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Te Ao Hou, December 1967, Page 21

see, these Maoris are not only hurting themselves, they are hurting the whole of the Maori race. Especially those that follow them wanting decent accommodation or a decent job, or even decent friends. It is easy for owners of accommodation houses or employers, who have had contact with some misbehaving Maori to condemn the whole Maori race and say, ‘I'm sorry but someone took the job this morning,’ to your enquiry about the job advertised in the papers that morning. Or if it be a place of accommodation, ‘I'm sorry but we are full up at present,’ and you know darned well that they're not. But all you can say is, ‘Oh all right, well, I'll try somewhere else. Thanks very much.’ And you wonder if its going to be the same at the next place. Yet I feel they are not biased because of the colour of our skin, but because they had some ugly experience with some unthinking Maori beforehand. Or I pray to God that this is the reason. The landlady and I get along together all right, however. We are very civil with one another. And the landlord and I tolerate each other. I think now they are beginning to realise that there are Maoris and Maoris. Like any other race. This then was 22 Raymond Street, Dunedin, when I first moved in nearly a year ago. And pretty much as it is today. I remember saying to myself that first day, when I saw how squalid the place was, ‘Tomorrow I will look for another place.’ But that was nearly a year ago now, and here I am, still here. I just cannot seem to be able to make the break. Thinking always, ‘I may be going back to Wellington next week,’ depending on whether the job I applied for came through or not. I applied for a job at the Education Board there and while I was waiting I thought I would come down South as far as I could and have a look around. I have always wanted to come South. Especially to Dunedin here. I don't know why Dunedin. Except perhaps because I heard so much about the place when they held the Ranfurly Shield for all those years. Anyway I think travelling is in my blood; the desire to see new places; new faces. I am working at present for a construction firm, ‘Jackson Brothers,’ but I hope to get a more suitable job soon. I kept thinking also that it was not worth my changing board for a matter of a few days. For I don't like the task of packing and unpacking. It was months though before I got definite word from Wellington. So I waited all that time thinking, ‘It's not worth packing now, for word may come through tomorrow.’ So here I am, still here, and far, far too settled now to move. But I think perhaps I'm trying to make excuses for myself and blaming other people for my predicament. It is not so bad here now, though. The place has been cleaned up a little, with additions and alterations being done all the time. That is the reason we are continually stepping over bits and pieces of timber and piles of sawdust to get to our rooms at night; or to and from the bath-room. Also there is a notice on the wall in the dining room now which reads. ‘To all boarders, please note. Anyone found consuming liquor in this building or bringing women into their rooms will be immediately discharged from the premises. P. F. Perry.’ But this notice is a farce, because we have parties and women here just the same as before. If not worse. There was a slackening off for a while though, when the notice first went up. Until someone tried it out and found nothing was done about it. Then it all started up again. Women and drink. Drink and women. There is also a notice in the bathroom above the bath-tub. It says, ‘Please clean bath after you. It is what you would do in your own home.’ And the landlord's name is signed at the bottom again. This notice is not so bad though because the bath-tub is not so dirty now. But I cannot imagine a lot of these fellows here ever having homes; having a mother to say to them, ‘Please clean the bath after you, dear.’ You just cannot imagine chaps like Jack Oxford (the name is probably a false one) or Eric Taylor who has three teeth missing in front, (probably the result of a drunken fight somewhere) and makes no effort to have them replaced with a false set, but just goes about grinning his hideous three-teeth-missing grin for all the world to see—having a mother or father, or a home with a clean white table cloth on the dinner table, and having to sit up straight and proper beside a sister, maybe. My room is nice and clean now and I always keep it tidy. I have papered the walls and ceiling and painted the fireplace. I have stopped up most of the draught holes too; beneath the doors, and the cracks in the window frames. But I think now that I am trying to

make excuses for myself, for still being here, and becoming more and more complicated. For the truth is I have become attached to these men; the boozers, the brawlers, the dead beats. The men who drink because they like it and what comes with it. And those who drink not because they like it and what comes with it, but because of something building up in them they know no other way of quelling. Yes, the alcoholics. The man who drinks because he finds a temporary escape from himself and the world as he knows it. So Jimmy Ramsay sits down in an armchair in our tiny lounge-dining room. He has just recovered from a bout of drinking and is very sheepish and very repentant. And he says, ‘Well I'm off the booze now. No more till Christmas.’ Sometimes it's ‘Well, I'm off it for good now. It gets a man nowhere. I'll start saving for a trip home.’ Jimmy is from the old country. The North of England somewhere. We all smile to ourselves and look sadly at Jimmy; for we know. We've heard this story before. A week passes and we can see Jimmy getting moody and his face becoming drawn and haggard. ‘It won't be long now,’ we say to ourselves, and sure enough one night when we come home for tea, Jimmy is sitting there drunk and singing and apparently happy—telling us what a long time we'll all be dead, so we may as well enjoy ourselves while we can. And always there is the silly sheepish grin on his face. I say to Charley O'Neil next to me at the table, ‘Poor old Jim it's got him.’ The tragedy is that Jimmy is only thirty-two. He drinks almost always alone. And when he makes those efforts to give up drinking he doesn't try to replace it with something else like sport or a hobby or a woman friend, maybe, but just sits about in the dining room in the evenings or through the weekends, reading, and becoming very bored and tense. Sometimes he will go for a walk. That's all. Then there are the older drinkers; like old Ted Wiley and the two Thompson brothers who were here for a time a little while back. Tip and Jake. They used to be boxers. They're not as erratic as Jimmy Ramsay, and don't go about saying they will give up drinking. Perhaps the pledge is a silent one; I've never heard them say it aloud yet. They must have become resigned to their fate and accept it. Working and drinking. Drinking and working. They don't fluctuate from the extreme of being drunk and happy, or sober and de-pressed, like Jimmy. They just drift along with it now, and have learnt to live with it. Their room always smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Dirty beer glasses stood on the dresser and on the floor. There were ring stains on the dresser and on the wooden arms of the arm chairs, and even on the window sills. The other chap, old Ted Wiley, was married once (he has a photograph of his wife on the dresser in his room) and he is forever blaming her for his present condition. ‘It was the missus,’ he said to me once, when I had visited him in his room, ‘The bitch!’ ‘Perhaps so, Ted,’ I thought, ‘Perhaps so Perhaps you drink too much. Perhaps some times you talk too much. A lot of rot sometimes too. Perhaps you're right—it was the missus's fault. I'm not going to condemn you old man. See what I'm like when I'm your age.’ Sometimes I think he has very good memories to look back on. And sometimes I think some of his memories are not so good. But he might be a darned sight happier than I am. I don't know. Even if he is an old man who drinks more than he should, and still has to wash his own clothing, and live alone in one crumby room in a crumby boarding-house… I don't know. Ted. You're too old for me to guess. I'll wait till I'm your age. Then there are the cleaner-living old men who live out their resigned bachelor lives; unnoticed; unobtrusive, except now and then when one of them comes to light in some argument or other on some topic that he has strong views on. These arguments invariably take place in the dining room in the evening when the meal is over and we're just sitting around. But no bright light will they kindle now. They work; keep their rooms reasonably tidy, perhaps have a hobby; are pleasant to talk to most times. They have the occasional spree. I often see them sitting in the old tram shed in the sun in the Exchange—old men finding companionship in themselves; talking. They may have been married before. They may have been single all their lives. They may have been well off once; I cannot tell. They never talk much about themselves; about their past. Yes, the truth is I have become attached to these men. There is hardly a dull moment with them. The dead-beats. The brawlers. The newly-released from prison, with their short prison haircut that is just beginning to grow again. And their feelings towards society no better when they ‘went in’. In fact, they may even be a little worse now. The labourers just in from a dirty heavy day

on the end of a jack hammer, breaking up the pavement along the main street… ‘Gee there was some beaut girls went past today …’ their work dirt upon their hands and clothes, and matted in their hair. The out-of-work, getting by on few borrowed shillings, from some old acquaintance in a bar or along the street, or in a billiard room perhaps… ‘It's just as well I've got a lot of friends. You couldn't give me a couple of bob could you? A dollar will do. I'll pay you back on Wednesday. That's my pay day. I had to pay off for a suit. I'll fix you up on Wednesday boy. No kidding….’ No kidding is right. I know very well I'll never see my five bob again even while I'm giving it to him. Yet I can't very well refuse. The freezing worker … ‘When the season finishes we'll live like kings for the rest of the year. Why not? Might buy a car and tour up around Nelson and down the West Coast. We'll be right when the Works opens again… ‘ The just-arrived-in-town … ‘You were at McDonald's woolstore in Christchurch last season weren't you? … Oh I thought it was you… There was someone looked very much like you there. You haven't a brother have you? … Yes, I know, a lot of people get me mixed up too. I must have a very common face, ha! ha! …’ The man's face takes on a fallcn look and I know he's thinking … ‘Too bad I can't hit him up for a loan now. Not for McDonald's woolstore in Christchurch, down behind the railway yard's sake anyway.’ The ex-seamen, the travellers, sitting about comparing impressions of different ports, bringing with their talk the thronging market places of the Eastern cities; with all their smells and noises and movement; the teeming slums of Panama; a throbbing mob in a London pub. And yet sitting there listening, it is hard for me to imagine that these roughly dressed coarsely-spoken men have seen all this. So much more than I. For they seem very little different from me. Somehow I expect to see all this adventure written on their faces. But I still think I should have waited till some of the men I am writing about have left the boarding house, or I have left. Then this piece of writing may have an end. It's strange, but if something has no end then it seems to have no beginning, either. Or at least I think so, anyway. It is a tall square three-storied structure of part brick and part wood. And it stands just off the street amongst several other houses at the foot of a hill ….