The Thrill of Falling: Stories

ONE

‘Is that you, Will?’ asked the voice on the phone. ‘It’s Cousin Lamarr, ringing from Tauranga.’

‘How did you know I was back in Gisborne?’

‘I have spies among all the trolley dollies on the international airlines,’ Lamarr chuckled. ‘I’ve been tracking you ever since you left Canada. What are you doing in the old home town?’

‘Visiting my sister,’ I answered. ‘Her husband died and she rang me in Toronto to let me know. His tangi was last week.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Lamarr answered. ‘Well, look, cousin, I’ve had this brilliant idea.’

Uh oh, that sounded like trouble.

‘When you’re on your way back to Auckland, could you possibly do me a favour and bring Mother up?’ Lamarr was close to tears. ‘The old people’s home doesn’t want her any longer. She’s being … difficult. So I’ll have her stay with me for a while and surround her life with a little glam and fabulosity.’

That explanation changed the situation. ‘Okay, I’ll alter my air tickets and fly back to Auckland via Tauranga and drop her off.’

‘Will, watch your common language! Mother on public transport?’ Lamarr’s voice had gone up a few decibels. ‘No. You will bring her in the Bentley.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘You still have the Bentley?’

‘Mother may have sold everything else when Father died, but she always kept the Bentley. I’ve telephoned Joe at his garage where it’s stored and he’s promised to get it ready for you. You know Mother. One must …’

‘… always have a Bentley,’ I said.

He whispered, as if confidentially, ‘The usual emergency kit is in the glove box.’

TWO

‘Aunt Lulu?’ my sister Kataraina said when I told her what Lamarr wanted me to do. ‘Now there was a woman! One of the last of the taniwha ladies of the coast, eh. Isn’t she in her nineties now?’ Then she leant into me and whispered, ‘I hear she’s gone gaga.’

Aunt Lulu’s real name was Ruru-i-te-marama, Owl of the Moon, but the Maori pronunciation of the ‘r’ sounded like an ‘l’ to unaware Pakeha, so Lulu she became. She and my father, Monty, had been brought up by their dowager spinster grand-aunt Wairangi, who, not having any children of her own, picked Dad from one litter and Lulu from another. Their respective parents didn’t seem to mind; in those days before birth control Maori had twelve to fifteen children and one less ankle-biter must have been easier on the legs.

When she was young Aunt Lulu had been a devastatingly beautiful girl — I’ve seen the photographs — tall, thin, café au lait skin, honey-coloured eyes and hair that was dark red, probably the legacy of a Spaniard whose caravel had been blown off course — way off course. My dad was younger than Lulu and, though they may not have been blood siblings, they looked out for each other. From the sounds of it, Dad had his work cut out because Aunt Lulu was the kind of woman about whom men would say, ‘If you think Lulu’s beautiful now, man, you should have seen her in those days.’

By all accounts Aunt Lulu was virginal, but she looked like a voluptuary. The consequence was that young men mixed up the signals and Dad often had to protect her.

THREE

When I turned up at the home in the Bentley I was puzzled that I had to sign so many papers for Aunt Lulu’s release.

‘What is this?’ I asked, irritated. ‘A jail?’ I felt like a marshal come to take custody of some saloon girl who was being run out of town, like Claire Trevor in Stagecoach.

‘Mrs Harrington has serious mental problems,’ the matron said. ‘Not to mention her medical issues. She’s being discharged permanently. We can’t keep her here when she’s a danger to our other clients.’

Other clients? ‘Don’t worry,’ I answered, and not in a civil way. ‘Obviously, she’s better out of here.’

I was so angry I didn’t even bother to ask, or read the papers, to ascertain what Aunt Lulu’s mental problems or medical issues were. And I didn’t really have time because Aunt Lulu appeared at the doorway, looking like an innocent little old lady who was being unfairly ejected.

Memory plays tricks with you. I hadn’t seen Aunt Lulu for a long time and, though it was clear that she’d seen better days, I would have recognised that hair any day. It was fire-engine red and, today, Aunt Lulu was channelling Lucille Ball in the movie of Mame.

‘William dahling, how lovely of you to come to collect me. Where’s the chauffeur to take my bags?’ She was pulling a poor arthritic-looking creature along behind her on a lead. ‘Pooch? Come along now and give William a kiss.’

I thought quickly. ‘The chaffeur didn’t turn up for work today,’ I answered, brushing both dry, powdered cheeks with my lips.

‘I know what you mean …’ said Aunt Lulu. ‘Good staff …’

The matron stiffened, outraged.

‘… are not easy to find.’

She flung her tatty fur over her shoulders, arched her neck and waited for me to proffer my elbow so that she could make a grand exit.

I escorted her to the car, where she turned and began to blow kisses to the other patients who had congregated to see her off. Some actually clapped as she stepped into the Bentley. ‘Tell the hotel staff to send my suitcases on, won’t you?’ she said to me in a loud voice. ‘And do tip the maid.’

Oh, the delight of digging into my pockets for a few dollars to push into the matron’s hands.

Showing signs of intermittent life, Pooch gave a growl and snap of his teeth and then, all energy exhausted, settled into Aunt Lulu’s arms when she picked him up.

I opened the door for Aunt Lulu and as she seated herself, all pretence fell away. ‘I’m being kicked out, William,’ she whispered, tears of humiliation in her eyes.

However, she revived enough of her savoir faire to shout out the window, as we drove from the kerb, Gloria Swanson’s line from Sunset Boulevard:

‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.’

There was applause from the patients who apparently hadn’t thought Aunt Lulu was a danger. Gratified, she whispered, ‘One must always leave in the same manner as one came: as a star!’

And then she cradled the dog against her face, ‘Okay, let’s go to Lamarr, eh Pooch?’

When Aunt Lulu was a teenager, Wairangi realised she had an uncommon and intelligent beauty on her hands and, therefore, none of the young men around Gisborne was an appropriate suitor.

That discerning dowager grand-aunt came from a line of chiefs and must also have known that if she didn’t get Lulu out of town her daughter would fall pregnant to some lucky but undistinguished Maori lad. Wairangi kept Dad behind to look after the land, but Lulu she sent up to Auckland to attend a convent school.

This was during the Second World War, and therefore, with all those American servicemen around, Aunt Lulu found a new kind of boy following her as she made her way from the convent dormitory a few blocks along the Remuera streets to the school classrooms.

To be frank, Aunt Lulu did not find the attention discomforting. By this time she was a functioning voluptuary who found her virginal status tiresome and wished to quickly rid herself of it. She had also discovered she liked everything American, in particular American movies, and she took to channelling film sirens like Lauren Bacall, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth or Rhonda Fleming, all of whom had titian hair; it’s not a colour you see these days.

‘Americans are best,’ she would say. ‘They smell so divine. They have intelligence, but not too much, they’re extremely good in bed, and the best thing is that they love to get up very early and go and play golf in the mornings. A girl must always be left alone in the mornings to freshen up.’

She would show us how to drape oneself seductively on a couch, in calculated dishabille, desirable and ready to be ravished … again.

And she had made her own Hollywood dream come true when she married an American GI, Gardner Harrington.

In his photographs at least, Uncle Gardner was a spunk. He looked like one of those blond, muscular lifeguards on Malibu Beach, and had all those even, white, teeth. He was the Burt Lancaster of Aunt Lulu’s dreams, and he was as horny as.

He was eighteen when he was stationed in Auckland, and he met Aunt Lulu at one of those dances that New Zealand matrons liked to organise for ‘lonely GIs’, though family legend says that he first caught a glimpse of her as she was going to Mass on Sunday. He followed her into the church where the choir was singing ‘Ave Maria’ and after another look, he was a goner.

At the time, Aunt Lulu was sixteen going on twenty-six, a mature head on a young girl’s body, and fortunately Uncle Gardner’s desire for her was reciprocated. And one thing about Aunt Lulu, she was never patient and all her whims required instant gratification. She knew what she wanted: Gardner. Nothing could stop her from having him. They fell madly in love and lust — though you weren’t supposed to have sex until after you were married. Instead you necked or petted. Presumably Aunt Lulu either didn’t go the whole way or, alternatively, was incredibly lucky.

If we take the benign view that Aunt Lulu and Uncle Gardner were virgins, the consequence was that Aunt Lulu, seeking consummation, climbed over the walls of the convent school and eloped with him. This brought the wrath of the American military down on them both and there were huge efforts to have the marriage annulled. Wairangi wasn’t pleased either: an American as a son-in-law? She sent Dad up to Auckland to bring his sister back home. I understand that when Dad met Uncle Gardner, they had a huge fight in the middle of Queen Street. Dad went down to Uncle Gardner’s uppercut, but it was to her brother that Aunt Lulu went to offer solace.

‘I’ll come home with you, Monty,’ she wept. Yes, she was prepared to give her husband up because of her love for my father. I suspect that they’d always loved each other and, after all, they weren’t brother and sister at all but, rather cousins, so they could have got together — but let’s not go there, eh.

Nevertheless, Aunt Lulu did return to Gisborne with Dad and Gardner Harrington went back Stateside but — he didn’t want to get divorced. Despite his parents’ objections, he came back after the war to collect his wife.

‘What took you so long, Gardner?’ she asked, before she slapped him.

Thus did Uncle Gardner forsake the Land of Uncle Sam for New Zealand. He and Aunt Lulu must have been really hot for each other because they produced three children with glamorous Hollywood names — Viveca, Yolanda and then their precious son, Lamarr.

By that time, Dad had met Mum, married her, and had me and Kataraina. When I was born, it was only to be expected that Aunt Lulu would consider me her son too. But whereas Dad had taken to the Maori side and lived in a Maori world, Aunt Lulu, by virtue of her marriage to Uncle Gardner, existed in a spec-tac-ular world of her own.

To my boyhood eyes, Aunt Lulu was the most unlikely Maori you ever saw. She was tall, attractive, scandalised the aunties in Ruatoria by dyeing her red hair even redder, and she wore slingback high heels that went clickety click over their wooden floors.

And what made her world spectacular? Well, although at the time she married Gardner and swore that she was unaware ‘he had all that money’, it all came out in the end. He was actually Gardner Harrington III (and my Cousin Lamarr was Gardner Lamarr Harrington IV). No wonder the Harringtons were horrified when he married someone, well, dark.

Nevertheless, he was the heir to the family fortune. Minions of the Harrington empire were therefore dispatched to ‘Noo Zeelin’ (‘Where the hell is that?’) to tell Uncle Gardner that all was forgiven and he should bring his bride home. Aunt Lulu and the three kids were hauled off to meet the folks ‘in some dull place called Washington DC,’ she would tell us, airily. There, the Harrington rellies tried to parlay her suspect Maori blood into something more suitable: they liked the possible Spanish caravel link in her ancestry and began hinting to their social circle that Lulu’s pedigree was Castilian.

Aunt Lulu soon put that little deception in its place when she appeared at the opera in a stunning Maori cloak and with feathers in her hair. ‘Castilian, my ass,’ she would tell us of this little incident.

Surprise, surprise, being Maori appeared to have more cachet in the Washington society set. Castilian nobility were a dime a dozen, but it wasn’t every day that you had a Maori princess living in one of the best streets in Georgetown, with Rose Kennedy next door.

The Harringtons were in construction, mainly building malls throughout the US, and the plan was that Gardner was to take over board chairmanship. But they hadn’t reckoned on Aunt Lulu. She persuaded Gardner that while their official residence might remain in the States, why not retain a ‘residence by the sea’, i.e. in ‘Noo Zeelin’, and commute to work?

Despite the enormous logistical problems, Gardner agreed. He ensconced Aunt Lulu in a big two-storey house on Riverside Road, the best street in Gisborne, gave her a cook, butler, nanny and chauffeur and then, as if he were any ordinary husband, got dressed, took the car to Gisborne airport, flew to Auckland and then by flying boat to Washington DC via San Francisco: one month there, two weeks back, one month there again, two weeks back and so on. Aunt Lulu, in consideration of his crazy schedule, took herself and the children off to Washington DC as regularly as she could, but also at Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving Day.

How the marriage managed to sustain itself nobody will ever know. I’m sure that Gardner must have had tempting offers from Washington socialites only too willing to take him away from the wicked wiles of that wanton Maori woman, but it never happened.

No gossip ever attached itself to Aunt Lulu’s reputation either. She would explain her and Gardner’s astounding accomplishment by saying, ‘Americans are as faithful as dogs —’ I have news for you, Aunt Lulu ‘— and while they don’t last the distance they never go off the boil. As for me, I’ve always loved Gardner. As long as he’s in my life, he’s the only man for me.’

But it was more than that. Aunt Lulu and Gardner Harrington were fascinated with each other and, as I was to realise, Uncle Gardner adored his daughters and Lamarr. There was no way he would ever jeopardise his love for them.

One more thing: Aunt Lulu always had an interesting way of speaking.

‘If nothing else,’ she would say, ‘always speak clearly and with intention. It’s the only way to get staff to understand what it is you wish.’

It’s a pity her advice wasn’t taken up by her dogs. Aunt Lulu always had a dog, always a male, always a pug and always — or at least it’s what I thought when I was introduced to the first one — either Pooch or Bark or Wag.

‘Pooch?’ Aunt Lulu screamed. ‘Pooch? You ignorant young boy, his name is Pu-ccini!’ She then began to instruct me on the Italian composer of La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Turandot. As for Bark, he was actually Bach as in Johann Sebastian, and Wag was, of course, as in Richard Wagner.

She always insisted on calling me William. ‘One never shortens names. That is vulgar.’

FOUR

We sped out of Gisborne.

Aunt Lulu and Pooch were happily sitting in the back and I was still wearing the silly look — some might call it a maniacal grin — I’d acquired since picking up the Bentley from Joe, the garage owner. No doubt about it, he’d certainly kept the car safe from all the ravages of weather and time — it was as handsome as I remembered it. I mean … a Bentley? I’d been mesmerised by the car since the day in 1956, when I was ten, that it was delivered to Uncle Gardner. It was shipped straight from the factory in the UK to small-town Gisborne and caused a sensation whenever it rolled into rural Maoridom where most people saved really hard for a second-hand car or rode the bus or went by horse to the marae.

Joe was in tears and kept polishing the Bentley even as I was driving it away from the garage. ‘I will personally strangle you,’ he called after me, ‘if the car comes back with anything resembling a scratch.’

Man oh man, was I in Heaven? Was I what! Who wouldn’t be, driving this beauty? She was a 1955 S-Type, six-cylinder sedan with an overhead inlet side exhaust valves type head delivering 4887cc horsepower. She had the distinctive two-tone colour scheme, and her simple lines bespoke wealth, good taste and the understated elegance of the very rich. She boasted a four-speed automatic gearbox, her top speed was 120 mph (that was a lot of grunt for a car from the 1950s) and, with no power steering, this was a car that had been built to be driven. Only a real man could drive her.

No wonder that I became an airline pilot and eventually a captain on Air Canada’s Boeing 777-300ERs. As a bigger boy I’d needed a bigger toy.

‘Oh, free at last!’ said Aunt Lulu as we left the city limits. ‘Now I must have one of my cigarettes. Do you have a lighter, dahling?’

‘For you, Aunt Lulu, anything.’ She’d taught me that every man carries a lighter and, even if he has difficulty turning to light her up while driving, he had to carry it off in the most masculine manner possible.

I took a quick squizz at my watch. It was nine o’clock and Tauranga was about six hours away: one hour to the Waioeka Gorge, two hours to Whakatane, where we could have lunch, and then a fast zoom around the coast to Tauranga would get us to Lamarr’s place by late afternoon.

The car soon filled up with cigarette smoke, Aunt Lulu carefully tapping the ash into the Bentley’s ashtray. Watching her in the rear-vision mirror, I couldn’t help thinking that, given Aunt Lulu’s influence on my boyhood, it was no wonder I’d developed a penchant for a career and wardrobe that had a bit of glamour: in my case, the four-star gold-embroidered epaulette that only captains of passenger aircraft can wear.

However, I had the suspicion that although I thought that way, Aunt Lulu and Cousin Lamarr probably just applauded the fact that I’d succeeded … within my own limitations.

Let me explain. In their world, there were some people who were stars and some people who weren’t. I know now that I was in the latter category: always waiting in the wings, the boy in the film who’s the best friend of the main actor, the one who doesn’t get the girl and doesn’t have the best songs to sing. Although Aunt Lulu and Lamarr both tried hard to bring Technicolor and widescreen into my life, I’ve always been the straight man.

As for me and Lamarr, we were the same age but, well, he was as spec-tac-ular as Aunt Lulu. It was only to be expected really: after all, Uncle Gardner wasn’t around much to provide a male flavour to Lamarr’s upbringing. (‘God knows, I tried,’ my father Monty confessed, ‘but that sister of mine had him in buttons and bows from the moment he was born.’)

In the absence of a father figure, Lamarr was doted on by Aunt Lulu and given everything he wanted by his proud mother and his sisters, who considered that he was one of their dolls. ‘I grew up dressing up,’ Lamarr would proclaim proudly.

‘He’s not different at all,’ Aunt Lulu would always proclaim. ‘It’s just that he’s, well, theatrical.’

Now, maybe Uncle Gardner wasn’t very bright, but when Lamarr was around seven it clicked that his son wasn’t particularly — masculine.

I remember the day clearly. There was some family hangi or something up the coast at Ruatoria, and Uncle Gardner was back for his usual fortnight at his ‘residence by the sea’. While the adults were talking in the shade of the willows, the kids were playing in the sunlight — and I was involved in a game of football in the paddock among the cowpats with my barefooted rough and tumble mates.

Until then, I hadn’t had much experience of Cousin Lamarr. None of us local boys had. Aunt Lulu had sent him down to boarding school in Wellington from a very early age. Maybe she thought lightning would strike twice and that, like her, Lamarr would eventually grow up and meet some nice rich American heiress — yeah, right. So that day was the first time any of us had ever seen Lamarr close up as it were. I mean he looked like a boy but something was a little off.

Uncle Gardner yelled out to me, ‘Hey! Boy!’ He waved me over. By that time the GI looks had faded and he’d begun to lose his hair, but he was still good-looking. ‘See that kid over there under the trees?’

I shaded my eyes and saw three, well, girls, playing with a toy dinner set. ‘You mean the boy —’ I took a guess, but I knew all along it was Lamarr ‘— in the middle?’

Uncle Gardner nodded. ‘That’s him. I want you to invite Lamarr to play with you young fellers and, every chance you get, you throw the little sonofabitch into a cowpat.’ He proffered me a few coins to sweeten the deal, so I spoke to the other boys and, well, money talks. With their agreement, I went over to the willows, where Lamarr was pouring tea for his sisters.

‘Hello, cousin,’ I said to him. ‘Wanna play ball?’ I couldn’t help the slight sarcasm that crept into my voice. I was sure Lamarr wouldn’t want to dirty his pretty little jumpsuit or whatever it was. Play with dolls maybe but … play ball?

Was I ever wrong! Lamarr looked at me, at the other boys, and he was off to join us like a rocket. When I dumped him in a cowpat he shrieked with glee and ran after me and dumped me! — and I wasn’t even holding the ball.

‘No, cousin, you have to go for the boy — on the other side,’ I added, because he still hadn’t got it. ‘The one who’s got the ball and wants to score a try.’

Well, that did it. Lamarr became the best tackler on the field. So I don’t want you to think that he was afraid of getting hurt, because he wasn’t. In fact he later made the first fifteen at his boarding school. He was a first five-eight, though he had desperately wanted to be a forward. One night when we were hanging out he told me why: ‘I just loved getting in among those hairy thighs and pushing.’ He’d never have done a Hopoate (Lamarr’s standards were too high), but whenever he was in the scrum he was in, well, hog heaven.

Aunt Lulu and I reached Matawai, the Bentley cruising up all those hills like a dream. I was so busy driving that I hadn’t realised the medication or whatever was keeping her, well, normal, was starting to wear off.

She looked at me, as if for the first time, and said, ‘You know I have a nephew who works for the airlines just like you do. You might know him. His name’s William.’

She took another look and her memory shifted again. She leant forward and gave me a sharp rap on the shoulder.

‘And you know, Brown, that I always like you to wear your chauffeur’s cap whenever we’re in the Bentley. I won’t tell you again.’

Uh oh.

Coward that I am, I rummaged in the front compartment and found the cap that had once belonged to Brown — he was Maori and his name was really Brownie.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said as I put it on.

‘That’s better,’ Aunt Lulu said.

FIVE

Silly boy, me, to think that driving Aunt Lulu to Tauranga would be that easy.

And so it was that from Matawai, approaching the long winding road through the Waioeka Gorge, I ceased to be Aunt Lulu’s nephew, William, and became Brown, one of the long line of dogsbody-cum-drivers that Uncle Gardner had employed whenever he was home in New Zealand.

Why the chauffeurs? Well, being American, Uncle Gardner could never get accustomed to driving on the left side of the road. And he never did like the Bentley. ‘What kind of goddamn country is this,’ he would grumble, ‘when an American citizen can’t buy a goddamn Chrysler because the steering wheel’s on the wrong goddamn side?’

I actually didn’t mind that Aunt Lulu assumed I was Brownie. I’d liked him, especially since he would sometimes let me drive the Bentley (I was thirteen the first time I got behind the wheel) when he was sent to the grocery store to get something important like more cigarettes or confectionery. And, after all, playacting had been such an important part of growing up with Lulu and Lamarr: if she wanted to do a Driving Miss Daisy, that was fine by me. I’d do anything to keep her happy.

Sitting in the Bentley, with Aunt Lulu nodding off and then rapping on my shoulder to say, ‘Brown, you’re travelling too slow! What is this, a hearse?’ and the wild bush standing in for Alabama, I couldn’t help but think back on those times when Uncle Gardner, after that first football game, would send Brownie around to pick me up and take me to the house.

My father concurred in what amounted to a game to stop Lamarr from turning from a sissy into something even more horrible and nameless. So the word was put on me: I was to be Lamarr’s daytime playmate and his best friend.

‘Lamarr’s such a girl,’ I complained to Dad.

‘It’s only for a few hours a week,’ he reprimanded me, ‘and you’re whanau, for Chrissake.’

Yeah, Dad, well thank you for putting that number on me. Fat chance, too, that he would sweeten the deal with some cash, like Uncle Gardner. No, this time I’d have to take on Lamarr as if he was some kind of social welfare project.

However, there was a ray of sunshine. I had become a randy teenager and I secretly had the hots for my cousin Viveca, who herself was interested in experimenting with a boy, even if it was her cousin. My seeming reluctance to be her brother’s best friend actually hid a scheming heart.

This was how the involvement in Aunt Lulu and Lamarr’s channelling games began.

‘Don’t take the boy home yet, Brown,’ Aunt Lulu would call from the living room. ‘We need somebody masculine to play the hero.’

Aunt Lulu’s love of American movies had persisted and she’d managed to pass on her passion to Lamarr. To assuage her love, Uncle Gardner had built a huge home cinema in the basement with a huge screen and projector. On would go a movie, 16mm film mostly … I suspect Uncle Gardner was relieved that I would supplant him in the male starring roles he’d had to play, out of love for Aunt Lulu, until I came along. And Aunt Lulu particularly loved either Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind or Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager or, her particular favourite, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.

I learnt to smoke at Aunt Lulu’s, trying to light two cigarettes and pass one to Aunt Lulu or Viveca or Yolanda or Lamarr — whoever had won the lottery to play the female part that night — and uttering, between coughs, ‘May I sometimes come here?’ However, I did develop muscles when I had to carry any of them as Scarlett O’Hara, but especially Lamarr, up the stairs where, like Clark Gable, I was supposed to ravish her — or him.

I liked Casablanca much better, especially if I was playing the Humphrey Bogart role as the gruff Rick, owner of the Café Américain. All I had to do was to be madly in love with Ilsa — usually Aunt Lulu, who always insisted on the Ingrid Bergman role — as she came into my place in Nazi-controlled Casablanca, looking beautiful in a simple white gown.

Ilsa had never been Rick’s, having married the Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo — but we were once lovers in Paris. While Sam the piano player plays ‘As Time Goes By’ we remember our bittersweet relationship:

‘Let’s see,’ Ilsa says. ‘The last time we met …’

‘It was “La Belle Aurore”.’

‘How nice,’ Ilsa smiles. ‘You remembered. But of course that was the day the Germans marched into Paris.’

‘Not an easy day to forget.’

‘No,’ Ilsa says.

‘I remember every detail,’ Rick goes on. ‘The Germans wore grey, you wore blue.’

‘Yes. I put that dress away. When the Germans march out, I’ll wear it again.’

Of course Rick realises that he still loves Ilsa, even though she’s married. In the famous last scene, as the German villain, Major Strasser, is closing in on Casablanca airport, Rick forces Ilsa to get on a plane which will carry her and Laszlo to freedom. ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ he says to her.

It’s one of the great farewell scenes in film, and to this day I can still remember every word of it.

SIX

I drove fast through the Waioeka Gorge.

I had purposely turned up the heating and, thank goodness, Aunt Lulu began to wilt and sag and, very soon, was snoring her head off. Pooch followed suit, whimpering and snuffling and shivering as if he was having a canine nightmare.

To be frank, I was getting worried. What had Aunt Lulu done to warrant her ejection from the home? What were her ‘medical issues’?

I tried to reach into the glove box to get out her medical file, but every time I did that the Bentley swerved dangerously. No, I’d just have to make the best of it. I drove more carefully but still as fast as I could, hoping to get as much mileage as possible behind us before Aunt Lulu woke up.

And after all, I owed Lamarr.

Sometimes I hadn’t been a very supportive cousin. In fact, growing up with Lamarr and being forced to be his best friend was pretty tough on us both, even if his father was an American and his mother was a Maori princess. Whenever he returned from boarding school — after Wellington he went to a more select school in Sydney — he was always worse rather than better. His brand of theatrical behaviour, as Aunt Lulu called it, didn’t go down in Gisborne and, once, when I saw him across the street, I snuck off in the other direction.

The trouble was that my defection had been witnessed.

The next time I was at Uncle Gardner’s, Aunt Lulu called me to her bedroom. She had on her dark glasses and was puffing furiously on a cigarette. She stubbed it out and folded her arms. ‘So when did you turn out to be pure arsehole, William?’

I blushed red and looked at the floor.

‘Don’t look away from me, you little shit,’ she continued. ‘Lamarr is your cousin. Just as Monty and I were close, you owe each other to be back to back against the world. Apart from which the world is too full of dull people who have no colour and who conform to the lowest common denominator. People like me and Lamarr are the only solution to making sure the world doesn’t become boring and conventional.’

She was really going for me.

‘I’m sorry, Aunt Lulu,’ I muttered.

‘Sorry?’ she screamed. ‘Sorry doesn’t cut it. After all I’ve done for you, what Lamarr has done for you, William? Get out of here, you little piece of pathetic trash, and go back to where you belong.’

Well, I learnt my lesson. From that moment on I started becoming a better cousin and friend to Lamarr. I often found myself having to protect him, beating up other boys who laughed at him.

Not that he always appreciated it.

‘You have to stop being my shadow,’ Lamarr sobbed after one such occasion.

‘If I don’t do it, who will?’

‘I’ll do it myself, damn it,’ Lamarr answered. ‘I may be helpless but I’m not entirely hopeless. I’ll get by.’ He tried to look like Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. ‘And if I don’t, I’ll rely on the kindness of strangers.’ Then he added, ‘And I know you only started to be friends with me because Dad paid you.’

Lamarr knew? That was the lowest ebb of our relationship, and I realised I didn’t want it to go any lower. I put my arm around his shoulders.

We were always trading lines from the movies. ‘Hey kid, you don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. Maybe just whistle, ’ I said, repeating lines from To Have and To Have Not. ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you?’

He looked at me, offended. ‘You’re asking me how to whistle? Honey, I’ve already had a lot of practice!’

He struck a pose. ‘You just put your lips together and blow!’

With an attitude like that, he survived.

SEVEN

We were approaching Opotiki when I went over a pothole and the sudden thump woke Aunt Lulu.

She peered at me. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

She clutched Pooch in front of her for protection. There was fear in her eyes.

I stopped the car and put on my best smile. After all, the smile had worked when I’d had to pacify distraught passengers on various flights over the years so it should do the trick with Aunt Lulu. ‘I’m your nephew,’ I said kindly. ‘William.’

‘William? No, you’re not,’ she whimpered. ‘You’re too old for William.’

Then she really went to lala-land.

‘Oh my God, what have you done with William? What are you doing driving the Bentley? Have you murdered my nephew and put him in the boot?’

In desperation, I made a mistake. ‘All right, Aunt Lulu, I’m not William. I’m Brown. Remember?’

But Aunt Lulu’s memory had made a hyper space jump since then. She stared at me, said, ‘You’re not Brown either,’ and she struck a pose worthy of Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. ‘Have you murdered Brown too? Oh no! Are you after my pearls?’

She started to scream.

‘Please Aunt Lulu, don’t do that,’ I pleaded.

What could I go except try to drive with one hand on the steering wheel and reach over and pat her with the other hand? But that outreaching hand caused another reality shift. She pressed herself back against the seat and I could see her eyes blinking fast.

Was she going into cardiac arrest?

No. After a short while she drew herself up, glared at me and said, ‘Matron? Matron! I have to go weewees.’

As I discovered later, one of her medical conditions was that her bladder was shot to pieces. I should have counted myself lucky that she’d lasted this far. Ger-reat: why was there never a toilet in sight when there was an emergency? I looked for the nearest clump of trees.

‘Not them, you fool,’ said Aunt Lulu, noting my gaze. ‘They’re too far away and I’m wearing my best heels.’

I slowed the Bentley and stopped. When I opened the door Aunt Lulu cast a commanding eye over me. ‘You’ll have to carry me,’ she ordered, surveying the fence, paddock and trees beyond.

As for Pooch, he leapt out, trembled, took a few doddery steps and sprayed one of the rear tyres before collapsing with the effort.

Not only did I have to carry Aunt Lulu, but when we got to the safety of the bushes she refused to squat.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ she growled.

I held her off the ground as she gathered up her skirts and let fly.

This wasn’t something they taught you at flight school.

‘Lamarr,’ I muttered, ‘you owe me one.’

The nightmare, however, had only just begun. Pooch was waiting beside the Bentley, and although Aunt Lulu picked him up she refused to get in the car.

‘Please, Aunt Lulu, let’s get going.’

She saw a big ute booming down the road. It must have belonged to pig hunters — it had spotlights for night work and a huge dead porker across the bonnet.

Before I could stop her Aunt Lulu made a run for it. ‘Help! Help!’ she screamed.

The ute screeched to a halt.

Aunt Lulu tottered towards it. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she told the three burly men inside, who looked as if they ate four sides of pork each for breakfast, dinner and tea. ‘There’s a strange man, he stole my Bentley, he’s after my body and my pearls, and he’s held me captive all morning.’

Well, what would you do if a little old lady carrying a small dog stopped you in the middle of the road and told you she’d been kidnapped?

‘Look, I can explain,’ I bleated, wearing my best smile, as they advanced on me.

Pity I wasn’t wearing a captain’s cap and jacket with epaulettes. The last thing I saw was somebody’s fist in my face and I went down.

EIGHT

I woke up in the Opotiki police station. I was lying on a small couch being attended to by a doctor. In the back, a nurse with a nametag that read ‘Simpson’ was looking after Aunt Lulu.

Three somewhat shamefaced pig hunters were sitting in a corner.

‘Listen, mate,’ one of them said, ‘sorry we hit you, eh.’

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ I answered.

‘You don’t want to press charges?’ the police constable asked. I suspected he’d been trying to arrest these blokes for some other misdemeanour, probably to do with an illegal marijuana plantation.

‘No, it’s really not their fault. Is my Aunt Lulu all right?’

‘Nurse Simpson has given her some medication,’ the constable said. ‘She actually remembers your aunt from a television panel show she was on, answering questions live.’

‘I’ve been a fan of Lulu’s for years.’ Nurse Simpson’s tone was reverent. ‘She and the other ladies on Roses and Your Thorns. Your aunt was marvellous.’

‘We found her medical details in the glove box,’ the constable added. ‘Hopefully the medication will last until you get to … Tauranga, is it? If you like, Nurse Simpson will be glad to go along with you.’

I considered the offer seriously. The adoration would keep Aunt Lulu safe in fantasyland but … ‘No, it’s okay,’ I replied. ‘Just … what is her condition?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Nurse Simpson asked, startled. ‘Your aunt has dementia. She caused quite a few incidents at the rest home.’

She went through Aunt Lulu’s misdemeanours.

At first I was alarmed because they appeared so wilful: Aunt Lulu believing the rest home was called Tara and belonged to her; Aunt Lulu accusing the matron of being a wicked aunt who was keeping her there under false pretences; Aunt Lulu telling the staff they were Nazis and trying to get to the airport to escape them.

Then it dawned on me. Most of her misdemeanours were based on the movie scenarios we’d acted out so often. ‘Gosh, anybody would think she was an axe murderer,’ I muttered.

What she’d really done was to go to Hollywood heaven.

Aunt Lulu was released back into my care. Before we left Opotiki, she posed for a few photographs and gave Nurse Simpson a shaky autograph.

I stopped the car at a petrol station to fill up and then said, ‘Let’s find a restaurant and have some lunch, eh, Aunt Lulu?’

‘I’m sorry, William,’ she said when we were seated. ‘For a moment there, I just didn’t remember who you were. Old age, nephew, it’s not much fun.’ She touched my cheek tenderly. ‘I’m so glad you’re not still the same uptight little prick you were when you were younger.’

‘None of those years was wasted, Aunt Lulu,’ I answered. ‘Something finally rubbed off on me, eh?’

She gave a gasp of grief and huge tears began to spill from her eyes and down every crack and crevice in her face.

‘Aunt Lulu, you’ll spoil your make-up.’

That stopped her fast. ‘Oh, my public,’ she said. ‘They must never see what we stars are like in the daylight.’

She was worrying about her appearance? I’d wondered why people in the restaurant were looking at me strangely.

It wasn’t until later that I saw the shiner.

NINE

The daylight was fading as I drove from Opotiki to Whakatane and then along the beautiful stretch of coast road to Tauranga.

I was in a mellow, nostalgic mood. At that moment, there was no better place to be than in the Bentley, driving my aunt to her son, while the sun was going down.

I suddenly remembered Lamarr’s emergency kit. I reached into the glove box and found the tapes of old movie songs to which, during all our long trips in the Bentley, we — Lamarr, Viveca, Yolanda, me and even Uncle Gardner — would sing along.

I put the first tape on, a Victor Young standard, and Aunt Lulu gave a shiver of delight and began to join in:

When I fall in love, it will be forever,

or I’ll never fall in love …

Her voice had been a beautiful lyric soprano. Over the years, afflicted by cigarettes, it had descended and was now a splendid basso profondo.

It had always been in the cards that Lamarr would join the Harrington family business but, when his father was kicked out of the firm — I can just imagining the board muttering about the ‘bad blood’ in that side of the family what with Gardner going troppo and Lamarr going gay — he had to rethink.

For a while he flirted with a number of careers. Of course they were all in the entertainment business. He tried acting and had a mild success in Boys in the Band where he was playing to type, but roles as heterosexual heroes were simply beyond him. Nevertheless he felt New York and the Great White Way beckoning and decided, when he was twenty-two, to try his luck in the Big Apple. He landed at the airport, told the taxi driver, ‘Take me to Times Square.’ When he arrived he struck his best pose, flung open his coat (it was freezing) and roared, ‘I’m hee-rrr-eee!’

Alas stardom was on holiday, so he upped sticks and flew to Los Angeles, where he hung out in West Hollywood. There, he found his own kind of adoration along Sunset Boulevard.

By that time I was flying for Qantas. I remember one time being in Los Angeles on stopover and I got a telephone call from Lamarr, who decided to come on by.

Now, the thing about Lamarr was that he slept during the day and only came alive at night. He took one look at my single hotel room and immediately pronounced, ‘Where’s your bed? You can’t possibly sleep on the floor,’ and checked us into the Hollywood Hilton.

Fortunately for Lamarr, he had actually turned out to be a hunk like his dad. Even so, he was a hunk who looked somehow askew. You know, you looked at him and you thought, Handsome as. Then he moved and you thought, Huh? Maybe it was the slight sway, or the all-knowing preen, or the combinations of colour: blue jeans, orange shirt, purple socks. So first of all, girls would look — and then shut off. And then their boyfriends would look — and nod, ‘Uh huh.’

We went out to some cowboy bars that he knew about and frequented, all of them gay. He didn’t mind being pawed and petted, but he could see I was uncomfortable. ‘Cousin William,’ he said, ‘this is not your scene. But thank you for trying. We’ll always be there for each other, though, won’t we?’

There was such an aching sense of panic and love between us as if, after all, the kindness of strangers wasn’t quite enough and would never be enough, for either of us. ‘Yes,’ I promised as I hugged him. ‘Just whistle, right?’

In the end, the US of A was not Lamarr’s scene either and, flamboyant as ever, he returned the next year to New Zealand. He was thirty when fortune favoured him and he met Harry, an Australian restaurateur who pursued him to Tauranga and didn’t mind watching old Hollywood movies.

And then I heard Aunt Lulu give a little chuckle and when I looked into the rear-vision mirror she was looking at me and she said:

‘Oh Gardner, you got that shiner all for me?’

To tell you the truth, I didn’t mind that Aunt Lulu thought I was Uncle Gardner.

In fact, I suspect that he’s who this story is really about. From the first time he had asked me to ‘throw the little sonofabitch into a cowpat’, Uncle Gardner and I had been on the same side. He was the iconic hero, someone like Alan Ladd in Shane: decent, disarming, moral. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he unreservedly loved Aunt Lulu and his family.

I remember one occasion when Uncle Gardner had come to see me play indoor basketball during a high school tournament. Lamarr was watching from the sidelines and I should have known, when the game was over and Uncle Gardner was congratulating me, that my sporting prowess cast him in a shadow. He came over to offer his congratulations too. ‘You should have been Father’s son,’ he said. ‘Not me.’

Forgive me, but all I could feel was elation. All my life I had felt the same thing: my own father regardless, Uncle Gardner and I could have been made from the same flesh.

But the blood drained from Uncle Gardner’s face. ‘What the Hell are you talking about, Lamarr? You’re my son.’ He pulled Lamarr towards him and shook him. ‘I love you.’

Just before Uncle Gardner died, fifteen years ago now, he called me to see him. Those blond good looks of his had completely faded and he’d put on quite a bit of weight, but he was still as charming and as concerned about Aunt Lulu and his family as ever.

‘Those daughters of mine are in the USA and I’ve left Lulu in good hands but, William, I would like to make you the executor of my will.’

I was floored.

He began to weep. ‘Look after them all, won’t you? Particularly your Cousin Lamarr. He needs a masculine brother, you know what I mean? Damn it, I don’t mind his predilections and peccadilloes because he’s my own flesh and blood. And it was his mother’s fault that he turned out the way he has and, no matter, I still love him, you hear? But every now and then, throw the sonofabitch into a cowpat.’

And so I assumed Uncle Gardner’s persona.

I looked into the rear-view mirror. Tried to smile with that same awkward, lopsided but sexy grin. Crinkled my eyes. Imitated that slow Southern drawl of his.

‘Ever since I saw you as a schoolgirl, I’ve loved you, Lulu. For you, I’d grab all the stars in the sky and one by one strew them at your feet.’

Uncle Gardner, this one is for you.

TEN

Finally, I delivered Aunt Lulu, the great Ruru-i-te-marama, to her son and heir.

As soon as I turned into the driveway of Lamarr’s house he came running out crying, ‘Mother? Mother!’

‘Hello, Lamarr,’ said Aunt Lulu as he yanked open the door to the Bentley. She looked him up and down. ‘You’re putting on weight,’ she said, as Marlene Dietrich did to Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. ‘Time to lay off the candy bars.’

Lamarr blew me kisses. I waited to one side as he gathered his mother in his arms. ‘How dare they do this to you.’

‘Out on the street, Lamarr,’ she sobbed. ‘They threw me away as if I was of no use to anybody.’

And then she stopped in her tracks.

‘I will not go a step further,’ she cried. ‘William? Take me back! Take me anywhere! I will not be a burden to Lamarr!’

At first I thought it was one of her usual melodramatic outbursts. Then I started to worry. This was real.

‘No! No! No!’ she cried as Lamarr forced her onward. She was kicking at him and trying to claw at his face. ‘Let me go back!’

‘Harry!’ Lamarr shouted. ‘Help!’

Harry waddled out but, try as they both might, Aunt Lulu would not go into the house. She began to scream — ‘Oh, Gardner! Gardner!’

And she fell to the ground.

I don’t know why I did what I did.

I walked towards Aunt Lulu and pulled her up. She gave a slight cry of fear and fought against my enfolding arms.

The moon came out and Sam began to play ‘As Time Goes By’ and I was Rick, owner of the Café Américain, and here I was with Ilsa at the fog-enshrouded airport, just ten minutes to spare before the plane to Lisbon was to depart.

I put my soul into my acting. ‘You said I was to do the thinking for both of us,’ I said to Aunt Lulu. ‘Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.’

Pooch began to bark. No Pooch, I thought to myself, this is not your scene. I was worried that Aunt Lulu might not respond as she looked at me, puzzled, but then she recognised the script. Good girl that she was, she immediately stepped into Ilsa’s character. ‘But Richard, no, I, I —’

‘You’ve got to listen to me,’ I said roughly. ‘Do you have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louis?’

Lamarr pretended to countersign the papers. ‘I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.’

‘You’re saying this only to make me go,’ Aunt Lulu cried. The plane’s propellers were already turning, roaring loudly in the night.

‘I’m saying it because it’s true,’ I answered, grabbing her arms and forcing her to accept what I was telling her. ‘Inside of us we both know you belong to Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it.’

‘No,’ Aunt Lulu cried again.

‘Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.’

‘But what about us?’

Her question lingered in the air.

I’d forgotten the line.

Aunt Lulu stiffened and glared at me. ‘Amateurs!’ she declared. ‘Why am I always surrounded by people from … central casting! And look at the lighting! Where’s the make-up girl? How can I possibly appear before my public looking like this?’

She pointed at me. ‘As for you — all of you — call yourselves actors? Where are Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart when you need them!’

She drew herself up and, head tossed back, made her exit.

Lamarr turned to me. We were grinning like maniacs.

‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ he said.