by Alan Duff
Why, one had actually found himself weeping as he sat in his engine-idling Range Rover, again as though a window had suddenly been opened on part of his township; his parents and their parents, and the Trambert before even them, great-grandfather Arthur who’d started the process of breaking in the land bought from the Maoris last century in the 1870s. Yet of the Maori they knew nothing. The compounding ironies there, of the land returning to them, even if in tiny pockets of individually owned land with those dreadful working-class houses put on them. But the circumstances of money being a leveller were not lost to him. The Trambert generational money was dwindling.
Six years ago Gordon Trambert had observed this wretched Maori kid expressing his grief like a dog howling to the moon. Or, in this case, the sun just peeped out from cloud and putting a shaft down on the cemetery but not on the youth. (Now that would have been just too much.) The sextons, one of them with sandwich still halfway to his mouth, suspended in this boy’s time, what he’d made of this moment at this freshly dug grave ready to be filled. Same kid who now dominated the rugby fields he played on.
His love of rugby and the fact he regretted son Alistair hated the game (he hates everything, including himself) had him going most Saturday mornings to watch a younger grade game then a senior match in the afternoon. He supported no particular club, a fact he prided himself on (he just loved the game), and nor thus socialised at any clubroom after a game; though there was the odd time he would have liked to, just to talk rugby with like minds, and yes, to enjoy a beer in the company of men with less social constraint than the company he kept tended to be.
A couple of years ago at a morning match of young men in their late teens at the main rugby park he happened to recognise a face but couldn’t figure from where until well into the match, so dazzled was he by the youth’s play and anyway with shaven head and not that wild mop of warlock’s hair when Gordon Trambert had first observed him. He was big and fast, a devastating tackler, a tearaway flanker in the true New Zealand tradition. He’d drive into a tackle and as often as not emerge with the ball ripped from the opposition player’s hands. More than anything, he played as if with some inner flow.
Rather than trust his own not very illustrious schoolboy player judgement, Gordon Trambert made comment to some of the more knowing looking rugby heads on the sideline and they confirmed that this boy was an exceptional player. Every Saturday from thereon he watched T. Nahona, as he was listed in his St Johns Under 21s teamsheet, heard the comments that the young man was ready for senior rugby and the wiser heads suggesting it should begin with lower grade senior, not straight in at the deep end. Whatever, Gordon was just another convinced this could be an All Black in the making, that this Two Lakes boy now with shaved head, who had already imprinted himself on Gordon Trambert’s mind from that graveside scene, might one day join the country’s rugby elite. If only he’d turn up for every game, which he didn’t. If only he’d get himself fitter instead of relying on raw talent. If only Gordon Trambert had more rugby mana so he could approach the young man and perhaps help him find his potential.
BACK IN ’89 he’d been (easily) persuaded to become a Lloyds Insurance Name. Like some of his better-off farming friends. Amongst them it had a certain prestige, one didn’t deny that, it was part of the attraction. For three hundred years the venerable Lloyds of London had made its investors money, some would say its own printing press making the stuff. And all that was required was a small deposit of $50,000 — which was a bank borrowing against another housing development parcel of land on which Lloyds paid interest — and the signing over of an unencumbered asset with a realisable worth of $600,000, which was a couple of hundred less than what the debt-free farm was worth; and once had been close to double that (if one hadn’t sold off chunks here and there). It was the gearing that was so attractive: it gave, historically — and there were few businesses in the world with a longer history than the venerated Lloyds Insurance Company — very high returns and few instances of loss years, all against an asset one could continue, in theory, to earn off as well — that is, if farming was profitable which it wasn’t, hence Gordon Trambert’s decision to find something that jolly-well was. But imagine if farming hit an upturn, too, is what he dreamed about.
Backing natural disasters not to happen and health litigation on a mass scale against international chemical companies and the like took time to come through on the Lloyds books. In 1992 Gordon Trambert was just another Name informed that the 1990 year had been the worst in Lloyds’ underwriting history and so instead of a healthy cheque in the post he received a bill. For cash he didn’t have. So off was carved another twenty-acre part of the farm to housing developers. And soon another ugly hundred little box dwellings one had to look at getting nearer and nearer to his stately old place. 1991 was an even worse year. Furthermore, the local market for housing land was depressed so he had to sell double the acreage for the same price as the year before. And what with the restaurant gone sour, too.
Hope being another name for desperation, Gordon Trambert hung in one more year, knowing he’d have to wait for at least a year before he knew if he’d called it right. He hadn’t. ’92 was another disaster. And then he found out his undertaking was unlimited when he had assumed it to be to the value of the asset he’d pledged. Murphy’s Law now.
Disgruntled Names hit as hard as himself and worse began making noises about the underwriting process making them, the faraway from London Names, sitting ducks for such things as mass employee asbestosis claims which large conglomerates had hastily insured against in those bad years. By some miracle of picking up a conversation between two friends to dinner — indeed it was at the very dinner of Grace Heke outside hanging herself — both of them Names, Gordon had heeded this private exchange of advice (bugger them, as a friend they should have warned me, too) and written express instructions to his Lloyds agent in London not to underwrite anything that included any form of health claim by employees against their companies. And as the noises about serious mishandling by underwriters became a loud outcry, Gordon Trambert joined those who were refusing to pay out on these Lloyds letters of demand for huge amounts. Or he’d have to sell the farm, the house, everything. The letter was his only hope, as representatives of Lloyds were in the country going to each and every Name demanding they honour their contracts.
He started seeing ironies everywhere, of his parents, their parents, modelling themselves, more or less but usually more, on the upper middle-class English societal model, adopting the style of well-enunciated speech, the private schooling, the pieces of imported English antiques, and the English reserve, and now this member of this generation losing most of the family fortune to one of the Mother Country’s most venerated business houses. And there was the Saturday rugby sideline irony of whispers about him being rich. And there was that troubling incident of one Grace Heke ending her life on his inherited property, it just wouldn’t go away. Losing himself in his sombre Russian choral music became more and more Gordon Trambert’s nightly habit — helped along by the gin bottle. Hardly noticing a wife losing respect for him.
NINE
SHE SEARCHED HER purse, a seven dollar and seventy cent start, the house beginning upstairs in her room, found a few coins there including (glory be!) a two-dollar coin, so she was getting close, forget the kids’ room they wouldn’t have any and she didn’t wanna wake them, not yet; downstairs to the sitting room, the ole plunge the hand down the couch-back trick even though she’d exhausted this one a few weeks ago, since there’d been a party las’ week so there was a chance, a small one, which is what her groping fingers found down there in the second-hand twenty-year-old couch, a twenty-cent piece and a lousy five. But it was adding up. She went through every pocket of clothing she owned, which wasn’t many things, thirty-seven cents when there hadn’t been two-cent coins for a few years, so mus’ be she’d not worn that dress in a while, nor bought anything new since, either. She pulled out every kitchen drawer, looked in every cu
pboard before facing the inevitable of having to count the total she had. (Long’s it’s over ten — no, I need eleven and some change, I should know that by now. Please, God, let’t be that much.) Though she’d settle for less if she had to, even though she knew come the day’s end she’d be in this situation again except with all her finding places exhausted. And even she had learned to be more long term than that.
The coins and five-dollar note no sooner spread out on the kitchen table than she had to scoop them up at sound of one of them coming down the stairs. Turi. Morning, Turi. Morning, Mum. (God, why do my kids give me the blues, their faces like they wake every day to a fucken fun’ral?) Watched him go to the cupboard and just before he pulled the food one open told him, No good lookin’ in there. Only fresh air in there, boy. Look at his face how it fell even closer to the floor. Made her angry. Hey! The hell you lookin’ at me like that for? What you ’spec’ me to do — make fucken magic and nex’ thing you look there’s a fucken feast in there? Eh? Watching her son back (cower) away. But he knew bedda than to say something.
And now the other one walks in. Gloria was sharp with her from the off (cos she bothers me) Yes? Yes? You got something to say ’bout no food in the house, too — madam? (Kid getting too big for her boots — well, her school shoes, which were coming apart at the seams: smilers) — only eleven and like she was getting ready to leave home.
Mum, I never said anything. No, no, Narissa hadn’t. But it was her look. No, but you are gonna say something aren’t you? Mum …? Go on then, open the bloody cubbid, check for yourself we’re out again. (Again. Story of our lives: always out of things.) Including love. Love’s the first thing out the door when the groceries run out. (And the smokes even worse.)
Narissa did check. And in that moment her mother got all sentimental for her daughter’s name, remembering how she and the baby-to-be’s father’d gone over the names they liked. Narissa won easily. But, come the day she was born, he was nowhere to be seen, the fucken father. Harry Hippie Martin he called himself, from his favourite song by Bobby Womack (kinda liked it myself, till what he did) had just up and gone, no kiss my arse nothing. Then along came — named what else — Bobby Taita, a woman’s introduction being jus’ that: You heard of a singer called Bobby Womack? Nah, he hadn’t. But he smiled back, But I heard a this Bobby, and I ain’t got such a bad voice myself. Wanna hear it? Yeah, well, she did hear it, and he could sing, and he sang his (easy) way into her bed and Turi was the result. ’Cept he never hung around much longer than pas’ Turi’s firs’ birthday; jus’ started a big row one night an’ up an’ left, the cunt. Now, eleven years later and a woman her share of lovers, a few who’d moved in for a few months, one for two-and-a-half years but he’d abused the kids, hit them, so she finally got the courage up to tellim to leave, which he did, but not before giving her a farewell hiding (men, they’re jus’ arseholes) ’cept a woman needed a man, and the ones she was attracted to turned out, every one, bad. Dunno why. They always seemed so, you know, ideal, Mr Dreamboats, when she first set eyes on them.
Eleven years down the track and a woman couldn’t even feed her kids breakfast. Not and smoke as well, and was (me) her who had the long day spread out before her to get through, and tomorrow, too; she was entitled to have something for herself. And not as if she wasn’t hungry herself, as if she was gonna be eating while her kids weren’t. She’d rather die than that. She was, well, not the worst mother around here in Pine Block. (Not the best, neither, Glor) she did inwardly concede that. But being on a single-parent benefit like more’n half them around here, she just couldn’t make ends meet. (An’ not as if I take one of them holidays in Fiji you see in the papers on the Hindu shop counter.) A woman, and her kids, survives.
Fuckit. She stood up, but carefully so they wouldn’t hear the coins jangle in her dress pocket. Go up to Nicky Hodge’s, she’ll give you something to eat. But Narissa was shaking her head, telling a mother they’d done that too often and they felt stink keeping on doing it. Which made Gloria feel instant hatred for Nicky Hodge even though Nicky was one of the best people in Pine Block, a heart of gold, didn’t drink, had given up smoking, and carried on where Beth Heke’d left off when she started that community-spirit thing here (before she met up with the flash Maori with that good job working for welfare and left us to rot here) trying-her-best Nicky, when everyone knew they had all returned to what they were, which was bitches and bastards, hahaha, gotta laugh about it from time to time or they’d cry — or, even worse, wake up having to face up — they even had turned it into a laugh, a joke at ’emselves, their slack ways, their partying up the large — Then you tell that fucken Nicky Hodge I’m gonna pot her to the welfare for taking money from them to feed kids when now you’re telling me she won’t! It just exploded out of her, Gloria’s unplanned hatred for Nicky Hodge, the only woman who’d stood up to Jake Heke when he had the cheek to be having a party when his own daughter was buried that day, Nicky’d tole that fucken Jake to his face what he was doing was not right. (Yet here I am speaking like this of her.) Now get! Gloria Jones turned her defeated — and guilty — state to the window, that used to look out over the Trambert paddocks but now the rich white bastard was even richer with selling his land for all those new houses out there as the view now.
She remembered Beth Heke had had a thing about him, whiteman Trambert she used to call him, all the time asking her friends what it must feel like to be him, his side of the fence, when really none of the girls Gloria knew gave Trambert one thought, ’cept in contempt if they happened to be down in the dumps and looked out and saw how big his house was compared to their side-by-side, two-storey State boxes. The daughter who killed herself, Grace, she’d been like her mother, never satisfied with their lot in life (and look where it got her, the kid) used to walk around talking about ambition and things like that — around here! For gawd’s sake, where did that kid live in her head? — Thinking of kids, she winced at the front door closing, the faces of her children looming in her mind. But she was also glad because she was that much closer to relieving the aching need in her — aching.
Down the street trying to keep the hurry out of her legs (a woman’s gotta have a bitta dignity, eh Glor?) inside feeling happy, on balance, on balance against the kids whom she’d already in her mind turned into faded figures, a trick she came to know of years of denial and struggle, pas’ that damn gang house, barbed-wire along the top of the high, corrugated-iron walls (oo, I hope no one comes out while I’m walking pas’, they give me the creeps). Yet she’d had her times of going past and hearing the noise of what sounded like a really raging party going on there and half hoping someone she knew’d give her a invite. (I’d go, I think. Jus’ to see what they’re really like.) Though she did have the thought of being gang-raped, which not even a slut would want. Smiling to herself (not even I’d want that).
At the dairy she first looked around for her kids, case they were lurking to shoplift a packet a biscuits or something, from these thieving fucken Hindus who owned it and parked their every year flash brand-new car out the back in the locked compound guarded by two dogs now, used to be one till some Browns Fist prospect kids threw a meaner dog over the fence, sikked it onto the Hindu’s alsatian and they were yelling at it to scratch the car, too, but shit it was only a dog not a trained ape like some of those bastards looked like. Not that Gloria knew anything about dogs, she only heard that the new dogs guarding the Hindu niggers’ car were pitbulls and even the Brown Fists didn’t mess with them.
She looked around the dairy, funny how it seemed like that story she remembered from school (the only one) of the house Hansel and Gretel found that was made of biscuits and cakes and lollies, that this little place should seem like that whenever she had no money, which was routine.
She bought a 30 gram packet of Park Drive tobacco, $9.85, 55 cents for a packet of papers, Ziz Zag, to roll them in, 65 cents for a packet of filters and finally 25 cents for a box of matches which she could dimly remember cost five ce
nts once. Eleven dollars fifty cents please, fucken Hindu at it again as Gloria wagged a finger at him. Add it up again, Mista. Comes to eleven thirty. Oh, I am sorrrry, with the r’s how they do these black thiefs, make mistake Mrs — I mean Miss — Jones. (What’d he mean by that?)
She came out of the dairy looking around carefully even though she was dying — dying — to stop and roll up and light up, she mustn’t. (I mustn’t.) Not till she got home. She saw the backs of her children disappearing into a house ’cross the street and up from the Brown Fist place, glad the school didn’t require a uniform which she couldn’t have afforded (even if I gave up my smokes), feeling better at seeing that, meant they’d found someone else to call in on and get a breakfast. She changed the packets of smoking items from her outside pocket just in case one of her kids came out and saw the shapes in that pocket.
At home, in the kitchen her hands trembled in tearing open the packet of filters; she slipped a paper out, opened it and put a filter one end, opened the plastic pouch of Park Drive meaning to pull a minimum of shreds of finely cut leaf from the wad (so lovely and damp and soft) but first she brought the whole 30 (precious) grams to her nostrils and took a deep drink of the aroma: Ahhhh, better than sex, at this very moment — Nah, fuckit, make it a big one this first. And so she added another paper to the end of the first, like rolling a joint, not that she’d had one of those for a few months (makes me too sexy anyrate) and rolled herself the longest, fattest cigarette in her life. Then got up, grabbed a rubbish bag and took it outside as an excuse to check her kids weren’t coming back for any reason. All clear. Back inside with the bag as it had some room left in it and bags cost fifty cents each, eighty down at the thieving dairy, taking the match and striking it, flame first time, smoke in her mouth, and she took that first drag. Heaven. Not Pine Block but Heaven.
