II

I’m thinking of getting married again.

Before you rush to congratulate me, may I remind you of a scene in the film The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, in which Benjamin announces to his parents that he is going to marry Elaine Robinson. Benjamin’s mother squeals with delight and reaches for the phone so that she may share her joy with Mrs Robinson. Benjamin suggests to his mother that she may wish to delay making that call. Elaine does not yet know that she is going to marry Benjamin.

Eugene Onegin, a spare prick at a wedding if ever there was one, made the biggest mistake of his life when he spurned Tatiana. But then, his head was full of shit. That’s what an old Kiwi girlfriend of mine used to say to me when I answered some obscure question in Trivial Pursuit. ‘Yer head’s full of shit!’ Onegin wandered around between his country estates and Petersburg, affecting the world-weary ennui he supposed befitted an aristocrat. When he fights a duel with his friend Lenski, pistols at dawn, he wins, precisely because he couldn’t care less one way or another. He treated life as a dalliance, blissfully unaware that the things that really matter in life are the things his grandparents would have told him to value, the things he turned his back on with his smug and all-knowing arrogance. Home, hearth, family, community, caring, the Church. Faith. Hope. Love.

These were the thoughts that occupied me while I kicked my heels in the remand cells and watched the minute hand of the clock creep round with pitiless inertia. Saturday morning. Another hour gone. Forty-eight to go! The cops were pretty nice to me. Even apologetic. They brought me newspapers. But mostly I sat and contemplated the events of the previous four months, which took me from a wintry New Year’s Eve in the northern hemisphere, all the way down to the New Zealand autumn and my present plight.

On Hogmanay, simultaneous with my decision to get out of the UK as fast as possible, never to return, there was a huge dump of snow, and I got stuck for hours at Heathrow waiting for the blizzards to abate. You forget the tedium of such nightmare journeys. I tried to gatecrash a BA executive lounge and was politely but firmly turned away. I went into the gents and put on a pair of full-length surgical stockings as protection against economy syndrome. That’s how I saw in the New Year. We boarded at 01.30.

And sat on the apron for two hours. Then a machine with the contour of an enormous stick insect de-iced the wings and we were pushed back. We taxied at a snail’s pace to the holding point. In the seat in front of me a child was screaming inconsolably. Thirteen hours of this … I was in anguish with sheer boredom. When the call for ‘doctor on board’ came over the PA system I jackknifed out of my seat so violently that my headset almost ripped my ears from my skull.

The patient was lying supine in the left-hand aisle at the rear of the aircraft. The cabin crew had already put an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. First aid is as easy as ABC. Airway … patent; breathing … satisfactory; circulation … his radial pulse was thready and his skin cool and clammy. A crash box had materialised at my side and I extracted a stethoscope and a blood-pressure cuff. It was impossible to hear the Korotkoff sounds above the din of the air conditioning, but I could palpate his systolic pressure coming in at about 70 mmHg. After ABC comes D, for neurological disability. Rather a lame mnemonic. I pushed a knuckle into his sternum and he opened his eyes.

‘Whizz mah? Fu’un baas …’ The smell of stale liquor was almost comforting, and who could blame him? How else to while away the hours in Terminal 5? The cabin crew nudged my arm and whispered, ‘Here’s the captain.’

But for the yellow striped epaulettes on the white shirt he might have been a bank manager. We shook hands and exchanged courtesies. He said, ‘What do you think?’ After D comes E, for Environment, and this patient was definitely in the wrong one. I said, ‘I think we should get him off.’ Actually I was really thinking how extraordinary it was that, having been an anonymous cipher in seat 60K a few moments ago, I was now giving advice to the man in charge. But he looked relieved. He confided, ‘You know, we’d just been cleared by the tower. If he had collapsed literally 30 seconds later I’d have been committed. We would have had to climb to altitude, dump over 100 tonnes of fuel, and land again.’

I love opportunistic medicine; all your professional life you worry, not about the patient in front of you, but about all the other patients in the waiting room. Off-duty medicine affords you the rare chance to live in the present.

Seven hours later, the cabin crew knelt by my berth, seat 3A, and whispered, ‘Are you awake? Would you like to see Kabul?’

The Afghan Highlands, in their winter livery, looked very beautiful. But that was from seven miles up.

At the Sheraton Towers, 39 Scott Road, Singapore, I got bumped up again to the Edinburgh Suite on the top floor. Edinburgh. A certain irony there. The old country was reluctant to let me go. The suite was enormous. It was like an embassy. I rattled about in it, an ambassador without a staff. I counted the number of chairs. Twenty-seven. I would certainly be able to spread out.

I didn’t see much of Singapore. Instead, I sat with my laptop in the Edinburgh Suite and in three days blitzed a memoir of the events that had propelled me out of Britain in such a hurry. I mailed two copies to Edinburgh, one to my lawyer David Walkerburn, the other to Angela MacVicor MSP. I thought of printing a third copy for myself but I decided against it. I didn’t want the baggage. Once I’d mailed off the two copies I was going to wipe the whole thing from my laptop. I’d put it into trash and then I’d open trash and I’d wipe it again. I would be like a fastidious lover of hygiene whose zealous detestation of litter and clutter amounted to an obsessive compulsive disorder. Of course, you can never really get rid of these things from your computer. There’s always a trace of it left somewhere that some computer anorak will be able to find. I suppose it’s rather like a bad experience in life. You might get over it, forget it, stop having the flashbacks, and get on with your life. But you can never really expunge it. It’s always there, sitting somewhere in some remote filing cabinet of memory.

Once I’d finished, I emerged from my purdah and switched my mobile phone back on. I was a bit reluctant to do so. But I was only slightly apprehensive that the British authorities might come running after me, and if they preferred to airbrush me out of existence that would suit me just fine. I wasn’t going back there. Ever.

I hadn’t let too many people in New Zealand know I was coming. Joe and Hinemoa, my adopted parents, of course. They’d gone off down to Oban, Half Moon Bay in Stewart Island for their summer hols, so I wouldn’t catch them for a bit. Caitlin Roy, my sister-in-law, texted from Cheltenham and she sounded good, happy, and playing her oboe again. And my twin sister MacKenzie phoned me to say she was playing her viola in Auckland Town Hall next week and she’d catch up. I didn’t know she had a gig there. It was a last-minute thing. She’d needed to get away. Somebody in the Arnold Bax Quartet had developed an ‘unprofessional’ interest in her. I teased her. ‘One of the Baxes got the hots for you? Ha!’

‘It’s no laughing matter. A string quartet is like a marriage, except it’s more complicated. It’s not just one relationship, it’s four. It’s a fragile thing.’

‘Actually it’s six. Relationships, that is.’

‘I rest my case.’

‘Anyway who is it? I suppose it’s Rafael. All that Latin temperament and passion.’

‘Not Rafa.’

‘Malcolm? Who’d have thought it? He’s the dark horse. I thought he didn’t care about anything except antiques and his cello! Should I be dusting off my speech? I take it you want me to give you away.’

‘Not Malcolm.’

‘Matrimony is so expensive these days. At least you can save a bit on the in-house entertainment. You can all be the quartet at the reception during the drinkies. You could–’

I stopped short.

‘Not Dominique?’

I was so slow on the uptake.

‘Goodness.’

‘You’re shocked.’

‘No, no. Not at all. No. I’m quite the New Age guy.’

‘Well, I tell you what, it shocked the hell out of me. Anyway, I had to get away. Thought I’d take a holiday.’

‘It’ll be lovely to see you.’

‘You’ll come to my gig?’

‘Try and stop me.’

For the Singapore-Auckland trip, I was back in the rear of the aircraft. But I didn’t really mind. I was full of anticipation. I began to construct in my imagination a putative New Zealand life. I was going to curtail this life in transit, this waiting-room life, stuck in a series of airport final departure lounges. I would stop being a vagrant and put down roots, before it was too late. Nothing much to it, really. I’d immerse myself in my work at Middlemore in the sprawling suburbs of South Auckland, the pathology capital of Polynesia, and then I’d go out and deliberately search for Mrs Cameron-Strange. Don’t leave it to chance. Don’t imagine someone is going to walk into your life and blow you off your feet. That can only happen once.

It was a beautiful summer’s day down on the North Island. I had a window seat on the left side and got spectacular views as we made landfall over Cape Maria van Diemen and commenced the long descent into Auckland. What would the wind direction be over the Manukau Harbour? If it was an easterly, we would come in off the ocean and make our final approach over Manukau Heads. If it was a westerly, we would join downwind on a right-hand circuit that would take us directly over Waitemata Harbour and the city.

It was a westerly. I was like a gleeful schoolboy with his nose pressed up against the Perspex window, picking out the landmarks, the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Lake Pupuke on the North Shore, Rangitoto out in the sparkling Hauraki Gulf. There came the protracted low rumble as the 747’s gear went down. The water was pure emerald and the islands of the gulf seemed to float upon it. First stage of flap abeam Musick Point, then a base leg over the city’s southern suburbs, more flap, and the turn on to finals – full flap now – that I knew would take us past McLaughlins Mountain abeam Pukeiti Road, to touch down on runway 23.

The woman at Immigration processed my NZ passport, smiled at me and said, ‘Welcome home.’

I went through the green corridor into Arrivals and stepped out into the sweet sunshine under a huge New Zealand flag flapping lazily in a balmy summer breeze.

I was reluctant to come away from airport land. I hadn’t reached home yet. One more flight to make, one more duty to discharge. I found a modest Travel Lodge in Ihumatao, on the outskirts of the airport and on the edge of the Manukau Harbour, and I checked in for one night. Middlemore Hospital was only a couple of miles down the road. Call in? Not yet. I dumped my bag in my motel room and changed into my running vest and shorts, put on my Nikes, and went for a run. I’d decided to run the three Ihumatao volcanoes.

I have a love affair with Auckland’s forty-eight volcanoes. It’s a private hobby of mine to run up them. Each has its own unique personality. There are the big flamboyant touristy ones like Rangitoto, One Tree Hill, and Mount Eden. You leave the bustle of the city beneath you and ascend maybe 600 feet to the lip of the caldera. The traffic noises recede, and you seem to gain a new perspective on life. Your petty cares and preoccupations diminish, and maybe even vanish. I like the secret ones, the ones that are little known and seldom visited. The remote ones. Perhaps the Ihumatao volcanoes are the most remote. Otuataua, Maungataketake, right on the edge of the Manukau Harbour, and, my favourite, Pukeiti. Visiting these sites is a spiritual experience. The pakeha don’t often come here. This is Maori country. I have a notion that all the industrial real estate around the airport sooner or later will vanish and leave not a wrack behind. But Otuataua, Maungataketake, and Pukeiti will remain.

It was when I paused for breath on the lip of Pukeiti’s small but perfectly formed caldera, that I conceived a Grandiose Scheme. You’ve run up all the volcanoes of Auckland. Why not run them all in a single day?

Could it be done? How big an undertaking would it be? Forty-eight volcanoes in twenty-four hours. Thirty minutes per volcano; that has a pleasing symmetry. What a challenge! Has anybody ever done it? Not that I’d ever heard of. In this land fascinated by extreme sport, that seemed surprising.

Well, I’ve registered the idea in my own mind. I’ve logged it. Don’t tell anybody. Guard your secret jealously. Don’t give anybody else ideas.

The following day, I took a taxi through Auckland’s southern suburbs to Ardmore airfield and renewed my acquaintance with Auckland Aero Club. I got checked out in a Cherokee Arrow, Echo Bravo Echo. Variable pitch prop and retractable undercarriage, rather fancier than I’d planned – she would fairly spank along – but that was what was available. Thus I embarked on a solo journey northwards that I recall I had envisaged one day in the Edinburgh winter while walking down off Princes Street towards 48 Heriot Row. I took off eastward on 03 and headed out along the Clevedon Valley toward the Hauraki Gulf, and turned north along the coast at just under 1000 feet to keep clear of the Auckland traffic. Rangitoto on my right, and the Central Business District on the left. Overhead the Whangaparaoa Peninsula I kept an eye open for any North Shore traffic using the strip at Dairy Flat. But it was quiet. Now I turned north-west and started to climb. By the time I reached 6000 feet over the windswept, deserted Kaipara Harbour I really had the place to myself.

I reached the west coast overhead Hokianga Harbour, having climbed to 10,000 feet to enjoy the view. I flew over the ancient Kauri Forest up towards Tauroa Point, listening out for Kaitaia traffic on 119.1, the unattended frequency. There was no traffic. There was the long metalled strip, to my east, on the plateau above the township. Once I had landed there, I would nearly be home. But not quite yet. I had one more duty to discharge. I stayed up at 10,000 feet and kept flying north. Now the terrain below me narrowed to a long, thin strip of land with a slender filament of white cloud sitting above it. The land of the long white cloud. Two miles below me, the breakers of the Tasman were crashing silently on to Ninety Mile Beach. There is Te Paki Stream, and now Cape Maria van Diemen, Three Kings on the horizon, and at last, the darling lighthouse of Cape Reinga. I made a wide, clockwise spiral descent and touched down on the tiny grass strip with its gently fluttering orange windsock above Waitiki Landing. I cut the engine, took off my headphones, and opened the aircraft door on its right-hand side, and just sat for a moment to enjoy the stillness, the birdsong and the tiny sounds of nature. I made the plane safe and took a walk down to Waitiki Landing, had a coffee and said hello to the whanau. Here I was, nearly at the northernmost tip of the Aupouri Peninsula. The Maori call this piece of land Te Hiku o te Ika: the tail of the fish. Marine volcanoes formed this land 60 million years ago but I prefer the Maori legend that tells how a giant fish (North Island) was pulled from the sea by Maui while he sat in his canoe (South Island).

Why had I overshot Kaitaia, flown over my home at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, and come all the way up to the top of the island? It was because I had decided that the time had come to say goodbye to Mary, and that I would do this at Cape Reinga, at the confluence of the oceans, at the spot where the Maori spirits depart this world. At Waitiki Landing I borrowed a ute, as I said I would, and drove it north all the way up to the car park by the lighthouse where the road comes to an end. I dodged the adolescent hoopla of the Japanese tourists taking zany photographs with extravagant poses beside one of these multidirectional signposts to London, New York, the South Pole, etc. I left the beaten track and descended carefully down to the ocean, to that point where the tidal waves of the Tasman and the Pacific meet, with a surge of white surf, at the northernmost point of New Zealand.

Under the gorgeous deep red blossom of the pohutukawa I unscrewed the top of the small urn I had brought all this way with me. I think I muttered a few incoherent words that I suppose might have amounted to a prayer. I know I recited to myself an ancient Maori proverb, because I knew I was always in danger of withdrawing into my own cloister and turning my back on the world. Mary would not have wanted that. A breeze had sprung up from nowhere because I remember how it made my eyes moisten.

He aha te mea.

Nui o te ao?

He tangata!

He tangata!

He tangata!

Then I let Mary go. I let her fly off with the Maori spirits. I cast Mary’s ashes out across the very edge of New Zealand.

I climbed back up to the lighthouse and to the ute and headed back towards Waitiki Landing.

There was one last pilgrimage I wanted to make, something else I had dreamed about during the northern hemisphere’s winter. A mile or two north of Waitiki Landing I hung a right at Te Paki Station and headed down a rough gravel track through pleasant wooded farmland with a herd of grazing cattle. There was a descent down to the huge sand dunes at Te Paki Stream where the gravel track ended. Mine was the only parked vehicle. It was a hot day and I was in shorts and T-shirt. I kicked off my shoes and sloshed down Te Paki stream as it wended its way through the dunes. Here at last was Ninety Mile Beach. I walked all the way out to the breakers and touched water. Then I came back to the edge of the beach, the tussocks and the toi toi grass, and I sat down in a reverie.

And something very odd happened. I can’t explain it. I suppose it was just a sense of what the Germans call Heimat, a sense that I had fulfilled some long-imagined tasks, reached a point of equanimity, and come home. Of course it was a very beautiful day, there on the beach. But I had this quite powerful sense that I was no longer alone. Somebody was sitting beside me.

I’m afraid I’m not explaining this very well. I don’t really think of myself as a spiritual person. You might say to me, you don’t mean to tell us Mary was sitting beside you? Or maybe even it was God, out for a morning stroll?

All I can tell you is that I was comforted with the sense that I would never again walk alone.

I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. I thought, you have recovered. You are better. You have consigned all that angst and anger and misery to the past. You’ve come home.

I turned away from the ocean and glanced back up towards Te Paki stream.

Two figures were heading in my direction. Two men. They were unseasonably dressed in suit and tie as if they had just stepped out of a bank on Queen Street, Auckland. They were trying to skirt the edge of the stream to keep their feet dry. They shimmered in the heat haze like a mirage. I had a vague recollection. I screwed up my eyes. One of the men was tall and slim, the other bulky and shambling. I watched their progress. They came into focus at last. I felt my stomach churn.

I uttered a single, short profanity.