Theo drinks his tea eagerly. ‘A cup of tea never tasted so good!’ he says, the worry evaporating from his face. ‘I think I’ll have a second.’
As they relax, Tori softly touches Frances’ arm. ‘Don’t feel too badly about that. I know you did what you thought was best. It should be all right, although it will hold things up on the mountain.’
But Frances can see he is worried and begins to wish she had followed Sam’s lead and left the skull where it was.
After morning tea, Mata offers to show the visitors more of the marae.
She leads them back inside the meeting house and takes them directly to the photographs on the rear wall. Different-sized coloured and black-and-white images of men and women and a few children stare back at them.
‘They’re all members of our family who have passed away,’ Mata says. ‘No matter how far our people wander, when they die, we all want to be back here where we belong.’
A shadow crosses Frances’ face when she sees the photos of two very young children.
Tori sees her distress. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he says. ‘I’m sure your sister is at rest but maybe you need to find the place she died. We believe that the spirit, the wairua, can stay where a child dies. It can have its own spiritual force. Perhaps she’s waiting for you to release her spirit, so all your family can be at peace.’
Frances is impressed by his deep faith. ‘I’ve never thought about her like that before. It’s not something we have ever discussed in our family.’
Mata takes her arm as they walk up a small rise to the family cemetery to the rear of the property. The damp green grass brushes their legs as they approach a small fenced area beyond which lie uneven rows of headstones. Hanging from the gate on a long piece of string, she notices a large Coca-Cola bottle filled with water.
Tori stops in front of a small monument fashioned in grey granite and stands, waiting for Frances to catch up to him. ‘This is the grave of my second cousin who was also on the train.’
Rawiri Jones
Beloved son of Hemi and Barbara
Taken by the disaster at Tangiwai
24 December 1953
Aged 22 years
‘You live among us always’
‘They didn’t identify him for a long time and he was buried in Wellington. When they found out who he was, a lot of the family went there to bring his body back here.’
Frances stares at the words for a long time. ‘He’s the one my mother’s friend Tui was looking for. Is that right?’
‘It seems so.’
She bows her head and offers a prayer, thinking of the young man and her own sister going together to their deaths in a deluge of water.
‘You have a much more personal way of dealing with your dead,’ she says. ‘We tend to brush death aside and move on with our lives. I haven’t even seen where my sister is buried so I think that’s why it is so much harder to accept. All my ancestors are buried at different places around England. I wouldn’t know where to look. You can make your peace here whenever you want.’
‘Yes, we Maori all know we have a home, no matter where we travel in the world. And when we die. Well you’re probably looking at where I’ll end up now.’ He sees her wince. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says laughingly, steering her out of the cemetery, ‘I’m not intending to go to the next world for a long time yet.’
As they leave, Mata beckons Frances over, opens the bottle of water and pours some into her own hands, then passes it to Frances. ‘You must cleanse yourself after visiting the graves.’
Frances washes her hands and passes the bottle on to Tori, who grins at her. ‘You’ll get used to our funny ways.’
‘I think I have a lot more to learn,’ Frances replies.
As they drive back to the office Theo won’t say what’s on his mind until he swerves to miss a car that has crossed to the wrong side of the road.
‘Damn,’ he says. ‘I knew that skull spelt trouble. We’ll just have to hope it doesn’t delay things for too long.’
Should she have been more honest about the skull in the first place? Frances feels like a fool, a very tired fool. Maybe she should have just left the skull there and taken the coward’s way out.
As they speed back to Taupo, she hears Theo exhale deeply.
‘By the way, kiddo, nice voice.’ He starts to laugh.
Frances jabs his arm and shakes her head in mock exasperation, then can’t stop herself from laughing too. ‘Thanks for nothing. But I might have to expand my repertoire because it looks like that’s not going to be the end of it.’
‘You’d better believe it.’
The Messenger
Being Christmas Eve it was hard to get away from my friends who had gathered at the pub that night for a drink. But I’d told my parents that my wife Beryl and I would be with them by ten o’clock at the latest. So we were already running late when we saw a couple of cars stopped ahead of us on the road. As soon as I got out I heard it—an incredible roaring noise. You wouldn’t read about it!
A chap came running towards me yelling that the road bridge had fallen into the river and there was a hell of a flood. Now, coming from a railway town it only took a second or two for me to realise the overnight express train was about to arrive and as I looked towards the line I could see the railway bridge was sagging in the middle. It looked ready to fall.
It was the strangest thing because while this incredible wave of water was washing down the river it was a beautiful night and I could clearly see Mount Ruapehu rising up in the distance behind. I grabbed my torch from the car and ran as fast as I could through the scrub towards the tracks a couple of hundred yards away.
I could hear the train coming even though the sound of the water was terrific. I saw the steam puffing from its engine into the sky before I saw the train. I was nearly there when it came around a bend. I flashed the torch and was yelling and jumping up and down to try and catch the driver’s attention. I think he and the fireman might have seen me but the train was going too fast to stop in time, even if they tried to. I felt absolutely sick.
When the train raced onto the bridge there was nothing to hold it as the water had washed away the piers. It collapsed beneath the weight of the train and the engine nose-dived into the river and crashed into the bank on the other side.
The sound was deafening and I think the driver and the fireman would have died straightaway. The first carriage was dragged by the engine into the bank. I could see the faces of some of the passengers inside the next four carriages as they disappeared into the darkness of the river. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
The last two carriages somersaulted as they crashed into the water. They had broken free of the rest of the train. The sixth carriage was dangling at a sharp angle over the edge, half of it still on the track attached to the rest of the train. The lights were still on and I could see passengers inside, some of them moving but others looked like they were still asleep.
I leapt onto the track and climbed into the van at the back of the train where I found the guard, unaware of what had just happened.
‘Half your train’s in the river!’ I told him.
‘Where the hell have you come from?’ he said.
He didn’t seem to believe me at first. I kept saying, ‘It is, it is!’
I must have persuaded him because he came with me through the other carriages where there was a lot of confusion with passengers trying to work out what was going on.
‘Move to the back of the train,’ we told everyone. ‘Just move slowly and don’t take anything with you. There’s been an accident.’
When we reached the end of the carriage, we were looking out straight into the river. We were urging the passengers to walk back but suddenly there was a huge bang and we knew the back coupling had broken. Next thing I felt myself falling. The whole lot: us, me, the guard and all the passengers all went into the river.
Everyone was screaming. It was bloody pandemonium. We hit the
river and started floating. People calmed down a bit and just hung on until we tipped over and just stopped.
Strangely the water level had dropped all of a sudden. One minute flood, the next, just the normal river.
We were able to get nearly everyone out and wade to the bank. I’m sorry to say we lost one young girl in the carriage—about 14 years old I reckon. Her head was trapped beneath the seat and even though the water level wasn’t that high, she drowned before we realised she was there.
By this time, there were loads of people arriving to help. Everywhere were survivors soaking wet, plastered with mud and oil, shaking and crying. Lots of them had bad injuries and many had lost all their clothes, ripped off by the flood.
But I knew there was worse news to come. There was no way many of those poor souls in the first carriages stood a chance of escaping.
Percy Allen, 29, electrician from Taihape
CHAPTER THIRTY
Winter has now set in and the sky is overcast but, after several days of intermittent rain, it is dry. Now that Frances is familiar with the roads, the three-hour drive back along the lake and past the mountains goes quickly. She’s on her way to Cedric’s to meet some of the Tangiwai group. When he rang he also gave her Beverley’s number. Full of apprehension Frances dialled and, to her surprise, the small, quiet voice on the phone agreed to a visit. Thick cloud obscures the volcanoes as she passes dozens of cars with skis on their roof racks. She double-checks her bag, ensuring her mobile phone and pager are both functioning should the warning system activate an alarm.
The small road to Cedric’s farm double-backs off the highway near Tangiwai. The bitumen lasts only a couple of hundred metres before giving way to rough gravel that makes her car bump and vibrate.
Soon she sees the gate with its name, The Poplars, and turns in, crossing a cattle grid and following a winding track upwards to the wooden farmhouse, perched in isolation on a small rise away from the river. Two other cars are parked outside on the rich green grass alongside an old tractor with barely discernible red paint.
As she pulls up, she sees Cedric waving her to park in a flat, empty space. He greets her with an affectionate kiss, as though they are old friends and, taking her arm, leads her inside. They pass through a kitchen owing its heritage to the sixties with orange-painted cupboards and bench top, cork floors and lacy café curtains. Seated on a floral couch and armchair in front of an open fire in the small lounge room are three others.
‘This is my wife, Pauline,’ Cedric says. ‘And these old buggers are Percy Allen and Trevor Atley.’
‘Not too much of the old from you, Cedric,’ Percy says as they all rise to shake her hand.
Once strangers, they became forever linked by the tragedy that connected their lives all those decades ago. They were all young when they met beside the river, rescuing the desperate survivors from the train wreck and retrieving the bodies of those who perished in the river. Now in their seventies and eighties, they share their memories like the survivors of a terrible war who have seen sights they can never erase from their nightmares.
Frances feels like an interloper but Pauline entreats her to join them, hastily offering a cup of tea from a large china teapot and freshly made scones.
‘You know a lot of people believe the bridge was condemned and should have been rebuilt?’ Percy says suddenly, directing his question at Frances. ‘They say the volcano wasn’t to blame. They used to go on and on about it to me.’
Frances sees an expression of bitterness in his faded eyes, a weariness in his lined face. ‘No, I never heard that,’ she says, her voice rising in surprise.
‘Percy was there when the engine and first carriages went off the bridge. He climbed into the front carriage that was still on the tracks and ended up in the river himself. He saved lots of people.’ Cedric turns to the friend he has seen through decades of suffering and self-doubt. ‘You were a right hero, weren’t you, Percy?’
‘I just did what anyone else would have done. Nothing more.’
He sighs and sips his tea, staring at the tiny dancing flames as Pauline pokes at the fire and adds another piece of wood. It displaces a half-burnt log beneath and a shower of sparks crackles and hits the mesh fireguard.
Frances waits for Percy to continue, sensing his reluctance to say more.
‘Tell her the talk about the cover-up at the inquiry,’ Pauline prompts him. ‘Go on, love, it’s ancient history now anyway,’ she says, giving his arm a little squeeze of affection.
He pauses a moment longer and runs his hand through his thin mane of white hair.
‘They did paint me as a hero—it’s true,’ he says at last, ‘but then the finger-pointing started. There was lots of talk going around that the bridge wasn’t safe. It was damaged by a smaller lahar in the twenties and one of the piers in the middle was shaky. A lot of chaps on the railways told me later it was supposed to have been replaced and that if it had been it would never have collapsed.’
‘Then a fire destroyed all the maintenance records just as the investigation was starting,’ Cedric says. ‘It did look bloody suspicious. Of course the inquiry cleared anyone of blame, except the volcano, that is. Trouble is, a lot of people took it out on poor old Percy here.’
‘Why did they do that?’ Frances asks.
Percy stares into the fire and shakes his head slowly. ‘You tell her, Cedric,’ he says.
‘Well, they started saying Percy was being used by the government, that they were exaggerating the hero stuff to take attention away from the bridge. And it was called an accident and no one was paid any compensation. Nothing.’
‘Yeah, I went from hero to villain in three months,’ Percy says. ‘I was like a pariah. You’d have thought it was all my fault. Sometimes I used to wish I’d never been there, never seen the train.’
‘There, there,’ says Pauline, putting her arm around him, ‘that’s not what all those people you saved thought. If it wasn’t for you a lot of them would have drowned.’
‘I’ve seen that happen a lot,’ Frances says. ‘Every time there’s a natural disaster, whether it’s a volcano, a bushfire, a flood or whatever, there’s always a search for a scapegoat. I think it’s just human nature, looking for someone to blame. It makes some people feel better. It’s easier for them to make sense of it if they cast blame, especially when people have died.
‘But I can tell you when Mount St Helens blew up in Washington, it was the same thing. Everything was washed away, all the bridges except one went. They couldn’t withstand the pressure of the mudslide. Maybe we’ll never know for sure about the Tangiwai bridge but the force of that water was so enormous, I think it would have gone anyway.’
Percy looks at Frances closely for the first time. ‘Were you there?’ he asks. ‘At Mount St Helens?’
‘Not when it happened, but I worked on the volcano years afterwards. I could see where the mudslides went. The landslide was much bigger than here but the effect was the same. A huge lahar full of melted snow and rocks and ash swept down the valleys and took everything with it. I don’t really believe one shaky pier in the middle of one bridge would have made all that much difference.’
As Pauline pours more tea, they begin to talk about it all happening again and ask Frances if she believes they’re in danger from another lahar from Ruapehu.
‘Yes, I have to be frank, I think you are. That’s why I’ve come here to work, to help make sure everyone is evacuated if that happens.’
‘Is it true the Maori are stopping work that could prevent it?’
‘That’s hard to say,’ Frances says. ‘They don’t want bulldozers at the crater, that’s for sure. But I’m not convinced that would fix the problem anyway. The forces in the volcano are such that an eruption could destroy any engineering work in seconds.’
‘And you still feel like that, even though your own family lost so much?’ Cedric asks her.
The doubt that plagues Frances surfaces once more. ‘I do struggle with it, I have to
be honest with you. It’s hard to accept you can’t control the forces of nature when we’re so used to trying to control everything else in our lives.’
‘I learned long ago you can’t do that. I learned it far too young really. I was only eighteen.’ Until now, the third man has not spoken a word. As he turns to Frances, she can see a gentleness in his still blue eyes that hints at deep sadness.
‘Tangiwai taught me that,’ he continues. ‘None of those poor souls could do anything about what happened to them.’
‘Trevor was there just after the crash. I told him you wanted to find out more about the rescue,’ Cedric tells her.
‘Yeah, well I don’t usually go on about it. After it happened I just tried to put it to the back of my mind. But I’ll help you if I can.’
‘It’s important to me to try and piece together where exactly things happened, where you found the bodies. Would you come back with me back to bridge?’
‘Sure. There’s still plenty of light left in the day. We can go now.’
Frances feels as though she is leaving old friends. Pauline and Cedric both kiss her goodbye, but Percy stays in his seat and just nods at her, lost again in his own memories of that bleakest of nights.
The Rescuer
I had been at the pictures with some of my friends in Taihape. It was Christmas Eve and we were all in good spirits with a few days off ahead of us and had come into town for the night. Most of us worked on farms, me with my father. We were waiting outside the Returned Servicemen’s Club for my father, because being under twenty-one, we weren’t allowed in. We weren’t allowed to drink.
A friend of my father’s pulled up beside us driving one of those old grey Mack trucks they had then. He was extremely excited.
Weeping Waters Page 17
