‘It’s no laughing matter. A string quartet is like a marriage, except it’s more complicated. It’s not just one relationship, it’s four. It’s a fragile thing.’
‘Actually it’s six. Relationships, that is.’
‘I rest my case.’
‘Anyway who is it? I suppose it’s Rafael. All that Latin temperament and passion.’
‘Not Rafa.’
‘Malcolm? Who’d have thought it? He’s the dark horse. I thought he didn’t care about anything except antiques and his cello! Should I be dusting off my speech? I take it you want me to give you away.’
‘Not Malcolm.’
‘Matrimony is so expensive these days. At least you can save a bit on the in-house entertainment. You can all be the quartet at the reception during the drinkies. You could–’
I stopped short.
‘Not Dominique?’
I was so slow on the uptake.
‘Goodness.’
‘You’re shocked.’
‘No, no. Not at all. No. I’m quite the New Age guy.’
‘Well, I tell you what, it shocked the hell out of me. Anyway, I had to get away. Thought I’d take a holiday.’
‘It’ll be lovely to see you.’
‘You’ll come to my gig?’
‘Try and stop me.’
For the Singapore-Auckland trip, I was back in the rear of the aircraft. But I didn’t really mind. I was full of anticipation. I began to construct in my imagination a putative New Zealand life. I was going to curtail this life in transit, this waiting-room life, stuck in a series of airport final departure lounges. I would stop being a vagrant and put down roots, before it was too late. Nothing much to it, really. I’d immerse myself in my work at Middlemore in the sprawling suburbs of South Auckland, the pathology capital of Polynesia, and then I’d go out and deliberately search for Mrs Cameron-Strange. Don’t leave it to chance. Don’t imagine someone is going to walk into your life and blow you off your feet. That can only happen once.
It was a beautiful summer’s day down on the North Island. I had a window seat on the left side and got spectacular views as we made landfall over Cape Maria van Diemen and commenced the long descent into Auckland. What would the wind direction be over the Manukau Harbour? If it was an easterly, we would come in off the ocean and make our final approach over Manukau Heads. If it was a westerly, we would join downwind on a right-hand circuit that would take us directly over Waitemata Harbour and the city.
It was a westerly. I was like a gleeful schoolboy with his nose pressed up against the Perspex window, picking out the landmarks, the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Lake Pupuke on the North Shore, Rangitoto out in the sparkling Hauraki Gulf. There came the protracted low rumble as the 747’s gear went down. The water was pure emerald and the islands of the gulf seemed to float upon it. First stage of flap abeam Musick Point, then a base leg over the city’s southern suburbs, more flap, and the turn on to finals – full flap now – that I knew would take us past McLaughlins Mountain abeam Pukeiti Road, to touch down on runway 23.
The woman at Immigration processed my NZ passport, smiled at me and said, ‘Welcome home.’
I went through the green corridor into Arrivals and stepped out into the sweet sunshine under a huge New Zealand flag flapping lazily in a balmy summer breeze.
I was reluctant to come away from airport land. I hadn’t reached home yet. One more flight to make, one more duty to discharge. I found a modest Travel Lodge in Ihumatao, on the outskirts of the airport and on the edge of the Manukau Harbour, and I checked in for one night. Middlemore Hospital was only a couple of miles down the road. Call in? Not yet. I dumped my bag in my motel room and changed into my running vest and shorts, put on my Nikes, and went for a run. I’d decided to run the three Ihumatao volcanoes.
I have a love affair with Auckland’s forty-eight volcanoes. It’s a private hobby of mine to run up them. Each has its own unique personality. There are the big flamboyant touristy ones like Rangitoto, One Tree Hill, and Mount Eden. You leave the bustle of the city beneath you and ascend maybe 600 feet to the lip of the caldera. The traffic noises recede, and you seem to gain a new perspective on life. Your petty cares and preoccupations diminish, and maybe even vanish. I like the secret ones, the ones that are little known and seldom visited. The remote ones. Perhaps the Ihumatao volcanoes are the most remote. Otuataua, Maungataketake, right on the edge of the Manukau Harbour, and, my favourite, Pukeiti. Visiting these sites is a spiritual experience. The pakeha don’t often come here. This is Maori country. I have a notion that all the industrial real estate around the airport sooner or later will vanish and leave not a wrack behind. But Otuataua, Maungataketake, and Pukeiti will remain.
It was when I paused for breath on the lip of Pukeiti’s small but perfectly formed caldera, that I conceived a Grandiose Scheme. You’ve run up all the volcanoes of Auckland. Why not run them all in a single day?
Could it be done? How big an undertaking would it be? Forty-eight volcanoes in twenty-four hours. Thirty minutes per volcano; that has a pleasing symmetry. What a challenge! Has anybody ever done it? Not that I’d ever heard of. In this land fascinated by extreme sport, that seemed surprising.
Well, I’ve registered the idea in my own mind. I’ve logged it. Don’t tell anybody. Guard your secret jealously. Don’t give anybody else ideas.
The following day, I took a taxi through Auckland’s southern suburbs to Ardmore airfield and renewed my acquaintance with Auckland Aero Club. I got checked out in a Cherokee Arrow, Echo Bravo Echo. Variable pitch prop and retractable undercarriage, rather fancier than I’d planned – she would fairly spank along – but that was what was available. Thus I embarked on a solo journey northwards that I recall I had envisaged one day in the Edinburgh winter while walking down off Princes Street towards 48 Heriot Row. I took off eastward on 03 and headed out along the Clevedon Valley toward the Hauraki Gulf, and turned north along the coast at just under 1000 feet to keep clear of the Auckland traffic. Rangitoto on my right, and the Central Business District on the left. Overhead the Whangaparaoa Peninsula I kept an eye open for any North Shore traffic using the strip at Dairy Flat. But it was quiet. Now I turned north-west and started to climb. By the time I reached 6000 feet over the windswept, deserted Kaipara Harbour I really had the place to myself.
I reached the west coast overhead Hokianga Harbour, having climbed to 10,000 feet to enjoy the view. I flew over the ancient Kauri Forest up towards Tauroa Point, listening out for Kaitaia traffic on 119.1, the unattended frequency. There was no traffic. There was the long metalled strip, to my east, on the plateau above the township. Once I had landed there, I would nearly be home. But not quite yet. I had one more duty to discharge. I stayed up at 10,000 feet and kept flying north. Now the terrain below me narrowed to a long, thin strip of land with a slender filament of white cloud sitting above it. The land of the long white cloud. Two miles below me, the breakers of the Tasman were crashing silently on to Ninety Mile Beach. There is Te Paki Stream, and now Cape Maria van Diemen, Three Kings on the horizon, and at last, the darling lighthouse of Cape Reinga. I made a wide, clockwise spiral descent and touched down on the tiny grass strip with its gently fluttering orange windsock above Waitiki Landing. I cut the engine, took off my headphones, and opened the aircraft door on its right-hand side, and just sat for a moment to enjoy the stillness, the birdsong and the tiny sounds of nature. I made the plane safe and took a walk down to Waitiki Landing, had a coffee and said hello to the whanau. Here I was, nearly at the northernmost tip of the Aupouri Peninsula. The Maori call this piece of land Te Hiku o te Ika: the tail of the fish. Marine volcanoes formed this land 60 million years ago but I prefer the Maori legend that tells how a giant fish (North Island) was pulled from the sea by Maui while he sat in his canoe (South Island).
Why had I overshot Kaitaia, flown over my home at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, and come all the way up to the top of the island? It was because I had decided that the time had come t
o say goodbye to Mary, and that I would do this at Cape Reinga, at the confluence of the oceans, at the spot where the Maori spirits depart this world. At Waitiki Landing I borrowed a ute, as I said I would, and drove it north all the way up to the car park by the lighthouse where the road comes to an end. I dodged the adolescent hoopla of the Japanese tourists taking zany photographs with extravagant poses beside one of these multidirectional signposts to London, New York, the South Pole, etc. I left the beaten track and descended carefully down to the ocean, to that point where the tidal waves of the Tasman and the Pacific meet, with a surge of white surf, at the northernmost point of New Zealand.
Under the gorgeous deep red blossom of the pohutukawa I unscrewed the top of the small urn I had brought all this way with me. I think I muttered a few incoherent words that I suppose might have amounted to a prayer. I know I recited to myself an ancient Maori proverb, because I knew I was always in danger of withdrawing into my own cloister and turning my back on the world. Mary would not have wanted that. A breeze had sprung up from nowhere because I remember how it made my eyes moisten.
He aha te mea.
Nui o te ao?
He tangata!
He tangata!
He tangata!
Then I let Mary go. I let her fly off with the Maori spirits. I cast Mary’s ashes out across the very edge of New Zealand.
I climbed back up to the lighthouse and to the ute and headed back towards Waitiki Landing.
There was one last pilgrimage I wanted to make, something else I had dreamed about during the northern hemisphere’s winter. A mile or two north of Waitiki Landing I hung a right at Te Paki Station and headed down a rough gravel track through pleasant wooded farmland with a herd of grazing cattle. There was a descent down to the huge sand dunes at Te Paki Stream where the gravel track ended. Mine was the only parked vehicle. It was a hot day and I was in shorts and T-shirt. I kicked off my shoes and sloshed down Te Paki stream as it wended its way through the dunes. Here at last was Ninety Mile Beach. I walked all the way out to the breakers and touched water. Then I came back to the edge of the beach, the tussocks and the toi toi grass, and I sat down in a reverie.
And something very odd happened. I can’t explain it. I suppose it was just a sense of what the Germans call Heimat, a sense that I had fulfilled some long-imagined tasks, reached a point of equanimity, and come home. Of course it was a very beautiful day, there on the beach. But I had this quite powerful sense that I was no longer alone. Somebody was sitting beside me.
I’m afraid I’m not explaining this very well. I don’t really think of myself as a spiritual person. You might say to me, you don’t mean to tell us Mary was sitting beside you? Or maybe even it was God, out for a morning stroll?
All I can tell you is that I was comforted with the sense that I would never again walk alone.
I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. I thought, you have recovered. You are better. You have consigned all that angst and anger and misery to the past. You’ve come home.
I turned away from the ocean and glanced back up towards Te Paki stream.
Two figures were heading in my direction. Two men. They were unseasonably dressed in suit and tie as if they had just stepped out of a bank on Queen Street, Auckland. They were trying to skirt the edge of the stream to keep their feet dry. They shimmered in the heat haze like a mirage. I had a vague recollection. I screwed up my eyes. One of the men was tall and slim, the other bulky and shambling. I watched their progress. They came into focus at last. I felt my stomach churn.
I uttered a single, short profanity.
III
Professionally, and in the patois of common medical parlance, I am what is known as a ‘shit magnet’.
The medical students love it. They know that if they come on the floor with me, they will see some interesting stuff, will learn a lot, and broaden their experience. But my colleagues, the nurses and doctors, in it for the long haul, they hate it. Seeing the odd interesting case is fine, but when they start to come through thick and fast, when they are falling on top of one another, when the gurneys are lined up along the hospital corridors, they all look at one another and raise their eyes to the ceiling. Another night from hell. ACS must be on. They know that this sort of thing will shorten their shelf-life and bring their use-by date that little bit closer. Edging nearer towards burnout. You can’t keep up this relentless pace. Emergency Medicine is not a sprint: it’s a marathon.
I’ve often wondered whether shit magnetism is a real or imaginary phenomenon. Am I really like a rain god? Is there really a great bank of cumulonimbus hanging over my head everywhere I go? Or is it merely that I have a capacity to create a storm in a teacup?
If I was already very angry with Major Forster and Dr Parkinson, then the sight of them materialising out of the heat haze on Te Paki stream – like some sort of mirage of a shambolic desert caravanserai shuffling along to the tune of Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia – put me into a cold fury. It was the fact that they had chosen this precise day, for whatever reason, to track me down. The day when I said goodbye to Mary, they had chosen precisely this dearly beloved place of mine, the most precious and the most sacred place in the world to me. I had come here to recharge my batteries – more, to replenish my soul; to get away from all of the sham and bullshit that for me these two gentlemen personified.
‘Alastair. We were worried about you.’
I didn’t bother to get up. I didn’t even look up at them.
‘Bugger off.’
‘Is there some place we could talk?’
I got up and started walking inshore off the beach towards Te Paki’s outlet. Parkinson called after me, ‘We’ve come a long way. Ten minutes of your time?’ That familiar, Australian bass voice.
I repeated, without bothering to look over my shoulder, ‘Bugger off.’
They were following me, striding fast to keep pace. Forster said, ‘Just a brief chat, Alastair. If you don’t like what we have to say, it’s not a problem. We’ll leave you in peace. Least we can do. There’s a promise.’
‘What part of “bugger off” is it you don’t …’ – and I thought to myself, don’t even waste your breath. I was in shorts and T-shirt and bare-footed and so I broke into a run back up the warm, shallow waters of the stream. Two city gents in their suits and Oxford brogues wouldn’t have a hope.
Simple as that. There’s a conical hill ahead of you as you head upstream on Te Paki and then you veer left round the huge dunes and the ocean disappears from view. In five or ten minutes I’d be back at the ute. I could charge back to Waitiki Landing in a cloud of dust and be back up at the Arrow and away before Forster and Parkinson had reached their car.
But they’d know about the Arrow. They’d know I was headed for Kaitaia. They’d know that once I got there I would get a lift to Waipapakauri and then turn left and head west down past Lake Gnatu towards the ocean. They would know I would head for home. It crossed my mind that I wouldn’t stop the ute at Waitiki but rather head east down to Te Hapua on the Parengarenga Harbour. Deep, deep Maori territory. White guys didn’t go down there, especially white guys in suits. They would know that they were completely out of place. They would have that inner sense of discomfort and alienation and they would say to themselves, ‘We need to get out of here.’
But it would only be putting off the inevitable. They would head back down past Gnatu to Waipapakauri Beach and just wait for me.
Here’s the ute, left where I parked it at the foot of the gravel track. There was a big shiny black four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser parked beside it. It had a driver, seated motionless at the wheel. He was dressed like the chauffeur of a 1950s millionaire, in a mud-coloured suit with a matching peaked cap. It must have been 28 degrees but he hadn’t removed the cap. He observed my approach and gave me a barely perceptible nod as if he’d expected my arrival precisely in this manner. I had already noted the ute had a flat tyre. Front, offside. I walked past it and over to the chauffeur and lean
ed in over the open window.
‘D’you let the tyre down, mate?’
He looked past me at the flat and pulled a sympathetic face. ‘A puncture. Unfortunate.’ It was an English accent. ‘Do you have a spare? Let me help you.’ He opened the vehicle door and stepped out. It occurred to me finally that it was going to be better for me to play ball, to sit down with Forster and Parkinson and give them their ten minutes. Otherwise they would keep goading me and niggling away at me in this manner.
‘Just as well you parked off the soft sand.’ He gave the spare on the back of the ute a punch. ‘Seems solid enough.’ Then he released the spare and carried it with ease round to the front of the vehicle. I noticed the effortless economy of his movements. His demeanour was not unlike Forster’s. Unconventional sort of chauffeur. He appraised the general decrepitude of the ute. ‘Shall we use the Land Cruiser’s jack and wrench, sir?’
So we changed the tyre. It only took ten minutes. By the time I’d tightened all the wheel nuts and the driver had released the jack, Forster and Parkinson were within 100 metres. I looked up again at the odd couple, one lithe, one lumbering. When two people resemble one another people often quip, ‘You never see them in the same room together!’ Forster and Parkinson were the diametric opposite of that. I never seemed to see them apart. Sometimes I thought they weren’t separate personalities at all: a strange, duplex organism.
They drew level with us. Parkinson’s breathing was heavy and he was wiping his brow. Forster took in the details of the flat tyre and the jack and nodded to his driver. ‘Thank you, Pertwee.’ I wondered what he was thanking him for. ‘Time for a brew. Waitiki Landing?’ Then, addressing me, ‘Will you join us?’
The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange Page 3
