For the next seven or eight years, they were fourteen-hour days for Oriwia from the time she left home until she returned at night. In the town, there were only a grill room and a dairy that sold any kind of prepared food. The grill room was open in the evenings only, and the flat pies and curly sandwiches put out by the dairy were no competition. Regulars to the tearoom included travelling salesmen and truckies who were keen on Oriwia’s pastries. They’d take lunch in a bag and be off on the road again. Oriwia made tea for them to take away if they had their own tea mugs. Orders were made up for workers round town. But what Oriwia enjoyed most were the customers coming in, placing their orders and putting their feet under the tables, ready for a chat. The really big days were show days, twice a year.

However, custom declined when a new café opened on the opposite side of the street, serving new kinds of coffee and plated food. Road improvements, and the fact that people all had good cars now, meant that they would bypass the tearoom, driving to the next town where a food market and chainstore had opened, advertising low prices.

Chapter 31

Aki

I was at the woodpile sawing stove-lengths from mānuka trunks I’d brought down from the slopes. About mid-morning. There was mist soft-footing about the hills, grey like old photos. Earlier, I’d heard Chappy drive up and knew he was over at the bamboo grove getting canes for the garden he was making. I had a few woodchips and scraps burning behind me in a ring of stones. In a minute or two, I’d boost the flames with a few sticks and put the billy on to boil. Before Chappy went home, we’d have billy tea and a yarn. I was thinking this when I looked up and saw him coming towards me, slow, slow, slow. He stopped and stood a way off with nothing to say. He was inside himself, ghosting.

‘What?’ I called, straightening, leaving the saw stuck in a half-cut piece.

He came towards me.

‘I found him,’ he said, whispering, turning away.

His ghost feet led me to the mid-section of the bamboo thicket where he’d been cutting. There were tied bundles on the trailer, loose sticks on the ground. I pressed my way in behind him while he held back a section of canes for me, and in there, deep, was Noddy – bones, old cloth, gumboots – still standing because of the tightness of vegetation which now grew through and about, binding him.