GODWIT & GLOWWORM

GODWIT & GLOWWORM

A SHORT STORY THAT NOBODY WANTS TO PUBLISH


Tena koto,
tena koto,
tena koto katoa.

My name is Jennifer Tohoro.

You did see me in Shortland Street a couple of times,
unless you blinked.

My tribe is Ngati Pahone.
My mountain is Puketama,
my lake, Wairima.

There is an Italian war bride, an Irish whaler plus various traders and sealers in my whakapapa, but only the Maori bit counts, so Matiu Waireti says.
He ignores those traders and sealers, although I suspect there are more of them than genetically unmodified Maori in his whakapapa which he can recite all the way back to Tama.
He does that frequently whenever he wants to stall something on the marae. He has been our Komatua all my life.
My mother and sister still live in Wairima.
Bella has a state house in the Rikihana Block with her husband Jason, and their six boys. Five years ago David and I spent Christmas with them.

Bella put her boys to sleep in the garage to make room for us. When some prowling hohas from down the road tried to pinch Bella’s Toyota out of the drive the boys rushed out at them with garden forks and grubbers.

Some nosey parker rang the cops. They called Family Protection because of the boys sleeping in the garage. Bella’s husband went spare.
“In Ruatahuna us kids slept on the veranda all year. What the fuck’s wrong with sleeping in a garage?”

The social worker kept talking in her tight ass voice about ‘finding appropriate shelter for the boys until she could arrange a group family conference,’ so David and I solved her problems by leaving town.

Unfortunately the media picked up the police report and next day there were headlines,

’ACTORS IN GANG BRAWL'.

And they printed a picture of me and not him, so we parted and now David is running a phone in programme in Invercargill.

I started using my qualifications instead of my looks and for the last three years I have been an auditor for Sheldon Developments in Sydney.Yesterday morning my boss called me into his office, sixteen floors above Sydney’s traffic jams.

He told me Ngati Pahone wanted to borrow more money to make a film like “Whale Rider.” What did I think?

Eight years ago Ngati Pahone signed a joint venture with Sheldon Investments which should have turned Wairima into a resort like Queenstown with a luxury hotel, a golf course, a fifty berth marina.

The vision had been magnificent, income from tourists and jobs for young Pahone.

Reality was complaints about poor service, sloppy maintenance, overpricing and very little money paid back.
“What’s going on, Jen?” demanded my boss.

Probably Matiu wanted to buy a new race horse, or something, but I couldn’t say that out loud. Finally my boss told me to get myself (he actually said ‘get your butt.’) over to Wairima and have a sniff around before the Sheldon financial advisers arrived on Monday.

On the plane I read through the file. What should have been a wonderful vision was a mess, full of excuses, and evasions.

Why had Sheldon lent so much to Ngati Pahone?

At the bottom of the file I found the reason. Matiu had mortgaged our tribal land. If Sheldon called in their loans the tribe would lose everything. I could have wept.

Also in my file was a fax from Te Ariki Sheldon. I was booked into the
Waitama suite for three nights and would be met by the hotel’s Ford Ghia courtesy car at Wairima Airport.

When I arrived there was only Uncle Koro and his battered shuttle bus. He made a lot of cracks about ‘Ngati Kangaru’ before grabbing my suitcase.

“You sit up front here, with me,” he ordered. “I’ll just drop this lady and gentleman in town. You stopping at Bella’s?”
“No, I’m not,” I told Koro. “I’m booked into the Sheldon.” He wasn’t pleased. He had to drive back around the lake, but he should have asked first, eh.

Te Ariki Sheldon, gave a nod towards Maori in the carved fascia boards at the entrance, but it was more Hong Kong Tudor, plaster board and lathe strips. There was a fibreglass copy of our whare runanga ridgepole, in the lobby. Our ancestors are there all right, standing on each other’s shoulders from floor to roof, but their genitals have been removed.

How they begat each other in that condition I can’t imagine.

The receptionist, not Sheldon trained, not even Kiwi Host, said her computer had no record of my reservation. She told me the hotel was fully booked.

Five years ago she would have been all over me because I was on TV five nights a week. Immortality surely is ephemeral. I waved the fax under her nose. She consigned me to a small room near the kitchens,
no phone,
no bath,
only a shower.

AND she demanded payment in advance and five dollars for the key.

“This’ll do in the meantime,” I told her, “But I am booked in to the Waitama suite.
I expect to sleep in the room reserved for me.”

The receptionist shrugged.

Dinner was unmemorable. I had to ask twice for a carafe of water. The house wine was drinkable, but only just; the coffee lukewarm; the receptionist had still not found my booking.

“I’m going for a walk,” I told her. “Please have the Waitama suite ready when I get back.”

I saw her reflection in the glass doors as I walked across the lobby.
“Careful,” I called from the door, “If the wind changes you’ll stay like that.”

The hotel site had been a camping ground years ago. Poppa took us there for fishing holidays. Up the hill stood the last patch of virgin forest in the district, rimu, smelling dark and cool, full of quiet noises from pigeons and fantails.
I decided to explore the old tracks, see if glow worms still set tiny points of light along the path from hilltop to lake.

The parking bay and the gate at the entrance to the grove were new. So was the green board advertising
‘Rimu Grove, Glow Worm Trail, Admission $5. '

People were climbing on to a tourist bus as the thug who called himself a warden tried to stop me going in to the grove. Eventually I paid, demanded a receipt.

He couldn’t give me one, kept staring at my cleavage, so I looked at his fly until he turned away and I walked into the grove, furious about being charged to walk on my own tribal land.

And now I couldn’t remember the path.

I wandered along, literally lost in thought about Ngati Pahone, trying to work out why the Trust was not keeping its agreements. The hotel said it was booked out yet there was an air of slackness.

The bed in my room felt damp, as though it had been made up weeks before. Dead leaves had blown into the corners of the hotel entrance, the garden was unkempt with dead roses.

At any other Sheldon Hotel the chef would have been fired.

I found a bench along the path and sat down to take my bearings. It was getting dark beneath the trees.

“Tena koe, Jennifer Tohoro.”

At first I thought it was the ‘warden’ but this man was shorter, hair tied in a knot. I caught a glimpse of full moko and white teeth. He spoke in a surprisingly quiet voice.

“Welcome home. You lost your way?”

“Not exactly. I came to see the glow worms, but I missed the track.”

“Ah, follow me. I will show you.”

We walked from the trees on to a rough path. Although it was now dark my guide set his feet surely. He stopped where the path fell away between two shingle banks.

“Look,”

To the west Wairima’s street lights shone like gold sequins on black velvet. Above me familiar constellations wheeled across the sky. Around my feet more stars glowed in the darkness. I felt as though I was far out in space. I forgot to keep silent,

“Oh!” I breathed and the glow worms blinked off.

“Sorry,” I said. The man laughed.

“Ngati Pahone settled here because if anything bigger than a weka moved the glow worms stopped shining. It was a good warning system. Now tell me, what has brought you winging home like a godwit?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell this man too much. He might be one of Matiu’s grandsons, finding out why someone from Sheldon Developments was nosing about.

The man’s voice was so quiet it did not affect the glow worms.

“Let me put it this way, Jennifer Tohoro, Matiu Wareti is chairman of Ngati Pahone Trust Board. He signed a joint agreement with Sheldon to build a world class leisure complex but now the money has run out.”

“Sheldon put twelve million into that venture,” I protested. “It was such a great deal, tourism for the area and employment for the young people.”

“True, but old Matiu likes cards and horses. He has also signed a joint venture with Mioro Japan to build the golf course and another corporation in America for the Marina. Five different consortiums have a claim to Ngati Pahone land, and now Matiu’s fish are beginning to stink. Whenever the auditors get too curious he holds a hui on the marae and throws pumice in their eyes. But eventually he will run out of excuses and the land will be forfeit.”

“The auditors from Sheldon Development are coming here next week and they will insist on seeing the books AND the meeting is scheduled for the conference room at the hotel. He won’t be able to pull his marae tricks there. They are very tough people these Aussies.”

“And over the week end something will happen to the conference room. The roof might leak or there will be a fire and everyone will have to go to the Marae. You know how things are run there.”

I certainly did.

I remembered Bella and me helping Mum and Aunty Matty in the antiquated kitchens of the Dining Hall. Out on the Marae Matiu and his mates strutted about, waving their staffs, talking on and on.

Mum would straighten up, sweat running from her face,

“Why doesn’t the old bugger shut up!” she would say, “We’re supposed to be planning a kohanga reo and they’re going on and on about the bloody Maori battalion.”

She and Aunty Matty would stump out singing a waiata about bringing the language to children. Sometimes the women among te Manuhire would join in but once the song finished another old warrior would get up and start ranting again.

“That old fox is robbing us,” I told the man beside me.

The glow worms winked out again.

Whatever money Matiu Wareti creamed off certainly did not reach the tribe. Bella has been waiting years for a piece of land to build a proper house. There had been no dividend for the Tribe since 2008.

Matiu said it was because profits had to pay off the loan from Sheldon Development; all lies.

And if this man beside me was telling the truth, when Sheldon Developments blew the whistle on Matiu’s shenanigans Mioro Japan and American Marinas would come demanding their money back.

Then Ngati Pahone land would be forfeit to the corporations.

“That’s it, Jennifer Tohoro. We must hold the land.”

Funny how this stranger knew what I was thinking.

“That’s why you have been called back here. To help Ngati Pahone hold its land.”

“Me?” I almost squeaked. “What can I do?”

“Matiu must stand down.”

“He won’t. He’s the komatua. He’ll brazen it out.”

In the starlight my companion’s teeth flashed as he laughed.

“Remember Tama’s battle with Te Ngongo?”

“Of course. Tama was outnumbered three to one so he tied cloaks around flax bushes and pretended they were warriors. Te Ngongo got such a shock he retreated.”

“You have been well taught, Jennifer Tohoro.

Now, suppose on Monday morning, before the hui, you show Matiu that you have the numbers to make him stand down. Not just a couple of Ngati Kangaru with goldrims and briefcases, but all the local people and some Asians.
At least one hundred people on the lawn in front of the hotel on Monday morning, Jennifer Tohoro. Can you do it?”

I counted in my head. Bella and her six,
her neighbours and their kids,
Aunty Matty and her friends from the church,
the kids I’d gone to school with.

If I rang David he could put out a call to all Ngati Pahone

BE HERE BY MONDAY MORNING
“So he’d think he was outnumbered. And I could tell him that every time he started talking anything except balance sheets and tribal funds I’d start a waiata about the tribe’s treasures being squandered.”

“More than that, Jennifer Tohoro. Call his bluff. Challenge him.”
“I couldn’t. You know that.”

A woman, challenging the komatua? Unthinkable.

“It’s time you did. Matiu’s got away with too much for too long.
It’s time for a real accounting. And there’s no one else brave enough.”

Brave? I felt as though he was telling me to step out into that black space between starlight and glow worms.

We walked back to the gate of the rimu grove. The hotel gleamed down on the lake shore. Mists crept across the garden, wrapping around koromiko and flax.

They looked like cloaked figures, implacable, waiting.

“Come back and see me on Monday evening. I will be interested to hear who will chair the new Tribal Trust.”

“Why not come down then, see for yourself?”

“I might. But I doubt if you would notice me. No, Jennifer Tohoro. I am like the glow worms, my place is here, looking after the land.”

He took my hand. He was so short I had to bend over as we hongied, but his eyes were bright as a kereru’s.

I strode down the road, towards the hotel and suddenly, for no reason, I felt incredibly brave.