“We’ll see,” Matiu had said, sounding exactly like a dad. It was a good thing, I reckoned, that Hamish wanted to leave his sisters behind sometimes. I was smiling, thinking about it, and then I wasn’t. Still nervous, then.
We were almost to the Chasm. I could already hear the nearly subsonic boom of waves hitting the hole in the rock. I needed to say this now. I’d have an audience for it, but then, I had an audience for nearly everything. I dropped back and told Matiu, “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” he said. “You can.” Calmly, the way he said most things.
“What if I ... what if we ...” I stopped.
He looked at me, his face alert. “What if we what?”
“I was thinking,” I said. “Looking around. There’s this house ... and it’s awesome. Ridiculous, of course. But awesome. Could be silly, though.”
“Mum!” Hamish said. “It sounds like an explosion! We must be nearly there.”
Matiu didn’t looked fussed. He said, “Could you hold that thought a few more minutes, maybe?”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.”
I wasn’t going to be disappointed. I was going to be happy. I was going to watch the waves come in under the hole in the rock, hear the thunder as they exploded up it, smell the salt spray and feel the wind on my face, and be glad I had this day.
That was the point of life, to be glad you had this day.
We heard the sea. We felt the spray. We ran a bit on the way back. At least the kids and I did, because Matiu was being careful, as he had Isobel. As if she’d allow herself to be carried by anybody else. She was hanging onto his hair, as usual, as if it were her reins, and as if he was hers to command. Which was pretty much true.
You could be sad, maybe, at not being your baby’s favorite person. But if her face lit up like that every time Matiu came through the door, if she smiled her sunniest smiles for him, held out her arms to him, and laughed and cooed when he sang to her? How could you feel sad about that?
We got nearly back to the tunnel of trees that led to the carpark, to where a random stand of trees on our right broke up the view of grass and bushes, and Matiu asked me, “Here?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is it.”
“Find the spot, then,” he said, “and we’ll do it.”
I walked around the trees, not into the midst of them. I wanted a place where you could see the sea. When I found it, I turned my face into the wind, felt the rightness of it, and said, “Here.”
First, Matiu took off the baby carrier and set it on the ground. I unclipped the belt and pulled Isobel out, then hoisted her onto my hip. Hamish tickled her toes in her little leather slippers, and she kicked her feet and laughed. Meanwhile, Matiu was unclipping the folding spade from the side of the pack, turning his back on the sea, and starting to dig.
Buddy got in there to help, and before long, sandy soil was flying everywhere. The kids were shrieking, and Matiu was laughing. Another few spadefuls, and he had the hole deep enough. He laid the spade aside and turned to me, pulling my own backpack off, then taking the carton that had once held acai puree out of its plastic bag. It was frosty on the outside now that the contents were melting, and there wasn’t quite as much of it, since Max had put some of it into the blender. Matiu took out something else, too. An ipu whenua, a pouch made of flax.
When he pulled on latex gloves and went to tip the contents of the container into the pouch, Hamish said, awe in his voice, “That’s really gross.”
“No,” Matiu said, still calmly engaged in transferring ragged, frozen pieces of purple-brown placenta and blue-veined umbilical cord into the pouch. “It’s how we’re all brought into the world. Do you know what ‘whenua’ means?”
“No,” Hamish said.
“It means ‘land,’” Matiu said. “It means the earth below you, where your feet are planted, where your ancestors have returned. What new life is made of, and what it becomes again once life is over. When we bury it, we return it where it belongs. We thank Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother, for her gift of life. We remember that life is a miracle, and a baby is a blessing.”
Everything was inside the pouch now, and he tied the flax cord into a neat bow and handed it to me. After that, he stripped off the gloves, put the cover back on the plastic tub, put the tub into the bag, and returned the bag to my pack.
“There’s a thing you’re meant to say,” I told him. “I don’t know what it is. Could you say it?”
He said, “I could.”
I said, “Then help me, kids. We’ll all put our hands on the pouch. We’ll put it in together.”
Hamish said, “The baby should put her hand on it, too, because it’s hers.”
So we did that. I crouched in front of the hole, in the light of the day and the wind from the sea, and Hamish put Isobel’s hand on the basket and said, “We should say that we’re glad she was born.”
“That’s a beautiful thought,” I said. “I’m glad you were born, Isobel.”
“I’m a little bit glad,” Olivia said. “But I will be more glad when she can play with me better, because she is my sister and sisters are s’posed to play.”
“I’m glad you were born, Isobel,” Hamish said. “You should say too, Matiu.”
Matiu crouched down beside us and put his hand over all of ours. Five hands all together, the topmost one capable, gentle, and so strong. The hand that had held Isobel as she emerged into the world, that had pulled the whenua out of me, that had made us both safe and had kept us safe ever since. He said, “I’m glad you were born, hine.”
We set the ipu whenua into the ground together, the green basketweave pattern pale against the brown earth, and Matiu chanted the words, his voice deep and resonant. He sounded like Koro, or like Tane. Or, maybe, possibly, he sounded all the way like himself at last.
“He taonga no te whenua, me hoki ano ki te whenua,” he intoned. “What is given by the land should return to the land.”
Silence for a moment, and then Matiu said, “Everybody can take a turn to cover it up. You first, Olivia.” So we worked with the shovel, with Buddy trying to help again and Hamish pulling him away, laughing, until the dirt was mounded over and patted down.
I said, “I have something to say, too. Something Grandad used to say to me, when I was a little girl. When I was sad.” I pulled the slip of paper from my pocket read aloud, into the wind.
“To every thing there is a season,” I read, “and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
More silence, and I put the paper away and said, “I reckon it’s our time to laugh. I reckon it’s our time to dance, and our time to sing, too.”
“Matiu can sing a song,” Olivia said. “He’s good at singing.”
“I can,” Matiu said. “I can sing Isobel’s favorite song. It’s for both you girls, though, because it’s a song for little girls everywhere.”
He reached for Isobel, and I handed her over. He tucked her into his arm, put his other arm on Olivia’s head, holding both of them under his protection, and sang. The Maori way, unselfconscious and proud, letting his love and his joy flow out through his voice. He sang the sweet, slow notes of the lullaby, and I stood with my arm around Hamish’s shoulders, looked out over the land and the sea, and let the chills come.
E tangi ana koe
Hine, e hine!
E ngenge ana koe
Hine, e hine!
Kati to pouri ra
Noho i te aroha
Te ngakau o te Matua
Hine, e hine.
You are crying, baby girl, the song said. You are tired, baby girl. Don’t be sad. You live in love. The arms of your father are around you. Sleep, now, in my love.
And if I was crying myself—well, wouldn’t you?
52
Strong as the Sea
Poppy
We walked slowly back to the car, a little bit exalted and a little bit drained. Isobel was on Matiu’s back again, and the kids were running ahead through the tunnel of trees, getting their own energy out by diving between the trunks, hiding, then finding each other again, even though Buddy made hiding pretty difficult.
Matiu said, “You had something to tell me. I had something to tell you, too. Or more like—something to ask you.”
Just like that, my heart was hammering, my breath coming shorter.
Life didn’t work like this. My life didn’t work like this.
Or maybe it did. If your life doesn’t work for you anymore—change your life. One step at a time. I’d taken so many steps already, and I knew what I wanted my next step to be.
Matiu said, “You go first.”
It was hard to start, but there was no way to do it except to plunge in, so I did. “I was thinking about houses,” I said. “I have an awesome house, I know.”
“Yes,” Matiu said. “You do.”
“But maybe not. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time for a change. A house should be someplace a family makes into their home together, and my family has changed.” I was hurtling on, now, because I’d started this, and I needed to see it through. Right or wrong, this was how I wanted to change my life, and I was going to try. Maybe I could sell the idea another way, though. “Dunedin’s pretty small. You can get around easily. To the peninsula, say. And I’ve always wanted an old house. I’ve always drawn old houses.”
“Ah,” Matiu said. “Maori Hill, maybe. Roslyn. Belleknowes.”
“It would take less than fifteen minutes to get to my parents,” I said. “And my grandparents. I’ve been thinking that a tiny bit of distance would be all right.”
“Sounds all right to me,” Matiu said. “And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because,” I said, and took a breath. “I thought maybe you would want to buy it with me. If you don’t want to move back to Tauranga. If you could bear to stay here. And if you want to live with me.” I tried to laugh. I couldn’t read his face, though. “Sounds like I’m proposing, eh. I can’t propose, obviously. Still married, and all that. Too soon as well. Oh, well. Just a thought. Just a ...” I ran down, put my hands over my face, remembered to check on the kids—still playing in the trees—and then, finally, looked at Matiu.
“Help me,” I said.
Matiu
I was trying to laugh, but I was having trouble controlling my face.
“Sweetheart,” I said, “yes.”
“Really?” There was such naked joy on her face, she shone with it. How humble did that make you, to know that you could bring somebody else that much joy? How hard did it make you want to work to keep doing it?
“Yes,” I said. “Really.” I was laughing, now, and I was holding her, too. “I’m going to move back to Tauranga, am I? Leave you, leave the kids? In what universe do you imagine I could do that?”
“Oh,” she said, and smiled some more. “Well ... good.”
“And I’m guessing,” I said, “that you’ve already found a place you like, because you’ll never be one to put a toe in the water. You’ll jump in, every time.”
“I have,” she said. “But it’s silly. Maybe even ridiculous.”
I kissed her, because I had to, smoothed her glorious hair back from her face, and said, “I don’t believe in ‘ridiculous.’ I believe in dreams. And I believe in you.”
“Do you want to see it?” she asked. A little shyly, and a little excitedly.
“What, now?”
“Yes. I wanted to show somebody. Or—no. I wanted to show you. I just have to make a call first. The kids don’t have to know it’s a possibility,” she hurried on. “They shouldn’t, because it really is ri— well, a bit over the top. It could just be a fun outing. An adventure.”
“Then,” I said, “let’s go have an adventure.”
We drove back around the start of the peninsula and into the central city. Past the iced wedding cake of the Southern Cross Hotel, skirting the Octagon, and up the hill on Stuart Street.
“Are we going to your house, Matiu?” Hamish asked. “Because this is the way.”
“Can you tell that?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “because of the turns, and the buildings.”
“Good on ya,” I said. “Nah, mate, not today. We’re going to see a house like a castle. Going to explore it, eh.”
“Oh,” Hamish said. “Cool.”
“How do you know it’s a house like a castle?” Poppy asked.
“Because you told me it was ridiculous. Could be I’m wrong, of course. Could be it’s a house like a hovel.” We were indeed passing the turn to my place, and then the Moana Pool where I swam. We were only about a kilometer from the hospital, and we were nearly to the house already. I could walk to work from this place. You could walk to almost everything, as long as you didn’t mind walking home uphill.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, bro. I tried to think it, and I absolutely failed. I wasn’t an impulsive person. Nowhere close. I was getting ahead of myself anyway.
A turn onto quiet, peaceful Littlebourne Road, then. Lush greenery everywhere, flowers and trees and shrubs filling front gardens. A glimpse of homes set well back from the street, mostly from the unfussy, stately Edwardian era and mostly painted white. Onto Melrose, an even smaller street, and up to the top of the hill. At the end of the road, there was a drive that took us around and back, into an enormous paved courtyard.
“It’s been a sort of B&B,” Poppy said a little breathlessly as I pulled the car to a stop beside a shiny black late-model vehicle that must be the realtor’s. “Luxury accommodation.”
I took it in. Not a castle, not really. A house, originally Edwardian, added onto over the years. Three stories, the top one a tower that would have a spectacular view. An ornate white wrought-iron balcony went all the way around the middle story, and the house sported at least three chimneys and more bow windows than that. Heaps of windows. So very many windows.
“There used to be a window tax,” I said, “in England. The richer you were, the more windows you could afford.”
“Then the person who has this house must be very rich,” Hamish said, unbuckling the straps of his car seat.
I climbed out of the car beside Hamish as Poppy sprang from the passenger seat. I got Olivia out, then lifted out Isobel, who patted my chin and smiled at me with that joy she’d inherited from her mother. I asked Poppy, “How many bedrooms does this place have? Tell the truth.”
She was laughing. “Ten. And a few lounges. Three and a half baths. But two of the bedrooms and one bath are in the annex.”
I said, “Ten. And the annex?”
She smiled some more and said, “Yes. Isn’t it a gorgeous house? Isn’t it absolutely over the top? Wait until you see inside.”
With the realtor’s help, we did see inside. And the kids started to run.
The entry hall alone was worth the price of admission. Carved, rimu-paneled walls, ornamental plaster ceiling, and the kind of craftsmanship to the elaborate door frames that nobody did anymore. Elaborate stained glass all around the massive front door, and a huge, ornate wooden archway leading into the rest of the house.
“It is a castle!” Hamish shouted. “Come on, Livvy. Let’s explore!”
“Fortunately,” the realtor, a middle-aged woman, said with a smile, “it’s unfurnished.” She didn’t sound too fussed, though. She knew who Poppy was, clearly. And who her parents were, but that didn’t matter. Poppy could afford this house, and so could I.
Together? We could do anything we wanted. Even this madness.
Poppy said, “I know, I know. But look.” She had my hand and was tugging me onward. “Look at the gorgeous white marble fireplace in this lounge, and the arched white woodwork framing it, and the sitting nooks in there. Have you ever seen anything like that? Almost all the windows are
bow windows, because that’s how they built the house. There’s another lounge down here with another fireplace, and a bedroom and bath for guests, and where you could change a baby and put her down to nap, maybe, if you were working downstairs. And come see the kitchen.”
I did. Farmhouse style, warm, and enormous, though it could need some updating, and beside the big wooden table in the window nook, the original iron range built into the wall, complete with all its ovens. “For warmth, in the winter,” Poppy said. “Or you could use it to cook, if you had enough leisure time and were mad. Isn’t it amazing?”
The dining room was another luxuriously spacious showpiece of fireplace, bow windows, and plaster ceilings, and there was more stained glass on the windows set into the landing of the curved wooden staircase with its carved handrail, plus pineapples adorning the newel posts at every landing. Another lounge with another fireplace up here, and more stained glass and more fireplaces and more carved crown moldings in two of the many, many bedrooms. It was the absolute last thing from the Kiwi-elegant modern simplicity of Poppy’s house in Waverley, or mine in Tauranga. It was unlike anyplace I’d ever lived. Practically unlike anyplace I’d ever seen.
Poppy said, “We’d want to take out one of the bedrooms up here and add another bath. You don’t need six bedrooms up here. Five’s enough. Maybe make an ensuite bath for this front bedroom with the fireplace and the view, as it’s my favorite. Have it flow into the lounge and kitchenette. Master suite, eh.”
Hamish came running down the wide wooden passage with Olivia and said, “Mummy, this is the coolest house ever. It’s like living in a story.”
“You’ll want to see the tower bedroom,” the realtor, whose name was Maggie, told me. “Everybody likes that best.”
It was large. No surprise. Three walls of windows looked out over the hills and the harbour, the Otago Peninsula and the sea, and there was an ensuite bath.
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 38
