Death by Water (25 page)

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‘I should think so!’ said Dot indignantly. ‘When?’ she added.

‘Oh, quite soon,’ said Phryne. ‘Quite soon now.’ Phryne was angry. The only way that an informed observer could tell was that her lips were a little tighter and her winged nostrils flared as though she was smelling out her prey. Phryne in that mood made Dot uncomfortable. Her employer was about to happen to someone. And when she did, they would be sorry.

Well, they deserved it.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Dot, not wanting to continue the subject.

‘Moanapipi,’ said Caroline, who stood nearby. ‘It means

‘ water of shellfish’’. I reckon they’ll lay on a good feed of pipis.

Haven’t tasted a pipi for months. And maybe puaua, some crayfish, a few muttonbirds—no, not the season for muttonbirds. Lots of fish and kumara, anyway. It’ll be good ‘‘kai’’, whoever wins.’

‘I thought that the Maori preferred high places for villages.’

‘That’s forts,’ said Caroline. ‘You always put the ‘‘pa’’ on a high place. But this village, it was built for the cruise trade. The tribes in these parts nearly wiped each other out in wars.

The survivors made peace and decided they’d better find a way of earning a living and this is it. The chiefs said the old ways were being forgotten, the old words were being lost, the wisdom, crafts, stories. So they put their heads together and came up with Moanapipi. Young blokes go there to learn the ways of men. They might go back to Dunedin to the university, but when they’re here they’re
iwi
.’

‘
Iwi
?’ asked Phryne.

‘The tribe,’ said Caroline. ‘The
whares
are corker. All built in the old way. Carved doorposts and all. You’ll like it,’ she promised, and went back to her group of dancers. Several of
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them were nervously bouncing little balls of woven material from hand to hand.

The day was, surprisingly, fine and warm. Presently the MV
Wayfarer
put into a little inlet and its passengers dis-embarked onto a boardwalk over a sandy beach. Inland, this gave way to scrub. From the tangle came odd noises: a squeal-ing, clucking sound like a mob of demented hens, mixed with the braying of a very small donkey, possibly caught in a mousetrap.

‘And the noise is . . .?’ she asked Professor Applegate.

‘Penguins,’ she replied. ‘Yellow-eyed penguins. They’ve obviously got up late this morning. Here they come.’

Hopping, sliding, hurrying so fast that they tripped over their own flat feet, came yellow-faced penguins. Phryne had always liked the blue fairy penguins of her home beach. These were bigger, noisier and looked so brightly painted that they could have just come from the toymaker’s hands with their paint still wet. The feathers on the head and around the eyes were bright sulphur yellow and the rest of the penguin was a pacific, decent bluish-grey shade which would match rocks, scrub and dark sand rather well. They paid no attention to the travellers, but rushed down to the water with cries and brays of delight and plunged in, swimming strongly like small bottle-shaped torpedoes.

‘Charming,’ said Phryne.

Presently the visitors came to a wire fence with a large wire gate in it. A sign in English said ‘Moanapipi. Please wait here’.

A tall Maori man, naked to the waist and illustrated with blue designs, came to the gate and unlatched it. He allowed the party in, closed the gate again, and led them perhaps twenty paces through low scrub before he signalled to them to halt.

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Caroline came forward, dragging the professor after her.

Professor Applegate was actually blushing and pulling against Caroline’s hand. ‘No, no,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t know these people. It’s too great an honour. It ought to be you,’ she told Caroline.

‘But it’s going to be you,’ grunted Caroline. ‘Hello,’ she said to the tattooed man. ‘All shipshape. You can start.’

He nodded and waved to someone out of sight behind the scrub. Professor Applegate settled her garments, cleared her throat and called, pitching her voice to carry: ‘Hae–ere mai!’

‘Hae–ere mai!’ came a woman’s voice, calling from the depths of history. Phryne shivered slightly. She had been at some strange ceremonies in her time, but this one seemed alien; stranger than the fire walkers in Fiji, older than the Bedouin sheep feast in Egypt. Call and challenge had to be answered by women, perhaps because no war band would have women in it—to have women with you was a guarantee of peaceful intentions.

Professor Applegate led them forward. Rough grass grew underfoot. Before them were a cluster of low houses, each with the crossed doorposts familiar from postcards. They stopped at a flat dancing floor in front of an imposing building.

There, waiting to greet them, stood a huge old man. He was scribbled all over with warrior designs. He wore a feather cape of special magnificence, studded with red feathers. He was flanked by young men in native dress and behind him were a flock of women and children.

The old man gestured to his warriors and they lined up in front of him. They had spears and clubs. They were very formidable.

‘No wonder they had to have a treaty with Britain,’ said Mrs Cahill. ‘They look like good fighters!’

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Stamp, stamp, came the dancers, their voices deep as the fjords. Stamp, crash, flourish of spears. Professor Applegate was translating.

‘It is death, it is death,’ said the professor. ‘It is life, it is life.’ Thump of bare feet on the grass, a horrible gesture reminiscent of neck-breaking. ‘Ranks together! Stay abreast!

Children of Tane, it is light! It is light!’

The warriors retreated a little as the line from the
Hinemoa
stamped and swayed towards them. Dot, who was hiding behind Mr Cahill, felt a small warm hand inserted into hers.

She looked down. It was an enchanting Maori child of some seven summers, in a little flax dress with a headband and feather. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ said the child. ‘It’s all show.’

‘Thanks,’ said Dot. ‘I won’t be frightened now.’

Professor Applegate was translating again. ‘It is fate, it is fate,’ she said. ‘From the sea, from the sea. Comes death in the morning. To our enemies! They flee! They flee!’

There was a gasp even from the old impassive chief. Professor Applegate had dyed the tongues of all of her haka dancers with blackcurrant juice. When they stuck them out all at once they looked frightful.

Then the chief laughed, lifting a hand. Weapons were put away. Women and children came forward. Caroline led Phryne to the chief. He bent toward her and, nose to nose, they pressed their faces together lightly. ‘Hongi’, the exchange of breath.

Phryne had been briefed. The chief smelt of fish oil, with which his white hair and probably his body had been dressed. A sensible precaution for an Otago climate. He also smelt of pepper, or something like pepper.

‘Now you take off your shoes,’ the small girl instructed Dot. ‘You put them there, in the porch. Can’t wear shoes inside the meeting house.’

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Everyone obeyed. Phryne was pleased that Mr Singer and the Wests had not made the trip. They would have complained and it was too much to hope that they would have been speared.

‘Sit, sit,’ said the chief, conducting them into the building.

‘Welcome. This is the
whare whakairo
. Later we go to the
whare
kai
. Then we eat, now we talk. And the girls dance.’

Professor Applegate began her speech in Maori, then changed to English for the benefit of her audience. It was a graceful speech, thanking the chief for his welcome and congratulating him on the fierceness of his young men.

Phryne’s attention wandered, as it always did during speeches. She considered the building. It was constructed of wood—where had they got such huge logs in this sandy place?—all of which had been carved to within an inch of its life. The walls were covered with fine fabric dyed and woven in brown and cream. The floor was wood and padded with the same cloth, which explained why they had been asked to remove their shoes.

The chief did not make a speech, but gestured to the tallest of his warriors. He spoke perfect educated New Zealand English, which sat oddly with his savage appearance. His speech, also, followed the same pattern; he thanked them for coming in the name of the chief and the tribe, made many complimentary speeches about the dangerous appearance of the
Hinemoa
’s warriors, and then sat down as the young women came on to dance.

They were wearing Maori dress, a shift and bodice of flax and their hair was dressed high with many feathers and pins.

They had a small ball of woven material in each hand, which was attached to the wrist by a thin flax thread. And they danced
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with a gentle undulation which reminded Phryne of a rippling stream.

‘So graceful,’ said Mrs Singer. Dot’s small girl was sitting beside her, delighted, singing along under her breath.

‘Every tribe has their own dances,’ said the professor. ‘Every action song and dance means something in the life of the tribe, a bit of its history. The Maori didn’t have writing until the
pakeha
—Europeans—came, so they remembered by means of songs.’

‘What are all those carvings about?’ asked Phryne.

‘Too many to tell,’ said the professor. ‘History, myth, legends.
Tiparu
, the ancestors. Unfortunately this part of the world rather went in for civil wars. We’re lucky that there are any Maori tribes left in Otago.’

The dance ended, the dancers were applauded and sat down, breathless. Then the
Hinemoa
’s women rose, led by Caroline. They were all wearing their uniforms, which looked odd, but once they started to dance, Phryne forgot that they were cooks and cleaners and stewardesses, and watched the clever hands as they flowed, twisted, moved, and the little poi balls danced and spun on the warm air.

It was strangely soporific and very beautiful, and Phryne really only came back to herself when she was led, by Dot and a small girl, from the meeting house into a long house, where places had been laid on the floor, each one marked with a woven mat. Each place also had a small, tightly woven basket containing coarse salt.

The eating house was open, like a verandah, and the seated guests could see older women digging with hoes, dragging aside the sandy soil, until there was a gush of scented steam. Saliva spurted into Phryne’s mouth. Suddenly she was starving.

‘Hangi,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘Earth oven. Not as highly
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seasoned as I would like, I admit, but perfectly tasty. And they do have some bush pepper which is quite hot,’ he said, a little wistfully.

The lounging men, Phryne observed, did nothing to help the burrowers as they lifted out packages of steaming food.

Dot’s little girl vanished along with all the children, to return bearing trays on which reposed sweet potato, pumpkin, potato, something odd which looked like sticks but tasted of aspara-gus, fish, and the shellfish for which Caroline had been hoping: huge clams, small shells, mussels, crayfish boiled bright red, and sea urchins.

Dot stuck to fish and potato. Phryne tried everything, later admitting that sea urchin was an acquired taste which she hadn’t acquired, tasting, as it did, of spoiled, salty egg yolk.

There was a subdued ‘whoof!’ as the
Hinemoa
’s crew fell on the food. Everyone was eating. Dot shared her plate with her little friend, who was called Miri. Miri informed Dot that her daddy was the biggest of the warriors, the strongest, and they lived in Dunedin most of the time where her father worked for the railways. Mr Cahill revealed an unexpected enthusiasm for sweet potato.

To drink there were gallons of sweet, milky tea. It was a feast. Phryne hadn’t fully appreciated the meaning of the term before.

‘So,’ she heard Margery Lemmon say to the warrior next to her, ‘are you the indigenous inhabitants of these islands?’

‘Madam,’ he said, grinning with a flash of white teeth, ‘my ancestors ate the indigenous inhabitants of these islands!’

Margery Lemmon laughed, and so did the rest of the
whare
. Professor Applegate, talking with the old women, obtained some bush pepper which met Mr Aubrey’s require-ments for savour. They watched him in astonishment as he
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poured it all onto the food and merrily ate it. One old woman made a comment which set the rest of them laughing and rocking.

‘Let me guess. She said “no sense, no feeling”, right?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ said the professor. ‘Yes.’

The feast could not have been considered to have ended.

It was just that even the stalwart young men couldn’t eat any more. The party sat, talking idly, digesting and eating little tastes of their favourite food.

The old women collected Phryne and the other women and showed them into another part of the
whare
. There there were looms, stretched flat on the floor, and young women pound-ing flax.

‘Hard work,’ said Phryne.

‘Woolworths better,’ said one fabulously aged crone with blue tattoos on her lips and chin. ‘But mustn’t forget. What if Woolworths gone tomorrow? Freeze in the cold,’ she said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.

‘We just make this for ceremonies,’ said the young woman.

‘I work in an office. We aren’t savages, you know. But this craft was disappearing. We need to keep our history.’

‘Very commendable,’ said Phryne. ‘My ancestors wore less than this. They just wore paint.’

‘You English?’ asked the young woman. ‘That was the Picts.