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Auckland
2010
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Libby uploaded the photos of the latest family event from her camera to the computer, opened the software program and started to edit them. Once she had collated them into a file, set the style and chosen the background music, she took the laptop out to the family room to show Ben. They watched the slideshow fall into place in front of them.
Libby said, “Amazing what you can do these days with such a tiny camera and a couple of bits of cable. I don’t pretend to be an expert and some of these are a bit blurry, but I’m happy with most of them.”
“That’s a good one of all of us. Everyone’s looking at the camera.” Ben was pleased. “I’d like that one printed.”
“Me too,” Libby agreed. “It’s handy to have photos on the computer when you can see them every day if you want to, but I wonder if they will still be around for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I mean, look at that photo there of your great-grandparents.”
Libby picked up the framed photo sitting on the Welsh dresser. Daniel and Emma looked back at her with severe faces. No smiles and little connection between them. A static picture of two people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, taken in a studio with a plain backdrop and blurred edges.
“Is that taken from the original in Len’s place?” asked Ben.
“Yes. I took it into a photo shop, and they produced a negative so I could print a new photo. And that one was worse,” she said, putting the photo back and pointing to another one of Daniel when he was about eighty. “Probably taken twenty years later, so the processes might have been better by then but it was still a tatty photo and small, tucked into the corner of another frame. Now we have good clear black-and-white photos that look aged but are better than the originals.”
“They’ve come out very well,” agreed Ben.
“Aren’t they? There’s so much you can do with digital technology these days – or rather the experts can – but I still think it would be awful, to forget about future generations. At least with a print, even badly damaged, I can get a copy.”
“You do have these backed up, don’t you?” asked Ben.
“Of course. But will digital last forever?”
“Good question. I don’t know. So what you are saying? Do you want to get prints of all of these?”
“A few maybe.”
“Well, get them done if you want to,” said Ben.
“I love this photo,” she said as she studied the picture of Daniel and Emma again. Dressed in dark clothes, they sat formally side by side, the only piece of jewellery a bar brooch pinned where her collar joined. No earrings, a little bit of white lace showing. He wore a dark shirt, a slightly lighter coloured dark tie – badly knotted – a dark waistcoat and a suit jacket.
“With that long, drooping silver moustache of his, it’s hard to see what his mouth is like, but hers is thin and straight,” said Libby.
“Photos certainly tell a story,” said Ben. “Remember the day we called into the old courthouse in Foxton?”
“Yes, I do. I think it’s great it’s used as a museum now. I loved looking at all the old photos.”
The walls had been lined with black-and-white photos of times past. There were scenes of bridge-building and drain-digging, of flax workers and buildings long gone, the floods and many other such events that had been part of Daniel’s life staring back at them. Ben had studied the photos of the two bridges built at Whirokino: the wooden one, with a central span so boats could get through, built in 1900; the one Daniel would have known, and the trestle bridge built in 1939 after he’d gone.
Libby preferred the photos of prominent families of the time, both the formal ones and the informal, workaday shots. The clothes they wore struck a chord with her. She tried to imagine what it would have been like to walk and ride in such heavy clothes, or to try and get up and down from a wagon, or do gardening and everyday activities. Another wall showed the many houses in the district.
Thinking about those photos reminded Libby to mention the houses to Ben. “I tell you one thing that’s been bothering me. I can’t find the houses that Daniel and Emma lived in. I read an article in the Manawatu Herald about Charles Adin putting an extension on his house at Whirokino around October 1899, so the men working there would have accommodation. Not sure what work the men were doing. Daniel seems to have been a flax worker for a few years, a drainage contractor for the council for many years, and a farmer. It’s probable the men may have been part of the drain-digging team.”
“I think he ran some sheep to earn a few bob more, but he wasn’t a serious farmer, to my knowledge,” answered Ben.
“Nobody seems to know exactly where the house was any longer. Then, when he applied for his medal, he gave his address as Patrick Street. Len said the house was round about where it meets the main road now, known as Windy Flat.”
“Really? I always understood they were down by the bridge. Until much later, nearer the end of his life,” said Ben.
Libby shook her head. “Not so. Rumour tells me the Whirokino house was on Robinson property. Remember those Norfolk pines we saw marking where Herrington had once stood on the way to Foxton Beach? That was Robinson land. Herrington was part of the famous ‘square mile’. Did Robinson own land down by the bridge too, I wonder?”
“Possibly,” shrugged Ben. “Does it matter?”
The house was long gone, and he couldn’t have owned the land or someone would know about it. The same with Patrick Street – the house there had gone too.
“I suppose I should stop tormenting myself on this one. There are more important things to discover. But I would like to have known what sort of house Emma kept.”
Ben laughed at her. “I couldn’t imagine you living in those times.”
“Nor me. We lead a lazy life in comparison. Emma would’ve walked everywhere. Probably better for your health, but imagine the time it must have taken to get anything done,” said Libby.
“That’s because women weren’t expected to do anything else other than look after the home and family. There was more time.”
“I doubt it. I do the washing every day with the push of a switch; she had to boil the copper and made a full day of it, once a week at least. You put the dishes in the dishwasher and push a switch; she washed them all by hand, after she’d boiled the water. If I am cold, I can turn on the heater with a push of another switch. In the early years she, more than likely, would have chopped the wood herself. The boys might have done it for her when they were older. Everything must have taken so long and been sheer hard work. And how they did anything in those clothes is beyond belief.”
“The pace of life was much slower then. People were more relaxed and didn’t care how long it took.” Ben put the muffins from the bench into the microwave and pushed the button.
“There were still only so many hours in a day to get things done,” she insisted. “Even putting food on the table day after day had to be a chore. I can pull something out of the freezer, like those muffins. She would’ve done her own baking and walked to the butcher or the markets every day to get fresh food, I suppose.”
“Possibly, though they used to put the butter, milk and cooked meat into the safe. I remember Nana having one,” said Ben. “Built into the shady side of the house with a mesh covering so the colder air could circulate through it.”
“I remember. Yuck. It might have worked a bit in the winter, but I can’t imagine what meat would have been like in there in the summer. I wonder if she made her own butter too, now I think of it.”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Something else to look up, I guess.” Libby shrugged a shoulder. “I do wonder if we are any better off these days. What with so many gadgets supposedly giving us more time to do other things, but we worry about everything. How will this harm us? What’s in it? Reading the labels in case there’s something artificial we shouldn’t be having. I bet Emma and Daniel ate fresher and more natural foods in their time than we do now.”
The microwave pinged. “Well, at least they wouldn’t have had to argue with the kids about whether to have a Big Mac or not.” Ben sliced a muffin in half, buttered it, popped one half in his mouth and handed the other half to Libby. “Yum,” he mumbled. “There was no option then. Homemade was it, but these – homemade or not – are still good.”
Libby agreed. “How things have changed.”
