Finding, p.9
Finding, page 9
Silence. Nobody moved; nobody spoke. Even the river’s roar seemed to dwindle. Seven pairs of eyes (this place is like the main street in town, I suddenly thought) gazed at the little panel. Pale sunlight gleamed through clouds, and the paua eyes gleamed.
Only then did Finola gasp and my father start murmuring ‘Dear God … Dear God.’ Mum went ‘Oh, Tipene!’ Auntie Whina was murmuring in Maori. I knew some of the words: ‘… water … our people’.
‘It was stuck on the ledge,’ I told them. ‘The river must have carried it there.’
Tipene’s fingers stroked whorls and diamond shapes. ‘… the swamp?’ I heard him say.
Grandad Duncan nodded. ‘Your Nana and Great-nana said … there were stories.’ He sighed.
My mother put her arms around me again. I’d stopped crying now, and I hoped nobody would mention it — ever. ‘Honestly, Whina — should we kiss these boys, or skin them alive?’
Tipene’s mum smiled, touched the greenstone at her throat. ‘Both.’ She knelt, kissed Tipene gently on the cheek, and I could see him hoping nobody would ever mention that again, either. Dad and Granddad Duncan stood grinning.
Auntie Whina touched the carving once again. ‘Nana Ahorangi and the others must be told.’ She bent her head, murmured again. I heard ‘taonga’. I knew that word, too; felt proud that I did.
‘All right, people.’ Dad took my arm, nodded at Finola to help Tipene. ‘Let’s get these two back home and dried out.’
We began moving towards the road and bridge. The Waimoana growled and swept by a couple of yards away, savage and wonderful. I’d always feel different about it now.
My legs trembled. My back and shoulders felt as if someone had run our farm truck over them. I shuddered with cold and exhaustion.
I glanced over at Tipene, stumbling along beside me, with Finola and Grandad Duncan gripping his arms. He looked even worse than I did, but he flicked a feeble grin at me. Auntie Whina walked behind him, holding the little panel in both hands.
We climbed the fence — that is, five of us climbed; Tipene and I were half-lifted over — and reached the bridge. It was less than an hour ago that I’d been standing near here, thinking how I wanted to stay in this valley, make my life here.
It’s life that’s the real treasure. I knew it now. The carving was amazing, and it would be even more amazing if the swamp held others. But the most precious things could be inside you as well as outside.
We started trudging along the wooden deck of the bridge. I lifted my sore, aching head again, and gazed around. I’d never felt so happy and hopeful in my life.
AILSA 1981
* * *
I’m only fourteen, but I’m going to the Auckland march. Mum and Dad weren’t too keen, but Nana Florence said: ‘We’ll make sure she doesn’t get into trouble. We girls can do anything, right, Ailsa?’
Nana Whina — she’s Dad’s friend Tipene’s mother; everyone knows everyone else in the Waimoana Valley — said ‘Dead right they can.’ So Mum laughed and went ‘I’m not going to try arguing with you two.’
Dad grinned. ‘And I’m not going to try arguing with you three.’ Even my big bro John laughed, in spite of all the arguments he’s been having with everyone.
Then Grandad Matiu went: ‘After all, Alan and Beth, just think of the name you gave this girl.’
I’m Ailsa Hahona Hohepa, which I think sounds great, even if a couple of kids at school reckoned Maori and English names don’t go together.
Ailsa is Scottish, and means ‘victory of the gods’. Amazing, eh? One side of our family came here from Scotland almost a hundred years ago, because they wanted a better life. Dad’s part-Scottish and a little bit Maori. Hahona means ‘healer’, and it's one of Nana Florence’s names, too. A girl called Hahona was the best friend of Nana Florence’s nana when she first arrived. My nana’s nana (hope you’re keeping up!) was called Aggie, and was blind. She and Hahona went everywhere together, Nana Florence says. So that’s why I’ve got my second name.
Anyway, I’m going to Auckland with the others, to march against the Springbok rugby tour.
I love rugby. John used to let me play with him and his friends when we were all little, and I reckon it’s rotten that girls can’t play it at high school. Dad agrees with me. (He was my primary-school teacher as well as my father, which is so weird. I’ll tell you more about that later.) John says if I play, the boys might be embarrassed. That’s their problem!
The Springboks are touring New Zealand, and the final test is in Auckland. The All Blacks won the first (yay!); South Africa won the second (boo!). The third game is going to be so important.
But although I like rugby so much, we shouldn’t have invited the Springboks to tour here. In South Africa, black and coloured people still aren’t allowed in the same restaurants or on the same buses as white people. It's almost impossible to marry someone who's a different colour. Black leaders have been sent to jail for wanting equal rights. Nearly all our family, except John, agree New Zealand should stop playing the Springboks until they treat black and coloured people better.
There have been protest marches outside most games. The match against Waikato had to be called off, after protestors broke through a fence and got onto the ground. A game in Timaru was cancelled, too.
Other people support the tour. Some of them say sport shouldn’t be mixed up with politics. Some reckon we should invite the South Africans here so they can see how New Zealanders get along together.
There’ve been arguments in the paper, on radio and TV. Not just arguments: fights between marchers and rugby fans. When the Waikato game was stopped, the television showed bottles being chucked at the protestors; guys kicking and punching one another. One woman had blood pouring down her face where something had hit her. Mum and Nana Florence were crying as they watched. Even John went silent. I felt sick. And I made my mind up I was going to do something. That’s why I’m going to Auckland.
John says the Springboks have got a black player in their team. ‘Yeah,’ I went. ‘One!’ He glared at me. Luckily, he works on a couple of farms down the valley, so he’s not home very often to have rows.
I’m a bit scared about what might happen at the third test, but I’m excited, too. Some of the kids in my Form Four class at high school wish they were coming; others reckon I’m stupid. The tour has really divided people. There’s families in the Waimoana Valley who’ve stopped speaking to one another.
Dad says there are black rugby organisations in South Africa working to get into the top teams. (He knows those sorts of things. Teachers usually do.) It was embarrassing sometimes, being in his class at primary school, or seeing his name on my report: Alan Hohepa, Teacher. But he made lessons interesting.
Mum’s a teacher, too; she met my father at teachers’ college. She comes from a part of New Zealand where my Great-great-great-Aunt Janet used to live. So when Dad went to teachers’ college, he was supposed to say ‘hello’ to this girl called Beth. He reckons he wasn’t very interested — until he met her. She helps teach Standards One and Two at Waimoana School.
I felt nervous during the couple of days before we drove to Auckland. Nervous and excited. I was going to show how I felt about this tour. So I went for walks down the riverbed, past the old orchard and the new bridge that crosses the Waimoana where the swing-bridge used to be. There’s no other girls in the valley my age. Dad’s friend Tipene and his wife, Pania, (she’s neither pronor anti-tour) have eleven-year-old twins, Marika and Marama. But I quite like being by myself.
I like the valley, too. I know it’s special. Tipene’s father, Robert McDougall (I call him Grandad Robert), used to teach at our primary school, and he’s writing a book about the Waimoana area. He’s found out all sorts of stuff. But I’m going to leave here sometime. There’s a big wide world out there, and I want to see it!
The road past our place is tar-sealed now. There are new big milk-tankers that pick up from the farms. We’ve got TV — though not colour. But it’s still a sleepy place, most of the time. I want some excitement in my life.
Some people like living in the Waimoana Valley because it’s peaceful. A family from South Vietnam came here about the time I was born. There’d been a long war in their country — even New Zealand soldiers were fighting there for a while — and they arrived in our country as refugees.
I didn’t know that Tranh — he’s about my age — was from Vietnam when I first met him. ‘Is New Zealand very different from China?’ I asked him. Tranh got quite wild. ‘We not China! We from Vietnam!’ His family used to be farmers, and they’ve started this huge market garden, with all sorts of vegetables.
Tranh comes on the bus to high school. When we were at primary school, he used to do this little bow whenever he saw me, which was embarrassing, but quite cute. He doesn’t do it now that he’s become a typical rude Kiwi guy! But he wished me good luck when I said why I was going to Auckland.
The day before we left, I walked a long way up and down the riverbed. The Waimoana had a huge flood a long time ago; Dad and Tipene nearly got drowned being silly. For ages after, the river flowed up against the other bank.
It was amazing, their finding that carved panel. It’s famous: Grandad Robert has lots of articles from newspapers and magazines about it. It’s kept in the meeting house on the marae. I like looking at it whenever we go there.
One article has a photo of Dad and Tipene and Tipene’s sister, Finola, holding the panel. ‘Stupid boys!’ Nana Florence said once. ‘They’re lucky they didn’t end up in the river.’
They made up for it later. The new bridge I was walking under yesterday had to be built because of what happened to the old swing one.
I was about six. My father and Tipene were sorting out our hayshed one morning soon after Christmas. I was ‘helping’ Mum in the kitchen — getting in her way, in other words. We’d picked a whole bucket of peas from our garden, and we were going to take some over to Nana Florence and Grandad Matiu, in their little cottage just across the road.
I heard a truck start rumbling across the bridge, but I didn’t take any notice. After Christmas is when most farmers cut hay for their cows’ winter feed, and trucks are always carting bales from one place to another.
Then a different noise made Mum and me freeze. A bang!, followed straightaway by a cracking and splintering. Silence for half a second, then the walloping sound of something heavy hitting water.
Mum raced out of the house towards the back path and our home paddock. I tore after her, as fast as my six-year-old legs could carry me. As I pushed through the gate into the paddock, she was already halfway over the stile onto the road. Dad and Tipene were ahead of her, sprinting towards the bridge.
I struggled over the stile and started along the road. I heard myself making little whimpering noises. Something terrible had happened; I just knew it.
I could see the bridge just ahead. Something was different. What … then I stopped and stared.
A long chunk of the wooden deck had vanished. I was gazing down through empty air at the stones of the riverbed way below. Up against its steep bank, the Waimoana swept by, deep and powerful. I glimpsed something under the surface. Something red and crumpled-looking. A truck.
Voices shouted. Hands grabbed me. ‘Ailsa! Stay here!’ My mother pulled me against her. We stood, staring at the twisted shape in the surging river. Where was the driver?
Dad and Tipene had scrambled halfway down the bank. Another truck skidded to a stop at the far end, figures jumping out. My father and his friend were pulling off boots, stripping off shirts. No movement inside the truck.
My father crouched, facing the river. ‘Alan!’ Mum called. ‘Be careful!’ But Dad was already plunging into the water. Tipene leaped, too, straight after him. They disappeared under the surface. I could just make out their shapes, heaving at the door of the crumpled cab. Mum squeezed me against her so hard I thought she was going to squash me.
Tipene and Dad burst up from the water together. They sucked in huge breaths and dived once more. Mum and I stood staring into the river, where the two figures struggled at the truck’s door. Brakes squealed behind us, and Mr Ross from up the valley jumped out of his car. He wore his going-to-town clothes: good trousers, shirt and tie.
He hurried up to my mother and me. ‘What’s happened, Beth? Who is it?’
Mum opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. At the same moment, I saw a different movement under the water. The cab door sagged open; my father half-disappeared inside. Another second, then he and Tipene were dragging someone out into the current.
They shot up to the surface again, clutching the driver between them. Once more I heard them gasping for breath, then they began kicking towards the bank, pulling a limp body with them, trying to keep its head above water.
Mr Ross went sliding down the steep slope. Mrs Ross will be annoyed if he gets his good clothes dirty, I thought — like an idiot.
He seized my father’s hand and the driver’s shirt; yanked them upwards. Tipene shoved from behind. They struggled up out of the river, and flopped on a level part of the bank.
Dad knelt by the driver, gasping and shaking. Mr Ross and Tipene crouched beside him. After a couple of seconds, Mr Ross raised his head (his going-to-town shirt was filthy; Mrs Ross would be really annoyed). ‘He’s alive!’ he called up to Mum and me.
Another car had arrived, too. Nana Florence and Grandad Matiu with Nana Whina. ‘Still getting into trouble at the river, you two?’ Nana Whina shouted down the bank. ‘Don’t you ever learn?’
Tipene and my father looked up together. Under their sodden hair, their faces split into grins. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Tipene went. ‘But this time we’re the good guys!’
They got their photos in the paper. The truck driver got out of hospital with a broken wrist a couple of days later. And our valley got a new bridge.
So I was thinking about all that, the day I wandered along the riverbed. About fifty metres past the bridge, someone called to me. No, it was magpies, warbling and squawking in the old orchard. The trees don’t give much fruit now, though Nana Florence reckons the plums taste better than ones from the town supermarket. The old orchard is where she and Nana Whina were when the big earthquake struck. There’s been some scary stuff happened in our valley!
I don’t go to the orchard much. Once when I was nine or so, Mum and Dad and John and I were all there, getting pears for stewing. A couple of magpies started dive-bombing us, swooping and shrieking. One whacked my head with its wing as it skimmed past, and I got a real fright. Dad said they must have a nest nearby. Either that, or they were trying to snatch the butterfly clip in my hair.
About a year after they found the carving and nearly drowned, Dad and Tipene were down on the riverbed near the orchard and saw something glittering among the stones. It was a little round piece of paua shell. Paua, miles from the sea? They took it to Grandad Matiu; he used to study old history and stuff like that. He thought it must be from another carving, maybe washed out of the swamp by the same flood that carried away the carved panel. It’s kept on the marae, along with the panel. Nana Whina’s mother Ahorangi said prayers in the meeting house over the new find.
She — Ahorangi — is buried at the urupa, near the marae. There’s a little memorial to her on the grave of my great-grandparents Duncan and Lily, up in the old part of our cemetery; they were best friends. Yeah, maybe South African people could learn from seeing how our Maori and Pakeha people get along? But the tour is wrong; I still believe that.
I know all the people in our cemetery’s new part. In the old part, there are some names that don’t live in the valley any more — Smale, Sheffield (though Great-nana Lily was a Sheffield before she married Great-grandad Duncan). I guess people gradually get forgotten after they die. Grandad Robert says that’s one reason he’s writing his history, to save as many memories as possible. I suppose people will forget me when I’m dead, though that’s hard to believe. It’s even harder to believe I’ll ever die!
As I finally came across the bridge and back into our home paddock, I could hear loud voices. I sighed. My brother John was back and having another argument.
No, he wasn’t. He stood on the front verandah of our farmhouse, calling across the road to my father, who was helping Grandad Matiu prop up the branches of the peach trees they’ve planted beside the cottage. ‘Cup of tea, Dad! And Nana and Grandad, if they want.’
Grandad called out that they were just off to visit Nana Whina. They’re all helping Grandad Robert McDougall work on his history. (I think they like remembering the old stories together.) Dad said he’d be a minute. Have you noticed that for men ‘a minute’ usually means quarter of an hour?
John saw me, went ‘Hi, Shorty’. I usually get annoyed when he calls me that, but there’ve been too many rows in our family these past weeks, so I just said ‘Hi’.
‘Thought I’d better make sure you’ve got yourselves organised before you head off to be silly sods in Auckland,’ my big brother went next. Now my face started to get hot. We didn’t need smart comments from him. I opened my mouth to tell him so.
Mum spoke first. ‘Thanks, love. Dad says you’ll drop in and do the milking while we’re away. That’s great.’ She shot me a quick look, and I knew she was telling me to stay quiet. ‘Dad moved the cows down to the river paddock this morning, so there should be plenty of feed.’
John nodded. ‘Not a problem.’ He glanced at me and said ‘Look after your mum and dad and the others, OK?’ Suddenly, I realised he was worried about us. For a moment I felt nervous; then I felt glad he trusted me — sort of.
‘I will,’ I told him. ‘Thanks for coming.’
John shrugged. ‘No big deal. Gotta go, Mum. Can I take a couple of scones with me?’ Next minute, my mother had four buttered-and-jammed scones in a bag for him. He left just as Dad appeared: ‘a minute’ had meant only five minutes today.
