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Authors: Derek Hansen

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BOOK: Remember Me
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‘But…’

‘But what!’ Mr Holterman banged his fist down hard on the arm of the chair. ‘Don’t you dare
but
me! I’ve told you I can’t help you and that’s final. Final, you understand! Don’t think for a second that life is fair, son, it isn’t. Mack betrayed his country. It wasn’t his fault, but that doesn’t change anything. I can’t help you. I can’t help Mack and neither can you. That’s life. It’s unfair. Get used to it.’

I was stunned by his vehemence.

‘Thank you for listening to me.’ My parents had brought me up to be polite and I reverted to training. I didn’t feel like being polite. Talking to Mr Holterman hadn’t made things any better but instead made them worse. His emphatic rebuttal of mitigating circumstances undermined any hope I still had that I could help Mack. Disappointment had me on the verge of tears.

‘You’d better go,’ he said.

‘Goodbye, Mr Holterman,’ I said. ‘Thanks again.’ I made no attempt to shake his hand. As I opened the living room door he called me back.

‘Mack’s secret is safe with me,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about that. But don’t go sharing it with anyone else, you hear me? You say you’re Mack’s friend, so be a friend. Keep your lips buttoned. Buttoned tight. You can’t trust people nowadays. If I hear you’ve told anyone else I’ll give you a lot more than a thick ear. I’ll give you a thrashing you won’t forget in a hurry.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. I just wanted to get away but Mr Holterman’s threats weren’t something you could walk out on. ‘Honestly I won’t, I promise.’

‘You promise, eh? Just make sure this promise is better than the last one you made. Or else. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

‘Son,’ he said, his voice suddenly softened, ‘how do you think Mack would feel if he’d reported the U-boat and it had been found and destroyed? How would you like the
blood of those German sailors on your conscience? That was the price of reporting the U-boat. In the long run it doesn’t really matter what choice Mack made. He was doomed to live with the consequences either way. Do you understand? Life isn’t fair, son. You can’t fight that. You just have to cop what comes.’

I didn’t know how to respond. I sensed that Mr Holterman had gone beyond talking about Mack and was referring to what had happened to him. Life certainly hadn’t been fair to him. He seemed to shrink back into his chair, turned away so I couldn’t see his face, raised his hand and waved me off. The back door was open and I went for it. I was gone in the time it took to say goodbye to Mrs Holterman.

It started raining as I ran home. Eric would be down under his house flying the old sofa to Dresden with no one guarding his tail. Gary would be sinking U-boats as usual. Nigel and Maxie would be getting into mischief somewhere. Big Ryan was probably still out riding his old clunker of a bike because he didn’t have the sense to get out of the rain. Or maybe they were all home polishing their shoes, getting ready for club. Life went on all around me but it was no longer life as I’d known it.

I’d just discovered that life was unfair.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The cannibals dragged me up from the beach to the village and threw me down before their chief. Perceiving that I was no threat to them, they laid their shields down and stood in a semicircle around me with their spears held high. The chief pinched my arm and then my thigh. He licked his lips. In desperation I reached into my pocket and pulled out a shiny two-shilling piece. The silver gleamed and sparkled between my finger and thumb and caught their eye. I pretended to take the coin exactly as the plumber had taught me and pretended to place the coin under the shield of the cannibal nearest to me. When he went to look under his shield I stopped him. I withdrew the same two-shilling piece from my pocket and repeated the trick with the next cannibal. I had them entranced. They could not take their eyes off me. I worked my way right around the semicircle to the chief, and this time actually took the coin and placed it under his shield. I pointed to the first
cannibal. He lifted his shield and howled in disbelief when there was no coin beneath it. I pointed to a cannibal on the opposite side of the semicircle who immediately raised his shield and also came up emptyhanded. He, too, howled in dismay. The cannibals quickly got over their surprise and became angry, believing I was cheating them. I pointed to the chief. He raised his shield and…bingo! He was like a boy who’d opened his first Christmas present and found exactly what he’d asked for. The cannibals went wild.

I pulled another two-shilling piece from my pocket and this time let one of the warriors win. If anything he was more delighted than the chief had been. From that point on, they all wanted to win. I stood and walked back to the beach, coin held high in my left hand. They followed like sheep, eyes fixed on the prize. I arranged them in a line along the edge of the sand, facing back into the bush. I pretended to take the coin and blow through my fist as if blowing the coin into the undergrowth. I repeated the trick for each of the cannibals. Once they were all firmly convinced that a coin was lying hidden in the bush in front of them I gave the signal to start looking. As one they dived into the scrub. I calmly walked down to the edge of the water, pushed my rowboat out and started rowing. I had no fear of pursuit because the cannibals owned no craft. They didn’t need them. They didn’t have to go
looking for food because food came to them; the rotting canoes of unlucky South Sea islanders and the skeletal remains of dinghies that had once belonged to sailors hoping to replenish their water supply littered the foreshore. To think that they’d died for the want of a few gallons of water, a little imagination and four shillings. Yes, that’s all it had cost to save my life.

A
N EXTRACT FROM A THRIFT ESSAY
, ‘H
OW
M
Y
M
ONEY
S
AVED
M
Y
L
IFE

I didn’t have time to do much thinking about what Mr Holterman had said. Monday night was the formal club night when we had to wear our Church of England Boys’ Society uniform: navy shorts and shirt; red lanyard through tabs over our left shoulder and fastened through the middle button of our shirts; red kerchief around our neck fastened with a woggle (usually a well-worn shell with a hole in the middle); and black shoes and socks. Our socks had to be hoisted up to our knees and our shoes had to be shined until they glowed. (Along with every other CEB—we were called CEBS not scouts—I used to run to the clubhouse as fast as I could in the hope nobody would see me.) That particular Monday I had every reason to make sure my shoes were shined properly. I was hoping for promotion to vice-captain.

Club started at six with parade so I barely had time to polish my shoes before dinner. My head was reeling from my conversation with Bobby’s dad and the only time I had to think about it was while I sat on the back step and polished. I must admit life had always seemed pretty fair to me. There was a natural order to things. If you did your homework and paid attention in class, you did well in exams. If you turned up to football practice and did what the coach told you, you won matches. If you put in the work you reaped the reward. This was the ethic of the times and hard to argue against. The real clincher for me was that the fishing went off just as the soccer season started, and came on again just as the soccer season ended. What could be fairer than that?

I didn’t want life to be unfair. If it was unfair it changed everything. It meant you could do everything right and still have the rug pulled out from under your feet. If that was the case, what was the point of going to church? What was the point of working hard? What was the point of studying?

In my heart I wasn’t convinced that life was unfair despite what Mr Holterman had said. At the back of my mind was the nagging suspicion that somewhere along the line both Mack and Mr Holterman must have done something wrong to earn God’s displeasure. Somewhere along the way they must have sinned in thought, word or deed and now had to cop the consequences. I know if I stacked my bike and broke my arm, all my pals
would want to know what I’d done to deserve it. When Clarry broke his leg falling off the rope swing we all stood around his bed for ages speculating on what it was he’d done to upset God. We didn’t want to have our legs broken, too. There was something very uncompromising and contradictory about this God of ours. Captain Biggs preached the Christian principles of forgiveness and tolerance but God never hesitated to take his revenge. Accidents didn’t happen. Punishment happened. That was how things worked for kids and I couldn’t see whyit would be any different for adults. It seemed to me Mack and Mr Holterman were definitely being punished.

But what if they’d done nothing wrong? This was a distinct possibility, because I couldn’t imagine what on earth Mack or Mr Holterman could’ve done. Yet teaching from both church and school suggested this had to be the case. Complicating things was the fact that we’d never been able to figure out what Clarry had done wrong to deserve his broken leg. My head felt as if it wanted to explode from so much thinking.

Right then I would have given anything for the chance to talk this over with Dad, Rod, Eric or even Captain Biggs. At stake was nothing less than the principles which underpinned my entire life. But how could I, without opening the whole can of worms?

I decided to test Mr Holterman’s claim. My soccer team, Eden eighth grade, was going to win the championship by either two points or four points.
Four points looked most likely because the one remaining championship game was against Pt Chev, and they couldn’t stand in line and kick the bum in front of them without missing. If life was fair we would also win the knockout because we were a four-points-better team than our closest rivals, North Shore. The problem was the last time we’d met North Shore they’d thrashed us three–nil. Their centre-half and fullbacks were huge. According to rumours, they’d already started shaving. It was hard to believe those kids were our age. Still, we were a four-points-better team and if life was fair we’d beat them and win both the championship and the knockout. I decided to make this the test. If we won, life was fair and Mr Holterman was wrong. If we lost, life was unfair and Mr Holterman was right. What could be simpler? The trouble was, the final of the knockout was four weeks away. Four weeks was forever and what was I supposed to do in the meantime?

I could hardly walk up to Mack and tell him I wouldn’t know for another four weeks whether anyone could help him or not. And he’d hardly be impressed if I told him his fate would be determined by the result of an eighth-grade soccer match.

I finished polishing my shoes just as Dad arrived home and Mum called out to tell us to wash our hands for dinner. Typically, that’s when Nigel came rushing out to the back step with his shoes in hand. He always left things to the absolute last minute but in this instance it didn’t
really matter. His shoes were way beyond salvation. He’d kicked the shine right off them and not even a truckload of Kiwi Polish could put it back on. One of the things I most dreaded was growing out of my shoes and inheriting his.

As I began to wash my hands the ramifications of my earlier thoughts began to dawn on me. Mum always said I lived too much inside my head and it was starting to look as if she was right. I realised all of Mack’s hopes rested on me and on my team. What if I had a bad game? What if we lost? I’d thought catching fish for dinner was a big enough burden of responsibility but it paled into insignificance. I was beginning to wish I’d never gone and spoken to Mr Holterman. I wished I could turn back the clock and start Monday all over again. Mr Holterman hadn’t helped me. All he’d done was complicate things and raise the stakes. Mack was no better off, and instead of looking forward to the knockout final I was beginning to dread it. I dragged myself to the dining table, head spinning, wondering how things could possibly get worse.

It turned out to be one of those nights when Mum could only afford to give us macaroni cheese with tiny pieces of ham hidden in it. Dad stormed away from the table when he’d finished. Then later that night at club, Bobby Holterman was made vice-captain instead of me. Just when you think life can’t get any worse it always does.

Bobby Holterman had been born in England in December 1943, shortly after his father was shot down.
(Even though he was born in England and his mother was English, his father was a Kiwi so he was never thought of as a Pommy.) While that meant Bobby was six months older than me, as far as the club was concerned, I had seniority. I’d joined the club a year before Bobby. In fact I’d introduced him to the club, which only made matters worse. I had more badges than him for everything from reciting The Creed to fire lighting and knot-tying skills. I had more points for attendance and for correct dress. I outranked Bobby in every way you could think of. But now Bobby outranked me.

Ronnie Cammell, my brother Rod’s best friend, had just turned sixteen. One of the club rules was that once you turned sixteen you were too old and had to leave. He was vice-captain to Rod, who was captain of the squad I was in. Club was divided into two teams, which competed against each other in games. We were also tested on religious knowledge and issues of personal hygiene. In every game and test the winning team was awarded one point and the team with the most points at the end of the year won the pennant. The competition was fierce, let me tell you, even though the pennant remained pinned on the wall and all the winning team got for winning was bragging rights. I loved being part of a team. It was another form of acceptance.

That night at parade Captain Biggs farewelled Ronnie with a speech and we all applauded him for the contributions he’d made to the success of club nights.
Then came the magic moment when Captain Biggs was supposed to anoint me the new vice-captain of blue squad. For all the reasons I’ve given, everybody assumed it was a foregone conclusion. As Captain Biggs walked along the line of assembled boys my chest puffed out like a rooster’s and I had a grin on my face I thought only surgery could remove.

Ha, ha.

Captain Biggs walked right by me as though I was invisible and announced Bobby was the new vicecaptain. If Jesus Christ had suddenly appeared in flowing robes in front of us you wouldn’t have heard a louder gasp of surprise. I was stunned. Then embarrassed. Then humiliated. Then outraged. Then mortally ashamed. All this took less than half a second.

‘Me?’ I heard Bobby say. He sounded as stunned as I was.

‘Me?’ I heard him say again. He sounded as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

‘Me?’ I’d never heard any kid sound as happy. Or as triumphant. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me.

Shame and disappointment burned on my face. Tears weren’t far off either. If I’d been home I would’ve stormed off to the bathroom for a major sulk. Nigel and Maxie were pointing at me and sniggering. Eric put his arm around my shoulders and that was even worse. We were all supposed to congratulate Bobby but I was still
coming to terms with the disaster. I was the certainty beaten, the heir apparent axed. Bobby, not me, was going to wear the blue, single bar epaulette on his shoulder tab, have a blue, single stripe tacked onto the sleeve of his shirt and wear the badge on his cap. Bobby, who I’d introduced to club, now outranked me. My fall was complete.

I managed to turn to Bobby who, as fate would have it, was standing right beside me and give him my congratulations. Back then it was important to be a good loser. It showed you had character. Bobby’s mates were crowding around him so it was easy to slip to the back of the pack and try to pull my thoughts together. Somehow it seemed to me that Bobby’s elevation and my conversation with his dad were connected. They had to be. Mr Holterman and Captain Biggs had to be in it together. Mr Holterman must’ve persuaded Captain Biggs to promote Bobby to teach me a lesson and demonstrate to me exactly how unfair life could be. It seemed plausible. More than that, it seemed the only possible reason. Why else would Captain Biggs bypass me?

Resentment mushroomed and I shuddered at the thought of the fallout. How could I hold my head up once news had spread through school? Now I had another reason to curse the fact that I’d chosen to talk to Mr Holterman. It was clearly the worst thing I could’ve done. I also cursed the fact that I’d read my essay to Mack in the first place and set everything off. I even cursed Mack. And do you know something? I began to hope
we’d lose the knockout final so I’d never have to see Mack again.

If I was embarrassed about being bypassed so were a lot of the other kids, especially my closest pals, Eric and Gary. It was a really weird night. Nobody quite knew what to say to me. They felt my humiliation and my disappointment. It was as if I was there but not there, a shell just going through the motions. When club was finally over, I didn’t hang around with the other kids but bolted straight home, tail between my legs like a pig dog sent packing by a foxie.

I crept in through the back door hoping to make it to the bedroom unnoticed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an only child or come from a big family with lots of brothers and sisters, or whether you’ve been sent away to boarding school, bed is where you find sanctuary. If you want to be alone with your thoughts or cry without anyone noticing, that’s the place to do it. Bed isn’t neutral territory, it’s private territory and every kid quickly learns how to protect it by becoming good at pretending to be asleep. I planned to do a lot of pretending, a bit of thinking and a fair bit of secret crying. But Mum heard me come in and called out to me to put the kettle on.

BOOK: Remember Me
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