Witi Ihimaera - The Whale Rider

‘You’d love her,’ I said. ‘She’s a fantastic looker. Big brown eyes, wonderful figure and lips just waiting to be kissed.’

‘Yeah? Yeah?’ he asked eagerly.

‘And I can tell she’d go for you ,’ I said. ‘She’s warm and cuddly, great to be with, and she just loves snuggling up close. And —’

Poor Jeff, he didn’t realise I was having him on. And as the weeks went by I embellished the story even more. I just couldn’t help it. But that’s how our friendship was; we were always kidding around or kidding each other.

I must have been in Sydney over a year when the phone call came from my brother Porourangi. Sometimes life has a habit of flooding over you and rushing you along in its overwhelming tide. Living in Aussie was like that: there was always something going on, day and night. If Jeff and I weren’t playing League we’d be out surfing (the beach at Whangara was better) or partying with buddies, or hiking out to the Blue Mountains. You could say I had begun drowning in it all, giving myself up to what Kingi would have called ‘the hedonistic life of the lotus eater’. Kingi was always one for the big words. He used to tell me that his favourite image of Australia was of Joan Sutherland singing ‘Advance Australia Fair’, a can of Fosters in one hand, and surfing supremely into Sydney Harbour like an antipodean Statue of Liberty. See what I mean? All those big words? That’s Kingi, for sure.

I was still in bed when the telephone rang, so Jeff answered. Next minute, a pillow came flying at me and Jeff yanked me out of bed saying, ‘Phone, Rawiri. And I’ll talk to you later.’

Well, the good news was that Porourangi was getting married to Ana. Nanny Flowers had been pestering both of them about it. ‘And you know what she’s like,’ Porourangi laughed. ‘Don’t bother to come home though,’ he said, ‘because the wedding is just going to be very small.’ Kahu would be the flower girl.

‘How is she?’ I asked.

‘She’s five and started school now,’ Porourangi said. ‘She’s still living with Rehua’s folks. She missed you very much last summer.’

‘Give her a kiss from me,’ I said. ‘And also kiss our Nanny. Tell everybody I love them. How’s Koro?’

‘In Nanny’s bad books as usual,’ Porourangi laughed. ‘The sooner they get a divorce the better.’

I wished Porourangi and Ana the very best with their life together. The season of bereavement had been long over for Porourangi and it was time for renewal. Then just before he hung up, he said, ‘Oh, by the way, your mate was very interested in Kahu, so I told him she was doing well with her spelling.’

Uh oh. That was the bad news. No sooner had I put the phone down than Jeff was onto me.

‘Warm and cuddly, huh?’

‘No, wait Jeff, I can explain —’

‘Big brown eyes and fantastic figure, huh?’

‘Jeff, no —’ In his hands he had a soggy apple pie.

‘Lips just waiting to be kissed?’ His eyes gleamed with vengeance.

I should count myself lucky that I had cooked dinner the night before. Had it been Jeff, that apple pie wouldn’t have been so scrumptious.

Not long after that Jeff also got a phone call, but the news wasn’t so good. His mother called from Papua New Guinea to ask him to come home.

‘Your father’s too proud to ring himself,’ she said, ‘but he’s getting on, Jeff, and he needs you to help him run the coffee plantation. He’s had a run of rotten luck with the workers this year and you know what the natives are like, always drinking.’

‘I’ll have to go,’ said Jeff. I knew he was reluctant to do so. Indeed, one of the reasons why he had come to Sydney was that it was as far from his family as he could get. He loved them deeply, but sometimes love becomes a power game between the ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that children have for themselves. ‘But it looks like all my chickens are coming home to roost,’ Jeff said ruefully.

‘Family is family,’ I said.

‘Say,’ he interrupted. ‘You wouldn’t like to come with me?’

I hesitated. Ever since speaking to Porourangi I had actually been thinking of going back to Aotearoa. Instead, I said, ‘Sure, I’ve been a cowboy all my life. Let’s saddle up, partner.’ So we started to pack up ready to move on out. I rang Whangara to tell Nanny Flowers.

‘You’re going where ?’ she yelled. As usual she was holding the phone at arm’s length.

‘To Papua New Guinea.’

‘What!’ she said. ‘You’ll get eaten up by all them cannibals. What’s at Papua New Guinea’ — I mouthed the words along with her — ‘that you can’t get in Whangara? You should come home instead of gallivanting all over the world.’

‘I’ll be home next summer. I promise.’ There was silence at the other end. ‘Hullo?’

Koro Apirana came to the telephone. ‘Rawiri?’ he said loudly. ‘What did you say? Your Nanny is crying.’ There was a tussle at the other end and Nanny Flowers returned.

‘I can speak for myself,’ she said in a huff. Then, in a soft voice, full of longing, she added, ‘All right, boy. You go to Papua New Guinea. But don’t make promises about next summer. Otherwise I will be watching the road, and going down to the bus every day to see if you are on it.’

Tears began to mist my vision. I could just imagine my Nanny walking down the road in summer, Kahu skipping beside her, and sitting on the verge watching the cars going past, and asking the bus driver —

‘We love you,’ Nanny said.

Waiting and waiting. Then the phone clicked on the handset and she was gone.

I was two years with Jeff in Papua New Guinea and while they were productive years, they were not always happy. Jeff’s father couldn’t come down to Port Moresby to meet us but his mother, Clara, did. Although Jeff had told her I was a Maori it was obvious that I was still too dark. As soon as I stepped off the plane I could almost hear her wondering, ‘Oh, my goodness, how am I going to explain this to the women at the Bridge Club?’ But she was polite and gracious and kept up a lively chatter on the plane to Mount Hagen.

Tom, Jeff’s father, was another story, and I liked him from the start. He was a self-made man whose confidence had not been shattered by his long and debilitating illness. But it was clear that he needed his son to help him. I can still remember the first time I saw Tom. He was standing on the verandah of the homestead, resting his weight on two callipers. He wasn’t embarrassed by his disability and when Jeff went up to greet him he simply said, ‘Gidday young fella. Glad to have you home.’

Tom had contracted Parkinson’s disease. It wasn’t until weeks later that I discovered the disease had not only struck at his limbs but also had rendered him partially blind.

The situation was clear. Jeff would have to act as an extension to his father, his arms and legs and eyes. Deskbound, Tom would run the plantation from the homestead and Jeff would translate the instructions into action. As for me, I’ve always been pretty good at hard work, so it was simply a matter of spitting on my hands and getting down to business.

Putting the plantation back on its feet was a challenge which the countryside really threw at us; I have never known a country which has fought back as hard as Papua New Guinea. I doubt if it can ever be tamed of its temperatures, soaring into sweat zones, for its terrain, so much a crucible of crusted plateaus and valleys, and its tribalism. But we tried, and I think we won some respite from the land, even if only for a short time. Man might carve his identification mark on the earth but, once he ceases to be vigilant, Nature will take back what man had once achieved to please his vanity.