Beryl Fletcher

Blog Number Seven: 13-19 Dec 2008

 

One of the themes that fascinates me as a writer is the constant shifting of identities that we undergo in one lifetime. This has accelerated markedly in the modern age. For the first half of the twentieth century you had your life path laid out before you at birth; rigid, under constant judgment, inflexible. You passed through the stages of child, parent, and aged person and took on the roles and clothing and speech of your group. People who enjoyed these roles thrived within them. My own parents had a long successful marriage lived entirely within the prescribed gender roles of breadwinner and mother.

 

This year I became seventy. I was born in 1938, the third pregnancy in a row for my mother Joan. I spent most of the first decades of my life trying not to ‘be her’. I loved her but I did not want her life.

 

My mother was a wonderful woman who overcame her lack of education (she did not make it to high school) to be someone who developed a deep understanding of how human relationships worked. I am very close to my four siblings, all of us in our sixties and seventies, and I’m sure that I owe this legacy to my mother’s wisdom.

 

I have a clear memory of the very moment when she realised that she had become an old woman. She was seventy-two and was ill with the flu. I was caring for her. She had a mild fever and was lying in her bed. Outside her room a winter’s storm raged. Her left hand was on top of the duvet. All at once she let out a devastating cry: whose hand is that, whose hand?

 

‘Don’t be silly Mum. It’s your own hand.’

‘But it looks old.’

‘That’s because you are old.’

 

A silence. I could have bitten my tongue off. She gave me an anguished look, not of anger, but of fear.  She whispered, How did this happen? I don’t want this…

 

From that moment on, my mother became what some would term a hypochondriac. She kept a strict watch on her bodily ills, both real and imagined, that eventually became dramatic characters in their own right. She kept quite good health until the age of eighty and died at eighty-three, demented, fearful, crying for her own mother, not understanding why she and my father had to live apart in the last eighteen months of her life.

 

Every aging person develops a reassuring identity that creates their final narrative. This may be a stubborn adherence to an identity long gone; in the case of women, a youthful way of dressing from a bygone era (the ubiquitous beehive hairstyle springs to mind) and for men, a sexually desirable person who chats up any woman under thirty, a practice that may earn him the derogatory title of ‘dirty old man’. 

 

I sometimes ask my younger women friends what sort of old woman they want to be. There is usually a shocked response. Like my mother, they simply can’t grasp the fact that they may one day be an old woman. In this time of the rapid rise in the numbers of old people on the planet, the zeitgeist is playing a dangerous game of hide and seek with us. Coming ready or not Boomers! A woman is not permitted to look old. To do so, is seen as letting down the side. Get rid of wrinkles, age spots, flabby chins and above all grey hair. Shove hormonal cream up your vagina (what’s left of it) and keep your g-string on to hide your bald mound. 

 

I am going to stick my neck out here. Old people are not a sexual turn on. Sex is for the young. Sex for life is a cruel commercial slogan. (Please note that I am referring here to heterosexual sex.) Women become invisible to the male gaze at about fifty. It’s great to move around the world as an invisible being; a blessed relief to be honest.

 

Here are some of my resolutions so far on becoming an old woman.

 

I will use the word old. It’s honest. I will not say things like so-and-so is fifty years young.

 

I will not use age specific words like sprightly, querulous, or refer to someone as ‘young for her age’ (whatever the hell that means). 

 

I will not dye my hair or cut my pigtails off. (Why is it that pigtails on an old woman annoys some people? I have been confronted by complete strangers who want to know why I want to look like a school girl.)

 

I will not get plastic surgery or do botox to try and look young.

 

I will not turn into one of those women who try to shock others so that they are seen as moving outside the stereotype of ‘little old lady’.

 

And above all, if I get tired and need a ‘nana nap’ or use a walking stick or anything else that age throws up at me, I will damn well do it. This is because the popular media and every health book you pick up has a recipe for NOT getting old. We see men of ninety running marathons, old women enduring pregnancy and surgical births after having other people’s embryos implanted in their ancient wombs and so on… but these people are exceptions. Most old people have health issues either chronic or acute. Once you hit seventy, your genes (if not your sins) will find you out.

 

What bugs me is that if you do get an illness, it’s seen as your OWN FAULT. If only you had exercised more, if only you had taken omega three or anti-oxidants, if only you had not boozed your brains out when you were a teenager or eaten too much sugar, if only you had kept your knickers on, blah blah blah… 

 

OK. So what’s all this rave got to do with writing? Plenty. A recent article (forgotten where I read it) asked why it is that old men [sic] were still writing novels. Writers like the great Philip Roth were quoted as an example of older male writers honing in on bodily decay as metaphors of social ills…

 

I fail to see the relevance of this critique. Of course a writer changes as his or her life (and the outer world) changes. Anyway, who would want to read work from a writer stuck in one era writing the same book over and over again. Old people make terrific characters in fiction. They are interesting, annoying, dogmatic, clever, whatever you want to make of them. Some writers avoid them like the plague because old people are thought to live (mostly) in the past and are just hanging around waiting to die and this can bore the readers.  

 

OK. Here’s a challenge for writers out there. Write a short piece of fiction from the point-of-view of an old person in the present tense without flash backs. Dare you to.   

 

 

Part Six: The Black Stones of Hannalore

 

Last week, in part five, Hannalore and Juno leave the community settlement with the help of Sarah and Jimmy. Sarah gives Hannalore three photos, two of her lost mother Eleanor and one of the front window of a men’s wear shop that Hannalore has never seen before. She and Juno climb aboard the konaki (bush sledge). Hannalore becomes fearful of Jimmy who begins to behave in a strange manner towards Juno. Jimmy leaves them alone in the bush to repair the konaki and together they run away from him only to lose their way in the bush.

Now read on….  

 

 

10

 

They struggled for hours through thick bush. Hannalore had no idea where they were. She knew that they should try to find a creek and follow it downhill until it joined a larger river, but they seemed to be climbing uphill for most of the time. Although the rain had stopped the trees were still dripping with moisture. The bush was stirring with birds drying off their feathers. A few drowsy bees drifted around looking for nectar. The air smelled fresh and sharp with an aroma that Hannalore recognised as rewarewa, the native honeysuckle. She took this early flowering to be a good omen that warm dry weather was on its way and that soon this wild wet winter would be over.

 

A kereru flapped noisily just above Juno’s head. She shrieked and tripped over a fallen ponga. She cut open her left leg just beneath the knee and shrieked even more loudly when she saw the blood emerging from a rip in her woollen stocking.

 

Hannalore tore the fabric away from the cut. She washed the wound with a handful of precious water from the bottle. She retrieved the package of sandwiches from the pikau and smeared her fingers with honey. She transferred the honey from her fingers to the patch of blood below Juno’s knee. The blood thickened and the bleeding stopped.   

Juno said that she wanted to go home. She hated the bush, she hated the bird that had tried to cut her legs off with its wings. If they had stayed with Jimmy he would have killed it stone dead. 

 

‘Hush now,’ said Hannalore. ‘You must be brave. We still have a long way to go.’

 

Juno announced that she was hungry. Hannalore waited until Juno had eaten some cheese and one of the thick pieces of bread before she suggested that they keep on walking.

Juno was reluctant to move. She said that her feet hurt and she was tired. Out came her lower lip again.

 

Hannalore lifted her pikau onto her back. ‘I’m off then,’ she said. ‘See you later.’ She left Juno lying against the fallen ponga trunk and did not look back. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the girl that this journey was to save her from the clutches of strangers but she knew that it was pointless to try to make Juno understand her vulnerability. Juno had just one version of events, her own. Her world was what she saw from her own eyes and what she heard through her own ears. 

 

Hannalore remembered something that Sarah had said when she passed on the information that the community wanted to get rid of Juno. Be careful not to build your life around another person. To love too much can be the worst sort of tyranny.

 

Hannalore paused to get her breath. Several days ago it had become clear to her that Juno’s expulsion was not the only reason she was leaving the settlement. It had provided the catalyst and the justification for her actions but there were deeper issues at stake. The long period of solitude imposed upon her by the elders had given her time to think about herself. This was against the rules of the community. Selfishness, in all its manifestations, had to be ruthlessly stamped out. 

 

Hannalore heard something rustle in the undergrowth. She and Juno sometimes played hide and seek in the bush.  It could be that Juno was creeping up on her. The undergrowth at the edge of the track was thick with the tangled spiked branches of juvenile matai. Hannalore left the track and crouched behind a tree trunk. She waited to hear Juno reciting the familiar chant, coming ready or not!

 

Something moved behind her. She jumped up and turned around. Facing her was a black and white dog, a border collie. The dog moved slowly towards her with its stomach close to the ground, stalking her. It did not take its eyes off her, almost mesmerising her. She saw two eyes staring up at her, one brown the other a startling blue ringed in black.

 

‘Here boy,’ she said. ‘Here boy, come here.’

 

The dog seemed confused. It stopped in mid track, lowered its eyes and trotted off without making a sound. Hannalore wondered where the dog had come from. She knew all the dogs at the settlement. She had raised some of them from puppies, spoiling them until they were ready to be taken away by the men to be trained into working dogs. 

 

This animal was out of its territory. Unless it was lost, there must be someone who had allowed it to come into the dense bush. The dog would know how to return to his master. Perhaps she could persuade the dog to come back to her and lead her down to cleared ground and to the river bank. She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. Nothing. She whistled again, more loudly this time. Again, no response.

 

She was not looking forward to another night out in the high country with Juno. As if on cue, she heard Juno calling out to her. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’

 

Hannalore ran back along the track. She found Juno walking along slowly with her head down. Hannalore said she was sorry for leaving her for so long. She asked her where the bed rolls were.

‘Dunno,’ said Juno.

‘You must have left them somewhere. We can go back and find them together.’

‘Jimmy took them.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Never mind. We can find some ferns to make a bed.’

Juno cheered up. ‘Make a bed, make a bed.’

 

They walked on. Hannalore told Juno about the strange dog with one brown eye and one blue eye. Juno claimed to have seen him too. He could not bark so he said hello chickadee to her instead.

 

Towards the end of the afternoon they stumbled upon a track that Hannalore hoped would lead them out of the high country. Much to her relief, it did. They descended a steep hill. The bush thinned out. The ground beneath their feet became wet and swampy. Now, there were cabbage trees and rafts of dense green flax bushes and wading birds rising up in huge flocks into the fading sun.

 

They came upon a creek in flood. Hannalore filled the empty water bottle. The light was deepening. They moved onto higher ground. Juno said she was hungry and tired and that there was a blister on her heel. Hannalore said soon we will eat but first we will make our bivouac for the night.

 

She took a knife from her pikau and slashed some branches from a clump of silver tree-ferns that grew close to an outcrop of rock. A cleft in the rock provided some shelter from the rising south-westerly wind. She unfolded the canvas ground sheet she had taken from Jimmy’s konaki. Her initial idea was to string it up to make a roof but she did not have a cord to pass through the metal eyelets to secure it to the rock. 

 

Juno played with a fern frond turning it round and round from green to silver and back again. Hannalore asked her to put it back on the ground with the others. It was part of their bed for the night. Juno refused. Hannalore felt like shaking her but she knew that she must not show anger or fear in front of Juno. Every decision she made from this moment on would have a direct bearing on whether or not they survived.

 

‘Don’t wanna sleep here,’ said Juno.

‘But you like the silver leaves. Look how they shine.’

‘I want to go to the little house.’

‘We can’t go back. Sarah would be angry with us.’

‘Sarah not here.’

Hannalore gave up trying to reason with Juno. She unwrapped the remains of the bread and the cheese wheel. Juno ate most of it and drank the water bottle dry. Then she announced that she wanted to go to the dunny to do number twos. Where was it?

 

‘You’ll have to use the ground. Go over there behind the rock well away from our shelter,’ said Hannalore. ‘I’ll go back to the creek to get some more water. Stay close, don’t stray.’

 

Juno nodded. Hannalore made her way back to the flooded creek and refilled the bottle. She found a small bush of rangiora half way up the bank and collected some of the leaves for Juno to use as toilet paper. She sat for a while on a flat rock looking down at the rushing water breaking over the sandstone outcrops at the edge of the bank.

 

The task of keeping Juno free from fear and physical harm was greatly magnified out here in the wilderness. Back at the settlement there were always others to share the burden. Perhaps she had been too hasty in stealing this needy and damaged child away. But things could be worse. This creek could lead them into a tributary of the Mokau. Tomorrow at first light she planned to follow the direction of the water and see where it takes them. But first she needed to get both of them through the night.

 

10

 

She hurried back to their shelter through the darkening air. The wind had died down. The cabbage trees had transformed their spiked heads into stark silhouettes against the backdrop of a vivid sunset muddied by black streaks of dissipating rain clouds.

 

She reached the rocky outcrop. The canvas groundsheet and the pikau were gone. Where was Juno? She called to her. There was no reply. She called again, more loudly this time. Again, no answer. She put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. The rays of the dying sun slipped down another notch.

 

She sank down onto the fronds of silver fern and put her face in her hands. This was the end. Juno could be drowning nearby in a foul swamp, calling for her, deathly afraid. Or perhaps Jimmy had tracked them down and taken Juno away. This would explain the missing pikau and groundsheet.

 

Something touched her left leg. It was the dog with the odd eyes. He pressed his damp nose once more against her leg. He made no sound. Hannalore grasped his collar. She was determined that the dog was not going to leave her again. She tied her headscarf onto his collar to make a short lead. The dog did not seem to mind and made no effort to get away.  She walked him around the rocky outcrop for a few minutes. She had hoped that he would take her to Juno. ‘Seek,’ she said. ‘Seek, seek.’

 

But he just stared up at her with one luminous blue eye and one dull brown one, docile, obedient, walking when she walked, stopping when she stopped. 

 

Then she saw it; a light shining from within a dense cluster of manuka and cabbage trees in the distance. A flickering light. And that meant human company.

 

She ran, holding onto the short lead on the dog’s collar, almost choking him in the process. He willingly kept pace with her.

 

The light had seemed close at first but the more she ran, the further away the grove of trees seemed to be. Her shoes were heavy with mud and her calf muscles were stricken with cramps. A tremor began to beat inside her chest; tick tick tick. She wondered if she was losing her senses.

 

Then the dog stopped running. He lay flat on the ground and rested his face on his front paws.  Hannalore untied the headscarf from the dog’s collar. ‘Sorry boy,’ she said. ‘You are as lost as I am.’

 

The dog jumped to his feet and set off at a good pace. He ran ahead of Hannalore and when she faltered he waited for her to catch up. Ah, there were the cabbage trees and the manuka and there was the light, stronger now. She did not see the hut at first. It blended in perfectly with the trees that sheltered it. It was a raupo hut, partly demolished, but with most of the walls still intact. And yes, there was a fire burning inside. Wisps of smoke threaded between the gaps in the bundles of nikau palms that formed the low slung roof. A finger of smoke rose from the slab chimney set apart from the back wall. The entrance lay open to the weather, the door long gone. 

 

Juno was inside, sitting on a wooden butter box close to the chimney, holding her hands out to the fire. 

 

‘Who brought you here?’ asked Hannalore.

‘No one,’ said Juno. ‘I seen it for myself.’

 

Hannalore looked around. The hut was old, and did not seem to be inhabited. There was a rectangular gap in the side wall that could have performed the function of a window but there was no glass, just the chewed remnants of a sheet of unbleached calico that someone had tacked over the opening to keep out the wind.

 

‘Rats,’ said Juno. ‘Eat everything.’

 

There was a pile of dry bark and some small logs stacked neatly near the chimney. The pikau and the canvas groundsheet were placed upon the clay floor.  

‘Do you like our little house?’ asked Juno.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Hannalore. ‘You are very clever. How did you light the fire?’

‘I took the swan box from your pikau.’

‘You should have waited for me. That was our last match.’

 

Juno pushed out her lower lip. To distract her, Hannalore drew her attention to the dog lying down at the doorway. Juno patted him and tried to make him enter the hut but he would not. Hannalore said that is yet another proof that he is a working dog, trained to stay outside. ‘Someone must be out looking for him and that comforts me.’

 

Juno smiled. ‘Look, on the shelf.’

‘Food tins?’

‘I put one on the fire. Dunno what’s inside, rat got the label.’

 

Hannalore grabbed two pieces of wood to use as a lever to pluck the tin from the flames. The tin was already bulging, about to explode. Juno laughed. Hannalore waited until the tin was cool and then stabbed it with her knife. A putrid smell like dead fish blew out into their expectant faces. After her initial shock, Juno laughed again. Then she pleaded for something nice to eat. She claimed that her stomach was like an empty paper bag with teeth and that it had started to eat itself. 

 

Hannalore took a flannel from the pikau and moistened a corner with a little water. She wiped Juno’s face and hands. She explained that there was just half a piece of bread left. It must not be eaten tonight. They would share it in the morning.

 

Juno yawned. She said that she could not stay awake. Hannalore made a nest for her out of the canvas ground sheet. The dirt floor in the centre of the hut was hard and shiny unlike the damp sections at the sides of the hut. But Juno did not want to go to sleep in the middle of the floor. She said that things can walk around her and when the fire goes out it will be too dark to see the old people standing at the end of her bed. Hannalore promised that she would try to keep the fire burning all night. Juno grumbled a little longer but soon her eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep.

 

Hannalore slept fitfully throughout the long night. She was vaguely aware of a passing storm that dumped a copious amount of rain on their shelter. She was surprised at how dry the floor was in spite of the open doorway and the holes in the roof. Once she heard something or someone howling mournfully through the trees. This thing seemed to call her name but in the end she decided that it was just the wind. She awoke stiff and cold and hungry. Her ankles were swollen. The fire had almost died down. She fed the embers with some dried bark and some of the smaller pieces of wood. Soon, small red and yellow flames licked around the edges of the logs. She held out her hands to the warmth and felt a flicker of life move up into her arms. 

 

She hobbled outside the raupo hut to find a place where she could pass water without disturbing the still sleeping Juno. The wind had died down taking the rain with it. The dawn light filtered through a thin mist that shrouded the tops of the cabbage trees. The silence hummed. She crouched underneath a clump of manuka. The hot urine splashed against the inside of her thighs.

 

The smoke from the fire drifted slowly upwards from the top of the slab chimney. There was no sign of the blue-eyed dog. Hannalore wiped herself with her headscarf. She wondered what Sarah would think if she could see her doing this. She tied the damp cloth to the manuka as a token of her presence here, or perhaps to leave a message. 

 

She did not know what to do. She did not want to spend another day walking. Both she and Juno needed to rest. They had little food left and after the experience with the rotten fish the night before she was not pinning her hopes on finding anything edible in the remaining tins. 

 

She went back into the hut and put some more wood on the fire. Juno awoke and began asking for food. Hannalore told her that she thought it best that they stay here for one more day and one more night so that they could rest. Then they would follow the river to find some houses and people who would feed them. Juno said that she wanted to leave right now; she had liked the little house yesterday but not today.

 

Hannalore opened her pikau to retrieve the last piece of bread. All that was left was a chewed piece of brown paper and some fresh rodent droppings.

 

‘The rats, the rats, the rats,’ said Juno.

‘I forgot all about them.’

‘I want my breakfast.’

‘There’s no bread left.’

‘I’ll have porridge then.’    

 

It took all of Hannalore’s strength not to break down. She had been deluding herself. What on earth had possessed her to believe that she could care for Juno all on her own? Sometimes she felt more like a child of five than a grown woman. We are truly sisters, she thought. Others have always decided what I should do and say and be. The same thing has happened to her. I don’t know if this can ever be undone.

 

‘You have persuaded me that we should leave today,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I’m hungry.’

 ‘I’ll find some porridge for you.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

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