Things get complicated …

Not for me.

I am just sitting here on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Aix, vaguely taking in the all day tribute to Johnny Hallyday on the tv in the background.  Turns out he did a lot of covers, so humming along to songs I know being sung in French.  The French are so deeply in mourning I am surprised they have not declared a public holiday.

A little while ago I zipped my Rains coat (I thought I was never going to need to wear it here) up to my chin, pulled the hood up, and ventured out to the convenience store up the road.  I felt lazy, so instead of going all the way to the Utile on the corner, I dived into the wee store that I usually avoid because the entrance is lined with nothing but booze and snacks.  However, the proprietor, who works every single day, was charming, and out the back were all the necessities of life.  I got my sparkling water, greek yoghurt and laundry capsules – unfortunately no sugar free Red Bull available – and high-tailed it back home.

The shopping trip was necessary, but also a way of putting off writing, since the Grandma story is, as I say, getting complicated.

Gisborne, in the second decade of the twentieth century, was a busy and go ahead place.  It was essential to the vast farming area it served, with large and wealthy sheep stations established by the late 1800s, and the port to support both exports and coastal shipping.  But the sisters did not remain in Gisborne.

Te Karaka is a small town 31 kilometres north of Gisborne, just off what is now State Highway 2 through the Waioeka Gorge.  It is another 16 km east of the main road up the valley of the Waipaoa River to Whatatutu.  Perfect country for farming sheep, and the most beautiful and iconic of New Zealand rolling farmland.  Provided you close your mind to the effect of deforestation on erosion.  Now days this tiny East Coast settlement has a population of about 300, and a couple of years ago was the centre of a controversy about fracking*.  It was probably not much different in the decade before World War I, but in those days the gold was wool and sheep meat, not oil or natural gas.

Mary’s husband, Uncle Denny to my mother, was a driver.  Presumably she arrived in Te Karaka by truck, and at least she had to go no further.  They would not have owned a house at that stage, but basic rental housing would have been available.  The big stations needed workers and support services, and those people had to live somewhere.  But although both places were small, there could have been very little comfort in comparing Te Karaka to Jersey.  

The latter had been settled since Roman times.  Its stone houses are solid and ancient.  There were shops and services, and constant contact with Brittany and England by ship.  Wealthy English and French people came to stay, and there were businesses that catered to their needs.  A concentrated and well-defined social order prevailed.  Te Karaka had none of those things.  The social order in particular must have been confusing to say the least.  Perhaps that is where my grandmother came unstuck.  

Isolation, it turns out, is a relative thing.  The Channel Islands are isolated, but a town at the back of beyond in God’s last, loneliest, loveliest country is more isolated. No wonder that Mary, with a young child and a new husband who was virtually a stranger, was keen to have a visit from her younger sister.  Unfortunately, it probably did not occur to her that she would be ‘in loco parentis’, and that she was not really qualified for that job.

Having attained respectability through marriage, Mary was about to lose it vicariously through her sister.  And make no mistake, respectability was an asset then as now.  It is just that we measure it a little differently now.

William Aperahama was born at Whangaroa in the Far North, and the whanau still has coastal land to the north of the Whangaroa Harbour.  But like other young men, no doubt including South Islander Uncle Denny, he would have been drawn to the work available on the farm stations in the area.  Hardworking, good looking and popular with his fellows, he had a streak of integrity and self-determination that may have made him stand out from the predominantly Maori workforce in the area.  In any case, it can be assumed that he and Uncle Denny knew each other.  Whether or not they were actually mates is another question.  There were not many Maoris in Geraldine where Uncle Denny came from, and in later years the relationship between the sisters seemed to involve activities that excluded the menfolk.

Into this rural backwater, where men were men and women kept their thoughts to themselves, drifted my grandmother in the early part of 1913, just before the western world exploded.  She must have been shocked and exhilarated in equal measure by what she came to.  Substandard housing in the ranges north of Gisborne with winter approaching, housekeeping and child care duties, and no way to get out.  But the freedom.  The unaccustomed ability to do whatever she chose.  And it should not be assumed she was naive or inexperienced with men.  There is a strong suggestion in the meagre correspondence available that she may have left a lover behind her in Jersey.  In any case, it should be assumed that she knew what she liked, and she liked men.

How she met my grandfather is a mystery.  He was working on a station at Whatatutu, and she was living with Mary and Uncle Denny in Te Karaka.  But the distance was not that great, with a brother in law who drove a truck to service the surrounding farms, or even by horse back.  She knew how to ride a horse, and so did William Aperahama.  Even so, he was not necessarily her first romantic entanglement in the district.

Picture her for a moment.  In the first flush of youth.  An upright, forthright and handsome woman.  Her family in Jersey had fallen on hard times after her father’s death, but before that she had been raised with a degree of luxury.  She had had a governess, been taught deportment and  social skills.  She might have had to work as a domestic, but her mind and manner were far above that.  Add to that a certain looseness in the face of convention, an openness to risk taking, and you have an intoxicating attraction for certain kinds of men.

My grandfather was that kind of man, but there would certainly have been others.  And as with any wealthy country area, there would have been occasions to meet.  Dances, race meetings, fetes, picnics – look at any archive of NZ history and you will see the photos.  My grandmother would have stood out like the fairy on a Christmas tree, and she would have known how to make the most of any event.  I am not sure if she was in danger from the men, or the men in danger from her.

But of course, it was 1913, and only women get pregnant.

D’accord, enough for now.  I have now had at least 8 straight hours of Johnny Hallyday, and it shows no signs of stopping.  If someone assassinated Trump it would not get the coverage this pop singer is getting.

 

 

 

*There is oil in those idyllic rolling hills and valleys folks, and apparently it can be extracted by hydraulic fracturing.  Not a popular idea with the natives.