A Proper Little Devil by Riki Eriki The old house stood rotting—dark and crumbling beneath a sprawling entanglement of thickly-entwined hawthorn, which unlike the once proud house, still thrived vigorously, after eighty, or perhaps more years of growth. Small, single-petalled roses of pink, yellow, and white, strung out like Christmas decorations, rambled at ease over the canopy of leaves and spreading limbs. Forcing a path through bramble and overgrown vegetation, I stood before a gaping hole in the germ-infested boards. A shaft of sunlight lit the interior and I was close enough to see and read some of the ‘Weekly News’ pages that papered the storeroom walls, The date on some of the peeling, tattered pages was December 1935. Large black headlines told of the Emperor of Abyssinia protesting to the League of Nations about the Italians' use of poison gas against the Abyssinian soldiers. That was the year I spent my first holiday with my mother's people. It was then that the house rang with the robust laughter of a happy family. There were four bedrooms, a large sitting room in which hung portraits of departed relatives, a big kitchen with a wood-burning stove at one end and an open fire near the centre, a pantry and a storerooom. The rooms were filled with the heavy solid furniture and big iron beds that the country folk fancied. Built of solid kauri, it was roofed with wooden shingles, It stood surrounded by flower gardens, shrubs and bushes, while a well-used path led to a large orchard with various kinds of fruit—peaches, plums, apples, nectarines, quinces, figs, oranges and lemons. By the gate into the orchard grew a big karaka tree, planted by my great-grandmother the first year of her marriage. Behind all this stood a shelter belt of pines planted about the same time. The hawthorn hedge was about 14 feet high then, but was kept at that height, and we young ones would feast on its berries simply for the sake of eating. Uncle Hemi's wife, Miriama, was a kind and loving woman, whose generosity and hospitality were known to all, far and near. Both of them, like my mother and the people in the district, belonged to Te Aupouri of Tai Tokerau. Hemi was the eldest of mother's family, whose members had been converted by the Rev. Samuel Marsden, and had always been pillars of the Anglican Church. When my mother changed her faith to become a Catholic and marry my father, such a rumpus had been raised that I don't think Grandfather ever completely forgave her, until he himself changed to become a Seventh Day Adventist after the Second World War. At that time, the families of the district belonged to three different religious groups—Anglicans, Catholics and Ratanas. The Anglicans and the Catholics both had numerous followers, while in our area, the local adherents of the Ratana church were members of five families. Now Uncle and Aunty had expressed a wish to become followers of Ratana, and join his church. There was great consternation amongst the family and church elders, but now that they had made up their minds they lost no time in making the change. The only one who didn't worry and made no bones about who knew it, was Granny Matilda, whom everyone said was a little bit porangi, and all of us, including most of the older ones, believed it then. But now, when I look back, I realise that poor old Granny Matire, as we all called her, (though whose granny she really was, I never did find out) wasn't a bit mad at all, not even eccentric—she simply was a nonconformist, who wished to do things the way she wanted them done. When every other woman wore black to a tangi, she would turn up dressed in white. It was whispered that she did mysterious things at night, for on certain nights she would sit up outside gazing at the stars till early morning, singing and posturing upon new mats that she made especially for this purpose. It seemed like some kind of ritual to me. Her strange ways and doings had no effect on her health, as she lived to the ripe old