“Really,” she said and put the phone down slowly.
What did Miss Marple say? “Motivation explains everything.” Everyone knew Kevin as a dedicated ornithologist. So he was. But no one knew him very well as a person. She recalled the deep line between the eyes, the hard, thin lips and the white knuckles on the fist when she asked her question about Nga Tama.
Kevin had lied about the Keulemans painting. And he hadn’t corrected her mistake about the sex. Why? Because he was angry and didn’t think. And why did he get angry? Because he has a phobia about the Maori.
But plenty of other Pakeha had the same phobia. Strong opinions about the Maori claims, especially to the conservation estate, were not uncommon in the mountain and tramping clubs. Some who held these views were her close friends. The so-called “Maori problem” had become the hot topic for the media, the talkbacks, the conversation in the street. It was all because of the hold-ups.
The spate of Maori highway hold-ups had started three months before. Each wrecked car had on it the name of a particular Maori “republic”. Not one of the iwi named had publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, nor had the Nga Tama. But every hold-up had been followed by a flood of vituperation in the media correspondence columns and by a spate of angry calls on talkback. There had even been organised demonstrations outside Maori marae and one marae near Turangi had been destroyed by fire with arson suspected. She had been appalled by the level of redneck intolerance in the community. It even deterred those with contrary opinions from making their views known lest they be branded as wimps or pinkos. The talkback response was 90% anti-Maori.
Motivation explains everything. Phobia about the Maori was a motivation for atypical behaviour. But could this include lying and the possible doctoring of the photo?
In auditor’s language there was a discrepancy in the accounts.
The Central Library newspaper room was fairly empty and fortunately there were no people there whom she knew. She took a look in the adjacent research room. Some elderly grey-haired Pakeha men were filling in their retirement days working on their genealogies. Again she was pleased that there were no accountancy clients or fellow ornithologists.
For two hours that morning she worked away, photocopying items from the relevant papers. She hadn’t read much about the hold-ups before, but now she studied them systematically together with public response in the way of editorials, articles and letters to the editor.
There was something unusual about the four hold-ups. In spite of the number of perpetrators and huge public reaction against them, the police had not succeeded in charging or arresting a single person. This had a noticeable effect on the type of media coverage. When a crime is committed, usually the media focus on the police activity to find the criminals and public requests by the police for information. In the hold-up cases you had to search to find any reference to what the police were doing. If they were mentioned at all, the publicity was derogatory. The papers instead were filled with angry letters and articles and strident political comment.
In other words the response was almost entirely political.
An article in the Herald caught her eye.
It is often assumed that real change in society can only come through democratic processes. This is to assume that a particular political way of doing things is the best and only way for our society. Yet in history many revolutions have brought progress and some have been non-violent. Take for example, the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution of 1688 whereby public-spirited Englishmen replaced the Catholic Stuart King James II with the Protestant William of Orange. It is believed that such bloodless coups could never happen in a democratic country like New Zealand, but history gives no such assurance. Let these examples be a salutary reminder to our present Government, lest it take too far its pandering to a minority group which has adopted a policy of highway terror to press its claims. Let it remember that the political process rests ultimately not in the Government but in the people itself.
This article was written by a senior member of the Department of Political Science at a leading North Island university. It was even supported in the following issues by the majority of the readers. She noticed that the supporting letters were similar in their arguments and in the historical facts which they quoted.
So there was talk of a coup, and ominously it was to come from the people – in other words from outside Parliament. Was there a hidden group of conspirators or “sleepers”? If so, who were they?
And what could this possibly have to do with the huia sanctuary?
She gathered up her notes and photocopied items and glanced across to the research room again. The elderly grey-haired Pakeha men did not look up. They appeared to be assiduously and silently gathering material on their long-forgotten forbears.
Or were they writing letters to the paper?
Why were there so many of them? And why did they all look alike? Were they really working on family history? Retired Pakeha men were formidable in political controversy. A pity that the older some of them got the more one-eyed they became.
As she came down the stairs, she noticed a Maori woman with three small children at the counter getting some books out. She was fumbling in her bag for her card, but someone appeared to jostle her. Her bag fell on the floor and the contents spilled and were spread around. There were several Pakeha people standing with her at the counter, but no one moved. One of the children started to cry.
For heaven’s sake!
She dashed forward, gathered up the little bits and pieces and put them back in the bag. The contents were cheap and a little dirty and the bag was well worn. She also found the card and gave it to the attendant at the desk.
“Thank you very much,” came the soft, gentle voice.
As she went out the door, she heard the quite audible comment from a thin-lipped, well-dressed European woman, “Why help those people?”
It was a perfect summer’s afternoon at Achilles Point. People were swimming at St Heliers Beach, there were beach umbrellas on the sand and a few windsurfers curvetting in the light breeze off the shore. All in front of her the channel sparkled in shades of blue and green and purple. Northwards in her mind’s eye she saw its waters lapping on a succession of golden beaches all the way up to Whangaparaoa. Eastwards beyond Te Waiarohia-o-Ngai Tai, “the panoramic waters of Ngai Tai”, known as Musick Point, the Tamaki Strait shimmered in the summer haze, and ranged across the horizon were the green-brown islands of the gulf. There was Motutapu, the sacred island, Motuihe, the jewel of the gulf, Motukorea, the island of the oyster-catcher, Waiheke, stretching lazily with its gentle brown hills to the east, and looming beyond it all the misty blue eminence of Moehau – where the wind slept. Then lastly, right opposite her and dominating the whole scene like some benign kaitiaki or guardian was Rangitoto, its mysterious, perfectly symmetrical volcanic cone rising skywards, clothed with its magical green and blue-hued cloak.
It was all so beautiful. The “City of Sails”, where a thousand yachts glided on the sparkling waters of Waitemata. Tamaki Makarau, “Tamaki desired by many”, where gardens blazed in a riot of summer colour on the rich volcanic soil. Auckland, a city of wide cultural and racial variety, where people came in their different canoes from the islands, from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, to live together in peace.
Yet once this isthmus had been a place where twenty-two volcanoes had wreaked a holocaust of death and destruction.