Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

As for me and Lamarr, we were the same age but, well, he was as spec-tac-ular as Aunt Lulu. It was only to be expected really: after all, Uncle Gardner wasn’t around much to provide a male flavour to Lamarr’s upbringing. (‘God knows, I tried,’ my father Monty confessed, ‘but that sister of mine had him in buttons and bows from the moment he was born.’)

In the absence of a father figure, Lamarr was doted on by Aunt Lulu and given everything he wanted by his proud mother and his sisters, who considered that he was one of their dolls. ‘I grew up dressing up,’ Lamarr would proclaim proudly.

‘He’s not different at all,’ Aunt Lulu would always proclaim. ‘It’s just that he’s, well, the atr ical.’

Now, maybe Uncle Gardner wasn’t very bright, but when Lamarr was around seven it clicked that his son wasn’t particularly — masculine.

I remember the day clearly. There was some family hangi or something up the coast at Ruatoria, and Uncle Gardner was back for his usual fortnight at his ‘residence by the sea’. While the adults were talking in the shade of the willows, the kids were playing in the sunlight — and I was involved in a game of football in the paddock among the cowpats with my barefooted rough and tumble mates.

Until then, I hadn’t had much experience of Cousin Lamarr. None of us local boys had. Aunt Lulu had sent him down to boarding school in Wellington from a very early age. Maybe she thought lightning would strike twice and that, like her, Lamarr would eventually grow up and meet some nice rich American heiress — yeah, right. So that day was the first time any of us had ever seen Lamarr close up as it were. I mean he looked like a boy but something was a little off.

Uncle Gardner yelled out to me, ‘Hey! Boy!’ He waved me over. By that time the GI looks had faded and he’d begun to lose his hair, but he was still good-looking. ‘See that kid over there under the trees?’

I shaded my eyes and saw three, well, girls, playing with a toy dinner set. ‘You mean the boy —’ I took a guess, but I knew all along it was Lamarr ‘— in the middle?’

Uncle Gardner nodded. ‘That’s him. I want you to invite Lamarr to play with you young fellers and, every chance you get, you throw the little sonofabitch into a cowpat.’ He proffered me a few coins to sweeten the deal, so I spoke to the other boys and, well, money talks. With their agreement, I went over to the willows, where Lamarr was pouring tea for his sisters.

‘Hello, cousin,’ I said to him. ‘Wanna play ball?’ I couldn’t help the slight sarcasm that crept into my voice. I was sure Lamarr wouldn’t want to dirty his pretty little jumpsuit or whatever it was. Play with dolls maybe but … play ball?

Was I ever wrong! Lamarr looked at me, at the other boys, and he was off to join us like a rocket. When I dumped him in a cowpat he shrieked with glee and ran after me and dumped me! — and I wasn’t even holding the ball.

‘No, cousin, you have to go for the boy — on the other side,’ I added, because he still hadn’t got it. ‘The one who’s got the ball and wants to score a try.’

Well, that did it. Lamarr became the best tackler on the field. So I don’t want you to think that he was afraid of getting hurt, because he wasn’t. In fact he later made the first fifteen at his boarding school. He was a first five-eight, though he had desperately wanted to be a forward. One night when we were hanging out he told me why: ‘I just loved getting in among those hairy thighs and pushing .’ He’d never have done a Hopoate (Lamarr’s standards were too high), but whenever he was in the scrum he was in, well, hog heaven.

Aunt Lulu and I reached Matawai, the Bentley cruising up all those hills like a dream. I was so busy driving that I hadn’t realised the medication or whatever was keeping her, well, normal, was starting to wear off.

She looked at me, as if for the first time, and said, ‘You know I have a nephew who works for the airlines just like you do. You might know him. His name’s William.’

She took another look and her memory shifted again. She leant forward and gave me a sharp rap on the shoulder.

‘And you know, Brown, that I always like you to wear your chauffeur’s cap whenever we’re in the Bentley. I won’t tell you again.’

Uh oh.

Coward that I am, I rummaged in the front compartment and found the cap that had once belonged to Brown — he was Maori and his name was really Brownie.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said as I put it on.

‘That’s better,’ Aunt Lulu said.

Silly boy, me, to think that driving Aunt Lulu to Tauranga would be that easy.

And so it was that from Matawai, approaching the long winding road through the Waioeka Gorge, I ceased to be Aunt Lulu’s nephew, William, and became Brown, one of the long line of dogsbody-cum-drivers that Uncle Gardner had employed whenever he was home in New Zealand.

Why the chauffeurs? Well, being American, Uncle Gardner could never get accustomed to driving on the left side of the road. And he never did like the Bentley. ‘What kind of goddamn country is this,’ he would grumble, ‘when an American citizen can’t buy a goddamn Chrysler because the steering wheel’s on the wrong goddamn side?’

I actually didn’t mind that Aunt Lulu assumed I was Brownie. I’d liked him, especially since he would sometimes let me drive the Bentley (I was thirteen the first time I got behind the wheel) when he was sent to the grocery store to get something important like more cigarettes or confectionery. And, after all, playacting had been such an important part of growing up with Lulu and Lamarr: if she wanted to do a Driving Miss Daisy , that was fine by me. I’d do anything to keep her happy.

Sitting in the Bentley, with Aunt Lulu nodding off and then rapping on my shoulder to say, ‘Brown, you’re travelling too slow ! What is this, a hearse?’ and the wild bush standing in for Alabama, I couldn’t help but think back on those times when Uncle Gardner, after that first football game, would send Brownie around to pick me up and take me to the house.

My father concurred in what amounted to a game to stop Lamarr from turning from a sissy into something even more horrible and nameless. So the word was put on me: I was to be Lamarr’s daytime playmate and his best friend.

‘Lamarr’s such a girl,’ I complained to Dad.

‘It’s only for a few hours a week,’ he reprimanded me, ‘and you’re whanau, for Chrissake.’

Yeah, Dad, well thank you for putting that number on me. Fat chance, too, that he would sweeten the deal with some cash, like Uncle Gardner. No, this time I’d have to take on Lamarr as if he was some kind of social welfare project.

However, there was a ray of sunshine. I had become a randy teenager and I secretly had the hots for my cousin Viveca, who herself was interested in experimenting with a boy, even if it was her cousin. My seeming reluctance to be her brother’s best friend actually hid a scheming heart.

This was how the involvement in Aunt Lulu and Lamarr’s channelling games began.

‘Don’t take the boy home yet, Brown,’ Aunt Lulu would call from the living room. ‘We need somebody mas culine to play the hero.’