| 'Angels Coming | 
| |
| Down' | by Myra Howerd, Sep 1989 | |
| Copywrite held by Claudia Klaus, P.O. Box 5102, Mackay M.C., QLD 4741, Australia |
| 'Angels Coming |
| |
| Down' | by Myra Howerd, Sep 1989 | |
|
| Copywrite held by Claudia Klaus, P.O. Box 5102, Mackay M.C., QLD 4741, Australia |
Sonny's late again. I wonder where those boys do get to, sometimes. This is the second time this week they've failed to come in when they promised they would. I think it's about time to give them a little shakeup again.
It's different when they're out in the boat. Then I have to accept them at whatever time they appear, like on monday when Fred caught that fish. My, that must have been a job of work for him!
He's always so proud of his fishing, is Fred. I remember when we were only children, living in Ashburton. Fred would go down the river then and come back with trout enough for everyone's breakfast, and there were eight of us then with Mum and Dad. Maurice was the other one who fished. He and Fred would try to better each other at nearly everything in those days.
All the rest of us were girls and even if we looked longingly at the river and its pursuits we never would be allowed to run as wild as the boys were.
Look at the family now. Maurice is dead, killed in Africa in the war, Jane was killed in Singapore, Joanie is married to an American and living in California somewhere, and little Evelyn got killed just after she left home. Not many of us left now, just Joanie, Fred and me.
Fred's the only one to carry on the family name. I often wonder just how it was that he ended up married for he was always such a womaniser who swore that marriage was a fool's game. Even when he was a teenager he was getting girls in trouble and I think that's why he finally left Ashburton. Too many irate fathers chasing him...
That's when he went on the boats. Dad swore at him when he discovered where Fred had gone, telling us girls that he was a good-for-nothing who deserved a whipping. And that was before he found out about the girls.
Fred always did keep in touch with me, though, and I remember that even though Dad ranted and raved he never tried to stop his letters or decline the occasional bit of money Fred sent back. They were much harder times then.
When Johan died it seemed the best thing to do, to come back to New Zealand and live with brother Fred. We were in Victoria at the time and I'd just got back in touch with him again after a long gap. Fred was never much of a writer at any time, but on this occasion he was remarkably quick to reply. He was envious of the wandering life Johan and I led, I think, or he simply liked getting letters.
I don't think anyone else ever wrote to him, he was always so obnoxious a personality that most people were glad to be rid of him, but they never realised what sort of man sheltered behind that coarse exterior.
Take his language, for instance. Fred was well educated compared to his peers, and is capable of much better speech than he professes, but he likes his image of dirty-mouthed old man too much and is deep into the habit of talking the way he does now.
Why, just the other day he shocked his sons by speaking perfectly good English to that new housekeeper girl, the one Dave Hurst brought in. Young Penny brought her down to meet me and of course Fred got to meet them as well.
She's a wee thing, this girl, supposed to be French but I never heard a french accent like hers anywhere in Europe... Oh, she's fluent, alright, and anyone else might be fooled, but I said nothing. It's a funny thing about that girl, her English has an underlying accent... not at all French... that's so hauntingly familiar to me somehow, I've heard it before... no doubt it'll come to me in time.
Anyway, she's a wee thing, as I said, and she dressed rather severely and wore these terrible glasses. To complete the schoolmistress effect she wore her hair pulled tightly back and the combination was just short of dowdy.
Well, when Fred was introduced to her and she was shaking his hand, he paused and peered into her face a moment, then ever so gently reached out and took those glasses off her. She stood absolutely still, like a deer trembling before flight, then he put his hand to her hair and without haste removed the pins and ties so that it cascaded onto her shoulders.
I was quite surprised at the transformation.
Instead of a dowdy little librarian type there was instead a brown haired beauty, with incredible blue eyes and the grace of a gazelle.
All Fred said was; "Lassie, you're a very pretty girl. Don't spoil it all by hiding behind those atrocious glasses." His voice had absolutely none of the coarseness he usually affects.
I remember too that Johnny was watching at the time and his mouth flopped open. I'm not sure if it was the change in his father's voice or the abrupt change in the girl's appearance, but of course he moved in on her anyway. Johnny's the original prototype for the Valentino image. with shiny black hair he sweeps back over his head and a craggy face that shows perfect white teeth when he smiles, his brown eyes glinting with humour.
He can be a perfect gentleman when he wants to be, but in the end it comes down to just one thing, getting the female he's wooing into his bed. I could see the process starting with this one, but something about her manner suggested that she wasn't at all fooled by his overfriendly style, and she was cool to him.
Sonny's completely different. I was frightened of Sonny when I first came here and met him. He's a giant of a man, even taller than his brother's six feet three and twice as broad. I used to think he was fat, but I've since decided that it's all muscle. He professes to hate women and when Johnny brings girls home from the city... we call Invercargill 'the City'... Sonny gets quite impatient and roars at them. When I first came here Johnny had a girl living with him and the place was a pigsty.
I had a talk to her and between us we forced Johnny and Sonny to clean the place up and to provide some decent facilities. Would you believe it, they had an outside privvy then! It didn't take long, but Johnny missed out on quite a few nights of domestic bliss before we got the rules established.
Sonny didn't say much, but I think he was pleased. Suddenly this girl... Jean, her name was, I think... was much less of a slut in his eyes and they could communicate. Johnny used to steam impotently when the four of us... Jean, Sonny, Fred and I... used to play cards at night. I have more than a suspicion that she managed to fall in the wrong bed one night, and that that was why Johnny finally took her back to the pub where he found her.
Maybe Sonny doesn't hate women as much as he pretends.
It's a strange life down here at the bottom end of New Zealand. I was horrified when I first came here and saw the weather and the people, and realised what I might be getting into. I didn't have to come, I could have stayed in Australia, I suppose, but there's nothing for me there now but memories.
It might have been different if Johan and I had had children, but of course I couldn't and then we were always travelling. It was a marvellous life, really, but now I'm quite happy to settle here. Fred thinks I have no money and I haven't disabused him of the idea for I think I do more than earn my keep here in his house and therefore there's never any need to tell him. I did pay him back for the airfare he sent to get me over to Christchurch, but I think he believes these were my last few cents.
If he only knew! In fact I've still got several properties in Australia, two in Melbourne and a house in Adelaide, not to mention the shares in the mining company. Since it's all in Australia I needn't ever mention it over here...
I'd never heard of Fergusson Point or Fergusson Bay until I got his letter. I'd written to him care of this hotel at The Bluff where I knew they'd keep anything for him or pass it on if they knew where he was, and this time I was surprised to get a reply so quickly.
Of course I had no idea of what I was getting into when I accepted his offer to come and be housekeeper to him and his sons, but now I'm happier than I would have been in Melbourne and I've come to love the wildness of this place. Now that it's summer the light goes on and on forever, and it's possible to read a newspaper outside at ten o'clock in the evening. Of course the reverse applies in winter when the wind howls around the house and then we light the fire and I can sit in front of it and do my crochet or my drawings.
When we fixed the house up I insisted that Fred fit that insulation stuff in all the walls and ceiling.
Didn't he and Johnny curse! They had to strip the internal liners off and cut it to fit in all the spaces, then put the liners back on again. After a while the pink fibreglass gets into your skin and itches abominably. Not only that, but I made them rewire the place for electricity while they were at it. Now that made a big difference. Sonny organised a big diesel generator and shipped it out on a flatbed truck over that terrible road.
It took three days in the coming, but it was worth it, my word it was. Now we just flick a switch and we have light, and I can have some music whenever I want,for I asked for and got a record player at the same time.
Yes, life is fairly comfortable here now. I have my chickens and my cats, and of course I made them get a housecow again since there was such a large paddock behind the house. Now we've even got horses as well, but I must confess that as done for the children. They do enjoy it so much, being able to catch and ride their own mounts.
Young Susan Prentice, for instance. She's always out there feeding them carrots or sugar or something like that, her little sister Geraldine toddling along behind.
I've watched them grow, these children. Susan must be ten or eleven now, a big fair haired girl with the face of a cherub but the heart of a bank manager's mistress. I think she gets it from her mother who seems to have a fatal attraction for men, much to Frank's distress.
No, it's not a very happy family. They live in a cottage only a few yards away and sometimes I can't help but hear what goes on, the yelling at night and the tears in the morning, the bruises she tries to paint over...
Well, it's their business, but I wish it didn't happen with the children there. Frank Prentice believes his wife is playing around when he's out fishing, and he might just be right. Lord knows, that Wayne Murray seems to do a lot of visiting, and Johnny isn't much better.
I told him once.
"Johnny, you keep away from that Prentice woman, or one day Frank will fill you with holes with that shotgun of his, and I wouldn't lift a finger to help you."
He just laughed at me.
"Don't you worry, Aunty, I just say hello every now and then. It's Wayne Murray you should be talking to."
"I never did like that man. He's a foreigner of some kind, I'll swear, and a bad one as well."
"C'mon, Aunty, he's from Palmerston North, his people have a sheep farm there."
"And how do you know that? Did he tell you? Have you seen this farm?"
Johnny just shrugged and turned away, just as he does with anything else that makes him uneasy in life. No backbone, that's his trouble. He needs a good woman who'll stop his alleycatting and whip him into shape, for I'm convinced he's not naturally rotten. Someone like that Marcia would do it, I should think.
Now there's a couple to watch. I never had much time for Maoris before I met them, too lazy as a rule and inclined to take the easy way of things.
Not Tui. He and Marcia are very recent arrivals in Fergusson Bay, they've been here only eighteen months now, but they've done little but work, work, work.
She's a nice looking girl, not pretty, her features are a little too heavy for that, but she's got a nice figure and her sense of humour makes up for it. I can't remember any time I've seen her that she wasn't smiling.
They'd only been in the old McKenzie homestead a couple of weeks when I first went over to see them and when I knocked on the door I could hear all sorts of hammering and sawing going on around the side. When Marcia opened the door she still had a paintbrush in her hand and her shiny dark hair in a cloth.
"Hello, I'm Emily from the Holloway house. I've brought you some milk and eggs, I thought you might be able to use them."
Marcia wiped her brow, leaving a smear of paint, and opened the door completely with a smile of welcome.
"Too right! Come on in and please excuse the mess. We're rebuilding the kitchen and living areas to try and survive in this mausoleum. How did they ever live in a place like this, let alone bring up a family..."
"I think they had more help than you have," I told her dryly, looking around a room that was stripped completely to its ribs. Clearly the Wongais were doing exactly the same renovations I'd made Johnny and Sonny sweat over so many months before.
Marcia's husband Tui came in from the next room, a hammer in his hand and a builder's tape measure in his pocket.
"Hey, Tui, this is Aunt Emily from over the Holloway's. She's brought us some eggs and milk. I hope you don't mind me calling you Aunt Emily?" she said to me in sudden embarrassment. "Susan Prentice has been haunting us and we have an intimate understanding of all the residents now. She's always saying 'Aunt Emily this and Aunt Emily that'..."
"Oh, I don't mind, everyone calls me that. How's it all going, then?"
Tui's brow wrinkled as he answered, his dark face becoming thoughtful.
"I think it's OK, at least so far. We're stripping the inner walls and putting fibreglass in against the stone to try and keep it a bit warmer in winter. It's terrible stuff, though, drives you mad with the itching."
"Haven't you got gloves...? No...? Then you'd better come over and get ours. I had the boys do the same thing at our place only last year and they used some nice leather gloves. Tell you what, I'll get young Susan to run over with them shortly."
"That's very kind of you, we won't say no, it'll make things go much quicker then."
"How much more do you have to do?"
"We're not too perhaps four more days. There's a lot more to be done when we have enough money, but that will have to wait. I want us out in the boat next week, getting the paua in."
"My, that will be a job and a half on this coast. Will you be out there on your own then?"
The two Maoris looked at each other before Marcia turned back to me to answer.
"No, I'll be with him, Aunt Emily. It's pretty rough out there, and I wouldn't be happy with Tui going out on his own. No, we'll do it all together."
Her chin lifted at these last words as if she dared me to criticise, her brown eyes flashing.
"Well, you are keen! From the sound of it you might be short of a few things too." I looked at her shrewdly. "What about fuel, and how are you going to get the shellfish to the City?"
We were still standing in the rubble strewn room, and suddenly Marcia cleared some chairs to make room for me, using the activity as an excuse to think of a suitable reply, I thought.
When I was seated she did look at me, a slight air of defiance about her.
"We've got an old Holden ute that we'll take the shellfish in with, and we intend to buy fuel as we need it. Everything else we'll grow here."
I looked from one to the other, noting the colour in Marcia's cheeks and the tension in Tui's stance. They obviously had virtually nothing and meant to fight their way to the lead in a gruelling mindless job that had the one single thing going for it that they cherished above all others. It was theirs, and nobody else could take it away from them.
"I think we'd better have a talk, you two. How old are you, Marcia?"
I saw the swift glance of alarm she gave Tui.
"I'm twenty two. Tui's twenty four."
There was a small silence, then I sighed.
"Let me guess. I'd knock at least three years off both those figures and I'd bet too that you've come here in the face of stiff opposition from one or both of your families. Maybe you aren't even married, but that's nobody's business but your own.
"The thing I see very clearly is that unless you have help you're doomed to failure, and I don't like to see young people who have enough push and enthusiasm to go out and start something like this fail.
"Let me tell you now, I'm a nosey old woman and I've taken the liberty to enquire about your business affairs. You need capital, money to set yourselves up."
Marcia opened her mouth to speak, her eyes flashing angrily, but I held my hand up and went on.
"Let me finish. You need power here so that you can at least run a small freezer and make your delivery trips an economical proposition. You also need fuel here to reduce the waiting time when you can go out. You also need equipment for your boat. Sonny tells me you don't even have a radio, and that your engine needs work done on it. These are all things that on their own can kill what you're trying to do. Am I right?"
Before Marcia could burst into life Tui looked at her and held his own hand up. Then he turned back to me, his face a mask, and nodded.
"You're right on almost every count," he admitted. "We are married, though," he added as an afterthought.
"Then you need help. I gather from the way you've gone about things that you can't expect too much from your families?"
Marcia's face wrinkled and she gave a short laugh.
"Not likely! When Dad found I'd married Tui he kicked me out, said I was a slut who'd been sleeping around, and that I couldn't expect any sympathy from him. There was a right old row, I can tell you. Tui doesn't have any family really, just a grandmother, and she still lives on the Marae in the East Cape area. We came down here to start a life for ourselves, away from interference." I could see tears in her eyes.
"Then will you let an interfering old busybody help? I think we can make a private arrangement that we needn't tell anyone else about. Strictly business, and I do know business, I can tell you."
I looked at each of them in turn, and they stared at me as if I was an apparition. Tui came slowly forward and sat down on a sawhorse, a mystified look on his face, and Marcia just looked at me, her big brown eyes wide.
After a long silence Tui spoke.
"What did you have in mind?" he asked in his slow way.
"I thought I could become a sleeping partner in your business. I'd provide the capital and you'd do the work, but there would always be the opportunity for you to buy me out, and of course if I died I would have it arranged that my share automatically fell to you. I've looked into this sort of undertaking, and I think it's quite viable as long as you have no downtime. That is, if you or your equipment don't fail. Will you let me do it?"
"Suppose we do?" Tui seemed to be thinking as slow as he talked, but I could see he'd already faced the problems and knew I was right. "What would you do, specifically, I mean?"
I looked at them both and smiled.
"First I would order you a diesel generator and a good stock of fuel, then that small freezer. Meanwhile you should rewire the walls while the linings are off, and you'll need fittings for lamps and all the switches and stuff. Sonny can help you, he did our place.
"Meanwhile I'll make some phone calls to the City and arrange some credit for you for all these things and see if I can't get you a radio for that boat. Young Gerry Hurst knows about them, I'll have a talk with him. Tui, what's wrong with the boat's engine?"
"It needs a new injector pump. Everything else is OK," he answered promptly.
"Come over to our place and order it, then when you go into town take the old one in for a rebuild, that way you'll have a spare. You don't have a phone, do you? We're on a special radio link, shared with the White sisters and the Prentices. I'll try to arrange that you get on it too, that should make things easier, won't it?"
Marcia stood up, her eyes shining, and came over to me.
"Aunt Emily, you're the first and only person who's ever helped us. I wonder if we can ever repay you!"
"Oh, Lord, that's not a problem. You just wait until you see the finance side of it, you'll find I'm a hard master. By the look of you it'll come right, though. And you don't have to thank me, just call it one in the eye for families that won't look after their own!"
I stood and prepared to go.
"Oh, yes, the milk and things, I almost didn't give them to you! Have a talk about it, my dears, and come over for some bread later on. I make my own." I smiled at them and left them still sitting in their battered room, wonder and hope on their faces, and I felt warm all the way home.
In the following months my faith in that young couple had been amply repaid, and their indebtedness to me was already reduced for they were perfectly willing to go without to get ahead. My spies in the City told me that Marcia paid the bills promptly and expected service in the same vein, and when I went over to Invercargill recently on one of my infrequent trips my bank manager invited me out to lunch to talk with me about them.
"You know, I wouldn't have given them a mosquito-sniff of a chance in that business when they started, but I've got to admit they've done very well indeed," He commented.
"Hah! You mean you weren't willing to give them a chance. I know you refused them a loan at the beginning!"
He looked pained for only the merest second.
"That's true enough. They were an incredibly poor risk, he was a new fisherman and she had no job."
"And they're Maoris. That was the rest of it, wasn't it?" He had the grace to look uncomfortable.
"You underestimated their capacity for hard work. Never mind, the time has come for a little repayment of social debt, Julius Fenwick. I want you to use your bank's facilities to get me some information."
Now he really began to look alarmed.
"Emily, you know we can't do that! That's the job of the police, or some private investigators, and any client information is absolutely sacrosanct!" He looked quite ill, the poor man, no doubt remembering the previous occasions when I had asked similar favours of him.
I reached out and patted his hand.
"Now, then, don't fret so, Julius! It's nothing to do with your clients, at least I don't think so. I need to know about a man called Wayne Murray. He's a newcomer in Fergusson Bay, and he's running one of those helicopter contraptions.
"He's let it out that he comes from Adelaide in South Australia, but I have grave doubts about this. I want to know where he got the money from to buy that machine, and if possible where he does hail from. Now, that shouldn't be too difficult for an old ferret like you."
He immediately looked relieved.
"I can tell you most of that already, he's an interesting character and I play golf with his bank manager. His name has come up in conversation several times already, so I doubt I'm breaking any confidences if I tell you.
"Your story is substantially correct, as far as I know. He has a brother or something on a station over there, and the money for the helicopter was sent over by him in a single transaction via a Sydney bank. I know about this because it was an unusually large sum, something in the order of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I believe.
"That in itself is a bit unusual. One of our more enduring businesses tends to be financing helicopters for live game recovery, and most operators put the very minimum down and pay the rest off. This fellow was different."
"Hmm. I don't quite like the sound of that. How can you be sure the money originated in Adelaide if it came from Sydney?"
"Er... well, I suppose one could ask for the records, but it's perfectly in order for things to be done this way, Sydney handles millions of dollars every day."
"And Adelaide banks don't. Is that what you're saying, Julius?"
"Of course they do. Emily, you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about this man. What's set you off on this wild goose chase?"
"Oh, it's not much. The fellow is a bit common and could be a social problem for us one day, but I don't hold that against him particularly. No, it's his accent, and a tattoo on his arm. The accent I know very well indeed, and it never came from South Australia, I can tell you. And he lied. He told some people at the beginning that he came from the North Island, then he switched to Australia. I don't believe either story!"
My companion shrugged.
"Very well, I'll make enquiries, if you wish. It'll have to be discreet but I'm sure we can manage that."
He sounded a bit dry.
"We've done it before. Is that all you want?" He began to look more cheerful.
"No, there's more." I paused to assemble my words carefully. I was on much more uncertain ground here.
"There's a girl recently arrived at the Point, she does housekeeping for the Hursts. I want to know about her."
He stared at me in surprise.
"A girl? What on earth has she done to upset you, is she a thief or something? You amaze me sometimes, Emily!"
I looked at his face and flushed.
"No, this child is very acceptable, and definitely not a thief. She professes to be French, but I can assure you she wasn't brought up in any part of France I ever had occasion to visit! Well, that's no crime. No, it's something more, something not quite right, she's got an accent I just can't quite place, it's hauntingly familiar... Oh, good Lord!"
I suddenly put my hand to my mouth.
"What's wrong, Emily, you look quite shocked, are you alright...?"
"Of course I'm alright! It's just that I've realised what that accent is, it's German, or more likely Austrian! And to think I never noticed, it just goes to show that it's the familiar things that are least noticeable... I certainly should know it, I lived there for years."
"And is this a surprise? Why shouldn't she speak German?"
"Not just speak it, Julius, she was bought up speaking it, from childhood, I should think. What a little witch, that she could get that past me!"
"I still fail to see any significance in it, Emily. French or German, she's a foreigner and as such she's perfectly normal, probably working her way around. There's lots of them each year in Queenstown that are doing just that."
"Perhaps you're right, Julius, but she's so controlled, so... I don't know how to put it. If she's who she says she is then it should be easy to get copies of her papers, shouldn't it?"
He shrugged.
"I suppose so. Give me the details and I'll see what I can do."
"Her name's Nicole, Nicole Perrier, and she's quite small, brown hair, good build, particularly blue eyes which she tried to hide with big schoolmarm glasses, says she's twenty but I'd knock a year or two off that. Yes, there's definitely something odd about that girl, Julius. Why on earth should she bury herself in the back of beyond as a housekeeper when she could be in the city. As Sonny would say, it smells, just a trifle."
My companion had written the description down in a small notebook and when I admitted there was nothing else he smiled and put it away again, reaching out to touch my hand.
"I don't know why I let myself get involved in your harebrained schemes, Emily. You're such a busybody sometimes, digging into other people's lives. Why do you do it? Is it a hobby or are you just trying to relive the past?"
"You mean the war years, in the Department? No, of course not, Julius. It's just that there's something not quite right in Fergusson Bay, ever since that Hawthorne fellow died. My nose has never let me down before, and it's twitching now. Let me know, discreetly of course, won't you. Just put it all in a bank window envelope and everyone else will avoid it like the plague!"
We stood, and he paid for our lunch and escorted me back to the car. Yes, it would make me much happier to find the smell in the Bay before it became a stink!