A Yacht Called Erewhon (2 page)

He told me how, as a boy, he’d stood under
Erewhon
at Okahu Bay, looking up at the magnificent hull and making himself a promise that one day he’d own her, and about how he’d heard she’d gone missing. He talked about the tug at his heart that day and how his heart was pounding again now. ‘Maybe this is my second chance, eh son?’

He got to his feet and we started to circle the hull, but when we got to the other side our hearts sank. About a third of the way along the hull was a hole large enough to walk through. Someone had put up a rough corrugated-iron door, and there was a well-beaten track leading away through the bush towards the farm.

We tore open the makeshift door and peered inside, blinking hard to adjust our eyes to the gloom. In the half-light we could just make out the interior. From what we could see, it was in its original state, even if it did smell more like a hay barn than a super-yacht. It was then we noticed the straw. Dad pulled out his lighter, and in the glow from the faint light we saw that the once-magnificent craft was being used to store hay.

Dad’s emotions were running high, and with an audible
tremor in his voice he said, ‘I’m going to get this grand old lady out of here!’

Jim Standish never said anything he wasn’t prepared to back up, and even though I couldn’t see how he was going to do it, now was not the time to argue. In the glimmer of the lighter we inspected the interior, and apart from the gaping hole and thirty or forty years of mud and straw caked under-foot, the rest of the hull seemed in remarkable condition, with all the varnish and fittings still intact.

Back outside, Dad pulled out his pocket knife and bounded up onto the hull beside the keel stub. ‘I wonder what happened to the keel,’ he said as he thrust the blade into the timber around the remains of the keel bolts. ‘By the look of the bolts, it was ripped off when she foundered.’ He turned and looked towards the ocean. ‘It’s probably out there somewhere.’

He grinned as each thrust of the knife met solid opposition. The old timber was in remarkable condition. ‘By crikey, Ben, she’s as solid as a rock! I reckon we could get her floating again.’

‘But she may not be for sale,’ I replied, to deaf ears.

Dad’s brain was racing. ‘Let’s try and work out how we’re going to get this old girl out of here.’

Dad slid back down the hull and landed feet-first. He continued around the hull, prodding and poking at the old timber, and with each thrust his smile grew even wider. ‘I wonder who owns her.’

I grinned. ‘I bet whoever owns the hay will have a good idea.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Without another word, he was off down the track, in the direction of the farm.

I hurried after him, trying to catch up. The bush gave way to the beautiful rolling pasture of a large cattle farm, but there wasn’t another person to be seen. For that matter, there wasn’t
a farmhouse or shed either. Some large, unfriendly-looking dry stock were grazing in the paddock, and after eyeballing one of the bigger members of the herd we decided discretion was called for and so returned to see how the glue was drying on the keel.

Erewhon
wasn’t going anywhere, and we still had about a kilometre to row once we’d relaunched the skiff. Dad decided to ask Hepi who owned the farm and if he knew anything about how
Erewhon
had ended up there.

As we headed back to the skiff, we detoured past the giant upturned hull for another look. Dad was jabbering away about the endless possibilities when we owned
Erewhon.
He was babbling so much, he didn’t hear me when I called to him to stop as we neared the hull. I’d been looking ahead through the bush, and I thought I’d seen someone go through the hole in the side—a Maori girl in a black bikini bottom, drying her hair on a white towel. I tugged at Dad’s shoulder. ‘Did you see that?’

‘Did I see what?’

‘The topless babe who just walked into
Erewhon.
’ My heart raced as I sprinted the last hundred metres to where I’d last seen her.

‘You’re dreaming, son. You’ve been out in the bush too long!’

‘I know what I saw. She was gorgeous, she was standing right here, and she went in there,’ I said, pointing into the hull. I snatched the lighter out of Dad’s hand as he produced it from his pocket and flicked it on as I dived into the inky blackness. I couldn’t see anybody in the faint glimmer of the lighter in the upturned saloon, so I stumbled my way past the hay bales towards the stern. Still nobody.

I called out, ‘Is anyone here?’ There was an eerie silence. ‘Don’t be scared. We won’t hurt you. We just want to know who owns the yacht. Can you help us?’ The blackness remained
silent as I used the flickering lighter to scour the hull.

‘You’ve been rowing too hard over the last few days, and your eyes are playing tricks.’

‘But Dad, I know what I saw!’

‘Yeah, yeah, a real beauty, was she?’ he said with a smirk. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the skiff. A good night’s sleep’ll do you the world of good.’

Dad headed back out of the hull, and I was reluctantly following when something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. On top of one of the bales of hay was the white towel and a black bikini top.

‘Dad!’ I yelled. ‘Look at this.’

‘Give it up, Ben. We’ve got to get going.’

‘But Dad—’

‘I said give it up. Now come on.’

I sighed and stepped back out into the half-light of the bush. I didn’t bother mentioning what I’d found. Dad was jabbering like an excited schoolgirl with backstage passes at a Robbie Williams concert, and I figured he wouldn’t believe me in any case.

We arrived at the skiff to find that the repair had dried without a trace, then we flew the last kilometre down the river to the waiting Nissan.

The trip back was a one-sided conversation, with Dad scheming how to get
Erewhon
home. The problems of ownership, cost, and getting such a huge hull upright, seaworthy and down to the river mouth were trifling details. When I mentioned that we needed to buy her first, Dad just laughed and said he’d get Hepi onto it on Monday. Whoever owned
Erewhon
didn’t realise he’d just sold her.

D
ad reclaimed his spot on the floating lounger in the pool, smiling and punching the air in excitement. Eleven months had passed since we’d stumbled on
Erewhon,
eleven months of the most intense negotiations he and Hepi had ever experienced.

After six months, Hepi had been ready to give up. He had walked into the office and asked Lizzy, Dad’s secretary, if he could have a word with Jim. Dad knew something was wrong—Hepi hadn’t called him Jim in twenty years.

‘What’s up, Fatman?’ he yelled through the open door to the outer office. Hepi eased over to the doorway with his chin on his chest, looking like he had the day he was employed. ‘Jim, I can’t do it. You can’t buy
Erewhon.
’

‘What do you mean, “can’t“? Losing your touch?’ Dad looked sharply at Hepi and saw that his old friend’s eyes were troubled. ‘What’s the problem, mate?’

‘It’s the tapu, Bollocks—it can’t be lifted.’

‘What do you mean, the tapu can’t be lifted, you dopey fat bastard!’

‘I’m serious, Jim. A tapu was placed on the yacht when it was washed up on shore, because of the deaths, and it can only be lifted by the tohunga who placed it.’

‘Bullshit!’ Dad bellowed. ‘No bloody mumbo-jumbo is going to stand in my way.’

Hepi turned to walk out the door.

‘Who said you could leave!’ Dad roared.

‘You can’t ride roughshod over tapu—I don’t care who the fuck you are—so get stuffed, you honky prick!’

Hepi stormed out of the office, slamming the door. Dad had never seen him so angry before. He threw himself back into his swivel chair. ‘Stuff you, you fat bastard!’ he bellowed. ‘I’m going to have that bloody boat or my name’s not Jim Standish!’

Later, he told me he couldn’t work out if he was so angry because someone had told him his dream was over, or because he’d fallen out with his long-time friend for the first time. In an attempt to get his heart rate back to somewhere near normal, he reached into his filing cabinet for a bottle of Scotch and took a couple of swigs.
What the hell have I done?
he thought to himself, reaching for the intercom button.

‘Lizzy, tell the fat bastard I want him in my office now!’

There was a deathly hush.

‘Lizzy, did you hear me? Tell Fatman I want him now!’

Still stony silence.

Dad rose from his chair, strode to the door, and threw it open. Cowering behind the computer sat his secretary. Finally, she blurted out, ‘He’s not here—he quit.’

‘What do you mean, “he quit“?’ Dad screamed. ‘He can’t quit!’

‘Well, he quit.’ She thrust a scribbled note in Dad’s direction. ‘And he left the yard five minutes ago, heading in the direction of the Rose ‘n’ Anchor.’

Dad stormed back into his office, flung himself in his chair, and took another swig. He sat there, motionless, for half an hour, his mind racing. Eventually, his brain began to function again.

I’m a bloody idiot,
he thought to himself. In the thirty years Hepi had worked for him, he’d never let him down. Through
thick and thin, Hepi always came through, yet now Jim’d let a minor hiccup come between them.

Dad rose from his chair and, without stopping to grab his jacket, burst out of the office. ‘Take messages, Lizzy,’ he bellowed, as he passed through the outer office. ‘I’ll be a while!’

It was a brilliant, sunny day outside, but you’d never have known it inside the half-lit public bar of the Rose ‘n’ Anchor. The pub reeked atmosphere, tinged with the odour of stale beer. Somehow it had managed to be overlooked by the breweries and developers and still looked pretty much the way it had done for the past hundred years. No focaccia open sandwiches with Blue Hawaiian cocktails here—it was more your traditional pie and pint.

There was no loud, ear-threatening music either, unless you counted the occasional outburst when Bert, the barman, started whistling as he loaded the glasses back onto the shelf. The Rose ‘n’ Anchor was probably the last true working-man’s pub in the city—a place to go and have a pint or two after a hard day’s graft.

Dad blinked to adjust his eyes. He could just make out a familiar shape at the bar, hunched over his glass. He went and sat on the stool next to the lone drinker. There were a couple of fellows hovering in the shadows of the low lights above the pool table, and Mazey, one of the regulars, was playing on the one innovation to the scene, the pokey machine. Other than the clicking of pool balls and the sound of Mazey feeding the machine, the room was silent.

As Dad sat down, Bert instinctively swung around to face the bar. ‘Bloody hell—look what the cat’s dragged in!’

‘Gidday, Bert. I’ll have a Red, and you’d better fill that one,’
said Dad, pointing to the empty handle sitting on the bar in front of Hepi.

Hepi accepted the fresh drink without the slightest acknowledgement of Dad’s presence. They both sat staring at their handles. Bert returned to loading glasses on the shelf behind the bar, and the pool players continued to tap balls around the table.

Dad drained his glass and thumped it down on the bar. ‘You’d better fill these two up again, Bert, and the fat bastard needs a pie.’

‘Tell Bollocks I need two pies!’ Hepi finally broke his silence.

Dad swung around on his stool to face Hepi. ‘Fuckin’ typical. I offer to feed you, and you bite me on both hands.’

‘Listen, Bollocks, if you want that bloody boat, it’s going to cost you more than two bloody mince pies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told you. There’s a tapu on that boat, and you can’t break a tapu.’

‘So what’s it going to cost me to lift this bloody tapu?’

‘You don’t buy off a tapu for a start! It can only be lifted by the tohunga who invoked it, or a direct descendant. The original tohunga is long since dead, and I can only find one of his grandsons.’

‘So what’s the problem? Get hold of this fellow and get him to lift the bloody tapu. Then we can get on with the negotiations to buy the boat.’

‘One small hitch with that plan—he’s about seven years into a life sentence for murdering his father and is currently residing in D block at Paremoremo.’

‘Oh, great. What’s the bad news?’

‘My brown brother is up for parole in a month, but he mightn’t get it. The other factor in this equation is that young
John Henry isn’t too keen on you honkies.’

Dad slumped back on the bar stool. It had been months since he’d first clapped eyes on
Erewhon
, and despite Hepi’s best efforts he was no closer to owning her.

‘There’s another problem, too, Bollocks.’

‘What?’

‘The small matter that I don’t work for you any more.’

‘Bullshit you don’t. Remember the deal with Greenbacker? You’re mine for life.’

‘But what about my letter of resignation?’

‘You mean this?’ said Dad, withdrawing a handful of shredded paper from his pocket. ‘Stop wasting my bloody stationery!’

Both men burst out laughing, and Dad gave Hepi a huge slap on the back. ‘Sorry I lost my rag. It’s been my lifelong dream to own
Erewhon,
and I don’t want to give up on her.’

Hepi stood dumbfounded for a second. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I just said I don’t want to—’

‘No, not that. Before all that bullshit, I’m sure I heard you say sorry! Jeez, I knew you were keen about that pile of firewood, but I didn’t know it was that serious. Our only chance of getting the tapu lifted is to make sure John Henry gets paroled, because if he won’t lift his grandfather’s tapu the iwi who own the hull won’t sell it to you.’

Dad sighed. ‘Details, bloody details!’ He took another swig and leaned against the bar. He pulled out his car keys, ‘Hey, Fatman, where’s your keys?’

Hepi delved in his pockets and finally produced them. Dad snatched them and threw both sets on the counter behind the bar. ‘You better pull another couple, Bert. We’re gonna be here for a while!’

Still excited about buying
Erewhon
, Dad moved from the floating lounger to the edge of the pool. He thought back to that afternoon session with Hepi all those months before, though the detail was a little cloudy and, judging by his memory of Jenny’s reaction that night, probably best forgotten. From that night, Hepi was put full-time on the trail of the yacht. His first task was to get John Henry out of jail and then convince him to lift the tapu.

Dad came into the picture by offering to pay for a lawyer to help with John’s parole hearing and to give him a job. On the strength of this, John was granted parole and
Erewhon
moved a step closer.

Now on the outside, and under Hepi’s wing, things started to improve for John. With his full-face moko, he was a fearsome sight and initially found it hard to gain respect, but his skill as a welder and talent for the impossible made him a real asset, and the ice slowly started to melt.

Dad grew impatient about the lifting of the tapu, but Hepi reassured him things were under control. He knew timing was paramount when it came to asking Paint (short for Painted Face) if he’d perform the ceremony.

Eventually, Hepi worked up the courage to ask John if he was willing to lift the tapu. To his surprise, it turned out John had studied Maori culture inside and was bursting to show off his skill.

The owners of
Erewhon
were contacted and agreed that if the tapu were lifted they would negotiate for the sale of the yacht. No purchase price was discussed, but on the strength of the pledge Dad agreed to fund the ceremony. He thought it would take about five minutes of what he described as hocuspocus, a song or two, and a few cans of Lion Red. As it turned out, Dad got off cheap, as only ninety-five of the iwi arrived for the event. It lasted all weekend and involved a hui, a hangi,
and a party beside the Waiora River. The iwi had a great time and, although Dad was left licking his wounds over the cost, he certainly got a pressure-cooker course on Maori protocol. Hepi talked him through each step of the ceremony, and he started to realise why his mate had been so wound up when he’d stormed out of the office. The spirits of the people who died when the yacht foundered were revered, and when the vessel had been washed up on tribal land all those years ago feelings had been intense, and the tapu had been placed on the remains of the vessel.

With the tapu lifted, Dad thought he almost had ownership of
Erewhon
, but Hepi pointed out the error of his thinking. ‘Bollocks, I told you six months ago it wasn’t going to be easy, so why do you think things have changed?’ It turned out that the farm where
Erewhon
rested was owned by a trust, and their lawyers were very particular about the negotiations, which all took time.

A deal was finally struck in early December when Dad added a condition that the negotiations be completed before Christmas Day—a thinly veiled threat that if it wasn’t a done deal by then the whole thing was off.

Hepi knew that was crap, but he told the trust Dad was deadly serious, and the deal was finally completed. The price was $10,000 and the right for any member of the iwi to be taken out for a day’s sailing when
Erewhon
was recommissioned.

‘Are you coming with me to the Waiora on the day after Boxing Day?’ Dad asked as he rose from the side of the pool. ‘I want you and Matt to help me dig the old lady out of the scrub and get her loaded onto a barge to bring her home.’

‘I’m a starter, and I reckon Matt will be too, but what about Mum?’

‘Leave her to me. I’ll get that new dinner set.’

So the wheels were in motion. The family holiday this year was to be a trip back to the Waiora to recover
Erewhon.
We estimated about two weeks for us to get her to the shoreline so she could be loaded onto a barge. I was excited about the prospect of another trip to the river. Even computer-nerd Matt was keen, but Dad was having major trouble convincing Mum it was a good idea. As the next few days drifted by, Dad tried all the angles. The new dinner set was met with a shrug of the shoulders.

‘I won’t be bought, Jim Standish!’ she glared.

That must have been hard for her, because we all knew how much she wanted it. She’d been back to the shop a dozen times to look at it, but anything to do with
Erewhon
was getting the full ice treatment. On the day after Boxing Day, a chink showed in her armour when she said, ‘I’d never go camping in a tent. The only way I’d go would be in a decent caravan.’

Dad didn’t need another prompt, and disappeared off down the drive. About an hour later, he pulled up in front of the house with a twenty-foot caravan on the drawbar.

The family swung into action. Dad and I went to the Standish yard and loaded a truck with every conceivable piece of equipment we could fit on the tray. We had jacks, chainblocks, scaffolding, dunnage blocks, rollers, shovels, chainsaws, planks and all manner of other gear to extract our old lady from the bush.

When Bertha (Hepi’s name for the truck) was loaded, and the trailer with the bulldozer was hitched on, we headed back
home. Matt and I threw our surfboards into the caravan and stowed the aluminium dinghy and dive gear on the back of the truck. Dad drove the Nissan with Mum and the caravan, and I drove Bertha. The trip north was slow and exhausting, as half the population of the North Island seemed to be going in our direction. At a rest stop north of Wellsford, Dad pulled the Nissan off the road, and, by the time Matt and I arrived, Mum had the coffee pot hissing on the stove. The ice wall had melted a little.

Mum loved going on holiday and, even if she wasn’t admitting it, she was looking forward to the adventure. She was also making the most of having Dad running around after her. She laid down the ground rules: no washing duties for her, including dishes, no cooking, breakfast in bed, and her hammock slung between two shady trees with a view of the water before anything else was undertaken. She’d armed herself with a stack of magazines and books, and we all knew the Do Not Disturb sign would be out as soon as she lay back in the hammock. In the interests of a successful holiday, we quickly agreed. There was no negotiating, anyway. We downed the coffee and were about to head back to Bertha, when there was a loud ‘Ah-hem. These cups won’t wash themselves!’