Hold the Line

By Kerry Harrison and Dione Jones

Rugby, apartheid, the 1981 Springbok/New Zealand test. More than just a test match.

 

It's 1981 and New Zealand is about to host the Springboks from apartheid South Africa for a national rugby tour. The well-supported protest movement pitches against a nation of die-hard rugby supporters. Despite growing public protest, the Government and Rugby Union are adamant the tour will proceed.

Beth returns from London. Her World War 2 veteran father is a rugby fanatic, her brother becomes a protestor embroiled in street violence. She studies law and meets Viktor who, unknown to her, is a member of the notorious Police Red Squad. What will happen to their polarised relationship in a country where the very survival of civil order is at risk?

 

In this fast-paced novel, the nuances and tensions of the infamous 1981 Springbok Tour are probed and laid bare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cloud Ink Press
• Release date: Jun 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9780473559472

Book preview

One

Viktor feels like he’s on autopilot. The Holden takes an instinctive turn from Salesi’s house in Ponsonby and heads for the valleys of Grey Lynn and Kingsland. Then it cruises to the leafy suburbs of Mt Eden and Epsom where the houses are painted cream – no gaudy colours allowed – and tonight their lights shine like white beacons, flaunting the large verandas and manicured lawns. Citroëns and Jaguars line the streets. So European, yet he’s the only real one here. He might own a slice of this paradise one day. Right now, that seems an impossible dream, plodding through just two papers each year while he works. At least his mother can show off. He can hear her saying to one of the customers, ‘Viktor was in Australia making skyscrapers. Now he’s policeman. Next lawyer!’

He passes through the stone gates of Cornwall Park. The vast acreage that spans out from the tiny mountain is deserted. His headlights light the fields. He can just make out the dark forms of sheep and cows asleep under oaks and fig trees. At the base of the steep incline he parks and disembarks from what feels like his mothership.

Halfway up the winding road to the summit he stops. He just wants to stand and take it all in for a bit – this quiet night – but his feet, still clad in police boots, feel heavy. He takes the weight off each foot, like treading water, warding off the cold that clings to his skin. He cups his hands together, blowing into the hollow, and covers his face. A streetlight buzzes beside him, a fluorescent rectangle, faintly ridiculous, letting him know of its presence as if it has his number, calling out this stranger’s idle loitering. Little does it know that he’s good at standing unseen, avoiding all distractions, watching, taking it all in. He thinks of the way he’d lean against the rough stone wall of his village in Yugoslavia, a six-year-old, observing the incidentals; the Erceg girl as she tried to run home, kicked by the gang of boys that he was too small to join. ‘Fat bitch. Get your stupid hairy face out of here.’

He used to watch the old goat lady ascend the uneven steps to the animals she loved. She’d sit beside them, lowering her bony body onto the ridge, the beasts nonchalantly chewing her offerings.

Later he’d observe his father gutting the fish with unseemly haste, killing them all over again with the fierce ripping of his knife. Then to the kitchen where he’d sit at the table, taking in every movement his mother made as she deftly formed the peach cakes, breskvice, with sugar-coated fingers.

Now, he must pay attention again; watch the body language, the changing signals – the twitching of an eye, the flexing of a hand.

His stillness has allowed the chill to settle inside his head, his torso, his arms and legs like a cooler, holding his head and heart in place. He’s been active today, at least, with his squad, leaping about like devilish children, hidden from public view in a basketball court behind the prison. No one could see them except the sheer grey-stone walls and the odd prisoner peering through barred windows. Mike, Dave, Bruce, Mori, Salesi, just to name a few, practising their arrest holds, just in case ‘The Tourists’ come, Sarge said.

Salesi was his partner. They took turns. Viktor played the part of the protester first.

He was passive, refusing to move. He tried to let his body relax and crossed his arms defensively over his torso. With feet clamped together he attempted to get in the mindset, holding out for a principle, seeing the bigger picture, or just there for a bit of stirring, a bit of rough. He couldn’t go any further with his method acting; there was no time, not with Salesi’s bulk squaring up in front of him. For a moment his mate grinned, then, with sudden precision, one strong arm was around his throat. With easy confidence, Salesi elbowed his head back, as if they were going through the motions of a well-rehearsed dance routine. In one tidy manoeuvre, Salesi’s free arm pulled his torso in and his legs collapsed. Air left his lungs. He went with it as part of the passive thing and lay on the hard ground for a moment trying to get his wind back.

‘Boo hoo, Vik. Come on, get up!’ Salesi’s black boots were in his field of vision. He lunged, tackled him around the legs, and Salesi laughed raucously as he lost his balance and fell over Viktor like a heavy sack.

Sarge blew his whistle from the far side of the court. ‘No fooling around! Get back to business! If this thing goes ahead it may not be so bloody funny!’ His voice boomed across the tarmac, released from some tight place in his chest. He glared at the two of them, eyes squinting, cheeks bitten by the afternoon wind, his paunch pulled in tight with a heavy belt. It was all for show. Sarge had been known to cry like a baby when he saw the dead body of a child. Not in public view though. Never. On the other side of the court, Mike Flaws and his partner Dave Petrie were listening intently to every word Sarge uttered. Mike is even taller, even more angular than Viktor, and Dave, Mike’s sidekick, is short and stocky but just as vicious.

Salesi took a turn as the protester. He was no passive Mahatma Gandhi groupie. He brought his shoulders up ready to run at him but Viktor clasped a hand to his heart and winced in pain, gasping for breath. His mate stopped mid-flight and frowned. Viktor took his hand away and smirked. ‘Jesus, you’re a sucker.’

‘Bastard.’ Salesi powered his way, readying to take Viktor down. In the tumbling and the rolling, they were two panthers on the asphalt. After that it was good to go to his mate’s family home to rest and eat.

Earlier that night, the Fifita family’s small sitting room was just as crammed with heavy furniture as it had always been. The same memorabilia – photos of family, including Salesi’s deceased father, Thomisi – were framed with purple, red, orange and blue leis. The painting of Jesus, the golds and chiselled features showing a romantic Christ, with long hair falling about his shoulders and angelic palagi face, no hint of the Jewish in him. Underneath him, an embroidered sign: JESUS DIED FOR OUR SINS. A huge tapa cloth covered one wall and, on the floor, woven flax. Salesi’s mother, Vea, yelled from the kitchen, ‘You boys want the chop suey? Just made it.’

‘No thanks, Mum. We just want a beer.’

Viktor was relieved. His stomach was sore from the day’s pounding and he didn’t want to put the old lady to any trouble.

‘You been training?’ Vea stood in the doorway, the harsh kitchen light, illuminating her white hair; the hunched shoulders, round torso; the long dress frilled at the hem and splayed sandaled feet.

‘Yeah, we’ve been training hard,’ Viktor replied. His muscles ached from landing on asphalt all day.

‘The boy has been not so bad today,’ Vea said as she retreated into the kitchen. Salesi followed her and returned with two opened beers, froth spilling invitingly over the tops. Viktor could hear Salesi’s wife Lupe, her voice softly murmuring, then the sound of a child coughing. He looked towards the closed door of the sunroom, drew the bottle to his lips and took a big gulp. The bittersweet liquid soothed his throat. ‘Everything okay with Boy?’

‘Yeah. Everything okay. We’re trying a new treatment for the lung. He stays in the sunny room now.’

They settled back. Sipped the beers. Lupe would be cradling the boy with her long arms, telling him a story or singing softly. He could hear Vea in the kitchen, pots clanging, water poured. Island music swung out of the radio. Salesi flicked on the gas fire.

‘Why did you come back? Got sick of the land of Oz?’

‘It was fine while it lasted. Oz has been good to me after those years policing in South Auckland. You know about that, eh?’ He’d finished his beer already. His friend moved quickly to get him another, talking as he took the cap off for Viktor. ‘Yeah. Those were tough years. We were just young cops. Didn’t know what struck us.’

Vea yelled again from the kitchen, ‘You sure you don’t want the chop suey? You look like you need feeding up, Vik. They starve you in Sydney?’

He could smell the juice and the fat of the meat and relented. ‘Yeah, OK. Thanks, Vea.’

He pulled his chair in close to Salesi. ‘You remember that time with the woman in Otahuhu? Her head kicked in and the husband howling like a baby in the yard. The dog was barking and the little kid, his back up against the wall just looking at his mother. Her head all mushy, her mouth dribbling blood. His eyes were as big and dark as the holes in the wall. That nearly did it for me. This protest that’s supposed to happen if the Boks come, this big thing? They don’t know the half of it. What it’s really like, far away from your average protester’s little world. We got to hold the line.’

Vea handed him a plate of steaming food. He took a mouthful of the warm, tender meat.

‘I’m happy to hold the line with you.’ Salesi lifted his bottle and shook it. Viktor returned the gesture. ‘You still get those blinding headaches?’

‘Yeah, not quite so bad now though.’ He smiled, smothering the lie. The pain comes and goes, the intensity depending on what he’s doing. But then and there, earlier tonight, with Salesi, it was going.

‘You ever find out why you get them?’

‘I’ve been told they’re migraines.’ He thought, in some irrational way, he could leave them in Australia, that coming home might shake them off, but no luck. Just a few weeks and they’re back.

The door to the sunroom slowly opened and Lupe emerged, holding Boy’s hand. Her shining hair swept over one shoulder and down the front of her dress like a strap of black liquorice. She’s tall. Her eyes are tilted and wide and, tonight they were a deeper brown, dark with concern and love for her son, who stuck close to his mother, his nightee shirt loose on his body.

‘Say hello to Viktor, Boy,’ she said.

‘Hello Viktor.’

He returned the greeting. The child seemed frozen; gazing at him seriously with eyes like Lupe’s, his small chest moving in and out rapidly behind the thin layer of cotton. It seemed as if he wanted some answer from him. Some explanation for why he spent so much time running out of air. He thought again of that frightened child and the punched-in wall. Behind Boy, through the white curtains, the night was coming, and he decided to head home, to gather himself, to pull away from that deep well.

‘This tour thing’s a chance to get into a whole different style of policing. We had fun out there today, eh? No more smashed holes in the wall. Listen, I better get going. We got lots of training ahead. Thanks for the feed, Vea!’

As he walked to his car, he stopped and looked back at the warm house. He was tempted to go back and burrow in, lulled by the ukulele and the songs of the Pacific coming from Vea’s transistor. This training could all be for nothing. The Boks might not come. Could be chaos. Could be a fizzer. Still, he had some time with his mate.

Salesi feels far away from him now, here, alone, on the side of a mountaintop. Down below, the lights of a bus, meandering along a main road, flash in and out of view. It’s late now. His feet are beginning to feel like clay. Up above, the black sky makes the flanks of One Tree Hill look blunt and alone above this suburban heaven. He’s only just learnt its Māori name from his reading of New Zealand history – Maungakiekie. These green slopes disguise the hidden menace from the ancient past, that ripping out 28,000 years ago, along with all the other child mountains of Auckland. They were a silent witness for the buried children, the women and men felled by muskets – those imported British weapons, like the names given to these volcanic bumps: Eden, Pigeon, Albert, Roskill, Wellington. As a child, he and his mates ranged over them with their toy guns.

He ventures further on up the road, the moon guiding his way. At the summit he can see the city lights fanning out in all directions, endless floating rubies, sapphires and diamonds, the jewelled cloak hiding any misdemeanours. Drug deals, theft, the odd wife and kid bashing. The odd affair. The world he’d dived into as a police officer, just a boy really, straight out of school. After just a few years, he had no choice but to get away. Like so many other Kiwis, he’d escaped across the Tasman.

Tonight, that world is anchored in the distant harbour. To the north, the promenades and Edwardian houses of Devonport. The moon splashes in the gulf. A pale-green wash covers the island, Rangitoto, her volcanic cone just visible, her sides spanning out into the sea like a giant stingray. To the west, the odd light flashes from the bush-clad Waitākere ranges. Beyond them, unseen, the high cliffs and wild surf of the black-sand beaches: Piha, Karekare and Te Henga where potters and painters and writers live with their barefoot children. Out on the highways, Ford Cortinas, no doubt filled with long-haired boys sharing a joint, cruise the highways. Finally, he looks to the industrial south; part-rough, part-rural, just like One Tree Hill with its farm animals in the middle of a city. Up here on this autumn night, it’s empty of people. Just the odd cow softly nuzzles the thick grass, either too dumb or disinterested to bear witness or help if anyone falls prey to something or someone. Some earlier herd, long gone to the meat-works, was oblivious to the children’s kamikaze, blitzkrieg battles. It was just air – all that shouting, raging, laughing. Nothing damaged, just landing winded on the slopes, the odd shoulder yanked out of joint with all that pulling and pushing, limping home with an occasional bloodied knee. He was a German, a Jap, a soldier for the Allied Forces. Once he asked, Can I be a partisan? The other children didn’t know who or what that was.

He’s only been back six weeks, but it feels like he’s never been away. He looks at his watch. It’s midnight. He’s delaying the return to his parents’ house with its square windows, square everything – their sized-down world, far from their beloved Yugoslavia, that big world. They’d be asleep, their fish and chip shop downstairs empty, but the smell lingering. There’s no escaping those fish. His mother endlessly tries to wipe them away, but they hide in the grease that drifts up from the shop and permeates the walls. He used to think of them alive, the shoal swimming as one being, racing through the water, eyes glistening, on a high, like surfing, like flying, then hauled up by the net, tossed on deck and separated in their flapping, gasping death. He can’t eat them.

Now he can only see the faint outline of houses, their residents having gone to bed, turning out the lights. Without that shine on their glossy exteriors, they are down to their bare bones, just wood and glass. He wonders where she lives, that girl who answered the professor’s question in the Torts law lecture early this morning. She shot him a tart look when he’d interrupted her with his clumsy, late entrance to the lecture theatre. He liked the way she talked, with her clipped tongue and swift delivery.

He carefully begins his descent, circling the crater as he goes, his eyes avert from its dark recesses. With the feel of the spongy terrain under his feet, the way the hill is worn in places, the ridges and steps the Māori used for their kumara growing, Maungakiekie’s many terraces are a great place to spot the enemy before they spot you.

Two

She lies very still, listening to the rustling of trees and the claws of some creature on the roof – clack. A bird? A possum? Earlier, when she was supposed to be studying, she thought she heard someone outside the house. A neighbour maybe, but the footsteps that walked up, then down the street were too heavy for Mr Hathaway’s. She didn’t want to look out of the window and break her concentration. Not that all that intense focus has done any good this evening. She can just make out the screwed-up foolscap on the floor, a trail of wasted thought.

She needs to sleep. The day has been a long one. She thinks back to its start; the early morning lecture with Prof Savage and his thick eyebrows and prowling gait. She thinks about him circling the podium in his customary garb: worn shirt barely covering his paunch, trousers just holding on, tie loose, nose a pinch of red. He relishes the Socratic style. Each morning, with his left fist clenched at his side and at the ready, he surveys his potential prey.

The law of torts is an exact science. The finer points of what constitute a wrong, where the duty of care lies. She’d spent hours sifting over the case law the class had been given the day before, having picked out the meaning from its armour plating, for once, this morning, she was ready to give the answer.

Savage was looking down his list. He raised his arm and a pudgy finger pointed Beth’s way. ‘You, Miss, in the front row. How does the law apply to the facts of the Donoghue v Stevenson case? What is the significance of this?’

Knowing but not wanting to appear too smart or too eager, she paused, looking around at her fellow students. A mediocre lot, the class of 1981, mostly white, from the inner-city suburbs like her, some desperately bored, slumping into their seats, retreating from the dry course content. They stared blankly back, along with the Prof, his eyebrows sardonic wings.

Just as she was about to speak, the guy who is always late pushed open the door to the lecture theatre. The only spare seat was between two prim girls who looked like they were straight out of school. To get there he had to scramble across five people. He muttered, ‘Excuse me. Sorry, eh. Thanks. Just about there.’ His dirty duffle bag swung against heads. Two girls took pre-emptive action, shrinking back into the spartan upholstery, eyes wide with alarm. The whole class watched, welcoming the distraction, some smugly turning pens between fingers. She felt a surge of anger at him for making her look stupid as she waited to give her answer, like some child in primary school.

‘Go on, say it, Beth.’ Chrissy nudged Beth’s side, encouraging her to speak up even though her friend also knew the answer. The information was dull and straightforward, yet she tried to deliver it with a touch of drama. There was none to be found.

‘It means that sometimes when there is no intention of injury to another party, the party still may be held responsible for damages if the injury to the other party was avoidable. The owner of the café had a duty…’ here she paused, slowing, lowering her tone, ‘of care to the consumer. If this is breached, then the customer is entitled to damages.’

‘Yes. That’s correct,’ Savage mumbled, ‘yes, yes,’ and turned to write on the board.

Beth put her head down, pretending to busily write notes while out of the corner of her eye, she examined the late guy’s profile. It was almost Grecian but too heavy around the brow for that. Then the Prof said something unexpected.

‘I wonder where the duty of care will lie when this country erupts. As it will. As it will. Will it lie with our Prime Minister, Muldoon?’ He muttered the words ‘prime minister,’ as if in apology and coughed, wiping away whatever was distasteful from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Matt Todd, that Remuera-bred, private-school boy from her Criminal Law tutorial, put his hand up. ‘What will the tour do to our reputation overseas?’

He sat behind her and she didn’t have to look back to know what his mannerisms would be as he waited for the answer. There’d be the considered sucking on his Parker pen, imported shoes impatiently jiggling. Savage came forward from the podium and began pacing, pushing out his gut, parading this way and that. Then he stopped and almost whispered to his cynical students, who had their arms crossed, keeping their distance.

‘Fraternising with white South Africa, the world’s racist pariah! This country will be scorned.’ He stepped back, folding his hands over the stilled belly, impressed with his own gravitas. Someone at the back scoffed.

The lecture had finished. She gathered her notes, tapping them on the long desk so they fell together to form a square. Chrissy leaned into her side. Her hot-pink jumper a haze beside her own dark jersey. ‘You were a clever girl today. I thought you didn’t like torts. I thought you found it such a bore! You said that you prefer all that wicked stuff we get with Proctor.’

It’s true that Criminal Law is her