That afternoon David climbed the hill behind the homestead. He followed the fence line which led up the long ridge. It was a blazing hot day, and there was little shade save under the occasional old charred stump. He was fit and long-legged, and, as he strode on up the ridge, the feeling of being out on the hills exhilarated him. In spite of his fears he started whistling.
Soon the whole land began to open out below him. The Waitehaia River plunged out of the ranges in a deep gorge with a series of rapids. Towards the coast, he saw the bare, eroded hill country with a winding road along the ridge top, and tiny groups of trees marking the homesteads.
It was not till he reached the top of the ridge that he saw the view to the inland. Rearing up beyond the valley of the Waitehaia and right across the western horizon was the wide sweep of the main range of the Raukumaras, mounting up in great folds of forested ridges and valleys, till the bush itself faded into wind-blasted skeletons of trees and leatherwood and patches of snow grass. Soaring clear from the very crest of the ranges were two massive peaks with sheer rock battlements where even now the clouds were gathering.
Now, as he looked out on these peaks, they changed. They rose up like great horned monsters, fearsome, terrifying, menacing.
At that moment he knew that the police were wrong. The run-holder too.
That lonely, sensitive, turbulent man had needed a place where he could find comfort and peace. And where could he find it but in the great mystery and majesty of nature which he loved and which he had been led to explore?
That story about his brother had mentioned a tapu broken. And the tapu was connected with the mountains.
He had never made an effort to understand Tane. Yet he sensed that it was Tane’s strange relationship with the mountains which underlay his superb geological insight. Something had drawn him back to the Raukumaras . Was there a link between these mountains and the tragic death of his brother?
But why had he wept?
There came to David’s mind another picture. It came right out of his childhood, from the home of his grandparents who had been religious. A picture of a man, fugitive on a bare plain under an angry sky, head bowed, one arm over his eyes, the other thrust upwards in desperate appeal.
A man who had broken a relationship and could not find his way back.
Cain! The one who in a fit of jealousy kills his brother and then, driven from his home, becomes a wanderer and a stranger on the face of the earth. Cain – the man all alone – the murderer whose crime cannot be expiated.
Sometimes the imagination conceives fearful things which, strive as we will, we cannot drive out.
It was then that the cowering figure behind the logs looked at him – straight at him. He saw again that naive, childlike, piteous face, the same face that looked at him before he walked out three years before.
Tane, what did you want to ask me?
CHAPTER 9
The eyes terrified him.
From the bathroom mirror at the night shelter a wild, defiant creature stared out, accusing and mocking him.
He shrank away. He wanted to flee from that face as he had run away from everything else – the person he had once been, the position he had held, the people who had once been friends, even the care which he used to take of himself.
Running, running, running – finding some place where he thought he was safe, then having to run away again.
Even the mountains had failed him. The relationship was no more.
From Waitehaia he had travelled by day and night, taking several days. After one look most drivers had sped past him, and he had had to walk a lot of the way. He had found a bed at the Auckland City Mission among the homeless because it was one place where they didn’t ask questions.
Tomorrow he would go to the meeting and talk with his friend again as they had once talked.
Surely he will listen!
When he walked up to the hotel, he was the only one for whom the porter did not open the door. He stood in front of the reception counter in his torn, dusty T-shirt and jeans, with his lank, unkempt hair and unshaven face. The guests stood apart from him and the staff didn’t appear to see him. He reached in his pocket and pulled out his membership card.
“We’d be honoured if you joined us,” his friend had said “but you don’t need to go to meetings.”
The card was faded, soiled and crumpled. He pushed it towards the shining brass buttons of a blue-uniformed concierge, but kept his head down. The buttons drew back, there was a scarcely concealed sniff, then a searching glance at the photo and the printing on the card. He took the card and showed it to a colleague who said nothing but raised his eyebrows. The first man then said stiffly: “Your meeting is in the Board Room on the first floor up the escalator – sir.”
He crept around the far edge of the marble-floored atrium; he shunned close contact with the guests and business clients and the looks and the sniffs which would go with it – then he went up the escalator. At the top he felt faint, and realised he hadn’t eaten for two days and had had very little sleep. Approaching the Board Room, his feet seemed to drag in the lush carpet of the reception hall.
At the door he hesitated and looked longingly back along the wide wood-panelled hallway. Then he knocked lightly. Perhaps he wouldn't be there and then he could go away.
Suddenly the door opened and a muscular, white-shirted man smelling of after-shave and deodorant eyed him contemptuously. He hated the man, but took out his card and showed it. The other glanced at it, but eyed him again and showed no intention of letting him in. However, after a muffled conversation in which his name was pronounced, he was shoved forward into the room. He smelt the cigar smoke and saw about a dozen people in the room sitting at a U-shaped table – well-fed, clean-shaven, middle-aged Pakeha men with dark suits and greying or balding hair.
A very large man with a pink bow tie who was sitting at the top of the table rose ponderously and came towards him with outstretched hand and a wide smile. “Dear boy! What a pleasant surprise!”
It was the voice. The cordial tone, the warm grip of the hand and the smile, especially the smile, unnerved him. He swayed on his feet. Someone offered him a chair – by the door, not at the table. He almost fell into it and sat looking at the floor.
He saw only the highly polished Italian shoes and the perfectly creased pin-striped trousers as the once revered rich resonant tones boomed over him. “Where have you been all this time? Are you sure you are all right? May I offer you anything? Brandy?” He shook his head. Someone gave him a glass of water, but his hand shook, so that some of it spilt on his jeans and his worn sneakers.
“We have a little business to finish. Do you mind very much if we carry on? Then we can go and have lunch together.”
He wanted to say something, but couldn't get the words out. Again he felt the urge to bolt. The door was beside him, but the deodorised man was standing in front of it. There was a low buzz of voices. The members were leaning forward, their heads almost together over the table and speaking very quietly. Suddenly amid the buzz he heard that voice.
“It has proved the perfect location …”
The words ran through him like an electric shock. He jerked upwards involuntarily and he hardly recognised his own voice.
“You promised!”
The room had disappeared. He saw the blinding light of a nuclear explosion, the screaming, the people running and burning as they ran, not only their clothes, but their flesh as well. Behind them the buildings dissolving into one enormous fireball which raced after and engulfed the fleeing figures. His body was contorting and his arms flailing. His fists pummelled the air impotently. His shouts were echoing unnaturally, harshly. “You promised!”
“You are not well…” came that voice.
But the face belied the words. It was not consumed by the fire. Instead the fire seemed to be coming from it. It seemed to mock him, twisting grotesquely.
Through the fire came shapes clutching at him, pulling him down,
holding his arms, stifling him. “The tutumaiao!” He hurled the word at them like a curse. “The tutu…”
Then all went blank.
CHAPTER 10
David didn’t go to church any more. The last time had been for the funeral of his grandmother.
He had often stayed with his grandparents when he was a boy and enjoyed eating the big juicy Satsuma plums, climbing the pepper tree in their garden and sliding down the banisters of their large two-storey house in Epsom. The picture of Cain was on the landing half way up the stairs. It was different from the other pictures in the hall and up the stairway which were portraits of gloomy, uninteresting people in old-fashioned clothes. At first, he liked Cain because he was a lively, active figure running away from those boring people. Later, his grandmother explained that he was running away because he had done something wrong, and he could identify with that as well. When he was a little older, she told him that Cain had killed his brother. Then he wasn’t so sure about him.
Although they also lived in the same parish, David’s parents gave up church when his father fell out with the vicar over the omission from the parish magazine of his modest contribution to the spire repair fund. His father’s opinion, often expressed to his wife and son and magnified over the years, was that all vicars were hypocrites and all they wanted was your money, and when they got it, they didn’t even bother to thank you for it. As this incident had occurred before he was born, David had never attended church except when he was staying with his grandparents. When he grew up, it did not occur to him to question his father’s opinion on this as on most other things.
***
After Waitehaia he found no trace of Tane.
As a scientist David worked on what could be proved experimentally and empirically. He was trained in scientific method, an approach based on the belief that as long as one applied intelligence and reason and sustained purposeful activity a solution would be found. The knowledge base established by the latest technology assisted this approach.
But how could he find a method to address the problem of Cain? It haunted him, this shut-out, fleeing, tortured figure. But the most fearful thing was that he could not forgive himself.
You fool! Did you think that all you had to do was look for him? Didn’t you realise that there were consequences to your own actions? You didn’t listen to him. Where could he go? Would he run until he could run no more? What would he do if he found no place to hide?
It was Sunday afternoon. He flung himself out of his flat and set off striding wildly around the streets. For hours he just kept on walking without knowing or caring where he was going. High on a hill in a smug leafy suburb he watched the sun going down in a blazing ball of red fire over the Waitakeres. In that fiery ball he saw his own turmoil. But when the sun slipped below the horizon and the cooling balm of the evening came on, he felt no respite.
It was then that he heard the sound of an organ and saw the shingled spire.
He recognised it as the church of his grandparents.
***
“I just wish he’d never gone there,” Eleanor McTaggart said to herself.
She had tried to discourage Stan from going to the Raukumaras, but it was like talking to a granite bluff. He did not listen, and as he got older he got worse. This idea of finding a forgotten valley was more suited to a twenty-five-year-old that a fifty-year-old, but you couldn’t change him.
“Eleanor,” she told herself, “you knew exactly what he was like when you married him.”
Leone, her sister-in-law, who was sitting beside her in the pew, was pressing her hand, and pointing to the hymn which was just starting. “Isn’t this one of Stan’s favourites?”
Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land...
Twenty-five years before, when she and Stan had married, old-fashioned Evensong was one of the services she loved. After a day in the Waitakeres, before the children were born, in the cool of the evening they would walk together up to the equally old-fashioned parish church of St. Peter-on-the-Hill, where the birds were gathering in the oaks to sing their own evensong. The organ would peal out, adding its rejoicing, the high-beamed roof and the kauri-panelled nave of the old Selwyn church would re-echo the sound as they had been doing for nearly a hundred years, and the congregation would respond enthusiastically.
Now she enjoyed coming back to it, hearing the beautiful poetic English words and the hymns and the music which had comforted and inspired generations before her.
Yes, Stan enjoyed singing this hymn in his fine baritone voice, and would sing it strongly, as he did with everything. She tried to join in, but could not stop herself thinking of him and Bill, and John, Leone’s husband, who had gone out on the search with the Alpine Sports Club contingent five days ago.
Suddenly, she noticed a tall, fair-haired young man whom she had never seen before enter the church and slip into one of the pews. He did not kneel but sat stiffly upright. She thought he looked unhappy.
***
He should have known it would be a waste of time.
The church was gloomy and dark, the prayers were in an archaic form of English, the organist had his own agenda and drowned out the thin voices of the small group of elderly people of his parents’ or grandparents’ generation.
He wasn’t surprised there was no one of his age there. How could these people, cocooned as they were in their generational complacency, have anything to say to him in his problem? What would they know about Cain?
They’re in a time warp.
As he slipped out of his pew at the end of the service, people kept smiling at him in a sickening way. He gave his book back to a tall, lugubrious man with a long, cadaverous face who was standing at the door. Then he tried to edge quietly out the door and slip away into the night.
But the vicar in his long black medieval robe, two bumps in a shining forehead and an unctuous smile, fixed his eyes on him and grasped his hand firmly.
“You are new here. How nice to see you!”
David mumbled something like “just looking, thanks”, and tried to move away. He found he could not get his hand free. “Come and meet some of us. What was the name? … From the University – ah, what Department? … You are on the staff there? … I have an excellent idea. Come and have some coffee. Leone and Eleanor, won’t you join us? This is David Corbishley. Leone and Eleanor, both McTaggart.”
McTaggart! At that word all the medieval atmosphere vanished. David’s brain locked suddenly into gear.
“We’re very traditional here. That’s why we still have Evensong on Sunday evening when nearly every other church has dropped it. People love it and it fits in with the church.” Archdeacon Harry Mountjoy never stopped talking all the way to the vicarage. “Built by Bishop Selwyn. Handcrafted timbers – the kauri is as good as new. We had to replace the shingles on the roof though for the centenary. We did the spire some years ago. We had an appeal and everyone was so good. What did you think of the organ? Just been rebuilt, had some trouble with the ventilation. Do you like music?”
“Some kinds,” he replied, not really listening.
“Would you like black or white, Mr Corbishley?” Mrs Mountjoy was a white-haired, ruddy-cheeked woman, again with the trademark smile. “Or is it Doctor Corbishley?”
He was pleased by her desire to recognise his correct status. “White, thank you, and it is Doctor”
Leone McTaggart was talking authoritatively. “They’ve got parties coming in from both sides of the ranges. John was asked to take food for a week and it’s probably the biggest one Search and Rescue have organised.”
Eleanor had a bright, open face with curly, slightly greying hair. She did not have the unctuous smile and her eyes were warm and intelligent. “It’s wonderful to have so many friends out searching,” she said. “I’m just sorry that Stan had to be the cause of it. He’s usually so well organised.” Then she saw David listening. “Do sit down, Dr Corbishley. I believe you are at the
University. Our second son has just graduated.”
He nodded as he sat down beside her. “It’s just a long shot, but I was wondering if I had met your husband. Is he short and stocky with a square face and greying hair?”
“Sounds like him.”
“Walks as if he’s carrying a pack and takes extra-long strides.”
She smiled. “That’s because he tries to keep up with Bill who has long legs and boulder-hops down a river like a mountain goat.”
“He called in for information just before Christmas.”
Her reply was unexpected. “Was he rude to you?”
“He didn’t actually tell me his name.”
“No, he picks everybody else’s brains, but he doesn’t tell them a thing.”
“Wasn’t he originally heading for the Waitoa?”
She nodded.
“He would be disappointed about the huia?”
She sighed. “Of course. But he had no idea that it was there.”
“You don’t mind me asking, but, if it wasn’t the huia, why go to the Waitoa?”
Her eyes shone. He could see that she just loved to talk about her husband. “He‘s always been an explorer. He wanted to go somewhere where no one else had been – he was looking for what he called ‘the point of maximum inaccessibility’.” Then she sighed again. “Funny expression, isn’t it? I suppose you could say that he was hopelessly old-fashioned and should have lived in another century when places did exist that were unexplored.”
He felt strangely excited. “But how did he pick on the Waitoa?”
“Do you really want to know?” At his nod she continued. “You see, if you’re looking for country that is pretty much unexplored, the Raukumaras are the obvious choice. One evening last November he got out all the maps of the ranges, about six of them, and spread them out on the lounge floor at home. You could see East Cape sticking out at the top and Waikaremoana at the bottom. There’s a huge area of green in the middle with no huts or tracks anywhere, except on Hikurangi which is well to the east.”
Show Me a Huia! Page 5
