One day, there they all were – Oriwia, Paa and the girls, in clothes and shoes all wrong for the climate, coming down the gangway with so much baggage I thought I might have to make two trips. But we packed everything in to the car, squeezed them all in and off we went, windows open and furnace air flowing through. Paa was so excited, full of talk about the journey; Daphne and Binnie were exclaiming about this and that along the way; Oriwia was not saying a word. Every so often, Paa would stop talking and, though it was full daylight with no moon in sight, he’d sing ‘Sail Along Silvery Moon’, or his version of it.

As we walked towards the house, we saw that my wife’s family was lined up with Chappy, holding loops of flowers to place round the necks of their visitors. Chappy stood unmoving, apart from his non-stop tears. Paa and I had to hold Oriwia up. She was stumbling. She kept blacking out.

We had done up one of the empty houses for Chappy, Oriwia, Daphne and Binnie. Paa came to stay with Ela and me, but spent most of his time fishing from the beach with Ela’s father, or out by the reef in a canoe. They were all to stay for a month while my mother and father and Dulcie looked after the businesses at home.

In the meantime Chappy and Oriwia became husband and wife again, the daughters became their daughters. Fish and kalo put flesh on Chappy’s bones and sun gave him back his shine.

Chapter 18

Oriwia

‘Start again,’ I said to my grandmother. It was the busiest part of a day when the small town was crowded with people on their way to a big agricultural show. My grandmother, in preparation for the day, had been up most of the night baking. It was not my intention to do any interviewing on that occasion. Instead, I would help her out in the tearoom.

The fact that she’d been working most of the night hadn’t stopped her from writing up the translations of Aki’s latest recording, and I was sure that there was something she’d found in there that was firing her up. But customers were queuing for cakes and pies and the little tables were full. She was out in the small kitchen at the back of the tearoom, flipping back the hinged lids on the metal pots, spooning in tealeaves, filling them with boiling water. Out she went smiling, in she came talking.

‘There were people waiting for us in the bonfire air,’ she said.

‘Not now,’ I said.

‘A bubble bubble of words …’ I took the tape recorder, put it down on the bench and sat her on a stool.