On the day of the tooth, as soon as I’d finished my watch in the early morning, I hitched a ride on a delivery lorry heading off for Ka‘a‘awa, Waiahole and some of those places. I’d never explored the North Shore. I was ignoring my tooth.

In my bag I had a bottle of rum and packets of cigarettes, which are a good lead-in to conversation, and which I intended sharing with a native man who I would find fishing from a beach or pulling up a canoe.

Once the truck had reached its destination I left and made my way down onto the sand where I walked for an hour. The tooth was beginning to thump, so I found a sheltered spot and took what I thought would be enough swallows from the bottle to douse it. It made no difference. Feeling annoyed at having to concentrate so fully on one small bit of such a large-sized self, I gave myself a hefty punch in the jaw, which made matters no worse and no better. What I needed was a pair of pliers and someone to help me.

I walked the morning through. The sun was high by the time I came across a native man pulling in a fish. Behind him in the trees was a shelter, where I guess he slept or rested. I greeted him and sat with him in the shade, taking the bottle and the cigarettes from the bag and placing them between us.

‘From the boats?’ he asked.

I told him which ship I was from, and which country, using his language as best I could, and for a while we compared our languages. Then I pointed to my jaw and said I needed pliers, showing with a gripping fist and a down-jerk of my elbow, what I wanted to do with the pliers. He laughed and blew smoke.

‘Soon,’ he said.

It was a long ‘soon’, but I realised why we were waiting when two little boys appeared from in the palms.

‘Two very bad boys,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘Should stay home with their aunty, but they run away after school and come to sleep by me.’ He turned to them. ‘Bad boys,’ he said, ‘this is your uncle.’

I wished I had brought chewing gum with me.

Their grandfather cut a triangle from each of two coconuts with the tip of his fishing knife and the boys drank, facing the sea with their moon eyes looking sideways at me. He cut fruit for them.

‘Go home to Aunty,’ he said, but they didn’t move. They bit into their fruit.

‘I’m taking Uncle for his tooth. Go home to Aunty until Mummy wakes up.’ They remained turned towards the sea, expressionless, as though he hadn’t spoken.