A Canoe In the Mist (13 page)

I
n Rotorua the Hensleys and the Perhams were received into the Lake Hotel without cost or question. Mrs Haszard was cared for in the sanatorium while her daughters stayed with family friends. Joe McRae was restored by a bath, a hearty dinner, a good night’s sleep and the satisfaction of sending messages to his wife, before returning next day with enlarged rescue parties.

It was clear now that the volcano had spent its force. Steam jets shot along the ridge, a mass of steam rising from Rotomahana, and the sulphurous air were the only signs of activity.

Now at last Joe found the body of Edwin Bainbridge, the lively young tourist who had come with such happiness and hope after reconciling himself to the tragic loss of his brother and sister. Far away in England they would mourn for him too—Edwin, the only one of the twenty-two
gathered for safety in McRae’s hotel, who had fulfilled his own prediction that before the night was over they would stand before their Maker. He lay under the broken balcony, killed outright by the crash that Mattie had heard as they plunged out into the devil’s rain.

Four days after the eruption the buried whare of Tuhoto was uncovered by searchers including a half-Maori guide, Alfred Warbrick. To their amazement they found the old tohunga still living, but unwilling to come out.

‘Come, give me your hand,’ said Alfred in Maori.

‘No. Leave me alone. I have my ancient gods to protect me. I won’t die,’ said Tuhoto.

‘Don’t you know me? I’m one of your whanaunga,’ said Alfred.

Only because the helping hand belonged to a relative, Tuhoto allowed himself to be lifted out. Other Maoris nearby refused to touch him. It was said among the Pakehas that they wouldn’t help him because they hated and feared him, but the truth was that no ordinary Maori would violate the tapu on the body of so famous a tohunga. Had he not again proved his unusual powers, by surviving a fast of more than a hundred hours?

The Pakehas had no such qualms. They carried him off to the sanatorium where the nurses and a barber bathed him and shaved him and cut short the hair on his tapu head. When he protested furiously, and bit and scratched them and pushed them away, they put it down to his age
and his ordeal. They took no notice when he told them that potatoes and water were his only diet, and fed him food they considered nourishing. When he died in their clean white bed they said it was from age and weakness. There was, however, another explanation. Pakeha ignorance had broken the tapu and killed him.

When there was nobody more to be rescued, the tangi for the dead began at Ohinemutu in Rotorua. On this famous marae stood the carved meeting house named for Tama-te-Kapua, the captain who had brought the Te Arawa canoe from the distant homeland of Hawaiiki, with Ngatoro-i-rangi as tohunga.

They were mourning sixteen dead at Te Wairoa, Maori and Pakeha; thirty-nine at Moura and Rotomahana; fifty-two at Te Ariki, and others from scattered homes around Lake Tarawera. There were no bodies. When the lakeside villages had been buried deep, it seemed right that those at Te Wairoa should also lie in their own earth.

Mattie and Lillian waited at the marae entrance with the other Pakehas headed by Joe McRae. Mrs McRae and their daughters had come to him from Te Puke. Mrs Perham and Mr and Mrs Hensley had said they didn’t want to intrude on tribal sorrows, but they need not have felt that way. Mr and Mrs Humphreys were there, and Bridget and Nora, and John Blythe and Harry Lundius, and Johnny Bird, and Willie with his Maori wife.

The two girls looked like sisters in their brand-new
dresses. The tradespeople of Rotorua had opened a subscription list and thrown open their doors to the refugees, without ever using the word charity. The draper’s shop had no ready-made clothes for girls of eleven years, so Mrs Perham was told to help herself to whatever material she chose. Using a modern sewing machine, she made two dresses from the same pattern, a blue-and-brown check for Lillian and a red-and-brown check for Mattie. Mrs Hensley, who had taken to her bed again after all those trials, sewed a line of fancy buttons down the front of each dress. Lillian had never worn anything so smart in her whole life.

Now it was their turn to be welcomed on to the marae. Slowly, with bowed heads, the group went forward in response to the traditional call from a kuia: ‘Welcome, thrice welcome, honoured visitors who come to us in our time of misfortune!’ Mrs Bird gave the answering call in Maori and they continued to the two rows of seats allotted them. One of the Rotorua chiefs wearing an old-time cloak addressed them in Maori, and Joe replied also in Maori. Thus they were all made part of this great assembly.

Next came Maoris from another district, giving time for the girls to take in the scene. The marae was already crowded. Piles of food were stacked in full view: potatoes and pumpkins and kumara, koura and eels, seafood, pigeons and ducks preserved in calabashes, loaves of bread. All this had been brought from miles around and would feed everybody who visited or stayed on the marae.

‘Look at that lovely fresh bread!’ whispered Mattie. ‘I’ll never forget that grimy stuff we had to swallow.’

‘There’s Kanea,’ said Lillian. ‘See there? All our people together in one place with Wi Keepa in front. And Sophia and Miriam behind him.’

Lillian went on to recognise other familiar faces. There was Kira who told the school about the waka wairua, and Mr Haszard had said, ‘No, we are not all going to die.’ But
he
was dead…Lillian’s heart gave a jolt, she wanted to cry. Oh, there was the group that had sheltered in the hotel, Tamati, and Makuini with the baby, and the three old people. And the singing women, and Mere Hamiora, and the boatmen, and poor Mohi without his wife and children.

To the other side of the meeting house sat the hosts, the tangata marae, who lived here at Ohinemutu. From among them rose a beautiful soprano voice with the first line of a hymn. On the second line she was joined by women’s voices, with others coming in on the third line, and again on the fourth, and finally all the men. The sound swelled to a harmony that touched the spirit so tenderly that only silence could follow it, a silence charged with a grief too deep for tears.

And now a dignified, tattooed man wearing a cloak of dogskin came forward. Directly facing the meeting house with the tribal ancestor portrayed on the gable, he intoned a karakia—or was it a prayer? The first of the speeches
was followed by several others, to be briefly explained by Joe and Willie Bird and Willie’s wife. Among the dead were people of renown: Te Ranigheuea the chief of Te Ariki, and Niheta Kaipara Mokonui-a-Rangi the chief of Moura, and other notable men and women. Their deeds and their ancestry were recalled and honoured. And sometimes Lillian heard the name of Te Harata, the Maori form of Haszard: they were paying tribute to a devoted schoolmaster. Every oration was followed by a waiata in which others stood up to strengthen the chanting.

The response from the bereaved survivors was led by Wi Keepa Te Rangipuawhe. He was wearing a cloak of kiwi feathers over a European suit, in place of the garment he had always worn at Te Wairoa on special occasions, a korowai of flax fibre with a patterned taniko border. Perhaps it is lost for ever, thought Lillian, the tears rising again within her.

First Wi Keepa sang a lament which recalled the legend of Tama-o-hoi who had now broken forth from his chasm. He thanked Te Arawa for feeding and clothing his destitute people, and added that the Government of New Zealand should do their share until Tuhourangi could again earn a livelihood. In a voice trembling with passion and sorrow he spoke of the land, the beautiful valley of Te Wairoa which was now a desolation; and of Rotomahana, that most precious of all thermal treasures, which had given to generations of Maoris its abundant food and healing
waters. With no land remaining but two small remnants not fit to grow a potato, the prosperity of Tuhourangi was lost, its mana brought down. But the heavens had spoken. Rotomahana, for which many battles had been fought, first with weapons and then resisting the greed of the Pakeha—Rotomahana was lost for ever.

And finally he sang, alone, the waiata which flowed from his heart when he came forth from the crowded, despairing interior of Hinemihi, and saw that the volcanic rain had ceased to fall at last. Mingled with his thankfulness was his awe of the cataclysm which had torn apart the tapu mountain and scattered the bones of their ancestors, overwhelmed so many of the living, and destroyed their foothold on the earth. And yet, Tuhourangi would live on.

The whole assembly was now loud with weeping. Lillian buried her face against Mattie’s shoulder. Oh, it was sad for Mattie too, everyone there was filled with sadness…but for herself something more had come through, a powerful sense of belonging. How had Wi Keepa given her this, when she couldn’t understand his words? But as he stood there in all his dignity, his voice breaking with emotion, she saw him again standing before her in the mud of Te Wairoa looking as rough and grubby as everyone else, and saying:

‘Au-e! I also weep for the land. It is our mother and without that mother we would not be here. But we cannot
let living people die because of the death of the land.’

When the ceremony was closed with prayers and the people began to move and mingle, Lillian unclasped her hand from Mattie’s and found it white with the pressure of their grip. ‘I must talk to Mr McRae,’ she said urgently as she pushed her way through to him.

‘What is it you want, Lillian?’ said Joe from a great height, as if he’d grown taller somehow, but perhaps it was only that he’d cast off his burdens.

‘I want to know where they can live, now they are homeless,’ said Lillian anxiously.

‘Aye, but you’re a big-hearted lassie, to be that sore troubled on their behalf! Never fear, the Maori generosity won’t fail, though it’s little enough they have to share. You’ve maybe guessed there were offers of land in those speeches, but they cannot settle all in the same place. And even when tribes from all over New Zealand send food and money, as they will, it won’t be enough. They’ll need to seek work wherever they can for Pakeha wages. Thousands of acres on the other side of Tarawera have been ruined by ash, did you know that? Our farm at Te Puke won’t grow potatoes or maize or cabbages this season, or the Lord knows when.’

‘Then you—you—’ Lillian struggled for words, dismayed that she hadn’t even thought of him in trouble.

‘Oh yes, I’m probably going bankrupt, and you too, eh, Humphreys?’ said Mr McRae with surprising cheerfulness.
‘Knock us down and we’ll come bouncing back. Now if you’ll excuse me I have six impatient daughters. God bless you, Lillian, and you too, Mattie, and wish your parents a tour without fireworks after this.’

‘How can he make a joke of it?’ said Mattie accusingly as Joe McRae and his family melted into the crowd and went out of their lives for ever. But Lillian didn’t know the answer to that, and she was busy saying goodbye to the two Humphreys and Bridget and the others, before they were alone.

‘We’ll be eating soon. I can smell the pork,’ said Lillian.

‘I couldn’t eat a thing, and I don’t want to talk to anybody. I couldn’t! It’s too sad.’

‘We must. They’ll think it rude if we don’t.’

‘With so many people here they’ll never notice us—oh, look who’s coming!’

Kanea pushed her way through the crowd and flung her arms first round Mattie’s neck, then round Lillian’s. ‘Sophia say to come over now,’ she said.

Mattie hesitated. To go
there
, among the people who had suffered most, and lost their own parents and children and dearest friends? But Kanea was pulling her on and there was no way to hold back. They wove their way across the marae to where Sophia and Miriam were sitting by a wall and waiting for them. They were like a quiet island in a sea of grief, after that grief had been relieved by its open
outpouring during the ceremonies.

After pressing noses and embracing, Sophia said, ‘We have only a little time before they call us for kai. Mattie, when do you leave?’

‘Tomorrow, by coach to Tauranga and then the ship to Wellington.’

‘And you, Lillian?’

‘Mumma’s been offered a job in Hamilton. It was in the papers about us losing everything. Constable Moroney came to tell us.’

‘Hamilton is not too far. When you come this way you can find me at Whakarewarewa. For you, Mattie, the oceans are too wide.’

‘Lillian will tell me about you. We’re going to be friends for ever and keep writing letters. We’ve promised,’ said Mattie.

Sophia smiled. ‘Letters are a bond that may weaken. We don’t know what lies ahead for either of you. But you’ll never forget that you shared two things: a night of terror and danger, and a day of great beauty. I’ve been thinking about your jewel, Mattie. I don’t think it’s entirely lost.’

‘But it’s like you said, isn’t it? Rotomahana’s all blown up!’

‘Yes. It has gone, and Wi Keepa has given up all claims to where it lay. And yet, when you placed that spray of whareátua in the pool of the White Terrace, your friend Lillian was there and it will nestle in her memory as long
as she lives. It will stay in my memory too, because you gave me something extra.’

Sophia paused and went on, ‘I have guided many tourists. Often they are loud with exclamations, like Mrs Fazackerley, but they don’t
feel
anything. To show that they’ve “done” Rotomahana, they scrawl their names on the Terraces and break off pieces of crystal lace for souvenirs. That is not the love that should hallow a place of such riches, where generations of people have lived. At times I grew so weary of the tourists, I felt I was demeaning myself by showing them round. Perhaps Tuhoto was right. We should never have made Rotomahana into a show place to fill our pockets with money. But when someone like you comes along, Mattie—and you too, Lillian—and feels its true magic, and adds a little more of your own, why then my work has meaning. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ said Mattie. ‘But you’re talking as if it’s still happening.’

‘I will be a guide to other treasures, at Whakarewarewa. But there’ll never be another like our Terraces.’