Before long, Chappy was well enough to do light work. While men were away fencing on rich men’s land, home fences were in need of repair. Some of this Chappy was able to help with. Otherwise he assisted round the houses, keeping wood supplied to fires, carrying water, sweeping verandahs. Once he found his feet, he was never still. He learned to milk Nunu’s cow, and every morning at daybreak he’d be there with the milk bucket. All this Oriwia observed as she went to and fro. When he stood, though Chappy was no taller than Nunu, his body had straightened, his skin had a new glow, his face a new ease.

Chapter 7

Aki

I wanted to go and see my father before I returned to the sea and decided that Chappy was well enough to come with me. On the way I would call in to see Oriwia so I could pay off some of the family’s shop bill. Also there was something I needed to discuss with her. I didn’t know how I was going to approach the subject of Ela.

‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ Oriwia said when we arrived. ‘Stay and talk to Dad while I bake something for you to take to those fellows working on the line.’

So Chappy and I went out to the yard where her father was sitting on his chair in the shade by a little table with a brick under one leg. Jimmy smiled his half smile, lifted his good hand, spoke a slurred greeting and began questioning, wanting to know all about this Chap. Though he’d heard the story on the night of the party, I went through it again – the story of the seeing ghost. I told all I knew.

Uncle Jimmy, with his good hand gripping my forearm, rattling it and looking Chappy up and down with his one open eye, was disappointed when the story came to an end.

‘Who’s he’s mountain?’ he garbled and puffed from his mouth-side, speaking in English because there was a stranger present.

‘I don’t know,’ I said in my own language. ‘I know his country, but not his land.’

‘Who’s he’s river?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who’s he’s ancestors?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who’s he’s name? Who he is?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ahh, ahh. You going to marry my daughter?’

These last were the jumbled words that Oriwia overheard as she came out with four mugs of tea and a plate of pikelets on a tray. She laughed and, while we helped ourselves, sat down, alternating between drinking her own tea and helping her father with sips from his. One eye of Jimmy’s was fixed on me, waiting for an answer, but it was Oriwia who spoke. She’ll tell about that. Instead, I’ll talk about my tooth.