Hoi Polloi (3 page)

Tamoa bites into the bean and spits it into Aroha’s face, cursing “Fucking pakeha shit” loud enough that Mrs Quigley hears and the manager frowns. Heels and Mrs Quigley walk this way so I turn my back on Tamoa.

The first day Heels drives me to school in the new Mercedes I tell her I want to vomit. No, not car sickness. Embarrassment.

“Don’t you dare be sick in this car,” she hisses, her jaw starting to jut, the sucking sound starting to come out of her mouth. She tells me I should be grateful to be able to travel in such comfort to school. I should appreciate it and be proud of how hard she and Winks have worked and slaved to afford such a nice thing as a Mercedes Benz because when she was a girl she never had such luxuries. She had to walk to school five miles through a Christchurch winter to go to school when
she
was a girl. What she wouldn’t have given to be chauffeured in a Mercedes like a little lord. Even going to school was a luxury in her day. She draws breath. Juts and sucks. She reminds me that Winks had to leave school when he was eleven because his own father, my grandfather, was such a no-hoper. He had some get up and go, your father, she says. Imagine, eleven, working—dangerous timber yards, gravel quarries, with nothing for dinner but a single roast potato. And here you are complaining about being driven to school in a beautiful Mercedes.

I hate the car. I’m scared to move in case my shoes put nugget on the white leather. People stare at me from the street. I can no longer go to school in private but with eyes following me like a celebrity. I ask Heels if from now on I can walk to school like she herself had done on those bitter winter mornings.

“If that’s the way you feel then walk to school. That’s gratitude for you,” she juts. She pulls the car over, reaches across and opens my door. It’s my cue to say I’m sorry and not get out of the car. I bow my head. I say I’m sorry.

We arrive at the school gate as morning bell sounds and skipping and hopscotch paths are being deserted. I carefully shuffle out of the car without scuffing anything. “Kiss,” demands Heels as usual, cocking her cheek for me. I lean across and peck her. “That’s pretty weak,” she says as usual. I kiss her again with more force and hold my breath so as not to inhale her makeup and perfume which blend into a smell that’s metallic-tasting and makes my eyes burn and run until I sneeze. As soon as I’m out on the pavement free of her I wipe away the coating of face powder kissing her always leaves on my lips. I run-walk from the car hoping not to be associated with it.

Tamoa stands up from where he’s been crouched behind the for-climbing-up tree. He steals his father’s cigarettes and hides them in the trunk there. He stares at the Mercedes as it drives off, his mouth wide open. “Hey,
e hoa
,” he says.
E hoa
is Maori for friend but can be used in a threatening way because it sounds threatening pronounced
air whore.
Tamoa uses it that way. He calls everyone
e hoa
. “That a Rolls Royce?” he asks.

“No, it’s a Mercedes.”

“Oh,” he grunts, suddenly unimpressed. He has a smoking butt in his curled-up fingers and sucks on it as if chewing his nails. He then stubs it out beneath his bare big toe and stows it in the for-climbing-up tree.

I begin walking to the classroom but stop because I want to ask Tamoa something. He’s a good person to ask because for one thing he’s older than me. Not in years, we’re both eight, but older in other ways—his smoking, his tattoos, his disobedience in class. His saying he’s finished with school and won’t come back next year. To Tamoa school is for pake-has. One day the pakehas will all be killed if they’re not careful, he says. The Maoris will run things. “So you better be a friend of mine
e hoa
, or else,” he says and runs his finger across his throat like a knife.

For another thing, Tamoa’s a hori, and my question requires a hori to answer it. There are two questions on my mind in fact. One: is
pakeha
a hori swear word about people who aren’t hori? Two: what things do hori men do to women? I don’t say the word
hori
to him though.

His answer to question number one on the word
pakeha
is, No, it’s a good word, not like
hori
for example. Tamoa says the word
hori
in his sentence but I act as if I’ve never heard it before. As for question two about hori men and what they do to women, Tamoa says he has no idea. His father gives his mother a belting sometimes, but that’s normal, isn’t it? Your dad does that to your mother, doesn’t he?, he asks. Yes of course he does, I lie.

I’m about to walk into class when Tamoa slaps my arm— in a friendly way, not for fighting. “Onions,” he says. “My cousin talks about onions and women.” But that’s all he knows about it because his cousin is trying to get into the Mongrel Mob and the onions are to do with them but they’re a secret, not to be blabbed outside the gang, especially to pakehas. He asks me why I want to know. I tell him that my mother talks about it and therefore it must be important.

I’m too spoilt and that’s the reason I can’t sleep, Heels decides. I should get used to the rowdy voices from down in the bars. I should ignore the glasses being smashed outside on the footpath and the yelling as people go home. “Do you think
I
like it? No, I do not,” she complains and wants me to know she has to put a cold flannel on her eyes and over her forehead to relax and block it all out. So I’m not to go thinking I’m the only one, think about
her
for a change. No I certainly cannot have a baby bottle of milk like I sometimes do, I’m eight years old now and no son of hers is going to act like a bloody baby. No more baby bottle with a teat on it to relax me to sleep. She doesn’t care if I am afraid of the smashed glasses and yelling, a baby’s bottle is out of the question. But all right then, if I can’t sleep I’m to come downstairs and make myself useful. Go into the Private Bar and unstack the glasses from the washer trays and place them for drying, upside down, on the drying rack.

The Private Bar is what she calls
couth
. Men must wear ties. Sir Thomas Goodes, when he parks his Bentley out front, sits in the corner of the Private Bar reading the newspaper. “Stout as usual, Sir Thomas?” Heels enquires, bringing him a Heritage Hotel coaster with a red sketch of the Hotel printed on it.

My school headmaster, Mr Atkinson, sits in another corner filling his pipe and then sucking out the smoke. His drink is whisky and milk. There’s suave Charlie Carmichael, that’s what Heels calls him,
suave
, with his blond wavy hair at fifty. He also drinks whisky and milk, with a bit of ice. Drinkers sit at laminex tables or the sticky towelled counter. No uncouth liquor like beer is drunk in the Private Bar. People drink the classier, expensive drinks—the wine, brandy, whisky or ports. They say “lovely” and make a smacking sound with their lips after the first sip while smoke comes out of their nostrils like streamers. Women are allowed to drink in the Private Bar. They are
not
allowed to drink in the Public Bar, but can go into the Lounge Bar if accompanied by a male. Horis are allowed anywhere by law, but fortunately, whispers Heels, they don’t come into the Private Bar because of the tie rule. The Salvation Army is forbidden to enter the premises. They’ll put us out of business with their tin rattling and tee-totalling nonsense.

Charlie Carmichael smokes Rothmans with the fancy, swirly writing on the pack and speckled brown filter. His lighter’s silver. He bought it in Sydney. “Ah, of course, you can tell something as stylish as that would hail from Sydney,” Heels says. “Best not to mention Sydney or I’ll get depressed I’m here not there.” He can flick his lighter open, light up a cigarette and snap the lighter shut in less than a second, a record for anyone in the hotel. I’ve timed them.

He trains Winks and Heels’ three racehorses (two wins and a third) and if he could establish himself with a few winners in Sydney he’d be there for good in a shot. “It’s the big time,” he insists, putting his hand flat on the bar like a slow smack. He drinks till he’s just sober enough for Winks to help him by the arm to wobble to his car and make sure he can start it and doesn’t fall asleep with his head on the horn instead. Heels won’t hear of him being called a boozer by Winks or anyone else. As far as she’s concerned he’s a civilised drinker with Sydney ambitions. Yes, he may like to get tipsy at night, but when have you ever heard of him not getting up at five every morning to work his horses? That’s the definition of a civilised drinker: they get up in the morning and do their work. Unlike the horis. That’s why the police only book horis. Pakehas get a warning because if they lost their licence they wouldn’t be able to drive to work. Isn’t that right, Senior Sergeant?

“You’ve hit the nail on the proverbial head, madam,” belly-laughs the Senior Sergeant, placing a shiny wood-pole, his nightstick, on the bar. He says he has time for a quick one. He turns a blind eye to us staying open later than Closing. Each month he receives two dozen flagons of draught as a gesture.

After Closing I help empty ashtrays and collect dirty glasses from the tables. “Lovely,” I mimic, sniffing the whisky tumblers. I swirl the near-melted ice at the bottom. The smell is sickly-sweet and sour all at once. Why would people want to drink this?

I wait till no one is near, no one looking, and duck under the bar-flap with a tray of dirty glasses. I take the tray into the phone box beside the stairs, close the door, crouch down below its glass window so as not to be seen. I sit on the sticky carpet to sip the dregs. Cold and watery but with soft-drink and cough-syrup flavours. I eat the ice lumps and suck up the liquid. I think I’ll only take a minute more but I lose track of time. I try to stand but have to sit straight back down. My cheeks have gone hot and there is a pleasant-unpleasant sense of the floor being uneven. My stomach rises into my throat. I might throw up any second. I’m sure I will, but the moment passes. Sleep. I have to go to sleep now.

I make it out the door and climb the stairs the slowest I have ever climbed them. Next night I sneak another tray into the phone box. And the next. And the next. A week. Two weeks of it. I sleep heavily, blackly. There’s barely a dream I can remember. I’m sluggish in the mornings—it’s impossible to get out of bed for school which Heels and Winks put down to a growth spurt. Sometimes they let me stay home and sleep all day because of the growth spurts.

W
HEN THE APARTMENT PHONE
rings after eight at night it means trouble. “Horis again, Dad?”

September Sixth. The Spring Blossom Festival. The orchards are blooming in Heritage. Row on row of tree reds, whites, purples on the outskirts of town. The crossways rains have finished. My jumper can come off by midday. Clouds stretch out in strips so thin you can see straight through them. The festival is tradition. We must respect tradition, we are told at school. Every year since World War II floats edge their way down Tui Street, stuck with real and paper blossom. Men in clown costumes toss Macintosh lollies to the crowd. Children dressed as fairies dance on the floats and bless the crowd with tinfoil wands. Even the hori gangs get blessed—the Mongrel Mob and Black Power from all over the North Island. This morning, as they do every Spring Festival, they arrive crammed in old cars with pink door panels and missing bumpers, or ride snorting motorbikes with long banana-bike handlebars. The police are still negotiating where they can park. They can’t park in the street, it will block the parade. This is a happy occasion please boys, no one wants any strife. Park off Tui Street next to the railway line. OK, motorbikes, motorbikes only, can stay here, but on the footpath so they don’t block the floats, not out in the street.

I lean out my bedroom window. The Senior Sergeant’s blue bobby helmet is nodding down below. Other bobby helmets nod around him. Black curly heads nod back: “Here for a good time is all boss.” An arm lifts up and wants to rest on the Senior Sergeant’s shoulder. It’s a denim arm with frayed, grimy cuffs. The Senior Sergeant slowly pushes the arm away and holds his hands up to stop any more denim arms being placed around his shoulders. “Here for a good time is all boss.”