Love kept Pani at Grandfather’s stern wheel for the agreed year. At the end of the year Grandfather did indeed offer his daughter’s hand — but Sephora’s hand and not Miriam’s. Was not Sephora the eldest and therefore the one to be wed before her sister? There was something biblical about Grandfather’s gesture, a rightness that was nevertheless vindictive to the course of true love. Yet Pani persevered and agreed to work another year for Miriam.
On the day we moved to Grandmother’s land, my mother found it difficult to leave the quarters. She was a sentimental person and, as the afternoon wore on, became more tearful. No matter what it looked like or how small it was, the quarters had been the place to which she was brought as a young bride. Here she and my father Joshua had shared their passionate life and, from it, become the parents of four children. They had nursed, raised and loved us when we suffered through whooping cough, flu, an ailment which the Maori called puku and other sicknesses. On one occasion Mum had called in an old kuia with healing powers to succour the rasping breathing I developed — Grandfather would have had kittens if he’d found out. The kuia hooked a small finger deep into my throat and pulled out string after string of dry yellow phlegm.
A house, no matter how small or old, is filled with memories.
My spinster aunts were also unhappy about Mum and Dad leaving. We were moving only three miles down the road, but the farewells between Mum and Sephora, Miriam and Esther were agonising. The women had grown to depend on each other. Aunt Sephora, for instance, had been midwife at my birth when I came prematurely into the world. She had always considered herself to be my other mother. As for Aunt Miriam’s romance with Pani, that would never have happened had it not been for Mum telling Miriam to take the chance and forget about the difference in age, that here was a young man who saw beyond physical years to the person beneath.
Our spinster aunts were afraid too. They didn’t want to be left alone with Grandfather Tamihana, whose rages and periods of irrationality could never be anticipated. But Pani would be there, living in the quarters, and he would keep Grandmother and my aunts safe at the homestead.
Dad filled the car with all our possessions, a pitiful assortment of bedding, pots and pans, clothes and a few ornaments and trinkets, and drove on ahead while the rest of us walked along the road, herding Red in front of us. Glory rode Dad’s palomino and pulled the packhorse behind her. Our dog, Stupid, kept barking excitedly.
Grandmother Ramona accompanied us. When we arrived at the land she asked if she might be given a moment to say goodbye to her bees. Of course we agreed, expecting that even though we lived there she would continue to come down to the meadow to keep her hives.
‘No,’ she said. ‘When I gave you the land I relinquished all claim to it.’ When she said it like that, my mother started to cry again, the tears streaming like a river down her face.
The sun was hot that day and the meadow was brilliant with spring daisies and other wild flowers. A slight breeze rippled the long stems, making waves of yellow and green. Grandmother Ramona was not wearing her beekeeping clothes. She walked into the middle of the field and stopped for a moment, breathing in the fragrance. Then she began to karanga to the bees, to call them hither –
‘Haramai, haramai, e nga pi aroha haramai —’
At first there was silence. Then, from the four corners of the meadow rose a humming sound as wave after wave of bees came shimmering and swarming like golden clouds towards her. Grandmother lifted her arms, her lips and her face to the honey bees. They came to rest in her open palms, to kiss her lips and taste her tears.
Afterward, she said that she had only two requests. The first was that we would never cut the meadow. The second was that we would love the bees as she had loved them. They, in their turn, would give us the sweetest honey in the world.
Then Grandmother turned her back and started to walk away. I swear to you that the honey bees made such a sound, such a loud buzzing, that you would think they would die of love.
Since then, whenever I have had to let go of anything or anybody in my life, I have always tried to remember Grandmother Ramona on that day.
She never returned.
That night we had the earth for our floor, the stars for our ceiling and the Waipaoa rustling at our doorway. Strangely enough, my mother was not as perturbed about sleeping in the open as I thought she would be.
‘No vampire in his right mind is going to turn up when we have all of Grandmother’s bees to protect us,’ she said.
There was a derelict house on a small western rise which Dad planned to restore for us to live in. It had three bedrooms, a verandah which had been partially closed in as a fourth bedroom, sitting room, dining room and kitchen. One wall was completely exposed and would have to be rebuilt, and the roof over the back part of the house was missing. Elsewhere there were areas which would have to be patched. There was no bathroom or toilet, and washing would have to be done in the river. Nor was the old outside windmill operable; we would have to repair the vanes and pump to enable water to be drawn up from the river along the rise to the house.
The next morning, when the sun came up, we were ready to begin. The house had been used for storing hay and old clapped-out equipment — heavy pieces of iron, car and tractor parts, all the junk associated with farming. Sheep, birds and dogs had left copious droppings. Huge spiders’ webs were strung in all the rooms. The first task was to clean the whole place out –
‘Let’s get to it,’ Dad said.
I had been given another job — the digging of a drophole for the outhouse toilet.
Just then we heard the sound of cars driving up the track. Our gang, Mahana Four, had come to help us — Uncle Hone and Aunt Kate, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Albie, Pani and Miriam, Sephora and Esther, Sam Whatu and his sons Willie, David and Benjamin, Auntie Molly, Haromi, Peewee and Mackie.
‘Don’t tell Father,’ Uncle Hone said.
‘My name is Charlie Whatu,’ Aunt Ruth winked.
‘Just keep Mother Ramona’s damn bees away from us!’ Aunt Kate added.
By nightfall, the place had been swept and scrubbed, and repairs made to broken window sashes and doors. David and Benjamin had helped me with the drophole and Uncle Sam had rigged up a small private enclosure as a bathroom. An inventory had also been made of what had to be done to the house — new roofing, replacement of rotten wallboards and floorboards, glass for broken windows, new doors and so on. We also needed some fences; Mum wanted to keep some fowls. The list seemed endless.
‘There’s a lot of work to do, Josh,’ Uncle Hone said. ‘I’m glad you’ve got plenty of money.’
My mother and father tried to keep up a brave front, but the real situation was that we were hardpressed for cash, what with the repairs on the car and the extra tithe we were paying.
Then David said, ‘Hey, I think Dad’s got an old window frame you could have.’
And Benjamin said, ‘What about that old roofing iron stacked behind old Pera’s place? He doesn’t want it any more. That’ll do for now for the holes in the roof.’