4.

 

 

  Ko Hemi Tuwhare sat alone and despite all the troubles his people had faced in recent times, still admired in enormity, the view of the city of Wellington and its most attractive harbour surrounds. 

  His was a privileged vantage point and he was saddened by the fact that the peaceful life of the thriving Maori community he remembered as a child was now just that, a thing of the past.

  Te Aro Pa, or ‘the facing’, in reference to the site facing the ancestral home-land and Mt. Taranaki, did also command a vantage point, looking directly down the harbour mouth. The Pa had been established in 1824, by the Ngati Mutunga of Taranaki and became residence to their iwi and sub-tribes, they themselves moving further south to the Chatham Islands.

  It was the largest Maori community in Wellington and was to a degree, done a great service by the Wairarapa earthquake of 1855, which raised the land and drained the low-lying areas of Te Aro. The new marshy swamps provided not only shellfish and eels, but large quantities of flax, in high demand with European settlers.

  Colonisation was the major enemy. It’s impact and other complexities, wrought largely by the Taranaki land wars, were responsible for a rapidly dwindling population. The first settlers had forged strong trading relationships with Maori, exchanging goods and cash for fresh food and labour. 

  But by 1870, the crown had burgled the land off the native in most instances, with plans to extend Taranaki Street down to the waterfront.

  The two hectare surrounds of the Pa had been home to around 200 Maori in the 1850’s, but Hemi looked out that evening from his chair as chief of the tribe, now down to but fourteen inhabitants.

  His son, Ngatata, had wanted to take his father back to the Taranaki to die, before Te Aro Pa buckled under the weight of colonisation, once and for all and his elder would end up having to squat on the land of some mysterious new Pakeha owner. 

  But Ko Hemi Tuwhare was adamant that he wanted to stay till the end. He had fallen in love and betrothed himself to the woman who had bore him children, and they in turn grandchildren, all on that Marae. He was staying and that was that.

  “I’ve known this Pa for mostly all of my life,” he would say, “why would an old man want to leave now, this is my wā kāinga.” 

  His thoughts were interrupted by Ngatata, who had entered the meeting house with a good friend to and of them both, known as ‘Hone’. Not a lot else was known of this man, but the pair believed him to be part-Maori, part-Pakeha, although it was not known for sure that this was the case. 

  He was certainly of a pigment slightly browner than your average British subject, but also spoke with a vague Irish affliction, from the Ballsbridge area of Dublin, if one did not know better.

  “Hone, my dear friend!” It was clear that Hemi was extremely pleased to see him, whatever the truth regarding his ancestry was, or which tribe he allegedly belonged to. “I intend to hold a conference tonight, with just Ngatata here, to discuss Pa business…away from the Pa business!”

  The two Maori gentlemen began to cackle at Hemi’s double entendre, but Hone was equally as sharp and was on to it in a flash.

  “You’ll probably be needing this then eh, Hemi,” he retorted, producing two bottles of honey coloured liquid from his rucksack. All three men then engaged in warm, friendly laughter.

  “Will you stay and have a drink with us?” Enquired the Maori elder.

  “Thank you Hemi,” replied Hone graciously, “but I have a few errands to run and I am late already. I would be obliged if I could return here later though and shelter for the night.” 

  “Actually, I may need to stay a few nights before I leave town,” he added, hoping not to push his luck too far with his most obliging hosts.

  This practice of Hone turning up with booze, in exchange for nothing but to occasionally have somewhere to hide (most probably from the law Hemi assumed and wanting to know no more about it), had been going on for a number of years.

  “As always my ‘Maori-ha’ friend,” this was a self-coined moniker that Hemi had given Hone, a reference to him being, in his eyes, some form of half breed, “you can hide here whenever you feel you need to.” 

  Ko Hemi Tuwhare’s reassurance was sincere and always greatly received as such. He didn’t care what illegal activities Hone was up to, so long as he got his bottle of whisky from him, which helped heal many ailments that the ageing gent had developed, both physical and psychological. 

  “Come Ngatata,” Hemi commanded. “I must have a long discussion with the liquid contents of this bottle and I may need a third opinion.”

  Miriam Emeline ‘Agnes’ Buxton, known to all as ‘Granny’, sat in bed and stared at the wall opposite. ‘Granny’ Buxton gave an entirely new meaning to the pejorative expression; ‘grumpy old trout’. In fact, she was the epitome of that exact postulation. 

  The footsteps she could hear approaching her door, she knew belonged to her daughter, Hannah, whom although her own flesh and blood, she perceived as a weak-kneed pain in the rump. Although she did possess a good degree more moral fibre and substance than her pathetic, softly spoken, waste of space husband, William.

  Agnes and Hannah were regularly embroiled in argument. The elder regarded her offspring as an insidious nuisance, always claiming that she knew what was best for her 85 year old mother, when reality was more often than not, something completely different. At least in Granny’s aged eyes.

  Her bedroom was her salvation, a place of solitude where she could largely be left alone in body and in spirit. In some instances, this was a particularly grand situation, for although she was well and truly toward the end of life’s long road, there were certain things that her daughter and feeble husband need not know about.

  There was a polite rap on Granny’s door, but in the mood she was in, she didn’t bother to answer. 

  Hannah cautiously opened the door, had a quick check to ensure that her parent was awake and stepped into the room. As she approached the bed, she could see that her mothers dinner had not been touched, not even a skerrick.

  “Oh mother,” she started, “what was wrong with your soup? It was chicken broth, your favourite. And the bread was baked fresh this afternoon.”

  Granny was in no mood to mix her words. “I’m not hungry!”

  “You must keep your strength up mother. And we can’t afford to be wasting this good food.”

  “Well you eat it then,” Granny snapped, “I said I wasn’t hungry. Now leave me alone will you.”

  “Would you like me to run you a bath?” Hannah enquired, adding, “you love a bath on Saturday night.”

  “Used to. I don’t anymore!” Granny was a master at using the terseness of age to her advantage and was getting more contrary and difficult by the minute.

  “But Mother, you need to bathe…,” Hannah continued knowing her words were futile.

  “I don’t want a ruddy bath,” Granny intervened, the volume and pitch of her voice rising. “Now get out and leave me alone. I want to be alone.”

  Hannah had taken the bait despite her own perpetual reassurances that she wouldn’t let her mother’s temper or nastiness get the better of her. With tears welling up in her eyes she was hopelessly drawn into the dispute. “Oh Mother, you ungrateful old woman…”

  Granny went up another notch or two, again interrupting her daughter mid-flight. 

  “Get out! Get out! Get out,” she screamed and picking up the hairbrush from the tallboy beside her bed, flung it headlong at Hannah as she retreated from the room.

  Sobbing echoed down the hallway. Granny simply didn’t care anymore. On the one hand, it pleased the old woman no end to have riled Hannah, yet on the other, it was a source of great annoyance to her that her own daughter could be such a wimp.

  She reached between mattress and base of her bed, fumbled around a tad and then produced a small metal decanter. She unscrewed the top and raised it to her lips, emptying the contents into her mouth and muttering to herself in disgust that it had been fully consumed.

  Agnes Buxton had seen a lot of life. She was born at Hartley Castle in Cumbria on March 9, 1796, the same day that Napoleon Bonaparte married Joséphine de Beauharnais in Paris. Her father, Sir John Chardin Musgrave, a rather rotund gentleman by the time of Agnes’ birth, was the 7th Baronet of the Castle. 

  His fondness for game meat, cheese and wine meant that he was often hindered by gout or other associated ailments, courtesy of his predilection. 

  Agnes’ mother was quite the subservient type and the pair did not get on. While she unquestionably inherited some of her father’s predispositions and partialities, she despised formality and tradition.

  As a young woman she correctly assumed that being female in such an environment simply meant kowtowing to those with land and title and already headstrong, she wasn’t having a bit of it.

  In 1815 she ran away with Michael Faraday, a young scientist from London, who because of his devout christian leanings had ended up applying his trade in the small market town of Kirkby Stephen, quite near Hartley Castle. 

  In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered by parlance, a gentleman. Ironic as he would become one of the most influential scientists in history.

  He established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics, but also invented an early form of the bunsen burner and - as a chemist - discovered benzene and the ‘system of oxidation’ numbers. 

  His devotion to both his work and the Sandemanian sect to which he belonged, ensured that it was Agnes on the back burner, so to speak, a place or position where she had absolutely no intention of being.

  By 1817, she had eloped with John Buxton, a young blacksmith from the neighbouring dale of Mallerstang. 

  To rid themselves of both sides of their families, the couple moved south to Nottingham, married and had three daughters; Mary Susanna (1821), Margaret Ann (1823) and somewhat of an after-thought, Hannah Elizabeth (1826).

  In 1854, John and Agnes, along with youngest daughter Hannah and her accountant husband, William Loxley, arrived in Nelson aboard the vessel Spray. They soon thereafter moved to Wellington, taking residency in a house in Mulgrave Street, Thorndon. John was already suffering from pleurisy, which eventually, in 1868, claimed his life. 

  Agnes had little alternative than to move in with her daughter and her daft husband, with whom she most certainly did not get on. She found it a difficult proposition to mask her feelings and was in turn considered cantankerous and obstinate by Hannah and William. 

  A gentle rap on the bedroom window, in a mere instant, turned the grumpy old woman into a small child. With youthful enthusiasm, she leapt from her bed, trying as best she could to suppress her excitement, not wishing her biggest secret to be discovered by her daughter or idiot husband.

  “Talk about perfect timing Billy Diamond,” she exclaimed opening the window as quietly as she could and handing over the decanter and then another from the under side of the bed.

  “This is a new brew Agnes, I think you’ll find it too your liking,” Bill Diamond whispered. “Not a word as usual.”

  “You’re a bloody saint Bill Diamond,” replied Granny, “have I ever told you that? And God bless ol’ Johnny Valentine as well!”

  The early spring twilight was just starting to fade. It had been such a grand day, the first indication that the days were beginning to lengthen again after the long winter months. 

  Before dusk settled in once and for all, David Robertson decided to go and check on Molly the cow one last time, in the hope that there may have been some improvement.

  Unfortunately, if anything, Molly’s condition had deteriorated. David and Mary stood looking down at the stricken animal, now lying prostrate on the grass, periodically moaning, but in earnest, looking likely to expire at any given moment.

  “I’m going to have to fetch the vet Mary,” David began. “I know the hour is late, but I fear that Molly is in serious decline. I don’t believe that she will make it through the night. She must have some relief and cure, or be put out of her misery.”

  The evening was still and quiet. Just the faint sound of trickling water from the Pipitea Stream could be heard in the distance and the occasional groan from Molly the cow.

  “I know my eyesight is not what it used to be David,” said Mary, “but I could swear that there is a…a glow coming off the water from the stream.”

  David’s eyesight was not much better than that of his wife, but he too could make it out. There definitely appeared to be a very faint, iridescent glow, with a yellowy hue developing and becoming more obvious as the skies darkened and natural light faded.

  Nightfall had taken hold in Wellington city on Saturday, 17th September, 1881. The inhabitants had absolutely no idea of the chaos and drama that was about to unfold that evening, quite unprecedented in the 40 year history of European settlement.

  In Haining Street, in the heart of the Chinese district, all was relatively quiet. Some of the villagers were engaged in a low key game of cards, others sat around drinking tea and reading. Jo Kum Yung sat in an adjacent room, smoking a pipe and contemplating the busy week ahead of him. 

  The Chinese had not been well received in the new Dominion, as recently exemplified by the New Zealand government’s imposing of The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881, which included a ‘poll tax’ of £10 and the restriction of one Chinese passenger per immigrant ship, per 10 tons of cargo. 

  Some had arrived via a credit system, by which a guarantor (usually a relative, village elder or prospective employer), had advanced the fare for passage and also the tax.

  The Otago goldfields had attracted the first batch of Chinese migrant workers from the Guangdong province during the late 1860’s. 

  A steady stream of able-bodied young men left their homeland, beset with famine, overpopulation and land shortages, to seek their fortunes in South-East Asia or the Pacific Rim countries, usually intending to then return to China. 

    But once the gold rush was in decline, where only a few struck it rich and most remained poverty-stricken and stranded in a strange land, many drifted toward the cities to look for employment. Some found work in fruit shops, laundries and commodity stores, others finding a niche for themselves in the market gardening trade. 

  The growing of vegetables was extremely labour intensive, requiring long hours of work and yielding only a comparatively modest living. Small capital outlay was the sole advantage, with land often leased from Maori, who in many instances sweated side by side with the Chinese.

  But despicable sentiments had been expressed by many white folk, who held a fairly universal belief that they were ‘haunted by the yellow peril’ and were against the importation of an alien labour force to the British colonies. 

  Because of New Zealand’s settlement policy; ‘A fairer Britain of the South Seas’, non-white migrants were considered undesirable when it came to the enterprise of nation-building. 

  Anti-Chinese prejudice, measures and propaganda were therefore rife and had, in most unfortunate circumstances, caused the majority of the race to live and mingle amongst themselves. 

  Most men were married, but unable to pay the poll tax for their wives to immigrate (or they remained in China to look after their husbands parents) and the sex ratio of the community had become extremely unbalanced. In fact, in 1881 there were 4,995 men and only nine women. 

  A bachelor society resulted and many sought solace in the notorious opium dens of Haining Street. Stories of a drug culture and gambling in the village had become grossly exaggerated and distorted tales of these activities were commonplace.

  Ahpoo Hock Ting was the first to notice the figure of a man enter the dwelling and was instantly on the alert to the intrusion. To his relief, he recognised him as Yue Han. 

  He knew exactly what business he was there for and motioned to him that Jo Kum Yung was ‘out the back’.

  The man acknowledged Hock Ting’s nod and ventured through the bamboo curtain, without saying a word or creating any sort of distraction whatsoever. 

  He was used to quietly going about his business and not attracting any sort of attention at all. It was, for him, wise to show such prudence.

  The old Chinese man looked up, at the same time expelling a long, thin puff of smoke. “Ah, my good friend, Yue Han.” 

  Yue Han politely bowed.

  “How can we do business today peng?” Jo Kum Yung enquired. Despite his name, Yue Han was not Chinese, but often frequented Haining Street, usually with merchandise to trade.

  “I have two gallons of the new whisky on me and can deliver more if there is a demand.”

  “Those men you passed upon entrance will consume that this very evening,” replied Kum Yung, “if I allow them too.”

  “Let them,” Yue Han replied. “While still fine whisky, it is old stock. For you my friend, the first hip flask from my new brew, made from a superior barley.”

  Jo Kum Yung was very pleased to receive this special gift. 

  “Did you use the special herbs I provided you with,” he enquired.

  “I did indeed,” replied Yue Han, “and the laudanum also.”

  “Most excellent,” the Chinese elder stated, nodding his head in approval. “I can offer you two more quarts of laudanum for your next batch, a bath now and all the opium you require.”

  Yue Han reached into the top pocket of his coat and produced a very fine looking cigar, offering it also to Jo Kum Yung: “Fresh from Havana, arrived yesterday on the HMS Himalaya, currently in dock at Port Nicholson.”

  “I shall arrange for Kim Yin to attend to any other requirements you may have,” the old man replied, extremely pleased with all deals that had been done in the past sixty seconds or so. “I like you Yue Han, you trade like a Chinaman!”

  “Why, thank you Jo Kum Yung,” he took the comment to be the utmost of compliments.

  “Kim Yin,” Jo Kum Yung motioned to a young woman, who was reading a book in a corner of the room. “Will you take this man downstairs and attend to his every need. Be at peace my friend.”

  “Certainly,” the young woman replied. “Come with me Yue Han.”