Red Herring (13 page)

He got dressed, put the trout and watercress in a sugar bag from the shed, lifted the box of gelly and the detonators under his arm, and walked back up the hill to the Plymouth. It was nine o’clock in the morning and just starting to get hot.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sunny Day was known as Sunny for the same reason the Governor-General, the tall and rotund Lord Freyberg, was known as Tiny. There was nothing sunny about him. He was trouble from the word go. He was darker than his Ngati Porou cousins and self-conscious about it. His maternal line was Ngapuhi, a legacy of the war parties that raided up and down the East Coast during the Musket Wars. There may have been some African in there too. The crews of the American whaling ships that called into Kororareka in the 1820s often included Cape Verde Islanders, expert harpoonists and boatmen from the west coast of Africa. His green eyes were anyone’s guess.

He was sentenced to a year in a Delinquents’ Home when he was twelve for breaking and entering, and then two years in a Borstal for assault. By seventeen he was bare-knuckle boxing at carnivals and A&P shows throughout Taranaki and the Waikato, and a ringie for a two-up promoter. If a game was going against the house he had the presence to call a foul toss and the size to silence any objections. At eighteen he was back-up man for the Ohakune sly-grogger, J.R. Rowley, making regular trips into the dry King Country, the back seat and boot of Rowley’s Austin Twelve loaded with whisky, a sawn-off .22 under his seat. He had a reputation for reliability and lack of compunction. He was a
master of the left hook and the king hit. In 1939 he was sentenced to nine months for burglary following an attempt on the strongbox of the Hastings Laundry Company after a day spent drinking in the Public Bar of the Albert Hotel with three steam-iron operators, one of whom, a girl named Wilhelmina, knew where the office key was hidden.

He was released from Napier Prison in January 1940. His father, a fine-looking man with a thick black moustache and a long Maori name, but known in the Pakeha world as Tom, was waiting for him outside, leaning against his truck, smoking a pipe. The old man took the pipe from his mouth and checked the bowl, patted his shirt pocket for a box of matches, struck one, held it over the tobacco, and took several gentle draws — his lips making a lopsided popping sound that Sunny remembered — while he kept his eyes on his son, expression neutral. Eventually the pipe took.

“You all right?” he said.

“Oh, y’know,” said Sunny. “What do you want?”

“A fulla from Gisborne was around asking about you,” said Tom. “Neville? Some name like that? Pakeha fulla? And a few of those bad Gisborne Maoris. Didn’t say why.”

Sunny knew why.

“You need to pull your head in for a bit,” said Tom.

“I was thinking of the South Island,” said Sunny. “Got a cobber in Christchurch.”

“No,” said Tom. “Further than that. Hop in.”

They made the two-hour drive over pot-holed gravel roads up the coast and inland towards Ruatahuna, where Sunny had grown up, stopping at Tikitiki, outside the Post Office.

There was a poster on the wall. A column of soldiers, rifles shouldered, marching in formation towards the words,

YOUR PAL
IS IN THE
FIRST ECHELON
DO
YOUR SHARE
!

ENLIST TODAY

“Wants to join up,” said Tom to the postmaster. “For King and country.”

“He’s not twenty-one though is he, Tom?” said the postmaster. “Has to be twenty-one, see.”

“He’s twenty-one enough,” said Tom. “Just get the form.”

“Right you are,” said the postmaster, after a pause. He was small and Tom was big. And Tom had
mana.
“No skin off my nose.” He pointed to the poster. “Second Echelon now. Made the quota for the first before Christmas.” He took a form from a drawer and squared it on the counter.

“Use Eru’s name,” said Tom. “Twenty-eighth of the seventh 1917 where it says ‘date of birth’.”

“What will Eru say?”

“You let me worry about what Eru says,” said Tom. “You get writing.”

Sunny filled in the details. Say one thing for the penal system, it gave a young man a chance at the things that count in life — how to give and take a hiding, how to stare down a challenge, how to read and write at a rudimentary level.

“Sign there,” said the postmaster, pointing.

Sunny signed.

“And if you’d witness the signature,” the postmaster said to Tom.

Tom wrote his full name and underlined it, as florid as John Hancock’s on the Declaration of Independence.

“Very good,” said the postmaster. He stamped the bottom of the form, tapped the impression with blotting paper, and added his initials. Two weeks later Sunny was in camp at the Palmerston North Showgrounds, part of the Main Body, allocated to C Company, (28) Maori Battalion.

He took to the training, less so to the discipline. If nothing else, it was better than prison and fighting was in his blood. Firing a rifle. Stripping a Bren. Twisting a 14-inch bayonet into a sugar sack filled with sand.

He was punished for minor infractions on a number of occasions and charged with assault following a mêlée in the Soldiers Club in Russell Street, just off the Square. Someone from C Company threw a penny into a group of recruits from B Company. B Company was drawn largely from the area around Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty, and was nick-named “the Penny Divers” after the children who dived off bridges for tourists’ coins at Wharewakawaka. The coin spun high into the air, not feathering in any way, thrown by someone who knew how to throw. The B Company boys took exception to this slight. The brawl wrecked the Public Bar of the Soldiers Club and spilled outside before being broken up by provosts and police.

Sunny, who had been in the thick of it, was brought before a magistrate. Inconsistencies in his recruitment details were discovered — his prison record, for example. Sunny thought the game was up. But the beak said that society was better off with him “over there” rather than “back here”. He was fined seven days’ pay and Confined to Barracks for ten days, the latter timed to coincide with the battalion’s embarkation from Wellington on the troopship
Aquitania,
in convoy with the
Empress of Britain
and the
Empress of Japan,
and the destroyer HMS
Leander,
part of the 2nd New Zealand
Expeditionary Force. They were joined in Cook Strait by the
Andes,
carrying soldiers from Burnham Camp, and its escort HMAS
Canberra
— and, briefly, a humpback whale, which C Company in particular saw as a providential
kaitiaki,
Paikea’s mythological saviour from Hawaiki-nui. The convoy was heading for Egypt to join the 2nd Division but diverted to Britain en route, crossing the Irish Sea a few weeks later past wreckage from a sunken liner and another vessel burning fiercely, the water slick with oil, arriving in time to learn of the death of Cobber Kain and the evacuation from Dunkirk and the capitulation of France, in time to hear Winston Churchill say on a radio broadcast, “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.”

He was in the army now.

The Maori Battalion spent six months in England waiting for the Germans to invade. It was based at Doddington — or, as the censors insisted, “somewhere in England” — fifteen miles from the Kent coast, directly below the flight path that German bombers followed to London. The Battalion suffered its first casualty of the war, Private Tokena Pokai, a despatch rider from the East Coast, struck and killed while leading a blacked-out convoy on the Folkestone Road at night. There were artillery exchanges between Calais and Dover, the distance from Te Kaha to White Island. There were dogfights overhead on summer afternoons. King George VI made an inspection, as did his brother, the Duke of Gloucester. Winston Churchill took the salute. A Battalion rugby team, wearing white jerseys and black socks, played Wales and lost, 12-3. The men impressed with their manners. No domestic chicken was safe.

But the expected invasion didn’t happen. The New Zealanders transferred to Egypt to join the first echelon at the beginning of
January 1941. Three months later Sunny was in Greece, separated from his platoon during the withdrawal from Mt Olympus, making his way to the evacuation point at Porto Rafti in an endless column of New Zealand and Australian and Greek soldiers, Palestinians and Cypriots from labour battalions, Albanian and Bulgarian and Yugoslav refugees, civilian and military vehicles.

An empty 6th Australian Division ammunition truck gave him a lift. The driver and the passenger were sappers from 2/3 Field Regiment. The ragged convoy stopped near Thermopylae while a tank was brought up to push the wreck of a petrol tanker off the road. The three men got out of the truck and under the cover of a tree.

“You’re a Maori, I suppose,” said the driver.

“He thought you was a blackfella at first,” said the passenger. “No offence.”

“I did! I said jeez, they’re getting desperate!” said the driver. “Y’know?”

“But I seen your shoulder flashes. I said, nah — he’s a New Zealander, mate. He’s a Maori!”

Sunny wasn’t offended. Besides, the Australian had a submachine pistol strung across his chest. Plus Sunny needed a ride. Being offended could wait.

“Never met a Maori before.”

“What about that little fella played for Wests?” said the passenger. “Whatsaname, Albert Herewini? He was a Maori.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t
know
him. Knew he was a Kiwi, that’s all. That’s different.” The driver turned to Sunny. “You heard of him?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Sunny.

“Nuggety little bugger. Tough? Jeez he was tough. Ran like a rabbit too.”

They shook hands. Mick. Red. Sunny.

“What happened to your outfit?” said Mick.

“Got separated coming off the line.”

“Yeah? Us too. Jerries just smashed through. CO gave us forty-eight hours to get to Kalamata, every bastard for himself. He said, ‘We’ve got to hook it tonight, men. Whether we get through or not is just chance.’” Mick shook his head. “Just chance! What a bloody shambles. We’re going to lose this flamin’ war.”

“What’ll happen then, you reckon?” said Red.

“To us? Not much. Follow orders. Same as usual.”

“You haven’t got any grub I suppose, Sunny? Anything tucked away?” said Mick.

“I’ve got some booze and a tin of gyppo pickles, I think they are,” said Sunny. “If you’ve got something to open it.”

Sunny’s canteen was filled with Greek brandy, which he’d found in an abandoned hut, along with a tin, rusted around the seal, Greek script and a faded illustration of what appeared to be a member of the cucumber family on the label, his first food in two days if he could work out how to get into it. He had no weapons, having abandoned them during the pitch-black night climb over Mt Brusti following the German break-through along the Aliakmon Line. He’d attacked the tin with a rock but just succeeded in changing its shape. He’d thrown the tin away in anger and then gone looking for it.

“I’ll open it with me teeth if I have to,” said Red. “Let’s see.” There was a pack at his feet. “Look at me swag.” He opened the flap and took out a pistol in a leather holster. “I’ve got a Luger. Nine millimetre Parabellum. Put a bullet through a tank this bastard they reckon. I’ve got two bayonets. This is a motorcycle pennant. Sort of a bush hat. Belt with a swastika on it. Smokes. Pills for staying
awake.” He held up a small canister and rattled it. “The Italians had these in Libya. Supposed to make them want to fight.” He looked at Mick. “Remember that, Mick? Italians fighting?” The Australians laughed. “How long have we been awake? About four days? You want to try one?” he said to Sunny.

“I’ll give it a go,” said Sunny. “Where’d you get this stuff?”

“Some Greek blokes we met a few days ago,” said Mick. “Come down from Albania. I swapped all this for a five-gallon drum of benzene. Could’ve got a machine gun on a tripod, you believe that? Could’ve got a tank probably. Me nephew wanted a flag, the little bugger, and me dad’ll be tickled with the pistol.”

“Pass me one of them bayonets,” said Sunny.

He put the tin on the ground and stabbed the lid with the bayonet. He worked the blade round the rim and bent the lid open. He took out a pale green vegetable of some kind, sniffed it, and dropped it into his mouth like a sardine. He wiped his mouth and passed the tin to Mick, who took one and then handed the tin to Red.

“Jeez,” said Mick, after swallowing. “Gyppo’s right. Hard to believe what the people over here call food. Most of their stuff you wouldn’t give to the dogs. Funny, because they sorta look like us.” Mick had a small blue swallow tattooed on the webbing of his hand.

Sunny unscrewed his canteen. Red took a packet of German cigarettes from his breast pocket,
Eckstein No.5s.
Holding out a lighted match Mick noticed the same blue swallows on Sunny’s hands.

“Where’d you pick up the birds?” he said.

“State ward back home,” said Sunny, hooking a thumb.

“Me too!” said Mick. “Put it here, mate!”

Mick had spent five years in the Magill Reformatory for Boys in South Australia. Sunny was impressed. Magill was the Sing Sing of
antipodean juvenile reform, a gladiator school. They discussed their shared history of delinquency and the efficacy of moral training. They sipped the Metaxa.

“Bloody hell,” said Mick, shaking his head fondly at the memory. He looked at Red. “What do you reckon? Shall I?”

Red shrugged. “Ask him,” he said.

“You up for something?” said Mick to Sunny.

“You bet,” said Sunny. “What?”

The paymaster unit of 6th Div’s Headquarters Company had requisitioned the Athens branch of the Thomas Cook travel company on arrival in Greece two weeks earlier because it had a secure vault.

“Not
that
secure,” said Mick.