The Whale Rider Page 10

The next year Kahu turned four and I decided it was about time I went out to see the world. Koro Apirana thought it was a good idea but Nanny Flowers didn’t like it at all.

‘What’s wrong with Whangara?’ she said. ‘You got the whole world right here. Nothing you can get anywhere else that you can’t get here. You must be in trouble.’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m clean,’ I answered.

‘Then there must be a girl you’re running away from. She looked at me suspiciously, and poked me between the ribs. ‘You been up to mischief, eh?’

I denied that too. Laughing, I eased myself up from the chair and did a Clint Eastwood. ‘Let’s just say, Ma’am,’ I drawled, then went for my six-gun, ‘that there’s not enough room in this here town for the two of us.’

Over the following four months I put in double time at the Works and got my Air New Zealand ticket. The boys took up a collection and gave me a fantastic party. My darling Joyleen Carol cried buckets over me. At the airport I said to Nanny Flowers, ‘Don’t forget to look after my bike.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she said sarcastically, ‘I’ll feed it some hay and give it water every day.’

‘Give Kahu a kiss from me.’

‘Ae,’ Nanny Flowers quivered. ‘God be with you. And don’t forget to come back, Rawiri, or else —’

She pulled a toy water-pistol from her basket.

‘Bang,’ she said.

I flew to Australia.

Unlike Kahu, my birth cord couldn’t have been put in the ground at Whangara because I didn’t return there until four years later. I discovered that everything I’d been told about Aussie was true: it was big, bold, brassy, bawdy and beautiful. When I first arrived I stayed in Sydney with my cousin, Kingi, who had an apartment in Bondi. I hadn’t realised that there were so many other Maoris over there (I thought I’d be the first) and after a while I realised why it was nicknamed ‘Kiwi Valley’. Wherever you went, the pubs, the shows, the clubs, the restaurants, the movies, the theatres, you could always count on bumping into a cousin. In some hotels, above the noise and buzz of the patrons, you were bound to hear somebody shouting to somebody else, ‘Gidday, cous!’

I was like a kid in a great big toyshop, wanting to touch everything. Whangara wasn’t as big as this, with its teeming city streets, glass skyscrapers, glitter and glitz. Nor could Friday night in the town ever compare with the action in the Cross, that part of Sydney to which people thronged, either to look or be looked at. People were selling anything and everything up the Cross and if you wanted to buy you just ‘paid the man’.

It was there that I came upon my cous Henare, who was now wearing a dress, and another cous, Reremoana, who had changed her name to Lola L’Amour and had red hair and fishnet stockings. I couldn’t understand Kingi’s attitude at all; he was always trying to cross the street whenever he saw a cous he didn’t want to be seen with. But I would just bowl along regardless and yell, ‘Gidday cous!’

As far as I could see, they were living the way they wanted to and no matter what changes they had made to themselves or their lives, a cous was a cous. I guess also that I didn’t feel that much different: I looked much the same as they did, with my leather jacket and pants matching their own gear with its buckles and scarves and whips. ‘What game are you into?’ they would tease. ‘What game?’ They would josh and kid and joke around and sometimes we would meet up later at some party or other. But always, in the early morning, when the sunlight was beginning to crack the midnight glamour, the memories would come seeping through. ‘How’s our Nanny? How’s our Koro? If you write to them, don’t tell them that you saw us like this.’

In the search for fame, fortune, power and success, some of my cousins had opted for the base metal and not the gold. They may have turned their lives upside down in the process, like Sydney Harbour Bridge’s reflection in the harbour, but they always craved the respect of our tribe. They weren’t embarrassed, but hiding the way they lived was one way of maintaining the respect. There was no better cloak than those starry nights under the turning Southern Cross.

Kingi and I got along fine, but when I found a mate of my own, I moved in with him. I had gotten a job working as a brickie and had also started playing League. It was through League that I met my buddy, Jeff, who told me he was looking for someone to share his flat. Jeff was a friendly, out-front guy, quick to laugh, quick to believe and quick to trust. He told me of his family in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, and I told him about mine in Whangara. I also told him about Kahu.

‘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 nigh
t. 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.