“Good evening, Madam. Are you in a hurry to get somewhere?”
A boyish face peered in at the window, looking puzzled.
“My daughter has just been rushed to hospital in Thames,” the driver said in a tremulous high-pitched voice, tipping her wide hat even further down across her face.
“Well, just be careful. And don’t pick up any hitch-hikers. There’s a mental patient gone missing and he may be violent.”
“Dear, dear, how shocking!” the old lady quavered, and distractedly fumbled with gears, brake and starter until the old Morris Minor jerked and wobbled off down the Thames road.
The old ladies did not proceed to Thames but plunged off Highway Number 2 on to the backcountry roads that wound through the swamps and the little hills around Te Kauwhata. Reappearing on the Hauraki Plains, the car, which now appeared to have somewhat younger occupants, darted and criss-crossed over the plains in a maze of country roads, leaving a trail of barking dogs at isolated farmhouses and startled cows in the dewy paddocks.
One of the occupants broke the silence. “How d’you feel now, Tane?”
“I never had much to do with church, but that man was a tohunga,” the other spoke slowly as if he was trying to form the words before he said them. “I’d made some terrible mistakes and I told him I was sorry. Then it all came out. I don’t understand how it happened, but I have never felt like this – for a long time. They had kept me on a drug to deaden the pain because I had terrible nightmares. But that fella knew what the trouble was and now the nightmares have gone and I can think clearly again.”
“If you feel up to it, tell us what happened,” David said gently.
“It goes back to my brother Hone, as you know.” David nodded. “He died because of something that happened in those mountains. I found out later that the elders believed it was a result of a curse because he had gone into a tapu valley. That was why no one said anything about where he’d gone and why he died. It had happened before. It was called “the valley of death”. So three years ago I made a secret expedition. You saw where I was going, didn’t you, when I looked at the maps? I’d worked out where the forbidden valley was.”
David whispered, “So it was the Waitoa.”
“The huia sanctuary!” exclaimed Kate.
“Huia sanctuary?” Tane looked puzzled.
“Just carry on,” said David gently.
“That gorge almost killed me, but when I got out onto a flat I made two discoveries. A conical mountain almost all limestone stood near the mouth of the gorge. Over thousands of years the river had disappeared into the mountain and had made channels through it. But a rock fall years ago had diverted the river and I was able to explore and found these huge limestone caverns. I had discovered a hollow mountain.”
“Amazing!” said Kate.
But David was apprehensive. “After what happened to Hone, weren’t you afraid about going into the forbidden valley?”
“I knew the teaching and I respected it. But I looked further than the elders. I was a scientist. I wanted to find out why it was forbidden. But first I was curious about the limestone and the original course of the river. The largest and lowest cavern continued beyond the mountain and appeared to be heading in a westerly direction. I had taken cave-exploring equipment, and as the cave was dry and the course level and the roof height reasonably high, I was able to explore it for some miles. I had no doubt that I was following the original course of the Waitoa River. Also, it appeared likely that this course, if it continued in its westerly direction, would eventually have come out on the Bay of Plenty.”
Their eyes met, as Kate framed a word. David too was strangely excited, but he shook his head.
“The next step was to explore the Bay of Plenty coastline. So on my way back I looked for geological indications all along the nearest stretch of the coast. At the top of the bay at a place called Pataratara where there was an old granite wharf, I found a depression in the ground which ended at a bluff on a limestone hill. Land slips had blocked the entrance, but I found a slit on the side of the hill and managed to scramble down into a much larger cave below. There were further rock falls, but the floor of this cave showed evidence of the same river shingle as the Waitoa. I explored again for a mile or so. The direction was east. I checked the map bearings. It seemed almost certain that the limestone was continuous and that the Waitoa River had originally flowed out to the coast at that point.”
He paused, and seemed unwilling to continue.
David was puzzled. It was superb geological exploration. Only Tane could have done it. But one question remained unanswered.
He waited.
After a long silence Tane began again, but this time his voice seemed hesitant and he was breathing harder. “I was looking for the thing that killed my brother.”
“You see, I was re-enacting his journey. He would have come through the gorge and he would have been exhausted. There was a wide, sandy beach there on a bend in the river. I too felt tired but I was alert and I took precautions. As you know I usually carry a Geiger counter. I tested the sand. I found there what I had long suspected. It was radioactive.”
He stopped. There was complete silence in the car except for the occasional wheezing which came from the old engine and the sound of sleepy ‘mooing’ in the dark fields.
“My suspicions were confirmed. Hone had died of leukemia because of exposure to radiation. But the worst lay ahead. I wanted to do what was right by him, to restore his name and the family name. The Hollow Mountain and the underground access belonged to the Whanau Apanui. I saw a huge tourist potential for the iwi if they could be developed. But the uranium was different. Though its mining was allowed in New Zealand, my conscience told me it might be better to forget about it completely, to leave it as if it had never been discovered. But the problem was too big for me. I needed advice. The trouble was that I was not used to asking for anything.”
David groaned. “It was all my fault. So that was what you wanted to ask me. What I did was unforgivable.”
Tane put his hand on David’s shoulder. He spoke more softly. “I was the one who did what was unforgivable. I insulted both you and your father. I never cared about anything except my own ideas. You were the only one who didn’t cold-shoulder me. I didn’t deserve to have a friend like you.”
David was in the front seat with Kate. Tears came to his eyes as the healing words flowed over him.
“So what advice did you get?” asked Kate.
“Before my discovery I’d been approached by a member of the University Council, who was also a prominent lawyer, about the relationship between geological discovery and Maoritanga. He’d picked up a paper that I’d written about it, and he was very sympathetic to my approach. After my discovery I went to him and talked with him in general about geological discovery. He understood completely my desire to benefit the iwi. He said he’d acted for the Whanau Apanui in land matters already and also had access to development interests and sources of finance. I saw that his services would be extremely useful. Then I talked to him about Hone and what he would have wished. He had heard about him from the elders and he totally supported me in my desire to clear his name.
He stopped and buried his head in his hands. “I should never have talked to him.”
David looked at Kate. “We understand,” he said.
He looked up quizzically. “Do you – really understand?” But he did not wait for an answer. “There was one matter which troubled me. I wanted the Whanau Apanui to be involved both because they were the owners and because I had to be sure that their wairua and kaitakitanga would lead them to the same decision about the discovery.”