Chapter Twenty-Two: Into The Cauldron
“Let’s see what Kiwi TV is like.” Beau walked over and turned on the television and started running back and forth through the channels. All three of them.
I lay on the huge, circular Las Vegas-style bed with the blue velour bedspread, dog-tired from our climb in Toby’s oceanside pinnacles in the hurricane-force winds. The Ancient Mariner Hotel in Picton had a few high-end rooms with round beds and we had decided to splurge — seventy U.S. dollars.
Something caught my attention. “What was that? Go back to that channel!”
The announcer was speaking so fast and with such a north-of-the-South-Island accent that we both had trouble understanding.
The TV screen was showing a beautiful park with giant native New Zealand trees as well as huge exotics — as they call maple, oak, elm Down Under. The announcer was practically screaming and falling over his own words in a rush to squeeze them all into the allotted seconds of TV commercial.
“Bring the WOIFE, bring the KEEDS, bring the WHOLE FAM’LY to the CHROISTCHU’CH BUTT SHOW!!! All this weekend!!! The CHROISTCHU’CH BUTT SHOW!!!”
Then they flashed all the particulars on the screen:
I almost fell out of bed laughing and Beau dropped his pants in the direction of the TV.
Now, remember, it was winter — don’t forget that we do things differently in NZ. June, July, August are winter months.
We were told that the best restaurant in Picton was closed for the off-season and as we were both feeling a bit lazy after our excursion to Toby’s place, we were happy simply to go upstairs to the Ancient Mariner Restaurant for a meal.
The waiter handed us the menus.
“The catch of the day is blue cod. The roast of the day is roast beef. I’ll give you a few moments.”
Six months later, we were back in Picton, this time on our way further south to Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula, another prospective coastal sheep station to consider as a possible new home.
We left our round, blue velour-covered bed, same room as before, and went upstairs to the Ancient Mariner restaurant.
Same waiter, different season. It was the Southern hemisphere summer now, December 2001.
The waiter handed us the menus. “The catch of the day is blue cod. The roast of the day is roast beef. I’ll give you a few moments.”
Things never change much in New Zealand. When people find a way of doing things, they stay that way. That being said, the catch of the day and the roast of the day at the Ancient Mariner were probably wonderful and most likely still will be whenever you pay a visit.
In Christchurch, we stayed at a lovely hotel just opposite the magnificent botanic gardens. These gardens, over fifty acres in size, are largely enclosed in a loop of the tranquil Avon River and are filled with English lawns and woodlands, conservatories, rose beds, flower beds of all types, really.
All this is adjacent to Hagley Park, which itself spreads out over four hundred acres. These beautiful botanic gardens and this magnificent park grace a city of less than half a million people, a small city surrounded by the most beautiful countryside just minutes outside the city limits. An embarrassment of nature’s riches.
The botanic gardens were founded in 1863 with the planting of an English oak tree to commemorate the marriage of Prince Albert to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The prince later became the king of England as Edward VII.
He was the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Renamed by his son the House of Windsor in 1917 because the English and the Germans were still at war. World War I.
I have already mentioned those sad little war memorials that you find in every little town, village, and hamlet in New Zealand. Farm boys and village boys went off to fight England’s wars in the Ottoman Empire, in Turkey and North Africa, boys who never saw the British Isles in their short lives, and who never returned to their own beautiful islands in the far away South South Pacific.
Islands peaceful, bucolic, achingly beautiful. Islands caught up in somebody else’s death and destruction, fighting for the king and for the “Better Britain” that Wakefield and other unlikely scoundrels had started here in the antipodes.
But that day in 1863, the first Great World War could not be imagined. It was the American families, North and South, Union and Confederate, who were slaughtering each other a world away from a beautiful New Zealand day, a day just like this one, I thought, as Beau and I wandered for hours beneath spreading trees, some of them one hundred and forty years old.
Perhaps a day just like this when the cream of Christchurch society came out to plant a little English oak tree, now grandly spreading out its branches in the Empire of the Air, for the Empire of the Birds.
“To commemorate the solemnization of the marriage between His Highness, Albert, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, we are here today gathered, this day of July 9, 1863, we do plant this English oak here in this little corner of England, here in Christchurch, New Zealand.
God Save the Queen, our blessed Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Empress of India. Queen of New Zealand.”
“Hear him, hear him!”
“Hear, hear!”
“God Save the Queen!”
“God save our precious Queen!”
“God Save New Zealand!”
Before driving over the hills to the little village of Akaroa, we decided to ride the pretty little maroon-and-cream-colored electric tram around the center of Christchurch. It was a touristy thing to do but the day was hot and we figured it would be a pleasant way to see the main sights of this most English town so far away from England, to see Cathedral Square and the heart of the lovely little city.
Others were gliding along the River Avon in Edwardian punts, those long, flat-bottomed boats propelled and steered along by means of long poles, poled along by young men in suspenders and straw hats.
From our tram, we watched them float slowly, silently under the willows and were cooled down just by the observation of them floating along like leaves on the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
We were the only passengers on the little tram and there were two old men dressed in early 1900s fashion, and both with long side-whiskers.
One was the driver and the other was the conductor and they kept up a light and humorous banter as they pointed out all the sights. We listened intently, trying to understand their Butt-Show accents.
Soon we were joined by a man of about our age and his quite elderly mother. The driver and conductor quickly ascertained that the man was a Kiwi now for some twenty years, originally from Edenfield Village, near Manchester, and that the old woman was his mother.
She was eighty-five and she was on her first visit outside of England.
“The queen trammed with us, you know, Mum, when she come down for a visit last and so I can tell you, you have chosen well today. It is the best view we will give you of Christchurch.”
Chroistchu’ch, as he pronounced it.
“Yes, indeed, she was a delight, she was, Mum, the queen was a delight. So friendly and charming, so elegant, so refined, but so down-to-earth friendly, Mum.
“Made us feel like we were part o’ the royal family, isn’t it true, Grant?”
“Aye, Graham, she was delightful, I had to stop me’self from inviting her over to meet the missus, wanted to invite her over to the cottage for tea.
“Had to pinch me’self to remember that she is the queen, after all! Anyway, she’s a busy queen and I held me’self back, I did, I held me’self back from the friendly invite. But she enjoyed her tram ride, she did that.”
“That Prince Phillip was a bit of a shocker, though, I can tell you, Mum. Never, ever grunted nary a word during the whole tram visit, never ever smiled even once, gloomy he is.
“Gloomy, somber, solemn. You shouldn’t like to have tea with him every night, I can assure you, Mum. Anyhow, he’s not English, now, is he? Greek he is, I believe. A gloomy Gus of a Greek for sure.”
He frowned in illustration of his words.
The little old lady had her shoulder bag clutched primly on her lap and she was hanging on every word. Her son smiled happily through all this talk, so proud to show his sweet old mother what a lovely English city Christchurch is. She must have been reassured somehow.
“And so the queen enjoyed her tram visit, did she?” Her voice was so soft and small that we could barely hear her above the screech of the brakes as we halted at an intersection to avoid crushing some tourists who, like tourists everywhere, had given their brains a vacation, too, by leaving them at home.
“And so the queen enjoyed her tram visit, did she?” she repeated a bit louder, with great effort.
“All she talks about, Mum, all she talks about!”
The old Mum smiled contentedly. She had, indeed, done well by taking the tram tour of Christchurch.
And so had we.
When you go over the last high hill forty-five minutes out of Christchurch and see the Banks Peninsula spread out before you, you realize that your vantage point is the eroded rim of a giant volcano with the bluest of waters in its core.
This round peninsula, misjudged to be a coastal island by Captain Cook and his ship’s resident naturalist and botanist, Joseph Banks, juts out into the Pacific Ocean east of Christchurch and is the most prominent volcanic feature of the South Island.
And another of the world’s magnificent sights.
As you gaze down at the ancient volcanic center, you will see that to the right, to the south, that is, the volcanic rim is completely erupted away, exploded away, and the volcanic center is open to the southern ocean, which makes the sunken crater or cauldron into a protected harbor, a safe haven from the Antarctic storms.
From up here on the rim, a picture-perfect landscape spreads out before you. Green hills circling all around this bluest of safe havens, lush green hills, vineyards, sheep farms, and scattered forests, a vista that takes your breath away unexpectedly.
When you see it the first time, the last thing you will think about is a murder in these idyllic parts.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
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Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published soon.
IN A DESERT OR A CITY
BOOK I
‘PRINCE CARTIER’ or HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE BEING GAY WITH MY SAUDI PRINCE AND TO START WORRYING
BOOK II
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE, PARIS
BOOK III
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
BOOK IV
TYROMANCY AND LUCIFER
BOOK V
WHY WAIT FOR THE LIGHT?