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Te Ao Hou, March 1967, Page 23

Return by Sybil Ewart The old woman felt strange in the new housing lot. She missed the pa with all the cottages close together and no fences between and the meeting house close beside like a friendly parent. Up here on the hill it would take a lot of getting used to. The new houses were strange and the neat rooms had an unfamiliar atmosphere. Ana had lived in the pa down the hill all her life. Now at sixty it was a wrench to leave. A man had come in a smart new car one day and walked round the pa, peeping in the cottages and writing things down in a note book. Then he had driven away and no one had known what it had all been about. Maui said he'd heard there had been talk about the pa being moved up the hill, but nobody took much notice and soon they forgot all about the man in the smart new car. After several months more men came, six of them this time, and there was a lot of talk between them. They looked into everything again, poking and prying, and the children stood shyly watching, while the older folk disappeared into the cottages. The old men sat talking after the men had gone, nodding their heads and trying to piece together what was going on. It seemed the authorities thought the place a blot on the landscape and unhealthy, too low-lying. There was a rumour that the pa might be pulled down, even the meeting house might go. There was much talk among the elders, but even they were not sure what it was all about, and the women listened and wondered. At last definite news came. The pa was to go and they were to be moved into the new houses up the hill that were already being built. Neat little bungalows with smart red roofs, all very new and shining, and a house it was said for every family. The children would run up the hill and watch the building, wondering which house would be theirs, and excited about the move. But the old folk did not even look, neither did the younger ones, only the children were pleased and excited at the change, watching the building and peeping in the windows and getting in the way of the builders. And now they were living in the new lot and nothing was left of the old pa. Not a stick nor a board, and the grass began to grow where the cottages had been, and when it rained the water lay about like miniature lakes. Some said one day it would all be a football field. Ana spent a lot of time sitting on the steps of her bright new house. From there she could see the old site below her, and sometimes as she looked it seemed the cottages and the meeting house were still there, and the children and dogs chasing each other round about as of old. This new house was very empty with only Maui and herself and Maui's old parents. Two bedrooms in the house and only four people to use them. Any more would be overcrowding, the authorities said. It cut her off from the grandchildren and even from the young married couples who were apt to stay in their own homes now, and there was no longer the coming and going there had been down in the pa. Everyone seemed to alter now they lived in these stiff new boxes. Even the children kept more to their own small gardens, or played outside in the street. Some of the young couples were getting smart modern furniture and making their houses look like all the others in the neighbourhood. But the old ones clung to what they had always had. They did not want washing machines or chesterfield suites. Down at the pa washing had been a social event, all standing round the old copper and flinging in their clothes and then spreading them over the blackberry bushes to dry. Ana hated the spanking green and white wash-house at the back of the house, where she washed all alone, and then pegged things out on the neat line that stretched across the small back lawn. ‘I can't see how it'll work,’ she said to Maui one evening as they sat on the steps with his parents. ‘It's the new ways,’ Maui said and shook his

head. ‘New ways,’ and he sat staring in front of him. ‘New ways are bad,’ Ana said. ‘It's not for the old people.’ Some of the younger couples were talking over their gates. It was a stiff new way of acting. Benny her grandson came up the patch ‘Hello boy,’ Ana said. ‘What you been doing? Haven't seen you to-day.’ The child came towards her smiling. ‘Going down to swim,’ he told her. ‘Ah, you got a long way to go now for a swim Benny. Not like before.’ ‘I don't mind,’ the child said. ‘I'm going to get a bicycle for Christmas, and I'll ride down, quickly, be there in a minute.’ ‘Ah but you'd do better to walk Benny. You'll forget how to use your legs.’ ‘Coming down?’ Maui asked. Ana rose from the step. ‘Yes, we'll take a walk,’ she said. ‘Come on Benny.’ Most evenings they went for a walk. Back to the site of the old pa. She and Maui and sometimes Maui's old parents, and perhaps one of the children if they were not down swimming. Ana would sit on the site where the cottage had been and all the loneliness and frustration would seep away, leaving her content. Maui would stroll round, kicking the grass with his foot, or just stand staring. As darkness fell Maui would say, ‘Come on Ana, time we went,’ But he would never say ‘time to go home’. This was home, this empty paddock where the pa had once stood and where she still saw the children at play round the tumbled down cottages. Each time she returned it was like a home-coming. Reluctantly she followed Maui back to the new housing lot.