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Rose put her left hand on the gearshift, cupping it in her sweaty palm with tenuous tenderness.
“Shift with the left hand,” she said to herself. She adjusted the rear view mirror at her left, glancing towards what was not there over her left shoulder. She practiced looking over her left shoulder a few times, as if about to reverse the car, and pulled a muscle in her neck from disuse. She kept reverting to looking over her right shoulder, but that was wrong. She started the ignition, and played with the windshield wipers and headlights. She snapped the radio on, but then snapped it off the irritating American rap music. She massaged her neck.
“Okay, kid,” she said. “Let’s drive this sucker.” She took a deep breath and pulled out of the car rental lot and onto the left lane of Route 1, heading south.
“Okay, just take it easy,” she said to herself, “just drive the car. That’s all you have to do. Just drive the car. Staying on the left. Here we go. Staying on the left. Hey, whoa.”
A car passed her on the right. Rose grinned at the novelty.
She drove a white four-door Holden Vectra, which the young woman at the counter had said with a smirk was an “American special” because it had automatic transmission, inferring, Rose felt, that her nationality made her too stupid or lazy to manage a manual-drive car. Rose, in fact, had burned out the clutch one of her father’s old standards, but would not admit this to the blonde with the chip of cordwood on her shoulder.
Forget it. Knock it off.
Rose told the girl to have a nice day the way others tell people to screw themselves.
The city thinned out into a maze of suburbs, with older weatherboard-cladded homes giving over to brick-veneer bungalows of a later period. Neighborhoods wore the look of certain eras, with some newer homes and apartment houses planted along older, long-established streets like blots from a strong, firm pen stroke that was continually rewriting history. After the Bombay hills, southward Route 1 was like a long, thin necklace on which small communities were the beads, and the small green volcanic cones became gently folded land. Traffic thinned out to give the impression of hedonistic freedom, except for the car behind her that stuck to her rear bumper like gum on a movie theater seat.
“Okay, Rose, just take it easy. Let the fellow pass. Let the fellow pass.” Rose repeated in song-song fashion like a comforting nursery rhyme, which then became a nervous,
“Pass, will ya? What’s the matter with you? I’m going the speed limit.”
Shortly afterward the car did pass her, to be replaced by another which clung to Rose’s rear bumper as if their cars were having an affair.
“Damn it, get off me.” Rose said to her rear view mirror. Soon, this car passed her as well, replaced by another.
Rose mumbled obscenities to sun visor. At Rangiriri she swerved off Route 1 to pull over and give herself, and any motorist behind her, a break. Unfortunately, in the course of her turn she had swerved by mistake into the right lane and nearly came to an end in a blaze of glory of oncoming traffic.
“Shit!” she screamed, her heart racing as her eyes darted back and forth over the two choices of lanes before her. After straddling the center line in indecision, she pulled herself onto the left lane again, narrowly missing killing herself, as well as the man in a truck, two kids crossing the road, and dog staring in evident disbelief at her from the sidewalk.
She parked the demon machine, found restorative comfort food in a pie shop, and contemplated the Waikato River a bit before returning to the inevitable hard reality of life.
Route 1 headed eastward after Hamilton, and the small farms became dramatically rippling hills as Route 1 became Route 5. The land lifted into a maze of rolling hills of the most vivid, retina-teasing green, sometimes dotted with scant flocks of sheep, and some of the terraces too steep for any living thing to attach itself but the ever-present greener-than-green grass. The endless crumpled dormant landscape showed everything about a violently volcanic past and almost nothing of the backbreaking work of massive deforestation lumbering of decades before, which had exposed the hills to the open sky, and erosion, where once there had been forests so great and dense as to hide dormant geologic and spiritual secrets.
The earth was not dormant in Rotorua, however.
She liked the name Fairy Springs Road, and as she approached the town, smoothly cooed to herself,
“Here we go, clock-wise at the roundabouts, yes, sir, doing fine, Girl. You are doing so fine. Yes, you are.”
Her real introduction to Rotorua was olfactory. The sulfurous scent hung heavy in the air and dared residents and visitors alike not to believe the nearby volcanoes and geysers and vengeful fault line might rouse them from sleep with a scene out of Revelations one night.
Fenton Street looked like a modern, and typically tourist-accommodating, strip of hotels and motels, and she stayed at the Quality Inn for the Maori hangi as advertised in the brochure Peter gave her. She flexed her hands several times after parking the car, having held the steering wheel with a vise-like grip for last two hundred kilometers.
Her grip felt much better around a cold glass at the hangi that evening. Several long tables were arranged before the hotel pool in a room that was pseudo-South Pacific, a cartoon image of the real thing that lay outside beyond the darkening sky light. A few tour groups were seated at the tables, with the majority of the tourists from Japan, but Rose was seated at a table with a small party of British, a few New Zealanders, and an Australian couple. Rose wondered if the people at her table were seated together because they were not attached to any organized tour group, or because they were all English-speaking, or because they were all white. It bothered her throughout the meal.
She noticed her tablemates all held their forks in their left hands. She picked up her fork with her right hand and mumbled to herself,
“In for a penny, in for pound.”
The Commonwealth nations raised their eyes in brief acknowledgment of her existence, and returned to the discussion of what made really worthwhile pavlova.
Tender lamb and steamed kumara, venison and strawberries, and the inevitable, but worth waiting for, pavlova. She attempted conversation with the Australian couple, but they were honeymooning, and in self-absorbed silence, created a protective barrier around themselves that was understandable to anyone with the sense to see it. Her luck was no better with the British lady, who tossed glances at Rose but directed her conversation to the group in general and to her husband, sister and brother-in-law in particular. Only the New Zealanders cast their attention both ways, towards the British and towards Rose, like spectators at a tennis match, invariably friendly. When Rose did offer a comment or observation, the British woman glanced in Rose’s general direction with distraction, and then with determined avoidance of the large, too-smiling, loud seppo who did not seem to know when she was not wanted, and continued to assume her accustomed status within the Empire. The Kiwis shouted a round. The show began with a conch shell siren, and their fatiguing efforts at being social were rescued by people who really knew all about being social.
The Maori performers glided to the staging area on the far side of the pool, which became a lagoon for their show. Dressed in traditional costume, their welcoming song was a warm, flowing rush of three-part harmony. The speaker for the group, a large, round woman with a powerful alto voice took command and explained the protocol to which they were now to conform, the meanings behind the heritage they were now to receive as a gift. She asked if anyone here was from the U.K., and the British lady and her party raised their hands. The speaker asked if anyone had come from Canada, from Australia, from Scandinavia, from Japan. A few hands shot up in the audience, and the others looked to see who was from where. She asked finally if anyone was here from the United States of America. Rose looked calmly about the room, but kept her hands in her lap.
The women in the audience were to be referred to as maidens for the rest of the evening, and the men as warriors. One man, a tall thin man named Bert, from Papua New Guinea, was called upon to represent the audience in the most formal and auspicious part of the welcoming protocol. He was asked to stand poolside while one of the Maori performers made threatening gestures at him with a spear. The young Maori man, whose scantily dressed sublimely muscled body did not escape Rose’s notice, approached Bert with serious menace, but with a slight glint of humor in his eye. Bert stood very still and swallowed audibly. Bert was told that if he withstood the challenge, the warrior would slap his thigh as a sign that Bert and his people (which evidently included his wife, the Japanese tour group, the Australian honeymooners, the Brits, the Pakeha Kiwis, and Rose) were accepted into the hangi, and that he should then pick up the fern leaf dropped before him as a sign of good will.
“Go to it, Bert!” the British lady’s husband said. The Japanese smiled. Bert looked scared, as if he had never been threatened by a man sticking out his tongue and shoving a spear at him.
“Pick it up, Bert!” the Kiwi woman called, laughing. Bert’s wife took several photos of him, perhaps to remember him by, should he be impaled. Rose agonized for him, took quick, deep sips of her water, and wished Bert were spared his moment in the spotlight, which was so obviously unnerving to him. One more beer and she would have saved him herself.
At last, Bert saved himself by woodenly bending to pick up the fern leaf, and the Maori warrior retreated with honor. Bert would have gladly retreated back to PNG if he had not already paid in advance for his entire trip.
The Maori performers came forward now, to where the audience was seated, and while a small chorus sang a background theme, the rest of the troupe picked out members of the audience to receive the hongi, one of the most charming manners of welcome there existed in the world. They touched their noses and foreheads to the faces of the people in the audience, who stood one by one as if desperately seeking a goodbye hug from a parent leaving them at kindergarten. Manaakitanga, the warmest welcome imaginable.
The young Maori woman who approached Rose was slim and small, with a shaved haircut that would have made her appear what she was, a very modern university student, except for the traditional costume of black, red, and white mosaic which gave her authenticity and the credibility to approach a completely unknown person of a different culture to touch their faces together. The young woman placed her hands on Rose’s biceps, and Rose helped by bending down into her, so that her forehead and nose lightly touched the Maori woman’s forehead and nose. It was gracious and brief, like the momentary landing of a butterfly on a bush, and Rose thought for a moment she would cry from the open-hearted warmth of it. Then the Maori sang, all together, with multilayered harmony as intricate as the designs on their costumes, with all the subtle force of their spirit, and with incredible ease.
Te Hokinga Mai had a smooth chorus, with a lulling sway to the lyrics that Rose felt was drawing her in like hidden curves on a long country drive. It enticed her to listen and to reach, then lulled and rocked her again when it felt she’d had enough, but it would not let her go.
E Whakawhetai Ana was just too cool. The girl who touched her face to Rose’s sang the lead with her stunning soprano and sold the vocal like a hip rhythm and blues ballad. Smooth. The chorus cascaded in all around her on the downbeat. The song sounded like something the “The Mamas and the Papas” should have recorded. Rose wished she knew the words, and did not care what they meant in English. Knowing them in Maori would be enough.
Pokarekare Ana was the song of two lovers. A barrel-chested baritone warrior sang the duet with the speaker lady and her impressive alto voice.
“E hine e, hoki mai ra,” he begged her, and she answered him, blending her powerful voice with his in affirmation of their love,
“Ka mate ahau I te aroha e...”
It was slow, South Pacific slow, with the suggestion of a breeze, and unbearable longing, and all the things that could not be.
They demonstrated hand movements and explained the significance of their hangi articles. A few “warriors” in the audience were pull up to be shown the proper way to stick out their tongues with ferocity at the enemy, including a couple of the Pakeha Kiwi men, a throng of Japanese who were having one hell of a time, and the British lady’s husband, to the aggravation of his wife
Next some “maidens” were brought to the fore to learn the use of the poi in the presentation of song. The small, slim university student with the terrific soprano and concentration camp haircut pulled Rose up to the front and demonstrated the poi for her. The tune to which they were to keep time with these balls like pompons attached to a string held in each hand was begun slowly at first, and Rose, not having been blessed with good coordination, began with trepidation but an obligation to good sportsmanship. Soon the tempo was wickedly increased, however, and Rose kept smashing herself in the eyes and nose and breasts with the fuzzy ornamented instruments of torture. The amused Maori girl kept her self-control with a tight-lipped smile and lied,
“You’re doing quite well.”
Rose lost her grip and the poi soared to the chandelier above them and remained there for the rest of the evening. Several Japanese, and Bert from PNG, took her picture.
“30 October 1950,
Dear Rob,
I hope this parcel reaches you in time for Christmas. Still, if this does not reach you until the New Year, Happy Christmas and our best wishes for the coming year. We are preparing for Halloween as I write this, a very strange American holiday that is not a holiday.
Children dress as beggars and princesses and pirates and cowboys come to your door in the darkness, whereupon you are to drop lollies in the pillow case they carry for that purpose.
Hank talks of the pranks he and his mates played as children, sometimes rather dangerous and cruel ones. My European in-laws and I shudder, smile, and wonder again what kind of place this is.
My two wee ones are too young for that nonsense, but they are invariably wakened by the doorbell until those wretched trick or treaters are gone for another year”.
Rose put the letter down on the bed and went to the window. From her third floor vantage, she could look down on the glistening fronds of the palms. The street traffic had diminished. It started to drizzle. There would be no Southern Cross tonight.
***
The drizzle continued into the next morning. She walked around the business district of Rotorua, visited the tourist information center and a shop where she’d bought a greenstone tiki pendant, and a wood carving she was told had been blessed in a Maori ceremony. She held the bag in a firm embrace and carried the blessed thing out of the store as if it had been a child, wondering about the proper protocol, feeling only that blessed things should be cherished, and if possible, not dropped in the parking lot. She brooded over the items, wondering if it was disrespectful to put the wood carving in the trunk of the rental car for safekeeping. That was a smart tourist thing to do. Smart tourist things were the meat of her travel experience. They kept her safe in foreign lands. She realized now they also kept her at arm’s length from those people in the foreign lands.
The lady who sold her the necklace told her she must wear it herself before presenting it as a gift to her niece. When her mother left New Zealand, she had brought no Maori carvings or jewelry to the us Had she known such things existed?
Noticing a Maori woman breastfeeding her baby in McDonald’s, Rose sat bolt upright in her seat, as if she’d been electrocuted.
“Holy cow!” she thought, “Here I am, eating in a McDonald’s again!” She giggled in between French fries.
Rose climbed into her car and sat for a moment, giving herself another brief orientation on the operation of a car from the right side. Not so strange now, she had gotten used to this right-sided perspective on her long drive from Auckland yesterday. She littered the car with her newspapers, crumpled maps, and candy wrappings. It was hers now.
She took a deep breath, muttered, “staying on the left, now, Rosie,” and pulled out of the hotel parking lot.
She drive a short distance to Rainbow Springs, which according to the shopping bag she eyed was “Proudly New Zealand owned,” where she threw bread crumbs to young trout.
“Hey fish, have some chleb,” she muttered, and then continued her education by plaque-reading about great ferns and great kauri. She drove down to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, shuddering at the passing of large trucks on the highway. At the site of the Sacred Waters, she strolled among the gaseous pools of multicolored noxious minerals that bubbled and steamed around her. Along the wooden walkway that lifted her inches above the mud pools, she stared at the gray bubbling slop, hypnotized by the hollow, popping, sloppy sound of the boiling mud. A strange and somewhat scary landscape that made her wonder what she would do if the earth here were to suddenly erupt and spew death all around. Could she run to the visitor’s center? Should she run to her car? Could she remember to drive on the left in her panic? Would there be trucks to avoid?
Guess I would just here stand very still and wet my pants. That would be the simplest thing to do.
She stood in a light mist with a sudden crowd of other tourists, among them mostly Asians and Europeans, who seemed to all appear from nowhere just before 10:15 a.m., and listened to the park ranger discuss the history and habits of the Lady Knox Geyser, which, after a little prodding with soap flakes he dumped into it, shot forth a smooth, quiet, almost restful stream of condensation far above their heads and for several minutes. The crowd fell silent, all Rose could hear was the force of spewing vapor, and the clicking of camera shutters, the gentle whirring of automatic camera advance mechanisms.
After several minutes, the fountain subsided slowly, and people began to drift away to their cars and motor coaches. Rose stood alone. She looked at the quiet geyser cone. It steamed a little, petulant that it was no longer the center of attention.
“Nice going,” she said to comfort it. “I mean, good on ya.”
She looked at her watch.
She headed south in the car, her driver’s window rolled down in the cool springtime breeze, and she said out the window, “Rotorua,” with the soft, rolling “r” sound as she had heard it pronounced. She said it again into the rear view mirror, and smiled.
The North Island sat on one continental plate and the South Island sat on another, which is to say there were logical reasons for the mystical springs and geysers, the mountains and hills on the North Island that were volcanoes and the snow-capped Alps of the South Island that were not. Rugged, impassable mountains with glaciers, and bubbling pits of mud and fire, and the gentle rolling of impossible green after green hill. It was a buffet of natural experiences.
Her mother had not mentioned this. Still, her mother had no leisure and no money to travel in her own country. She had known only a neighborhood in Auckland as a child, and her employer’s farm as a young woman. There she grew to love the country, but knew it as someone who worked at hard physical labor in the outdoors, never a tourist. Her experience was of the most limited and parochial kind, yet contained a depth of understanding and appreciation such that Rose knew she could never have, just passing through.
Rose pulled over to the side of the road and climbed out of the car to stretch her legs. She did not know the name of the ribbon of river at the junction, but hoped to remember to look it up on the atlas she had bought. There would be Lake Taupo soon. A beautiful obstacle, which she did not resent for being an obstacle. She would have to go around it, and that was okay. She pulled a 20-cent coin out of her pocket. One side was engraved with the profile of Queen Elizabeth II on it, the other side featured a kiwi poking his long beak around the elegant plume of a silver fern. She flipped the coin in the air, missed catching it as she always did, and watched it plunk to the ground. Kiwi side up. She smiled, and took Route 1.
“17 January 1954
Dearest Ruby,
We are both well, and it looks like CHCH for us. Edith wants to be nearer her family. I’m happy to let her have her way, as long as there’s work. Crikey, you ask me about politics and you know I’m not a political man. I’m just a working man, Ruby. I don’t give a rat’s arse who’s in government, they are none of them for me. Only I am for me, I’ve learned that. I have no interest and they can all hang themselves. I’m sending you the newspaper because I know you are interested in this business, though I think I must be the only bloke in the country who is not. I hope you enjoy it.”
What newspaper was it? What was the news that day? Would her mother have thrown out the newspaper after reading it, or was it still in a box in the cellar, among all the rest of the things she did not then have a heart to sort and decide their fate?
Wait a minute, it must have been around the time of the Queen’s visit. Rose smiled. Yes, that was the newspaper in the old cedar chest. Uncle Robert had no idea he was creating an heirloom. Her mother would have liked to be home during those weeks, perhaps that whole year of 1953 into 1954. Could it have been with Hillary’s and Tenzing Norkay’s ascent of Mt. Everest and afterwards the Queen’s visit to New Zealand that she ached to be home again, if only to be among people who were excited by the same things and to talk about them together?
Home again?
Taupo. Wharewaka. Turangi. Rangipo. The Waikato River and the desert, and Mt. Ruapehu beyond. Fields of tussock and flax. Massive cones and rippling mountain ranges, and delectable places names. Red manuka by the road. She found a place to check in with Peter by email. A message was waiting for her.
“Rose:
I’ve found more copies of documents for you, but I won’t upload them as I know you may not have access to a printer, so I’ll keep them here for you. However, I can tell you that the 2nd Marines were in Paekakariki at Camp McKay in 1943. They shipped out for fighting in Tarawa on 28 October 1943, so your mum and dad did not have a long honeymoon. Below is a link to a site where you can see an old photo of the camp. Camp McKay was at what is called McKay’s Crossing on Route 1 just north of Paekakariki. No luck on her Land Service posting, yet. Just out of curiosity, do you know how they met?
Peter Frost”
Rose smiled at the formality of using his full name.
“Hi Peter,
Thanks for the news. I’ll check out McKay’s Crossing on my way down. She said they met on the road. Which road, I don’t know. My father was marching with his battalion up the road, actually, they were sitting on the side of the road resting, and she came down toward them droving something like a couple hundred sheep by herself. Her, and a couple dogs. God, Peter, even now I can’t believe it. My mother. City girl that she was.”
Rose slammed the mouse button to exit and pulled out the letters her mother had written to her brother Rob. It was too late for leisurely exploration of the letters at this point, and she scanned each one at hyper-speed with bionic retinas. One letter, a timid precursor to another letter in which she came right out and asked her brother what had happened to him in the war, broached the future subject with a single remark on her own wartime service.
“I could probably tell your Edith a thing or two about farming, for though her family may have owned a station, you say she spent much of the war at school. I, on the other hand, mustered sheep, and yes, even slaughtered my share, too. Let me tell you about my days as a Land Girl out in Reikorangi sometime.”
Rose banged out a quick email back to Peter.
“Found it in a letter: Reikorangi. Too late to start now. Will head on first thing morning.”
***
“Onward, my trusty steed,” she told the rented Holden the next morning. A “cooked breakfast” in a tearoom. A table by the window with a view of the main street. A trickle of traffic. People stopping on the way to work at the Postal Shop to drop letters. No American accents except for what could be found on television. A small boy toddled over to her table, and they discussed the plastic yellow toy car in his hand, until his father smilingly pulled him away. Rose smiled back at the father, as they each wordlessly exchanged that expression grownups whose hearts are melted by children share over the heads of the very small ones. The talkative little boy had not remarked on Rose’s strange accent. He had not noticed or thought anything of it. He was absorbed only in what she was saying to him and not how she was saying it.
Mt. Ruapehu frightened her. The perfect symmetry of the cone seemed to infer it was still in the process of being created, meticulously and with some sort of destiny beyond her pitiful scope of understanding. Massive and asserting, and like most mountains, seemed to carry an added arrogance to its majesty that so pointedly made her insignificant. Besides, it could blow up at the drop of a hat. That was beyond the scope of her experience and understanding. The Berkshires did not blow up. They just hunkered there under the sunset and minded their own business, like everyone was supposed to in New England.
Never would an awesome peak such as this allow itself to be tamed like the deep lush green hillsides dotted with sheep she had seen elsewhere. Tourists and skiers could play here, but it would tolerate only so much. Eyeing it out her driver’s side window, she grudgingly admitted her insignificance, but with a scant bit of face-saving pride, she realized she no longer thought about driving on the left. It felt natural to her now. However, it was still difficult to get used to the strange sensation of the driver’s seat belt chafing her left breast instead of her right breast.
“Rose:
No Fowlers in Reikorangi now. Property listed under Taylor now. Relative? No knowing. Address below. Break off Route 1 at Waikanae, Reikorangi is about 5 km southeast. Paekakariki is further south on Route 1, about 15 km.
Peter.”
She immediately answered him.
“I love you, Peter. You are my guardian email angel. I’ll miss you when I finally get to Wellington.”
Should she have written that she loved him? She brooded about this on the road.
You’re walking a tightrope, Rose. Better pull your big ass in. Arse.
Route 1 was less a highway of the kind she knew than a flat, black bottom to a longer finger of a green, remote valley, all the way down to the coast, with small towns and properties barely breaking the stillness of the back country. Even so, the modern highway such as it was made the country more accessible than when her mother traveled by train from Auckland to work at Mr. Fowler’s farm during the war. Rose knew she had traveled by train because her mother had told her. She told her of sights and sounds and occasionally of feelings, though those usually ran too deep for her to talk about. Practical details like where and when were not introduced into the conversations on the war and New Zealand. The conversations themselves were nothing more than her mother’s momentary and impromptu lapsing into memory if something had reminded her while in the process of cooking supper, or working in the garden. They never sat down and talked. Her mother was not like that. There was a mixture of covetousness about her own past and being unwilling to share it, and a kind of modesty that made her assume no one else would be interested. Rose instead had to follow her mother surreptitiously and gather information like dropped petals, when her mother was ready to let it go.
Now came Route 1, parallel to the coast, Foxton, and the railway line between the Tasman Sea and the highway. Levin and Otaki. Waikanae. She left Route 1, and one last settlement before the mountains of the Tararua State Forest was all that was left of her mother’s life-changing experience as a Land Girl on Benton Fowler’s small farm. Rose pulled over to the side of the road and matched Peter’s emailed notes with the name on the mailbox. She looked up at the house on the hill up the gravel drive, at the outbuildings beyond. She had two pictures at home of her mother as a Land Girl. One was a studio portrait in her dress uniform, with the wide-brimmed hat pinned up on one side, cocked at a rather rakish angle for the quiet, somewhat sad-appearing woman she knew as her mother. The other photo was a snapshot taken of her mother, her employer Mr. Fowler, and Shirley, the other land girl who worked with her and was her friend. They wore coveralls and boots, and stood out near a sheep pen with their dogs. She had no photo of the house and could not really prove, despite Peter’s seat-of-the-pants research, that this was really the same farm.
She thought Peter could be trusted. In case it was, she took a deep breath and said quietly,
“Hey, Ma, I’m here.”
A wet breeze ruffled strands of hair at her left ear.
She had considered knocking on the door, but did not want to risk disturbing whoever lived here with an old, second-hand story about World War II and a national service most people barely recalled, and a young woman who had become an old woman and was now dead. Rose would have sounded self-involved, intrusive, and those most common accusations against American travelers: naive, shallow, pushy and arrogant. She took a quick picture with the disposable camera, and got back into the car. She stole a quick glance in the rear view mirror, wondering if anyone saw her and supposed she was a spy, an insurance investigator, or some other creep.
Back to Route 1. Paraparaumu, Paekakariki. Her father would have known these names. It was her mother’s country, but they were both newcomers to this region, learning its geography and place names, and climate and temperament almost together. Almost together. Almost was evidently close enough for them then.
McKay’s Crossing was where the railroad played Tag with Route 1 again, and where the Queen Elizabeth II Park now stood on the former site of Camp Russell on the ocean side, opposite Camp McKay in the foothills. She entered the park and found the memorial dedicated to the us Marines stationed here.
“Ma and Dad, I’m here,” she said softly to the memorial gate, into the breeze. She touched her forehead to it. It was weathered, wet and cold. She looked around again, and took a deep breath.
“I’m here,” she offered again when the gust died down and her own voice seemed suddenly very loud.
She stepped back after a moment, looked around, pulled out her camera, and shot the hills where Camp McKay had been and was not anymore, and took a photo of the gate, and then a close-up. A cyclist coasted slowly toward her and was about to enter the park when she asked him if he would mind. He did not, and took a picture with her camera of her standing by the memorial gate.
“My dad was stationed here with the us Marines.” She felt suddenly shy. “In World War Two,” she added. It seemed necessary to explain when taking a photo with a disposable camera. If she had been taking the picture with a professional camera, a camera bag full of lenses over her shoulder, there would be no need to say anything. Expensive equipment exuded importance. Without it, she felt she needed an excuse. She had thought about buying one of those waterproof khaki vests with the many pockets. You could take pictures of anything you wanted if you wore one of those and never explain, even if you just kept candy in all the pockets. The vest gave credence. But, and this was the thing, how would wearing one of those look while holding a disposable camera? Like a garbage man wearing a uniform with epaulets, probably.
“Was he? Good on him.” The man smiled, being utterly charming even though they both knew he could not have cared in the least. He handed back her camera after taking her photo against the memorial, and mounted the racing bike again, plowing away on the best body Rose had seen since the hangi. She just realized she had confessed her nationality, and could have kicked herself. Still, it was comforting to note he took it in stride.
A short way in there was a plaque to the us forces. More brief photo ops. She went farther on still, in the direction the cyclist had disappeared, and approached the dunes.
Rose looked out on the gray, choppy Tasman Sea rolling against the beach where her father had trained. Captain Cook had charted this sea and Australia beyond in the days when a world away, Englishmen were plowing up the turf along what would be Chicopee Street in what would be Chicopee, along the Connecticut River, from the Chicopee River to her present-day backyard, where her mother grew roses and lilac, tomatoes and wax beans, but not kumara, and where they had maple trees, not jacaranda.
“June 10, 1956
Dear Rob,
How long have you been back in Auckland? I noticed your return address, but you mentioned nothing about relocating in your last letter.”
Her mother had started writing the date the American way. She had started drinking instant coffee by then. They had a television. She had liked Sid Cesar, and Lucy Ricardo. They bought furniture from the S & H Green Stamps book. B-52 Stratofortresses flew over their house from Westover Air Force Base that was up the hill and beyond the trees, and behind the gates and the guard post; the Cold War was there. Linda and Darlene were practicing Duck and Cover, and Sister Mary Aloysius told them to make an Act of Contrition while they were under their desks. Couldn’t hurt, she said. Their mother frowned at the monster plane shadow over her rose bushes, and rolled her eyes in silent sarcasm at the heavens far above even the planes with first strike capabilities.
Rose climbed back into her car, and headed south again until Paekakiri became a small thing in her rear view mirror, and she lazily followed the stone walls along the side of the narrow highway with a sadness she feared was becoming typical of her, until motorists trapped behind her began to wish she were dead.
The Wellington skyline grew larger ahead of her, and she knew from Peter’s notes how to get to the Botanic Gardens, where her parents had strolled on an outing when they both had leave, but she did not know in which church they had been married or what movie theater it was they sometimes went to, or at what hotel they stayed when they were married. She could find Oriental Bay on Peter’s map and see the place where the Marines arrived. A memorial to the us Marines, 2nd Division, stood at Aotea Quay.
“I’m here, Dad and Ma,” she whispered. Standing back away from it, she snapped another photo. In the viewfinder, the rest of Wellington beckoned her.
A large boat plodded it way to the Overseas Passenger Terminal, an airliner took off behind her at the airport, and the past was lost again to the present.
She took a few snapshots of the city skyline, and left it at that.
There was still a little time before Nora’s plane was to arrive from Auckland. Rose stopped for lunch.
“Ohhhh, man....” she moaned aloud while standing in line at the counter at what she just realized was another McDonald’s. Too late to leave now, it would only call attention to herself. It was her turn next. Might as well have that cheeseburger.
Rose drove to the national museum called Te Papa, and afterward headed for the airport to the turn in the rental car and find Nora. It would have been nice to stay longer and ride the cable cars, and maybe do some shopping. Christmas shopping loomed over her like a huge debt.
The airport was typical of any airport anywhere in the world, as if nationality ceased to exist—save for duty-free shop souvenirs—once inside any terminal. The terminal was ever a world unto itself, hustling, impatient, ultra-modern, bordering on the ugly, and where mankind left and arrived invariably late. A temple of commerce and marketplace of nerves, fears, emotional arrivals and departures, of anticipation, and escape. The laconic ease of deplaning travelers was a marvel to Rose. Their nonchalance contrasted with the huddled people behind the rope watching them, waiting for their turn to board the same plane. Like the difference between people waiting in line for a bungee jump watching with curiosity the now super-cool ones who have just done the thing, and are instantly above all that.
Rose checked her luggage for the flight Nora had booked for them both from Auckland, and found Nora standing behind her.
“I must say, it’s a relief to see you here.” Nora said.
“Did you think I would ditch you? Or get killed on my way down here?”
“I reckon either was surely possible. How did you find the driving?”
“This is a really pretty country. You want to tell me why you people can’t just slow down and enjoy the ride? I thought Bostonians were aggressive. There was a car on my ass every minute.”
“Arse.”
“Arse.”
“And are you finding your mother’s New Zealand?”
Rose’s face fell. “No, I’m not.” They went to the café section for coffee. “I’m only finding my New Zealand, a tourist’s New Zealand.”
“In some ways, your mother’s New Zealand no longer exits, so that’s not to be unexpected. You must remember she knew a British colony, a far-flung outpost. The pence and the pound and metal roads and Pathe news films.” Nora smiled. “She would have entirely missed the suburban sprawl, supermarkets, the expressways, American television programs and pop music, everything the 1950s threw at us and is still reverberating off the bloody walls. Oh, never mind, luv. Would she have known the South Island at all?”
“No, I’m really parting company from her now. She’d never been to the South Island.”
“23 March 1962
Dear Ruby,
We call her Nora Flora, and Edith and I rowed for three days, for I wanted Nora and Edith wanted Flora, and the names together sounds like a saloon wench in the Yank westerns.
Now, I’ve got my chappie and I’ve got my lass. That’s done for me. For once Edith agrees with me. May we not get any surprises.
Did I tell you that a huge section of dairy farms just outside the city has become a bloody great sea of new houses? A bank loan and a time payment, and you’ve got yourself a house on a quarter acre. We may pull out of these government barracks soon. We’ll be needing the room now. You wouldn’t know the old place, Ruby. I barely know the place anymore. Or do you think it couldn’t possibly compare with your Yank suburbia?”
Rose smarted from the inferred assumption of American self superiority, surprised only that it should be cast upon her mother, who was the least “Yank” person she knew, and by her own brother.
***
The small plane lurched into what felt like a half-hearted lift and Rose swallowed, gripping the arms of the seat as she glanced out at the forty-five-degree angle of land and sea.
“The sea crossing’s worse if you’re not a good sailor, and it’s much longer,” Nora said.
“I’m fine. Just having a flashback of my journey from the us”
“Did you have a bad flight?”
“I had several flights, none of them bad, exactly. I saw a security guard frisk a baby. The guard felt the baby all over with her latex gloves, and the baby laughed and kicked her legs. She was checking the baby for explosives.”
Nora was quiet for a moment.
“Too bad you didn’t have much time to see Wellington.”
“I saw a little. Oh, hey, I saw Te Papa. Been there?”
“No. I must say, I’m impressed. You certainly manage to cover a lot of ground. Did you enjoy it?”
“Absolutely, positively,” she quoted, waving a brochure.
“You’re a tourism spokesperson’s dream, Rose. We can feed you anything, can’t we?”
“I admit, I’m easy. Besides, Peter did all the legwork for me. He also gave me some nice info on Rotorua.”
“Very resourceful is Peter,” she said with what sounded like benevolent sarcasm, “Ah, yes, and how did you find it? Very touristy, isn’t it?”
“No, I wouldn’t say so.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Sure, they put on a show, but that’s about all. That’s not touristy; that’s just people doing what they know how to do. Touristy is when you’re at an amusement park, leaning against a purple fiberglass tree trying to figure out where you are, and some guy in a giant plastic cartoon head gets in your face and tries to shake your hand and scares your toddler into a screaming fit. And the hamburgers are ten bucks. And that’s without beets and eggs.”
“Where else have you been, apart from this hellish amusement park?”
“Europe a few times, Mexico, Canada a bunch of times, Israel, parts of the Caribbean, Hawaii. It’s the compensation for being single and having a good job. Having had a good job, I mean.”
“Did Peter tell you he’s been to the us?”
“Yes. Where did you go on your OE?”
“I never had an OE. Sometimes I think I’m the only bloody person in this bloody country without a passport.”
“How did that happen?”
“I was busy at the time. My mother was ill, having a self-indulgently rough time after losing my father. I was trying to get through uni. Trying to plan our wedding. Trying to keep my brother Edwin from running off and doing something stupid.”
“I didn’t realize you and Peter had been together for so long. So, no OE.”
“I’m more the keeping the home fires burning type of twit.”
“You sound disgusted with yourself.” Rose said, amazed.
“More and more every day.”
“Peter’s a nice guy.”
“What about you, Rose? Any men in your life?”
“No,” Rose said, then added as a genuine afterthought, “Oh, I mean not if you don’t count almost getting married.”
“Well,” Nora said, “How cavalier you are. When were you almost married?”
“Last year.”
“Oh, crumbs, Rose, I’m sorry.”
“No biggie.”
“Is it anything you can talk about?”
“Your wicked curiosity is flattering as hell,” Rose said, “I met him at work, when we both worked in Boston. Chuck. Wonderful guy. Very good looking. Very kind. Sweet, sweet man. Well, my mom got sick, so I took more and more time off from work to care for her. He got transferred to the Salt Lake office. I said, that’s okay, that’s fine. You do what have to do and let me take care of my mom. Meantime, we’ll save our money, make our plans, and in a year we can be married and you can move back to New England. I planned a terrific honeymoon in Italy. Made the reservations. Worked out a very romantic, very fun itinerary. I’m good at that. Seriously if Captain Cook had me in his crew, things would have gone much smoother.”
“And Scott’s trip to the South Pole?”
“I could have organized it better and for cheaper, too. Including the dogs.”
“I hope your fiancé knew what a find you are.”
“He fell in love with a woman in the new office.”
“Oh, Rose, I’m sorry.”
“I turned over my honeymoon plans to him and his bride.”
“Hell, that’s bloody noble of you.”
“We parted as friends. They invited me to the wedding.”
“Oh, shite that is sad.”
“I went.”
“Ohhhhh, that is sad.”
“No,” Rose said thoughtfully, “Sad part is, I had a really good time.”