Sweet Blackberry by Fiona Kidman Mr Wellington-Crosby was working his way through the outstanding rates demands. It was February and the sun shone through the top half of the window that would not open, the part that was not painted ‘mashed-potato cream’. Light reflected from his bald patch, so that sweat ran into his eyes and fogged up his glasses. Roberts, Roberts and Robinson, through Rogers, Rogers and Ryan, on through S; Smith, Smith, Smith, Smithe and Smythe, past Thompson, Tompkins and Turner … on through the alphabet with nice safe names, and for those that did boast the occasional hyphen, they probably had a caravan, a station wagon, and a double roll-a-door, to go with it. Or so he thought. He took off his glasses to wipe them, so that the room dropped away behind myopia. And who would not exchange Wellington-Crosby for Smith, Smithe or Turner? Certainly he would, and if it had not been for his mother's dying wish, or wishes, for she pleaded near to death quite often before her final demise at the age of 83 at the TAB window one Saturday morning, he would have dropped one or the other long ago. But … she hadn't gone through trial and sorrow to educate him, that she had not, to be a common Mr Wellington, or Mr Crosby. Sighing, Mr Wellington-Crosby returned his glasses to the bottom end of his nose, and slid them thoughtfully towards his line of focus, as a large and magnificent woman sailed through the swinging glass door and under the crest of the city fathers. ‘Heremaia, Rebecca Rawinia,’ she boomed. Mr Wellington-Crosby jumped. ‘I beg your pardon?’ She repeated her name more loudly, and then, as he continued to stare at her, she pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a pocket in her muu-muu. ‘I've come about my rates,’ she said. ‘Of course,’ murmured the small man, beginning to collect himself. ‘You can't swing this lot on me,’ said Mrs Heremaia, jabbing an eloquent finger at the paper. ‘Man, I ask you, sixty-five dollars. Sixty-five dollars rates for a patch of blackberry.’ Mr Wellington-Crosby took the paper and, after studying it, opened a long, grey filing cabinet. It took him a while to find what he was looking for, and as he searched, Mrs Heremaia produced a transistor radio from her dress and turned it in to ‘The Yellow Submarine’, loud and clear. The city greybeards in their nice, straight, locally-produced picture frames twitched their whiskers and rolled their eyes. Or so it seemed. But the weather was very hot. ‘Your land is incorporated under the Maori Land Court,’ said the rates clerk, coming up for air at last. ‘That's right?’ said Mrs Heremaia. ‘You must have signed some papers once, don't you remember?’ ‘Sign this, sign that, all the same to me.’ ‘Well it must be so,’ he said, patiently. ‘So what's that to me? My old lady always paid the rates on that bit of scrub, but she died six months back. So this letter comes for her — hey, what for you send it to her after she's dead?’ Mr Wellington-Crosby made a mental protest that the heavenly records had not adjusted themselves to the rates file, and shook his head with wonder and solicitude. ‘I don't know how we came to make such a mistake,’ he said. ‘I'm very sorry.’ The music had turned mellow and soft. Mrs Heremaia shook the radio vindictively and because the music stayed as before, she switched off and repocketed it. “Anyways,’ she said, ‘I'm not paying those rates. There's a lot of fellas own that bit of land, or so my old woman used to tell it, an' now you say so, too. Perhaps she left it to us, I never bothered to find out,