by Derek Hansen
I don’t think anyone ever tried harder to look and sound like a Kiwi. I could’ve written the longest essay ever by a nine-year-old had the topic been ‘My Life’. But it wasn’t to be.
The shop with the living quarters jammed tightly behind was the centre of my universe. It sat squarely on the border between Ponsonby and Grey Lynn. According to the post office, we lived in Ponsonby. According to Mum, we lived in Grey Lynn and she’d accept no argument. In those days Ponsonby wasn’t regarded as a nice place to live.
Typically, in a suburb made up almost entirely of wooden houses, our half-shop-half-house was made of brick. The living part was shoehorned around the back and one side of the shop on a wedge-shaped, corner block formed by the intersection of Chamberlain Street with Richmond Road. There were two bedrooms, one shared by my two older brothers and me, the other separated by a doglegged room that served as both dining and living room. The kitchen was tiny and the bathroom was even smaller. There were few parts of our home where you didn’t have to turn sideways to let someone past. A yard occupied the thin end of the wedge, which gave us a bit of playing area, but not much. It didn’t matter. Grey Lynn Park was less than two hundred yards away down Chamberlain Street—all the playing and growing room we needed.
One hundred yards up Richmond Road were the big, brick, forbidding buildings of the Church Army and the Chapel of St Michael and All Angels. Most of my friends went to church there. We went not so much for spiritual enlightenment but to qualify to attend the Church of England Boys’ Society. At some stage, the Church Army, aided by donations and the skilled hands of parishioners, had built a clubhouse behind the church. For kids who had next to nothing, the club was everything. Monday night was the formal night when we all had to front up for inspection in full uniform. On Tuesday nights we sat around tables and worked on balsawood models of aeroplanes. Wednesday night was sports night, which involved a bit of wrestling, boxing, hopping barge, gymnastics and all sorts of team games involving relays with balls or sticks. The Church Army had almost as much involvement in our lives as school but not in all of our lives. The Church Army was Anglican and non-Anglican kids were barred.
Through the Church Army—Sunday services, concert nights and fundraisers—I got to know all my friends’ parents. They would also show up on the evenings in summer when we had athletics down in Grey Lynn Park. If I was competing in an event in which their son wasn’t involved, I’d often hear the other boys’ parents cheering me on. I loved that. Doubtless my parents reciprocated. In those days every parent had the right to compliment and criticise. Anybody’s mum or dad could tell me to tuck my shirt in, pull up my socks or comb my hair and I’d feel duty bound to comply. In exchange, if one of us fell off our bike we could knock on any door and expect a bit of antiseptic, sticking plaster and sympathy.
There was another side to knowing my pals’ parents. I loved talking to grown-ups and grown-up conversations. In those days kids weren’t encouraged to chat to grownups. It was seen as both precocious and presumptuous which, of course, made the moments all the more precious and exciting. If there was an exception to the rule, it was Mr Gillespie, the father of my second-best friend. He always seemed pleased to see us, never talked down to us and always listened if we had something to say. Mr Gillespie was one of many ingredients making up a community that was orderly, close-knit and clannishly supportive. We each had our place and, for the most part, all trod the same, safe path.
Looking back it still amazes me how easily it all came unstuck.
CHAPTER ONE
Everyone carries their own burden of responsibility although some burdens are lighter than others. Some burdens amount to no more than having to run messages after school, cut the grass occasionally, tidy your room or wash the dishes. I have my share of these responsibilities but I carry another burden of responsibility as well. This burden is heavier than all the others put together.
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY’
I wrote the essay that tore my world apart on the fifth of July, 1956. When our teacher, Mr Grainger, announced the topic was ‘The Burden of Responsibility’, the whole class groaned. Normally I wrote war stories. If I couldn’t contrive to write a war story, I wrote an adventure story, often heavily influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson and featuring cannibals. If I couldn’t write an adventure story I could usually manage to write something funny with a punch line that made my pals laugh. When I heard the title of this essay I couldn’t see how I could turn it into a war story, adventure story or anything remotely funny. So I did something I’d never done before: I wrote about myself.
Mr Grainger had suggested we write about our Prime Minister, Sidney Holland, who had the burden of running the country, the mayor who had the burden of running Auckland, the headmaster who had the burden of running the school, the captain of the All Blacks who had the burden of carrying national pride, or our fathers who had the burden of keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table. Instead I wrote about the burden I carried.
The essay was homework and the fifth of July was a perfect day to stay home to write. I’d woken that morning to a grey sky and drizzle—the worst kind of drizzle. The rain didn’t fall so much as hang in the air, minute droplets that saturated everything in seconds and turned soccer balls into sodden lumps of leather. It settled in for the day, keeping gardeners happy and every kid in Auckland miserable. I stayed home and wrote, and my prized soccer ball stayed home with me. This always upset my brother Nigel and my pals who tolerated the fact I was hopeless at throwing stones, useless at building secret hide-outs and terrified of being caught when we raided orchards, in favour of my one redeeming feature. I had a proper leather soccer ball.
That afternoon when I stayed home to write my essay my brother and pals were left with nothing to do. They regarded this as an act of treachery, if not outright treason. Nigel went off in a huff to exchange anatomical details with a girl further on down Richmond Road; my best friend Eric went home to bomb Dresden; his brother Maxie probably lay on his bed and read comics; my second-best pal Gary probably found someone to play Battleships with and sink U-boats; and Big Ryan probably took his hopeless old bike down to Grey Lynn Park to practise skidding on the wet grass.
My essay on ‘The Burden of Responsibility’ revolved around fishing. Could anything be more innocuous? My eldest brother Rod had faced the solitude of the new boy when we’d first moved to Richmond Road and overcame it by going fishing down on the Admiralty Steps. Sometimes he took me. As Rod assumed more family responsibilities he fished less and less and I fished more and more. Fishing became a passion. I soon discovered you didn’t need to be big or strong or tough to be good at fishing. You didn’t need to be able to throw rocks from one side of the gully to the other or tackle Samoan boys twice your size or worry about bullies like Graham Collitt. All you needed was patience and skill.
I went fishing with a thin nylon line, a bolt for a sinker and some tiny hooks I cadged from Rod. I used to catch the trolley bus to town after school and race down Albert Street to the Admiralty Steps or the steps alongside the ferry building. Bread didn’t get a chance to go stale at our house so I would nick a couple of slices when Mum wasn’t looking, to break up and throw into the water to attract the fish. For bait, I mixed flour and water and made dough.
There were afternoons when my mother encouraged me to go fishing whether I wanted to or not and I’d come home with twenty or so sprats and piper. They became dinner and I was her hero for the night. She called the sprats herrings, which somehow dignified them and made them more than they were. My father and brothers weren’t exactly thrilled because they didn’t like having to deal with the bones—and there were millions of them—but the alternative was cauliflower cheese. So at least one night a week we had herrings for dinner, just as we had pork fillets, which were really tripe in a white sauce with a mountain of mashed potato.
In my essay I made the point that I had the responsibility of providing at least one meal
a week, from spring through to mid-autumn. There was no point fishing any later because the fish moved on to warmer waters. In the beginning I didn’t see fishing for dinner as a burden, even though some afternoons I had to hang around until it was almost dark to catch enough fish. When the wind was blowing from the wrong direction it could get really cold down there.
On my tenth birthday, things started to change. My father bought me a bike, an old back-pedal brake Rudge he picked up from a mate for ten pounds. I decided I was too old to catch sprats and piper. I saved every penny I could get my hands on so I could buy real fishing gear and go after real fish—snapper. My ball stayed in my wardrobe while I delivered newspapers, groceries and prescription medicines for the local pharmacy and slowly filled my money box. My problems arose the moment I finally managed to buy a split cane rod with a side-cast reel. That was when I assumed the burden of responsibility.
Real fish like snapper required real bait. I couldn’t get by on two slices of bread and a scone-sized lump of dough any more. I needed real bait and real bait cost money, which I didn’t have. I’d have to ask Mum for money and this put her in a real quandary. Nowadays you’d say she was between a rock and a hard place. She usually had just enough money to buy something for dinner and if she gave any of it to me for bait she had to gamble that I’d catch enough snapper to feed everybody. How’s that for a burden of responsibility? Fishing never comes with a guarantee. Even the best fishermen miss out sometimes. Yet I’d set off for the breakwater at Mechanic’s Bay with my new rod tied to my crossbar and a shilling’s worth of liver in my saddlebag, knowing I had to deliver or else. I made this point in my essay as well.
Nobody ever fished with greater dedication or earnestness. I nearly wept every time a snapper took my bait and I failed to catch it. But I caught enough on enough occasions to justify my mother’s faith, although sometimes the fish I brought home were kahawai instead of snapper. Mum made fishcakes with the kahawai, the only way she knew to make them palatable. Still kahawai was better than nothing and there were plenty of times when nothing was all I caught.
Up until then I’d thought pressure was what occurred when I was trying to score a goal to win or draw a soccer match in the dying seconds. That was tension. Pressure, I discovered, was when your mother is depending on you to catch fish for dinner and has given you her dinner money, but the fish aren’t obliging. Mum and Dad argued on the nights I failed to provide. My dad worked hard and expected a proper meal at the end of the day. Meals consisting entirely of cauliflower or macaroni cheese just didn’t hit the spot. They don’t now and they sure didn’t then.
To improve my chances and reduce the number of arguments I started consulting the wisest fisherman I knew. His name was Mack MacEnnally and he lived in Brown Street, which ran along the southern side of Richmond Road School. Mack had spent most of his life on Great Barrier Island, which all of us kids knew was the best place in the world to catch snapper. Great Barrier lay on the horizon about sixty miles east of Auckland, a low dark smudge visible only on really clear days. We all knew about Great Barrier Island but the closest any of us had ever got to it was Waiheke Island, and that wasn’t even a quarter of the way there. As far as we were concerned, Great Barrier Island was as unreachable as England. The only way we knew you could get there was in Fred Ladd’s Grumman Widgeon flying boat from Mechanic’s Bay. Flying, for heaven’s sake. Flying wasn’t even a remote possibility. In those days flying was strictly for the very rich and film stars. Even the Queen came to New Zealand on a boat.
Mack had moved to Auckland because his wife was sick and needed hospital treatment. No one would ever actually say what was wrong with her but she seemed to take an age dying. By the time she died Mack had grown old and couldn’t face moving back to Great Barrier and living alone. Besides, he’d had to sell his house there to help buy the one he lived in by the school. All this was irrelevant to me at the time. All that mattered was that Mack had lived on snapper heaven and knew all there was to know about catching them.
I can’t count the number of times Mack stopped me going fishing because the tides, moon or winds weren’t right. When he said go, I rarely missed. But tides don’t rise and fall to accommodate school hours, so the number of times I went fishing declined dramatically. Sometimes on the afternoons I didn’t go fishing we had liver for dinner, as a change from macaroni or cauliflower cheese. Mum called it ‘lamb’s fry’. Call it what you like, only the bacon she fried with it made it edible, as far as we kids were concerned, and there was precious little of that. I got a whack once when Nigel came home asking what was for dinner and I told him ‘bait’. Even Dad started pushing me to go fishing. So I went down to the breakwater when Mack said don’t and came home with fish about the same number of times I came home with nothing. Those were the nights we didn’t even have lamb’s fry and I felt my failure to provide so keenly I used to slip away to the bedroom after the dishes had been done and try not to cry. I hated letting Mum down. I hated letting Dad down. Never did any burden feel heavier. Never did fishing feel less like a sport.
I concluded my essay with both of these points.
A funny thing happened when I read my essay to my pals. They were used to me writing stories that made them laugh or hold their breath with suspense. But this story was different. I think it hit them where they lived, touched nerves and made them think about their own lives. I knew for a fact there were days when some of them were lucky to have a piece of toast for tea. Some were sent straight to bed with a mouthful of knuckles or a belt around their ears from their drunken fathers to keep their minds off their rumbling bellies. My pals never said they liked the story but I could tell I’d suddenly gone up in their estimation. In telling my story I’d captured something of them. I made them realise that each of us had our own burden of responsibility and were important in our own way.
Mr Grainger thought he’d finally hit the target after twenty years of teaching, of casting his pearls before swine. He felt vindicated, rewarded and, I swear, he almost broke down. He read my essay out loud to the class. He read it out loud in the staff room at morning break. He went to the headmaster’s office and read it to him. The headmaster read my essay to the entire school at assembly the following morning. I had teachers and kids coming up to me to congratulate me on my essay and talk about it. It was amazing. I could see the wonder in their eyes as they tried to figure out how the skinny little Pommy kid had suddenly got so smart.
Of course I read the story to Mack. Mum wasn’t really keen on my going to see Mack because he lived alone and was inclined to drink far more than was good for him. On the other hand she was proud of me going to see him because he lived alone and was obviously lonely. Nevertheless, I could never go to Mack’s without telling Mum I was going and how long I’d be. It was years before I understood why, when words like paedophile and kiddie-fiddler reared their ugly heads. When I read my essay to Mack I expected a pat on the back and a good on yer. After all, Mack played a key role in my essay and it was clear I thought the sun shone out of his tackle box.
I’d been taught to look up at my audience while I was reading and since I knew every word of my essay by heart, I looked up a lot while I was reading to Mack. But a funny thing happened. Mack didn’t react as I thought he would. Perhaps if I’d been older and wiser I might have stopped reading, folded up my essay and suggested reading it to him some other time. But I blundered blithely on.
If you had to pick a moment when the snowball began its journey down the mountain you’d have to say that was it.
CHAPTER TWO
Never did any burden feel heavier. Never did fishing feel less like a sport.
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY’
Mack’s smile faded and he seemed to turn grey in front of my eyes. He started to shake. His reaction scared me—I began to wonder if he’d had a heart attack or something. He heard me out, attempted a smile, then got up and walked out of the kitchen into his back yard. I hesitated, not kn
owing what to do. In the end I followed him. I found him sitting on an old wooden chair between his tomatoes and his marrow patch, crouched over, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
When I asked he said he was all right. I didn’t know what to make of things so I said I had to go home. He told me to hang on, said he’d be all right in a couple of minutes. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
‘I didn’t know you was a writer,’ he said, which was a lie because I sometimes used to read my essays to his wife when she was confined to bed. ‘At least I didn’t know you was a good one.’ Mack told me to sit tight while he went and poured himself a beer. The way he was behaving had me worried so I spied on him through his kitchen window. He filled his glass and drank it straight down. His shoulders slumped and he sighed as if he was carrying the weight of the world, a burden of responsibility beyond anything I could imagine. I’m ashamed to say it but I couldn’t help suddenly thinking there was another essay there, one with which I would amaze everyone all over again.
There was, but it wasn’t the one I expected.
Mack poured himself another beer and turned to walk out to the yard. I bolted back to the beer crate I’d been sitting on. In those days beer came in wooden crates as opposed to the cardboard cartons you get nowadays and people usually only bought crates of beer when they were having a party or a celebration. Mack bought his beer in crates all the time, which was one of the reasons he’d earned his reputation as a drinker and why there was always something for me to sit on.
