sortment of people; a Maori family, a young mixed couple like themselves, more likely counting than married, a couple of famished looking students, a well-dressed, middle-aged woman who could as easily have been Sally's mum getting ‘easy tea’ for Sunday night. ‘Chips, two pies, lots of tomato sauce, and two thickshakes,’ Piri ordered. When it was all ready, they climbed into the car. He gave the food to Sally to hold. They drove down past the wharves and parked. He took the food from her and after he'd opened it across their knees, they ate. After a while, he said, ‘Good city Maori kai, good city Pakeha tucker.’ ‘Did you like the hangi dinner?’ she asked. He was close to shy, like she'd been earlier that day. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But sometimes when the hangi's cooked for so many people it's not as good as if it were… just for a family say. I should have remembered that before I blew my stack.’ ‘Piri … I …’ she started, but he put his fingers across her mouth holding her lips together, like children do when they make each other say ‘a basketful of vegetables’ and she nearly choked on a chip. ‘When we go back to meet Eru's wife,’ he said … she wiggled her head—but he held onto her mouth … ‘We'll go for Sunday lunch when the bread's sweet and fresh and there's a nice mug of tea to go with it, and she's cooked for twenty and not two thousand.’ He let go of her mouth and kissed it quickly where his fingers had been. ‘And if you don't like that, I'll eat your share and have a big, cold, greasy pie waiting in the car to shove down your Pakeha throat.’ He took her hand. ‘Time to go, wahine.’ They smiled at each other, and, comfortable and replete—at last—drove companionably home.

The Morepork by Arapera Molenaar My cousin was terrified of it, the morepork. When we were younger she would come down to our place for a chat, and we'd sit and talk and laugh mainly about boys—who we thought was nice looking or which film star, male of course, we had a crush on at the moment. We were happy in our dreams. Our homes were rather unsettled domestically with mums and dads always fighting and we children getting the laying on of hands in the form of the manuka stick. I must admit there were times that we deserved it, but sometimes it was because our parents lacked the communication with one another and became frustrated, taking their feelings out on the children. So we made our own happiness—cut out pictures of Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey, Greg Peck, and Esther Williams, whom I thought was extremely beautiful. Whenever we went out to the river, she was the one we would imitate, with sommersaults, twists, group flower arrangements … all the beautiful movements we saw her do on the screen, we did. We sang a lot too, usually while we milked the cows. ‘Little White Cross on the Hill’, ‘Sweethearts or Strangers’, real sad songs about lost ones. Perhaps beneath it all we felt a little lost ourselves, but there was a bond between us children. Then at the weekend we would go up to the bush to swing on the vines that grew