A Yacht Called Erewhon Read online

  As we broke through the green canopy into the clearing beside the river mouth, we could see that no one else had been there for a long time. Since the tapu-lifting ceremony, the bush had reclaimed the fringes of the site, and even the hangi pits had disappeared under the regrowth.

  I swung Bertha over into the corner of the clearing farthest from the river, as Dad chose the best site for the caravan. Thirty minutes later we had it set up, with the awning on and Mum’s coffee pot bubbling away. Soon the hammock was swinging between two of the shadiest trees, and Matt, Dad and I had the tabs off three cans of Lion Red. Even Mum seemed to be starting to relax, admitting that, despite the trip down the track, this place was heaven.

  After another couple of cans, we decided to walk through the bush and have a look at Erewhon. Mum had heard so much about her over the years and was eager to see the other lady in Dad’s life. Matt, too, was keen to see what all the fuss was about, and I was busting for another good look at her so we could work out the recovery plan.

  I grabbed a tape measure from the toolbox and a notepad, and we headed off along the track. Part of the deal was that we had agreed not to damage certain trees, which the iwi had marked with ribbons. Many of these ringed the upturned hull, so we had to measure out a path for the yacht that avoided them.

  The hull was about fifteen minutes from the base camp, and my heart raced as we drew near. What was Mum going to think of her? Dad was babbling away in an effort to coax her more quickly through the undergrowth, but as soon as he was close enough he couldn’t help asking the classic dumb question. ‘What do you think, doll?’

  I ducked for cover behind the hull, Matt slipped behind a tree, and the birds in the trees stopped singing. Mum’s jaw dropped. ‘How much did you pay for this rotting pile of firewood?’

  ‘It’s not rotting, darling. She’s as sound as the day she was built. Come and look inside.’

  ‘I’m not remotely interested in looking inside that thing. I bet it’s full of spiders! Now take me back to the caravan.’

  Dad knew he’d lost this round, but at least she only wanted to go back to the caravan—not home. As he tossed me the torch, he called ‘I’ll be back in twenty minutes’ before disappearing with Mum in the direction of the camp. Matt and I started breathing again.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘What the hell do you and Dad see in this pile of junk?’ Matt had never been one to see beauty in anything old, let alone something half-buried in the bush. Matt likes things to come shrink-wrapped with a twelve-month guarantee, although he did concede it would be fun trying to get her out. That was something for someone who never liked getting his hands dirty.

  I flicked the torch on, and we peered into the cavernous hull. Apart from the remnants of the hay bales it was empty, and there was no smell of dampness or rotting timber. As the beam of light pierced the inky darkness, she seemed even more immense. Now the hay had been removed, the true beauty of her internal woodwork was obvious. Despite the ravages of time, the varnish work was in remarkable condition. The old wood fittings were absolutely beautiful, with the feature bulkheads crafted in mottled kauri, the visible frames pohutukawa, and the decking bleached teak. She had to be worth restoring!

  The glow from the entrance dimmed as Dad’s bulk blocked the light. ‘Magnificent, isn’t she?’

  ‘Looks like a lot of bloody hard work to me,’ retorted Matt.

  ‘Yeah, but she’ll be worth every minute we spend on her,’ I replied.

  ‘We’ll make a start in the morning. Let’s measure the gap between those trees, and then we’ll head back to the caravan and get the barbie cranked up,’ Dad said, not wanting to hear any more of Matt’s opinion. ‘I reckon Mum will settle to the idea if we keep her happy.’

  Dad and I stretched the tape over the hull and with a bit of guesswork measured its beam as twenty feet.

  ‘What’s that in metres?’ Matt asked.

  ‘It’s twenty feet!’ Dad snapped back. ‘They didn’t have metres when they built this baby, and I’m sure as hell not going to use metres on her now!’ Matt knew it wasn’t the right time to argue the merits of the metric system, so feet and inches were suddenly fine by him.

  I grabbed the torch and ducked back inside. I’d seen something I wanted to have another look at on my own. I swung the torch from side to side and finally settled on what I was looking for in the corner: a large folded white towel with a black bikini top resting on it.

  Matt swung in through the hole. ‘Come on, we’re going back!’ he said, as he disappeared outside again.

  When I turned back, the towel and top had gone. In a low voice, so as not to be heard outside the hull, I whispered, ‘Come out, whoever you are!’ There wasn’t a sound. I repeated myself, but still no reply. ‘I know you’re in here,’ I continued, but still just an eerie silence.

  ‘Come on, Ben!’

  I turned and headed for the opening, pausing at the exit. In a low voice I said, ‘You don’t have to be afraid—we won’t harm you.’

  ‘I can see you’re really getting into the old lady,’ Dad said, as we headed back.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I replied.

  He grinned. ‘Talking to her.’

  Before we left, we measured the distances between the major trees and marked them on a sketch plan, so we could work out how to manoeuvre the hull past. We had plenty of room until we got close to the water and ran into a cordon of juvenile puriri trees that had obviously grown after the hull had been moved to its resting spot. The largest gap we could find was nineteen feet and six inches at ground level.

  We carried on back to the camp and mulled over the problem on the way. We wanted to honour our commitment to the iwi that we wouldn’t damage any major trees, but the puriri looked like a problem.

  Back at the camp, Mum was in her hammock, sound asleep. Once we had a big driftwood fire roaring in the barbie and cold cans in our hands, Dad, Matt and I sat down around the camp table.

  As the beer flowed and the fire died down to glowing embers, we tossed ideas around. Dad had prefabricated three rubber-wheeled bogies: the plan was to cut a track from the hull to the beach and then jack the hull up onto the bogies, placed in a tricycle formation. With the aid of the bulldozer, we’d gently drag the whole rig to the river. The only damage would be to the regrowth scrub. All the large trees would remain. This left us the problem of the gap between the puriri.

  Mum rejoined the land of the living and, lured by the delicious smell from the barbie, wandered over. ‘If you only need another few inches, why not bend the trees back?’ she asked.

  We laughed…and then stopped to think about what she’d just said. The trees wouldn’t move at ground level, but surely we could widen the gap a little further up the trunks? If we got ropes on the top of the trunks and gently pulled the trees away from each other with the bulldozer, we should be able to get the gap we needed. It was just a matter of building a ramp to the necessary height and drawing the hull through.

  ‘Simple!’ said Dad as he hugged Mum.

  The steaks were ready, and Mum threw a salad together. She must have been feeling good to break her no-cooking stand so early in the piece.

  I woke up to the sound of the dawn chorus. Dad had been up for some time, eager to make the most of the daylight hours. The barbie was roaring, and in the middle of the dancing flames was a billy of steaming mussels. The hotplate to one side had bacon and eggs nearly ready, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air.

  ‘Come on, you lot, we’ve got work to do!’ he yelled.

  I grabbed a towel and a bar of soap, dashed down to the river, stripped off, and plunged in. To my surprise, Mum was close behind me and showed no qualms about following me in. Matt was a few steps behind her, and with a giant belly-flop he nearly drained the river.

  What a way to start the day, as the ice-cold river bit, making our bodies tingle all over. The three of us thrashed about like school kids until Dad bellowed, ‘Come a
nd get it!’

  We wrapped our towels tightly around our chilled bodies and were soon tucking into the piping-hot breakfast and working on our plan of attack. The first step was to cut the track from the riverbank to the hull and then work on the gap through the puriri trees.

  While Dad and Matt cleaned up the dishes, I went over to the bulldozer and got ready to flash her into life. Agatha, named after Hepi’s cantankerous old aunt, was, in his words, a pig-headed old bitch and, just like her namesake, needed a bit of priming. In Aunt Agatha’s case, a slug of gin in the morning had got her sparking on all four, but the mechanical Aggie was more demanding, and I had to run around with the grease gun and lubricate every point. Hepi had warned me that if I missed one nipple the infernal machine wouldn’t start.

  After this ritual, Aggie kicked into life, and with the customary billow of sooty black smoke the engine roared, shattering the tranquillity and announcing to the world that the recovery mission had begun.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and, as the usual groan came from deep within the gearbox, engaged reverse, backed off the trailer, and headed off in the direction of the riverbank. Dad and Matt grabbed some heavy ropes and leaped on the counterweight behind me. We rumbled down to the shore and headed up the riverbank to the point we’d planned for the track.

  I’d driven Aggie many times and always got a buzz from her sheer brute power. I loved the smell of diesel exhaust fumes and the freshly turned earth as the dirt squeezed through the tracks—and the satisfaction of knowing I could move a mountain if I wanted to.

  To limit damage to the bush, the track we cut was the absolute minimum and, as we were only removing manuka regrowth and other scrub, it didn’t take long. Having always driven Aggie on confined city building sites before, I revelled in the freedom of the wide-open space and had to curb my desire to go wild.

  Unlike their urban counterparts, the puriri were tall and lean. They were relatively young trees and had grown straight and branch-free for the first ten to fifteen feet.

  Matt jumped in the bucket with one end of a rope, and I hoisted him up high so he could reach the first branches. He looped the rope around the trunk and tied it off. Dad secured a snatch block to the base of the next tree, threading the heavy rope through the pulley and back to Aggie’s towing hook.

  I selected low gear and took the strain, edging forward. The rope groaned as the load came on, and I gradually dragged the trunk away from the new track. At a height of about three feet above the ground, Matt and Dad measured the gap between the two trees that stood on either side of the track.

  ‘Nineteen feet nine inches!’ Dad yelled. ‘Lash her off at that.’

  I repositioned Aggie and hoisted Matt high into the opposite tree. With the rope in place, Aggie once again took the strain. This tree was a little less keen to concede, and Aggie was working up a sweat. Matt and Dad held the tape across the gap as I kept the power on.

  ‘Nineteen ten, nineteen eleven…’ Dad called as the rope sung. ‘Lash her off!’

  It was going to be close—just a couple of inches to spare. But so long as the weight of the hull didn’t close the gap as it passed through, we were home free.

  Matt and Dad leaped back onto Aggie, and we trundled back to the camp. As we got close, our nostrils were put on high alert. Over the smell of freshly turned earth, there was a new aroma coming from the barbie. In the centre of the fire was a large dixie with two tell-tale antennae poking out. I lifted the lid to see the biggest cray I’d ever laid eyes on. Mum was smiling but didn’t say a word.

  ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Dad quizzed.

  Mum turned to me. ‘I think it’s ready, if you’d like to lift it out of the pot, Ben. Mind—it’s very heavy.’

  ‘Where the bloody hell did that come from?’ Dad repeated.

  ‘I caught it, of course!’ Mum replied. She was having fun stringing us along, and Dad was biting like a fish.

  ‘Bullshit! How?’ Dad was hooked, and Mum was reeling him in.

  Knowing how important fishing prowess was in her maledominated world, Mum couldn’t hold out any longer. ‘While you three were mucking about, I went for a walk around the point,’ she said, pointing to the northern end of the beach. ‘There’s a large rock pool there, about waist-deep, and that fellow was sitting half under a ledge looking at me, so I jumped in and grabbed him.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  Mum raised the palms of her hands for us to see the evidence of a hard-fought battle.

  ‘After lunch, you can take me to see this pool.’ Dad still wasn’t convinced.

  ‘It’s nice to know your family doesn’t believe you,’ Mum said as she handed Dad the carving knife and the cray on a chopping board.

  Dad ignored the knife and tore the bright-red cray apart. Each leg was a meal on its own, and all four of us hoed in, quickly reducing the extra-large catch to a pile of empty shell.

  Crayfish demolition complete, we lay back in the sun, and an hour passed before Dad was on his feet and raring to go. ‘Come on, old girl, it’s time you showed us this rock pool.’

  Matt and I grabbed our snorkelling gear, thinking we might look for Erewhon’s keel while we were at the beach.

  It was about a twenty-minute trek to get around the point, and we were surprised that Mum had tackled it on her own. She wasn’t normally one to scramble over rocks, and this all added to our suspicions. As we rounded the point, Mum pointed ahead to where the pool had been. The tide had risen, and the waves on the surf-line were now breaking into it. As we peered in, we could see how deep it was.

  It was confession time. We might have been able to believe her if the pool had been waist-deep, but over her head: no way. Mum pulled her sun-hat down over her face. ‘I had a little help,’ she admitted.

  ‘We know that!’ we chorused.

  ‘I was wandering around the rocks, looking into the pools, when I came across a folded towel on top of the rock over there. As I picked it up, a head popped out of the water. I don’t know who got the biggest shock. She wanted to know who was with me. I told her there were only the four of us and you three were occupied on your salvage mission. She said her name was Mic and she lived around here.’

  ‘What did she look like?’ I asked.

  ‘Gorgeous! Perfect olive skin, dark wavy hair, a trim figure and the most haunting brown eyes. She didn’t say much about herself, but she knew all about Erewhon and wanted to know what we were doing. I said you were taking her away to restore her and that, after seeing the hull, I didn’t think that was possible. At that point, she asked me if we’d like a crayfish, dived into the pool, and came up with our lunch. She handed it over, said goodbye, and disappeared into the bush. I tried to invite her to lunch, but she’d vanished. I was struggling with the crayfish, so I trussed it up in my bikini top, and that worked a treat. I even had a couple of handles to carry it with. You’re not the only ones with clever ideas.’

  Matt and I put on our snorkelling gear and went to look for the keel. It was going to be a huge task, but we figured that the reef running out from the northern end of the river mouth was a good place to start. We theorised that if the yacht had been sailing up the coast when it struck the rocks, the keel would be on the south side of any reef and in water no deeper than fifteen feet at low tide. Matt and I spent an hour in the water swimming along the reef, and even checked on the northern side on our way back. There wasn’t a hint of anything manmade, but the sea life was incredible. We came ashore to find Mum and Dad curled up under a lazy pohutukawa enjoying the absolute solitude.

  As Matt and I walked up the rocks to meet them, we decided we were wasting our time—the keel was probably lying on its side under the kelp forest, and we might have swum right over it and still not seen it. It would have to be scuba gear next time. We sat down under the tree and let the warmth of the afternoon sun warm our chilled bodies. I lay back in the peace, enjoying the moment. The waves lapped the shore, fantails flitted in the tree overhead, and cicadas
chirped incessantly. Perfect harmony. I nodded off.

  ‘Come on, you useless lot!’ Dad had lazed around for long enough, and dinner was just starting to show its head above the receding tide. A large clump of mussels was jutting out through the shore break. We looked around for something to carry the soon-to-be-gathered harvest in. Mum’s wrap got the vote, and before she had time to protest it was fashioned into a sack. We tossed in handfuls of large black mussels and were soon heading off in the direction of the camp.

  I left Matt and Dad to carry the haul and chased after Mum, who was striding off ahead.

  ‘I’ve never seen you so relaxed,’ I said, as we scrambled over the rocks.

  ‘I’ve never been so relaxed, Ben,’ she replied.

  ‘Hey, Jen,’ I continued, to test how relaxed she really was, ‘this girl who caught the cray—she sounds like the one I saw by Erewhon last year.’

  ‘She’s absolutely beautiful. At a guess, I’d say she worked as an aerobics instructor or something physical—you don’t get a figure like that sitting in an office.’

  ‘Did she have long dark hair and wear a black bikini?’

  ‘Yes, but she only wore her bikini bottom.’

  ‘Sounds like we’re talking about the same person.’

  As we sat around the fire that night, with the sun sinking behind the hills and the crickets tuning up, I handed Dad another can and asked him to tell us about Erewhon again. The mussels hissed and steamed on the embers, and as they popped open we plucked them from the billy and downed them straight from the shell.

  3

  Dad never needed much prompting to tell the story. Mum and Matt drew their chairs closer, and we put the billy on top of a convenient stump and settled back as the logs hissed on the fire. I was amazed at the change in Mum. Her only concession to the cooler night air was to throw on one of Dad’s old T-shirts. With a glass of white wine in her hand, she was the picture of perfect calm.