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Authors: Derek Hansen

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I ruled out Mr Grainger, my schoolteacher, and the headmaster. There were no secrets in school. We all knew which kids had been thumped by their fathers even before we saw the bruises, whose dad was assisting the police with their enquiries and which kids were being taken out of school and sent away to health camps, often about the same time as the victims themselves. We all knew who was in trouble for shoplifting, who’d been caught smoking and who’d been nailed for putting Mighty Cannons in people’s letterboxes and blowing them to bits. In school there were no secrets and a secret as big as Mack’s didn’t stand a chance.

I couldn’t tell my pals for much the same reasons, not even Eric to whom I told just about everything, and especially not Gary, whose father’s ship had been torpedoed. Their reaction would have been the same as mine had been when Mack had first begun his story. How could I expect Eric, Gary or any of my pals to keep a secret like that? Mack’s secret would’ve become the talk of the school, the suburb, the city, the country. Once out there’d be no stopping it. I knew for a fact my pals would race over to Mack’s place and hang off his front fence, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Seeing the man who’d seen a U-boat was the next best thing to seeing the submarine itself. How could I possibly inflict that on Mack?

I mentally rolled through the names of the fathers of all the boys I knew. I really liked Eric and Maxie’s dad—he was my third-favourite dad after my own and Gary’s—but he was out before he made it to the crease. He was half-Samoan but wholly Samoan in the way he encouraged family conversations. I really envied the way Eric’s entire family used to gather in the big room at the end of the hallway and discuss whatever was the issue of the day. His mother and elder sisters would iron and fold washing while they chatted. They’d talk about anything from cry-baby Johnny Ray’s latest single to which code of football had the toughest players. They always had a lot of laughs and each member of the family kept in touch with what the others were doing. There were no secrets in
that big, wonderful room and that was the problem. There were no secrets. How could I let Mack’s secret loose in there?

One by one I dismissed the other fathers. When it came down to it, they all shared the same set of beliefs as my father. Too many New Zealanders remained behind in the sands of the Western Desert and graveyards in Italy and Greece, too many wounds had yet to heal. There was still a lot of animosity towards the Germans. I couldn’t see any of them forgiving Mack for what he’d done.

Of course the dad I most wanted to confide in was Gary’s. I think Mr Gillespie would’ve made a great teacher. He seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to us kids and we liked talking to him, opening up to him like steamed pipis. We told him things we never told other adults and we knew he’d never tell on us. That was one of the great things about him. Mr Gillespie was one of those cheery, affable people who throw themselves wholeheartedly into the community, without whom schools, churches, sports clubs and old people’s homes would struggle to raise money. I would’ve loved to talk to him about Mack but I had to rule him out. For one brief moment I thought his connection with U-boats might provide some common ground, but common sense prevailed. Why would someone who’d nearly been killed by a German submarine have any sympathy for a fellow countryman who’d let one get away? The horrible thought occurred to me that Mack’s submarine might
have been the one that had eventually sunk his ship. As affable as Mr Gillespie was I couldn’t see him getting a laugh out of that.

Inevitably and mercifully, I fell asleep. Sleep played a much more important role back then than it does now. Sleep brought an end to the day as emphatically as a ruled line across a page. The expression ‘things will look better in the morning’ was a tenet of faith. Christmas, birthdays, illness, deaths and other catastrophic events like divorces aside, each day was a clean sheet of paper. That’s how it usually happened. But for once when I awoke, sleep had been no more than a semi-colon, a pause between thoughts. My concerns for Mack and the secret I carried picked up where I’d left them the night before. I needed some way to unburden myself, a way that God would approve and Mack allow. Fortunately, I got embroiled in the usual rush to have breakfast and get to school before the bell. But the distraction didn’t last. Mack’s secret sat with me through arithmetic and spelling. I was warned twice for not paying attention and threatened with the strap if I let my attention continue to wander.

Lunchtime brought relief of a kind. My acceptance as a Kiwi was always under constant review. Nigel and I were always being tested and had to prove our worth. One of our most challenging after-school expeditions was exploring an underground storm drain. This ranked among the most stupid and dangerous things we ever did. We all knew that just because it wasn’t raining where we
were didn’t mean it wasn’t raining somewhere else in the drain’s catchment area. We all knew about flash flooding and the consequences of being caught in the tunnel when a wall of water came through, but not even that deterred us.

The danger was a large part of the attraction but there was something else as well. To get into the drain we had to use crowbars or steel rods borrowed from tool sheds to lever up the manhole cover. The cover was cast iron, around two and a half foot in diameter, probably five inches thick and inset into the shaft’s concrete and steel capping. It took at least three of us to lift the cover high enough to slide it away from the shaft. Now here’s the thing: we came to regard the manhole cover as the hatch in the conning tower of a submarine. The shaft continued the illusion. It sat about two foot above ground but dropped about six foot into the roof of the drains. That made the shaft roughly the height of a conning tower. To get into the drain, we had to climb down steel rungs set into the wall of the shaft and that really set our imaginations going; we’d seen rungs like that on submarines in movies. Once inside it, the storm drain was like an oval tunnel with concrete walkways on each side. The walkways were about two foot wide and sloped into a half-pipe-shaped drain just over three foot wide and two foot deep. There was never a time when this central waterway didn’t run with water. Overall the tunnel was just over nine foot at its widest and just under eleven foot
from top to bottom. In short, it was about the same shape and size as we imagined the inside of a submarine to be.

None of us had any idea where this storm drain began although we knew it ended in Coxs Creek, which cut through mud flats out into the upper harbour about a mile away. We’d never had the guts to venture more than fifty yards along. Even that took some courage. By then we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces unless we looked back towards the shaft, which provided the only light. We were as scared of someone putting the manhole cover back in place while we were underground and plunging us into total darkness as we were of hearing a flood of water rushing towards us. The drain was the most frightening place we ever went and we were always mightily relieved to get back up into daylight and not ‘end up in Coxs Creek’. The presumption, which was fair enough, was that if we did we’d be dead. ‘Ending up in Coxs Creek’ became a euphemism for getting killed or into serious trouble. Whatever we were doing we had to be careful or we’d end up in Coxs Creek. It was the ultimate threat but the experience was magical and we felt brave as all hell afterwards.

Depending upon which war movie we’d seen last, the drains were either a U-boat, a Jap sub or an American submarine. For some reason they were never British. I think if any of our parents thought we were even thinking about going down into that drain, or any drain, they would’ve given us the hiding of our lives. If they’d
found out we’d actually been down into it they would’ve killed us.

I normally raced home for lunch. If I ate quickly it meant I’d be able to get back to school before the bell that signalled we were allowed out onto the playing field. On this day the bell beat me but I found Eric and my closest school pals still sitting on the bench outside our classroom. Someone had come up with an idea that would test our courage to the full.

The drain lay beneath a bushy easement, which followed a natural valley all the way down to the harbour. Clarry, who lived at the bottom of Cockburn Street near the easement, claimed he and some pals had managed to lift the cover on a shaft about two hundred yards further along the easement. We all knew about the existence of this shaft. It was one the Water Board workmen rarely accessed and we’d never had any luck lifting off the cover. The possibility that we could get both covers off and explore two hundred yards of the tunnel was electrifying.

If ever I was tempted to blurt out Mack’s story it was right then. Just imagine how that could’ve added to the excitement. It would have been perfect fuel for our fantasies. But just in the nick of time a warning bell went off reminding me of the last occasion we’d gone down to the drain. It had been raining heavily for days when we got word that the force of water pouring through the drains had blown our manhole cover off, and a six-foot fountain of water was spewing up out of the shaft.

We raced down on our bikes and looked on in awe. We’d previously discussed what we’d do if a surge of water ever came through while we were underground. This involved scampering up the nearest shaft and hanging on tightly until the danger had passed. That storm not only blew water out of the shaft, it blew away our fanciful escape plans. There was no escape. Nothing focuses the mind quite like fear and the memory was so overwhelming there was no space left for Mack’s story. For the first time since I read my essay to Mack, his story took a back seat.

CHAPTER FOUR

Richmond Road School is not the best school in Auckland, although we wouldn’t swap it for any other. It only has one playing field where other schools have two or even three. Every lunchtime three games are played simultaneously on the same patch of ground. Some kids play rugby, some league and some play soccer. Sometimes players from different games crash into each other. The girls have four basketball courts covered in asphalt.

A
N EXTRACT FROM
‘M
Y
S
CHOOL

Eight of us made it to the easement after school. In addition to the core group of Eric, Maxie, Nigel, Gary and me, there were the two regulars from our scratch soccer games, Ken and Clarry, who’d discovered the top could be levered off the other shaft, and Ryan who was the biggest and strongest kid in our class. Ryan was the same age as Nigel and had been held back because he failed the
end-of-year exams. He wasn’t smart but he was tough and we all liked him because he slicked his hair back like Elvis Presley and was the closest any of us came to being a rebel.

Once, when a young and very pretty student teacher took us for art, Ryan became a legend. Told we could paint anything we liked, Ryan unbuttoned and painted his dick then proudly displayed his handiwork to the teacher. She ran screaming from the room. Moments later just about every male teacher in the school came thundering down on Ryan. He copped six of the best and a suspension but reckoned it was worth it. Even Ryan was scared about venturing so far underground, but we covered up our nervousness with exuberance.

The plan was to explore the tunnel in pairs in a sort of relay. Nigel and Maxie claimed the right to go first. The idea was for them to lever the cover off the second shaft and make their way back to Eric and me waiting by the first shaft. We’d then do the run and hand over to Gary and Clarry, who in turn would hand over to Big Ryan and Ken. Eric and I were left to guard the first shaft once the manhole had been prised off, while the others went off to work on the second manhole cover.

After waiting about ten minutes Eric and I became convinced (and secretly relieved) that they’d failed to lift the cover off the second shaft. Eric climbed down into the drain to make sure no one was coming.

‘Can you hear anything?’ I asked. There was no point in asking if he could see anything because the curve in
the drain meant we couldn’t see the light from the second shaft. Without a light source to look at it was hard to tell whether your eyes were open or shut.

‘Not yet,’ said Eric. His voice sounded hollow but also had a deadness to it. The drain seemed to funnel sound away. I was thinking about heading down through the bush to join the others when Eric called out.

‘Hang on. I can hear someone laughing. They’re coming.’

I was glad Eric was down in the drain so he didn’t see my face drop. Now there was no way out. I had no choice but to make the return trip. Chickening out was unthinkable, the sort of gutless thing a Pommy would do. Eric stayed down in the drain while Nigel and Maxie climbed out.

‘Your turn,’ said Maxie.‘We’ve done it so you have to.’

‘Watch out for the rats,’ said Nigel. ‘You don’t know they’re there until they jump onto you.’

‘They’re as big as cats,’ said Maxie.

Their faces were flushed bright red so I knew they’d run most of the way. But they were laughing and if they were laughing it obviously couldn’t be as scary down there as I feared. I climbed into the shaft.

‘Run your hand along the wall,’ said Maxie, suddenly serious. ‘It’s the only way. You can’t see a bloody thing.’

‘OK,’ I said. I preferred it when they were laughing. Eric stepped back as I reached the bottom rung.

‘You go first,’ he said.

The tunnel had never been so scary. The blackness seemed to swallow everything: light, sound and even life itself. The prospect of going down the tunnel where I couldn’t see any light at all was terrifying.

‘No, you,’ I said. ‘You go first.’ Following Eric didn’t seem quite so bad.

‘I already bagsed going second,’ said Eric, and he had.

‘Just stay close behind, OK?’

‘You bet.’

‘No chickening out, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘We’re going to jog, OK? Jog quickly.’

‘Gotcha.’

I took a deep breath. At least I had Eric with me. I don’t think I would even have climbed down the shaft if I’d had to do it with anyone else—except maybe Gary. I had thought about going through the drain with Gary. His dad had avoided being drowned when his ship went down and I thought maybe the ability to escape drowning ran in the family.

‘OK?’ I said again, just to make sure.

‘Yeah, let’s go.’ Eric sounded keen to start.

I started jogging with my left hand out in front of me, sliding along the wall. Part of me wanted to turn back but I knew I’d never live it down if I did. The other part of me wanted to break into a run. The trouble was I couldn’t see a thing in front of my face, and the path, as I said earlier, sloped inwards and downwards towards the half-pipe.
Running was out of the question. It was hard enough jogging. I tried to listen for any sound that might suggest a flood of water was on its way but I could hardly hear the sound of my own feet over the pounding in my ears. I couldn’t even hear Eric.

Couldn’t hear Eric?

‘I’m stopping for a breather,’ I said. There was no reply. My heart leaped into my mouth. I’d gone far enough around the bend that I couldn’t see back to the light from the shaft but, even so, I knew Eric wasn’t behind me. I once picked up an electric kettle that was shorting and was blown across the room. Eric’s absence had the same stunning, paralysing effect. He had to be there! I spun around and tentatively started jogging back, scared for me and scared for him, scared he might have fallen and hurt himself, scared of bumping into him or tripping over him, scared of the dark. But then the light from the shaft came into view along with the unmistakable figure of my best pal scampering up the rungs. He was laughing.

‘What are you doing?’ I screamed. I heard someone laugh and Eric laugh back. Then I heard another sound. I couldn’t believe it. My mind refused to accept it.

‘What are you doing?’ This time I didn’t scream. I shrieked. There was no mistaking what I’d heard. The light from the shaft narrowed and disappeared. Unbelievably they’d shut me in the drain. I’d been scared before but at that moment I understood exactly what blind panic was.

I turned and jogged towards the second shaft. It dawned on me that I had to get there before anyone up top did in case they closed that shaft as well. Panic wanted me to ignore everything and just run. But it was impossible. It’s impossible to run hard when you can’t see where you’re going and you’re scared of running into something. And it’s impossible to run when fear has you holding your breath. When I was finally forced to suck air into my lungs it was hard to know whether I was gasping or sobbing. I kept my hand against the wall and tentatively upped the speed, hoping at any moment to see the light from the second shaft. Every fraction of a second I couldn’t convinced me the others had got there first. Suddenly I could see it. When you’ve been staring into total darkness it’s amazing how bright a weak shaft of light can appear and how welcome. Relief flooded over me. It was over. I’d made it. Solo. I’d passed the test. I almost smiled. Then, as I closed to within ten yards of the rungs I heard that dreaded sound again.

‘No!’ I screamed.

If anyone heard me they took no notice. The scraping of iron on concrete ceased just as I reached the rungs. Once again I was in pitch darkness. I clawed my way up the rungs faster than I’d ever climbed before and punched my fist against the manhole cover. I could’ve fired a cannon at it and no one would’ve heard a thing through the five inches of cast iron. This time there was no holding back the tears. I sobbed uncontrollably like the
weak, lily-livered Pommy that I was. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to die.

I climbed back down the rungs. I knew they’d expect me to run all the way back to the first shaft. My only hope was they’d had enough fun and this time they’d let me out. I’d only just turned back when I noticed things had changed. The air in the tunnel felt different, sort of colder and damper. My first thought was that it was because I was running in the opposite direction. But then I felt a slight breeze and my fear ratcheted up to a level I never thought possible. We’d talked about it and we’d all agreed. If a flood of water were to come down the tunnel it would push air in front of it. We all reckoned you’d feel it coming before you heard it. In that instant I reckoned I’d felt it.

My mind filled with movie images of sea water rushing into stricken submarines and the screams of sailors. I knew with blinding clarity exactly what would happen. If I was wary about running flat out before I wasn’t any more. I knew there was nothing to bump into and my feet had got used to the sloped walkway. I bolted. I ran for my life. Captain Biggs had always encouraged us to say silent prayers when we were in danger and to ask for God’s help to get out of whatever trouble we’d got ourselves into. Of course implicit with the calls for His Divine Assistance were the trade-offs that went with them. For example,
I promise to go to church every Sunday for a full year if only I get saved. I promise to put out the hymnbooks and kneeling pads every Sunday, and put them away after the service. I promise to
put half of my pocket money into the collection plate. I promise I’ll never again sneak under the girls’ dressing sheds for a peep. I promise not to dream of Sister Glorious in the nude ever again
. I ran, cried, prayed and promised with all of my might, my head filled with visions of fountains of water erupting from the shaft, of my lifeless body being swept along the drain at one hundred miles an hour, of my pals all standing around my muddy body feeling mightily sorry for what they’d done.

I’d run hard but there was still no pool of light in front of me. I had no real idea how far I’d come but I thought I’d run far enough. At that moment my hand collided with steel. I knew immediately where I was and grabbed hold of a rung with a mixture of desperation and despair. My feet slipped from under me and into the half-pipe. There wasn’t the slightest doubt. The flow of water had increased. I couldn’t believe it! The water was rising and the manhole cover was still in place. My only chance for salvation was blocked by five inches of solid iron.

It suddenly occurred to me that my pals might have got bored, gone home and left me there, or gone to play on the rope swing nearby. I was doomed. I was going to end up in Coxs Creek. I was never going to see Mum and Dad again. I don’t know what it was that came up out of my throat next; a wail of despair or a shriek of sheer terror. I was as good as dead. I started climbing up the rungs, clinging to whatever hopes I could muster. Maybe the water level wouldn’t rise all the way to the top of the
tunnel. Maybe my pals would come back for me. I still couldn’t believe Nigel had left me there. What would he tell Mum? He’d never get away with it. Dad would kill him. I couldn’t believe Eric would leave me there, either. But my brother and my best pal had been in on it from the start. My hand touched the manhole cover. I’d climbed as high as I could go. There was nothing more I could do except wait for the water to come and take me. And add to the flood with my tears.

Even when I heard the grate of iron on concrete I couldn’t stop crying. I tried, God help me. The manhole cover slipped back in place twice as they tried to lever it off. That wasn’t all that unusual, but in that brief delay the wave of relief that had engulfed me was matched by an equally large surge of anger. For once I didn’t care that my pals could see me crying. For once I didn’t care about their taunts. I was going to get even. And this Pommy kid knew how.

‘You bastards,’ I screamed as I climbed out of the manhole. ‘The water’s rising!’

That stopped them. I knew it would. It was bad enough that they’d trapped me down there. That went against all the rules. But to trap me while the water was rising was unthinkable. And unforgivable. Guilt and fear hit them in equal measure because each of them knew exactly what I’d say next. And I said it.

‘I’m going to tell Dad on you.’

There was nothing they could say to stop me. They
all knew they’d gone way too far. They all knew the consequences. I’d told on them before.

‘I’m going to check,’ said Maxie. I could hear the fear in his voice, we all could, but I was the only one who felt good about it. He climbed down into the shaft. The others immediately recognised the thin thread of hope and clung to it. They clustered around the hole anxiously. I started walking home. My crying calmed to intermittent sobs and I used my sleeves to dry my eyes. Now that I was out of danger I was more intent on getting even. Dad wouldn’t just belt the daylights out of Nigel, in his no-nonsense north-country way he’d go to see each of the boys’ fathers and make sure they got a belting as well. My pals had every right to be scared. I guess I’d got a hundred-yard start before they came after me. They circled me like scared dogs; they didn’t want to let me go home but were unwilling to stop me in case it made matters worse.

‘The water’s only come up as far as the walkway,’ said Maxie. ‘You weren’t in any danger.’

‘The walkway,’ echoed the others. ‘You weren’t in any trouble.’

I ignored them.

‘We’re sorry,’ said Ken. ‘Please don’t tell your dad. It was just a joke.’

Some joke.

‘I wasn’t in on it,’ said Gary. ‘I was the one who made them take the cover off.’

I believed him but was in no mood to be charitable.

‘Dad’ll belt you, too,’ said Nigel. ‘It stands to reason. He’ll belt you for going down the drain in the first place.’ His voice always seemed to jump an octave when he was scared.

‘We were only teasing,’ said Eric. His father had a big leather strop he threatened Maxie and him with. No wonder he was worried. ‘We wouldn’t have tricked you if you’d let us have the soccer ball the other day. We were just getting even.’

I knew immediately what day he was referring to—the day I’d stayed home to work on ‘The Burden of Responsibility’. When they’d asked for the ball I’d refused to hand it over because I didn’t want it to get all wet and soggy. I figured they’d thank me for it later. A fair part of my acceptance hinged around my soccer ball. The boy with the bat or ball is always popular so I’d begged and pleaded until my parents gave me one for Christmas. It pushed their budget to the limit and came with the stern admonition to ‘look after it’. I looked after it as though it were a holy relic because I knew with absolute certainty that if I lost it there’d be no replacement. I was the only one who looked after things. Give Nigel a soccer ball and you’d be lucky if it lasted a year. The stitching split on the last one he’d had after just six months. And Maxie lost the footy he got for his birthday after just three months. He left it down the park one day and that was that. If I didn’t look after my ball we’d have nothing at all to play with.
I stopped walking and stared at Eric incredulously. They’d trapped me down in the drain for doing the right thing and looking after my ball? Clearly they’d been looking for ways to get even ever since. To say I was staggered was the understatement of the year. I decided right then that I’d never let them play with my ball again. Never. That would show them.

BOOK: Remember Me
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