‘E hara!’ he said. ‘I think I lost it. It must have fell out when I was —’ Then his hand pressed against his heart and, ‘Anei,’ he whispered. He drew out a small packet and put it on the table. He pushed it toward our mother.
‘Enei nga moni.’
It was £500, our share of the winnings.
My sisters and I whooped and yelled and screamed with delight. Mum breathed a deep sigh.
‘I accept this token of aroha for me and our children,’ she said, ‘and return it to you as head of the household. I pray, however, that you allow me to take £200 for myself.’
Dad nodded in agreement.
The next day my mother, sisters and I drove into Patutahi. Mum wore her best dress and hat. She put on her white gloves and, at the last moment, applied lipstick. We stopped at the general store.
‘Why look who’s here!’ Miss Zelda cried, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘We listened to all the news on the radio! We just couldn’t believe that our Maoris had won the Golden Fleece award! Congratulations!’
Miss Daisy and Scott came from the back to extend their congratulations. Other Pakeha customers in the store surrounded us to shake my mother’s hand and pat Glory on the head.
‘I–I — I —’ My mother opened her purse.
‘My mother wants to pay —’ I began.
Mum put a gloved hand over mine. With a great effort she said, ‘I — Yes — I — want to pay in — in — full.’
‘Oh why not leave it for a while?’ Miss Zelda smiled. ‘There must be a million other things you want to do with the money. Go around the world perhaps!’ She laughed out loud at the thought.
Mum was firm. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Now.’ Her tone communicated authority. The other customers looked somewhat put out.
‘Well,’ Miss Zelda said, ‘if that’s the way you want it.’ She took out the ledger book and totalled the amount. ‘Two hundred pounds,’ she said.
Mum peeled the notes in front of Miss Zelda’s astonished face.
‘I think you’ll find it all there.’
Miss Zelda nodded. Then, just as my mother was about to leave, Miss Zelda’s voice came out of some dark place to strike.
‘Oh dear, I forgot to add on £6 interest.’
It was such a small thing really. All we had to do was to say to Miss Zelda that we would come back. But my mother recognised it for what it was — a sneer at her back, a piece of spite, a play of power. My mother turned to Miss Zelda. She walked back through the other customers and looked Miss Zelda straight in the eye.
‘You have made a mistake,’ she said.
Pakehas never make mistakes.
‘Yes,’ Mum said, determined. ‘You have made a mistake’ — she pointed at a ledger entry — ‘here.’
I thought, How can Mum know? She can’t read, she can’t do sums, she hasn’t had any schooling. Miss Zelda would have her for mincemeat.
‘Let me see that,’ Miss Zelda said. She picked up the book and took it to the window. ‘I can’t see where —’
‘There,’ Mum said, ‘where the ink is smudged. I remember clearly the day I came in. You charged me too much, got your rubber and rubbed it out, and put the right amount in. There. You overcharged me.’
‘But I would never do such a thing,’ Miss Zelda said.
‘Well you did,’ Mum said. She was trembling. ‘You did that day.’
There was silence. Everyone was staring at my mother. I felt like I wanted the floor to open up so that I could disappear.
Then Scott came from the back. ‘I remember,’ he said, nodding at Mum, confirming what she had said. ‘Mrs Mahana came in here and she looked at new clothes for her boy and we overcharged her by’ — he paused — ‘£6.’
The exact amount owing on interest.
Zelda and Daisy looked at each other.
‘Well, Scott, if you say so —’
With that, Miss Zelda wet her pencil with her lips and slashed a diagonal line across the tab.
‘Paid in full and discharged,’ she said slowly. She handed the tab to my mother. Her eyes were angry but her lips smiled. ‘Thank you, Mrs Mahana. I must also apologise —’
My mother nodded her head. She turned and left the general store, walking as fast as she could towards the shade of the oak tree near the school.
When we caught up with her she was at the pump, pushing the handle frantically up and down and washing her face. We knew she had been crying and was trying not to let us see her tears. She turned to us.
‘Isn’t this a marvellous day?’ she said. Her lips were still quivering. Then she gave a whoop and a holler. ‘Kia tere! Let’s get to town! We mightn’t be able to buy anything, darlings, but nobody is going to charge us for looking.’
She was free. She was no longer a slave.
Chapter 53
At the end of 1959 the faithful and stalwart Pani finally ended his two years’ servitude to Grandfather Tamihana. He again sought Miriam’s hand in marriage. Grandfather, still glowing in the success of the Golden Fleece, and Pani’s part in it, agreed. He was proud to have Pani as his son-in-law. Miriam was thirty-four and her hair was beginning to grey. She and Pani were married at the registry office in Gisborne. They were overjoyed to be together. Nor was Miriam’s womb barren. Within eleven months of their marriage, Miriam bore a lusty, squealing son.
Not long after Miriam’s wedding, my cousin Mohi was drinking late at the Patutahi Hotel with his latest girlfriend Carol and four friends. He had put a down-payment on a red Ford Zephyr convertible with a white canvas hood and white painted tyres; it was the only one in Poverty Bay and looked like it had been driven straight out of Rebel Without a Cause. It was the appropriate car for the sex machine that was Mohi, and it was his pride and joy. That night Fraser Poata from Hukareka happened to be in Patutahi and challenged Mohi to a re-match race across the red suspension bridge. Perhaps Mohi was worried about scratches on his new car. He lost.
According to the coroner’s report, ‘No blame should be attached to the publican, Mr Walker, who refused to serve the young Mohi Mahana and his friends after 6 p.m. closing. It is a tragedy blah blah blah.’
The facts are that the said Mr Walker slipped a crate to Mohi, who was angry at having lost the race against Hukareka, on the understanding that the transaction would remain secret between them. Mr Walker was fortunate that the survivors of the accident kept to that understanding. Around five o’clock in the morning, after drinking steadily all night, Mohi failed to take the corner just past the bridge to Waituhi. My father Joshua and I, up early and on our way to a cattle sale in Matawhero, were the first to come across the car. The Zephyr was upside down in the huge drainage canal which ran parallel with the road. The bodywork had crumpled; the windscreen was starred with broken glass. Week-long rain had filled the canal, and floating upside down were the bodies of Mohi, Carol and a young man called Jake. The other three boys were sitting on the side of the canal, drinking and laughing as if the party was still happening, man, and yelling to Mohi, ‘Hey you black bastard, wake up! Don’t be a piker!’ Brown beer bottles bobbed up and down unbroken in the water.
My grandfather Tamihana Mahana, Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies, took Mohi’s death very badly. Mohi had been his favoured one; in him could no fault lie. His grief was only compounded by the way in which the newspapers made a big fuss of Mohi’s promise as an athlete and of his relationship to Grandfather: this was ‘the grandson of Tamihana Mahana, one of the best known Maori citizens of the district and patriarch of the family which last year won the Golden Fleece’. He was outraged that the local Gisborne Herald reporter should use the opportunity of Mohi’s death to editorialise on the danger of alcohol abuse among young Maori. Grandfather was, after all, a respected elder of a church to which alcohol, tobacco and other abusive substances were anathema. A cynic like myself would have said that Grandfather was concerned only for his own reputation. But even if that was true, there was no denying the depth of his grief.