I also went to St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on The Terrace. The Kaikohe Presbyterian Minister had been a highly engaging, animated man who took Bible Class with us most weeks, and I’d been confirmed by him¹. Christian observance was just another of the things we were expected to do. In Wellington it became much more than that.

§

I want you to know

I started writing a diary that October, a sure sign that, despite Kevin and Ruth’s best efforts, I was lonely and unhappy. It opens with me saying that I wanted the future “nebulous me” to know:

… what it’s like to be young — or bossed around — or studying — or in love for the first time at the tender age of (for me) sixteen (she was nineteen and, oh boy! I was on top of the world).

I also promised to be honest.

§

 “Oh boy!”

That phrase reminds me so strongly of my father at that age. The difference is that he’d already worked hard for a few years — on farms and down the mine — gained matriculation by correspondence and managed to get a solid, secure job in the Post Office. He was a tough, driven kid.

He was also conducting Bible Classes, having given himself to the Lord. It was a great way to meet girls, he said, especially after those lonely years on farms. That didn’t mean he was insincere, but the girls were a bonus. In a couple of years he’d meet my mother and — Oh boy! — fall hopelessly in love.

§

Farewell to all that

Looking back, “one thing stands out like a wart,” I wrote, I’d never extended myself.” That was partly conceit, partly true, but also acknowledgement that I’d managed to hide my limitations at school.

At the beginning of 1963 I was going to be an agricultural scientist. I already had my university qualifications but I went back to Northland College to try for Dux, Head Prefect and Senior Athletic Champion. I did it, too.

Rather than being in a dormitory I shared a room with Sio, another Samoan, and for most of the year we studied. We studied. A 10.00pm lights-out wasn’t good enough for us, so we blacked out our windows with paper from the art department, and like tunnel-digging prisoners in Colditz studied through the night, with Sio taking the late shift and me the early.

Then two things happened — girls and, for more obscure reasons, an interest in the Diplomatic Service.

At the end of the year, armed with the excellent excuse of having spent the year on more important matters (prefect’s duties, athletics, my girlfriend) I sat the Entrance Scholarship exam in the Sciences, English and French, ending up with disgraceful marks in all but English (which result was no more than disappointing).

Maybe that’s why I opted for Diplomacy over Science, and enrolled at VUW.

§

I remember another incident, not mentioned in the diary. At the end of the year someone organised a boat trip for us senior kids (we were pupils then, not students) to Otehei Bay, Zane Grey’s base on Urupukapuka in the Bay of Islands. Someone produced a flagon of sherry and it turned into a piss-up. As a result we were assembled by the Head Master and given a serious dressing down the night before Prize Giving. If it had happened earlier in the year, he said, some of us would have been suspended and/or expelled. As it was, if it became public at this time of the year it would bring disgrace on us, and the school, to no good purpose. Prize Giving would carry on as usual.

It ended exuberantly with seven hundred unruly adolescents roaring out Now Thank We All Our God, with Joe Wellington hammering out the accompaniment on the piano.

§

One of the first diary entries is worth quoting, since I can’t believe I wrote it: 

People generally spend most of their time at work. Except in war time, for the most part they see no intrinsic purpose in this, but do it to finance their leisure. But there is no purpose, rhyme, or reason to their leisure either — except in so much as it makes time pass. So what do people get out of their lives? Children? Many people find joy and purpose in raising a family, but this is no valid purpose in life either, as their children will grow up themselves into the same purposeless life.

If the one purpose of human life is to propagate, we’re only animals…

Three days later my landlady came home with her third child, a baby girl, and I had a chance to observe closely a mother’s intense love and commitment for her newborn. I wonder now how she’d have reacted if I’d read her those words. It might have helped cure me of “adolescent philosophising”.

By October I had more to think about than the meaning of life. My end of year examinations were looming — especially sobering since I’d lost all interest by then in diplomacy, and the law, and university in general. Still, I had to study.

§

A sickening experience

A few days later, I woke at 6.00 and looked out the window. It was a beautiful day, so I decided I’d go to the beach, and study. In my duffle bag I packed my shorts and some books and sandwiches.

On second thoughts I also took my notebook, containing character sketches, plot summaries and bits of description, self-analysis, etc. That was a mistake.

I caught the 9.00 o’clock train and was out at Paekakariki within an hour.

I got changed and went for a walk along the beach. There I met an old man carting firewood, including a plank that was obviously too heavy for him. I asked him would he like a hand? He hummed and hawed, and we started off to his place — two miles back along the beach, surely!

Well, he gave me lunch, and showed me his garden, by which time it was starting to look like rain. I headed back towards the station, stopping to get changed in a toilet, as the changing sheds were way back along the beach. The only other people (except in one or two passing cars) were two men throwing bread to the seagulls. As I was going back down the main street a car pulled up beside me. It was those same men.

They said they were police, and could they have a word with me. I got in the proffered back seat.

I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but it came about that they were investigating burglaries committed over the last week — at around lunch time — along the waterfront. They were watching out for strangers wandering around the place, and I was the only one. All on my lonesome.

I told them my business, and explained in answer to questions that I’d been there three times before, during the August holidays, “to read poetry and write”. Did they want to search my bag? I emptied it.

The man in charge began to browse through my notebook. One doesn’t undress in public, and I certainly didn’t enjoy watching this “stupid flat-footed detective” rifle through my … adolescent philosophising!

A voice came through the wireless. I didn’t catch the words, but one of them answered, simply — “in the car”. So another lot were looking for me!

Presently a third fellow came along and got in the car beside me. “Take a look at this,” said the man with my notebook. The newcomer looked through it with avid attention.

“Does he know what he’s here for?” he asked.

“I just said for burglaries.”

“Well this is a special type of burglary,” said the other, looking at me. “Someone has been going into women’s bedrooms and taking, very neatly,” he said, “their panties.”

He turned over a few more pages. “Some of the notes here are concerned with sex,” he said, “very much so.”

I could see them looking at me and thinking, pervert! Wondering what made me that way. In fact there were only three notes on sex, and they were anything but immoral — in reality, probably more a reflection of how I felt about people getting more sex than me.

They asked me what I’d been doing over the last week. I said swotting, apart from going out once or twice to the pictures. What pictures? they wanted to know.

Fate seemed to be playing with me. The last picture I’d seen was Electra, based on the Greek tragedy by Euripides … about a princess who murders her adulterous mother the Queen. The one before that was Bedtime Story². Clearly I had strange attitudes to sex.

When I told them I’d miss my train, they took my particulars, told me to go to the CID in Wellington, and reminded me that if I went home first they would know.

I did as I was told, and sat at the police station for over an hour before they arrived, after doing what I don’t know.

They said I was still the prime suspect. I started to get angry, and they said they wouldn’t be wasting their time talking shit across the table with me unless they thought it necessary — they were investigating burglaries, not passing the time.

I said, alright, alright — why don’t you come up to my flat, search it and ask my landlady questions? So they did.

They searched the place. There was nothing to find. They apologised for the inconvenience and left. Just like that.

But I was sure they still thought I was a pervert — and all this when I thought I’d just done my good deed for the year, helping that pensioner lug his firewood.

§

That incident gave me new respect for Kevin. The cops clearly knew him, and our address. I didn’t know why at the time. But he stood up for me, took charge of the situation and got them out of the house as quickly as possible. He knew my rights.

§

I was too young to remember the 1960 Kennedy election beyond a vague memory of Nixon’s sweaty lip in the first ever TV debate, but come the 1964 American elections, the Vietnam War was coming into our consciousness, and I thought voters had an unfortunate choice — either competence and dishonesty, or honesty and ignorance.

I think Robert Caro would have approved of me describing President Johnson as an “extremely able man, but disturbing to say the least. He impresses me as a political colossus, in absolute command — tremendous — but sly, unfeeling, dishonest, immoral, not above any manoeuvre in pursuit of his object … personal power.”

On the other hand, I thought Senator Goldwater seemed “unflinchingly, even dangerously honest… The danger of his honesty is not that of choosing principle over expediency, but of failing to understand.”

It took me back to President Kennedy’s assassination the previous year. I was in the Northland College Boy’s Hostel at the time. “The whole building went deathly quiet. I think it wanted to cry…”

That had been the second time we boys ate in deathly silence. In 1962 it had been the Cuban Missile Crisis. The only sounds in the dining room that day had been the clatter of cutlery and plates, and the scrape of chairs on the wooden floor.

§

A new man, sort of

A month later I was back on the farm, and a new man, sort of — “worn out, sunburnt and getting fitter every day — all the things I’ve wanted to be throughout my university year.”

But there was so much I wanted to do! — study, read the Bible, learn to pray with Saint Teresa, talk with this or that memorable character, walk through the “murmuring bush”‘, talk to friends… and there were all these urgent problems facing the world, but

“what have I done all day? Just worked…”

Fortunately there were some interesting characters close to hand.

§

A museum piece

Last Thursday when Dad and I went to Parkers’ Mill to load timber for our new cowshed.

The mill was a museum piece, both men and machines. The mill itself was ancient, trussed together with logs and iron and an old, old engine. Everything was manual except the saws themselves, a winch for the logs and another for the wagon loads of timber. The yards were scattered with mysterious and venerable implements, engine blocks and tools, while the house was gloomy and dark, and crammed with antique furniture and dusty old books — even part of a spinning wheel.

The men were just as interesting. All three were Parkers. Two of them, while hardly ordinary, were not unique, but the third, the eldest was very interesting – he must have been 60 or more, I thought, permanently bent over with work, his hands as tough as leather, his chin unshaven and dribbly where a few teeth had rotted back.

He must have slaved his life away. His muscles were fibrous and fleshless and he talked with a loud shrill voice as if always trying to be heard above the shrieking saw. He made us a cup of billy tea, lifting the billy out of the fire with one bare hand, and pouring the brew into cups with the fingers of the other supporting its smoking hot bottom — and not even feeling it. He was a rather awful sight — he wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been so bent and crippled.

If they’d wanted to they could have made a fortune with that mill, but they were content as they were – not that they were unintelligent. The oldest one, explaining the money problem, said very clearly, “With the population increasing like it is they’ve got to make more money or pass it round more quick.” I never understood that before, fair go.

§

Three little pigs

Mum and Lynne took in three little pigs the other day, which were cold and hungry because their mother wasn’t caring for them properly. They were almost lifeless when they came into the house, but after a feed and a couple of hours inside they were quite perky. Joe, our little Dachshund, wanted to climb into the box to keep them warm. He was quite excited, but then one of the piglets bit him and he became most agitated.

During the night they climbed out of the box and messed all over the kitchen floor and the Feltex, and in the bathroom, the toilet and the hall. Then they settled down by the stove to sleep. In the morning, they were taken outside again.

§

Neville

He’s got guts and he talks ceaselessly. Evidently he’s also sensitive, as he tried to kill himself once — he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun. The Doctors took out what was left of one lung, moved his heart to give it more protection, and spaced out what remained of the ribs on the left side of his chest. He recovered by sheer guts. They told him he’d have to do sedentary work, but now he’s labouring for us.

Neville’s quite a sight with his shirt off, thin and tanned, his chest badly scarred. He’s as stubborn as a fat porker, and wants friends, and needs them. He’s in love with a married woman who at 31 is six years his senior. She has her husband‘s permission to do whatever she likes with Neville as long as she doesn’t leave home. Her name is Olive, but Neville calls her Wendy because he likes it. She is, as they say, just a bitch. She tried to dump him once but he cried on her shoulder until she gave in — goodness knows what he would have done if she’d left him because he’s mad for her.

He talks incessantly, and explains things to me as if I’m the poorest dimwit on this dear Earth. During early milking, if I’m tired, he exasperates me, and I soon lose my temper — at which he talks even more, trying to get back in favour, and I soon feel ashamed of my rudeness. Then we’re friends again.

This morning I became truly annoyed and called him either a fool or a liar — and I was still trying to work out which. It distressed both him and me that I should’ve said it, for it’s not true.

I get the impression that, should stress show up in his life, there wouldn’t be much strength in him to stand up to it. He keeps himself going on pep pills, and he sleeps on tranquillisers. His hand shakes.

§

Thursday 31st December:

The singer, not the song, they said,
There is no God, but they were wrong…

… There is half an hour to a new year. May it be better than the last.

§

No such luck

But the new year wasn’t any better. I was back with Ruth and Kevin, back at university — going to very few lectures, if any. I heard that the lecturer who’d taken our Year One law course asked what had happened to me.

Instead I spent the first half of the year reading, writing and feeling miserable.

When you move to the city, I wrote, you can be proud, to begin with, of your country roughness.

You can reminisce on days spent digging, painting, mowing, milking, moving stock. Sun, rain, damp unpleasant drizzle. All these are there in the city, in your memory, and then they fade.

§

Kevin was an enterprising man. Besides working as a sales manager, he ran the bar and wait staff at a downtown cabaret, and I worked there occasionally to earn a bit of cash. As a result I can carry a full tray of food or drink with confidence, which is certainly a useful life skill.

As I’ve said, I didn’t know anything about Kevin’s back story or how he got into this line of work, but he was good at it. I think he may have done something similar at one of the city hotels.

The Cabaret had a house band with a ball-gowned lead singer — good looking, generously bosomed and with a great voice — belting out the favourites. There was a dance floor and table service for food and drinks. We stewards dressed in dark suits, white shirts and bow ties, with the traditional white napkin draped across our forearms. We hosted big functions from time to time, and the low point in my waiting career was unthinkingly brushing the crumbs off Governor General Sir Bernard Fergusson’s place setting with a soiled napkin, leaving a broad smear of cigarette ash in their place.

For some reason I went with Kevin on one of his sales trips to Napier. He took me out to dinner and we drank a bottle of Liebfraumilch. It was about then I learnt not to judge all wine by the horrible stuff I’d tasted at my older cousins’ weddings.

§

One night, after the ball was over and our work done, the stewards gathered around a table with a few bottles of beer and a half of Pimms. I had a few glasses and then — as if at the snap of someone’s fingers — I was floating away from myself and the voices around me were a hundred yards away. I was so tired, and I wanted so badly to giggle. Guiding my body by remote, uncertain control I put away the glasses, climbed the stairs and drove off on my scooter. The cold blast of air on the road revived me. I’d felt like that only once before — the previous Christmas at haymaking — equally tired and with a few beers in me.

I detest the way we’ve neutered the word “drunk” by using it to describe how we feel when we’ve gone out with mates for a few drinks. I reserve it for the few times I’ve got absolutely plastered.

§

Two women, the first dressed in gorgeous blue for the Ball. She’s tall, brunette and crazy-drunk. She pukes on the carpet and wets herself, so they coax her outside, through the kitchen, and she screams, “Leave me alone, please leave me alone!” and wails and laughs hysterically. She’s giggling. When they get her out into the street, she pulls up her dress, squats down on the pavement and pees through her undies onto the ground.

The second is a girl in years. She wears a waitress’s white smock and black lace-up shoes. She’s short, and plain, with bouncy black hair combed to sweep down to her neck, and back up into large bangs. Her face is shadowy and her skin soft. She’s quiet and friendly, and her voice unmusical. She has a plain intensity about her face and hands and body, and she’s a pleasant companion on our station. She was assaulted, so Kevin says, some time ago. A man attacked her on her way home at night.

§

A couple of weeks later I came across an ad. in the paper and left Ruth and Kevin’s to take up a live-in job as a Medical Orderly in a geriatric ward at Silverstream Hospital. It was harder to escape reality there — in fact a deeply positive experience. At the same time it was a nod towards the better life “doing good” that I’d announced to Kevin and Gordon.

I was at Silverstream from late July until early December 1965, when I left for home. The Summer of ’65 was magic — energetic, exuberant and now largely forgotten — but then it was back to university in 1966.