Huia Short Stories 9

by Anahera Gildea

  Through her clear blue eyes, slightly squinted at the edges by the severe pulling back of her hair, she would see my effort to dress up for the bank manager is a failure. I haven’t worn a tie since Nelson Mandela pointed out their symbolism as a yoke. Instead I’m wearing a scarf I’ve tied like a cravat, but it’s coming apart, and my best trousers seem to have shrunk.

  When I shaved this morning I noticed a new crop of grey hair, and my skin seems to be getting darker with every passing year. Perhaps I should use sun cream.

  ‘Mr Campbell,’ I hear my name being called. He’s standing in the doorframe. I go to him. He doesn’t move. His eyes meet mine for the briefest moment when I offer him my hand. He looks down as we quickly shake.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he says, as he moves behind his glass-topped desk and settles into a chair that elevates him a full head higher than me.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Campbell?’

  I can see my letter and business plan sitting in front of him.

  ‘The Restaurant,’ I say, pointing.

  ‘Restaurants are an extremely high-risk business, Mr Campbell,’ he says, tapping fingers on my file. His wedding band is etched with a Celtic pattern similar to kōwhaiwhai.

  ‘I know that,’ I say, ‘but even my most pessimistic figures show I can service a mortgage of a hundred and fifty. And the building will be worth at least three hundred when I’m finished.’

  ‘Did you know ninety percent of new restaurants fail within three years?’

  ‘Yes, my accountant told me that.’

  ‘And your accountant is?’ He plays at scanning my letter.

  ‘Peter Watson,’ I say. ‘He’s checked out my figures and thinks it’s a goer.’

  ‘A goer?’

  ‘Yeah, I can make a go of it.’

  He grins as he says, ‘Mr Campbell, that ninety percent of new restaurant owners thought they had a goer.’

  So how much will you lend me?

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Campbell.’

  ‘What are you saying? You won’t lend at all?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He’s looking at me now. His eyes are remote and dull. He says, ‘I’ve read through your proposal and consider it too great a risk for our bank.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You’ll hold the first mortgage. Come and look at the building. It’s just around the corner. It’s perfect. Right on The Parade. Parking front and back.’ I hear myself sounding desperate.

  ‘I drove past the building this morning. It’s in very poor condition.’

  ‘Of course. That’s why it’s a good price.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Campbell. It’s not just the building. The bank doesn’t think we have the population here to support the specialist restaurant you’re proposing.’

  ‘But there’s huge demand for seafood. And no competition.’

  ‘But it’s very specialist.’

  ‘I’m going to do meat as well.’

  ‘I’m talking about the name,’ he says.

  ‘The name? Kaimoana. It means seafood.’

  ‘Yes. It’s very specialist.’

  ‘I’ve owned a seafood restaurant before. It was very successful. Did you read the reviews?’

  ‘Yes I did, but that was over ten years ago.’

  ‘That just means I’m wiser and older, and better know what I’m doing.’

  ‘If you had more security we might reconsider.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Another property would be ideal.’

  ‘But I sold my house to get out a hundred and fifty grand. Doesn’t that show I’m serious?’

  ‘What about parents, or brothers and sisters? Could they stand surety for you?’

  ‘You mean mortgage their houses?’

  ‘Mr Campbell, we need protection with such a risky proposal.’

  ‘I don’t get the big risk eh,’ I say. ‘I know the restaurant business. The business plan is sound. Kaimoana will be a great restaurant.’

  ‘People might have trouble saying it.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘The name.’

  ‘Kaimoana?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you saying people will be put off by the name?’

  ‘I think it could alienate some people.’

  In my proposal I honoured Papatūānuku for her gifts from the land, and I thanked Tangaroa for his bounty from the sea. I wonder how Mr McDonald reacted to those names some people might have trouble saying.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I ask.

  ‘Pardon?’ he replies.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Nearly a year,’ he says, pulling at his collar.

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Auckland,’ he says.

  ‘Were you born in Auckland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the bank sent you here?’

  ‘I was promoted.’ He pulls himself up in his chair. ‘I’m Senior Loans Manager.’

  ‘How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I’m 29, but I don’t see that as relevant.’ He sticks two fingers under his collar and pulls.

  ‘Nah, probably not, but you are very young for such a responsible job. Well done.’

  He smiles for the first time. ‘Thanks, he says. But it’s really hard sometimes.’

  ‘Must be tough,’ I say. ‘Tell you what. I’m prepared to change the name, and could ask around my whānau for more security.’

  ‘That’s the right attitude, Mr Campbell. Have you any other names in mind?’

  ‘Yeah, I do, but it might alienate some people too.’

  ‘Try me,’ he says.

  ‘What about “Glencoe”, Mr McDonald?’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ he says, loosening his tie.

  ‘But you are,’ I say. ‘You’re a bloody joke.’

  Mummy’s Boy

  Mark Sweet

  Chapter Five

  He likes doing the rounds with his mother. They start in the Village at the butcher’s. She tells Mr MacPherson what she wants to cook and he finds her the best cuts of meat. His mother talks a lot with Mr MacPherson, and he has noticed how her accent grows thicker and her words flow faster when they talk about the people they both knew in Glasgow, and about black puddings, and single malts.

  She signs the book, and Mr MacPherson always passes him a warm saveloy wrapped in white bread and says, ‘There you go laddie,’ and when they leave his shop they stamp the sawdust from their shoes on the grate outside.

  If the blacksmith is working at his forge he will often stop and watch him while his mother shops for groceries at The General Store.

  This day, the heat from the fire blows a warm draft across the footpath, and the clunk clunk of metal hammering on metal draws him toward the stable door. His mother nods and walks on. He squats down, and waddles under the two-tier stable door, which is closed at the top. The inside is so dim; his eyes grab every shred of light as they focus on the black form with a smudged head on top, glowing orange from the fire in the forge. He edges along to the bench in the corner of the room where the blacksmith lets children sit. He is not alone. A girl sits staring intently, her head clasped in her hands as if to steady her gaze. He recognises her. He too is drawn to the scene Susie MacDuff fixedly watches.

  In one hand the blacksmith holds his hammer, its head as big as his fist. In the other he grips a pair of metal tongs, with which he places the horseshoe into the forge before beating it into the shape of a horse’s hoof, while it’s still red hot, with blows that shake the floor. The blacksmith plunges the horseshoe into a bucket of water. Steam rises in a mushroom cloud, and vanishes like the morning mist. Susie is on her feet clapping vigorously, and she is under the door before he realises she is gone.

  His mother stands beside the open boot of the car being stacked by the grocery boy, who looks at her with a silly grin as he passes her by. She’s smoking a cigarette; she exhales in wispy trails from the corner of her mouth, and when she finish
es, she throws the half-smoked cigarette to the ground at the grocery boy’s feet, and stabs at it with her foot.

  ‘Who’s coming to dinner?’ he asks as they drive around the roundabout toward Te Mata Road.

  ‘It’s a business dinner.’

  ‘Will I know anyone?’

  ‘You can watch TV in our room if you like. You don’t have to see anyone if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Can I watch The Avengers?’

  ‘Aye, OK.’

  He sees two boys from his school, Orr and Drake, walking along the footpath, and he slumps down in his seat. ‘I’m glad it’s Saturday tomorrow,’ he says.

  They stop at Ashcroft’s Honey House, and he watches as Mr Ashcroft fills their pottery honey crock from a stainless steel tank he imported from America. Mr Ashcroft is also the Mayor of Havelock North. At the Anzac Day ceremony he looked silly wearing the mayoral chains because they were like a string of medals bigger than any others. He could tell Mr Ashcroft felt uncomfortable, and wished he didn’t have to wear the mayoral chains.

  As they pass his school he looks in the opposite direction, and concentrates on fixing his gaze on a single point on the grey concrete curb that runs before his eyes. Only after they pass McClintock’s petrol station and the footpath runs out does he look back to the road.

  ‘Help me with the flagons,’ his mother says when she stops the car at TMV, the winery with the round stone cellar built nearly a hundred years before.

  There are three flagons. He carries two, and follows her into the cellar room where barrels are stacked, and cases of bottles are tiered up the walls. Mr Toogood’s office is in a glass enclosure, and his mother waves to the man peering through the window. He is very tall, and brushes down his jacket when he opens the door. ‘Good afternoon Mrs Gow,’ he says, ‘How can we help you today?’

  ‘Three of each, the usual, thanks very much,’ she says.

  ‘Dry red, medium white and sherry – medium dry.’

  The barrels are on their sides cradled on wooden cots, and parked in a line like drawn-up wagons on an episode of Bonanza. Mr Toogood positions a low stool for himself to sit on while the flagon fills. He turns off the tap, screws the cap back on the flagon and moves to the next barrel.

  ‘One more stop on the rounds,’ his mother says, after jamming the flagons between the front and back seats and padding between them with a blanket.

  ‘Mushrooms,’ he says.

  They grow in the dark and don’t need photosynthesis, he knows, because mushrooms are fungi and different from other plants in the way their cells divide and multiply. When the mushroom farm first opened, Mr Speeden had given him a shoebox he had half filled with compost seeded with spores, and told him to put the box in the hot water cupboard, and every day to spray it with mist, and watch the mushrooms grow.

  The Humber shudders over the corrugated surface on the narrow road cut into the hill. Men who have been repairing the bank where recent heavy rain has gouged out channels are packing up for the day. He notices all of them are Māori.

  Their house is around the corner and up the straight, hidden from the road by a row of mature acacia trees and a head-high creosoted timber fence.

  The house is long and low, and spreads out in two wings from a central core, where his mother parks the car under a canopy, beside a wide door. When he opens the car door two paws are instantly on his lap, and his dog’s tongue is lashing at his face. He offers his school bag to the grinning face, which clamps it in its jaw. He helps his mother carry the groceries from the car to the kitchen. He doesn’t help with unpacking and putting away, because his mother is fussy. She always watches him to make sure he places new cans behind the ones already on the shelf. Instead, he collects his slug gun from his bedroom, and a handful of peanuts from the jar on the drinks trolley. He will use the nuts as bait to lure rats from their burrows under the chook house. His father is paying him ten cents a rat, but he has to buy his own slugs.

  ‘I need a hen for Sunday,’ his mother says as he passes.

  ‘Is Granddad coming?’

  ‘No, but we will still have Sunday roast.’

  Chicken is his grandfather’s favourite roast. He calls them chooks.

  ‘The one with the black foot has finished laying.’

  ‘You mean Penelope.’

  ‘I told you not to name them. It makes it harder.’

  ‘No it doesn’t. It makes it easier.’

  He doesn’t like or dislike chopping a chook’s head off with the tomahawk and letting it flutter around until it keels over. He has boiling water ready in the laundry, and he carries the headless bird by the legs, held above a bucket to catch the blood. His mother had shown him everything to do when she told him that if he wanted chickens, it was his job to look after them, from the beginning to the end, and all the eggs in between. The boiling water loosens the feathers, making the bird easier to pluck.

  ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ he says.

  He tells Brandy to sit, and leaves the rifle propped against the fence, as he lays the bait outside the burrows.

  He waits, and watches a nose poke gingerly out from a hole in the dirt. He pulls the trigger, and a lead pellet thuds into the rat’s head. He waits, and watches, knowing how curious the other rats will be.

  By the time the guests arrive he has had his dinner, and a bath, and he is propped up with pillows in his parents’ bed watching TV.

  Emma Peel is entering the house of a dangerous criminal alone.

  He has left an invoice for fifty cents pinned to the kitchen noticeboard.

  When he hears car doors slamming he looks out the window. His father’s head is wobbling about as it does when he’s been drinking, and as he walks up the path he puts an arm around the shoulders of a man he’s never seen before. The other men he knows. They are the Board of Directors of Gow Meat Processors.

  After Steed beats off a deranged killer and his accomplice with his walking stick, he goes to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and to look for any cheese balls left over from nibbles. The sink bench is piled with plates and pots and pans. The sideboard has the food on it. As he scans the dishes he hears his father’s voice beyond the servery.

  ‘Stuck in the past in a very unhealthy way,’ his father says. ‘Had a terrible war. I know that, but …’

  ‘But what happened to him shouldn’t affect what’s happening now,’ his mother says.

  ‘Very sad.’

  ‘So unfair.’

  ‘He talks to his friend Ralph all the time,’ his mother says.

  ‘Ralph was killed in 1917,’ his father says.

  ‘A medical opinion will determine him unfit to make decisions.’ He recognises the voice of Mr Grosser, who is the family lawyer and godfather to his sister. He’s glad Fiona doesn’t have to hear this.

  ‘It’s for his own good.’

  ‘Hate to see this become public knowledge,’ says the man he doesn’t know.

  ‘I’ll make sure we don’t publish any mention in the paper,’ says Mr Chalmers, who’s a major shareholder in the Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune.

  ‘That’s settled then,’ says the man he doesn’t know. ‘Here’s to the success of SelbyGow.’

  ‘SelbyGow.’

  ‘SelbyGow.’

  His father says, ‘To your capital and our assets. Combined we are unbeatable.’

  His mother had told him to turn the TV off after he’d watched The Avengers, but after hearing the man he didn’t know say, ‘The best thing my father did for me was die before I was forty,’ he went back to his parents’ room with a second glass of milk and a plate of cheese balls, and fell asleep with Jane Eyre.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Remember the hen,’ his mother says as he fills the feeding bucket with mash from a sack. He doesn’t answer her. If she had bothered to look she would have seen he had already turned the Zip on.

  He will make sure Penelope has no idea what’s about to happen to her. She’s a good eater, and she likes the morning mash m
ost of all. He will pick her up after she’s eaten, and after she’s had a drink of water and a big shake of her feathers as she does when she’s finished. But first he checks her laying box, hoping he will find an egg.

  ‘Callum,’ his father calls, ‘I’m leaving in ten minutes. I don’t want to be kept waiting.’

  He has finished plucking Penelope, and his hand is inside her gathering up her organs. He pulls, and the knife in his other hand finds the grisly cord that holds everything in place.

  ‘Coming, Dad,’ he shouts, as he flushes the bird’s cavity under the tap.

  His father drives a Daimler and he wears leather gloves. He keeps them in the dashboard drawer, and they never leave the car. He clips green shades over his glasses, and looks at himself in the rear-vision mirror. He doesn’t shave on Saturday mornings, and he wears an open-neck shirt. His hair is combed back and falls into tight curls on his collar. He plucks a grey hair from his temple.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did Ralph die?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Granddad’s friend who got killed in the war.’

  ‘Why are you asking about him?’

  ‘I just want to know how he died.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how he died.’

  He disagrees with his father. Of course it matters how Ralph died. It matters how everything dies. But he doesn’t say what he thinks, because he knows he will get the lecture on survival of the fittest and the killer instinct.

  ‘Have you heard him talking to Ralph?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve never heard your grandfather talking to Ralph?’ His father turns to look at him, and he stares into the two green shades, and he says, ‘No, never.’

  He doesn’t take his eyes off his father’s head when he looks back to the road, and when he changes gear and the engine moans he sees him mouth the words, ‘little shit.’

  Gow Meat Processors are on the railway line halfway between Hastings and Napier. The main building is a large factory with a saw-tooth roof built in 1937. The walls are reinforced concrete and the roof is clad in corrugated iron. Huge metal-framed windows flood the factory floor with southern light. They are opened and closed with pulleys, and, together with ventilation slats around the walls, provide for circulation of air. His grandfather went to Chicago and brought back the latest innovations in meat-factory design. The sheep and cattle arrive in railway wagons from as far away as Dannevirke in the south and Wairoa up north. More and more, stock is brought in by trucks, and the fattening paddocks surrounding the Works, established to graze the hungry mobs herded in by drovers, are needed less and less.