridge, saw the thundering river, and realised what had happened. At the same moment, he glimpsed the train’s headlight as it sped towards the bridge. He sprinted for the railway line, waving his torch. The driver must have seen something, because he slammed on his brakes. But the express couldn’t stop in time, and the engine, plus half a dozen carriages crashed down into the water.
