Witi Ihimaera: I've Been Thinking About You, Sister

When Uncle Rangiora was killed, Mum was inconsolable. However, life goes on and, after the war ended, she moved to Gisborne to stay with her sister, Mattie, and worked as a shedhand in various shearing gangs. Dad was a shearer — that’s how they met. But she never forgot Uncle Rangiora, who had been buried in the Commonwealth war cemetery at Sfax, Tunisia. For as long as I can remember, every year without fail, Mum has walked in to The Gisborne Herald office and placed the same notice in the In Memoriam column:

To my brother, Private Rangiora Wharepapa, killed in action in Tunisia, 1943. Sadly missed, never forgotten. Your sister, Aroha.

Of course my sisters, brothers and I knew that Dad would never let Mum go to Tunisia without him. I was not surprised when Wikitoria telephoned to tell me, ‘Well, as usual, there’s no Judy without Punch.’ Apparently, Dad had shown up at the travel agent’s on his truck just when Wiki and Mum had almost completed the arrangements for the trip and were handing over a cheque for the deposit.

‘You can go back to your fish and chip shop, Wikitoria,’ Dad said to my sister. ‘How will that husband of yours cope without you to boss him around?’ He turned to the travel agent, a nice young boy named Donald. ‘My name is Tom Mahana and I’m going to Tunisia with Mrs Mahana.’

Mum looked at Dad askance. ‘With your bad hip you’ll be a nuisance,’ she told him. ‘Look at you! You can’t get around anywhere without a walking stick.’

‘And look at you ,’ Dad retorted. ‘You’re an old woman, or have you forgotten? You’ve never been able to find your way around without my help, so how do you think you’ll manage when you go overseas?’

‘You’ll slow me down,’ Mum answered defensively. ‘It’s a long way to go with a lot of connections to catch. I don’t want to miss the planes.’

‘Your wife is right,’ Donald said, pursing his lips. ‘If you have hip trouble you’ll have enormous difficulties.’

Dad was in no mood for an argument. Today was the cattle sales and he should have been there. ‘We won’t miss any planes,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am? I may have to use a walking stick but I’m not entirely hopeless.’

‘And I’m not clever enough to get to Tunisia with Wikitoria, is that it?’ Mum asked. She looked at Donald, who was really only the meat in the sandwich. ‘You know,’ she confided in him, ‘when my husband asked me to marry him I didn’t want to because he was so much older than me. But I thought, “Better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.” I never realised, that when men get older it doesn’t matter what their age is. They’re all hopeless.’

Donald excused himself while Mum and Dad continued their argument, but eventually Dad got his way. After all, the money for the trip was coming from their joint account, so that was that.

Now I have to admit that the idea of the trip would have been much easier on the family’s nerves if Mum and Dad had been flying on a, well, English-speaking airline. With an eye to economies, however, Mum had chosen to fly on Aerolineas Argentinas from Auckland to Buenos Aires to Barcelona to Paris, and thence to Tunisia by some airline that nobody had ever heard of.

‘How are you going to communicate?’ Wikitoria asked. ‘How are you going to find your way around when you won’t be able to read the signs?’

And, man oh man, the connections. When Mum sent me their itinerary I just about had a heart attack. ‘How do you know whether those terminals have air bridges?’ I said to her on the telephone. ‘How’s Dad going to get up and down all those stairs to and from the planes? And why does it look like the gates to your connecting flights are in other terminals? I’d better get our cousin Watene to fly from New York to Paris and go with you to Tunisia.’

‘And spoil our great adventure?’ she answered. ‘Don’t you dare! Anyhow, your father’s already in training.’

I’d heard all about Mum’s training from neighbours in Gisborne. ‘Oh, your poor father,’ they told me. ‘Your mother has been getting him up at six in the morning for a run around the block. We hadn’t realised she was so fit. She takes off like a rocket and your father hobbles after her, walking stick in hand. We can hear him complaining all the way about the new trainers she has bought for him. He says they’re too big and he doesn’t like the colour.’ True, my father has always been proud of his small feet and, well, aren’t all trainers white? ‘Does your mother listen to him?’ the neighbours asked. ‘No, she just keeps on yelling at him, “If you can’t keep up, you can stay at home.” By the time they finish their run your dad is absolutely exhausted.’

Exhausted or not, Dad managed to pass Mum’s fitness test. As the time for departure approached, they bought backpacks, got their passports and changed their money into pesos, francs and dinar. Mum gave Dad a haircut to save him the trouble of getting one while they were away. Three days before they were due to leave, she went up to Tolaga Bay where she and Uncle Rangiora had lived. There, she headed for the river where they had loved to swim.

What a nuisance. Mum had hoped to gather white stones from the riverbank but the best ones were at the bottom of the river, and the water was too deep to wade out to them. However, two Pakeha boys who were playing truant from school were jumping off branches into the water. She waved them over.

‘Yes, lady?’ they asked.

‘See those white stones?’ she said. ‘I’ve come to get some.’ She explained that she wanted to take them to Tunisia to put on Uncle Rangiora’s grave.

The young boys nodded and were soon duckdiving to the bottom of the river. Mum could see them, gliding like dreams through the sparkling water. When the boys returned, gasping, to the surface, they brought the white river stones to the bank. They soon had a good pile but they sorted through them, throwing some away. ‘They have to be perfect,’ they said to Mum, ‘You can’t take any old stones, can you, lady?’

‘No,’ Mum smiled. ‘Only the best.’

The boys dived again. They were enjoying themselves. While Mum waited for them she filled a small bottle with river water. Uncle Rangiora would like that — he probably missed the cool of the water there in the desert.

‘Thank you, boys,’ Mum said when the job had been done. She gave them a five-dollar note. ‘Don’t spend it all at once. I’m glad you played truant today.’

She left and gave them their river back.

At this point, my cousin Clarrie, her husband Chad and my Auntie Taina come into the picture. Somehow Clarrie found out about Mum and Dad going to Tunisia — probably from Wiki. Chad was American and, as it happened, they were planning with Auntie Taina to make one of their infrequent trips to catch up with his folks in Montana.

‘Don’t worry, cuz,’ Clarrie said to me on the phone from Wanganui, ‘We’ll meet them in Auckland. We’ve changed our bookings and are now on the same flight as Auntie and Uncle as far as Buenos Aires. When we get there, we’ll make sure they catch their connection to Barcelona.’ There was a slight tone of disapproval in her voice that I was letting Mum and Dad wander around in a dangerous world where they could get mugged or murdered, the poor things.

‘Thank you, Clarrie,’ I answered, trying to sound suitably chastised.

The day came for Mum and Dad’s departure. The terminal at Gisborne airport was crowded with my brothers and sisters, all trying to be brave. Mum sat stony-faced as they pleaded with her to change her mind; she was clutching her airline bag with its passport, money, river stones and bottle of river water, and turned a deaf ear to their words.