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Trevor John’s car skidded stop in the gravel outside. He ran into the shed, where Nora and Rose were just arrived in the open doorway, having run from outbuilding to outbuilding, at last finding Sue was standing inside this one.
“What is it? I saw you running from the road,” Trevor John shouted, expecting at least a fire.
They turned their heads to look at him, slowly, with expressions of warning and silence. Edwin held a rifle pointed at himself, under his chin.
“Oh shite.” Trevor John said, “Mate...” He stepped toward Edwin.
“Don’t!” Edwin said, but Trevor John took a few more slow steps.
“Easy, mate,” he said.
The mother horse stirred in her stall and nickered a warning, keeping her baby to the wall.
“Stop it, Trevor John,” Nora said, “Just stop. Just leave it. Ed, please let us all go back into the house.”
“Yes, Ed, please!” Susan’s voice broke with tears, and Edwin groaned in despair at the agony he could see he was putting her through. He waved her away.
“Go in, all of you, and leave me here.” Edwin said, choking on the hoarseness of his own voice, “Please just leave me here alone.”
“Ed, stop!” Susan moaned.
“I can’t. I can’t now. It’s gone too long.” He spoke haltingly, with great difficulty, not just in forming the words, but in having to hear himself say them. He shook a little, and with labored breathing, gripped the gun, sliding his fingers over the barrel and along the trigger.
“There’s always hope,” Susan said weakly, desperately, but without conviction and damning herself for a lack of originality.
“Go on, luv,” he pleaded, “Leave me here.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Please, stop, Ed,” Nora said, but like Susan, not moving any closer.
Edwin said angrily, weary of frustration, “I can’t manage. I’ve lost everything.”
“You’re selling the farm, that’s all,” Nora said, “that’s covered the debt. You’re free and clear to start over.”
“It’s not the money!” Edwin shouted, and Susan jumped and gasped. “My God, Nora, this land has been in our family since the 1870s! I’ve stuffed up. I’ve let them all down, every Bates to have been born and raised here and the first Bates who came out from England. This was their dream and I’ve gone and buggered it in fifteen years.”
“You did your best.” Susan moaned, wishing she could think of something wonderful to say, something comforting, or at least just something more. She was a blank.
“How many other stations have been sold in the past few years? My God, Ed, give it over!” Nora said, “You’re not alone!”
“I am alone!” He shouted, “It was up to me! I lost it all! I’ll never see my grandchildren here! I’ll never grow old here! This was all I ever wanted and I’ve stuffed up! I’ve made bloody bad decisions, and even Trevor John is out of a job because of me.”
“Oh, look now, mate...” Trevor John interjected.
Ed cast his glance upward toward the rafters in utter hopelessness. “I can’t manage anymore.”
“Oh, hell, Ed,” Nora said, “You weren’t starting out in the bloody green paradise like your great-bloody-grandfather. After the U.K. left us high and dry for the Common Mar...and the inflation and, and unemployment. Everybody got hit, thousands left for good but you stayed and made a go of it. And you did make a go of it, Ed, you did.”
“The farm subsidies we didn’t get.” Sue interjected hopefully, searching, “interest rates, input costs.”
“Oh hell, the bloody stinking droughts. Anything. All of it,” Nora said, “You have a collection of reasons why the station couldn’t be held, not just by you, but by anybody.”
“You did the best you could, luv.” Sue said, flinching at Nora’s words but hoping they were working.
“Trying to switch to the orchard plan, so late in the game, but how could you have known.”
“It was the bank’s subsidiary that called in the loan....”
“Just shut up, both of you!” Edwin shouted, and Rose noticed he made fleeting attempts to catch Trevor John’s eye, as if he were searching out Trevor John’s opinion on all this, in spite of himself and in spite of really believing he had already made up his mind. She noticed, too, that Trevor John said nothing throughout this exchange.
Rose stood back near the opened door, and shuffled the packet of letters in her hands. She had grabbed them when they scrambled out of the bedroom, an impulse reaction, or a dependence on them. Now she searched through them, spurred by the memory of one particular letter. She found it. Her hands shaking, she took the yellowed folded papers from the dog-eared envelope. She stepped forward.
“Trevor John,” she said Reluctantly he turned his head away from Edwin to look at her.
“Take this.”
“What is it?” he asked, irritated.
“It’s a letter, written by Edwin’s father. Read it out loud.”
“Are you an idiot?”
“Not now, Rose.” Nora tried to temper Trevor John’s panic-driven anger.
“Now, yes,” Rose said, “I’d read it, but it should be in a man’s voice, with your accent. Please, read it, Trevor John.”
“What is this, a bloody school play audition?!” Nora shouted. No one attempted to temper her.
“I don’t want to hear anything from that bastard.” Edwin shouted. “He had his chance while he was alive to pitch in and the bloody sod was utterly worthless. That shite was a bigger failure than I am!”
Trevor John tried to hand the letter back to Rose, but she would not take it.
“Read the damn letter!” she yelled, losing her own temper.
“I don’t want to hear it!” Edwin shouted.
“Just listen! Can’t you just listen?!” Rose shouted back.
“Rose...” Nora cautioned.
“Why did you bring her here?” Edwin shouted.
“Just read it. Trust me!”
Trevor John held her in his gaze a moment, and decided to trust her. He fumbled the letter open and was unable to steady his hands.
“Easy there, mate,” he said softly to Edwin, “Let’s just humor the lady. She only wants to help. I’ll be quick.”
“Dearest Ruby,
I was going to wait a bit before answering your letter, knowing that it was going to take a lot of thought, even to tell you to forget it.
Then I thought, well why not take a chance. Taking chances was what brought me this far, for better or worse. You asked what happened to me in the war. I do think you should forget it. Still, I shall tell you a bit. Crete was the whole story for me. North Africa was just getting our feet wet. Crete was where we became soldiers, I think, because there is where we fought hard, took risks, gambled and were as bold as we knew how, and there we were caught, trapped, frightened, sickened, captured and died. And that is the full measure of soldiering, if you ask me. The drill and parade is nothing to do with real soldiering, it’s all the facing up to what you’ve got before you that is real work, and how you can be chased like an animal, which is what happened.
There was only one moment of it I cherish, that was when we fought back an attack around one village, and with what kind of courage or desperation I don’t know, but suddenly there went this God-awful thrilling battle cry by what seemed like hundreds of our blokes yelling a haka, like nobody’s business. A real New Zealand sound, and to me it was like the bursting of souls of these men. At that moment my heart broke and I was brave and proud, and glad to be part of it.
But there were too many Germans, too great an air attack, too many planes, too many bombs, too many guns. They ruled us utterly from the air and crushed us. There was no hope. There were not enough ships to evacuate us off that place. Some blokes got off all right with a few near scrapes. I didn’t have the luck. We had already been chased from Greece to Crete, and there were no more chances for me. It gives you a sick feeling when you come to know that.
Shocking casualties, and nothing left of my battalion.
A few mates and I hid in caves and in the bush for a few weeks. We ate insects. I won’t go on about that. Then we got captured by a German patrol, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. One bloke thought they would take us to a prisoner of war camp on Crete, another said we would be sent to a work camp in Europe, another bloke said we would all be shot. We had already been living like animals, wounded and filthy and no food. One bloke thought at least if captured perhaps we would be given prisoner’s rations.
It was not a proper prisoner of war camp after all, it was a rat’s nest we were told would be temporary, but temporary lasted yonks.
What really bothered me about being captured was it seemed now I had a choice. You wouldn’t think I had any choices in the matter, would you? And yet, that’s how I felt about it. It felt like under the right set of rules or luck, I might be able to live. I might be able to go home. This drove me mad. You see, I had gotten used to not ever believing I would go home again, that made sticking it easier. I hated the army, full stop. But decisions were being made for me, and I could accept that. I just had to do my job. No worrying about the future. There was no future.
After a time it was easier to get through the days if I just believed that I would be killed. It gave you a kind of peaceful feeling, you never had to worry about hanging on or what you were going to do after the war, or what if you lost a leg or an arm. You just accepted you would be dead, possibly within the next day or so, it made things easier. There was no feeling after that. That was how I got through the war, by dying every day. Dying and being resurrected.
Then me and four other blokes got captured and things got a bit nasty. At first I thought, ah well, this is how I’m going to die then, but that’s all right because now I’m ready for it. But after a while I kept thinking about ways to escape, and the other blokes, too. We couldn’t help it. Maybe it’s human nature, wanting to live even when you think you don’t. We started thinking about escape plans to pass the time. To keep from being bored.
We used to make each other laugh with our dodgy ideas.
Then we began to take these plans seriously. Then we wanted to try them out just to see if we could do it. Then, suddenly, I realised I wanted to live after all. I wanted to live very badly indeed.
On our first attempt, Simon was shot in the back, Mike and George took machine gun fire into their faces, and Bob was bayoneted in the side of his neck. Then there was me.
I got pushed out of the scrum and ran like hell over their bodies where Simon told me to go if I was the last man standing.
I climbed the rocks and they may be looking for me still. All I know is, I got away. But three blokes had to die for that to happen.
You have no idea how that makes a bloke feel, and I can’t even say it.
After about three months I was recaptured, and this time sent to a prison camp in Germany, where I swore I would just sit out the war, probably die in a corner of the barrack, freezing from the winter. I met a few other New Zealanders amongst the Allied prisoners and that was good, but then it only made me mad again, mad to think about escaping. We tried it, and only one other made it out with me. We separated, and I have no idea what happened to him.
I wandered into Czechoslovakia and after a few months of stealing from garbo bins, I was lucky enough to be found by partisans. They hid me for the rest of the war.
Of course, you knew nothing of me and there was no way for me to tell you or Mum where I was. Poor Mum was gone by then, but I didn’t know it.
The Russians liberated the town I was in, I crawled out of a cellar, and after a bloody long walk, managed to find a British unit. I was sent to England, and then home. I arrived in September 1945. It took me another few months to find out what happened to you and Mum. I was fairly shocked. Would you believe, I was actually in Auckland in December when you left for the us? We might have just missed each other.
Forget the war now, Ruby, and please don’t ask me again. All wars have to end. That’s what I’m counting on to keep me sane. This one will end too, one day, when there isn’t any of us left who remembers. I’m just no good anymore. I can’t take as much as I used to.
I can’t do anything right. I’ve gone soft inside, and sick over it. I’m a miserable bastard, and I’d rather just have you remember me for the young bloke I was. You say you don’t know who I became. My children will never know who I was, before all that.”
Trevor John had read the letter very well, his voice slowing and deepening, and though his hands were shaking, he read with a calmness that brought them all to another place and time. Rose admired him them, admired his intelligence, his sensitivity and his good judgment, and his perseverance.
Edwin looked at the ground as Trevor John had read the letter, then brought a querulous look of fascination up to the letter in Trevor John’s hands, then at last meeting his sister’s pained gaze.
He lowered the gun, his arm falling limp with the weight of it. Susan rushed forward quickly and held him. He tossed the gun aside and put his arms around her, shakily leaning on her as she coaxed him outside, wiping sweat off his face with the sleeve of her blouse.
Trevor John stepped quickly forward and picked up the gun. He handed Nora the letter, and brushed past Rose as he left. Nora glanced at the letter and looked up at Rose.
“Good on ya,” Nora choked, in tears.
***
Susan continued to make comforting talk, comforting movements, comforting sounds over Edwin as she settled him in chair at the kitchen table. He clutched the crumpled letter that Nora had passed to him, and Rose marveled that under the stark glare of the overhead lamp, which rendered them all old and tired and not particularly attractive, Edwin was actually beginning to look better. His tired, careworn features in his creased, tanned face seemed more relaxed and he did not have that look of omnipresent tension, fear, and doom on his face. It was as if his embattled psyche decided to have a nap, and his demons went off to leave him alone for awhile.
Nora sat down opposite him, shaky and looking like she badly needed a drink, but there was nothing in the house. Susan put on some water for tea, and Nora, exhausted, watched her mechanically fuss and work and get on with the everyday business. She felt awe and admiration for her sister-in-law she had not before realized, and Rose noticed this as well.
After a moment, Trevor John came in, quietly closing the door behind him with barely a touch, as if he were entering a public library or sickroom. He glanced at everyone with embarrassment. Rose guessed this was because he had not secured all the guns and must have felt guilty for Edwin’s managing to find one and very nearly use it.
Trevor John sat down at the table, opposite Rose. He swiped his hand across his mouth anxiously, and looked at her. He exchanged brief looks of she’ll-be-right forced heartiness with Edwin, and then took a deep breath, perhaps, as Rose guessed, because it was now all over.
“I was married at one time, Rose,” he said suddenly, while the others looked at him in confusion. He went on briskly, and really seemed to be addressing no one in particular.
“Very brief it was. We were teenagers and then she died. Brass tacks, though, we didn’t love each other. I wanted to have sex and so did she. She got pregnant. My father was ready to have my guts for garters. He had high hopes for me. Dad was this half-grown, half-Maori kid with big wants and nobody to listen to his dreams, poor and raised by a pair of aunties who thought a life at the freezer works was good enough for anybody who had the sense not to think too well of himself.”
The kettle whistled and Susan roused herself from leaning on the counter, listening to Trevor John’s odd tangent, and poured the hot water into the teapot to steep.
“Hard-working bloke, though, my dad,” he continued, “and disappointed, and angry. And he wanted the best for me. Insisted upon it, in fact. At his urging, and coaching, and preaching, and pushing I did well in school. I did well in sport. If I was told to walk the dog, I was supposed to do it perfectly. That was my old man. Here I get this girl pregnant, and in the face of his rage, I have the temerity to insist I wanted to marry her. I don’t know why. Really, I don’t know why. Scuttling myself, I reckon, on purpose, like a coward, because there went uni. There went my dad’s last chance, as well. Of what, I don’t know. Of his son being higher up a notch than he was, I reckon. He said I was a bloody fool and could count on no help from him if I went this way. I told him I didn’t give a toss, to piss off, and I married that girl with a comical, it seems to me now, and amazing spirit of vengeance for a happy bridegroom.”
Susan poured out the tea into matching cups, resting on matching saucers, on which there were balanced small silver teaspoons. Rose wondered if she had forgotten to pack them, or purposely left her best service for them to use until the end.
“Did I mention she did not particularly want to marry me, nor particularly want to have the baby?” Trevor John continued, nodding thanks to Susan for the cup she placed before him, who never took her eyes off his face as if she were absorbed in watching a really good show on TV.
“But her parents were unhappy, and until they cooled off she felt she might as well move in with me. In a small room over my friend’s parent’s garage. I got a pissing little job in a factory, and the baby was born. It was a boy. I had always suspected, but my vanity would not admit—he was not my child. After a row, she informed me of this herself.”
Trevor John stopped briefly and sipped his tea, “Then she said she was taking the piss with some mates, and I told her she wasn’t going to go out boozing and leave me with some other bloke’s kid. I picked him up, that poor wee thing, and practically threw him at her, and told her to take him with her and not come back.”
Edwin was not drinking his tea. He was still holding the letter to his chest, like an apprehensive child about to turn in a homework assignment, and watched Trevor John. Both had tears in their eyes.
“She got in the car with him and was not even a kilometer away when she wrecked the car. She died. The baby died. And didn’t I become the most pathetic, tragic young man? My father expressed condolences and spoke with such kindness as I had never heard from him before. All our friends and family patted me on the back at the funeral and said what a shame it was, and afterward buying me drinks like some sick, backward version of the twenty-first birthday party I never had. And didn’t I wear the look of the tragic young widower for them, and then packed myself off to Aussie where I wouldn’t have to live the lie anymore.”
Nora had not touched her tea. She looked at Trevor John with wonder and fascination, as if seeing him for the first time.
He clamped his hand on Edwin’s shoulder, “And then this bastard had to bring me back. I reckon I’m glad he did.”
Edwin never taking his eyes on him, still said nothing.
“Anyway, I never felt so low as when accepting their condolences on the loss of a family I never should have had, never wanted, and never really deserved,” Trevor John said, and at last he was speaking directly to Rose. “It’s taken me a good bit of time to swallow that.” Then he turned to Edwin.
“I was a fraud, and you’ve lost your property,” he said to Edwin. “I think we’d both best call an end to that, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and get on with it, mate. ‘Coz that’s why we’re here. Your dad was trying to suss out some answers a long time ago, like us, I reckon. Too much for him. Perhaps we’ll have better luck, you and me.”
Edwin looked at the paper in his hands, and then folded it carefully, putting it in his shirt pocket. He stood, pushing his chair back, and clapped his hand on Trevor John’s shoulder a moment, then went out onto the porch to look at the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Susan looked after him anxiously, and decided to join him after a moment, because wondering how he was feeling was worse than knowing. Edwin sensed her beside him in the dark, wanted her there, and put his arm around her.
Trevor John stood from the table, all the while looking at Rose as if for emphasis on all he had said.
“Good night, ladies.”
Then he stopped and said, without looking at her, “It wouldn’t have mattered whose voice was reading the letter. You think things like that are important. They’re not. You’re fairly paranoid over it.”
He left the kitchen for cool blackness outside, leaving the door slightly open.
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