The Thrill of Falling: Stories

PART ONE IN SEARCH OF EMERALD CITY

So here we are, me and my mate Whero, and I can feel that beautiful hot white spotlight on our faces. I look across at her, the way the light reflects off those cheekbones of hers and all those sparks come to nest in her hair. How did she ever get to be so gorgeous? She’s a rock diva, queen of the club, and I ramp up the sound on my guitar. Although she frowns, she takes up the challenge.

‘Come on, Whero, honey,’ I urge her, ‘let it out …’

I hear the volcano purr of it, that clear rumbling big voice, no sides to it, man, a Milky Way of sound pouring across the darkness:

Here in the darkness the punters are loving it. Some of them must be bloody Kiwis come to see a New Zealand girl making good in London.

I’m hyped up, proud to be Whero’s mate. People say we look like sistahs … and it’s freakin’ true, you can’t tell us apart. And we are smokin’, man! But we haven’t even reached the climax of the song and … then what happens? Whero walks off the stage! Without a word. Stops singing. Leaves me stranded there.

Just. Like. That. Yup.

Shit.

The back room is dingy and dull.

‘So what the freakin’ fuck was that all about?’ I ask Whero.

She has the gall to pretend that nothing happened. ‘What?’ She shrugs, plucking at her guitar, defiant, trying to stare me down.

‘Unbelievable.’ I shake my head. ‘Did you see the audience? Did you hear them? They were loving our ass.’ Not that they’re happy any more. I can hear them baying for our blood. ‘And you just walk off. You, Whero Davies, the Kiwi wannabe queen of music and lyrics. You left me, Red, your mate, to the lions. What’s your damn problem?’

It sounds like the punters are breaking up the place. Dermot, our manager, must be tearing his red Irish hair out trying to placate them.

Is Whero concerned? Na. ‘Maybe I don’t wanna be the queen of music,’ she says.

I laugh, incredulous. ‘But you can’t do that. Walk off. This is London, not Eketahuna or Gore, for fuck’s sake. We’re this close —’ I hold up the fingers of my right hand ‘— we were this close to signing up.’

‘Red, I gotta love your confidence,’ she says.

I gasp for air. Man oh man, there are times … ‘The record label guy — Bob, Ben … Benjamin …’ I shake her, trying to force her to get a grip.

‘Karl. His name’s Karl Jeffs.’

‘He was out there tonight. And he saw you walk off the stage!’ I try to explain in words the bitch will understand. ‘Isn’t this what we came to London for? Sistah, I dragged your ass here. I was the one who had the balls to get us on the plane, got you to leave the comfort zone of Auckland so you could be a rock chick in London.’

Oh, I give up. Let Whero explain her actions herself to our faggoty little manager.

At that moment, over all the ruckus, I hear a knock at the door. Maybe it’s Dermot himself. I open the door. ‘She’s all yours,’ and a loud blast of angry noise follows him in.

But it isn’t Dermot.

It’s some guy, dark, and at first I think he’s Arab or Hindu but then he steps out of the shadows and looks right into me. I know he’s Maori and that he means trouble.

‘Fuck off,’ I snarl at him. ‘Whero’s mine.’

‘Oh, is she now?’ he replies before pushing me aside. He’s dressed in a slightly awkward colonial-boy-come-to-the-big-smoke kind of way, like he’s a cow cocky from Te Awamutu. The look he gives Whero speaks of charm and humility but I know it’s all bullshit. Bull. Shit.

‘Hello Whero,’ he begins, ‘my name’s Petera.’ He waves his hands in a friendly manner. ‘Buggah me, you had that crowd in the palms of your hands, girl. God knows where you took them, but you had them all right. And then, well, there was that bit where you walked out. You left the place a war zone, eh.’

I try to warn Whero against him. ‘Don’t let him get to you, mate.’

It’s too late. ‘What do you want?’ she asks.

‘I want to know you better, eh, shake your hand and — ’

‘Why? Cause we’re from New Zealand? Cause we’re both Maori?’ She says the words with sarcasm and my heart leaps: maybe she’s onto him. ‘You need a place to crash, eh. You heard a Kiwi accent over the microphone, saw a brown face and thought, “Sweet as”, two Maoris got themselves lost in Europe, and maybe she’ll help me out. Think I’ll just take advantage of some good old Kiwi hospitality. Well, that ain’t gonna happen. Cause I ain’t a Kiwi, I’m an Aucklander, and Aucklanders eat Kiwis for fuckin’ breakfast.’

Oh, but he’s a snake, this Petera.

‘Kia ora for that,’ he answers, ‘but I already got myself a hotel so I will politely decline your invitation.’ Then he moves in. ‘Look, I haven’t been completely honest with you. My last name’s Davies. I’m related to you on your dad’s side. And since I’ve been here in London I’ve been looking … for you … mostly.’

Whero backs away. ‘What for?’

I can tell she’s scared. I mean, fuck, I’m scared too.

‘Your mother, my Auntie Anahera, told me to look you up. After all, your dad only died last month, eh.’

Whero’s eyes brim with tears. ‘I rang her. By the time I got the message that he’d died, it was too late. I wanted to get on the plane and go to the tangi but when I phoned Mum she said, “No, stay in London. Kotare would have wanted it that way. His little girl … trying to make it as a singer.”’

‘Kei te pai,’ Petera answers, ‘I’m not here to judge you. Your mum loves you and the whanau understood. Anyway, I said I was coming over to London and Auntie Anahera asked me to see how you’re coping.’ Awkwardly he hugs Whero. ‘You play a mean guitar — the ole fulla would’ve been proud.’

‘You play?’

‘Hey, I’m Maori, aren’t I?’ He laughs, oozing more charm and pretending that he’s offended. ‘I’m staying at the Sanderson on Oxford Street — pretty flash, eh?’ He takes out a pen and small notepad and writes on it. ‘It’s um — it’s a cab ride from here. I’ll be in London for a bit, taking in the scenery. It would be choice to catch up.’ He tears the page out of the notepad. ‘Till next time, eh?’

I step in his path. I’m not going to let him get away without making sure he knows I’m ready to take him on. But he looks at me as if I’m of no consequence, as if I’m not even there. ‘I’ll deal with you later,’ he says.

When he’s gone, it takes me a while to get my breath back.

‘I don’t like him,’ I tell Whero. ‘He could come between us.’

Next morning, I’m breathing easier.

Whero’s asleep, completely out to it, and Dermot appears to have forgiven her. But I’m still worried about last night: her walking off the stage and, of course, Petera.

What does he want?

I slip out of bed and, tiptoeing to the window, open it slightly. Not enough to let the whole world in, but just enough so that I can take out a ciggy and have a smoke. God, I wish we had enough dollars so that we could have our own flat. Still, we were lucky that Dermot came up with a solution.

‘Why don’t you come and stay with me and Tupou?’ he’d said. ‘We’ve got a spare room. We could split the rent. It would make it easier on all our pockets, eh?’

Earl’s fuckin’ Court. We come to London and where do we end up? The Aussies could claim it as the next Australian state. And Kiwis could do the same, raising the Tino Rangatiratanga flag. All you hear around here are the colonial accents:

‘Gidday, mate. Kia ora, cuz. Put a shrimp on the barbie. All Blacks forever.’

Yeah, you can tell I’m still in a mood, but no wonder Whero and me tried to lose our accents when we got here. However, at least you gotta say one thing about Antipodeans. When you’re on the tube and strap-holding with all those hairy armpits at nose level, it’s not the colonials who give you a whiff: Londoners stink.

And, after all, those colonials — even the ones from Canada, India, Scotland and Ireland — they’re our punters. There’s plenty of them.

The empire is ster-riking back. Chur, bro.

Just as I’m finishing my ciggy I hear Tupou coming in from his late shift at Heathrow. God, how did a Polynesian prince like him ever end up with a faggoty little Irishman? To women Dermot looks like a … well … dork, but he must have some mysterious appeal to men. Though God knows I’ve caught a glimpse of him in the shower and you can hardly see it.

I stub out the cigarette, throw it out the window and sneak over to the door to listen in to their conversation. Open the door a crack and I see that Dermot is making breakfast. ‘You gonna help me,’ Dermot asks Tupou, ‘or are you just goin’ to stand there fantasisin’ over my arse?’

Gee, he’s ever fuckin’ hopeful.

‘So? Do you want some breakfast or not? And what’s with the smile?’

Tupou is just standing there with an idiotic look on his gob. ‘I smile, Dermot, thank you for asking, because I am hot shit. Take a guess at what you’re looking at.’

‘Apparently I’m lookin’ at one Mister Tupou Ihaka,’ Dermot answers, ‘who has the uncanny ability of shootin’ lava from his arse.’ He edges around the table with two plates and ladles out baked beans.

‘Ugh,’ says Tupou. ‘I was hoping for something like spaghetti and meatballs but …’ he takes a spoonful and returns to the point ‘… not lava: sunshine!’

‘Sunshine?’

‘I got the promotion. I walked into that room, pointed my rear at Barry, bent over and music be-gan to play.’ He demonstrates, shaking his backside and shimmying. “Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in, the suuun shine iiin.” Lo and behold, team leader.’

Behind the door I’m trying to stop from laughing. I mean, shut up, sometimes Dermot and Tupou are like Saturday Night Live.

Breakfast is forgotten now. ‘Put a niggah in a suit,’ Dermot claps sardonically. ‘and he thinks he’s goin’ places.’

‘Actually — yeah,’ Tupou answers, flaring. ‘Stick with me, kid. We’ll be in New York before you know it.’

‘New York?’ Dermot asks. ‘Who wants to go to feckin’ New York! My yellow brick road leads to Sydney. From the Emerald Isles to Oz, geddit? The best shows on telly in Dublin were reruns of Aussie soap operas. And Ramsay Street and Summer Bay made me determined to click my heels together and escape the shite grey chill of a Dublin winter.’

Tupou pouts. ‘I never knew Sydney meant that much to you.’ But he’s not about to give in quite yet. ‘So you came to … er … London?’ he adds with barely concealed sarcasm.

‘At least it was the first step on the way south.’

‘Flying into Heathrow with nothing but a suitcase full of dreams,’ Tupou continues, exaggerating. He pretends to be a television interviewer: ‘Sir, have you got the balls for London?’

‘You should count yourself lucky that I stopped over,’ Dermot says. ‘If I hadn’t, we’d never have met.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Tupou says sneakily. ‘There you were, hanging in the urinals between flights. You thought I was a Polynesian prince …’

‘In your dreams.’

‘And I saw you … and, yes, Dermot, I heard music.’ He coughs, pulls Dermot up from the breakfast table and starts dancing with him. ‘“You know we belong together — you and I forever and ever.”’ It’s the theme song to Home and Away.

Dermot doesn’t find it funny. ‘Piss off.’

‘“No matter where you are,”’ Tupou continues, ‘“you’re my shining star.”’

‘I said, shove it!’ Dermot yells. ‘Don’t dump on my dreams.’

‘I’m just playing.’ Tupou knows he’s gone a bit far.

‘Well, I’ve had enough games today, from you … and Whero too. Stupid moo walked off stage last night before finishin’ her set. I busted m’ballocks getting the record label guy to come see her and the bitch does that to me.’

Tupou looks towards the bedroom door; I hide behind it. ‘You reckon she’ll be all right?’ he asks. ‘She’s been acting very weird lately. What is it with her?’

‘Maybe it has to do with her dad,’ Dermot answers. ‘And her mum too. Maybe she’s feelin’ guilty about not goin’ home to the tangi. And maybe there’s stuff about them she hasn’t dealt with yet.’

Now listen to me, Whero, you mustn’t feel guilty, bub.

You know I’ll always love you … and your mother. Have I ever told you how I met her? A thousand times eh! Well tough, I’ll tell you again.

I was at the reef, just around the bay from our marae where it fronts onto the sea. Tamanui Te Ra had risen and Tangaroa, God of the Sea, was calling — who was I to ignore his voice?

Aue, if only I’d known what Tangaroa had waiting for me, I’d have jumped out of bed, grown wings and flown to the seashore much earlier.

‘Oy, you, ya buggah.’

Who me? I had just come up the beach with a sack of paua. Shit, I thought, Tangaroa himself must be on patrol and wants me to put some back.

‘Yeah, you, ya sad buggah, nicking all the kai moana.’

But would Tangaroa talk in such bad-ass language? No. And apart from that, he must have had a sex change as the voice sounded mighty like a female. Uh oh, maybe the voice belonged to a kehua! ‘Is that … is that you … Nan?’

‘Umm …’ the voice hesitated. ‘Yeah, except that I’m younger. That’s what happens when you get to heaven, boy, you get young again. Now you make sure you get that sack to the marae on your way back home. That will make up for all your greed, ya blimm’n poaka.’

I saw movement in the scrubby bushes on the sand dunes. I crept up on the voice, zeroing in. ‘Yes, Nan. Sorry, Nan.’

Whoever it was could barely contain her amusement. ‘Don’t apologise to me. It’s Tangaroa you’re hurting.’

‘Gotcha!’ The voice belonged to a young girl, and she squealed as I pulled her out. ‘I don’t think I’ll be apologising to anybody.’ She was wearing a bright red bathing costume. I took a long look and then, ‘Gee, Nan, you’ve changed,’ I said. I must admit my heart was already going pitter patter, hubba hubba. ‘So who the hell are you? You oughta be out there —’ I gestured to all the women in their ballooning dresses, like ducks’ bums as they put their heads in the water ‘— collecting pipi and gossiping with all the other wahine.’

The girl looked at them and down at herself. ‘Wearing this?’

‘Well … maybe … maybe not.’ I began to be unsure about what to do next. ‘My name’s Kotare — Kotare Davies.’

She looked at my outstretched hand. ‘Unbelievable,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Well, I can’t kiss you on a first date!’ I replied. ‘How come I haven’t seen you around here before?’

‘Maybe I’m just visiting. And stop looking at me like that!’

‘From where?’

‘You take that sack to the marae and I’ll tell you. Look at all your paua! At least those old nans out there treat Tangaroa with respect and leave some kai moana for tomorrow.’

‘Okay, I’ll keep half a sack for me and I’ll donate the other half to the marae.’ Gee, she’d better be worth it.

‘Auckland — I’m from Auckland.’

‘Phew-wee! Pretty flash, girl, pretty flash! That’s where you got your costume from.’

‘You’re a blimmin’ genius.’

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot.’ Couldn’t she see I was trying to be serious?

‘I’m sorry,’ she answered. ‘So … half a sack to the marae? I’m worth at least that, although some boys I know would …’

‘Okay! The whole sack.’ And I was rewarded with a big smile that made the sun shine in my heart.

‘Anahera, my name’s Anahera.’

Yeah, but Anahera who? ‘Anahera Grace?’ I asked. Shake of the head. ‘Anahera Manuera?’ Another no. ‘Anahera Kaa?’ Nuhnuh. This was getting up my nose. ‘Anahera Rumple-fuckin’-stiltskin?’

‘Anahera McLean.’

‘We’re not related!’ I almost punched the air.

‘No,’ she smiled, ‘we’re not even remotely whanaunga.’

I was dancing on the inside. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. All right, yes,’ she replied. ‘Bring your guitar, eh? I’ll teach you how to play until your fingers bleed.’ Then she was off and over the sandhills.

‘And don’t forget,’ came her voice. ‘The whole sack.’

That’s how I met your mother, bub. But I knew I had to work fast because a girl like her, new in the neighbourhood, wasn’t going to be without a fulla for long. Not only that, but there were better-looking boys down at the marae.

Next day, I pulled a sickie from the meatworks — reckoned all that meat could wait to be chopped another day. I phoned the boss: ‘I’m really crook, boss’ — cough, splutter, cough. Then I drove fast to the reef to get some serious fishing in. Other whanaunga were down there, and I joined them in the water.

‘Hmmmn,’ said Auntie Polly, who was with some kuia, ‘the early kingfisher catches the …’ She gestured to Anahera, who’d just arrived, and the other aunties roared with laughter.

I must have broken the record, Whero, for the fastest time to fill a sack with paua. Once the sack was chock full, I pulled it after me up the beach, sucking in my stomach. Anahera was playing my guitar, pretending that she hadn’t seen me, my rippling muscles, my tight ribs, my sexy thighs. Then she looked up. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

I kept my pose a while longer before collapsing into my usual sloping shoulders, sunken chest and bony legs. ‘One sack of kai moana,’ I began, ‘for the marae …’

‘Oh?’ she asked. ‘And what do I get?’

I scrabbled for the other koha I had hidden, beforehand, in the sand. ‘Um, I found this kowhai floating in the ocean.’ I blew the sand off the yellow blossom. A bit wilted, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘I wonder what it was doing …’ Anahera answered, rolling her eyes, ‘floating out there?’

‘Well, it must have known Christmas is coming …’ I raised the kowhai above her head.

Anahera laughed at me gently. ‘Wait your patience, boy. Your kowhai should be a mistletoe. You kiss under a mistletoe.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ What did she think I was: entirely stupid? ‘But where am I going to find any mistletoe around here?’ I sidled in for the king hit. ‘Oh come on, let’s give those old aunties out there something to gossip about.’

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she giggled, escaping my arms and running away.

Your mother sure played hard to get with all her ‘tomorrows’!

Luckily it was the weekend so I didn’t have to pull a sickie the next day. But I was a bit late arriving at the reef and, although it was crowded with the rellies and the whanau and the few Pakeha trying to poach our kai, what was this? Everybody was packing up to go home.

I sat beside Auntie Polly on the sand. ‘What’s wrong, Auntie?’

‘Today, the world has changed, boy.’ She motioned to a sign that hadn’t been there yesterday. I walked over to look at it. This time, I couldn’t help swearing. ‘Fuckin’ bastards.’

Anahera, coming over the sand dunes, heard me. ‘Kotare, wash your mouth.’ Then she realised something bad had happened. She looked nervously at Auntie Polly and watched as the trucks revved up and headed back to town. And I was so obviously angry, my fists clenched, looking out to the ocean.

‘What’s the matter?’ Anahera asked. ‘Is there a shark out there?’ She tried a joke. ‘Is the water too cold?’

‘First they take our land,’ I answered, ‘and now our fuckin’ ocean.’ I pointed to the sign. ‘It says the water’s polluted — sewage pipe. We can’t use our beach.’ I dunno, something just got to me. I dropped to my knees and … I couldn’t help it … I began to cry.

‘It’s all right, Kotare,’ Auntie Polly called. ‘You’ll find another place to fish. There’s always another place.’

‘Is there, Auntie?’ I asked her as I stood up. ‘And we go there and catch kai moana until the next sign tells us to move on?’ I felt I had to say something to Tangaroa. ‘Sea, we’ve been unkind to you. We’ve poisoned the land and now we feed our poison into your waters. We’ve lost our aroha for you, and our respect for life. Forgive us … Haere ra, e rangatira.’

I felt Anahera take my hand in hers and lean her head against my shoulder. Then at long last, she kissed me.

‘You’re a sweet man,’ she said.

It was on that day, Anahera told me later, that she fell in love with me, bub.

All because I was a sweet man.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. After the wedding, we went up to Auckland to make our lives and, for a while, we stayed with her folks.

Your mother, Anahera, became my angel.

Even when my troubles began.

So here we are, me and my mate Whero, onstage again.

How come? Dermot got us a second chance at another club, Delilah’s. Nobody gets a second chance in this town, but the faggoty Irishman pulled some strings and, fucking amazing, Delilah came through!

‘How did you manage it?’ Whero asks him.

‘Told some lies. Shite, I’m goin’ straight to hell. Said the reason you walked off the stage was because you had food poisonin’ and needed to spew … and, you know, Delilah’s been wantin’ a chance at you. So for feck’s sake, Whero, when you get out there on the stage and in the spotlight, stay there. If you don’t, and you walk, you and me are finished. Got that?’

But there’s always a moment, just before we take the stage, when girlfriend turns to me, panicking, her eyes wide with fear. ‘I can’t do it, Red,’ she says. ‘Not without you.’

Hell, I live for those moments. ‘That’s what I’m here for, babe,’ I tell her. ‘It’s me and you forever, remember? Womb to tomb, birth to earth and all that shit. So let’s get out there, bitch, and rock this es-tablish-ment.’

There’s something about Whero. If she wasn’t heading for rock-chick stardom she could make it on Broadway or even Hollywood — a bit of Barbra, a dash of Judy, something of Janis and, when she really lets out the throttle, Jennifer Holliday.

If you’re standing in the way, watch out.

But it’s more than that. When she takes the stage tonight there’s a deep moan. And then she begins to sing:

Oh, the punters, mostly Kiwis again, I know they want to fuck her.

‘Open up,’ I yell at Whero, ‘time to show what ya got.’

The sound crew — well, the sound man — who’s trying to control Whero’s huge voice just gives up as it rockets into the stratosphere. And there am I, not wanting him to do that, forcing her on and higher and louder and no don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t …

Zowee. Fireworks, climax time.

Backstage, everyone’s happy with Whero, kissface, kissy kissy.

‘I could never do it without you,’ she says to me.

‘And that’s the friggin’ truth,’ I grin.

Is Dermot relieved? He’s drinking straight from a bottle of Southern Comfort, blissing out but … uh oh, I see that he’s brought a suitcase. Maybe that argument he had with Tupou earlier has tipped the scales. He doesn’t want to go to New York so … time to move on out? Or maybe he was serious about him and Whero going their separate ways if she didn’t work out tonight.

Here comes Tupou with bubbly in his hands. He takes Dermot’s bourbon from him and switches it with a glass of champers.

This I gotta hear!

‘What y’doin’?’ Dermot asks as Tupou leans in and cops a feel. ‘I’m celebrating my extremely hot boyfriend ’cause he’s a cracker.’

‘I love that word,’ Dermot sighs. ‘For me, it’s up there with “struth” and “flamin’ heck” and “cobber” and “digger” …’

Tupou looks at him askance. ‘Are you trying to get a rise out of me when I’m trying to say sorry? And wanting to congratulate you for tonight? Whero was fabulous! The audience went apeshit.’

But nobody’s home at Dermot’s tonight. ‘Alf Stewart,’ he says, lifting his bubbly in a toast, ‘he’s the lucky bugger who gets to say all them words. Aussie words. Home and Away words. Ray Meagher, he plays Alf Stewart.’

Tupou gives Dermot a long, sarcastic look. ‘Struth,’ he mouths. ‘I think a dingo took me boyfriend.’

Dermot eyeballs him. ‘You’re a genuine stand-up comic. I’d do anything to be a stranger in your land.’

‘Aw, fair go, mate. Aussie ain’t my land.’

‘Australia, New Zealand, same old, same old.’

‘You’d make a terrible Australian,’ Tupou taunts. ‘You get sunburnt too easily. England, Ireland, same old, same old.’

‘Take that back, y’filthy bitch.’

Oh, for goodness sake, guys, make up. Whero and me like living with you and don’t want to be back on the fuckin’ street.

Tupou sees Dermot’s suitcase and, before Dermot can stop him, picks it up and opens it. ‘Oh, I see. You don’t want to come with me to New York so you’re going to Australia?’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

‘You’re leaving me?’ Tupou’s voice is cracking. He takes out one of Dermot’s shirts to underline his point. ‘You were going to tell me, of course, and Whero.’ He begins to sing ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’.

Dermot grabs him. ‘No, I’m not leavin’ you — or Whero, not now that she’s back on feckin’ track with her career. And if you look closer, you’ll see that my suitcase is only half packed.’ He pauses. ‘I’m not goin’ to Aussie.’

Well, that’s fuckin’ good to know! So where then?

‘My uncle rang from Ireland,’ Dermot tells Tupou. ‘Seamus, my mother’s older brother. It’s his birthday and he wants me to go back for it.’

‘Can I come too?’ Tupou asks, and then he sees a look pass over Dermot’s face. ‘Oh, right, this faggot niggah isn’t good enough to take back to your people.’

‘I’m not goin’ to be gone for that long. But maybe …’ He begins to do a bit of a rant. Is it the booze talking? ‘Look, what the feck are we all doin’ in London anyway!’

‘Catholic sonofabitch, and just when I was about to tell you that I told the boss to stuff the job in New York.’

‘But that would be just exchangin’ one —’ Dermot makes signs with his fingers ‘— “metropolitan capital” for another. Why don’t we try somethin’ new? What’s wrong with succeedin’ in … Dublin?’

He’s got to be joking. Even Tupou is startled.

But Dermot raves on. ‘Look, we all come to feckin’ London because we think that’s what we’re supposed to do. If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. But what if we don’t fall for that shite?’

‘Er …’ Tupou begins, ‘so you want to go back to Dublin? To the same Irish family that told their queer son to piss off? Like my family found out, so I hightailed it out of New Zealand to London? Dermot, just a while ago you talked about going to Australia.’

Dermot clenches the champagne glass so tight it’s a wonder it doesn’t break.

‘Feck, feck, feck. Sometimes I just don’t know where I belong, Tupou. Or where I’m supposed to get to from here.’

Tupou hugs him close.

‘Dermot, you belong to me. And we’re each other’s country, each other’s family.’ He takes a breath. ‘Listen, you go back to Ireland to your uncle’s birthday, I’ll keep the home fires burning here, and then, you bastard, come back and let’s sort this out. UK, Oz, Ireland, Aotearoa or even Apia, what the fuck does it matter as long as we’re together.’

Two weeks later, Dermot’s gone to Ireland and Tupou’s mooning around the flat. Sometimes Whero and I take him to a bar to cheer him up and we all have a couple of drinks and dances — and man oh man, the number of posh British gentlemen who come on to Tupou. After all, he’s a Polynesian prince.

Dermot, if I was you, I wouldn’t stay away too long.

But that freakin’ Petera and the memories of New Zealand that he brought with him are causing havoc. Worse, he’s got Whero thinking of her dad again.

Whero, you must understand that the way you are isn’t your fault.

Sure you were a difficult baby, up most nights bawling your head off. Maybe you sensed the change coming when your mother told her folks we were moving out and would find our own place in Auckland city itself.

Aue, and my job packing batteries at a car factory died on me when they laid me off. And I was missing the sea.

Tangaroa, don’t desert me …

It was your mother who found a place for us to look at in Mount Albert.

That was when she began to realise the truth about me, her sweet man.

The landlord was waiting at the gate when we walked up to the address. He had a BMW, real flash, and we’d come with you on the bus. ‘I have to admit,’ he said, ‘when I saw your name listed on the rent form I was expecting something different.’ He was one of those guys who had read a ‘How to Make Money’ manual and decided that having low-rent flats was a good way to get a fast return.

‘Different?’ Your mother went stiff. You had to watch that girl when she got her back up.

‘With a name like Davies, love …’ He lit his pipe, puff puff puff. I don’t think he was being deliberately offensive. He probably had Maori and Pacific Islanders in his other flats but was disappointed that we weren’t Pakeha and therefore, well, an improvement.

‘What’s wrong with Davies?’ Anahera asked. ‘And you are Mr …?’

‘Papadopoulos,’ he answered. ‘Third generation Kiwi, though, so don’t go thinking I’m fresh off the boat. I wasn’t expecting Maoris is all.’

‘And I wasn’t expecting a … a Greek,’ Anahera flared.

The landlord ignored her remark. ‘Ah well,’ he continued, as if he was doing us a favour, ‘seeing as you’re here …’

He opened the gate and was just about to lead us in when Anahera stepped quickly in front of him. He remembered his manners and let her through first.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

We followed your mother up a narrow and dark side pathway to a double doorway. One doorway was for the top flat, which we were hoping to rent. The other was for a bottom flat, which I thought the man at the letting agency had said was empty but I could swear I saw some Maori kids — teenagers — looking out from behind the curtains at us. Perhaps I hadn’t heard him properly.

If Mr Papadopoulos assumed Anahera and I would give the place a quick once-over and then take it, man oh man, was he wrong. ‘There’s no need to accompany us while we take a look,’ she began. Then, to make sure he didn’t: ‘Here, take care of baby for a moment, will you? And please don’t smoke while you’re holding her. We won’t be long.’

Mr Papadopoulos was a bit startled, but we’d already walked off so what else could he do?

The flat was to be let furnished and, although the furnishings were a bit tatty — double bed in one room, single bed in another, sofa and chairs in the sitting room and table and chairs in the kitchen — the place was clean enough.

‘At least there are no rats or cockroaches,’ Anahera said, loud and clear, so that Mr Papadopoulos could hear. We went into a quick huddle, running over the pros and cons, and decided to take the flat. By the time we joined him — he was glad to hand you, Whero, back to us — he was looking at his watch. Anahera’s eyes gleamed. ‘Aha, a man who’s in a hurry,’ she whispered to me, ‘is a man who wants to close a deal fast and can be beaten down.’

Not quite. ‘You are married, aren’tcha, love?’ Mr Papadopoulos asked. He’d noticed Anahera wasn’t wearing a ring.

Maybe we were, maybe we weren’t. ‘The pregnancy caused my fingers to swell,’ she said.

‘Got the ring around y’neck, I s’pose,’ Mr Papadopoulos said with sarcasm.

‘I did have,’ Anahera continued, ‘on a chain, but I’ve put it away for a while. Unfortunately bub’s wandering fingers tore it off in her scramble for the breast.’

I could tell that this detail was a bit gross for Mr Papadopoulos.

Anahera changed the topic. ‘Could you tell us what the neighbours are like?’

‘This is Mount Albert, love. There’s lots of different cultures around here now. New immigrants from all over the place, all mixing in with each other. Did you see the Sikh temple along the road? I rented out one of my flats just last week to some Somalis … I like to do my part for refugees. And you want to see St Luke’s Mall on the weekend … lots of smiling people getting on together. You Maori people should smile more often too — would make getting on with ya a lot easier, eh.’

Jeez, was the arsehole begging for a fight? Anahera saw my flash of anger and gave me a look: settle down.

Mr Papadopoulos looked at his watch again. Made up his mind: we were probably the only name on his fuckin’ list. ‘Righto, love, y’like the flat then? It would be good to get a married couple in it. It makes for more stability.’

‘The walls need painting,’ Anahera said, beginning the negotiation.

‘Yeah, I’ll get to that.’

‘The carpet in the sitting room’s got big holes. It seems very damp and that’s bad news for babies.’

‘Love, Auckland was built in the middle of a swamp and across a coupla harbours. You’ll be hard pressed to find a flat that isn’t damp.’

I spoke up. ‘I think the rent’s too high for what the flat is.’

Mr Papadopoulos looked at me, astonished. ‘By crikey,’ he said, ‘it speaks.’

But Anahera came in fast. ‘Kotare’s right.’

‘The boards on the stairs need work,’ I began. ‘There’s mould on the ceiling of the bathroom, and there’s a heap of junk downstairs needing to be taken to the tip. Also, the walls are thin as hell — and I can already hear the kids downstairs.’

Mr Papadopoulos gave me a strange, puzzled, look. So did Anahera. ‘It’s on a good bus route, hon,’ she said after a while, ‘so I can get to Onehunga when I want to see my folks.’

The landlord recovered. ‘Look, the rent’s three hundred and fifty dollars a week, plus two weeks’ rent in advance, and a bond of two hundred. You’ll get that back, of course.’

‘Make it three hundred a week,’ said Anahera, ‘plus two weeks’ rent in advance, no bond, and we’ll wallpaper and repaint.’

‘Three forty, one week in advance, no bond, I’ll get rid of the junk out the back.’

‘Three fifteen, new fridge.’

‘Three thirty-five. No bond,’ said Mr Papadopoulos.

‘Three twenty.’

‘Three thirty.’

I chipped in, spoiling their rhythm. ‘Three twenty-five.’

‘Done.’ Surprised, Mr Papadopoulos gave me a respectful nod. When it comes down to it, a man likes to negotiate with another man. ‘There we are then,’ he continued, relieved. ‘Oh, by the way, you’re not planning any big parties, are ya? Just, I know you Maoris and your guitars.’

I couldn’t resist. ‘Been to a few, have ya?’

‘I’m not bloody joking. You can move in this Saturday, I s’pose. I’ll be here nine o’clock in the morning with your keys.’

Outside Mr Papadopoulos shook my hand. ‘Right you are — cheerio.’ And then I heard him whisper in Anahera’s ear, ‘You’ve got a right one there.’

We settled into our flat and Anahera made it look fuckin’ awesome, given the little amount of money we had. Took up all our savings to move to Auckland in the first place, and, now Anahera had you to look after, she couldn’t work.

It was up to me. Get off your ass, Kotare Davies, and get a job.

Fuck this place, fuck Auckland. Why wouldn’t anybody give me a job? They looked at me, asked for my qualifications. Where the hell did they think I could go to on the coast to get qualifications! I showed them that I had strength, good hands and could handle any job they threw at me: I tried a coupla builders, the council, the harbour board …

I knew I had to get a job, and I prayed:

‘Tangaroa, help me …’

I miss the healing sun and sea. I’m going out to Westfield meatworks to see if they’ll put me on their waiting list … It’s near the sea …

And I did it, bub, I did it!

I was smiling so much on the bus back from Westfield that even the other passengers started smiling. Well, a few didn’t — they thought I might be one of those loonies who smile all the time. I got off at St Luke’s and walked the rest of the way to our flat. Hey, I saw this fish ’n’ chip shop. By the time I got back to the flat it was getting a bit dark but … there it was … and a light shining in the upstairs window, like the Star of fuckin’ Bethlehem where my angel was waiting with you.

I opened the door and ran up the stairs. One of the kids in the downstairs flat — I think his name was Barney — waved to me from the window. The kids had a habit of playing their music a bit loud. I decided to talk to them about it soon. ‘Ana! Ana!’ I called as I went up, two steps at a time.

She appeared. Man oh man, I thought, Kotare Davies, you are one goddamn lucky sonofabitch.

‘Would you keep it down, Kotare? I just managed to get bub to sleep.’

‘Wake her up again. I got fish ’n’ chips.’

‘But I’ve made our tea,’ Anahera said, ‘and we gotta save our money. The rent’s due this Friday.’ She was near to tears. ‘Hon, what am I going to do with you?’

‘All sorted,’ I told her. ‘From next week I’m gonna be bringing home the dollars!’

Your mother’s eyes lit up. ‘You got a job? My hon’s got a job?’

I whirled her around in my arms. It was so good to see her happy. ‘Wasn’t that hard,’ I told her. ‘I just walked into Westfield meatworks, told them what I been doing back home, asked them to put me on the waiting list — and it was my lucky day because there was a vacancy! And you know what the best part is? Westfield’s right on the Manukau Harbour, which means I can go fishing after work. Tangaroa will look after us too.’

Anahera looked at me tenderly. ‘Kotare Davies, I swear I’ve got a rival.’

‘Eh?’

‘The ocean.’

I thought about that for a moment. ‘But can the ocean keep me warm?’ I asked Anahera, as I kissed her. ‘And does the ocean have lips as sweet as yours or hair as soft?’ She began to melt against me. ‘Can the ocean play music as sweet as my Anahera? Does it have fingers as delicate?’

‘If you’re trying to get around me,’ she murmured, ‘you’re going the right way.’

‘Is the ocean as playful or as deep as my Anahera? Kaore, kaore, kaore …’

‘You’re a silver-tongued kingfisher, Kotare Davies.’

I made my mournful face. ‘And is the ocean as forgiving as my Anahera …’

She stiffened, searched my face, became frightened. ‘Kotare, please don’t do this to me. To us.’

I laughed, glad to fool her. ‘I only had enough money for one crabstick!’

I grabbed it and put it in my mouth. But the joke was on me. She wasn’t laughing. And when you started to cry in your bedroom, bub, and I said I’d go and look after you my Anahera said:

‘No, Kotare. Not you.’

Wonder of wonders, I’ve persuaded Whero to stop thinking about her dad and come for a walk.

‘Where you off to?’ Tupou asks as she opens the door. Dermot will be home soon, thank Christ, and that will get him off our case.

‘Oh … Oxford Street,’ she answers him.

He thinks for a moment. ‘Hey, why don’t I meet you there later? We could go to a pub for lunch?’

‘Okay.’

Meanwhile, I’m getting suspicious. You’d think that with all of London to choose from … I mean, who’d want to fuckin’ hang out on Oxford Street! First of all you have to take the tube, and no sooner do you get up to street level … where are the Brits? Instead it’s Russians in fur coats come to spend up large, or the French across the Channel for the day and Arabs going into Marks & Spencers.

We wander along for a while and, bingo, the light comes on in my stoo-pid brain and I see why Whero wanted to come here: The Sanderson Hotel. Yup, Red, you’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire. This is where that arsehole Petera Davies said he was staying.

‘Won’t be long,’ Whero says as she walks in.

I could kick her. I watch as she approaches the reception desk. She talks to the receptionist. He looks in a computer, frowns and shakes his head. She talks to him again. He tries his computer a second time. Again no luck.

‘There’s no Petera Davies booked into the hotel,’ she says to me when she comes out. Hell, I could have told her that.

Whero tries phoning the number that Petera gave her.

Along comes Tupou. ‘Don’t stand here too long,’ he smiles, ‘otherwise the cops will think you’re doing the street.’

‘I’ve got a cousin who said he was staying here,’ Whero explains as she stows the phone. ‘Except that he’s not registered. And his mobile must be switched off.’

‘Really?’ Tupou asks as we push through the tourists and around the corner away from Oxford Street. ‘Why the hell would he give you false details?’

‘You might have met him,’ Whero insists. ‘He came to the club that night when I had my … er … moment.’

Tupou shudders. ‘Thank God I wasn’t there … and, no, I don’t think I ever met your cousin.’ He stops at a small doorway. ‘Aha, here we are. This will do us.’

This is not my day. A fucking Irish pub. At least it’s not crowded. Tupou finds a table in a corner. ‘Okay, the reason why we’re having lunch … is that Dermot’s been in touch. I’ve got a letter from him. Shall I read it?’

‘Go ahead,’ says Whero.

‘Hmm, some of this stuff is per-son-al,’ Tupou begins, ‘so I’ll only read the part that clears Customs, okay? Now … ah, here’s the paragraph that affects you. “Please tell Whero that I’ve made contact again with Karl Jeffs — he’s still pissed she walked off the stage but I told him she had a virus. Since then he’s heard about her gig at Delilah’s and he’s asked me to send a demo tape.”’

Tupou opens his arms. ‘Is my boyfriend good … or is he good? When he gets back, I’m gonna throw him on his back and show him your appreciation.’

Oh my God, a bulge is starting to grow in his pants in anticipation.

Kippers and chips and Irish beer are on the menu for lunch, and then Tupou has to leave. ‘See you back home,’ he says as he disappears down the street.

As we exit, what the fuck — Petera. Now I really know that someone is shitting on my day.

He ignores me. His eyes are liquid, pouring an intense, frightening glance into Whero’s soul. ‘Hey, cuz,’ he greets her.

Whero looks at him with suspicion. ‘Why would a bro tell me he’s staying at the Sanderson when he’s not?’

The prick’s got all the answers. ‘Aw, hell. Moved hotels is why. Living the nomadic lifestyle, so to speak. Just came this way to pick my gears up.’ Then he stares me down, down, down. ‘I see Red’s tagging along?’

‘What about your phone?’ Whero asks, giving Petera a run for his money. ‘I rang the number … nothing.’

Petera shakes his head, looking disappointed with himself. ‘Global bloody roaming. Didn’t realise I’d need it …’ He’s like quicksilver, circling Whero, confusing her. ‘You know there’s no buggah around these parts selling hokey-pokey ice cream? Enough to make you wanna go home, eh?’ Then he moves in for the kill. ‘You reckon you got the strength to survive London … alone?’

‘Alone?’ I ask him. ‘You bastard, Whero has me.’

He ignores me. ‘You don’t miss home? What about your mother?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘She’s worried about you. Like father, like daughter …’

‘Fuck off.’ Whero is causing a scene. People are looking at her, giving her a wide berth.

Petera backs off, his hands up in the air. ‘Okay, Whero, okay. But you’ve been wishing you had somebody like me for a long time. That’s why I’m here. I’m overdue, I know that, but I’m here now. How ’bout we meet at your flat? Oxford Street’s not really the place to hold a family reunion, eh? You need me, Whero.’

And then he grabs my chin, his fingers digging into my cheeks, and forces me against a pane of glass.

‘You, Red, you’re not invited, geddit?’

Nope, not my freakin’ day at all. Nor does it get any better when Whero and I return to the flat. Why? Because Dermot’s back and we can hear the thunk, thunk, thunk in the front bedroom and, well, why should he and Tupou be happy when I have to deal with fuckin’ Petera coming back into our lives?

They both come out of the bedroom with silly grins on their faces and pretend that they haven’t been at it. Tupou starts a celebratory glass of bourbon and, as Whero enters the room, passes her a fat spliff of hash.

‘Gee, am I a lucky sonofabitch Irishman?’ Dermot says as he cuddles her. ‘Two beautiful Polynesians welcoming me home? Let me give you a hug, darlin’, we’re all on the up and up.’

‘What are ya?’ Whero asks with a smile. ‘My mother? You get a kick out of dictating my life?’

‘I ain’t dictatin’ shite. I’m just … cuddlin’ up to my investment.’

Suddenly we hear something vibrating. ‘What the hell is that?’ Tupou asks drunkenly. He points accusingly at Dermot. ‘Your pants are moving, hon.’

‘Aw, feck,’ Dermot dips into a pocket and pulls out his phone.

Tupou giggles. ‘And there was I, thinking you were getting horny … again.’

Dermot ignores him. ‘Yeah? Dermot here … yeah, that’s me. Karl! How you doin’? What are you wantin’, pal?’ His eyes light up with excitement and he makes a thumbs-up sign to us. ‘Yeah — yeah, for sure. That sounds grand. Maybe we could meet up later this week? Discuss the details further, yeah? Lovely, Karl. You’re a feckin’ legend.’

‘Well?’ Whero asks.

Dermot feigns ignorance, so Whero and Tupou pile on top of him. ‘That was Karl Jeffs, wasn’t it? What did he say?’

‘He loves your feckin’ demo tape!’ Dermot yells with glee. ‘Says that your voice is phonogenic. That it takes to recordin’ as if it was made for it. Says that sometimes singers in bars and clubs don’t sound as great when they’re recorded but you, girlfriend, you only sound better. And he really loves your original songs. So, he wants to talk serious talk with me about … a recordin’ contract.’

‘Woo-hoo!’ Whero yells. She gives Dermot a massive hug and pulls him up and into a dance.

‘Does this mean we’ll stay in London?’ Tupou asks.

‘You bet your beautiful ass,’ Dermot answers. ‘Soon we’ll be snortin’ coke through gold-plated straws. But …’ His eyes get that faggoty Irish grin: ‘… if there’s an album, wouldn’t the primo place to launch it be …’

‘Please don’t say Dublin,’ Tupou groans.

‘Oh ye of little feckin’ faith,’ Dermot sighs as he begins again. ‘Wouldn’t it be … Auckland?’

It takes a while for Dermot’s idea to sink in.

Then, ‘Yay,’ Tupou says, ‘the dingo hasn’t stolen my baby.’

And Whero, grooving on the idea, says, ‘Everybody there would love your accent. Everything Irish is fuckin’ sexy.’ Then the bitch gets weepy. ‘It’s as good as it gets. It’s home.’

Tupou restores some realism. ‘I was going to say that it’s constantly overcast and it’s surrounded by about fifty big fuckin’ volcanoes. Big … and, well, dead.’

‘And y’play football with your hands, eh.’

‘Are you demeaning our national sport?’ Tupou yells. ‘It’s not football, it’s rugby, you dumb Irish piece of shit.’ He takes off his shirt. ‘Stand up.’

Dermot is already standing but, hey, who’s being pedantic. ‘What for?’

‘Gonna show you how to do a haka, the way the All Blacks do it,’ Tupou answers. He takes off Dermot’s shirt too — skinny Irishman, Jeez, put the shirt back on. ‘Now, bend your legs like this, Grasshopper.’ Tupou goes into the classic haka stance and Dermot tries to imitate him.

‘Kia rite!’ Tupou shouts, scaring the shit out of all of us. ‘Waewae takahia!’ He starts to stamp his feet. And then he’s away. ‘Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora!’

And it’s so funny to see Dermot following Tupou’s directions: ‘Cross trainer, cross trainer! Ski, ski! And cross trainer again!’

Tongue poking, knee slapping, chest pounding, it’s comedy time, which turns into something gruesome as they sex it up together. At the end of it, we all fall about laughing.

‘That was primo,’ Whero says.

‘I’ll make a haka boogie man out of you yet, Dermot,’ Tupou tells him.

And Dermot beams like a fuckin’ Irish elf.

‘Auckland it is.’

Here we are in the middle of Heathrow meeting Tupou before we go to see Karl Jeffs. Dermot is also due soon; Jeffs doesn’t live far from Heathrow.

When Tupou arrives, he’s eating an ice cream. ‘Hey,’ he says to Whero in between licks, ‘how are you feeling about signing the contract?’

‘Okay, I guess,’ she answers. ‘Is that hokey-pokey?’

‘Actually, Heathrow is one of the few places outside New Zealand you can get it.’ He sees Whero looking at the ice cream and edges away from her. ‘And you can’t have it.’ Then he remembers something. ‘Oh, Dermot gave me something this morning — it’s for you. Can I give it to you now?’

He pulls a large package from his backpack. As soon as I see the wrapping I know immediately what’s in it. Pills. I’ve been hiding them away from Whero for months. How the fuck did Dermot find them?

Whero looks at the package, uncertain, and then takes it. ‘Thanks,’ she says.

‘Dermot was all secretive about it. You know me and secrets! So I opened it. What are they for?’

‘Nothing.’ Whero turns away.

‘Nothing?’ Tupou says. ‘Dermot tells me that you haven’t been taking them, you naughty girl, you.’ Slurp, lick. Watch out, Tupou, curiosity can kill a cat.

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘My sometimes intolerable boyfriend won’t tell me what’s going on, and now I’m in the company of a sometimes intolerable bitch.’ Whero remains tightlipped and Tupou gives up. ‘Okay, don’t tell me anything. It’s not like I need to know anyway.’

And after that outburst, Dermot arrives and sits down next to Whero. ‘He’s given you the pills already? Please take one before we go to see Karl. Will you do that for me?’

‘Fuck off.’

But Dermot is insistent. He sees Whero looking for me and his eyes narrow. ‘Red can’t help you, girlfriend. So you won’t take a pill now? Ah well … promise me, Whero, you’ll start takin’ them soon. I mean it, Whero, soon.’

And hey, the contract’s signed, sealed and delivered.

Excitedly, we catch the train back to London. But all the way in, I’m plotting how to get those pills away from Whero …

Damn, Dermot’s watching her with hawk eyes.

Worse is to come.

Dermot and Tupou go out for a beer, but Whero is tired so begs off and, instead, we come on home to find somebody waiting.

Petera, in the darkness, with only the moon coming through the window.

‘Didn’t I tell you,’ he begins, looking at me dangerously, ‘that you’re not invited?’

I cuddle against Whero, she’ll protect me from him. ‘What do you want?’ she asks him. ‘How did you get in? Who gave you a key?’

‘You gave me one,’ he lies. ‘Don’t you remember?’ Then he says, ‘What about the pills?’

‘She doesn’t want to take them any more,’ I say.

‘Why not?’ He turns to Whero. ‘It’s not Red’s right to steal your pills from you.’

Whero defends me. ‘Red’s my best mate. She’s only looking after me. We both know what the pills do. They make me … go back.’ She begins to sob and, before I can stop him, Petera folds her in his arms.

‘There, there,’ he whispers. ‘I know you don’t want to think of home …’ he moves in closer ‘… and it’s hurting you because the closer you get to the truth the more it’s killing you.’

Whero moans and slides to the ground. Petera kneels on his haunches, lowering himself to her level. He gently places a hand on her shoulder.

I try to warn her, ‘Whero, no!’ but she instinctively leans into him for support.

I turn on the bastard. ‘I’m the one she needs, the one who always helps her when she calls out. I’m the one with balls who can look after her, and I’m the one who brought her here from all her memories of New Zealand so that she could start a new life in London.’

‘Is that so?’ He stands and casually approaches me. ‘Well, it’s my turn now.’

I look at Whero, pleading for her to help me, but she’s finding it difficult to breathe. And then Petera takes a swing at me. The back of his hand smashes into my jaw, sending me flying some distance across the room.

He’s calm and clinical as, methodically, he begins to beat me up.

‘Red’s not right for you,’ he says to Whero. She tries to get up and stop him but it’s almost as if his blows are also raining on her.

‘Please,’ she says to him, ‘you can’t do that to her … to us.’

This time Petera punches me in the guts. Whero howls with pain. ‘Leave her,’ he says to me.

He’s split my lip. My stomach really hurts. Another punch. ‘Fuck you,’ I tell him as I go down. I’m on the verge of blacking out.

Petera kicks my skull. Whero holds her face in her hands.

‘Leave!’ he shouts at me again, his spittle spraying. ‘Leave us. Leave her.’

He kicks me again and again and I lose consciousness.

And all is darkness.

PART TWO AT THE SAME TIME AS THE SPIRAL IS GOING FORWARD, IT IS RETURNING

My eyes flicker, and I see Whero staring into them. She has put me in bed and we’re lying side by side, covered with a quilt.

Oh, Whero, we’ve seen a lot of the world since we met as children, haven’t we? Of course I haven’t been with you all the time but, somewhere, somehow, we’ve always met up and, hey, girlfriend, we’ve always been there for each other, right?

‘Are you okay?’ Whero asks, tenderly stroking my face. ‘Petera gave you a bad beating. I should have called the cops.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ I answer. ‘Hold me close, girlfriend?’

She does so and I wince. ‘Well, not too close.’ And as she settles against me I remember the first time we met.

Oh, how I’ve always loved that girl!

She must have been about eight — I was the same age — and she and her mum, Anahera, had come back to the East Coast over the school holidays so that Whero could spend time with Kotare’s kin.

The day was hot, the sky blue as the sea, and Whero was playing in the water, not too far out, where the reef was. It was low tide, foam sweeping before the wind from the sea, and the shoreward part of the reef was exposed. Whero saw a seahorse, flashing through seaweed in one of the pools and she got so excited, running up the beach yelling, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ She was like her father: he loved Tangaroa’s domain too.

Anahera was asleep in the shade of some bushes, so Whero decided not to wake her up. Instead, she sat down beside her mother and then, seeing her father’s guitar, carefully picked it up and began to strum it.

Ouch. She strummed badly. She hurt my ears. She must have hurt Anahera’s ears too because she stirred and woke up.

‘Oh, sorry, Mummy. I was trying to play the tune but I can’t hit the right chords.’

Smiling, Anahera held Whero from behind and guided her fingers on the guitar:

She put the guitar aside, leant back and looked out at the sea. ‘This was where your father and I first met,’ she told Whero. ‘Right here, nine years ago now. We had our romance, here in the sand. Oh, he was a handsome boy, your dad — don’t you ever listen to people who say otherwise. He hated it when the beach was polluted. Him and all the people from the marae, including his Auntie Polly, had a tangi here — such a sad sound for such a beautiful day. They respected Tangaroa. Since then, nobody comes here. Just me and you.’

‘Will Daddy ever be back with us?’ Whero asked.

‘We have to hope so,’ Anahera replied. ‘When we return to Auckland we’ll go out to the hospital to see him, eh? I know he will be looking forward to seeing you. We can take him fish ’n’ chips, eh? He always liked fish ’n’ chips!’ She hugged Whero. ‘In the meantime, you and me have each other. This is where we belong … together.’

Then Whero remembered. ‘Mummy, I saw a seahorse!’ With that, she ran ahead of Anahera, splashing quickly across the shallow water to a low rocky staircase in the lagoon. She searched for a moment in one of the pools and, ‘There it is!’

In a trice, Anahera had the seahorse fluttering in her hands. ‘It got stranded here when the tide went out,’ she said. She cradled it carefully and, swiftly, motioning to Whero to follow her, went to the edge of the reef where the sea turned blue. ‘Here we go,’ she said.

The seahorse was delicate and luminescent. It whirred and scintillated in the sunlit sea and then, slowly, began to descend into its depths.

‘Haere ra, seahorse,’ Whero whispered. She was so sad, so sad.

The sky was a mirror and so was the sea. When Whero looked into the water I looked back. As she returned to the beach her mother didn’t see me coming up behind Whero and slipping my hand in hers.

‘Kia ora,’ I said. ‘My name’s Red.’

Of course, Whero, when I first met your father, all I could see was a sweet, sweet man.

He was pulling a sack of kai moana up the beach and, at the time, I thought he was a bit of all right. In fact, he was one of the best-looking boys I’d ever seen, and very different from the city boys of Onehunga, always so sure of themselves. He was a country boy, living on the marae, and so he had a natural goodness that attracted me to him. He loved the sea, he was always respectful to Tangaroa. He was cheeky too and innocent and I don’t think he knew that I was planning to get him for my very own.

I guess you don’t see people the right way when they’re in their own environment. Even when we were married, and he came with me to Auckland, I still attributed his happy-go-lucky ways to a tender heart. But it soon became apparent that he wasn’t cut out to be a city boy. Even worse, he couldn’t handle stress. And when you were born, and there was pressure from Mum and Dad for him to get a job — he really did try, my darling Kotare — that’s when I began to notice troubling things about him.

He would retreat into a world that existed only in his mind. Physically, whenever he was really stressed out, he would repeat various actions, like turning around and around, and talking to himself. The lying came later, and I suppose he did this to sustain the stories he told me.

In the end, Mum and Dad were arguing so much with Kotare that I decided we had to move out with you, bub. So we came into the city and found a flat. At first Kotare was fine, and he managed to find a job at Westfield meatworks. He loved the idea that it was close to the sea. He used to talk about the kids downstairs — we lived in the upstairs part of the house — which bothered me a bit, but I let it go. Meanwhile, I found a part-time job at a local greengrocer where the owner, Mr Chattopadhyay, from Bengal, didn’t mind having a baby behind the counter.

Kotare was very good at giving me his pay packet. But, about five weeks after he took the meatworks job, he told me that his pay wasn’t coming in until the next week.

That’s when the lying began. When that week came around, Kotare said he lost the money on the way home. So we had to start budgeting and watching our money, and that distressed him — especially when he thought you were hungry, bub, and crying because of this. I now know that he was beginning to feel guilty about not being a good provider. Whenever I mentioned our money worries, he took my comments personally.

The following week he should have come home with money in his pocket. Instead, he brought fish ’n’ chips. It was always fish ’n’ chips whenever things were going wrong inside him.

He started to snap at both of us. He would never have meant to hurt you and me, and he never raised a hand … but after a while we were shouting at each other, and I knew it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t his fault. He just didn’t want to tell me what was really happening to him.

I found out in the end. He’d been fired in his fifth week for what they said was erratic emotional behaviour. But what had he been doing during the day? I telephoned one of the men I knew worked with him, and he told me that my darling liked to go to the beach close to the meatworks. One afternoon, in desperation, I put you in your pushchair and we went out to Manukau Harbour on the bus.

I saw him. He was sitting with his head in his hands. I could hear him talking to himself. ‘How am I going to tell my angel about my job? She’s already got enough trouble looking after baby.’

I sat down beside him. I touched him. He was shocked to see us. ‘What are you doing here?’ he cried.

He was so confused and upset. Next moment he got up and started to run away, flapping his hands like a mad man. I watched him while the wind sighed over the beach and the water lapped against the shore.

I wheeled the pushchair after him. He was standing in the mud, staring dully over the mudflats. He was making strange scratching movements and saying something:

‘I can smell the fucking rotten smell of the meatworks. It’s poisoning the sea.’

‘Kotare,’ I asked him, ‘is this where you’ve been spending your days? The whole time?’

‘Yup,’ he answered. ‘Playing hide ’n’ seek. You and baby want to play with me? You go and hide and I’ll find you.’ Then his head snapped up. ‘Can’t work for the abattoir any more. They poison the ocean. Won’t do that. Tangaroa doesn’t like it. Auckland’s not the place for us, angel.’

I hugged him. ‘Kotare, what are we gonna do? Bub’s gotta eat. We gotta pay the rent too.’

He was all over the place. ‘There’s five kids living below us. I hear them playing their music. Sometimes I go down and visit them.’

‘I guess I could see if I could make my job full-time?’

He nodded vigorously. ‘Thelma works in a sewing factory, Rose is getting a job at Mr Chips down the road, Sambo works in a bakery, sing a song of sixpence a pocketful of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.’

‘Thelma? Rose?’

‘And Koro and Johnny Mack. But they don’t have jobs. They keep wanting to come fishing with me, but I told them you can’t do that any more because there’s a sign gone up, and they laughed and laughed. Five hundred bucks the kids are paying Mr Papadopoulos for a flat smaller than ours. We got us a good deal, angel.’

You started to cry, Whero.

As for Kotare, he was frightening me. I didn’t want him to talk about the kids downstairs any more, but he wouldn’t stop.

‘They got no furniture, just mattresses,’ he went on. ‘Thelma reckons she can spruce it up. She’ll nick some material from the sewing factory, make them some new curtains. They’re pretty hard case … when they’re not too pissed. They get angry when I talk about the ocean.’ He was shaking his head so hard I thought it might snap off.

‘Kotare!’ I shouted to get his attention. ‘Listen to me — promise me …’ In desperation, I bent down to the water, cupped some in my hands and flicked the water over his face. ‘Do you love me? Do you love me, hon?’

‘I would do anything for my Anahera.’ He was wiping the sea water away from his eyes, weeping, and his nose was running.

‘Don’t visit the kids downstairs any more. Don’t visit them. Promise me, hon?’

He thought this through, frowning at first. Then he gave a giggle. ‘What if they visit me?’

And this time I was really frightened. ‘Then don’t let them in … Lock the door, Kotare … shut them out.’

I wake up with a start. I see that Whero has dozed off.

I feel much, much better! ‘Hey-ee, matey,’ I say as I shake her awake, ‘time to get up and play.’

‘Fuck off, Red,’ she moans.

I’m insistent, but before I can get anything more out of her, there’s a knock at the door. Uh oh, it’s Tupou, and I don’t want him to see me like this, still all bruised and bashed up from Petera’s assault. Better find a place to hide away. After all, a girl has some pride.

Tupou sticks his head around the door. ‘Whero?’ he asks.

She sits up. ‘God,’ she tells him, ‘I feel as if somebody’s done my head in.’

Tupou is still hesitant.

‘You gonna come in?’ Whero asks. ‘And where’s Red gone?’

‘Red? I dunno.’ He mutters something under his breath. Something like, ‘Damn you, Dermot.’ Then edges into the room and sits on the bed, stroking Whero’s hair. ‘God,’ he shudders, ‘I can still remember how awful it was when I came home and found you … Did you know I had to call the doctor?’

‘You did what?’

‘When I came back from the pub,’ Tupou explains. ‘Dermot stayed on with some friends but I wish he’d been with me as I’ve never been so scared in my life. I really freaked out when I saw you … lying on the floor … comatose. I thought you’d OD’d — but I’d seen enough ODs to know it wasn’t that — and then I thought you’d had a heart attack or been assaulted or something. I called the doctor and, shit, then I realised that if I called the cops, they might find some of the drugs and stuff in the flat … Anyway when the doctor came you called him Petera and you were screaming and yelling your head off … but he gave you something and, thank God, you calmed down. Went out like a light.’

‘Thank you, Tupou,’ Whero says in a little-girl voice.

‘Anyway,’ Tupou continues, ‘the doctor’s just rung. He asked if you’ve signed those papers he left for you.’

‘What papers?’

Bugger. From behind the door, I see I’ve been outed: I hid those papers so Whero wouldn’t find them.

‘Does the doctor want to commit me or something?’ Whero asks, as if it’s a joke.

‘No, he thinks he knows what your condition is …’

‘My con-dition?’ The way Whero says it sounds like she’s shit scared. I’m scared too. Why the fuck can’t people leave us alone?

‘He wants you to sign the papers so that he can get your medical records released to him.’

‘Thanks,’ Whero says, ‘but no thanks.’

‘No isn’t an option,’ Tupou says firmly. He seems to be enjoying being masterly. ‘Give a dog a bone, Whero … I’m trying to give a damn. And are those your pills on the bedside table? Good, there’s a glass of water too.’

Tupou is firm. He puts two tablets in the water and gives the glass to Whero. ‘Bottoms up. Take all of it down. God, that sounds so sexy! Now show me your tongue. Good girl!’ Satisfied, he gets up. ‘Right. I’ll leave you to get dressed. Dermot wants to see you at Karl Jeffs’ recording studio. He and Karl want to run through your songs and choose some for an album. Here’s the address. Take the Hammersmith line.’

When Tupou leaves, I sneak back to Whero.

‘Some friend you are,’ I say. ‘You could have pretended to take the pills.’

‘I can’t stop to argue with you, Red. I’m not going to miss a second chance to redeem myself.’ She looks at me tenderly. ‘After all, aren’t you the one who got pissed off when I walked off the stage?’ She takes a serious look at me. ‘Listen, you’d better stay here.’

‘Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?’ I ask. ‘You and me, we’re a team. I’m your back-up girl. We always do this together.’

‘Not today,’ she continues. ‘I can’t have you around looking like Madam Death. I’ll take along the backing tape and sing along to that. And I can accompany myself on the guitar.’

‘No,’ I protest. But the world is going round and around, and Whero leads me firmly to the bed. ‘Stay there. Rest.’

She goes to the bathroom. I hear her showering. Shortly afterwards she’s back in bra and panties, slipping on her jeans, a sexy top and a leather jacket. To top it off, she puts on six-inch stilettos. ‘What d’ya reckon?’ she asks.

‘You’re fuckable,’ I reply. I’m panicking. I can feel her slipping away.

‘See ya,’ she says in a flippant tone.

‘No, wait …’ But it’s too late. She’s out the door and gone.

A few days after I found Kotare out at Manukau, I managed to convince Mr Chattopadhyay to take me on full-time.

I rang my folks and asked them for a loan to pay Mr Papadopoulos the rent we owed him and sorted that out so that we would still have a roof over our heads. Of course, the main problem after that was who was going to look after you, bub, during the day? I couldn’t trust Kotare to do that, and, anyway, despite his problems he was hunting for a new job.

There was a lovely Pacific Island lady who lived just a bit down the street and she said I could leave you with her — she was looking after her grandchildren. Oh, Mrs Fitisimanu adored you, Whero!

I thought everything was coming right, but, one evening, when I got home after work, Mrs Fitisimanu was waiting at the front gate with you wrapped up in blankets in her arms. Some of the other neighbours were around. Something was happening in the flat. All the lights were on and there was a huge racket coming from upstairs. Downstairs, the windows were, as usual, dark.

I placated the neighbours. They were grumpy. ‘Tell your husband to stop all this noise. If he keeps this up, we’re calling the cops.’

I asked Mrs Fitisimanu to take you back to her place. I walked along the pathway, opened the door and started to go up the stairs.

‘Hon?’ I called. ‘Are you up there?’

When I went into the sitting room it was a shambles. It looked like an explosion had happened and all the furniture had been thrown to the sides of the room. In the middle, walking round and round in circles was Kotare. Round and round. Whimpering. Agitated. His hands were cutting up the air. Then he stood stock still, thinking a moment, before looking through the furniture for two large sound speakers.

‘Hon, what are you doing?’

He looked at me, but he didn’t really see me. ‘This will show them,’ he said. He placed the speakers downwards pointing at the floor, and then hooked them up to the hi-fi.

‘Who?’ I asked again.

‘The kids downstairs.’ He put a CD into the hi-fi and let rip at full volume. ‘I’ll show them! I’ll give them a piece of my mind.’

I went over to him, managed to get past, but he held me back from switching the hi-fi off. ‘Please, Kotare,’ I pleaded, ‘what about the other neighbours?’

‘If those kids are gonna keep their music on all night, then I’m gonna turn up mine.’

‘What music?’

‘Their music,’ he answered. He was having difficulty breathing, the way you do, Whero, when you’re stressed out. ‘They make fun of me, playing their songs. And when I went down to talk to them, they just laughed in my face. Well, who has the last laugh now, eh?’

I was still wrestling with him. ‘You went downstairs? Visited the kids?’ I managed to pull the cord from the wall.

‘Fuck you, Anahera,’ he said, bunching his fists. His eyeballs were bulging out of their sockets. The look of a crazy man was written all over his red, perspiring face. ‘Put the fuckin’ plug back in.’

‘You promised you wouldn’t go down there,’ I cried. My heart was thudding. Oh, what was happening to my darling?

‘Put the music back on!’ Kotare roared. ‘Can’t you hear them? They’ve put their volume up. We have to fix them, drown them out, fix them good.’

That’s when I began to sob. I crumpled to my knees.

‘I can hear them even louder now, Anahera. Rose, Thelma, Sambo, Koro and Johnny Mack. They’re laughing at me.’ And he jumped up and down on the floor. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ He put the plug back into the socket. The CD fired up again.

I stumbled to the hi-fi, pulled the CD out and threw it to the other side of the room.

‘What did ya do that for?’ Kotare asked.

‘Hon, there are no kids downstairs.’

He tried to take this in. Then, ‘They moved out?’

I went up to him and held him tight. ‘There’s never been anyone down there, hon.’

‘Never? But I’ve spoken to them, I’ve drunk with them, I’ve sat in their sitting room.’ He thrust me away. ‘Bull-shit, Anahera. They’re there all right. They’ve gone all quiet now, gone all fuckin’ quiet, playin’ possum, but they’re there. I’ll wake them up. They want to play games? I’ll wake the bastards up.’

I grabbed him again. ‘Hon, you’re tired. We’re both tired. Let me make us a kai, eh? Or you can go and get us a feed of fish ’n’ chips? And then we’ll just clear up the place and have an early night? Eh?’

But I couldn’t stop him. He went down the stairs and, next moment, I could hear him smashing the windows of the downstairs flat. ‘Wake up, you bastards! I can wait all fuckin’ night! You hear me? I got … I got all the time in the world.’

At that moment, I heard the police siren. Can’t blame the neighbours really. One of them must’ve called the cops. I heard the commotion as they restrained him.

‘What the fuck? Lemme go-o-o-o-o-o-o.’

I heard one of the neighbours saying, ‘It’s not handcuffs you need. Get a straitjacket. Take him to the loony bin.’

I waited upstairs. Mrs Fitisimanu joined me and gave you to me. I was rocking you in my arms when the cops came upstairs with my darling between them. He was frightened, bewildered, crying.

‘What’s happening, Anahera? What’s happening to me?’

I wake up to a huge noise — it’s Whero, Dermot and Tupou returned from Karl Jeff’s studio. I tiptoe to the door to see Tupou opening a bottle of champagne and pouring into three glasses. And I can hear Whero singing one of her songs:

Come home before the dark of night …

Come home before you lose the light …

‘Why the feck didn’t you sing it like that when we recorded you?’ Dermot teases. I’m so jealous. We always do things together, me and my mate, always.

Time to make my entrance.

But someone pushes through the door and closes it after him. My nemesis. The one and only Petera. ‘Now see what you’re doing?’ I growl at him.

He won’t let me pass. His prodding fingers hurt.

‘I would die for Whero,’ I tell him. ‘Leave us alone.’

‘Why do you think she called me?’ he asks. ‘She wants to go back.’

‘She never called you!’

‘She does it every time she remembers … her dad … her mother … every time she looks in the mirror …’

‘She doesn’t want you, Petera.’

‘Then tell her to stop remembering … Tell her to stop feeling guilty that she has become a burden, like her father was, to her mother.’

He pushes me again and, whoa, I am falling.

‘This is it, Red. It really is time to go.’

I manage to cry out ‘Whero!’ through the open door of the bedroom. As soon as she sees me fighting with Petera she comes running.

‘Dermot!’ she cries. ‘Help me!’ She pushes Petera away. ‘Let her go, you bastard!’

And I fall into her arms, I’m really hanging on to her by my fucking fingernails. She collapses with a groan.

‘Okay,’ Dermot says. ‘I gotcha, girl … I gotcha … I’m here now … Nothin’ matters any more — just you, babe.’

‘Oh, Dermot …’

He consoles her. ‘D’ya remember the first time we met? Y’played y’music for me — I fell in love with it the moment I heard it, swore I’d be your manager. My God … you sounded — looked — feckin’ amazin’, grit and tears and blood and spit like all the rock divas reborn.’

All the time Dermot’s talking to Whero, I can see him scanning her. He’s looking for me. And he sees me inside Whero and whips her face close up to his.

‘Red’s here, isn’t she?’ he says to Whero, shaking her. ‘You’re off your pills again, aren’tcha? Did she take them away? Has she been talkin’ to you?’

‘No, that was Petera.’

Tupou’s gone bug-eyed. He swivels around, looking for ghosts.

‘Oh, the other one,’ Dermot says.

Whero begins to weep. ‘Please don’t do this to me, Dermot. I’ve been a good girl, haven’t I? Since that time I walked off the stage I’ve been okay. I …’

‘Yeah, but as long as you’re not takin’ your pills, you are still a feckin’ liability, you stupid bitch.’ Dermot turns to Tupou. ‘Start lookin’, will ya? The pills must be here somewhere. They’re not very far away.’

Tupou begins a frantic search around the bed, drawers and cabinet.

‘If you don’t tell me where they are,’ Dermot continues, ‘I’ll get the doctors in and tell them everythin’. No need for them to wait for your medical papers from New Zealand. I’ll tell them exactly what your mother told me.’

Tupou starts to hunt on the bed, under the pillows and, damn it, he zeroes in on the wastepaper basket where I’ve hidden the pills.

Whero’s shocked. ‘My mother told you?’

‘Yes,’ says Dermot. ‘About when it started for you. Around the time you were eight. You were comin’ back from the beach and you introduced her to a little girl called Red.’

And then Dermot tells my Whero the truth.

‘Your father was in a mental institution in New Zealand. Your mother went to visit him every week until he died. And you, Whero, you’re sick too.’

‘And Red?’

‘She doesn’t exist.’

‘But I can see her,’ Whero wails.

Tupou joins Dermot on the bed, cradling and rocking Whero.

‘I know,’ Dermot says. ‘I know …’

He spills some pills into the palm of his left hand and signals to Tupou to get a glass of water.

Whero looks at me. She’s struggling with her tears, aching with pain. ‘Give me one more night with Red. Please … one more night.’

Dermot isn’t without sympathy. He places the right dosage of pills beside the glass of water. ‘Okay, one more night … but take the pills by the morning. Promise me.’

Whero nods. ‘Okay.’

‘Good, but if you haven’t taken the pills, I kid you not, I’ll ram them down your feckin’ throat myself.’

That night, I lie down beside Whero, we lie within each other’s warmth. I am her and she is me.

And Whero dreams.

And now the dawn has come and the time for Whero to kill me, softly, in the glow of morning.

The weak bitch can’t do it. Ahh, fuck. So I’m the one who reaches over for the pills and puts them into the palm of one hand. I give her the glass of water. ‘Down the hatch,’ I tell her.

But she hesitates.

‘Do you want me to show you how to do it?’ I ask. ‘You’ve got the balls now, bitch.’ I mime myself drinking from the glass as if it was poison and then thrash around in the bed, my eyes crossed and tongue lolling out. By the time I’ve finished my little performance, Whero is laughing her head off. And then she gives a quick, tearful nod.

‘I love you, Red,’ she says. ‘You’re everything that’s brave — the guts to chase a dream. I’m gonna miss you so much.’

Before I can even stop her, she’s upended the glass and swallowed the pills.

No, no, no.

At the last moment I see Petera. I give him the fingers. At least I have the consolation of knowing that he’ll be murdered too. Fuck you, Petera.

With the last of my life I kiss Whero. ‘Girlfriend, be happy.’

Hey, see that Maori girl getting ready to take the stage? Her name’s Whero Davies. Surely you’ve heard of her? And her hit album, One More Night? Everywhere you go on the London tube you see her poster. She’s got a new album out now, and it’s at the top of the charts.

Those two guys waiting with her? The skinny Pakeha is her manager and the other guy is his partner. They once had dreams of their own but Whero is now their dream.

Did you know Whero’s come back to New Zealand to kick off a world tour? Isn’t that great for a Kiwi girl to do that? From here she goes to Sydney, Singapore, and they want her to guest-star on American Idol in Los Angeles on her way to New York.

Her agent also wants her to go to Dublin. Why Dublin, for goodness sake?

Man oh man, the stadium is filled to capacity. The tickets for Whero’s first concert sold out in minutes and there are some people still out there hoping for a cancellation. The prime minister is here, and I saw some of the Shortland Street stars coming in. Anybody who’s a somebody is here. She’s a hometown girl who’s made good. Her dad died last year, but her mother has come to the concert. That’s her, the woman in the green dress.

Hey, Whero’s about to begin. The warm-up act has left the stage. The audience is screaming her name: ‘Whero! Whero! Whero!’ The strobe lights are going crazy in the sky.

Whero strides into the light, into the huge engulfing roar. And she smiles at everybody and opens her arms to them as she introduces her first song:

‘This one’s for Red.’