Heartland (17 page)

Delia's statement

On the outside of the envelope Delia writes carefully:

She re-reads what she has written:

Delia dates and then folds the sheets of her handwritten statement, seals the envelope and slips it with her Will and Marriage Certificate into a pigeonhole in the old oak writing desk.

A lucky break for Tracey

‘Fitzy sold another of my paintings,’ says Tracey, her head down, voice gruffly avoiding any signs of pleasure. ‘And he says— Whoops!’ She stumbles and nearly falls. Donny holds out his hand to guide her over the fallen log. Tracey accepts the help easily, smiling even, which warms Donny to the pit of his stomach. Both babies are in backpacks, Manny’s donated by the McAnenys, Sky’s a Kingi cast-off. The little ones chat away in their endless baby language, bobbing up and down as their parents stride along.

‘What did Fitzy say?’ Donny is only half listening.

‘Tell you when we get there.’

The river hole they’re heading for is a Manawa secret: years ago, Donny’s granddad showed him the pool, close to the road, though the entrance to the track is hidden by bushes. Donny was pleased to be able to share the secret with Tracey last summer; now they come as often as the fickle
mountain weather and Donny’s work allow. Today has been a scorcher, Ruapehu standing sharp against a pale blue sky, tiny wisps of steam rising from its crater, the bush up its flanks a hazy purple.

Here by the river, the beech trees provide welcome shade, the babble of water over stones a cool and easy accompaniment to the children’s gurgling. Over the years, those in the know have built a dam of rocks at the lower end of a natural bend in the river. The quiet pool, dark below the far mossy bank, glinting by the near shore where the sunlight catches it, is perfect — sandy shallows for the children, cool depths for Donny and Tracey.

Donny tears off his clothes and bombs naked into the pool, bellowing like Tarzan. The children, already paddling, are showered; familiar as they are with Donny’s loud ways, they scream with delight. Tracey, wearing bathing togs, enters the water more sedately, splashing her thin arms and shoulders with the delicious water before she commits her whole self. There they bob and fossick for a while, Donny wading downriver with a large rock to add to the dam, Tracey letting pretty Sky ride on her back in the shallows. Manny roars for his dad to give him a ride too and Donny returns, tosses his son high in the air, scattering shining droplets, then dips him head and all into the river. Tracey and Sky watch in alarm but Manny loves it.

‘More, more!’ he shouts — his favourite word.

Later, they sit on the bank where sun slants through the outstretched branches of a beech tree, eating a meal of New World deli throw-outs — ‘Fit for kings!’ as Donny says almost
every night. Out on the road, a truck bumps and rattles over the little bridge, but the family is hidden by the great leafy trees, a world away from work or worries. Even Tracey seems to lose her edginess at the river hole. She sings with her mouth full — ‘Three bags full!’ — and the children join in with deep belly laughs, opening their mouths to show how full of food they are. Donny lies back among ferns, drunk with happiness.

‘I heard some good news,’ says Tracey. ‘Fitzy told me.’

Donny stares lazily up into the trees. ‘Yeah?’

‘Some big-shot down south is doing a movie and some of it will be filmed in Manawa.’

‘Yeah, I heard.’

Tracey scowls over at him and Donny grins. He knows by now to ignore whatever mood her face might suggest.

‘Fitzy says there might be a job for me in it. Helping Tina Kingi. She’s doing catering while they’re filming here. Those film stars, he says, need good meals — you know, cooked breakfasts and special stuff for lunch. Tina will need a hand.’

‘Whoo hoo, Trace. We might be able to buy a car.’

She looks at him, and Donny clears his throat anxiously. ‘There I go again. Your money, right?’

But Tracey is watching something — a dragonfly hovering over the water, perhaps — and doesn’t answer. Donny levers himself up and brings the children back from the water. He towels and dresses them, and loads them into the backpacks. From time to time he looks at Tracey, worried that she’s angry, trying to guess what she’s thinking. She’s gone quiet as she often does, drifting into another world where Donny doesn’t seem to exist.

Back on the road, plodding along under their dozing loads, Tracey says abruptly, ‘A car would be a good idea.’

‘I don’t have any savings, Trace.’

‘Well, I do, you idiot, that’s the whole point. I could buy it.’

Donny groans. ‘Trace! You’re not thinking of shooting through?’

Manny wakes with a start and begins to cry.

Tracey scowls furiously. ‘It would be both our car. You provide the house and food for us, I provide the car.’

Donny stops in the middle of the road, ignoring Manny’s wails. ‘For us both? Dinkum, Trace?’

She nods, stopping too and studying the grey metal of the road. ‘Might as well. Makes sense.’

Donny knows what she’s saying. It’s a commitment. She’s decided to stay with him. More than anything in the world he wants to hug her; he takes a step, meets her dark eyes and checks. But he can’t resist a light touch on her arm, which she allows, the slightest smile breaking out from behind the ramparts.

‘I love you, Trace,’ he says.

‘Your Manny’s crying. Get cracking, you big lump.’

But there are tears in her eyes and she lets him see them.

The film crew rolls in to Manawa

Like everyone else in Manawa, Vera has trudged down to the railway line to have a dekko. She’s outraged at what she sees and marches up to a long-haired young man who’s lounging in the middle of the road, directing traffic. Traffic control in Manawa! The lanky fellow straightens in alarm. Vera on the warpath is a frightening sight.

‘What the hell is all this?’ she demands in a voice that carries to the kohanga children and Lovey’s school class who are lined up safely behind a fence, marvelling at the sights. ‘Look here, I have to get Bull’s tea across this road in a couple of hours. Will you be clear by then?’

The young man clearly doesn’t understand. He speaks into his walkie-talkie, switches the sign to
GO
, then turns back to her.

‘We’ll be here for three weeks, maybe four, depending on weather,’ he says, politely enough. ‘You’d better get off the road now. They’re coming through.’

Vera plants her feet, lowers her head as if preparing to charge. ‘I’m not going anywhere till I get some answers. I’m not going to be bloody cooking all afternoon and then find I can’t get a hot meal through.’

The young man scratches his locks, which are nearly as disreputable as Vera’s. He gestures back up the road. ‘The caterers are back at the hall. Perhaps you should talk to them?’

‘
I
am the bloody caterer,’ Vera shouts, and is about to say more when she sees the cavalcade arriving.

‘Come over here!’ calls Lovey. ‘Quick or you’ll be smashed.’

Vera decides to move after all.

Manawa gawks as five big trucks, three enormous caravans and an assortment of smaller vans lumber down Kingi Road, turn right onto Matai and find parks near the hall. All the trucks are enclosed. One of them has a satellite dish and various other protuberances on the roof. The stretch-limo-style caravans are painted white and pink, have floral curtains and TV aerials. Suddenly the quiet street is full of men and women sporting headphones and voice mikes, clipboards and tool-belts. One of the trucks begins to emit thumping noises — a generator. Wires are unrolled from it and into the hall.

‘Selina Sands is going to star,’ shouts Lovey over the racket. ‘And Max Burton and Lydia French. They’ll be in those caravans, I bet.’ Lovey’s habitual solemnity is gone. She’s a normal excited child, jumping up and down with her schoolmates, ready to squeal, eager to garner autographs or even a photograph.

The caravans are hauled to a vacant lot by the hall. No star emerges, though, and the children begin to drift back to school. Vera plots a course through it all to Bull’s and sees it will be possible. But the thought of the weeks to come fills her with dread. Keeping Bull on an even keel will be bad enough; much worse will be the inevitable discovery of a body in the bush section. All these busy strangers! They’re so full of importance, so intent on whatever they’re doing. They won’t care whose toes they tread on, whose lives they might destroy. She’d like to lash out at somebody, but who? It’s all too much.

Vera goes to have a word with Tina Kingi, who it seems is now a caterer for the crew, but she’s turned away from the door of the hall.

‘Crew only, sorry,’ says a polite but firm woman in overalls and headset.

Vera wants to explain that this is
her
hall, where she went to dances back in the old days; where her mother had her wedding reception; where the library used to be and, for a while, the post office. But in the face of the friendly, impersonal stare of the stranger, she turns away, defeated.

In the following days, all activity is centred on the hall. Vera and Bull dare to hope that the bush section will not, after all, be needed. There’s even a kind of pleasure in marvelling at — and deploring — the enormous expenditure.

‘Tina tells me,’ reports Vera, as she and Bull eat their
sausages and baked potatoes, ‘that all of them — even that dreadlock boy on the traffic signal — have ham steaks, eggs, bacon, chicken legs and crumpets for breakfast. Breakfast!’

‘Wouldn’t suit me,’ says Bull. ‘I like my toast and marmalade.’

‘Well, but Bull, they have that too! And cereal if they can manage to stuff it down. And then there’s lunch and dinner if they go on late.’

Bull adds butter to his potato. ‘However do those stars stay slim, you’d have to wonder.’

‘Oh, they don’t eat with the crew. They’re not even here yet. Lovey is quite disillusioned.’

Bull relies on Vera for reports. He’s stayed at the back of the house all week. His face looks drawn tonight, a wrinkling around the eyes and a greyness to his skin giving Vera fresh cause for outrage. But he’s interested in the money side of it. ‘Who’s in those great caravans then, if not the stars?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, Bull, no one. They’re empty. Waiting for their ladyships and his majesty to put in an appearance.’

They speculate on the likely daily cost of the empty caravans, the generator which stood silent all day yesterday, the food bill, let alone the salaries.

‘What are they actually
doing
?’ asks Bull.

‘Search me. The Virgin’s in there helping Tina. She says they’re not allowed to talk about it. I think they’ve been building a forest lair with fake rocks and ferns and buckets of dried potato flakes thrown everywhere for snow. Or was it an underground cave? Something like that, inside the hall. Then they decided it wasn’t right and pulled it down again.’

‘Good God.’

But in the silence that follows, they are thinking of the Virgin and Donny, not the fake lair. Or the wasted money.

‘No activity out in the bush?’ asks Bull eventually, rising and taking the few dishes to the sink.

‘Not yet.’

A week later, the news is that Di Masefield has appeared on the set. Lovey brings the story to Vera, along with half a bacon-and-egg pie. Her big sister, Tina, has been quietly distributing the leftovers around Manawa. All the locals are eating well these days.

‘Di Masefield?’ says Vera, not believing it.

Lovey nods. ‘Yep. And it was me done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Got her the part.’

‘You’re making it up, you little monkey. Di Masefield has a part in a film?’

‘Well,’ Lovey concedes, ‘not
exactly
a part, but sort of.’

It turns out Lovey and her class were visiting the craft centre in Ohakune to watch a weaving demonstration. Di was there doing the explaining. As they were leaving, Lovey dared to tell Di that her hair looked quite like Lydia French’s wig.

‘Who?’ says Vera.

Lovey rolls her eyes. ‘Lydia French. You must have heard. She played that old lady in
Autumn Remembrance
, don’t you remember?’

‘Did it come to Ohakune?’

‘No, but her photo was in the magazines and the papers — you must have seen her.’

‘Go on then,’ growls Vera.

‘Well, they want a stand-in for her to do the marks.’

Vera gets up from the table to put the pie in the oven. ‘Lovey Kingi, if you can’t talk plain English, take your news somewhere else. Stop pretending you’re the world expert on movies and spit it out.’

Lovey gives an exaggerated sigh, brushes back her fringe and contemplates Vera. But in the end she has to finish her story. ‘The famous stars just come in at the end when everything’s ready. They sit in their caravans, drinking coffee and eating tiny fancy meals while a stand-in does the standing, in this place or that. Fitz says the stand-in has to look a bit like the star — same height and that — so the cameras can line up the shot. Sometimes the stand-in actually is in the movie, you know, if it’s just back-on or in the distance.’

Vera is interested in spite of herself. ‘And Di Masefield is standing in for this famous star?’

Lovey giggles. ‘Yeah. It’s her hair done it. Lydia French wears this massive wig. Tina saw it hanging up, and Mrs Masefield’s hair is exactly like the wig! Tina thinks Lydia is acting some sort of creature from the underworld!’

‘Go on. Who would go to the movies to see Di Masefield’s hair?’

‘Anything looks good on Lydia French. Anyway, when they’re ready for the real Lydia French, she’ll just pop out of her caravan to do the talking, then pop back while Mrs
Masefield does more standing round.’

Vera snorts. ‘Di Masefield won’t enjoy being somebody else’s dogsbody.’

Lovey grins. ‘No, she does. She loves it. Tina says she ponces round like Lady Muck. It’s her hair is the star really. But she don’t know that.’

That brings out a full-throated laugh from Vera. She punches Lovey on the arm, and they lose themselves in the giggles.

‘Who would want,’ splutters Vera, ‘to make a wig like Di Masefield’s hair?’

‘Lydia French must be the baddie!’ shrieks Lovey. She flings her thin arms around Vera’s stomach and buries her face there, hiccupping with laughter.

Vera pats her awkwardly. A good laugh is just what this child needs, she thinks. What we all need. Thank God for Di Masefield’s hair.

‘Let’s try some of this film-star pie,’ she says, wiping away tears.