I see him sometimes, in the moonlight, just walking by the pond. How tall and graceful he has grown, so like his father was long ago. I can’t approach him, of course. No, I know I can’t. Something awful would happen. It would change the spell, I am sure. And then I would never see him again. And he is so like his father. I cannot see his golden hair in the moonlight, but of course I know he has it, just as it was when he was a child, because of the feathers, you see.

I had the pond made, you know. It used to be a formal garden with lots of box hedges and raked gravel. They said the topiary was quite remarkable and there were statues hidden among it, nymphs and things. I kept them. They are over in the woodland garden. One of them is Diana the Huntress and Gerald used to say it reminded him of me. He was such a sweet man.

Gerald never saw him in the moonlight. The accident happened too soon, before I even had the pond made. After we lost him Gerald was never the same really. He cared less about himself, took risks he shouldn’t have. I tell myself he was fond of the hunt so at least he died doing something he enjoyed, and it was quick by all accounts. Came off on a jump and broke his neck. It happens, of course. But I think it would not have happened if poor Gerald hadn’t lost a certain will to live.

So after that I had the pond made. I just had to do something to keep going. It took months of workmen with spades and wheelbarrows, then more months of just waiting. Then the birds began to arrive. You can see I had the edges planted heavily and there are several small islands for safe nesting.

They were just ducks at first, but I fed them anyway. A busy pond is more attractive than a dead pond, especially since it was close to the house. And it had to be close to the house, so that I could see it from the windows.

Then the first few geese appeared. They were migrating from somewhere, I forget where. It doesn’t matter anyway. Oh, I took special care of those geese. I had little houses built for them and they came when I called. Wherever they were migrating to they seemed to forget about it and I seemed to have more and more arriving every day.

People talked, of course. They suggested I should harvest the geese and mentioned it was a while since they had enjoyed roast goose. Yes, they could say that to me, after what had happened. I was outraged. My sister told me I was losing my marbles. I told her anyone would if it had happened to them.

And early one morning I noticed a new goose on the pond. He must have arrived during the night because I always check them last thing to make sure they are all comfortable. A fine young fellow, I thought, and as I was throwing them the morning grain he came closer and I could see the golden sheen on his feathers.

I dropped my bucket of feed and stared at him. He stared back, of course. And I think he remembered then what he was. How, when he was a golden haired boy he had been changed into a goose and flew away and lost himself. And now he was home again.

And sometimes, when the moon is just right, I see him changed back to human form, walking on the edge of the pond.

Heaven

There was always a queue here and tonight was no different. Tom had waited over an hour, slowly working his way forward towards the garish doorway ahead. It had a big sign above it in flashing lights. It said ‘Heaven’. The music coming out of there was incredible, but they had that kind of reputation and everyone wanted to be seen on the other side of that door.

And they pulled in all sorts, too. People giving it a try. Tom wrinkled his nose. The guy behind him stank of turps. He had a paper bag he took a swig from every now and then, and he kept forgetting that Tom had said he didn’t want any.

‘Care for a swallow?’

‘No thanks,’ said Tom, again.

And the short woman in front of him was ill or something. She kept talking to herself, muttering away things Tom could never quite hear and he wasn’t so keen that he was going to lean down to listen better. He caught the odd word, though, mostly ‘no’ and ‘won’t’.

He sighed and shuffled forwards again as the line moved up.

There was Big Pete at the door. The lights on the sign overhead reflected off his shaved head and sometimes crazily off his polished black eye patch. He looked like a pirate. And nobody argued with Big Pete. If you had a membership card he let you in. If you didn’t, well he might if he felt like it.

But if he didn’t you didn’t argue.

The line moved again.

Tom had no membership card. He was hoping the management would remember him. He’d dressed carefully. It did no harm to make the effort. Although he knew his clothes were looking pretty shabby lately what with one thing and another.

The line moved again. Tom was second in line now. The woman in front of him was explaining to Big Pete that of course she had a membership card but someone had stolen it earlier in the evening.

‘No, sorry, can’t be done,’ said Pete.

‘But… but you’ve got to let me in! Damn you!’

‘Lady, if I said no then no is all I’m going to say.’

She turned away still muttering, and the few words Tom caught were curses.

Big Pete turned to Tom.

‘Membership card?’

‘Ah, no,’ said Tom. ‘But I know Josh, he invited me.’

Big Pete looked at him and shrugged. Then he called over his shoulder in a voice that carried over the music inside.

‘Hey, Josh, someone here says he’s your buddy.’

There was a distant ‘hang on’ and then Josh stepped through the doorway behind Pete.

‘Oh, sure, he’s with me. Hi Tom. Come on in.’

Josh reached out his hand and Tom saw the hole that went clean through the palm and out the other side.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Tom.

Huia

If you're not from New Zealand you may need some vocabulary help in this one. Pakeha are the European (mostly) settlers that arrived in NZ long after the Maori people. Tipuna refers to ancestors. Mere is a kind of club used for fighting and greenstone is a local variant of Jade. A Swandri is a woollen jacket, actually a English-derived local trade name. Pa used to refer to a fortified hill top but it often gets used for any Maori settlement.

'Why don't you do a moa?' asked Jack. I wished he wouldn't talk as he drove at breakneck speed along the dusty road. He saw my concern, grinned, and half slid around the next corner. A few more feet and we would have tumbled over the steep bank on the other side. Somewhere a long way down there was a stream splashing white water over grey rocks.

'A moa?' I half gulped, wondering what he was on about.

'Y'know, big bastards, ten feet high. Do one of those.'

'Oh,' I realised what he meant. 'Maybe one day. But we've only got bones. No soft tissue, no feathers. Soft tissue is best, skin or meat, stomach lining's ideal. Fat chance.'

'No moas have been gutted around here for a while,' agreed Jack. 'I never heard of any feathers. So feathers would do?'

'Depends on the feathers,' I replied, guardedly. 'But they're worth trying.'

He swerved around another corner. It was lucky there was no one coming, he drove as if he owned the road. But this was somewhere in the middle of the Ureweras, I was a bit vague where. We hadn't seen another vehicle since Murupara. And Jack had lived here all his life, knew the road like the back of his hand, or so he said.

It was Tuhoe country, rugged and uncompromising. One of the last places the Pakeha had ventured. Even now I wondered how much influence we Pakeha had here. The bush clad hills frowned down on us as we threaded our way along the precarious road.

It was well after lunch when we got to the Pa. They just called it that, the Pa. That's why I didn't know where it was. There were a few wooden houses clustered about a meeting house with a carved front. Next to it was another building the same size, it looked like a hall of some kind.

I'd seen it before on television, and a couple of times for real, but I wasn't prepared for what happened when we got out of the car. This Maori guy came at me with one of those wooden spears, swinging it around and yelling. When he dropped something on the ground and backed off, Jack nudged me. 'Pick it up.'

I stepped forward gingerly, it was a piece of leaf. I kept my eye on that guy with the spear as I picked the leaf up. It occurred to me that I was a long way from Auckland, and I was out of my depth. How long ago had it been since they had eaten Pakeha? Perhaps not as long as I would have liked.

Anyway, when I picked up the leaf the women started singing one of those haunting chants and we walked up to the meeting house. Outside the meeting house sat the old people, some of them wrapped in blankets in lieu of coats. I noticed one old woman had the moko, the tattooed chin. She smiled at me when I caught her eye, two white teeth were all that clung to her gums.

The speeches started then. There were an endless succession of elders each having their say. Each one strutted up and down in front of the meeting house, several had real greenstone meres which they waved eloquently. About half of what they said was in Maori. I caught a few of the words. There was a lot of talk of Tipuna, and of course, a lot of talk about the Huia.

The Huia birds had once sung in the trees here. They must have been rare for a long time, though. The feathers were prized, marking the wearer as having noble birth. No one here remembered them, not even the very old ones. But they remembered the old people talking about the Huia birds.

Jack had told me to wait until they had all spoken before I did. It would show respect, and I was anxious to do that. After all, I had come here seeking a favour from them.

Eventually it seemed to be my turn. I stumbled through a carefully rehearsed greeting in Maori. Jack had laughed when I had practised it on him on the drive here, but the old ones smiled and nodded encouragement. The rest had to be in English. I explained why I needed the feathers of the Huia, what we would do with them. Someone had suggested that we were going to make a mechanical bird from them, a thing of clockwork cogs and electric motors. I told them it wouldn't be like that.

Eventually they seemed to come to some agreement and Jack was grinning, his teeth seemed very white in his dark face. A couple of the kids grasped my hands and tugged me to my feet. I glanced towards the old people. The old lady with the moko smiled and nodded.

The kids led me into the hall next to the meeting house. They'd laid on lunch for us. I hadn't expected that, and I wasn't hungry. But I could see they wanted me to share food with them. The old ladies kept heaping my plate with roast pork and potatoes.

'Eat up!' I looked up and saw the guy who had waved the spear at me when I had arrived. He was wearing a shirt and jeans now, and he was watching me with amusement. I sat down beside him on one of the benches.

'You always eat like this?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'Only when there's something special going on, eh. The boys brought in a couple of pigs this week, so we've got plenty. Bet you don't get pork like that in Auckland.'

'No way,' I agreed. It had a rich, gamy flavour that, frankly, took a bit of getting used to.

At the end of the meal one of the old men started singing and, one by one, the other old ones joined in. The younger ones, mostly, didn't, as if they didn't know the words. They looked at their feet and grinned at each other.

The old lady with the moko came in the main door, I hadn't seen her go out. She carried a box, it was about a foot long and covered in intricate carving. While the others sang she brought it to me reverently and placed it in my hands.

'This is the Huia, Pakeha,' she said. 'This is the Huia. You make him sing again for us. You make him sing again, for the young ones. You understand?'

For the young ones. For the ones who didn't sing with the old people, the ones who didn't know the words.

'I... I'll do my best,' I stammered. I'd told them that the whole idea was far from certain.

'Make him sing,' she urged. 'Then they will know.'

'I understand,' I said, hoping I did. At least I did understand that they were trusting me with their treasure.

That was two years before. I heard from Jack that the old lady was gone now. She died talking about the Huia bird and how it would come back.

The next time we drove up to the Pa Jack was more subdued. He drove more slowly, too. Slowly and carefully, like he had a load of eggs in the back of the truck.

'How did... y'know, how did you talk them into it?'

'Didn't tell them.' I shrugged.

'Someone'll pretty slacked off with you.'

'Probably,' I said, trying not to think about it.

'What do you reckon will happen?'

'Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Just have to see.'

He didn't have anything to say to that. It was quite late in the day when we got to the Pa, thanks to Jack's slow driving.

The reception today was quite different. I saw the guy with the spear. He was wearing a swandri and carrying a rifle. He waved cheerfully at us when we drew up. There were no old ones sitting outside the meeting house, though. It seemed a bit run down, as if no one cared about it now.

'Changed a bit, eh?' remarked Jack.

'Where are the old people?'

'Some died, a couple in hospital in Whakatane. The Welfare reckoned they were too crook. It gets very cold here in the winter.'

'Not much of a reception.'

'Maybe not much of a feed either. Times have been a bit lean.'

'Let's get them out then.'

We got out of the truck and lifted down a box from the back. Several kids gathered around to see what we were doing. Knowing there was no going back now, I opened the box and lifted out two black and white birds. One of them had long, curved bill.

'Pretty birds,' said a little girl.

'Funny looking ones,' said another.

'You know what these are?' said Jack.

'Tuis?'

'Blackbirds?'

'No, stupid,' said another. 'They're the old people's birds, aren't they? They're the Huias.'

They fluttered and stretched in my hands, recovering from the journey and adjusting to the sunlight from the darkness of the box.

'What's a Huia?'

'That's a Huia.'

'But that's just a story. There aren't any Huias. Anyway, they're dumb Huias. They don't sing. The old people said they sang.'

The male, the one with the long beak, stretched his wings and flapped them experimentally. Then, before I really expected it, he launched himself off my hand and went on a long glide across towards the door of the meeting house. With an easy motion of his wings he gained height and lifted himself up to the top of the roof, settling on a carved figure of a warrior.

From there he looked around, seeing his ancient homeland for the first time.

And from there the Huia sang.

Some of the images of the Pa are probably now out of date, drawn from a visit I made to the Urewera country in the 1960s. This was to mark the arrival of electricity to the area and we had a ceremony quite a lot like the one described here.

Cat Flap

He wasn’t sure how long it had been there, if that was still a meaningful question. Time did not work the same way here, but it still helped to think it did.

So there it was. A cat flap in the gateway. He reached down and pushed it so that it swung back and forth glinting gold and flashing against the pearl surround. There was a picture in relief of a cat’s head stamped into the gold. Had it been there yesterday? Had it been there forever? The answer might be both no and yes to both questions. That usually meant they were the wrong questions.

While he looked a nose from the other side pushed it open. A head followed, ears pricked up, then a paw and then the whole body slid through. A final flick of the tail caught the flap as it flipped closed and held it for a split second while the tip of the tail slipped out of the way.

“So,” he said gently. “A new arrival. Let me check the list. I ought to do this on the outside, you know. I mean there are no foregone conclusions.”

The cat looked at him in a way that suggested he might have been better prepared.

“Yes, well, some days are more organised than others,” he said, then remembered that with time being different the comment was meaningless. All moments were the same moment after all.

He was carrying the list, as always, so he opened it up and scanned down. The way the list was organised was impossible to understand, but the names found themselves so it did not much matter.

But this time it was not a name. The entry just said ‘all cats’. He frowned. ‘All cats?’

The cat stared up at him as though it knew all about the entry and he was being tiresome about it. Then it proceeded to have a bath, the kind of cello-playing bath one feels obliged to look away from unless one knows the cat well.

Lost

‘Now, the Alien, a nasty piece of work, but really not a problem, you know?’ He chewed on a cigar as he talked, tapping it every so often so that the ash floated down onto the marble by the swimming pool. This was a man who should always keep his shirt on, but the Santa Barbara sunshine was too tempting for him today. I’m talking obese, and hairy. I’ll say no more.

‘Even those little, what do you call em? Metal buggers, shouting all the time.’

‘Daleks?’ I ventured.

‘Yeah, Daleks. They went off to Lisbon or Seville or somewhere. Got themselves a big house with no steps. They couldn’t stand steps, you know? Used to get really pissed about steps. Ever seen a really pissed Dalek?'

‘Umm.’

‘No, not just acting pissed. I mean really, really pissed. You don’t want to find yourself near one of those things when it’s just found some stairs.’

‘And the Alien?’

‘Just down the road, he’s got a nice ranch, big place. Cows. Likes Ray Bans. Looks kind of weird in them but you don’t tell him that. His staff get danger money, of course, but hell he can afford it. Four, no, five movies now. We’re trying to get Sigourney in for another but she says she’s over it.’

‘So, you mean there really was an Alien?’

‘Hell yes. Haven’t you been listening? Everyone wants to think it's special effects, but it’s still cheaper to use the real thing. Well for the first couple of movies anyway, then they start screwing everyone. But if they’re bringing in the money who cares? You remember Godzilla?’

‘Sure.’

‘Got a nice place up in Hokkaido, that’s Japan. Somewhere up in the back country there, I think. He loves the Japanese. Eats a lot of sushi and that, what do you call it when they throw the food at you?’

‘Teppanyaki?’

‘Yeah, I guess. Anyway, he just loves that stuff. Gets it in bulk. Loves it when they throw it. Whatever pulls your chain, I say. He’s taken good care of his pile, though. He was the mystery owner of the rights to King Kong and offloaded them for a fortune to New Line. He’s really made it. Kong himself, well he’s in rehab at the moment but he’ll be okay. He’s made enough money to see him through.’

‘And the ones that don’t?’

‘Yeah, well, there’s the problem. What do you do with a loser who’s more than happy to rip your arm off and eat it, then go and wipe out your city? If nothing else there’d be so much of this shit going on in real life that no one would pay to watch a movie about it.’ He sighed. ‘Last year I had a warehouse full of pterodactyls hidden away in Arizona. We’d let ‘em out on Sunday nights for a fly around and get ‘em back with meat lures. Dangerous, though. And just don’t ask about the killer tomatoes.’

‘So there are warehouses of monsters all over the country?’

He grinned.

‘There certainly were until a couple of months back. How’s your drink?’

‘Just fine, thanks.’

He took a slurp from his martini.

‘Problem solved at last.’ He sighed contentedly and I wondered if he was going to tell me he had sedated them all with alcohol. ‘We got the idea from Jurassic Park. All those dinosaurs confined to a little island miles out to sea where no one has to worry about them. Jurassic Park itself, the island they used, I mean, that’s full up. So we went a bit further south. Down near Fiji they have little islands all over the place that no one lives on. Hell we used to let off nukes somewhere down there and no one noticed. Ideal.’

‘So, you got an island for them?’

‘Paid for it, of course. Set up a transmitter to warn folk away and all, got to do it properly.’

‘And that’s where you put all the loser monsters?’

‘Yep. Nice and tidy and safely out of the way.’

‘What about… I dunno, accidents. A boat off course or a plane down?’

His eyes suddenly glittered. ‘That is one hell of an idea, boy. A plane crash on the island. Yeah!’

Where Sheep May Safely Graze

More local vocabulary: A ute is a 'utility vehicle' not quite a pickup truck but close enough. Manuka is a low, bushy tree. Kai is food. A Chillibin is a portable ice box.

The road was loose metal and dusty. Clare could see in her rear vision mirror the twin clouds of choking brown dust billowing behind her, she could hear the rattle and scrape of stones thrown up, clattering against the underside of Geoff's nearly new Toyota. Some of them had probably chipped the paintwork.

She couldn't care less.

It was always the same at Christmas: the big fight in early December about what they would do this year. The grim silence afterwards and then, to keep the peace, Clare gave in and they took the boys to Geoff's mother's place for cold ham and limp lettuce.

Except this year the fight had lasted a bit longer, been a bit nastier and she had told Geoff he could do what he wanted for Christmas. But she was going up North, by herself if necessary.

Geoff had let her know where his priorities lay and had taken the boys to his mother's place again.

She changed down to meet a steep grade in the road and shuddered over a corrugated section.

Well, she didn't care what they did. For once she was going to enjoy herself, get away from everyone and do her own thing. Geoff hadn't asked where she was going, and he'd been all right about the Toyota.

She was just a little bit vague about where she was. Navigating alone was a bit tricky. She had the map open on the seat beside her but it wasn't much help. She'd turned off the main road some time ago and it had been unsealed from there.

At the top of the steep grade she noticed the steering on the car had gone funny, pulling her over to the centre of the road all the time. At first she thought it was just the grooves in the road, ruts in the metal made by the traffic. They smoothed them out every year or so with a grader, but this road hadn't seen a grader for a while.

It wasn't the road. She pulled over, twisting the wheel hard to move the car off the road onto the verge, but making sure she didn't go into the drain. There was a tangle of blackberry bushes there which rolled over what had once been a fence and drifted off into the manuka beyond.

She waited for the brown dust to settle and then climbed out. It was a stinking hot day. Tomorrow, Christmas, would be just as hot. But by then she would be at the beach so it wouldn't matter. At least she hoped so.

The front tyre on the driver's side was dead flat, like a balloon the day after a party. There must have been a nail or something on the road. There was no problem with the spare though. She had checked it before setting out.

No problem except that to get at it meant hauling all the stuff out of the boot. Fortunately she wasn't carrying very much, just a couple of bags and a chillibin. She opened the chillibin, lifted out a bottle of water and took a long gulp of it. The cold reached right down her throat and disappeared somewhere around her middle.

The bags and the chillibin weren't very heavy, but the spare tyre was. She could only just lift it. Geoff, she knew, could pick it up with one hand. He was smug about that sort of thing.

Clare wheeled the tyre over to the side of the car. Then she got out the jack and handle to crank it. She'd changed tyres before, not for years, before she met Geoff she had had a car of her own and a couple of times she'd had a flat.

The wheel cover gave her awful trouble. It was just a decorative piece of plastic that covered the nuts, but it didn't want to come off. Finally she found a way to lever it up with the jack handle, by then she was hot and dusty. Sweat trickled down her neck and her face was filthy from using her hands to wipe the sweat from her eyes.

She knew she had to loosen the nuts before jacking up the car. That was the next step. The tool kit included a spanner. She fitted it onto the first bolt and pushed the handle.

It didn't move.

She threw all her weight onto it.

Nothing.

Perhaps she was turning it the wrong way. Should it be clockwise or anticlockwise? She tried the other way. Still no movement. Geoff was always going on about doing the wheel nuts up tight. You didn't want them falling off while you were going along. She hadn't seen the disadvantage, though. They were too tight to undo.

She leant against the car, ignoring the fact that the dust was rubbing off onto her clothes. It was miles from anywhere. She remembered passing some farm land a while ago, there must be a house there somewhere. But this part was all bush reserve.

It would be quite a walk to that house. And she'd feel such an idiot. She knew how to change a tyre, she really did. She just couldn't unscrew those nuts because Geoff had done them up too tight. But the farmer would nod and smile knowingly and gallantly come to her rescue, telling himself that she was a dumb female who shouldn't be allowed out without a keeper. She would have to walk for miles to get there for that privilege, and in this heat too.

The noise of a car coming alerted her. Apart from some birds there was no other sound. She hadn't seen any other cars on this road, it was a bit out of the way. But if she could get them to stop they might be able to unscrew those nuts. She could sort out the rest herself, just loosen those nuts and that would be fine. It would save her a long walk.

The road was too windy to see the car itself, but she could see the clouds of dust it was kicking up. From that she could tell it was moving rather fast for this road. It was probably a local who knew the bends and twists well, either that or a maniac. But hopefully he'd stop and help.

When the car appeared around the nearest corner she could see that it certainly was travelling quickly, almost too fast to avoid the Toyota. It swerved to one side at the last moment, missing Clare by little more than a foot, then it skidded to a stop while she choked in the billowing dust.

She heard it reversing backwards towards her and, getting the dust out of her eyes, she saw it was a Holden ute which had seen better days. Several of the panels were different colours and there were two sheep in the back, panting in the heat. Locals, definitely, she decided. The kind of people who lift sheep into the back of utes are the kind of people who can undo these nuts.

As the ute reversed a head peered out of the passenger side window and she was suddenly not so pleased. She couldn't see much of him, but he looked like a big man, a Maori with long hair swept back from his forehead. Across that forehead was tattooed the word `Filthy'. He looked at her with a glazed expression that suggested he was either simple or high on something, his smile revealed several teeth missing.

What can you do? There were at least two of them, miles from anywhere. She could run for it, but they could catch her, easily probably.

The ute had stopped reversing. Filthy still grinned at her. She found that running was not an option. She was petrified. The driver pushed open his door on the other side and his head appeared above the ute.

`Nice car,' he said. `Not much good with a flat, though.'

Filthy let out a girlish tee-hee giggle. Clare had never heard anything so menacing before in her life.

`Let's have a look, Filthy.'

When Filthy climbed out of the ute she saw he was at least six feet tall and built like a barrel. She had read about fighting off would be rapists. But nothing she had read told her what do now. The driver was smaller, more lithe, but he looked wiry.

Filthy didn't say anything. He just looked at her. The driver peered at her too.

`She's a nice looking lady eh?' He grinned and Filthy let out his giggle again. Clare tried to look haughty, to show them she wasn't scared, otherwise she might start crying. She wished she had her jacket on, that she'd worn trousers instead of shorts, anything.

`All the air's gone to the top, eh?' said the driver. Filthy giggled yet again. It seemed he giggled at everything the diver said. `Let's have a look.'

The driver picked up the spanner and twisted the nuts loose without seeming to make any effort. As he did so he spoke to Filthy. `Yeah, nice car all right. You'd like one like this, Filthy? Sure, you'd like one like this, eh?' Filthy, of course, giggled. The driver picked up the jack from the tool kit and put it down again. `How 'bout a lift, Filthy?'

Filthy walked around to the front of the car, put his back to it, bent his knees and lifted. To Clare's astonishment the flat tyre lifted off the ground. Filthy looked as if he was straining to do it, but he certainly was doing it.

The driver didn't waste any time. He unscrewed the nuts, pulled the wheel off and slipped the spare on. `Okay, Filthy, lower away.' A moment later he had the nuts tightened again. Clare wondered if they were as tight as Geoff made them.

The driver lifted the spare in one hand like Geoff did and carried it around to the boot.

`Chillibin. Got anything cold for the boys, Lady?'

Clare realised she hadn't yet spoken to them. She could still feel her heart thumping, but it seemed possible that they were simply going to fit the tyre and leave.

`Just... just a bottle of wine.' Her mouth was dry. `You're welcome to it.' She tried to sound more grateful than scared.

`Nah,' he dropped the tyre back into its slot under the boot. `You going somewhere for Christmas? Come to our place, eh? We've got plenty of kai, couple of sheep here,' he nodded to the two sheep in the ute. Filthy seemed to think that was hysterically funny.

`Thanks... but I've got other plans. The family, you know. They're expecting me.' She wanted to make that clear. There were people who would come looking for her if she went missing, which was a lie.

`Got to have the family at Christmas, eh? All the uncles and aunties. Got to have plenty of kai too! Okay, Filthy. We'd better get going.'

The pair of them climbed back into the ute, the suspension rocked heavily with Filthy's weight. The driver started the car and they roared off in the shower of dust and stones leaving Clare stunned and confused.

She picked up the two bags and pushed them into the boot. They had fixed her tyre and driven off, tossing her an invitation to spend Christmas with them. She felt ashamed of thinking badly of them. But she had been very frightened.

The sound of a second car approaching from the same direction caught her attention just as she was getting back into the Toyota. It was travelling fast as well, she could tell by just the noise. She really ought to get started before it arrived, if she got behind it then she would have to wind up the windows to avoid the dust and that would make the journey unbearably hot.

Before she could move off the car appeared, a white car with a blue stripe down the side. It missed her by a wider margin than the ute but it skidded to a stop just the same and reversed back. She could see now it was a police car. A stocky man in a blue shirt climbed out. A Pakeha with sandy hair. He looked angry.

`Better move that car, someone will clobber you if they take the corner too fast. Have you seen anyone else? I'm looking for a ute with two blokes in it.'

Clare had wound down her window now that the dust had settled.

`Yes, two Maori men. They helped me change a tyre and they've just gone.'

The policeman sighed wearily, he looked as if the air had gone out of him, like the flat tyre.

`One of them had “Filthy” on his forehead?'

She nodded.

`And a couple of sheep in the back of the ute?'

`Yes, they said they were for Christmas.'

`Wouldn't you know it? And they stopped and changed a tyre for you. You know they pinched those sheep from a farm back down the road. Farmer saw them nip over the fence and grab them. They've got a bloody cheek.'

Sirens

What happened after Odysseus got past the Sirens?

At least the nightmare stays with me

T'is all that I have left

And through a veil of terror

I may hear them still

I bade them tie me to the mast

And bade them stop their ears

So all they saw was evil

And all I heard divine

They perched like hungry carrion birds

Upon the treacherous shore

Surrounded by men's bones

Their feathers dripped with gore

Their voices cried a different tune

So sweet I wept aloud

My weary wanderer's heart

Heard songs that called me home

A lonely wife and son await

Not heard of me in years

A dog that must be dead

I'll never see again

My years of futile travelling

Were swept away and then

I knew that here alone

Lay all that I held dear

What price is death for such a song

But fast my bonds were tied

And though heart would burst

My men ignored my pleas

We rowed on past the deadly shore

They heard none of my cries

Away the song was swept

And all aboard were saved

At least the nightmare stays with me

T'is all that I have left

And through a veil of terror

I may hear them still

The Treaty of Wellington

If you're not familiar with New Zealand history there's more explanation at the end.

They don’t think the same way we do, these people. Haruki knew this. The Anglos were different, slow to accept the new ideas. They held themselves back, clinging to old, useless values. Although, he had to admit, they were not completely to blame.

Haruki spoke their language well. He had spent two years working at the Washington office and another year in Edinburgh. Sometimes a turn of phrase would puzzle him. Usually he understood perfectly.

So the opportunity to interview a number of the old Anglo soldiers was assigned to him. Tokyo was interested in some things that were being said, angry things. They wanted to know more.

The house was a tumble down affair, one of those cheap places knocked up after the war when material was short and the need for housing was high. Probably he had lived here ever since, no doubt working at the big Mitsubishi factory that was the mainstay of the town. Mitsubishi had made good use of the cheap labour over the years. But the recent recessions had hit places like this hard.

He knocked on the door and stood back so that he would have room to bow when it was opened. A repaint was long overdue, he could see and the small garden was overgrown. There was an old car rusting in the long grass.

There was movement inside and the door swung open. He was grey-haired and moved with a shuffling gait. The open door released a set of smells that spoke of strange food, bad air and infrequent washing. He knew that the Anglos did not bathe much, sometimes as little as once a week. He studiously avoided wrinkling his nose and bowed graciously.

‘Good morning, Mr Andrews. I am Haruki Keisuke. We spoke on the telephone yesterday.’

There was a pause as he was weighed up, his age guessed, some obvious speculations running through the old soldier’s mind. Then he sighed.

‘Well, you’d better come in, Mr Keisuke. Let’s get this done.’

‘Please, I would prefer you to call me Haruki, Mr Andrews.’

They liked first names. By allowing him to use Haruki’s first name Andrews would be in the superior position. It was all about face. The Anglos were very strong on face.

He was ushered into a small living room that seemed cluttered with furniture and rugs. It was gloomy because the windows were small. The chair he was waved to was too soft and it creaked as he sat down. He felt as if he might roll out of it if he relaxed. But he smiled his thanks.

‘I have a small gift for you, Mr Andrews. Please accept this from me.’

He handed him a small package, exquisitely wrapped in hand-made paper. It was locally made paper. There were moves to foster indigenous industry among the underprivileged Anglos. Tokyo was supportive. Haruki hoped he would recognise the design.

Andrews took the package and held in his hands. He looked up at Haruki.

‘Um, I don’t know. Do I open it now?’

‘Now or later,’ smiled Haruki. ‘Either is perfectly appropriate.’

‘So nicely wrapped. It seems a shame.’

‘I always feel the same way. My mother keeps the paper in a scrap-book with notes of the occasion.'

Andrews looked at him sharply then and, just for a moment, he looked as though he would hand the package back.

‘My mother was born five years after the war ended,’ said Haruki quietly.

‘And your father?’

‘He was a child of three at the end of the war. One of my grandfathers supervised a boot factory during the war, a vital industry you understand. My other grandfather fought in China.’

‘Not in the Pacific?’

‘No.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Where were you born? Your English is good.’

‘Thankyou. I am from Kyushu. A city called Nagasaki, have you heard of it? I have lived in America and Britain. For now I am based here, at the embassy.’

‘Not one of the local… Japanese, then.’

‘No.’ That was important. Haruki was an outsider, although he was the wrong kind of outsider.

‘I accept your gift, Haruki.’

He reached behind him and produced what looked like a small dagger but was, in fact, a letter opener. He slit the packaging carefully and slid it back from the small wooden box. Opening the box he lifted out an old fashioned fountain pen. There was gold in its case. Andrews raised his eyebrows appreciatively.

‘This is a fine looking pen. Thankyou again.’

‘Just a token.’

‘You’d like some tea.’

‘English tea if you have it.’

‘Of course.’

As Andrews shuffled off to the kitchen Haruki reflected that he hated the stuff. But politeness was necessary.

‘You wanted to ask me some questions,’ Andrews called through the kitchen door. There was the noise of a kettle starting to boil. ‘Stuff about the war you said.’

‘Mostly,’ he called back, then he stood up and moved to the doorway. It did not seem right to shout from room to room. ‘They told me you were in Guadalcanal.’

‘Yeah. From ’43 onwards. After the Yanks stopped the Japs… stopped the Imperial Army.’

‘There is no need to be careful, Mr Andrews. Please speak freely.’

He waved the cup and saucer he was holding vaguely. ‘Old habits, you know.’

‘Please go on.’

‘Not much more. The Yanks checked your people at the Coral Sea. Then the Germans exploded their bomb and the Yanks pulled their forces out and concentrated on Europe. By the time they finished that you’d taken Australia. Lucky for me your lot decided to leave the Coral Sea alone and go for the Aussies. So I mostly sat out the rest of the war up there until the treaty was signed. There were some skirmishes but it was obvious your people had orders to hold their positions.’

He poured the brown liquid into the cups.

‘Milk?’

‘Just a drop.’

‘Same here.’ He poured milk from a carton marked with both English and Katakana and handed Haruki one of the cups.

‘And you shipped back home?’

‘Yes, that’s what they told us anyway. Back home. It was all over and we’d made peace. Got a good deal, they told us. And we were safe at last. But home wasn’t what it was any more.’ He sighed. ‘Not that there was much option. We knew that. We’d heard what was happening in Aussie. They tried to keep it quiet but the stories got through. Some of us did what we could, you know, to help the Aussie resistance fighters. But we’d signed a treaty, our government had to call that kind of thing criminal. I heard of chaps who slipped across the Tasman to help. They never came back.’

‘The transition for Australia was particularly difficult, and the Imperial Australian Government did not always act with… restraint. Even now, long after independence, there is tension.’

‘But not here. No, we had it easy. We had a treaty. They read it out over the radio at the time in full so many times that most of us knew it by heart. The school kids learned it too. We were guaranteed sovereignty and everything, as long as we accepted the role of the Imperial Army in defending our shores. Which meant we had to disband our own forces. There were trade concessions. We didn’t sell meat to Britain any more. We sold it to Japan instead.’

‘But not for the same price.’

He grimaced.

‘No. Well it was grim everywhere, I suppose. Maybe the Brits would have offered lousy prices too. But we soon found that everyone was dirt poor and in debt to the banks up to our eyeballs. And somehow the banks were owned by the Japs… sorry.’

‘We call you Anglos, you know this? There are worse names, after all. The banks made use of considerable investments made available by the Imperial Government. It was an attempt to restart your economy.’

‘But we knew where that money came from. You were bleeding the Aussies dry and tossing us some of the drops.’

‘Yes. That is at least partially true. Your country did benefit from this policy. Others benefited more: Indonesia and Papua, for example. The justification was that certain… exploitation had occurred in those countries during the days of colonial rule.’

‘Did that justify the concentration camps?’

‘No. No I do not believe it did. And such a thing would not happen now. And it never did happen here.’

‘Because we had that treaty, or because you didn’t need to? The investment came in, and the new businesses, and the new immigrants. I had a farm back then, after the war. My father’s farm, but it came to me when he died. I spent my youth cutting scrub and digging drains. Flat land, but it had a good water supply too. But for all that investment I couldn’t make a go of it. We, my wife and I and we had two kids by then, walked off it in ’53. The bank said we were under utilising the land and foreclosed. I hear there’s a fish farm there now, big ponds all over the flats and they grow wasabi too.

‘It was hard but at least there were plenty of jobs at factories like the one down the road. I worked there for years on the assembly line. No skills required so the pay was low. No chance of promotion either. Even the middle-management were your people.’

‘Well, there was a language issue. Few of you spoke good Japanese.’

‘And at least we had jobs. Not everyone thought that was good enough. There was the insurrection of ’58. You heard about that?’

‘I have read a little. There was a farmer revolt.’

‘Down in Taranaki, very good land there. They said the mortgage payments were missed, the farmers said otherwise. But when you’re on the bones of your bum you can’t afford to argue it in court. Who was going to lend them money for a lawyer and all? The bank that reckoned they were in default? There were dozens of them like this, maybe hundreds, and they got together and decided to do a sit-in.’

‘Sit-in?’

‘When the bank people came to evict them they found not just one family but a couple of hundred people sitting there refusing to go. It was peaceful, of course. Just an argument between the farmers and the banks. But it turned ugly when they called the army in to keep the peace. You can, perhaps, imagine the reaction of those farmers who were mostly ex-servicemen being confronted by Japanese soldiers on their home ground. There was shooting and once the shooting started it was hard to stop it. The end result was that most of the Taranaki land was acquired by the new immigrants. Anyone who had anything to do with the insurrection was arrested under emergency laws and if they had a farm with a mortgage that always meant they defaulted. The banks foreclosed and were happier to lend money to the new Japanese immigrants than our kind so they bought the land up cheap.

‘It didn’t take more than a few months, except for the “Hokitika Republic” which held on for about five years I think.’

‘Hokitika? That is on the west isn’t it?’

‘West coast of the South Island. They’ve always been a bit more bloody minded… stubborn than the rest of us. They reckoned they were a sovereign state, they even printed their own stamps at one stage. But they sold their coal for yen. It fizzled after a while, probably something to do with the yen.’

‘So you worked at the factory until you retired?’

‘I retired in ’94, nearly ten years ago. The factory closed down in ’97 so I got out in time. My kids have it hard though. One of my boys lost his job and there’s nothing else. He’s over 50 so he couldn’t learn anything else now. I get a pension, of course, but he just got a lump sum and that’s long gone.’

‘You have two sons, I think.’

‘Well, the other one got into trouble in his twenties. Got mixed up in the gangs. He was never a steady worker so the assembly line didn’t suit him. He’s been in and out of prison. I don’t see too much of him nowadays. I think he’s got a steady woman now, though, so that might keep him on the right track. Of course there’s no work for him. My daughter married a no hoper who left her with a tribe of kids. They had to take the smallest two off her. I don’t know where they are now.

‘But the grandchildren are growing up. The oldest is… well she must be over thirty now. They muddle along somehow. But there aren’t the jobs around nowadays so it is much harder for them. My wife never lived to see the grandchildren. The medical benefits available to my kind were a bit basic for what she had. Still, she didn’t see my boy in jail either, so that’s something.

‘I worry most about the next generation, though. Their parents have never had jobs, they grow up with a different attitude.’

‘What about their education? There are good schools here, and they are free.’

‘Do you know what happens at the schools? First of all most of the lessons are in Japanese. Our kind are slower to pick that up so they are held back. By the time they get to secondary school they are the dumb ones who get shunted off into the classes where they don’t really teach them, just keep them amused until they reach the minimum leaving age. This didn’t matter so much when there was plenty of work around. But now….

‘Now the factory is closed. You know I once really thought that treaty was a good thing. It meant we would be safe. But there are all kinds of safe.’

So here was no firebrand ready to start another insurrection. If they were all like this the report to Tokyo would be bland indeed. As he drove away Haruki, who knew more history than he wanted to admit to Andrews, wondered how things might have been different. If, for example, the Germans had been a little later developing their atom bomb, giving the Americans time to push back the Imperial forces in the Pacific. It was clear enough they would have managed to do this.

But once London had been bombed they had little choice and the Pacific became a Japanese lake.

You probably know that it did not happen like this. The Americans did win the battle of the Coral Sea and defeated the Japanese, then went to help in Europe. In the process Hiroshima and Nagasaki (not London) were bombed.

But what you may not know is that the English settlers and the Maori population signed a treaty in 1840. The land confiscations followed a few years later, in the Taranaki region and elsewhere. Maori were marginalised in a similar way to Mr Andrews' people were with similar results.

The Man from SiliconBark

The mail it danced from desk to desk

But Mark’s laptop is still.

He’s not connected to the net

And Mark is getting nil.

'You need windows 95

and eight more meg of RAM

and then with little effort we’ll

connect you to the LAN.'

'Eight meg of RAM cannot be found,'

Cried a despairing Mark.

A shadow fell across his desk

The man from Siliconbark.

His eyes they squinted in the sun

his grizzled beard was long

he wore a hat with dangling corks

and hummed a cheerful song.

‘I’ll fetch your RAM, struth Mate,’ he said,

'For I know where it’s found.

I’ve crossed the Simpson Desert twice

My oath, I’ve been around.'

And off he went with Mark’s good will

To find the elusive RAM

On camel back with pick and spade

And water, beer and jam.

For weeks he staggered ‘cross the waste

where water never flows

and snakes and roos and wombats roam

and dust storms always blow.

At last he found the mine he sought

A deep shaft in the ground

He took his pick and spade and climbed

Full fifty metres down.

T’was days he worked with sweat and toil

He hacked and dug and ripped.

But finally the seam of rock

Gave up a memory chip.

Eight megs, its pins were seventy-two

Full parity and ECC.

He tucked it in his swag and said

‘I’m bound for Mark and Sydney.’

Weeks later, then, he made it back

His camel died en route

And he near dead with thirst and heat

Had worn out both his boots.

'I got your RAM was all he gasped.'

He sprawled across the floor.

Mark looked up from his new desktop.

‘I don’t need it any more’

The title of this poem is a play on Banjo Patterson's 'The Man from Ironbark'. We were working on a project in Australia at the time I wrote it and and our project manager was running an old operating system on his laptop. Yes, he did upgrade his laptop before the memory upgrade arrived.

The White Goose

He had no idea how long she had been standing there, it might have been a moment, it might have been half an hour. Stan had been engrossed watching the other boats across the bay. There was that big white one, beautiful craft, must be worth two maybe three million. It was just coming around the point now, its big motor throbbing gently, the sound carrying well across the smooth, blue water, its clean lines glistening whitely in the bright sunlight. Ah, there was a real boat.

He had been on board it once, last summer it was. Though that was academic, it was always summer here, not like back home. Its owner, he was something to do with one of the casinos, had met Stan in the local tavern one evening as he wiled away the dark hours. The meeting resulted in an invitation to a party on board the `White Goose' as it was called. Not a good name for it at all. The party was too rich for Stan, he hadn't seen the owner of the `White Goose' since.

But it was still a beautiful boat. His own was pleasant enough, big enough to live on, alone anyway. And small enough not to use too much fuel when he took it out past the point fishing. It was his kind of boat, and it gave him the lifestyle he had always wanted. Nothing to do now but mess around in his boat in Queensland's eternal summer.

He happened to glance up, the tide was out and the boat rode low alongside the wharf. The sun bleached boards up there were warm to the touch, you could see some of them cracking in places. His own deck was so hot now he had to slip jandals on his suntanned feet to walk on it, when he wanted to. Stan's usual afternoon occupation was to sit in the deckchair with a nice cool beer and take in the harbour traffic.

He must have been vaguely aware of someone up there, else he would have continued to look at the `White Goose'. And there she was, just standing there, looking at him. Their eyes met and his gaze slid away while she continued to stare. He was aware of her eyes, looking at him, boring into his back. Don't they teach these young people manners any more? he wondered. It made him uncomfortable.

Perhaps he was imagining it. People often walked along the wharf, she had probably just been glancing in his direction at the same time he had looked up. He stole a glimpse back again, she was still there. Still looking at him.

He felt intimidated. She was young, but not very young. Stan was nearly fifty and his hair was grey. She could be around thirty, maybe a bit older, but still pretty. Old enough to know better than to stare at people. He considered telling her to move on, but he knew he was not within his rights there. Better to ignore her, better to be above the pettiness of a staring girl.

He sat back in his chair and picked up his beer. There was a cigarette here somewhere. Where had he left it? There it was, smouldering in an ashtray under the chair. A nice relaxing drag and he fastened his eyes on the `White Goose' as it slowed its motor and drifted serenely towards its berth.

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