Waimate Advertiser:
PORTA-POTTY PASSES THROUGH
A distinctive pink plumber’s van has become something of a media sensation after an Instagram page was set up to track its movements across the country. After Christchurch students allegedly attached a toilet to the roof, it has become a badge of honour to get a snapshot of the vehicle as it heads south.
Caroline Bay Cafe worker Chloe Turner managed to snap a shot of the van and post it to the page.
“It’s more exciting than the time that movie kid was here,” she told our reporter. The van was last seen on the main road south.
Faith slid open the door the next morning and found herself staring at a kangaroo. She’d spent a large part of the night having weird dreams involving her parents and she paused for a bit to contemplate whether she was actually still asleep. The small furry creature looked up at her, seemingly less fazed by her appearance than she was by it. It regarded her solemnly for a beat, ear flicking, and then calmly continued chewing.
The sound of a door opening had it looking up, and then it was off, hopping across the lawn, tail out behind it. Grey came down the path, giving a half-hearted bark, before meandering over to a bush to pee. Red appeared, back in his hoodie, basket in hand. “Hey.”
“Morning. Am I going mad or was that a kangaroo?”
“Wallaby,” he said with a shrug.
Anna sat up, her hair a tangled mess, rubbing at her face.
“What? What did I miss?”
“There was a wallaby here. On the lawn,” Faith told her.
“What? We don’t have wallabies in New Zealand, do we?” She looked far less poised than usual. Less put together and far less intimidating. More human.
“Yeah, there’s heaps out here. Pests,” Red told her, whistling for Grey and setting off across the lawn to a chicken coop.
“Wow. Well, that’s not something you see every day,” Faith said, getting out and stretching. “How cool. I wish I’d got a photo.”
Joyce was up and making porridge when they knocked on the door. They took turns having a quick shower. When Faith went in after Anna she noticed the scorch mark on the sink bench and then a fancy-looking hairdryer plugged into the socket beside it. They joined Joyce at the Formica table which was set, lace doily over the sugar pot and a knitted cosy over the teapot.
“You’re famous,” she told them with a laugh, laying the paper down in front of them.
“I’m glad I didn’t see that van of yours last night — I’d have thought you were both barmy.”
On the page was a photo from the cafe. The van even in black and white stood out glaringly against the backdrop of the beach. The toilet perched on the top had a seagull standing on the seat. Thankfully, neither of them was in the picture.
They set off after breakfast, leaving a twenty-dollar note under the teapot to say thank you.
Joyce gave them both a hug and then put something in Faith’s hand. It was a soft-pink crystal. “Rose quartz,” she told her. “Good for healing rifts.”
Faith gave her an awkward smile and put it into her pocket, then climbed into the van.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said to Anna. “You forgot your hairdryer in the bathroom.”
Anna looked weirdly embarrassed.
“I didn’t forget it,” she said quietly. “I just figured I didn’t really need it that badly.”
Faith looked at her new friend, looking awkward at getting caught out doing something nice. She might appear to be a bit of a high-maintenance, high-society woman, but she was a lot more faceted than that, Faith realised. Instead of embarrassing her further, she started the van acting unaffected.
“Yeah, not much use for one in this old girl,” she said and they were off down the road in a reluctant Rizzo, who was rattling somewhat ominously, hoping to see another wallaby as they drove out of town and back onto the main road.
By the time they were ten minutes in, Faith realised she’d overthought the whole manual car thing. Rizzo was quite easy to drive really and she should have done it sooner.
“Right, so tell me more about the commune,” Anna said.
“I’m dying to know all the juicy details.”
Faith laughed. “Like what?”
“What did you wear? Do they have arranged marriages? Do you go to hospitals? I don’t know, it’s all just a bit fascinating.”
“Well, yes, the elders choose your spouse. Hospitals are a bit of a grey area. We could go for broken legs, some surgeries and things — we’re not anti blood products or anything like that — but stuff like cancer? That’s seen as God’s will, so …”
They spent the next half hour talking about Faith’s upbringing. She was used to people’s curiosity. After years living a normal life she could see how odd the lifestyle was.
She’d grown up with very set gender roles. The women cooked and cleaned and did laundry; clothes were demure and plain. They were to be submissive to the men, and worked only as teachers, midwives or nurses and occasionally as office workers. And only within the commune and until they had children, which they birthed at home.
“It’s funny, I acclimated well when I left, I think, but I had a lot of weird guilt after the girls were born when I went on the pill. It seemed such a big thing, to stop nature, God’s will.”
“So you still believe in God?”
“Well, I believe in something. Maybe not the same God as my parents and sisters, but something … higher.”
“So had they chosen someone for you to marry?” Anna asked.
“Yep, Josiah Burns. Nice enough guy but I wasn’t at all keen on him.”
“Haha, you’d have been Faith Burns,” Anna said with a laugh. “I can’t imagine who my parents might have picked for me given the chance. Probably Terry Grogan. Ergh.” She looked over at Faith and grinned. “Nose-picker.” Faith laughed. The van made a loud beeping noise.
“Shit, there’s an orange light that’s come on on the dash,” Faith said. “What’s it for?”
“No idea. Hopefully nothing important.”
“Should we stop?”
“I don’t think there’s much point. I can change a tyre and check the oil, but that’s about all my car expertise. If we open the hood I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
“Well, that’s more than me,” Faith confessed.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Let’s get to Dunedin and we can look at it then,” Anna said. She seemed confident, opening up a bag of M&M’s, and they went back to talking about the Servants of Christ.
“So were you allowed to watch TV?”
“Nope.”
“What about books?”
“Some, but mostly non-fiction stuff.”
“What about magazines?”
“No, definitely not.”
“So what did you do for porn?” Anna asked, making Faith crack up.
They stopped in Dunedin for lunch and parked in a large parking lot. The van made a pained grinding noise as they pulled in and Faith realised a little belatedly that she’d forgotten to change down gears.
They used the bathrooms and had lunch at a Mediterranean cafe, sitting in an enclosed courtyard with olive and lemon trees in large tubs.
“I might get a coffee to go,” Anna said as she scraped up the last of the hummus from their mezze platter. “Hey, who’s that out by the van?”
Faith looked at where she was pointing. A scruffy-looking guy in faded baggy jeans and a puffer vest was lurking around the van’s side door, looking furtive.
“I’ll go check,” Faith told her. “You get your coffee.”
She wandered out to the parking lot, where the guy was now tugging on the sliding door.
“Can I help you?” she asked, and he spun around, hands going into his pockets.
“Oh, hey, umm, I just locked myself out, it’s all good,” he told her. He was only in his twenties, she would say. His hair was buzzed short, with a few scars visible on his scalp and one eyebrow. There was a slightly vacant look about his eyes and she wondered if he was high.
“Okay, well, I think you’ve got the wrong van, mate, this one’s mine.” She held out the keys to show him. His mouth dropped open and he frowned.
“Oh, yeah, but like I mean … It was my mate’s van. Baz. ’Cept it didn’t have the loo on it.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “I’m Gary. His mate.”
“Oh right, Baz. Yeah, he sold it to us in Wellington,” Faith told him, “at a party.”
The kid shuffled around kicking at the kerb with his off-white sneaker.
“Yeah, but like I had something in there, and I need it back.” He looked up at her and gave her a lopsided smile.
“Can I just get it? It won’t take long.”
Faith wondered what he could have left in the van that they hadn’t found. Then she realised.
“Oh, right, hang on,” she told him, unlocking the passenger door and leaning into the glove box. “Here you go.” She passed him the rap CD with a smile. “Not really our kind of music anyway.”
The guy gave her a funny look and opened his mouth to speak just as a large group of students appeared all yelling and cheering and pulling out their phones.
“Dude, it’s legit the van,” someone yelled.
Anna appeared carrying a takeaway cup and gave her an eye-roll. “Let’s go, shall we?”
Faith went round to the driver’s door and hopped in, hoping she didn’t embarrass herself as she put it into reverse and backed the van out. Baz’s friend was getting into a small red car parked beside them and she gave him a quick wave as she changed into first and left.
“Who was that?” Anna asked.
“A friend of the mysterious Baz,” Faith told her. “He said he left something in here and needed it back.”
“Oh, the drugs?”
“Oh, my goodness, I didn’t even think of that. I thought he meant the CD. No wonder he looked confused.”
“Well, if he knew Baz from Wellington, it’s a long way to go for a shitty rap CD,” Anna said with a laugh.
They stopped for gas on the way out of town and Anna noticed there was a tyre shop next door so they pulled up outside, Rizzo spluttering loudly. There was a beefy man in a checked shirt in the workshop and he came out to meet them, wiping his hands on a dirty rag.
“Hey there, ladies, you need a bit of help?”
“We’re just after a tyre repair,” Anna said. “We got a flat a little while ago — I think maybe a nail might have gone through it.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Anna said.
“Well, how about you let me be the judge of that? I’ll fix you up with a nice new tyre and then you can go on your way to the shops, or whatever it is you ladies do. We’ll have the van back to hubby in no time.”
“What makes you think it’s not our van?” Anna’s cheeks were flushed red with indignation.
“What? You telling me you two are actually plumbers? Well, if you can fix my broken loo, I’ll give you your tyre for free, how’s that?” He chuckled and shook his head in amusement.
“Okay, done,” Anna told him. She jerked open the van door and indicated the flat tyre to Beefcheeks. He gave them an appraising look and then as if to call their bluff, he pointed to a shipping container that had been fitted out as an office.
“Through there, door on the left.”
“Anna,” Faith hissed as he stalked off. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know, he just pissed me off, assuming just because we’re women that we wouldn’t know how to fix a loo.”
“Yeah, but we don’t actually know, do we?”
“How hard can it be? We’ve got tools.” She grabbed them from the back of the van and waved her phone. “And YouTube.”
“I think it’s the fill valve,” Faith said, looking up from Anna’s phone five minutes later. They had an assortment of wrenches laid across the filthy bathroom floor. She shuffled through the tool box. “I don’t think there’s anything here to replace it though.”
“It might just be a washer,” Anna said doubtfully, peering over Faith’s shoulder. “This bit here looks a bit worn out. It’s kind of like a bottle top. What if we just pulled it off and put a water bottle lid on in its place, and stuck a new washer on? That could work.”
“It’s worth a try, I guess. How much would it cost to call out a real plumber? We’re probably saving him a heap.”
Anna snuck back out to the van and unscrewed the top of her water bottle. Beefcheeks was nowhere in sight but she could hear a hissing noise coming from within the workshop. She hurried back inside, taking a bracing deep breath before stepping back into the urine-soaked bathroom.
“Try this.”
Faith banged the valve with a wrench to dislodge the broken part and they slid the bottle top on. They used a handful of washers to hold everything in place and Anna replaced everything inside and wedged the lid down. They put their tools back into the box and thoroughly washed their hands with lukewarm water and a cracked and dirty cake of soap before retreating into the waiting room.
Beefcheeks came in about ten minutes later. “Well, just as I thought, you must’ve run over a nail. Tyres still pretty good so I did a repair. No need for a new one.”
As they stood to leave, Faith nudged Anna. Her eyes were wide in horror and she indicated with her head towards the bathroom. A thin trickle of water had started to seep out under the door.
“No need for paperwork,” Faith said hurriedly, hefting the tool box into her right hand. “I wouldn’t use the toilet for a little while though, it needs to, er, settle first.”
“We should have stuffed some loo paper down it,” Anna hissed as they hurried to the van. “Do you think we were meant to turn off the water?”
Anna buckled her seatbelt as Faith started the engine. “Oh shoot,” she exclaimed, glancing into the rear-vision mirror. Anna craned her head to see what Faith was looking at. Beef-cheeks was running out of the office, waving one meaty fist at them. With a sudden roar, Faith gunned the engine and swung onto the road, tyres squealing. When Anna looked over at her she was grinning broadly. “Thelma and Louise!” she yelled, looking slightly wild.
The van was still making a clunking sound, but they’d sort of gotten used to its rhythmic tempo now. They headed out of town, feeling a little guilty at their shoddy plumbing job and thinking they had probably done nothing to change the tyre guy’s sexist views on women plumbers.
“He did say he was going to give us a tyre though,” Faith pointed out. “All he did was put a crappy patch on it in the end. I reckon fair’s fair.”
They both grinned at each other as they picked up speed down the long straight highway.
“So why social work?” Anna asked Faith a little while later.
“Well, I never really wanted to be a nurse,” she told Anna.
“That was just a way out of the whole arranged marriage. And something my father was sort of on board with, with the idea I could do midwifery, I suspect. But once I was out there, and Daniel and I got settled into life, I realised my life experience might actually help someone, you know? And I love my job, especially when I work with teens.”
“Good on you. Really. Your story is so fascinating. Makes me feel very dull and boring.”
Faith had never really thought of herself as interesting. It gave her pause. Perhaps there were just different ways of living life, and hers hadn’t been as wasted as she sometimes thought.
“So tell me about the chef thing then,’ she said. “What’s your favourite thing to cook?”
“Oh, baking for sure. I used to love doing fancy dinners and things, but I’ve done so many work dinners it’s old. No, baking. I love the exactness of it. The science. And the art, the decorating and presenting …”
Anna looked so animated, and Faith opened her mouth to say so when the van suddenly made an awful grinding noise, like metal on metal.
“Flippin’ heck,” Faith said as it lurched, stalled and then shuddered slowly to a stop. She steered it off to the side of the road, wobbling over the uneven ground and coming to a final rest on a lean at the verge, facing a drain. The engine clunked and whirred and then popped with an ominous hiss, like a last gasping breath before it died entirely.