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4.
Bridget’s first full day in her new home dawned fine and clear and promised to be a hot one. Barefooted, wearing only a wrap-around, silk skirt and tee shirt, she opened all the windows and doors, installed her stereo and put on some of her favourite music, controlling an urge to play it quite loud. She didn’t want to antagonise any neighbours. After breakfast, she started to unpack and put away kitchenware.
Around mid-morning, she heard a knock on her opened French doors and a head popped around the doorway of her kitchen. Friendly, twinkling blue eyes behind strong-lensed, black-rimmed glasses looked at her from a face that was wrinkled and framed in softly-curled, thin, grey hair. Lipsticked lips smiled and introduced her neighbour, June. Bridget took her to be around 75 years old. A frail-framed lady, she stooped slightly and leant on a walking stick with her left hand, holding a plate of fresh scones in the right.
June lived with her husband of fifty years in the old house directly above Bridget’s. Her colonial bungalow was quite hidden behind the native trees and had a wooden veranda running along the front. It was surrounded by a lush garden full of fruit trees, flowering shrubs and a good-sized, well tended vegetable garden.
“Here”, she said. “Some freshly-baked scones we thought you might appreciate. We saw you arrive yesterday and I thought I’d come over and say hello.”
Of course Bridget made tea and served it in a delicate china cup and saucer she had inherited from her mother. She remembered how she had always thought it such a waste that her mother would never bring them out of the glass cupboard and had resolved to use them when she inherited them. June drank slowly, peering at Bridget over her glasses and refusing a scone.
After a half-hour of chatting, Bridget knew she could not have wished for a better neighbour. June, she could see, would be the sort of woman whom she could go over to borrow an egg or a cup of flour from, could phone up and ask to come around if she fell and injured herself, or drop in on if she was feeling lonely. June had children that were Bridget’s age, with an assortment of grandchildren, all overseas. Bridget thought she was being eyed up to become a surrogate daughter, one June could call on if she ever fell and injured herself, should her eighty year-old husband, Barry, not be around.
“So, have you lived here long?” Bridget asked June.
“Oh yes … all my life, except for a few years away before I got married to Barry. We used to run the grocery store in the village. We like it here. Our roots are here. I do miss my children and it is difficult for me to go and visit them overseas. It’s my knees, you see … arthritis. The pain is pretty bad and I get bad side -effects from medication the doctor prescribed. But I get by. Pottering around the garden is my greatest delight these days - that and baking.”
Bridget gave her a sympathetic look. “Yes. Old age is not for the faint-hearted, they say.” She took a mouthful of scone, generously buttered. “And your baking is truly excellent!” They smiled generous smiles at each other.
“Tell me about the lady who used to live here, Mrs Dallimore. Did you know her? What was she like?”
“Muriel? She was a character. I never really made friends with her. She kept pretty much to herself, especially after her husband died. We would talk occasionally over the fence. I didn’t enjoy the conversations all that much. They always ended up being about money. She was obsessed with the fear of people ripping her off ... the electric power company, the bank. There was a rumour going around for a while that she had saved thousands in cash and kept it somewhere in the house. She suffered dementia in the last few years before she went into the old-folks’ home here on the hill above the township. People think that she would have forgotten about the money, or where she had put it. I’m sure there’s no truth to the story.”
Bridget looked around the living room and tried to imagine where one would stash thousands of dollars in this house.
“Well dear,” June said when leaving. “I hope you will be happy here. It’s a nice little town full of the most interesting people, most of them good sorts. In a few days, when you have set yourself up and have time, Barry and I would love you to come over for a ‘cuppa’ and get some of Barry’s runner beans. We’ve far too many at this time of the year. You can only freeze so many. Just drop in. We’re home most of the time”. She stopped and turned around to hobble away down the old, concrete path to the gate. “Don’t eat too many of those scones at once now!”
Bridget saw that twinkle in her eye again and wondered why she could not. Did she think Bridget was carrying a little too much weight? She looked down at her waistline and stomach and decided there and then she would lose some weight, by going for a swim and a walk on the beach.
5.
She found a towel and sun-hat, grabbed some suntan lotion and sauntered the hundred or so metres down to the beach. By the time she had gone to the end of the beach and back, the tide was in, so she was able to just walk across the strip of driftwood-littered dunes straight into the warm water. Golden Bay was a shallow bay and so the hot summer sun, on a windless day, warmed the sea nicely. She savoured the velvety sensation of the clear water running past her skin as she swam breast-stroke, causing as little disturbance of the surface as possible. She turned over onto her back and looked back towards the beach.
There were a few people sauntering by. Some children were digging in the sand, their parents sitting not far, watching them. There was a young man walking along slowly, looking intently at the ground, as if searching for something. Something about him held her gaze a bit longer than the others. The curve of his shoulders, the shape of his head, looked faintly familiar.
A breeze came up and Bridget decided to get out of the choppy water. Oh, what heaven, she thought, to lie on this beach, views of the distant hills encircling much of both sides of the bay in delicate shades of blue, grey and violet, the sea a huge, flat expanse of blue-grey. The unusual outline of the Wakamarama Range undulated and tumbled northwards awkwardly towards the sea, ending in the long thin strip of sand dunes that was named Farewell Spit by the explorer James Cook, as he left the shores of New Zealand to start his journey back to England. She knew she would never tire of this view.
Lying on her stomach, she had turned her head to look down along the beach and watched the tall, slim young man, hoping it would not be obvious. She saw him pick up a piece of driftwood. He turned it over carefully in his thin long hands, studying it from different angles, then resolutely walked up to the road. Bridget wandered what he was going to do with it.
She dozed in the warm sun for a while, thinking of her next move, here in this new life. She would put the advertisement for the life-coaching in The Golden Bay Weekly on Monday. She planned the wording carefully. Yes. She was ready. There would be a few days to get the room ready.
She suddenly felt extremely hungry and walked home briskly to have some lunch. As she crossed the dunes to the road, her attention was captured by the amazing array of driftwood scattered across the sand. Never before had she noticed just how beautiful driftwood could be. Each curve, each shade of brown, black, silver and grey drew her in as if she melded with it. She stopped several times to take in the incredible variety and detail, transfixed in wonderment. She picked up one piece and took it home to put in her garden, her step light and fast. As she walked in her front door, she heard herself laugh quietly.
“Funny”, she thought. “I don’t really know what I am laughing about.”
She spotted June’s scones sitting on a plate on her kitchen table. She cut a few in half and smothered them with raspberry jam, the colour of which had never seemed so brilliant. The texture of the cut scone fascinated her and she looked at it intently for a good few minutes. She noticed there was a slight green tinge to it and there were little spots of green as well. June must have put in some herbs or spring onion, she thought. She wolfed the scones down, finishing the jar of home-made jam and the last of a block of cheese.
“Must be the fresh sea air,” she said to herself. “I have never felt so hungry.”
6.
That Sunday, Daniel had walked more slowly than usual along the beach-front road that circumvented the township. It was time to replenish his supply of weathered driftwood - the bleached, aged, native hardwood that after a storm was washed up on the beach - the skeletal remains of what were once great native trees that stood proud in the forest on the steep hillsides of the Wakamarama Range. Wakamarama - the ‘canoe of the moon’. Such a wonderful, romantic name, Daniel thought. The dark hills did, indeed, cradle the moon in their canoe-shaped edge, silhouetted so delicately against the clear South Island skies he loved so much.
Daniel collected the driftwood to take home and chisel, sand and sculpt into some pleasing shape that he could call a sculpture. He would rub them with natural beeswax to give them a subtle sheen and bring out the magnificent colours of the native timber: rimu, totara, rata, matai. Sometimes the pieces would suggest being put together in some way to make garden furniture, but mostly they were just themselves, a complete work of art created by Tane, the Maori god of the forest, and Tangaroa, the god of the sea. All he did was recognise its inner beauty and caress and coax it out, preserve it in the wax and put it on display in his little studio on the hill above the township.
The studio was hidden in amongst the kanuka bush around the house which Daniel had bought three years ago after moving to New Zealand from Australia. Having toured pretty well all of the country, he finally took that journey west of Nelson, way off the main highways through the countryside and arrived at what was almost the end of the road: Collingwood. He felt instantly at home in the small township and settled in fast. Then there was a vacancy for an art teacher at the Collingwood Area School and he was easily accepted there. He put behind him the 23 years spent in the dry, sandy continent and embraced the cool green manuka forest with the tui, bellbird, fantail and warbler.
As usual, he started at the north end of the beach, at the mouth of the Aorere River and worked his way south through the wide band of sand littered with driftwood, some newly added by the last time that a spring tide and a storm had conspired to wash it high up on the beach. He meandered slowly, his eyes scanning every square metre for that special piece of wood, unaware of the other people on the beach. It meant that he did not really look too far ahead, so that he almost stumbled on the woman lying on her towel inside a little hollow.
He stopped abruptly and looked at her with a slightly disapproving look, as if it really was a nuisance that there were other people on the beach whom he had to look out for when doing his treasure hunting. The woman had her eyes closed and seemed oblivious to his approach. So he turned quietly away from her and continued his search, wondering if she was that woman he had seen around a bit, the one that had moved into Mrs Dallimore’s old cottage behind the Courthouse Café. New arrivals do not go unnoticed for long here. If she was, Daniel was a little disappointed that she appeared to be in her late forties. A woman more his age would have been more interesting.
Daniel carried home two pieces of driftwood and put them on the bench in his studio where the warm afternoon sun would bathe them every afternoon and dry them to the point where, weeks later, he could do something with them. As he looked at them, the folds and grooves in the weathered wood reminded him of the face of the woman whom he nearly tumbled over on the beach. They looked pleasingly familiar, like a mother’s face. It made him think of his own mother. She would have skin like that now, he mused. But he had trouble imagining her face. It was some years since he last saw it.
He sighed and walked slowly out of the studio toward his house.
7.
Three days after her arrival in Collingwood, Bridget walked the little path up the hill through the native bush between her property and June’s, thinking it was about time she responded to her invitation to come and visit, have a cup of tea, meet Barry and get some fresh vegetables from their garden.
Their place was completely hidden behind the bush so she did not see Barry, bent over, attending to some plants in their vegetable garden, and came upon him rather suddenly. They both jumped when she stumbled out into the sunshine and came face-to-face with him, and laughed at their awkward introduction.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Bridget, your new neighbour. You must be Barry. Is June home?”
Barry led her into the dark old house to where June was sitting in a small patch of sun on the front porch, her right leg resting up on a little table. She was dozing there and her very fluffy cat sat on her lap. She welcomed Bridget with a generous smile.
“How’s it going? Feeling at home yet?”
“Yes. I feel very at home here,” Bridget said. “But I probably should get on with finding a way to earn some money soon. Pity. This is such a great place to just be ‘footloose and fancy free’.”
“What do you think you might do?” June asked.
“Anything, really. Until my life-coaching clinic gets going.”
Bridget had to explain what life-coaching was to June and Barry who, of course, being well over their seventies, had never heard of such a thing. They were extremely skeptical about it. Barry was a practical man, a retired grocer. It sounded like ‘poppycock’ to him.
“So how is this different from counseling?” he asked.
“I guess it’s dealing not so much with digging up the past and getting in touch with pain or trauma … more with helping a person develop mental skills and use tools that will enable them to make positive decisions and changes in their lives - changes they may need a little bit of coaxing to help them make. Sometimes family or friends are not the right people to fill that role in their lives …”
“Well.” Barry said. “Good on you for believing you can do that. You obviously don’t need a life-coach in your life.” They smiled at each other. “But, if you find no-one comes, why don’t you check out the Courthouse Café? I’ve heard they’re looking for a cook there.”
Bridget thought that was a good idea. Cooking had always been a passion in her life. She made an excellent spanakopita, a good Thai seafood curry, a great hazelnut torte. She was sure the café would take her on.
After tea and scones, (Bridget noticed there were no green herbs in this lot), Barry took Bridget out to his vegetable patch, picked her far too many green beans and gave her a huge bunch of silverbeet too. Never mind, she thought, imagining that she would be able to give them away to her clients or the café.
Walking home through the patch of bush, she decided to ignore the little path and just amble straight through it, meandering between the trees and familiarizing herself with their unique characteristics.
She came upon a little clearing in which grew some tall, weedy-looking plants. Oh yes, what she had suspected was indeed true. Barry and June were growing their own marijuana here. Brave, she thought, or foolish. They probably grew it for pain relief for poor June’s arthritic knees. She’d heard it sometimes helps. Growing marijuana in New Zealand was illegal and she was sure the old couple knew that. Bridget decided she would treat June’s scones with a little more caution in future.
8.
When Bridget got home she immediately began making a spanakopita ... her own recipe, with nutmeg, feta cheese, sunflower seeds and Barry’s dark green silverbeet, wrapped in fine filo pastry.
After taking it out of the oven, she took it straight down to the café and told them she would love the job - whatever hours they could give her. She knew it would not be for long as the café closed for the winter, being very reliant on the tourists who flocked to Golden Bay over the long, hot summer, right till the end of April.
The young couple who ran the café, Paul and Sonya, looked nice enough and they were pleased to find someone keen and so close. The spanakopita smelled delicious. Oh, the seductive effects of nutmeg. They told her to come around with her other specialties the next day.
So that night saw Bridget working in her kitchen. To make the rich, buttery 'torte', she used hazelnuts, grown locally and sold from a roadside stall. She savoured the rich smell coming from the oven.
And the next morning, she began making the Thai seafood curry. Not hard with the Thai green curry paste in the fridge, a tin of coconut milk in the pantry, lemon grass from the garden and some frozen Golden Bay scallops and cockles in the freezer. She delivered the two dishes at ten in the morning and was confirmed as the new part-time chef at ten past ten, over a good latté, in the shady garden of the Courthouse café.
Bridget looked forward to working in the stately old bungalow that once was Collingwood’s courthouse and now was its best café. The walls were lined with tongue-and-groove, native, rimu timber and the floors were also ancient, pitted, native timber. Large wooden sash windows let in the sunlight filtered through the ancient pohutukawa trees outside in the garden, in the shade of which there were three large, hand-built, wooden tables for the customers. Local artists, of whom there were plenty around Collingwood, displayed their work on the walls of the café. On colder autumn and spring days, a large wood-burner cast its golden warmth around the dining room. Bridget was pleased that the kitchen had the same natural ambience - no stainless steel and no fluorescent lighting.
She started the following week, mostly working alongside Sonya in the kitchen. Paul generally worked behind the counter and as a waiter. Sonya was a young woman. Bridget guessed her to be in her late twenties. Her body still firm, she wore tight jeans and tea shirts and had a tattoo on her left arm - a flower, no doubt inflicted on herself while she was in her teens. Her hair, bleached and dyed repeatedly, was stiff and straggly. Her eyes were heavily made-up, hiding, according to Bridget, their natural beauty. At the centre of all the make-up, they were two shiny, clear blue gemstones that moved and twinkled, evidence of an alert mind that was interested in people and was passionate about life. In her case, Bridget thought, that would probably be centred around food and her partner.
