Cousins by Patricia Grace

Author:Patricia Grace [Grace, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742539690
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-seven

It was a hot night and Makareta was uncomfortable in her serge gym, long-sleeved blouse, blazer, tie, heavy black stockings and lace-up shoes. The new panama felt tight round her head and the elastic under her chin made her itchy.

For an hour they sat in the dark on the railway platform before they heard the station master coming. ‘Ho,’ he said as he went by them and in through the door. They could hear his noisy breathing. The station lights came on.

Soon afterwards they heard the train coming. They saw the big light beaming on to the track as it pulled in, squealing and steaming.

Aperehama and Wi went ahead of her into the train with the bags and pillows, and as Makareta stepped up into the carriage with Keita, Kui was beginning to cry again, her crying becoming a wail, ‘Our daughters don’t come back,’ she was calling. ‘Our children go, they never return.’

‘She’ll be all right,’ Wi said as he and Aperehama stowed the bags and put the pillows down. The two men hugged her quickly then left the train as the whistle sounded.

The engine began to shoulder along, leaving behind the patch of light where, looking back, she could see Wi and Aperehama holding onto the old woman, putting a rug round her. She watched out of the window until they were out of sight and there was only the dark, passing countryside, the black paddocks and hills, the black shapes of houses and the occasional thin gleam of fence wires.

‘I felt bad leaving her. From the window of the train she looked so old and so small that I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t help feeling that I was doing something wrong.

‘She tried so hard to let me come, fussing round and getting me ready this last month — sewing all the labels on the clothes after we received the parcels from you, taking the hem up on the basketball gym so that it is now the regulation “three inches above the knees when kneeling”. I felt sorry watching her, with her old eyesight, stitching such dark cloth, but we had to let her do it. The house gym, best gym, blazer and blouses were just right, Mum, and needed no alteration.

‘And she decided I would need six pillows for the train journey so that I could sleep comfortably and not get my new uniform creased. (She’s very proud of the uniform. So am I, even though it’s so hot for this time of the year.) She made six new pillowslips with frills all round the edges. So we had to take six pillows with us. We were very comfortable on the train. (Also I was very glad to have the pillows for somewhere to hide my tomato eyes. Keita kept telling me not to cry, because my eyes would stick out like ripe tomatoes. They did.) But at the end of the journey we had a real struggle with our luggage. I don’t know how Keita managed the pillows on her way home.

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