Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

We drove through the suburbs of Gisborne City. The main shopping centre had been turned into an obstacle course, thanks to all the palm trees and other so-called visual improvements by which Gisborne had been accessorised for the Millennium celebrations. But the streets were deserted except for the occasional shell-shocked Swedish backpacker looking vainly for something that spelt either entertainment or food. Through the first set of lights we went, past the hideous bicentennial memorial, across Kaiti Bridge and around the harbour to Auntie Pat’s house in Crawford Road. All I could think of was that I had foregone a night out in Wellington for this?

Auntie Pat went ahead of me, hurrying into the kitchen to check the stove. Habit made me head for the bedroom where I slept whenever I visited. I threw my bag on the bed and then went to join her.

‘Can you open a bottle of wine for us?’ Auntie Pat asked. ‘We could drink one of your father’s if you like.’

‘Might as well,’ I answered. ‘Looks like I’ll be buying my own from now on.’

‘You and me. He’s hated me bringing up Sam after all these years. When I mentioned to him I had given you Sam’s diary, he hit the roof. He hadn’t wanted you to know. And he hadn’t known that I had Sam’s diary. He thought everything of Sam’s had been burnt in the fire.’

‘So there was a fire?’

Auntie Pat paused and shivered.

‘Yes, but we’ll talk about that later. Meantime, why don’t you go into the dining room? I’ll bring our dinner in soon. It’s pork bones and puha.’

As it turned out, dinner was actually a mussel bisque, followed by swordfish steaks broiled with olivada and rouille. Dessert was poached apples with gorgonzola. As well as being a fan of Hollywood movies of the 1940s, Auntie Pat loved cooking. She always made light of her culinary accomplishment, as if Maori weren’t supposed to know how to cook à la cordon bleu.

‘Those were the best pork bones I’ve ever had, ‘ I said.

‘It was nothing,’ she answered. ‘They only took me a few minutes.’

With dinner over, we moved to the comfort of the living room. Auntie Pat had lit the fire. I couldn’t remember when I had ever been so relaxed with her. At least that was a plus of coming out. It had brought me and my spinster Aunt closer together.

‘Anything happening between you and Jason?’ Auntie Pat asked.

‘I saw him just before I came up,’ I said. ‘We’re finished. I only wish I didn’t love him, but I do. If you were ever in love, then you’ll know how I feel.’

I kicked myself as soon as I said it.

‘No, it’s okay, Nephew,’ Auntie Pat smiled. ‘After all, you’ve only known me as your spinster Auntie and I’ve never made a habit of talking about myself. But there were boyfriends, nothing serious, and—’

Auntie Pat paused, choosing her words carefully.

‘Yes, there was a man I loved but, at the time, he belonged to somebody else. The usual story. So, yes, I think I do know what you mean about love. And I wasn’t always like this —’

She stood up and went to her dressing table. When she came back she had a photograph album in her hand. She flicked through the pages.

‘Here we are,’ Auntie Pat said. ‘This is me with Mum and Dad when I was twelve. It was taken just before Sam went to Vietnam. Probably at Poho o Rawiri marae, from the look of the surroundings. I hated it when he left.’

‘You were twelve? I always thought of you as being much younger.’

‘I guess you get that idea from Sam’s diary,’ Auntie Pat nodded. ‘Sam always thought of me as being his little kid sister. I think he preferred it that way. When he was in Vietnam I used to write to him every week, did you know that? Even after he returned to Waituhi he never saw me as I really was —’

Auntie Pat paused at a page in the photograph album.

‘This is what I was looking for,’ she said. ‘I was fifteen.’

I had forgotten how pretty Auntie Pat had been. If photographs tell the truth, three years had changed the young skinny kid, tightly holding her mother’s hand, into a young vivacious girl with long curly hair and a wide flirtatious grin.

‘This was my boyfriend Charlie,’ Auntie Pat said, pointing to the boy with her. ‘Look at what we wore in those days! If you saw Charlie now you wouldn’t believe that he’d ever managed to fit into those pants. As for me, well, I was trying to be so California.’

Auntie Pat and her boyfriend Charlie were mugging for the camera. Charlie was pretending to be like Fabian or James Darren. Not to be outdone, Auntie Pat was posing like a Hollywood ingenue, one arm behind her head, mouth pursed in a kiss, and the other hand on her hips. She had a beautiful bust and small waist, and was wearing a white blouse and hip hugging blue jeans.

‘Whatever happened to you, Auntie Pat?’ I wondered. The physical person was still there, but it was almost as if someone else was now in that body. Some person or some event had altered the destiny that seemed to be ahead of that laughing young girl who posed one sunny day long ago with a boy named Charlie. The girl in the photograph looked as if she had all the world at her feet and loved being touched. The woman next to me disliked the idea of physical contact, and lived hermetically sealed away from life in a small house surrounded by old movies and cordon bleu cooking. Who did it? What was it —

All of a sudden a gust of wind came down the chimney and Auntie Pat leaned back from the momentary increase of heat. She looked at me with terror and made as if to get up, to take a runner from the story she knew she had to tell. But the flames, fuelled by the burst of oxygen, leapt like tongues and began to talk to her.

Tell him, Patty. Before you change your mind, tell him. Now.

Auntie Pat sighed. She traced the photograph of herself tenderly, almost caressing it as if the girl in the photograph was a living person.

‘I was this age, fifteen, when Cliff Harper came to New Zealand. All that Sam had ever told us about him was that he was his American friend. I went with Sam to the bus station in Gisborne to wait for Cliff. I loved my brother and, because he was happy that his friend was coming, I was happy too. More than that I was just happy to be with Sam. We were so close. Sometimes people used to take us for boyfriend and girlfriend because we were always kidding around. I loved it when he put his arm over my shoulders to pull me into him.

‘Anyway, the bus was late, it always was. It was the early afternoon bus and it finally got in at three o’clock. At last all the passengers got off, and there was no Cliff. I said to Sam, “Maybe he’ll be on the next bus.” I mean, I didn’t care! But I could see that my brother was disappointed so I put my arms around him to make him feel better. I had my face tight against his chest and I felt and heard his heart beating. Incredible, really, to remember that after all these years. It was going der der der der der der , and it was like a little bird beating its wings in there. Then all of a sudden the heartbeat changed. It went der der der der der der. That’s when I heard somebody laughing behind me and felt Sam push me away. When I turned around to see who it was, a man was standing on the step of the bus in an American airforce uniform. “Looking for me?”

‘The next moment Cliff jumped down and he and Sam were slapping each other on the back and laughing. They kept turning and turning and Cliff’s hands were on the skin of Sam’s neck. I felt closed out and jealous and angry, and Cliff must have noticed because he broke the embrace with Sam.

‘“So you’re little Patty —”’

Auntie Pat gave a nervous laugh.