My father, on the other hand, became a successful businessman. He owned a tannery, imported goods and rented the numerous blocks of flats he’d built. Alec was often ruthless, known for leaping over counters and wrenching the overdue rent from the tenant’s till. He had over time distanced himself from his family. No man without genuine disaffection could write, ‘Relatives are like potatoes. The best are under the ground.’ While the other members of his family had gone bankrupt or expired, Alec had started a company with a man called Fisher. It says something about my father that the firm’s name had to be McPhail and then Fisher.
Alec and Mr Fisher established a ‘leather and grindery’ business at the bottom of Manchester Street. This was a part of Christchurch my mother frequently dismissed as being too close to the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. As I was to discover, anyone from the wrong side of the tracks needed to be treated with either caution or scorn. The fact that my father had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks did not deter my mother from her infallible rule.
From the age of three, I would accompany my father on a Saturday morning ritual. He would dress carefully in a suit and waistcoat, adjust his watch chain, place a filter-less Benson and Hedges cigarette in his polished wooden holder and with a slight flick of his walking stick indicate I should get into the back seat of small, unprepossessing Ford Prefect. We were off to inspect ‘the business’.
My father was not a bad driver; he simply defined the road as an extension of his own driveway. Anyone else on the street was a trespasser. Besides, the road rules were often ambiguous and therefore required personal interpretation. He also had the alarming habit of talking to me in the back seat while ignoring where the car was heading.
When we arrived at ‘the business’ I would follow him up the long, dark staircase to a large room filled with benches and tables. When I had first seen this room I’d been horrified. There was leather everywhere. Piles of dark, brooding hides and a dense, musk smell of flattened skins. I knew immediately these were the remains of animals; their memory still defined by the shapes of the hides.
I was desperate to leave and seriously wondered what on earth my father and Mr Fisher were doing. He could not understand my fear and Alec McPhail was notoriously impatient with things he couldn’t understand. After ordering me to enter the room, he must have noticed my white, tight face. He lifted me up and sat me down on a pile of hides. This was a textile factory, he explained. It was true the leather was from cows and, to obtain it, the animals had to be killed. But, I was to remember that these hides were as important to New Zealanders as rump steak. I nodded meekly, but still wonder why I never became a vegetarian.
Alec had a disdain for baths, claiming you could never get clean floating in the ‘soup’ of your own discarded dust. Normally a modest man, he would stand naked and bony in the lead-floored shower of our Manchester Street house and turn on the tap. The old verdigris-stained rose shower head spurted tepid water and he would lift me in his arms. He held me tightly. I pressed my face into the sharp edge of his shoulder and the water crashed down on us both. Nothing in the world could touch me then.
My father had built the large brick house in Manchester Street for his first wife, May, and his four children, Clem, Neil and the twins, John and June. I suspect Alec built such a prominent home for several reasons. It was an emblem of his business success and it was a deliberate snub to the rest of his family. The small boy who had thrown himself into the Heathcote River had become a man of prominence. He was an astute businessman rumoured to buy and sell commercial buildings in a single day. His competitors were few because, numbed by the Depression, they considered this approach cavalier and reckless. But, there was another reason for this stately, slightly forbidding building with its ivy-covered bricks.
My father was proud of his children and he had created the house for them. As a child I spent many hours in the large front room. It was dominated by a massive stone fireplace beside which sat an old gramophone and a pile of dusty, black 78 rpm records. The carpet could be rolled up because underneath it my father had constructed a fully sprung dance floor. This was a room for parties. My brother John was renowned for his rakish good looks and elegant dancing. This, and the almost inexhaustible supply of Black & White whisky, meant there was a dance party every weekend at the house.
Alec rarely spoke of those days before my mother came to the house and I cannot recall him ever mentioning his late wife. There was a family rumour, never confirmed, that in the latter years of their marriage Alec and May never spoke to each other. If this was true it would have made my mother’s arrival as Alec’s new bride and the children’s stepmother a true domestic disruption. Freda McPhail was vivacious and high-spirited in contrast to someone who might have been a rather sombre woman. However, I know my mother was particularly careful when she arrived at the Manchester Street house.
Freda was entering a foreign world. Her eldest stepson was only three years younger than her and my sister June McPhail regarded Freda with deep suspicion. June’s first impression confirmed her wariness. It was said the day my mother met the family her hair was the same colour as her fingernails — bright red. But, my father was a strong-willed man. He had determined he would marry Freda and the family had to accept his decision. They could, in his words, either ‘like it or lump it’.
In addition, Alec had an unpredictable temper and sometimes an abrupt manner that could be mistaken for rudeness. I was told that when June’s future husband, Bill Guthrie, came to the house to formally ask Alec for her hand, Bill became agitated. He had some coins in his pocket and nervously jingled them with his fingers. When Bill asked, ‘Can I marry June?’ my father replied, ‘If that’s all the money you’ve got in the world, you can’t.’ I think that because my mother genuinely liked her new children, and would often defend them to their father, whom she loved dearly, the uneasiness faded and a guarded affection developed. As this was happening the world moved with blind helplessness towards the Second World War.
One of the curiosities of Alec McPhail’s life was his association with Japan. In 1933, he’d been appointed the manager of a New Zealand Universities Rugby team to tour Japan, the first New Zealand team to do so. My father was chosen because he was prominent in Rugby circles and, for some reason, knew a New Zealander who lived in Tokyo. It was unusual that, at a time when, to New Zealand eyes, Japan was still an exotic and mistrusted country, Alec knew a citizen of Tokyo. I have tried to discover the identity of this man, but, like a rice-paper screen, everything is shut off.
The team travelled to Japan by boat and finally arrived in Tokyo Bay. However, the Japanese authorities refused to allow anyone to land for six days. It would have been difficult to control a team of raw-boned, big-muscled boys from farms, who’d spent three weeks in the close confines of a small ship. Somehow, Alec did. The boat rocked on the clear water of Tokyo Bay and, much to the surprise of their fellow passengers, the players ran around the decks passing rugby balls and scrumming against life-belts. Alec assembled the team in the smoking saloon of the ship. It’s an antique term, but that’s what you did in a smoking saloon, you smoked and you drank. Alec introduced his mysterious friend. My father asked what these young players should do to prepare themselves for Japan. His friend replied, ‘All you need to know about Nippon is this: when your people were wearing skins, these people wore silk.’
When the team was finally allowed on shore, the players faced an elaborate banquet. The dishes to them must have looked like left-overs or forgotten floral arrangements and there was nothing to drink but saki. To men who only drank beer, these small saucers of colourless liquid were puzzling and strangely intoxicating. The next morning, Alec spoke to a representative of the Japan Rugby Union. There is no record of what was said, but at the next banquet there was only Kirin beer. The tour was a success. The team played nine games and won eight. They had a close call with Meiji University, holding on 13–11 and drew with the All Japan student team.
My fat
her’s management of the team had also been successful. On his return to New Zealand he was appointed to lead an All Black tour to the United Kingdom in 1940. Alec brought back two things from Japan as well as his success. One was a large round plate made by the Imperial Purveyors at the Fukagawa Seiji factory in Arita. Above an embossed view of Mount Fuji, the inscription reads ‘Presented by Japan Rugby Union to commemorated of New-Zealand Universities Tour in Japan.’ The other was four small paintings of the seasons by a court painter of the Showa dynasty.
I cannot find the strands of this connection with Japan except that my father was an unusual and independent man. I do know that a Japanese agricultural student lived with my parents at Manchester Street in the late 1930s. His name was Kawasi and he was studying at Lincoln College. At the time it was certainly curious and considered a little dangerous to have a Japanese man living in a New Zealand house and many of my parents’ friends were wary of Kawasi.
My mother spoke affectionately of this diminutive and constantly cheerful man. Kawasi was a skilled pianist who, surprisingly, had a passion for Scottish songs. I remember my mother recalling with delight that Kawasi’s favourite tune was ‘Annie Laurie’ which he would sing lustily without a trace of Japanese accent. Kawasi returned to Japan and before Christmas in 1940 he sent a card to my parents. In it was a picture of his wife and his first child. In English Kawasi had written, ‘Above all pray for peace in the Pacific.’ The following year Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Twenty years ago I read in a newspaper that a man called Kawasi had returned to Christchurch because of his happy memories of the city. I never contacted him. This is something I deeply regret.
It became obvious to me that Alec and Freda made an uncommon couple. Their regular rituals — my father always had salt on his porridge, while my mother never appeared in the morning without full makeup and high-heeled shoes — and the circumstances of their marriage and their choice of lodgers did not mark them out as a typical, middle-class husband and wife. My father had a distrust of Christians yet one of his closest business colleagues was a devout Roman Catholic, and he did not seem to care that my mother was forever squirreling away bibles and prayer books around the house. My mother was fastidious in her personal habits but she smoked frequently and carelessly. Often ash had to be flicked off the vegetables. Neither of them was eccentric, in fact my father was shrewd and hard-working while my mother was affectionate and practical. But, I sensed early on they were different from other people.
While many of Alec’s friends would avoid Chinese people and use the expression ‘as cunning as a Maori dog’ in normal conversation, my father remained silent. We bought our vegetables from a wide Chinese man called Wah Ping in Colombo Street. He had a large, flat face and twinkling teeth. His sons scurried around the shop with bunches of spinach and new potatoes. Wah Ping would wave his sons away and give me a free radish. I hated radishes. He and my father would then discuss the quality of cabbages and the price of brussels sprouts. Then my father and I would walk down Colombo Street to the butcher’s shop.
There was sawdust on the floor and the heads of dead animals mounted on the walls. One was a bison. Another was a small deer. In the south corner were the unmistakable horns of a moose. Their glass eyes watched. Today, if a health inspector walked into a butcher’s shop decorated with stuffed heads he’d faint. Shuffling in the sawdust I was frantic to leave but my father was calmly selecting the meat for the week. Sides of beef were thrown on wooden chopping blocks and, as the butchers stropped their knives, the customers would point at the piece of meat they wanted. The butchers were standing in a slippery sea of blood. I was four. I couldn’t see anything except the offal in front of my eyes or the remorseless moose head. My father was very particular. He examined the meat with great care, frequently pinching it with his fingers. Beef kidneys, livers and sheep’s brains were placed on greaseproof paper, weighed and then rolled in newspaper. A slice of tripe, perhaps? Or a slab of bacon? Then, with a click of his walking stick or a nod to a passing debtor, we would walk home.
But, that was all much later. In 1940, my brother Neil enlisted in the army. He was 26. My brother John waited impatiently to join up. Clem became an artillery officer.
This was the time my parents often spoke about as I was growing up. The absence of the boys and, as the war progressed, the very real possibility of defeat. Neil was commissioned into the 20th Battalion of the Second New Zealand Expedition ary Force under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Howard Kippenberger. He quickly rose to the rank of captain. The battalion saw action in Greece and, unhappily, Crete.
The Germans attacked the island in May 1941 and for the next 12 days the Allied forces fought a tenacious losing battle. When Neil left Crete he had a helmet, a pair of shorts and one boot. Several months later his platoon was overwhelmed in the Western Desert and Neil was captured. With his fellow prisoners-of-war he was first shipped to Italy. But Italian military resolve was wavering and the sentries ran away. Neil spent three days in a camp with no guards until the Germans arrived.
My mother recalled my father’s anguish as the weeks passed and the only description of my brother was ‘missing in action’. John joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force in November, 1940 and, when he had completed his pilot’s training, he was commissioned and posted to the Pacific.
At this time, with one of his sons imprisoned first in Italy and then Germany, and the other about to have his face and his life disfigured by a clumsy American bomber pilot, the next-door neighbours, a maiden sister and a bachelor brother called the Smiths, complained to Alec that leaves from our cherry tree were falling into their guttering. My mother told me he leapt from his deck chair, climbed the fence, hurled a hammer into their back garden and shouted, ‘If it wasn’t for men like my sons, there’d be Japanese bombs falling in your blasted guttering.’ Freda recalled the Smiths never complained again.
It is probable my brother John, a ‘daring young man in his flying machine’, was landing a Hudson aircraft from the Number 3 Bomber Reconnaissance at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal when an American bomber landed on top of him. John had good looks, an urbane personality and a debonair delight in life. He returned to New Zealand with his face ravaged by fire and his spirit crushed. All my father said was, ‘We are lucky to have most of him back.’ John was admitted to the burns unit at Burwood Hospital and the restoration of his body began.
Plastic surgery was in its formative period, although the dramatic techniques developed by Archibald McIndoe in the United Kingdom proved that the reconstruction of badly burnt faces was possible. One of my brother’s grafts required his arm to be strapped to the ruined landscape of his face for six months. Rigid and immovable he lay in bed with his arm locked to his head. It is not surprising this once charming man became an argumentative, quarrelsome and bad-tempered patient. One woman would sooth the fractious pilot. Mary Coventry was a young nurse with a gentle smile and, as I recall, a placid, calming voice. Mary fell in love with this sullen and defiant man. He must have fallen in love with her. They married in 1944.
My mother baked and packaged fruit cakes in sturdy tins for the Red Cross to send to Neil in O’Flag VA, a prisoner-of-war camp at Weinsberg, south of Mannheim. My parents knew where he was and occasionally they received limited, heavily censored letters. Some of the letters acknowledged the cakes had arrived. It’s remarkable that in the middle of a tumultuous and bloody war, parcels of fruit cake could be posted in New Zealand and actually delivered to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
A close friend of Neil’s was Victoria Cross holder, Charles Upham. He was at that time a man desperate to escape and unaware his bravery at Minqar Qaim in the Western Desert would result in a second Victoria Cross.
My brother taught Highland dancing at O’Flag VA. It seemed to him an antidote to the dangerous boredom of life behind the wire. I suspect they played Rugby as well. That would have puzzled the guards even more.
In the old Manchester Street house there was
a battered atlas. On the maps of Europe a line had been drawn in blue, indelible pencil. It swept from Normandy, across France and into southern Germany. The pencil line inched north. My father was following the progress of General George S Patton and his Third Army. At one anonymous point there was a large exclamation mark. Neil had been released.
So, there we are. I am often frustrated with memoirs that describe a past inhabited by shadowy and unknown people. I have written about my father and my brothers at length because I cannot understand myself without them. Disjointed and incomplete as my memory may be, their singular faces, the grave, gravelly sound of their voices and the occasional brush of their large hands on my small head, helped make me who I am.
Chapter 2
LEARNING TO GROW
So, at 5.45 pm on 11 April 1945, I appeared at a Christchurch hospital run by a Catholic order of nuns called Lewisham. I do not know why my father, a devout atheist, allowed me to arrive in such a religious place. Whether or not my mother’s pregnancy was planned was never discussed. Alec McPhail, later in life, told Freda that as he would never live to see me grow up he would agree with her decisions on my education. But, he had one demand. I was never to attend Christ’s College.
Before I started school, I led an uneventful life. My mother was a secure shadow in my existence with reassuring and dependable arms. I knew she and my father loved me dearly. But I was an oddity. My elder brother, Clem, had two sons who were older than me and as I grew up many of my nephews and nieces were approximately my age. My brother, Neil, freed from the prisoner-of-war camp and now playing in the United Kingdom for the Kiwis, the New Zealand Army Rugby team, never saw me until I was nearly two years old.
The Years Before My Death Page 2
