Coloured Memories

A short story about a European pioneer of Wellington, New Zealand

Old men sit in the sun and dream. Henry Thompson's great-granddaughter Helen, climbs onto his knee and wriggles to get comfortable. Henry suppresses a cry of arthritic pain. There will not be another Wellington Anniversary day for him and ancient pains will not be allowed to spoil this one. He is after all the hero of the day, a living relic, a fossil of those distant primitive days 50 years earlier when the pakeha planted themselves on Petone beach and planned to build a city.

Helen is at last comfortable and begs for a story. He is to tell the story of how he met great-grandma Charlotte, when he had first come to New Zealand. He screws up his face and pretends horror. He's good at this. Helen squeals with laughter and eggs him on. Her mother looks across the picnic crowd and rolls her eyes. Both her grandfather and daughter will be over-tired tonight. But this is their day. The old Wellington pioneer and life's beginner.

Henry starts his story. He tells her he couldn't speak to great grandma he was so nervous. He screws up his mouth and makes gurgling noises. Helen laughs appreciatively. Henry confides that when a man meets a beautiful woman like her great grand mother he must be very sophisticated and impress her with the clever things he has to say.

He pauses for effect but Helen cannot wait.

“You told her the leaves are green,” she shrieks.

“And I told her....”

The pause is deliberate.

“You told her the sky was blue..... and it WASN'T.”

Still laughing Helen runs off to be with younger company. The family ritual is fulfilled and Henry settles back to rub an aching knee and think of times 50 years earlier.

Resting, listening to family and friends it is still easy to conjure up the three days the Aurora waited for good conditions to enter Wellington Heads. Of course there was no Wellington then. The new settlement was to be Britannia and was to be built wherever suitable land could be bought. Bizarrely the New Zealand Company had committed several shiploads of immigrants - a thousand people - to the high seas without owning an acre of land in New Zealand. Miraculously it worked. Colonel William Wakefield, purchased, - at least to his own satisfaction - the huge New Zealand Harbour called by Maori Whanga-nui-o-Tara and all visible land around it. For the Maori chiefs Wharepouri and Te Puni who led negotiations, the pakeha gifts were too seductive and the need for pakeha allies too great and so when the Aurora dropped anchor on 22 January 1840 the travellers had friends and a homeland.

“You give me clothes, I build you house, you give me book.” said one quick study of pakeha ways. And so in a country still at risk from tribal wars, with hostile Maori chiefs living barely 20 miles away, European settlement began.

The seagulls still cry over Wellington in 1890. Perhaps there are more now that they are attracted by human detritus, but Henry remembered them mocking from the sky as the travel weary passengers came ashore. Henry is a lucky one. He is young, unencumbered and strong, but best of all he is a builder of houses and that is what the young colony needs first. There are tents and European pre-fabrications but the best results will come soonest from raupo huts constructed with the help of the local Maori.

Henry smiles to himself as he remembers the jokes at his expense as he learned from the Maori to weave raupo over the stick frames and to pack mud on roofs and walls to make the dark small huts that served as the first homes. For this he had trained in wood and brick and built fine houses in Liverpool.

The colonel's prefabricated structure was slightly superior. Not the fine building that would grace Thorndon Flats when its time came but in a world of mud huts and tents it was as close to a Government House as they could get. Henry still felt the swell of pride when the Colonel admired his handiwork and nodded approvingly. At the end of it an extension for Sam Revan's printing press was attached. From there the first newspaper of the new colony would come. Who else has built a government house and printery in a few days?

But then the Oriental arrived and Henry first saw Miss Charlotte Bridgette Ludlam. He was landing a pig by passing it from the longboat to a sailor standing in the water when her first spied her being helped ashore further along the beach.

“Ere lad, you going to cuddle that pig much longer? I got water in me boots standing 'ere.” But then the older man's eyes followed Henry's and he nodded understanding. “Perhaps you should save the cuddles for her and just give me the pig, aye?” The unloading went on as before but Henry had changed. Whether he could win the lovely Charlotte Ludlam or not, he was no longer free. The vision had him prisoner.

He sought excuses to go on the Oriental and later when the Ludlams landed permanently he sought excuses to be near, but the glimpses were always distant and unsatisfying.

The days that followed were busy. Henry was needed for advice. Families were keen to get settled off the ships and so Henry worked and advised, and watched for a glimpse of Miss Charlotte.

At last there was the joy of a visit from her father, John Ludlam, asking for help. An excuse to please the family and meet the daughter. The family were pleased with the work he did, but the daughter was absent, staying on board the Oriental. It was small satisfaction to get a pat on the back and an enthusiastic endorsement of a young man's skills and adaptability in a new land.

And so on a still warm evening in February 1840, just a month after his arrival Henry went for an evening walk to fetch vegetables from the Korokoro plantations. The poor boy from Liverpool had much to be satisfied with. He was no longer poor. Food was plentiful as it never had been at home. Land and housing would become available. Best of all he was no longer a lowly working class boy. He was respected, as he had never been in Liverpool. A strong young man and builder in a land that valued those things. And he was in love. Even if only with an unattainable vision.

As Henry gazed across Petone from the Korokoro hills he was not to know that soon the work would begin again at a new site at Thorndon. He wondered what would become of his Maori friends and helpers if ships kept arriving and the landscape changed to town and farm. In this he was prophetic. Soon Maori would be gone from what had become alien land, giving up on the share they had been promised and leaving it to a steady flow of the invading Pakeha. Henry believed, because the New Zealand Company had said, that the capital would come to Wellington. That was far in the future of that 1840 evening and would only come when the South Island's burgeoning population forced the Governor's hand after much conflict with Wellington settlers.

And so Henry, well fed, a valued member of the new society, and eager for the future, set off the long way home by the river, and passing through a grove of thick mature trees, dreaming of how he would one day sweep Miss Charlotte Bridgette Ludlam off her feet was both delighted and horrified to meet her and her family coming the other way.

He had never been this close before. She was truly beautiful. A mass of golden hair with clear and startling large eyes. The causal walking clothes set of figure full and sensuous. Henry longed for inspiring words but none came.

Charlotte waited and since nothing was offered, said “A pleasant evening Mr Thompson.”

“Yes,” Henry looked about desperately for inspiration. “The leaves are very green.”

A flicker of puzzlement crossed her face.

Desperate to make amends Henry tried again. “But the sky is very blue.”

Charlotte glanced up but the darkening cloudy sky was invisible though the foliage.

“Somewhat overcast I think Mr Thompson,” she said.

Then to Henry's delight she turned back to her parents and said, “I think I have walked far enough, perhaps Mr Thompson will accompany me back to the beach.”

John Ludlam was not happy to leave his daughter in Henry's care but took his wife's arm and moved on. Henry's ordeal was not quite over. John turned back and said, “You two are to go straight back if you go back together. Anyway, Mr Thompson, Miss Ludlam will value your instruction on the colour of the sea.”

Charlotte found things to occupy her on the far side of the track and made unladylike snorting sounds.

Henry waited a moment for her parents to move on and for Charlotte to compose herself.

“I am glad to be entertaining, but I had hoped it would be my wit and not my foolishness, Miss Ludlam.”

Charlotte looked up at him still chuckling. She had a seductive way of using her large eyes to look up through her lashes. “Perhaps the beauty of the green leaves overcame you Mr Thompson.”

“It was not the beauty of the leaves that defeated me, Miss Ludlam.”

“Ah gallantry! The colour of our conversation is much improved Mr Thompson,” and Charlotte laughed and squeezed Henry's arm.

The world was a beautiful place for Henry.

If this was a fairy tale, and it nearly is, I would say that Charlotte and Henry lived happily ever after, but no one does. The deaths of two of their six children marred their happiness and sometimes the hard work and drudgery of pioneer life wore them down until they quarrelled, but they lived much happier than most for 35 years until Charlotte died in Molesworth Street under the wheels of a wagon pulled by a capricious horse.

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Old men sit in the sun and dream. Below the smoke of a large modern town drifts lazily. Trains now come from the north where once only difficult walking tracks gave access. Steamships go to England in less than half the time of the sailing ships of 1839. The forest is gone, the parrots have fallen silent and the Maori and their villages are a memory. The old world has passed and Henry knows from the strange new pain daily growing in his chest that soon the last of the pioneers will be gone as well.

Reviews

[Lena M. P.]

Excellent story with pieces of history sprinkled within. Kept my interest throughout. Sad when our days are through but glad to watch our grandchild begin theirs.