The Best Of Dinners by Fiona Kidman The Te Pikis had trouble parking the car. Finally they found room in the long line of vehicles alongside the marae. There were buses taking up room everywhere, but they just had room to squeeze in between a beat-up jalopy with a sagging tray which threatened to collect their rear vision mirror as they edged in, and a hand-painted electric blue Chev. exploding kids in all directions. Just as they were sliding the last inches into position, Piri had to slam his foot down to avoid a tiny leg protruding from behind the Chev's front tyre. The owner of the leg emerged, all of three years old, removed the slice of watermelon from his mouth long enough to smile, and retreated. Piri cursed thinly through his teeth, and climbed out to make sure that their shiny little Volkswagon hadn't been scratched in the manoeuvre. Sally slid out behind him, laughing. ‘What's so funny?’ he snapped. Without looking at her, he shrugged off her amusement and straightened his tie. Sally could see why he'd insisted on her wearing a hat. She never did as a rule, unless it was to a wedding, and even that wasn't as essential as it had once been. Still she kept one outrageous one in reserve for special occasions, which this, in a sense, definitely was. As she looked at the women purposefully making their way over to the new hall, shepherding children, and looking for errant husbands who had dallied to talk in the winter sun, she saw that, except for old women in scarves, they were all wearing hats, mostly shiny white straws, cone shaped, or linen, with little rolled back brims, in spite of the season. Still, so white, so all purpose, that there was no mistaking that they were right for the day. Piri's eyes were starting to light up with interest. ‘Shall I take my hat off?’ Sally said, fingering the huge floppy brim of her coffee coloured felt with the bizarre cut-outs on its enormous crown and the floating scarf. ‘Eh?’ Piri dragged his attention from the crowd. ‘Come on, they're going in.’ ‘Shall I take my hat off?’ she persisted. ‘No, of course not, I told you to wear one. You going to wait all day?’ And he started off, without waiting for her to reply. Sally sighed and set off behind him, thinking how lucky men were, because unless they went really all out, they could get away with being smart in a less obvious way than women. Piri looked just right, in his nice brown suit, with a coloured shirt and wide tie. He'd have been right in the city, like every day when he set off to work, and he looked right now. She couldn't complain though, she kept telling herself, about the way either of them looked, or about his sudden enthusiasm. After all, coming there was all her idea. ‘Take me back to where you came from,’ she'd said to him. ‘It's your heritage, you want to separate me from it? You share mine.’ Heritage! The word had grumbled round the house at him for weeks. Why did she keep on about it so, Piri wondered, every time she brought the subject up. He'd had a poke around a few maraes in his time, been to a few huis. He knew what went on. And he remembered. He'd been nearly nine when his parents left the country to come into the city. You don't forget the early days so easily. But what the heck, the city'd killed off both his parents in one mighty car smash before you could turn round; the welfare had had him brought up in a Pakeha orphanage; he had a job in the city that many a Pakeha would say his prayers twice to