Colour Scheme. Ngaio Marsh
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against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-great-grandchildren.
This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hilltop, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hilltop.
‘Good evening, Mr Smith,’ said old Rua without turning his head.
‘G’day, Rua.’
The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.
‘Great doings down at the Springs,’ he said.
‘They seem to be busy,’ said Rua tranquilly.
‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.’
‘A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.’
‘He’s only an actor.’
‘Mr Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.’
‘Then you know all about it, do you?’
‘I think so,’ said old Rua.
Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.
‘Questing’s at the back of it,’ he said. Rua stirred slightly. ‘He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!’ added Smith viciously. ‘By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.’
Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.
‘Look!’ Smith said. ‘He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.’
He lit the cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. ‘You don’t say much,’ he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. ‘Like a spot?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.’
‘Look, Rua,’ said Smith energetically. ‘I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?’
‘You are intimate with some of my people.’
‘Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.’ Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hilltop with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.
‘Questing’s got a great little game on,’ said Smith. ‘He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.’
Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.
‘My people are well contented,’ he said. ‘We are not Arawas. We go our own way.’
‘And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.’ Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key. He went on with an air of nervousness. ‘Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,’ he said.
Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.
‘That’s not so good, is it?’ said Smith.
‘My grandfather Rewi,’ Rua said, ‘was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.’
‘Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.’
‘The Peak is a native reserve.’
‘He reckons he could square that up all right.’
‘I am an old man,’ said Rua affably, ‘but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.’
‘Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.’
‘Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad pakeha Maori.’
‘Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.’
‘He will not find guides,’ Rua repeated.
‘Money talks, you know.’
‘So will the tapu of my grandfather’s toki-poutangata.’
Smith looked curiously at the old man. ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I am a rangitira. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr Smith,’ said Rua with a chuckle. ‘I know.’
‘You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much …’
Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. ‘Our people,’ Rua said, ‘stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth; your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their pakeha friends.’ Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. ‘There are pakeha laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky and too much beer,’ said Rua tranquilly, ‘but there are also pakehas who help them to break these laws. The pakehas teach our young maidens