but you better find all them fellas and tell ‘em to pay, Sixty-five dollars, not me.’ Mr Wellington-Crosby cleared his throat to explain. ‘You've always owned this land you know. You and eight others. Which means you've always been equally liable for the rates. Only your mother's been good enough to pay for them in the past, and it's only now that she's — er — passed away — that you have to worry.’ He paused for breath and fanned himself with the rates demand. A near thing that, he had nearly said ‘dead’ for ‘passed away’, so very unkind that. Not the sort of thing a gentleman would do. Mrs Heremaia scratched her ear, with her finger, found it unsatisfactory, and produced a hairclip from her muu-muu. Maybe, thought Mr Wellington-Crosby, with fascination, maybe, if I ask for a tin of condensed milk, and two packets of tea, she will be able to produce from that supermarket-sized garment. ‘You know,’ she said leaning over the counter confidentially, ‘my mother, she swapped that land for a sweet bit of property up back of the lakes. What do you think of that?’ ‘I don't know,’ the little man muttered feverishly. ‘If you ask me, it's that fifty acres round Rotorua that we own.’ He was silent. ‘That's if you ask me.’ Silent still. ‘Ah well, looks like that's that then,’ she said. ‘It was simple. Fancy her paying all them rates on the wrong bit of land.’ Gathering herself together, Mrs Heremaia headed for the door. ‘Stop,’ cried Mr Wellington-Crosby. She turned back, a beautiful, carefully modulated swivel of large but unruffled flesh, and looked at him, long and cool, so that inside him said, ‘I'm so hot, I'm so hot,’ and outside him the crisp white shirt burst into despairing wet rivers. And this time it was she who was silent. ‘See here,’ he said. ‘I can't let you off your rates, just like that. You'd get into trouble.’ ‘Not if you told me I didn't have to pay.’ ‘Then I'd get into trouble.’ He trembled. Big lady, have mercy. She shook her head slowly. ‘What do you reckon I oughta do?’ ‘You could get in touch with the Maori Land Court.’ She nodded her agreement. It gave them both time. After she left, the rates clerk, sat down and ate a peppermint. His digestion was no good at all, and to be sure this had knocked him. It must be the heat. But the heat went on day after day, and things were no better at all when Heremaia, Rebecca Rawinia, came back to the office with Tuhoro, Albert Tai, a week later. ‘My brother-in-law, Mister,’ she said, standing at the door, and urging the man forward. It looked as if she was tickling his spine, for he twisted and wove on shiny, pointed shoes without advancing a step. A shifty character, thought Mr Wellington-Crosby. A scoundrel, you can always tell these types by their sharp ways. But he was no fool this Mr Tuhoro, Oh no. A self-respecting man was he, good at his job, both of them, a painter on his own account by day, and a dance band leader by night, quite an entrepreneur this one, and always paid his rates, and his light bill, and the phone, not to mention his income tax, caught you up this secondary employment, and why PAYE couldn't do all it promised and save a man the everlasting worry, he didn't know. In fact, you name a department, any of these outfits that were out to keep a man poor, he had owed it, paid it, and had a clean bill of health. Mrs Heremaia shrugged behind him. ‘He's always like that, Tuhoro, my brother-in-law,’ she said, approaching the counter. ‘But what he says is true. He owes nobody anything, and he works hard to make sure things stay that way. Except for this,’ and she waved the rates demand, now a tattered remnant, under his nose, ‘and this he does not want to pay.’ ‘But if he is an owner — did you get in touch with the Maori Land Court?’ Yes, and indeed, how could Mrs Heremaia forget to do what he said, taking his advice as seriously as she did? All the other owners then, bar her mother, were alive and well, the eight of them, and all, bar Tuhoro, disgruntled as they were, would pay the rates. Well no one had got in touch with Auntie but she did what she was told