Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

And what made her world spectacular? Well, although at the time she married Gardner and swore that she was unaware ‘he had all that money’, it all came out in the end. He was actually Gardner Harrington III (and my Cousin Lamarr was Gardner Lamarr Harrington IV). No wonder the Harringtons were horrified when he married someone, well, dark.

Nevertheless, he was the heir to the family fortune. Minions of the Harrington empire were therefore dispatched to ‘Noo Zeelin’ (‘Where the hell is that?’) to tell Uncle Gardner that all was forgiven and he should bring his bride home. Aunt Lulu and the three kids were hauled off to meet the folks ‘in some dull place called Washington DC,’ she would tell us, airily. There, the Harrington rellies tried to parlay her suspect Maori blood into something more suitable: they liked the possible Spanish caravel link in her ancestry and began hinting to their social circle that Lulu’s pedigree was Castilian.

Aunt Lulu soon put that little deception in its place when she appeared at the opera in a stunning Maori cloak and with feathers in her hair. ‘Castilian, my ass,’ she would tell us of this little incident.

Surprise, surprise, being Maori appeared to have more cachet in the Washington society set. Castilian nobility were a dime a dozen, but it wasn’t every day that you had a Maori princess living in one of the best streets in Georgetown, with Rose Kennedy next door.

The Harringtons were in construction, mainly building malls throughout the US, and the plan was that Gardner was to take over board chairmanship. But they hadn’t reckoned on Aunt Lulu. She persuaded Gardner that while their official residence might remain in the States, why not retain a ‘residence by the sea’, i.e. in ‘Noo Zeelin’, and commute to work?

Despite the enormous logistical problems, Gardner agreed. He ensconced Aunt Lulu in a big two-storey house on Riverside Road, the best street in Gisborne, gave her a cook, butler, nanny and chauffeur and then, as if he were any ordinary husband, got dressed, took the car to Gisborne airport, flew to Auckland and then by flying boat to Washington DC via San Francisco: one month there, two weeks back, one month there again, two weeks back and so on. Aunt Lulu, in consideration of his crazy schedule, took herself and the children off to Washington DC as regularly as she could, but also at Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving Day.

How the marriage managed to sustain itself nobody will ever know. I’m sure that Gardner must have had tempting offers from Washington socialites only too willing to take him away from the wicked wiles of that wanton Maori woman, but it never happened.

No gossip ever attached itself to Aunt Lulu’s reputation either. She would explain her and Gardner’s astounding accomplishment by saying, ‘Americans are as faithful as dogs —’ I have news for you, Aunt Lulu ‘— and while they don’t last the distance they never go off the boil. As for me, I’ve always loved Gardner. As long as he’s in my life, he’s the only man for me.’

But it was more than that. Aunt Lulu and Gardner Harrington were fascinated with each other and, as I was to realise, Uncle Gardner adored his daughters and Lamarr. There was no way he would ever jeopardise his love for them.

One more thing: Aunt Lulu always had an interesting way of speaking.

‘If nothing else,’ she would say, ‘always speak clear ly and with in ten tion. It’s the only way to get staff to understand what it is you wish.’

It’s a pity her advice wasn’t taken up by her dogs. Aunt Lulu always had a dog, always a male, always a pug and always — or at least it’s what I thought when I was introduced to the first one — either Pooch or Bark or Wag.

‘Pooch?’ Aunt Lulu screamed. ‘ Pooch ? You ignorant young boy, his name is Pu-ccini!’ She then began to instruct me on the Italian composer of La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Turandot . As for Bark, he was actually Bach as in Johann Sebastian, and Wag was, of course, as in Richard Wagner.

She always insisted on calling me William. ‘One never shortens names. That is vulgar.’

We sped out of Gisborne.

Aunt Lulu and Pooch were happily sitting in the back and I was still wearing the silly look — some might call it a maniacal grin — I’d acquired since picking up the Bentley from Joe, the garage owner. No doubt about it, he’d certainly kept the car safe from all the ravages of weather and time — it was as handsome as I remembered it. I mean … a Bentley? I’d been mesmerised by the car since the day in 1956, when I was ten, that it was delivered to Uncle Gardner. It was shipped straight from the factory in the UK to small-town Gisborne and caused a sensation whenever it rolled into rural Maoridom where most people saved really hard for a second-hand car or rode the bus or went by horse to the marae.

Joe was in tears and kept polishing the Bentley even as I was driving it away from the garage. ‘I will personally strangle you,’ he called after me, ‘if the car comes back with anything resembling a scratch.’

Man oh man, was I in Heaven? Was I what! Who wouldn’t be, driving this beauty? She was a 1955 S-Type, six-cylinder sedan with an overhead inlet side exhaust valves type head delivering 4887cc horsepower. She had the distinctive two-tone colour scheme, and her simple lines bespoke wealth, good taste and the understated elegance of the very rich. She boasted a four-speed automatic gearbox, her top speed was 120 mph (that was a lot of grunt for a car from the 1950s) and, with no power steering, this was a car that had been built to be driven. Only a real man could drive her.

No wonder that I became an airline pilot and eventually a captain on Air Canada’s Boeing 777-300ERs. As a bigger boy I’d needed a bigger toy.

‘Oh, free at last!’ said Aunt Lulu as we left the city limits. ‘Now I must have one of my cigarettes. Do you have a lighter, dahling?’

‘For you, Aunt Lulu, anything.’ She’d taught me that every man carries a lighter and, even if he has difficulty turning to light her up while driving, he had to carry it off in the most masculine manner possible.

I took a quick squizz at my watch. It was nine o’clock and Tauranga was about six hours away: one hour to the Waioeka Gorge, two hours to Whakatane, where we could have lunch, and then a fast zoom around the coast to Tauranga would get us to Lamarr’s place by late afternoon.

The car soon filled up with cigarette smoke, Aunt Lulu carefully tapping the ash into the Bentley’s ashtray. Watching her in the rear-vision mirror, I couldn’t help thinking that, given Aunt Lulu’s influence on my boyhood, it was no wonder I’d developed a penchant for a career and wardrobe that had a bit of glamour: in my case, the four-star gold-embroidered epaulette that only captains of passenger aircraft can wear.

However, I had the suspicion that although I thought that way, Aunt Lulu and Cousin Lamarr probably just applauded the fact that I’d succeeded … within my own limitations.

Let me explain. In their world, there were some people who were stars and some people who weren’t. I know now that I was in the latter category: always waiting in the wings, the boy in the film who’s the best friend of the main actor, the one who doesn’t get the girl and doesn’t have the best songs to sing. Although Aunt Lulu and Lamarr both tried hard to bring Technicolor and widescreen into my life, I’ve always been the straight man.