Uncle had even organised the ceremonial aspects at the marae and got all the relatives on the job catering for the many visitors who were expected to arrive to farewell Nan.
‘Do you see what your eldest brother is doing?’ Koro said to Mum after she had embraced him and cried on his shoulder.
During the funeral, Koro was formal, dignified and strong. After all, he was a chief and his people — there must have been over six hundred on the marae — expected a certain restraint in the face of death. Tall, stately, his silver hair combed, he was the proud rangatira receiving everyone with immense generosity. They cried; he didn’t. They wanted comfort; he gave it. A loud sigh came from the people. ‘Yes, you can always count on Big Tu to show us all, by his example, how to rise above our grief.’
Behind the scenes, however, Koro found fault with Uncle Tu-Bad even when there was no fault, sending him and Bo and Charlie out on more expeditions to catch fish, hunt pigs and find succulent forest roots so that the visitors would have extra delicacies to praise.
‘Pa,’ Uncle Tu-Bad would say to him, ‘could you let me handle it?’ Since his return from prison he’d got involved with the community and the marae, and people were looking up to him.
Mum didn’t escape Koro’s critical gaze either. ‘Tell the women more visitors have arrived at the gateway,’ he would say to her. ‘I won’t have anybody complaining that they had to wait in the hot sun. And make sure the young girls in the kitchen have lunch ready and on time. It was late yesterday.’
As for my cousins and I, we were on constant clean-up duty: the showers, the latrines, the grounds and so on. Seth, Abe and Spade eyed my height and shoulders with some respect, but that didn’t stop them from trying to put me down. ‘You d-d-do the latrines, Little T-T-Tutae,’ they mocked. ‘That should be s-s-second nature to you.’ They laughed and laughed as if it was a great joke.
‘I wouldn’t go there if I was you,’ I said, deliberately articulating my words and squaring off. ‘You clean those latrines, because if you don’t you’ll be down them.’
They got the hint.
Yes, in public Koro presented the perfect image of a chief.
However, late at night, when everybody was asleep, I would catch him weeping on Mum’s shoulder. She was looking after the budget for the funeral, balancing the outgoings with the koha the mourners would leave to help pay for the tangihanga.
‘What will I do without your mother?’
I found these private revelations of Koro’s vulnerability surprising, almost shocking. How would he cope when we put Nan into the ground? Uncle Tu-Bad had led a crew up to the graveyard to dig the hole. ‘You boys too,’ he said to me, Seth, Abe and Spade. I was only too willing to do that for Nan; after all those times she made me breathe her herbal fumes, I owed her.
Watching Uncle as he directed the work, I couldn’t help but think how proud Koro should be of his eldest son. Later, when we buried Nan, I heard him say to Koro:
‘We’ll be all right, Pa. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.’
The question was what to do with Koro, now that he was a widower.
Soon after the tangihanga, Mum, Dad and Mum’s brothers got together. They all looked to Uncle Tu-Bad to chair the meeting. ‘May will have to move back to Uawa to look after him,’ Uncle Bo said. ‘She’s the girl in the family.’
‘Just because she’s the daughter,’ Uncle Tu-Bad answered, ‘doesn’t make May the one to take sole responsibility.’
‘Pa’s a pain in the arse,’ said Uncle Charlie, ‘and he’ll get worse now that Ma’s not around. He’ll need a housekeeper to keep him in the manner he’s accustomed to and we can’t afford to hire one. May’s the best person to do the job.’
Mum was glaring at Bo and Charlie. ‘You brothers have got this all sorted out, haven’t you. Don’t I have a say?’
Wally made it easier for her. ‘I know you think I like my job in Wellington, dear, but family is family.’
None of us heard Koro joining us. ‘Talking about me behind my back already?’ he asked. ‘Well, I’ve made my own decision about what I want to do. May can’t move back to Uawa. Are you all stupid? She and Wally have got good jobs down there and I’m not going to ruin Little Tu’s chance of going to university.’
I thought he was going to claim his independence and tell the family that he was quite capable of looking after himself. Instead:
‘So, if the maunga can’t come to me … I will go to it,’ he said. ‘I’m moving to Wellington.’
‘We’d love to have you, Pa,’ said Mum, ‘but we haven’t got any room.’
‘Esther and I had savings,’ Koro answered, ‘and I’ve had a good pension plan for years, so now that I’m retired that will ensure my financial independence. I’ll rent the homestead out and we’ll buy a house in Wellington together.’
I could see the wheels turning sluggishly in Uncle Bo and Uncle Charlie’s minds. Pa spending his money and not leaving any to them? They didn’t like that either!
‘You go for it, Pa,’ Uncle Tu-Bad said.
The proposal meant a lot of travelling back and forth between Uawa and Wellington.
Mum, Dad and I returned to the capital, and Mum started looking for a property with at least three bedrooms and space for Koro’s library. When she’d narrowed down the choices, Koro flew to Wellington and, finally, he and Mum settled on a big old place in Island Bay: two double bedrooms overlooking the sea, one single room at the back, a huge basement, double garage and sleepout.
‘You’ll like it here, Pa,’ Mum said. ‘You can have one of the bedrooms in the front. Wally and I will fix up the basement for all your books and whakapapa, but some of your precious things will have to go to a storage unit out at Porirua.’
‘And will Little Tu have the room at the back?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I think he’s old enough to sleep by himself now.’
Gee, thanks, Koro.
‘Oh, him,’ Mum answered, as if I didn’t matter. ‘Can’t you see that he’s got his eye on the sleepout? At least if he goes in there he won’t wake us up when he goes training in the mornings and he won’t have to sneak out the window any more to be with his mates or those girls who keep hanging around him.’
As always, I zipped my lip. If I protested Mum might present evidence and I might not be able to refute it.
Once the sale was settled, we drove back to Uawa to help Koro to pack. Ralph and Tommy came with us, having hired two huge moving trucks for the job.
Uncle Tu-Bad organised a big farewell for Koro at the marae. People from Uawa know how to throw a good party, no matter what the occasion, and Koro was extolled and honoured for his leadership and generosity. During the celebrations, he revealed another reason why he was coming to Wellington with us.
‘Look at those elders,’ he said to Mum. ‘They can’t wait to see me go so that they can move one up on the paepae!’ He cast a proud glance at Uncle Tu-Bad. ‘Well, they’d better not do that too soon because it looks like the tortoise has put on speed and is coming through. Maybe I should have left sooner to leave him space to do it, eh.’
Came the day we were supposed to leave, there was no sign of Koro.
‘I think I know where he’s gone,’ Dad said. ‘Probably to see Esther and say goodbye to her.’
We drove out of Uawa to the family graveyard and, sure enough, there was Koro’s car, parked at the bottom of the cliff face that rose starkly from the bush. The cemetery was lovely in the sunlight; the cliffs behind were tapu, sacred, like palisades climbing to the sky and honeycombed with potholes and tunnels.