Rain in Kawhia, falling heavily night and day, during a recent visit to sort out matters of possibly great cultural importance.
My brother Mark lived there for 24 years until he collapsed on the footpath near his front door in December, and died the next afternoon at Waikato Hospital. He owned the town’s old bank. It was his home and studio. He stored paintings in the vault.
I travelled to Kawhia earlier this month with my sister’s family. Quite a lot of reunions have been held these past six months. Death does that. A funeral is a special event – you only die once. But after death is slow and enduring, long after the sharp claws of grief let go and you move around each other in the rooms of the deceased, making cups of tea, washing the dishes, staring out the window at rain.
Rain, nowhere in sight on the road from Auckland, travelling with my two nieces. I was about 11 when Katrina was born. Perhaps I can acknowledge that it was unusual behaviour for a boy that age to take such delight in pushing her in her pram along the streets of Mt Maunganui but I think it was firstly the first time I felt responsible for someone else, and secondly, love.
Anyway, 54 years later it was her turn to direct the vehicle. Her younger sister Rochelle sat in the back. It was our second journey together since their Uncle Mark died and it was a happy, chattering, familiar drive, once more stopping to admire the Huntly power station and to buy lamingtons at Pirongia, heading west, towards the coast, towards Kawhia, towards rain.
Rain, signalled that night by thunder and a two-hour blackout. We had just finished dinner at The Sands. It was my sister’s birthday. We were the only customers. The Sands opened in late 2023, and looks like an alarmingly big lump of timber and glass next to the little old low-roofed bakery, pub, garage, dairy and fish and chip shop, all on the harbour’s edge.
Kawhia is a fishing village of sorts, with three trawlers in the harbour that night, one of them with a light at the top of the mast. It was the only light shining after the power cut. Dark town on a black night, in silence, about to drown in loud rain.
“Rain began to fall in torrents,” writes Somerset Maugham, in the opening story in Volume 1 of his Collected Short Stories. My brother has about 100 books by Maugham in his house. I picked out Volume 1 and read the opening story in his bed. It’s set in Samoa. Passengers on a ship come ashore and shelter beneath a corrugated iron shed. They are on their way to Apia but an outbreak of measles among the crew means they have to stay in quarantine.
“The rain showed no signs of stopping.” A missionary and his wife bring the word of God. They are unbearable racists. “The rain poured down without ceasing.” They ban dancing. “It swept in from the opening of the harbour.” They are terrified of sex. “It was not like our soft English rain that drops gently on the earth … It did not pour, it flowed … You felt that you must scream if it did not stop.” The story is titled Rain.
Rain, flowing through Kawhia for three days and three nights; I did not ever want it to stop. It was beautiful, a constant white noise as we made cups of tea, washed the dishes and catalogued Mark’s paintings.
I kept thinking: what was the fascination with Maugham? And: what was he thinking, at what speed and with what conviction, when he painted his masterpieces? It was a lovely visit with family. We left in bright winter sunshine.
