On Saturday morning Flossie asked her Mum if she could play outside.

“What? In the garden? Of course,” said her Mum.

“No,” said Flossie. “I want to go climb up the hill and maybe find the rope swing we found that time with Dad.”

“No,” said her mother. “You’re seven years old. You can’t go out there on your own. I’m going to walk the dog later – you can come with me then if you like?”

Flossie stamped upstairs to play in her room. She jumped on the bed for a while because she was full of beans. She played hide and seek with herself but that was dumb. She wondered about asking to play on the lap top but she still felt annoyed with her mother, so she rolled herself up in her rug and pretended to be a sausage roll while she thought about what to do next. She was wearing her green pinafore so perhaps she was more like an asparagus roll she thought.

The rug was a little itchy but it was interesting to be looking at the room from the floor. The furniture seemed bigger. She could hear her mother moving about downstairs through the floor. She stared at the ceiling.

Unlike the rest of the old house, her ceiling was not high up.  Around the edges were pieces of wood that joined to the wall and seemed like a picture frame from here on the floor. They were pretty. There were different sorts all around their house and in some rooms there were nice raised patterns where the lights were screwed in. In Flossie’s room there was also a hatch that went up to the attic. She stared at the hatch. Could she get up there?

She rolled out of the rug. Not far from underneath the hatch was her big chest of drawers. She squeezed in between her toy chest in the corner and the drawers. She sat down against the chest and pushed the drawers with her legs. It felt good when the heavy furniture moved – she kept pushing until her legs were all the way straight. When she looked up she could see it was now underneath the hatch.

She took everything off the top of the drawers and then pulled a few drawers out like a ladder, and clambered to the top. She pushed at the hatch and moved the lid across inside the roof cavity. Inside was mostly dark but she could see her room used to have a higher ceiling. Above the hatch was some wall that once used to be part of her room – narrow planks painted yellow. Flossie clambered down and collected her Barbie torch and a dining room chair. She put the torch in her pocket, climbed up using the chair this time and then pulled up the chair to get a boost into the space above. She felt pleased with her ingenuity as her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

Someone had laid planks over the ceiling in the direction that lead to a large dark opening that she knew must take her to the main attic. There was a little ledge nailed into the old wall that made a perfect step. She climbed into the dark moving slowly to savour the newness of the space.

Once up in the attic she found that a little light came into the roof cavity from small leaded windows at the front and back. Again there were planks making a path for her to follow. Beyond them was a drifting sea of pink insulation which she felt might be as insubstantial as cloud to tread on, and so she kept to the islands of boards.

The attic held a store of old suitcases and boxes. There were old chairs and the shapes of things hung over with old sheets. There was a smell of dust and old leather – things just left to themselves. A fluttering sound in a far corner set off a chorus of shrill cheeping. Not far outside there must be a birds nest. Flossie thought about the babies snuggled in the nest -waiting for their meal and getting ready to fly.

Flossie looked at the first sheeted lump. She peered underneath and found an assortment of old taps and hooks and plumbing bits in beer crates. The next lump was a collection of shoe boxes – about ten in all. Each had four numbers written on the outside. All the numbers were different. At the top of the pile was a box with a number Flossie recognised from school – she wrote it every day as part of the date – it was this year. She picked up the box – it was light. Inside was a single small doll: a girl with a green pinafore dress. She put the doll in her pocket.

The next box down held more items – she rattled it thoughtfully. The outside of the box said 1898. Inside the box was filled with old fashioned furniture. There was a funny little black stove, a sort of bed and some materials, a lamp, and even a chair that looked a bit like one sitting close to the boxes. Flossie smiled – she knew what this stuff was. She looked to her left – there was a boxy shape under a sheet. She pulled it off to reveal a large dolls house.

It was by far the best she had ever seen and she carefully played the torch over the outside of it. It was painted green with a blue trim and here and there were touches of orange. A small veranda roof sloped over the front door. She bent to look under the veranda and saw something very familiar – the front door had panelled stained glass windows on each side and a beautiful kaleidoscope window set in the top half of the door and a little brass door handle in the front. On each side of the front door were high windows just like her own house. The doll’s house was two story like hers and even had little attic windows like hers too.

What a fabulous secret the attic was holding – a house within a house. Peering through the windows she could make out a flicker that might be coming from the parlour fireplace – the TV room these days but sometimes Mum called it the parlour.

Flossie felt around the sides of the house – looking for a way to open it up. Sure enough, half way up the right hand side there was a little catch. Carefully she pushed it upwards, then eased the door open revealing the rooms within. An oriental rug lay on the parlour floor which was painted black, a tiny light shade glinted on the hallway wall, and a strip of carpet snaked through the hall and then disappeared up the stairs. A little guilt mirror in and upstairs bedroom reflected a gas lamps – as she looked it seemed to glow – perhaps catching the light from her torch. Things were on the walls and floors but there was no furniture.

She put out her finger and stroked the carpets – blood red and black and cream and warm to the touch – not yet worn from the tread of many feet. She touched the wall paper – it had little raised bumps. It was what her mother might call a museum piece – hardly played with.

Carefully she took out the furniture from the from the 1898 box and placed them in the little rooms. Velvet covered chairs and lace draped tables in the grandest room – the parlour. She put a fancy bed with a sausage shaped pillow in the main bedroom and in another she placed a little rocking horse and cradle and more simple beds. In the kitchen she placed the old range and a table and she could smell something cooking as she placed the fat smiling cook. Maybe mum was baking.

When everything was arranged, she dragged over an old chair like the little one in the parlour and sat down and looked. The house was remarkably like her house today but some of it had changed – now the kitchen and bathrooms were all different. Her own parents had changed the kitchen again and put in another bathroom upstairs that used up space in the nursery she could see.

In her pocket she felt the doll with the green dress. On impulse she reached out and placed the doll in the kitchen.

…………………….

“Are you here to play with the children?” asked the cook. Flossie nodded – lost for words. The cook looked at her a little closer.

“Them’s funny boots. New off the ship are they?” Flossie nodded again. Nodding had seemed to work the first time.

“It’s amazing all them new things keep coming over,” the cook continued, red in the face and not seeming at all bothered by a strange girl appearing in the kitchen. Flossie looked around, it was her own kitchen but without the modern oven and microwave and the benches her mother had the builder put in last year.

The cook bent to open the range and pulled out a tray of buns. Almost as she did so, three children came into the kitchen through the back door. They stared at the buns son intently that they almost didn’t notice Flossie.

There was already another tray of buns on the table and from these the cook handed the two girls and a boy each a cake and then turned to her.

“Here you are then – now run off and play, kitchens no place for you lot. That should hold you till dinner.”

Flossie followed the others outside – the bun now warm in her pocket. The backyard of her house – their house too she now guessed – was laid out differently. There were sheds instead of a garage and a large vegetable garden and a huge stack of wood neatly piled to one side with a half roof over it.

“What’s your name then?” asked the eldest. She didn’t seem too surprised to find a strange girl in her kitchen. “I’m Vera, this is Kathleen and our baby brother is Leslie. Our other sisters aren’t here.”

Flossie said her name.

“Here,” said Vera, “hold my bun while I go to the privy.”

Flossie held the bun as the other girl entered a small shed.  She realised this must be an outside toilet. Vera was back in a moment, straightening her clothes and a large white apron that hung over her dress and wrapped around the skirt of it. Her sister was dressed similarly, while Leslie wore grey trousers and a jacket that reminded her a little of the clothes her father wore to work.  He was like a boy in fancy dress – dressed like a man. His hair was close cropped but a few curls escaped at the back giving him a softness despite the attempt to package him as austere. The girls all wore feminine long locks – Vera’s meticulously curled while Kathleen’s was iron rod straight but carefully arranged. All walked with a regard to keeping their attire clean – the girls smoothing skirts and straightening themselves but in a natural way – they were comfortable and at ease.

The four of them wandered round the side of the house to the street. It was much quieter than usual – there were no cars, and the road seemed to be dirt. As they walked up the road, dodging the odd puddle, Flossie looked at houses she recognised and buildings she’d never seen before. A clip clopping brought her attention back to the road.

“Look at that!” she exclaimed.

A horse was pulling a cart with a man atop it holding reins. The cart was full of boxes and some wooden planks. You could see the muscles of the horse working to pull the cart up the slope of the road.

The others were not excited to see the horse.

“That’s just Mr Cobb coming down the road,” said Kathleen. She looked at Flossie curiously but without scorn. “He comes every day.”

They kept walking down the road and soon they came to a school yard where there were a number of other children playing about. The sisters took her into the yard and joined another girl playing hop scotch.  Flossie watched the stone being carefully dropped by each participant and understood what to do by the time her turn came up. Leslie had wandered off to play with some boys who had a spinning top and a stick and were taking turns to make it spin. After a while someone suggested they go blackberrying and they all moved off, over the road and up behind the houses to a stretch of land where blackberry bushes grew. There weren’t a lot of ripe berries and each time someone found one they would call out and play a game to determine who should eat it. They used a rhyme:

Each peach pear plum, out goes Tom Thumb!

When Flossie found herself the last alive in one of these rounds she triumphantly placed the berry on her tongue and felt its juice squirt sweet and sour in her mouth.

“Can we go and see your dolls house?” One of the girls asked Kathleen.

“If it’s still in the barn you can see it,” said Vera, taking charge. Kathleen turned to Flossie and explained that Mr Cobb had delivered the dolls house with his cart the other day, and that their Mother had bid him leave it in the barn until it was decided where it would go inside. Kathleen hoped it would go into her room but she glanced at Vera as she said this and Flossie knew there would be competition.

The girls began to make their way back home. On the way they stopped by a rope swing and took turns pushing each other. Leslie tagged along, with Vera and Kathleen helping the little boy over banks and muddy patches.

At the house they entered the biggest shed in the back yard. Atop a rough table Flossie saw the dolls house – brighter than it had been when she found it in the attic. Vera opened it up and there was much hushing and ohhing and ahhing from the neighbourhood children. She pointed out the carpets and the gas lamps and the little tables under their lacey clothes. She showed the little rocking horse and other small objects Flossie had not seen before – a wash stand and a jug and bowel and a small display of fruit. She saw there were curtains on the insides of the windows when the side was opened. Had they been there when she saw it earlier?

Vera’s presentation of the dolls house turned to the kitchen. She had turned to her audience and begun to tell them about the coal range when Kathleen spoke up:

“Look! There’s a new person in there with the cook.”

Kathleen, and the other little girls, were all looking at the doll’s house kitchen. Vera was last to see the new addition.

“She wasn’t there before,” she said. And she reached inside and pulled out a little doll in a green dress.

…………….

As the doll left the kitchen Flossie found herself once more in the attic, sitting in the chair. The doll in the green dress had fallen to the floor. The Barbie torch was flickering – it’s battery low.

She put the doll in its box and clipped the side of the doll house back on – noticing there were no curtains on the windows. She pulled the sheet back over the house and climbed back down into her room. She had just pulled the dining chair down off the drawers when her mother came into the room.

“You’ve been quiet up here a long time Flossie. Dads home and Im going out to walk the dog – do you want to come?”

Flossie shook her head. Her mother looked harder at her:

“Whats that purple around your mouth? I hope you haven’t been sucking a felt pen dear – it’s probably not good for you. Shower tonight!”

She turned and left the room. Flossie looked around in the bottom draw of her chest of drawers where random things got put. She found a plain notebook someone had given her for Christmas or a birthday. It was a beautiful thing – green velvet on the outside and cream blank thick sheets of paper on the inside. She wondered now why she hadn’t started writing something in it. Anyway it was perfect for what she wanted. She sat on her bed and turned the first page. Usually when she started a little notebook Flossie had the feeling the paper needed something especially good written on it – it was her personal theory that the quality of a notebook equalled the quality of the written word. This was perhaps why her class struggled to write much on their tablets at school – they were cheap ones from India. They didn’t always save to the school network so your words could be lost. And there were so many words out there already competing to be read. Flossie liked paper and lots of her friends did too – but she was also in awe of it. You could only write or draw something once and then it was committed. But tonight she felt like this notebook could carry something important that just she wanted to see. She sucked on her pen and then she wrote:

Felicity Anne Beachamp, aged 7 years and 10 months. Met Vera, Kathleen and Leslie. Blackberries and buns.  1898.

Then she looked around to think about where she would put the notebook and finally poked it under her mattress and then headed downstairs to watch TV. Dad was there and he gave her a cuddle.

“What’s all that purple round your mouth Floss?”

“Blackberries,” she said feeling the bun in her pocket and feeling peckish.

“Hmm.” said Dad, “Won’t be many of them round yet, you sure they weren’t sprayed?”

“Positive” said Flossie. “Want half my bun?”

“Yum.” said Dad, “Did Mum make this?”

“No,” said Flossie. “It was the neighbour. I only got one.”

“You want to keep in with her,” said Dad, “We could do with more baking.”

“Alright,” said Flossie, and they watched the news.

“A kick! I felt a kick!”

Vicky pulled Stella down on the couch next to her. She put Stella’s hand on her belly and they waited grinning at each other.

“Who would have thought you could get kicked in a good way” Vicky said when the baby finally did it again.

Stella wondered if many other women had cause to think of kicks like that. Shane still hung over Vicky, he seemed to have taken small pieces of her friend a little at a time.

As Vicky hauled herself off the couch, her dress strained at the seams. She pulled at the fabric. “I wish I could alter this, it’ll take an age by hand.”

Vicky had asked Shane for her sewing machine when they’d met him in the supermarket aisle.

“Come around tonight for it.”

They waited, but he never showed up.

Vicky asked him about the machine again at the Post Office and that time he just said no. It was a little knife he could twist. She stopped asking.

Stella would have suggested she get a new machine but she knew Vicky didn’t have the money.

Driving past Southern Cross Fellowship she saw Shane with his church group, sporting a big smile and handing out flyers. He looked like butter wouldn’t melt on his motorcycle on a hot day. When she drove back later the church people were all gone so she pulled over and read one of the posters on the big community noticeboard. Love of Christ Festival. It was some big gathering and would last for days. People were supposed to bring tents and camp out.

On the day of the festival, Stella watched Shane’s house from the reserve over the road. Shane moved back and forth, bringing out gear, rolling it up and tying it all down. He tinkered with the bike, switching it off and on and finally he left. She waited a while to make sure he’d gone and then went up to Hawkes and picked up a freshly painted Falcon Ute. Nobody in town had one like it.

“Don’t scratch it Stella.”

“If I did, it would probably look less stolen. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”

At home she picked up Vicky’s stuff and a couple of empty bags they’d need.

“We’ve got a job to do before we head off,” said Stella.

Vicky looked at the bags and the strange ute and she knew straight away. “He’ll kill me.”

‘He won’t know. We’ll make it look like a burglary.’

They went round the back of the house. Wearing her kiwifruit gloves, Stella prised the glass panels out of the louvered laundry windows and leaned them against a flax bush. She clambered on top of the rubbish bin and climbed through the window onto the washing machine and then down onto the loo. It was nice that he left the seat down, her brothers never did that.

She let Vicky in the back door with the empty bags.

‘Get your machine and anything we can sell.’

‘Like what?’

‘Tools – get tools. Wait a minute – put everything you’re taking in a pile there on the table and I’ll check it first.’

Stella walked around the house. It had two small bedrooms, a kitchen and lounge combined – your typical little bach. What struck Stella most was how tidy he kept it. He’d shut every cupboard, everything was in its place, and he’d made the bed like it was a show home. There was nothing on the walls except a wind catcher Vicky used to have hanging in her car.

In the second bedroom all his tools were lined up by size. At least he’d know what was missing. Stella picked out a few she thought would sell and took them out to the ute, she could hear Vicky in the other bedroom. Back in the lounge she looked at Shane’s record collection. There were a lot of the usuals there: Def Leppard, ACDC, Frank Zappa, and some tapes. She bagged the lot to save time.

On the table Vicky had put her sewing machine and some kid’s toys and clothes she must have started collecting when she lived there.

‘Wait – not the kids’ stuff. Burglars wouldn’t take it. They’d take the machine because they could sell it. Put them back where you got them.’

‘My fingerprints will be everywhere!’ Vicky was rattled.

‘You used to live here – your fingerprints are everywhere silly.’

Stella opened the kitchen drawers; even the cutlery was disturbingly neat. She stirred the teaspoons so they unstacked, that looked better. They took the last of the stuff outside and she shut the door. Vicky was already in the cab.

‘Duck down and I’ll drive out of here.’

They headed into town through the gorge and swapped back to her Holden. Hawke materialised from down the road and got into the ute, nodded and left.

Her Holden had a full tank of gas. The old pack, with a pound of weed inside, was nestled in the boot. Good to kill two birds she thought.

Vicky let the seat belt out a bit to fit more comfortably. She looked over to Stella as they headed toward Paeroa and smiled. “I’ve got my sewing machine back!”

“Yeah but when we sell this gear and your machine you’re going to have an even better one. That way, if Shane ever sees it, it won’t be the one that was stolen from his place.”

“Stella, that’s actually a really good plan.”

 

A few hours down the island they had cheese toasted sandwiches for dinner at a truck stop.  The truck drivers around them leaned over plates of steak and eggs and glistening piles of baked beans. Outside a driver pulled his rig in behind the truck stop. There were overnight spots there, away from the noise of the road. He brought a thermos in with him and started chatting to the woman at the till.

“That could be you,” Vicky said. She found it hilarious that Stella had gone looking for a computer course and ended up getting her HT. “How is it going anyway? Those farting men on the course are just the start you know, if you get a job you’ll have to put up with more of them every day.”

“It’s a bit freaky. Takes me back to when I learnt to drive, you have to manage something much wider then yourself, do you remember?”

“Oh yeah, that was weird.”

“And there’s lots more gears.”

“So is it boring?” Vicky surveyed the drivers at the truck stop. Clearly she was thinking going up and down the island wouldn’t be that interesting. Stella looked at them too, they weren’t poster boys for driving trucks but Vicky wasn’t getting it.

“There’s a lot of different driving jobs in mining. The really interesting stuff, it’s like sculpting really, you’re reforming the land. It takes skill working the wrigglies – that’s those trucks with the two bins on them? And the blokes… I understand them, it’s how they’ve been brought up, man at the head of the household, man’s job, that sort of thing.”

“I reckon you get off on it, beating the blokes.” Vicky finished her sandwich, she’d left all the crusts. Stella picked on up off her plate and bit into it, thinking about the boys on her course.

“Those guys have a wife and kids and they just want a job in a town where there aren’t any. They look at me and they think there’s some moral reason I shouldn’t get the job. That’s all it is.”

There only seemed to be two women on duty and they were cooking, taking orders and clearing. Stella and Vicky took cleared their own plates, on the way out a driver shouted out to Vicky. “Hey love, there’s something wrong with your bloke, he’s a she!”

Vicky stopped and looked at him. She moved her hand up to her belly and said simply, “Yeah but she’ll make a great Daddy.” The driver seemed confused looking between Stella and the pregnancy he’d failed to see before. Outside Vicky laughed and planted a kiss on Stella under the light of the truck stop sign. She looked back at the trucker, still staring at them through the doors.

“Hope he doesn’t turn up at the mine.”

They parted to go to either side of the Holden, Stella was still thinking about the kiss and the daddy line. Was any of that serious?

 

It was a calm night with a moon lighting up the road. Stella liked night trips.  There was less traffic and the road seemed more interesting, you could imagine you were driving anywhere. They stopped in Taihape, played a game of pool and Stella had a few whiskeys before closing time. She picked up a bottle to take with them.

Near Porirua, at 4am, they were nearly there. The last tape Vicky had put on before she fell asleep was Van Morrison, mellow and sweet. Stella was starting to nod off too. She pulled out Van and popped in Led Zep, turning the window down a crack to sharpen her up.  A Whole Lot of Love wound up and up and then there in front of her were three lanes of nothing on the road. Perfect. Stella put her foot down and took the centre lane, feeling the car and the music carrying her along.

Blue lights started flashing behind her just after Tawa. She cursed her lead foot as she slowed, turned the music off and pushed the bottle under the bench seat.

She should have stuck with Van Morrison.

The taxi driver only came to Christchurch for the weekend

But his friend was advertising for a flatmate

And this beautiful red head answered his ad

So he stayed to marry her

He still has his house in Dunedin

And he keeps a copy of an exam his son sat

Tucked into the sun visor to show his passengers.

 

The taxi driver used to have a business to do with beans

Not the sort of beans we have in New   Zealand

But the government took control of the business

And ruined it. They also shot his brother

He does not know when he will see his children again

 

The taxi driver left Napier at 17 with the merchant marines

And it was only going to be for a year or so

The first boat he was on changed its course

The cargo of potatoes was going off

So they were sold to make gin

In London the company gave them 50 pounds a day for expenses

while the ship was in dry dock

the pubs closed at 3 so they took a look at the sights

He looked in the museums and the galleries

They were free

In New York he saw the Salvador Dali exhibition

He likes that sort of thing.

 

The taxi driver recognises me as his neighbour

Who has a truck

He cheers up when he finds out my friends

are dropping me off

And going all the way to the Hutt.

 

The taxi driver wears jandals on his hands and knees

He lost his legs (below the knee)

When he walked on a land mine

Lucky really

Now he has a disabled car park outside the flats

But he saves it for people who have real disabilities.

 

The taxi driver is reading Womans Day and I say

Hasn’t that Princess Beatrice turned out wild

The taxi driver has given her children strict upbringing

She has taught them to be respectful

One is a doctor, one is a computer programmer

One works in a call centre

And I say if Princess Beatrice had had her for a mother

She wouldn’t have turned out so badly.

 

The taxi driver speeds us down the motorway

So we won’t miss our plane

He is a good cricketer and has played in teams in

Pakistan and Australia and here

Auckland is a better place to drive taxis but

He may join a cricket team in Christchurch.

 

The taxi driver has five grown children

And now – more joy – an adopted daughter

He explains that the bible was translated into Samoan

That’s why most Pacific Islanders can speak Samoan

I ask about the identity of his new kiwi born daughter

I want to know if he thinks if she is Samoan

Undoubtedly she is Samoan

But the young people are losing the language.

 

The taxi driver curses the road

we don’t know how frustrating it is

this should be a roundabout or even a set of lights

he has written to the Transport people about it

they should ask the taxi drivers what to do

 

The taxi driver was going to have a Thai bride

He went to meet her but couldn’t stop thinking

about the Chinese girl he met online.

His mate said just fly there, so he got a flight from Bangkok

and surprised her, met all her family

Now they have a five year old and she

loves gardening you wouldn’t believe all the

foreign vegetables she grows

they eat really healthy

 

The taxi driver took a memory course

We give him dates and he tells us who was born then

When I get to a computer I check

he was right, Chrissy Hynde shares my daughters birthday.

 

 

 

The prisons get a few volunteers who turn up to teach things. She’s heard it’s the same in the male prison. The place is crawling with Christians trying to make a convert. They spend hours with women who want to repent, want a place in heaven and then when they get out they can have them up in the front pews a nice example of what Jesus can do. The worst of it is, it can be infectious, one minute a woman can be quite reasonable and interesting even to work alongside and the next minute she’s full of half baked ideas about religion. Religion is as addictive as P and poppies and nicotine thinks Stella. She looks up at the banners on the wall that the women have hung. The 12 Steps says one banner. She reads the steps – there it is on the third line ‘God’ with a capital G and there it is three more times along with a few Hims with a capital H. Great, it’s a visit from the god squad. She stares at the drawings and statements these women and others before them have decorated and hung on the wall and tunes out the god squad and the brainwashed soon-to-be-grads. On the wall the little hand of the clock does slow rotations but she’s learnt to find ways to pass the time.

In her mind she walks up to her Holden. It’s the powder blue HT. She lifts the door handle feeling a slight pull half way through as the lever engages. The door opens, red vinyl interior smells pleasantly sun warmed. Eases herself into the seat and clicks the engine over. The petrol gauge is showing nearly full.

My name is Liz and I’m an alcoholic

She lifts the gear stick up into reverse and eases out the clutch. The rear view shows a clear patch of tarmac with velvet grass at the sides. The car slides onto the road and she moves it into first gear and perfectly balances the clutch and accelerator to glide down the road gradually moving the revs up and slotting into second. She nurses the steering wheel down the the left and takes the corner the speed never wavering and moves seemlessy down the back road then lifts her foot and looks for traffic moving down the merging gorge road. Nothing there. Her foot goes down the engine powers up and the HT moves faster getting up to 51k as she gains the road and then slightly eases off to turn and take the bridge out of town.

And so I got a sponsor and she told me 90 meetings in 90 days and ring me every day and I…

As soon as she’s  over the bridge her foot goes down and now she’s switching to third and the engines opened up and the HT starts eating up long stretch. Then she’s buttoning back to turn onto the beach gorge and onto that beautiful straight. She guns it through the willows and poplars, all filtered light like Cybil Sheppard might be in this scene the way they always shot her to look soft and dreamy and the HT just cuts through it she can get up around 130 ks here and it doesn’t even judder that 186 motor is just so sweet.

….funny but it took till I was in jail again and I thought maybe there is some kind of connection between my drinking and getting into trouble but I never saw it before…

She pulls her foot off and lets the HT glide and slow, then kisses the brakes and takes the first turn of the gorge, concentrating and leaning in to each corner, accelerating out again. She glances in the rear view mirror doesn’t want anything to think she doesn’t know this road like the back of her hand. The HT rocks round the bends almost like she knows them too and some nights she’s practically driven herself back home poor baby – there’s that one scratch where for a second she’d connected with the wire catcher on the inside bank that time.

…. and you know what it’s like when he’s giving you the bash and you’re driving?

In fact Vicky had talked about that. How Shane had laid in to her a few times when she was taking the Cortina over the beach gorge and how she couldn’t duck or move because she didn’t want to crash the car there.

When the last tight turns were taken care of that was when you saw the beach – a great stretch of sparking blue like there were 50 surfers parked out there in sunnies reflecting the light back and making you squint. You just had to glance at it because there were still a few corners to take and then finally it was on to the downhill stretch and there, like a jewel on the sand, was the beach pub. She slowed and turned right, took the little bridge and stayed in second to glide down the road and then went  into first turning onto the gravel, that soft crunching sound of gravel under the tires, and pulled up by the back door of the garden bar.

‘Stella? Stella? Are you with us? Do you want to share?’

‘I’m alright at this time thanks.’

‘OK, we’ll end the meeting with the serenity prayer linking hands.’

 

I don’t get a lot of real letters these days. It’s all email and Facebook from my friends and family.

 

My letterbox has a no junk mail sign on it. I made the sign from those give-away fridge magnets you get from plumbers and real estate agents. I cut them into the shapes of our house numbers and then I still had plenty left so I made NO JUNK and put them on the metal box. I didn’t think they’d last but they have.

 

The odd clown turns my magnet letters around to say JO NUNK sometimes and then, oddly, I get all the flyers from the supermarket bursting out of my box. When I see all the junk mail, I notice the magnets have been swapped around. When I change it back to NO JUNK I only get the local rag and a few bills and still, after all these years, a few things for my ex.

 

So I don’t check the box much. I don’t know how long the letter had been there. One of the kids fished the letter out of the box. My hands were full so she posted it into the top of my handbag where it perched, out of place, across my lunchbox. I gave it a glance just checking it wasn’t going to slide off onto the footpath and when I saw it I did a bit of a double take.

 

I was holding a shopping bag and my handbag in one hand and I had my arm outstretched with the car keys to shut the garage door. I love that automatic door, it’s one of the first things I ever got sorted after me and my ex split up.

 

The envelope was smaller than usual, it was made from thick paper of a creamy light yellow and there was a real stamp. Stamps are another thing you don’t see much these days. There were other small round inked stamps on the letter showing its progress, like the sort you used to get on passports and, well, letters. But what made me stop, with my thumb on the automatic garage door opener and my arm outstretched and pointed at the garage door, what made me put my bags down on the footpath and pick it up and have a good look was that the letter was addressed to me.

 

Well not completely accurately to me – but that made me clearer still about who it might be from. The letter, in blue flowing fountain pen ink, was addressed to my first names and my ex-husbands surname. It said: To Mrs Gordon Edward Paulson.

 

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had mail addressed to me that way. I never used his surname. Not even when we were together. I have a perfectly good name and I never changed it. Maybe in the back of my mind I was thinking of the drama if I ever wanted to change it back. The only people who have ever sent me mail addressing me as a Mrs Paulson were a few elderly relatives who got the news I was married and put two and two together. I recognised this as the handwriting of one of my relatives but I’ve never had any mail from her before. And there’s a good reason for that.

 

“I’ll take these.”

 

My eldest daughter grabbed my things, breaking me out of my trance, and I followed her through the gate where the other one was waiting, sighing, and I let us all in. They dispersed into the house leaving me at the dining table. I grabbed a steak knife and sat down with the letter in my hand. Was this some sort of joke?

 

I’ll have to tell you what I’ve got in my wardrobe so you understand. On the top shelf, in an acid free box, in two archive quality folders, there are The Letters.

 

The earliest one is dated February 1820 and it’s from Carrie Bimson writing to my great great great great aunt or grandmother or cousin. She’s writing from a small farm in America to her family in Preston, England. Two old ladies corresponding over the years as the spokeswomen of the family news – but we have only one side of what they say.

 

The letters arrived with my grandmother. They were in an old bureau that her husband’s father had owned. That bureau contained all sorts of things: cards and a cloth bag of pennies we used for gambling, and a host of pictures of her grandchildren in Australia and New Zealand and lots of blue airmail envelopes from her sons and letters we wrote as young kids painstakingly writing the words to say thank you grandma for the money you sent, all kept by my Grandma each just as precious as each other.

 

The letters were old then. They were in shoe boxes and cigar boxes made by companies that didn’t exist any more. They were each in their envelopes and roughly filed by date up to 1911 when our recent family correspondence took over. I remember in the 70s looking at 1911 scornfully because it wasn’t even 100 years old but of course it is now. One hundred was a magic number that made something ‘antique’.

 

And when I was in a mood for thinking about old things, or I just felt like reading somebody else’s mail (which was a bad thing unless the people in question were dead) I’d take them out. I’d spread them on my parents bedspread. Sometimes Dad would join me and tell me bits and pieces about them. Some of the letters were written when there was a paper shortage and so they wrote across the page one way and then across it another way and you had to read it with a ruler for the criss cross writing to make sense.

 

There isn’t much for a historian to get excited about.

 

Some of them were written in the civil war and they told of how they hid the boys in the hay stack to keep them from conscriptors. Later, Carrie said it was sad that they had brothers dragged into fighting on both sides of the war. And later still she says they have been offered compensation land for a penny an acre – but that it is out in California and everyone knows that land is worthless. We always laughed over this. These people, our relations, might have been rich.

 

It was in the hope of riches that the letters were kept. Somebody, a great great grandfather I think, wanted to prove that he was the rightful heir to land in Ireland. The letters didn’t help with that but they are a different treasure to us. I loved to feel them in my hands and connect to way back then, and now at the dining table, because I haven’t touched a letter like this in years since my uncle came and put them in their plastic folders and helpfully transcribed them to go online for his genealogy, I feel that connecting again.

 

In my hands I’d feel paper that women wrote on who helped plough fields and sew clothes and birth babies. They sketch new flowers for their sisters to see, and enclose seeds and instructions on how to grow them. They send a home-made Valentines and Christmas wishes. They tell of new babies and baptisms and who was poorly. When there is a death you know before you open a letter because the envelope is framed in black. Unfortunately all the letters are out of their envelopes now so you can read without damaging them. You don’t have that feeling of anticipation that comes with folded paper sliding out of an envelope.

 

Carrie Bimson is the main author and she always says Do write! It is so long since your last letter! Tell me all the news. I want to know everything! And she tells of the weather in great detail and what is happening with the crop. When I was young I didn’t understand that this was because the weather was make or break for them. I understand her letters differently now. Carrie would have loved Facebook.

 

So here I sit with a letter in my hand that looks just like those in the wardrobe. I take the steak knife and carefully slit it open.

 

 

 

Dear Deborah Margaret

 

Well I never thought a daughter of my family would travel even further than I did! But here you are at the bottom of the world where the weather is backwards and you don’t have bears thank goodness but you do have wild boar like your poor great great great aunt Elizabeth was gored by and then they sent her home but she had William on the ship – but I already wrote about that. She’d of been better off staying in America.

 

I am writing because I know you’ve been asked by your Uncle to pass on our letters to that Museum they put up 12 miles from our old farm. I know you are conflicted. Don’t be child. They can go there when you are ready. My words were sent to my family and I’m just glad I still have family to read them. I was so lonely out there and so often scared to death and I missed my sister so. It’s a dreadful thing being apart from your kin. I didn’t say that though.

 

I was so pleased when I passed on that my daughter kept writing and the family kept in touch. Then I felt your letters beside my own as your grandmother added them to the box. I read your words, clumsy and slow as you learnt and then more confident as you found your voice. Imagine my surprise and delight when my letters travelled all the way to you.

 

I know I’m gone now but when you opened my letters as a child I felt like my words were still reaching my family.

 

Do keep writing! Tell me all the news, I want to know everything! Keep the words dear as long as you need them. And do give my love to your daughters – such sassy bright things. I do hope you get rain soon – I’m sorry for your drought it’s a trail and that’s for sure. May God keep you all well,

 

Carrie Bimson

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s for dinner?” asks the eldest and I pop the letter into my bag for later and put my cell phone on the bench – no messages.

 

I open the fridge and take out what needs eating first, look at it, get other things to go with it and start making the meal. We need more tomato paste. I grab the cell and tap tom paste onto my shopping list app and then add a note to the To Do list: write to my sister.

 

The Salvation Army had the contract for processing the unemployed in the town and the system was simple. Once a month everyone on the dole mustered at the work skills centre to sign in.

The queue stretched out the door, through the car park, up the street past the Take Away and around the corner onto the main street sometimes as far as the BNZ. If you missed the sign-on your dole was cut off.

There was a similarity in everyone’s appearance in the queue. Everyone had long hair and most of the guys had beards. The women wore tight jeans or tie dyed leggings tucked into folded down gumboots. The guys wore work boots even though they weren’t working. Swannis and shearers shirts and padded jackets on everyone to keep out the cold while they waited.

People clustered in groups in the queue – smoking and talking and making plans for afterwards. It was a community atmosphere. The men outnumbered the women 3 to one. The women in this town mostly get the dpb – not the dole. Usually they outnumber the guys. A few men here had wives or partners at home and were signing on for the family but most were single because when you have so many to choose from you never settle for long.

She queued with two women she knew who’s surnames were close to the ones she needed to fill in. Two friends were in Australia looking for work and as long as she signed them on they could keep drawing money and looking. She did it for nothing – well maybe the thrill. Once you knew the system it seemed like a bit of payback after an hour of waiting.  

Only six people were allowed in the office at a time. Two ledgers to keep the line moving (what a joke!) and the same questions you had to answer verbally before you signed next to where your name was printed:Have you looked for work in the last four weeks? Did you write a letter or visit an employer at least once? If you had been offered a job would you have taken it? Are you interested in a work skills course to improve your chances of employment? 

Here’s the thing: these people wouldn’t have a job if she and the rest of them didn’t have one.Six people left the office with eight signatures on the ledger.  

Afterwards she headed to the Horse. There were four pubs in town – the main thriving business here. Everyone dreamt of owning a pub one day. On the way there she collected her gear from the car – pens, papers, some photocopies of reference material in a school ring binder which she’d collected from the library over the last nine months or so. The Horse wasn’t busy and she picked a table for her gear before putting 20 cents down on one of the pool tables. Stephen had seen her come in and asked her to partner him, so she was in to a game before she got a beer.

The first beer came from a guy she didn’t know but she’d seen around and knew was a local from the beach.He had to wait till she made the break and sank another ball before she sat down to look at his paperwork. ACC case – two lost fingers. Easy.

“OK”, she said, “I need to know the whole story from you and then I’ll write it up for them. I can write it straight on the forms but its better if I write it down and you take it away and get your lawyer or someone to look over it – have you got someone like that? Ok well tell the story and I’ll put it down for you”.

Hard to know how much he knew about the way things worked. You didn’t really need a lawyer but someone needed to be literate and understand the system. He was a crab fisherman, lost two fingers, nasty mess but fortunate because they were the outsiders – little finger and the one next to it. Not as much money but he could work again – if he could find work. Had he lost the fingers deliberately? He didn’t seem the type.

She and Stephen kept playing while she sorted out the story and got the details she needed and then she asked for another beer while she repeated it back to him. Finally, third beer, she wrote it down and sent him on his way.  

The pub went a bit quiet when three patched boys came in. She recognized one of them as the partner (or maybe ex partner) of a woman who was staying at the beach. No gang presence in this town and everyone gives patches a second look wondering if they mean trouble. She sticks to her business but sees the one she recognises look her way at least once.

The next guy wanted a generic letter to send to several children. They talked about him drawing around the letter and making it fun. She took a double whiskey for that and started to lose at pool because she was drunk.She made a date for the next day with a guy who wanted her to look at his stereo instructions and then got a toasted sandwich and joined some mates at the bar. More beers and more pool (she wasn’t a great partner) and she wasn’t fit to drive but at closing time she rolled out to the HT all the same and got in.

The HT was powder blue and had a 186 in it. The upholstery was red and there was bench seat in front. She bought it off Suzanne for more than she’d paid for it and they both still used it, except now it was hers and Suzanne had fixed the dog and three cats and fenced her section and paid the power bill.

There were always groups of people in the pub car park – smoking joints and doing deals. She’d been out here once already tonight. She didn’t think twice that three sets of legs were approaching or even that the passenger door was opening. The blonde patched guy slid into the HT. “Nice car.”“Yeah.” Hmmm. The other two were outside. What was this? He is reaching inside his jacket. Paper. She is relieved. Hands her a document.

“You know about this stuff?”

Property stuff. The address is in town. She reads: sale and purchase agreement. No, she doesn’t know about this stuff but…

“My office hours are over – and I don’t do business in car parks.”

Outside another figure – crab fisherman comes into view. He knocks on her window. “Coming round to Mels?”

He is giving her an out.

“Yeah – you still want a lift?”

Get in get in get in. He walks around to the passenger door and blonde patch asks if he can talk tomorrow.

“Nah – three days – Beach pub – opening time.”

He leaves and the crab man gets in. They sit for a while and then she clicks the ignition over.

“Yeah they hardly ever need keys.”

“You live at the beach right?’“

Yeah but my cars down the road – drop me off on the corner.”“

Sweet.”

Tomorrow she will get to the library and read up on conveyancing. Then she’s getting a quote from the local lawyer and see how much these guys would be paying for the real thing. She’s gonna think about what could go wrong and whether its worth the risk. But she kind of gets off on risk.   

Here’s how it went down – the day things started to unravel.

Mack had met a guy who said he had some fantastic heads at a great price – sticky foxtails. She did a bit of business with Mack. He was business like, kept good margins, checked backgrounds, didn’t take risks. He did hardly any drugs so he was always thinking straight.  

They were two thirds of the way there before she realized that the guy they were going to see had been at their flat last week. She hadn’t liked him. Shifty guy. Broke out a joint and the four of them had shared it. He’d asked them what they thought of the gear and she asked what was in it – it had to be laced  but she hadn’t picked what it was. H, he said.

That was low – lacing stuff like that into a get-to-know you joint. If that’s what it was… As soon as he said it her mind ran a check on her high – how relaxed, how communicative, what was she seeing, how was she feeling – involved? Detached. Some sort of opiate definitely. Bastard. Now they were traveling to his place and she had a trust issue with the guy. Not good.

It got worse.

She told Mack to leave the money in the car and on the way down the driveway she moved it out of the pack and stashed it in a tampax box in the glove box.

“If I tell you to get the pack just go and start the car.”

Long driveway – the overgrown hedge hit the car going down it and Mack had the nouce to turn the car to point out before they went to the door. Old farm house – she’d seen this kind before and knew the layout. They headed round the back and found three edgy junkies waiting for them. Two guys and a woman. All strung out. It was hot.

“Where’s the gear?” she didn’t want to be civil and muck around. Behind her Mack was standing in the doorway.

“Did you bring the money?”

Wrong question. Smells all wrong.

“Where’s the gear?”

First junkie nods to the next room. It was a bedroom off the first room and the window faced out front. There was a pound unpacked on the bed and another wrapped up beside it. She could tell it wasn’t great gear before she got close to it: little heads, lots of twig and cabbage. She turned to look back and the first junkie – laced joint guy – was blocking the doorway. He was between her and Mark and coming out of his jacket was a gun.

“Its good gear isn’t it?” he said and his face was menace and desperation.  

“Right it’s what we expected”, she said, and louder “get the pack from the car hon.”

The junkie relaxed as she walked to the gear and then she didn’t know what he did because she saw Mack make it to the drivers seat and she forward rolled through the open window like some fucking stunt woman. She kept turning so her bum was landing in a big overgrown hydrangea – blue. Her elbows and palms were pushing her up and off and she stepped out and then landed in the passenger seat as he took off down the drive with her leg being whacked by the hedge until she got it inside and the door closed. Ugh. Spiders probably.  

“I take it the gear was no good” he said and she wondered whether they should think about moving out of their place and setting up somewhere else before those junkies could turn them over. I am not getting enough of a cut for all this she thought. 

He still wanted to score because they had a trip to Wellington planned in a week and he didn’t see the point going empty. They filled up in Morrinsville and he took her up a back road that became unsealed after a while. She was excited she was going to meet a new grower but she kept cool – he was very wary of her knowing his contacts and they would be wary of him passing on their id. As they pulled in the driveway he put his hand on her thigh and she knew they’d be the honeymoon couple meeting an old friend.

Sure enough he was a farmer who’d met him at school. She met the wife – Naomi – seemed pretty straight but you never knew – and admired the dog and the kids and the kitchen while he and Mack ducked of to ‘look at the tractor’. She heard the car trunk slam after a while. Two can play that game.  

“Hey”, she says, “I’ll give you my mothers phone number in case you ever want me to get hold of you. I know a lot of women in Wellington – I’m from there and I go there a lot. Some farmers wives I’ve met have a little industry. Make a bit of money on the side out of the scrub land. Nice to be able to buy a few extras. Dishwasher. That sort of thing. If you ever know anyone who’s in to that – and they want some help to meet people – maybe they don’t want to meet the people themselves – I could help with that.” 

Not an entirely bad day. She is trying hard not to smirk in the car. There’s a big bag of lemons and kiwifruit in the back – too many for Naomi to cope with. Unlike Mack she’s put no cash down but she definitely intends to make the little deposit she’s agreed to.  Next time she sees Naomi she’ll explain that she and Mack have broken up.

She needs to ring Suzanne and tell her she’s her mother.   

 Harry had entered the bush from Otaki Forks. The river was up when he went over the swing bridge but not dangerously high and it was twilight. Now, as he moved up in the tree line he caught occasional glimpses of the moon as it rose. The track was a bit wet and he had struck soft pug in the lower valley but as he rose through the forest floor the track firmed.

The beech trees were thick overhead and the darkness closed in. In the day this was welcome shade after the hard climb. He used his headlight as the track became indistinguishable in the groundcover of fine leaf mould over roads of tree roots, reaching up to miniature hill ranges of moss encircling each trunk. 

The first time he’d done a night tramp was with his father. He’d stumbled along until his father told him to stop trying to see the ground.

“Feel it under your feet. Trust your feet.”

And he had – right until he’d walked face first into his father’s pack. Then his father had talked about listening too.

“You’re an adolescent elephant, just because we’re walking hard doesn’t mean you have to plant your foot with so much force. When you’re an old codger you’ll want to keep that effort for the hills.”

The night tramp had opened his senses to the bush. He was listening more than looking, feeling the track and as they walked on he realised his sense of smell could tell him how close his father was. 

He’d made the crossing twice before at night. Both times he’d experienced a rush of what he supposed was spiritual elation when he got to the tops.   The terrain changed again, the beech giving way and the first mountain cabbage trees started to let in a little light. This section of the bush was over with sooner. The cabbage trees could take cooler temperatures than the beech but the track was still climbing and he was soon at Field Hut. Minutes later the height of the vegetation dropped away and the sting of Spaniard Grass at his calves would have told him he’d reached the alpine terrain if the night sky hadn’t been revealed to illuminate the blasted hillside.

Up on the tops the night was cold as Harry stopped. He rolled up his socks to shield his legs and put the torch in his pack. Only then did he look out on his first night solo Southern Crossing of the Tararua ranges. The moon was barely above his shoulder and the ranges were a frilled outline all around. The track was very visible now but experience told him not to trust his eyes – moonlight had a way of smoothing out the dips and ruts. Better to use his night sense and save his eyes for the view – a not quite monochrome frozen landscape that even now awaited the finishing touches of frost.

Magic.

He shouldered his pack again – a fit man can make the walk up to the next hut in four hours and then on to the dress circle and down to Alpha hut in another five. Harry expected to be starting to walk out of the bush at Kaitoke in 7 hours. Moving off he savoured the moonlight accompaniment that would be his until the decent if the night stayed cloudless. 

Unbidden he remembered the last time he’d done this tramp. He was with two other guys from the tramping club. There had been snow on the top then and the moonlight had been reflected in it until it was almost daylight. One guy had kept saying how happy he was and the only thing that would make him happier would be if his wife was there to share it with him. Since their bootlaces were frozen Harry doubted his wife would be so ecstatic to be there but he knew what the guy meant. Now, alone on the track, he felt the beauty was almost too much to take in alone. It would be good to be able to say to someone something like,

“Hard yards getting up here but she’s worth it eh?”  just to make it easier to cope with perfection. 

All too soon the walk across the tops was done and the bushline started to meet him, scrubbier on this side. He was halfway in when he heard voices. He slowed and listened. There had been no entry in the first hut diary that anyone else was going over from the south and the north was for masochists. He’d made tea at Alpha hut and there had been no signs of recent habitation. There was silence now but he figured he’d hear them again soon enough – sound carried well in the early hours of the morning. He didn’t hear them again for a while and then his senses went blank as he descended into trees again and the path disappeared from view.

For a few steps he was on firm footing but then his boots met the spring of scrub and he knew he was off the route. He stood to put the headlight on again – annoyed to have to go to artificial light again so soon. The track was out to the left  – he must have stepped out several feet but it was wide and he ought to be able to follow it now he had had a visual check. A pair of mountain bikes had gone through recently leaving ruts. He snapped off the light, used the beginning of their rise to guide against his left foot, and started confidently down. 

Not long down the track and the air shifted perceptively with the decline. He felt the warmth of the beech forest layer before he smelt the wet tang of moss. He paused to take off his wind breaker – no more shifting air for the descent and he’d overheat with it on. He heard the craaagh of a bloody possum and underneath it, out of place, a whimper – what was it? a dog? It was close. 

Hunters use these tracks. They’d take dogs in but hunting dogs were valuable – you wouldn’t leave one here. This one could be injured. A small rustle at ground level – not the possum then – somewhere up ahead. He snaps on his headlight, shoulders the pack and moves slowly down the track. 

He saw the child about 3 metres off the route – might have missed it completely but for the big eyes reflecting off his light and the dayglow of some picture on his (her?) clothing. When he got there he saw a lot more – cuts, grazes, very little clothing and all of it damp. The kid wasn’t scared of him – didn’t smile but seemed to relax.  His impulse is to pick the kid up and when he does he finds a heavy nappy snagging at the trousers the kid has half on.

So he does what you do with any hypothermic person in wet clothing. He strips off the cold gear and replaces it with some of what he’s wearing – warmed by his body and like a tent on this small small person.  And then he starts rooting around in his pack to see what else will do when it hits him the kid will fit in the pack so he pads her – he saw it was a she when he took off the nappy – he pads her in his sleeping bag and straight away she’s happy there and nodding off. 

Now he is walking carefully down the track with a little girl – warm, asleep and sucking her thumb on his back and he presumes he must be going to find a rescue party or hear voices of someone looking for her soon. Later he wonders why he didn’t shout out, but he didn’t. In this way he is able to make out the sound of a shovel or spade, of digging, as he comes down the track. He hears male voices – one low and calm, another more high pitched – anxious. And he’s thinking – why are they digging? Why dig in the bush?  

He knows where he is now – and the beech is soft underfoot mostly – so he takes off from the track and heads toward where he knows there’s a creek and he follows it down the hill where he knows the farmland it will spill out on to. If those guys lost this kid they can pick her up from the police station – he’s not going to meet two guys out digging at 4 o’clock in the morning.

After the pub closed everyone went to Laras place.

Freddie is never quite sure what she is supposed to do at these things – she acts a little more wasted than she is until she actually is as wasted as she’s acting. They listen to George Thoroughgood and The Doors and ACDC and people stream in and out of the front door and the back door.

Cars drive up and drive by. Freddie rolls cigarettes and drinks beers. She stands on the veranda and she stands by the stereo. She dances a bit. She watches Aaron in the corner chatting up Debbie from the corner of one eye.  Amanda and Simon are talking down on the lawn. She thinks about walking down there and then walking up but it’s a steep slope and she’s now pretty out of it. 

Frank comes up and asks to lend some money for a couple of weeks and offers his Merc. They go smoke a joint but the living room window and she looks out at the Merc. She’s never driven one before. Its worth more than she’d be lending but if she had to sell it – would there be a buyer? She tells him she’ll want the papers but then changes her mind and asks for his Mazda. It’s straighter really and she’d be able to sell it faster if he gets busted or loses or whatever could go wrong with whatever he wants the money for. 

She is sharing a joint in the living room when she joins everyone else in looking out of the window. Simon and Amanda are arguing. Simon slaps Amanda and she puts her arms up and steps back from him. Simon steps toward her grabs her hair and slaps her again. Inside the stereo is still blasting but it seems quiet because nobody is shouting to each other anymore. Through the window you can’t hear what they are saying but she sees Amanda glance up – and Freddie feels dirty that she’s looking out at her friend.

Amanda is shaking her head and then Simon shakes Amanda. Its like a movie – not real. The next thing Simon is walking into the night and Amanda seems frozen until Freddie sees that Lara is there and she’s leading Amanda away – up to the house and the party. 

Later Freddie is in Lara’s bedroom – the party is still going out behind the door but she and some others are sitting here while Amanda cries. What Freddie really remembers Amanda saying that night is this: 

“But who will love me if I leave him?” 

Amanda is skinny and blonde with big blue eyes and a sweet honeyed voice. Who will love her? Well a lot of guys would like to try. But Amanda makes excuses for Simon. He had an angry father. And she knows about anger – her stepfather was like this. She knows she didn’t handle things right. She set him off. But, and she looks up and smiles at them, he can be so unbelievably sweet after he’s been angry. Freddie gives her a hug and tells her again she should leave and then she leaves the room before she says something really stupid. It’s the first time she’s understood that a person’s insides are not the same as their outsides. She wants to finish getting drunk and she wants to hurt Simon some way but she’s not sure how or how it would actually help.

A few days later and Freddie is at the beach pub at opening time. Hadn’t meant to be there but the Mazda has broken down and she knew there would be three free games on the table. Out of habit she gets a Waikato. 

The only other person in the bar is Tais brother Fen. He’s a big boy from the Black Power in Wellington. Not wearing his patch. She hasn’t spoken to him much – he has almost nothing to say. The story is that he had a few too many magic mushrooms and he’s a bit slower than he was. He has a jug of OJ in front of him. She sits at the table next to him and nods to the pool table. He picks up a queue and they start a slow game.

Simon comes in carrying a petrol can and looks around. Freddie and Fen are still sitting at separate tables. Simon doesn’t look at him when he asks her if he can siphon some gas from the Holden. Freddie wonders if he knows how disgusted she is in him and why he thinks she’d help. But then she has a better thought.

She tells him where the Mazda is and that the tank is half full and he leaves. Freddie and Fen are in luck and get their third free game because nobody else comes in for a while. Then Freddie asks to use the phone.

It goes to the Hamilton cop shop but she knows they’ll call a car. She tells them she saw a guy breaking in to a car up the gorge way.  She puts the phone down and sees Fen is right behind her. 

“Hey that’s that guy beat up his woman at Laras house the other night?”

“Yeah.”

“But you said he could take that petrol?”

‘Yeah.”

“Who’se car is that?”

“Not mine – a friend – he’s out of town.”

“He’s gonna spend the night in the cells then eh?”

‘Yeah – want another game? “ 

Freddie gets another beer. 

 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 

Fen leaves around midafternoon and walks down to the beach and around the bay. Takes his time and pokes at the sand here and there.  

He wonders if he will

Jemima was going to be six. Mia talks about what they will do. Freddie pretty much leaves it up to Mia and says she will be there. Mia knows she will either be very helpful or very drunk.  

Freddie takes Jemima out in the car with the dogs – they let Mika out at the top of the gorge road and she runs effortlessly alongside the car. When they get to the beach Mika runs after the seagulls and circles back for sticks. Snow walks slowly but she seems happy to be out – she sniffs the air and barks to Mika and the waves.  Jemima scribes her name with her stick and says she is wondering if her father will send her a birthday card. 

Freddie knows about Bruce from the time she broke into his house and stole back Mias clothes and sewing machine and photo albums. She knows he was young like Mia when they met and that he was just as unable to create a family life he’d never known . But he was 17 and with two years up on Mia she’d trusted him to pay the bills and be there and when he wasn’t…. 

When they get back to the house Mia is struggling with the kindling – they are both bad at it. She has made macaroni cheese and Jemima’s brother Dan is already sitting at the table with a bowl full. Freddie has a half hearted attempt at splitting the wood while she tells Mia about the birthday wish.

After the kids are in bed they get talking again. Mia supposes that Jemima got thinking about her Dad because of the kids at school. Freddie says it must be something the teacher said because she hasn’t seen any Dads down there. They laugh but then they talk about it some more – would it be so bad to send Jay a card from him? 

Mia says: She might get the idea he could love her.

Freddie says: Well maybe he does?

Mia says: What I mean is – that he might help her, that she could trust him, she has to expect that she looks after herself. 

Freddie wonders why Mia let Jemima believe in Santa if she’s not so keen for her to believe in her father.  

On Jemima’s birthday she wakes Freddie to say that her dog is doing a poo in the lounge. Freddie strides in yelling but finds in fact she is having her puppies. Freddie once saw her friend having a baby in hospital – all nurses and monitors and drugs and yelling.  Snow looks surprised as, paws first, a perfectly formed diver arcs from her body.

The pup is still encased in its sack and Freddie remembers the one book she read after discovering Grant Whetton’s German short haired pointer had gotten in to her bitch. She moves it to Snows muzzle and the dog’s instincts take over as soon as she smells her baby. She is cleaning her first born when the second arrives but when she is done she turns to the next and then the next and her strong tongue brings each to the final stages of life.  

Mia makes tea and provides an old blanket for the apple box which they shift the dog and eight puppies into half an hour later. Freddie scrubs the carpet and rings the pound to see if they know if eight pups will be OK for the dog to manage.  

An hour later they leave to blow up balloons at the community centre. Kids and Mums start to arrive a bit later. Grant Whetton comes in with his neighbours Tina and Mark and their daughter Hannah. A huge parcel of fish and chips takes centre stage before the cake and then a treasure hunt.

Jemima opens her presents and comes across an envelope with $5 in it and a note: Happy Birthday my beautiful daughter, Bruce.  

Jemima says: Who is Bruce?

Mia says: Bruce is your Dad.  

Jemima momentarily strokes the note; she puts the money in her pocket and then moves on to the next present. Mia looks over at Freddie and Freddie mumbles that she’s off to the pub now. Grant falls in to step with her as she starts down the road.  

“Reckon you owe me one of those dogs since my Chester is the father Fred.”

Freddie says she reckons her owes her a bundle since she’s probably wasted her dogs best litter on a bird dog. Being a father is more than putting it in there mate – its making the nest and keeping them safe.  If I get anything out of those dogs its got nothing to do with you. But you can shout me a few beers I reckon. 

Down at the Cross they rack up the balls and Freddie recalls Grant has a child somewhere.