XXII: Last Post
Propaganda rules
When heads and hearts are forced…
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Main Trunk Line, south of Auckland
September 15, 1984
The train rattled and ker-thunked its ponderous way through the satellite towns of what had been Auckland’s commuter belt. Grace hadn’t been sure she even wanted to come back when the call came down the line from Hamilton, but the jealousy in Mel’s eyes had been enough to convince her that refusing might not be the best move. At least the trip would give her the chance to get further from the farm than the big smoke of Morrinsville, though beyond that she had no idea what to expect.
To be honest, it was hard to know what to expect from a hometown that had been nuked.
Four hours. They’d opened the exclusion zone for “displaced persons” (not
refugees, not in New Zealand; that would be demoralising) for four hours to assess the damage to their properties and either determine whether they intended to return from their current places of residence or, if the damage was beyond their means to repair or they simply wished to forfeit the rights to their land, recover some of their belongings and begin the process of setting those affairs in order. They had until 2pm to get to the checkpoint at the Army food store at Sylvia Park, which meant catching the train from Hamilton at 10am, which meant being in Morrinsville to catch the Civil Defence bus from Tauranga at 8:45, which meant borrowing the half-rusted pushbike from the farm and cycling for an hour and a half through Waihou and Waitoa to get to the stop in time, which meant waking up at 5:30 to get dressed, help cook breakfast for the evacuee labourers, and get her documents and gear ready to be out the door at quarter past seven just in case a delay happened on the way. She’d slept in fits and starts on the buses and train, interrupted by other people talking, sudden starts and stops at nameless towns and street corners, and the pangs from her belly as anxiety tied new knots in the knots in her guts.
So no, Grace wasn’t enjoying her day. The sole mercy was that the storm which had blown in on Tuesday had finally dried out last night, so none of this took place in the rain. So to balance out this luck, there was a bloody delay at the checkpoint because some stupid bastard had forgotten his identification documents. He wasted ten minutes of his and everyone else’s time making excuses to the stone-faced policeman at the guard post, looking desperately to the unsympathetic crowd for support, and eventually sat in defeat with his face in his hands off to the side. Grace might have felt some sympathy for his wasted trip, but she found it very difficult these days to empathise with someone for being stupid.
They finally got sorted into fourteen groups of twenty (and one group of nineteen) in front of a sign shouting to the world in block letters that Looters Will Be Shot, were assigned two armed soldiers each, and made their way off in awkward walking buses along the footpath, bruised black-and-grey where splotches of water hung about drying slowly in the humid afternoon.
It took three-quarters of an hour for Grace’s closely-supervised group to go past Hamlin Park, hang a left and sign off half the group to check their homes before turning right and signing off the other half. As the soldier – a weekend warrior highschool dropout judging by the baby-smooth cheeks and blackhead-speckled neck – patrolled the street to make sure nobody went about coveting their neighbours’ goods, Grace got her first look at the house since February.
Pretty much all of the windows were gone, blown out by the blast or by storms in the last…Jesus, had it already been six months? The roof and frame had held, though, which was more than could be said for a couple of the houses she’d passed on the way up here. The door was closed; apparently the police and army had been through the whole subdivision to remove bodies, clear squatters (sometimes, if a fight broke out, points one and two became the same), and mark properties before the evacuees came back. Grace entered through the kitchen, everything as it’d been the last time she’d seen it. Mould speckled the lacy curtains, and a film of dust and shattered glass covered most of the floor.
Most of the floor; an uneven trail was discernible where the recovery teams had come in, had a look, and dragged out…
that.
Following the trail to the hallway, a shaft of light shone from an open door and, as a thought occurred to Grace, her spine stiffened and her legs froze mid-step as the stink of bleach and decay hit her nostrils.
When did my mouth get so dry? Shit. Shitting fucking shit on a shit. She took a moment to close her eyes and breathe deeply for a bit, placing a clammy hand on her chest to try and feel her heartbeat and slow it down. When she’d calmed down enough to feel the feeling come back to her legs, Grace backed into the kitchen, still with her eyes closed, and blinked down at the lino until she’d gathered herself a bit.
Okay, how do we get around that
shit again? Okay, okay, let’s just…okay. Yeah, that might do.
Squeezing her eyes shut until she saw white specks, Grace felt her way along the wall until she felt the door frame. Humming half-remembered verses of a song from the summer to keep her mind focused on something else she reached cautiously into the ether, coming across no resistance. A few more seconds of blind groping at the air before the sudden chill of the door handle, which she pulled towards her until the door shut. A few more paces before she opened her eyes, leaving behind the bathroom and the nightmare inside. She didn’t notice her hands balled into shaking fists until she came to the lounge and reached up instinctively to hit the light switch, shaking her head to clear it and clenching and unclenching her fingers to banish the thoughts.
No power anyway. Is there? An exploratory
click-click of the big rectangular rocker didn’t do anything, so looked like they’d cut the lights.
As she looked around the room shrouded in dust Grace shivered and drew her jacket across her as a chill began spreading through her chest, spearing her heart as she stood dumbly in the lounge staring at the dead TV. The first breaths exploded out like she’d been thrown into ice water, Grace leaning against the wall for support as her eyes lost focus and her heart thundered.
She didn’t know how long she was there, white knuckles and clawing fingers curled around the doorframe as her breath shuddered back to normal and scenes of the last six months raced through her mind. It was familiar and unfamiliar
it’s wrong it’s wrong it’s wrong like the weird alien sense you got when coming home after camp
wrong wrong wrong and your brain had only just gotten used to the layout of the dormitory, but was just waiting to dust off the memory of what things were meant to be like
wrong wrong wrongwrongwronghave to leave get out get out.
After what might have been five minutes or five hours she found herself in her bedroom, where she started to look through the clothes, shoes, and books scattered across the floor where she’d left them when frantically stuffing undies and shirts into a bag while the world screamed to a halt outside. What was left was unappealingly musty and damp; when she finished bundling things into her duffel it was with a compulsion to wash her hands, but wiping them on her sheets was a workable second. Pursing her lips in thought, she started looking through the drawers, humming half-remembered fragments of songs from before the war. A watch, a clock radio, some bracelets went into the bag before she seated herself on the bed to think of what else was left.
A sigh filled the heavy, musty air, stirring the drifting dust into spiralling patterns.
How am I meant to rebuild anything
here? Slinging the duffel bag over her shoulder, Grace moved into the lounge to see if there was anything worth keeping, her brain turning over as she picked gingerly through the bookcases and drawers to look for anything worth having. Theoretically, the house was hers, as was everything in it.
It doesn’t matter, she thought as a couple of damp banknotes, ones, twos, and even a rogue ten, were peeled from the old hiding place.
None of it matters, fuck it. No point in staying.
Outside, the afternoon was quickly melting into darkness, the silhouettes of houses and trees stretching north towards the low, crouching hump of Mount Wellington proper, standing out in perfect blackness against the indigo blue of the sky, where the last orange streaks of sunset dipped towards the west.
The air was heavy and damp with a half-serious promise of thunder later on, proper Auckland air she hadn’t realised she’d missed until she’d had to return to it, the aroma of the neighbours’ magnolia lazily perfuming the footpath.
Despite the fading warmth Grace shivered as she looked out on the row of houses where nobody and nothing lived, a street lined with weatherboard tombstones. A handful of streetlights, maybe every tenth or twentieth one, had been replaced along Barrack Road as a halfhearted concession to reconstruction and been lit, twinkling like sodium-vapour fireflies in the purple-blue. Behind her, the dying sunlight glinted off the very top of the high-voltage transmission pylons which marched east to west, a couple of dead wires hanging limply in the evening calm. It took a while to register the soldier trying to catch her eye until he was practically in front of her.
“Time’s up, miss. Got everything you needed? Gotta head back to the station.”
Grace nodded, and said something about joining the group around him. They’d made it to the corner when the other soldier shouted something Grace couldn’t make out at the Territorial, whose face went sheet-white.
“Jesus Christ, not
another one,” he snapped, sprinting towards where his comrade stood outside a house with an open door. The returnees milled uneasily for a while as evening came on in full, and another four soldiers came jogging around the corner from Sylvia Park, two passing them to head for the house while the other pair shepherded them back towards the depot.
The last man from their original group of twenty never did come back.
Nothing left to go back to. Nothing left to hold her back. Nothing to do but make the most of it. The future was a blank slate, with all the excitement and terror that held.
For now, she was left with simmering anxiety and confusion as she walked south into the dawning night with scraps of her life slung over one shoulder and twenty-seven dollars in her pocket. It wasn’t a particularly consoling consolation prize, but at least Grace was alive to complain about it.
What more could you really ask for?
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We’re safely moving with the flow
I’m marching with patriotic friends…
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Tauranga, Bay of Plenty
September 16, 1984
Spring was in the air, a warm nor’wester stirring the bark on the piles of logs at the dockside and whipping up the smell of damp wood and diesel fuel, salt spray and bird shit. And, for the first time in months, the Corporal (for he had been given a pat on the head and told “good boy” in return for everything he’d been dragged through in the last few months) was without orders or a mile-long to-do list.
He’d done a good job, so far, of not crying whenever he thought about Brighton. He’d done pretty well at convincing himself it had never happened, though the scene replayed itself every time he fell asleep. Like it hadn’t been bad enough the first time it happened.
After England, the company had spent another six weeks in the ship, getting progressively more sick of each other’s stinking feet as they and the Corporal’s stomach pitched and rolled from Portsmouth to Ascension to Reunion to Melbourne, the Corporal leaving plenty more down the side of the ship to feed the gulls along the way.
Off the boats, in the rain. Parade for the locals, in the rain. Stand for far too damn long listening to speeches about the Anzac Spirit, in the rain. Twelve-hour pass, in the rain. Back on the boats, in the rain.
Six days across the Tasman, vomit rising to gale-force, dying down as they rounded Cape Reinga. Off the boat, another parade, and more speeches before being bundled into some rooms better-upholstered than the ones in Geraldton for more debriefing to wring out those last precious drops of intel.
“Now, your CO made it clear that there had been some issues with the deployment. I think you agree it wouldn’t be in the best interests of the nation for these sorts of little incidents to be put in the record where they might be misunderstood by civilians in a few years, wouldn’t you?” A marker hovered over the page as yellow eyes brooking no dissent bore into him. “Here, for instance, there seems to be a little typo. Says you discharged your rifle at a civilian.” The hollow man sucked air through his teeth, scything through the offending words. “Clumsy writing, that. I’m quite sure the Major meant to say ‘an insurgent attempting to steal food from a communal store was dispatched’ ” pause for thought with the scratching of a pencil in the margin filling the silence “ ‘dispatched thanks to the quick actions of Corporal X, who anticipated and prevented a potential breakdown in civil order.’ Yes. I think that puts things much more clearly for the history books, don’t you?”
Everyone was worn to the bone and ready to snap at one another at the slightest provocation, and that was perhaps why the Army looked like it was in no rush to get them back to Trentham. Officially, of course, the explanation was that it had to wait until they had transport ready, which thanks to the Army’s usual ruthless efficiency could be anytime between tomorrow and Christmas.
For now, they were billeted in a hotel which just so happened to be within earshot of the cop shop, with the pleasures of real beds and real food which went with it. In theory, there wasn’t much a soldier could complain about after a four-month deployment to hell and back. Fresh linen, clean undies, hot showers, and access to actual alcohol at the hotel bar.
And so, with the honour of the Army riding on it, the men of the Company gritted their teeth and got down to complaining about living the life of Reilly.
“Jesus, I think I ate a cat in England better than that steak.”
“I think the steak
was that cat from England.”
“Don’t even joke about that shit, man.”
“Speaking of; Tangaroa, did you just shit yourself?”
“It’s the cauliflower cheese, Corporal.”
“Is
that what it was?”
“Jesus, give ‘em another stripe and they all of a sudden think they can blame their farts on any other bastard.”
“What was that, Scott?”
“You reckon Hone’s bad now, sir, you should see him after lights out.”
“Or smell him.”
“Or hear you, Zitnik, you toss yourself like a fifth-former.”
“I do not!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, Zitnik, learn to take –”
“Hey, mind yourself around Killer, mate; he’ll have you up against the wall.”
“Ah, only if I try cutting in front of him in the bread line.”
The Corporal stopped mid-comment at those last couple sentences, the words cooling around his mouthful of mashed potatoes. Feeling the eyes of the table on him as he glanced around to see who’d brought the incident back up, he forced out a smile and a braying laugh to stuff the genie back in the bottle. After a moment of tension, the others slowly lowered their gazes and ate in uncomfortable silence. The Corporal decided to try and break the tension.
“Hey, better be careful, Scott, or I’ll shoot you, too.” No good. His voice sounded tinny in his ears even as he spoke.
Christ, that was stupid. Why did I even say
that? He wolfed down the rest of his food (all of it; complain all he wanted, it was still the best he’d eaten in months) and left.
This must be why people let themselves burn out, the Corporal reckoned; resting just gave you time to think, and since there was a lot of work to distract yourself with these days, there were endless opportunities to leave yourself too tired to waste time worrying about what might have happened or who you might have shot in
the back of the head back of the head right between the eyebrows brains blown out his forehead smashed on the floor like a dropped pie ages ago. After all, he had two stripes now, and that meant leading. Couldn’t lead if you were going crazy.
That little moment after waking up and not knowing who or where you were was a nice holiday from it, but once that passed it was a matter of getting up quickly. The less you lay in bed, the less time you gave yourself to dwell on things and the easier it was to stop your brain from remembering what it had just been dreaming about. It also let you feel productive, like you were doing something and going somewhere.
All the time in the world, and not a lot to do with it. First day back, on the piss; second day, rolling in hungover misery; days three and four, repeat one and two; day five, shaping up to be the same again. When he went out and drank and laughed and joked and sang and fought, for a little while nothing mattered and he was everyone’s friend and there was something to do that took him away from himself and the hell of having a memory.
For tonight, then, he’d go out and have another drink and maybe a root. Blame his departure from the table on the cooking, joke about Tangaroa’s bowels, and everything would be hunky-dory. Besides, sooner or later the Army would catch up with the company and have them shipped back to Wellington, where there’d be all the work in the world to do.
Until then, sure, he knew that something was wrong and that he had to do something, so what better to do than find something to do. So long as he kept himself busy, it’d all sort itself out fine.
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We’re told of the pride we all should feel
We’re marching towards a sticky end…
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Portsmouth, England
September 19, 1984
Wednesday. Thirty weeks since the Exchange. Summer had come late and was leaving early, though it was still a bit warmer than Christchurch had been a week ago. A soft sou’wester blew, carrying respite from the ghost of the summer heat that haunted David Lange in his natty suit.
He’d made it, as he’d expected. He’d also suspected, and continued to suspect, that he was being sent off to the other side of the world so Geoffrey could declare whatever fait accompli he pleased to the Emergency Cabinet without interference from the head of its largest party, and had seen little to confront that suspicion.
What did he see? A national trauma which made New Zealand’s gut-punch look like a love tap. There had been some disturbingly frank after-action reports from Transit of Venus on the state of affairs up here which had provoked some soul-searching conversations (“are we meant to be grateful human life is so worthless there,” he’d asked before he left, “that a New Zealander killing a civilian doesn’t matter?”), but even those bleak descriptions had apparently been sanitised for domestic consumption. Admittedly, he hadn’t actually
been outside Portsmouth itself – foreign dignitaries were firmly corralled within the town, right where H.M. Government could keep tabs on them – but the man next to him in the car to the Cathedral had.
Godwit – well, he was
named Gerald Turner, but after you referred to someone on the other side of the globe in the abstract and by a code for several months, habits tended to form – wasn’t the fellow David had expected to meet. Bill Young had been exactly what he’d’ve expected: a doddery Tory who lost his seat in ’81 and got a lovely bauble to entertain him into his dotage. Godwit – Gerry – was somewhere in his early thirties, had an MA from Waikato, and therefore perhaps inevitably stood decidedly on the left wing (“
I finally have the Government I voted for, and all it took was the end of the world” he’d joked upon meeting the Labour leader). How the hell he’d got into the foreign service was quite past David, but he was refreshingly honest in the way of someone who’d seen and done too much to care about things like career or reputation.
“Absolutely rooted,” Gerry confided over a drink in David’s hotel room, “and no two ways about it. I met the heads of mission we sent over, and it sounds like they were shocked at how the Poms manage to get by with so little.” Sensing the Minister’s awkwardness, Turner waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry: we’re
definitely being bugged. Not like there’s anything we’ll say the Poms don’t already know. You’re leaving the country in a week, anyway, which is hardly time to get in trouble with all the other much more important people there are to listen in on first, and as for me, well, what are they gonna do to me? Cut off my rations?” He said this looking like a sharply-dressed scarecrow; his cheekbones betrayed a larger man who’d gone to bed without supper for a long, long time, and the dark bags beneath his eyes were lit by a devilishly amused glimmer. “Ooh, maybe I’ll disappear!” A hand shimmied ostentatiously before him. “Nasty workplace accident, fall under a filing cabinet that leaves a bruise like a garrotte.”
“I’m sure there’s something in the Accident Compensation Act 1973 about that one, but it might’ve been overruled by Muldoon precious bloody Emergency Powers Act.”
The grim smile faded from Gerry’s face.
“I don’t think you’ve much to complain about there. What happened to Piggy, anyway? Heart finally give out?” The note of vicious hope stuck through the flat tone like a tack in a pillowcase.
“Not by the time I’d left. Muldoon” he cast about for the words “Muldoon cracked. He’d already lost his grip, we knew that years ago, but he’d dashed himself against the rocks trying to hold everything together. It’s more than any one man can do.”
“You sound sorry for him.” Gerry tried to make it sound like an accusation and failed, the sadness creeping in despite himself.
“It’s hard not to be, once you’ve seen it in person. His
eyes, Gerry, his eyes. They were – it’s that feeling of having failed at something, magnified a hundredfold. Worse, that beady little evil light, you know the one; that had gone out. He’s just…” Lange spread his hands.
“Is he still in Parliament? Nope, wait, stupid question; he wouldn’t have stepped back unless he were incapable.”
“Not in the sense of being completely away with the fairies, but word has it he’s making a pretty good go of drinking himself to death.”
“I wouldn’t have thought there was enough alcohol left in the country for that project. He has the liver of a concrete hippopotamus.”
“I do feel bad for the old tartar, you know. He had to go, and it’s for the best that the country forget who dragged us into the war, so we can just get on with rebuilding without one half of the country blaming the other. Worse yet because, between you and me, it’s only his ridiculous Think Big nonsense that has the country in as good a shape as it’s in.” A pause for thought. “How about you? Have you had the pleasure of the Prime Minister’s company?”
“Little Willie? Not directly, though I’ve heard bits and pieces. If you thought the Tories were bastards before, try placing them under a megaton of pressure and see what kind of diamonds you get from that lump of coal. No, that’s unfair,” he allowed, raising a hand as the other cradled his forehead “they’ve had their share of hard decisions, too. But it’s a shit working with people to fix a crisis you know they helped create.”
“Well, isn’t that just politics. But what else can we do?”
Neither of them had any good answers there.
Portsmouth wasn’t shabby even by Christchurch standards; the place had been scrubbed down with toothbrushes for the Coronation, the British having managed by some witchcraft to dredge up enough bunting to string along the route from Southsea Castle to the Anglican Cathedral, a mile or so of mostly flat, open parkland with plenty of room for crowds to come and gawp at their future King.
And by God had they come. Portsmouth wasn’t a big place, only about the size of Manukau, yet it was packed to the gunwales with spectators: about a hundred thousand, they reckoned, and that was with private transport and time off work still alien concepts. Every one of them had a deep and existential tiredness etched into their eyes and was, by and large, stick-thin. Lange wasn’t the fattest man in town, but he had to be close to it.
For today, though, none of that mattered. For the first time in months, there was hope and joy and something to look
forward to.
The Cathedral was a wedding cake turned outside-in, all white pillars and gilt facings and big plain windows to let in the weakly-shining sun, nothing like the looming, gothic Westminster Abbey nobody would ever again see outside photographs. For the sake of posterity and the cameras, richly-adorned chairs lined the aisles; back from these, the guests were seated in folding chairs which wouldn’t have gone out of place in an Otorohanga church hall. As the place filled with guests Lionel, David’s opposite number from across the ditch who’d sat next to him on the plane up, leaned over with a guilty squeak to murmur a comment about the royal regalia.
“You have to wonder at the planning, don’t you?” he finished.
David nodded agreement, lapsing into thought on that one. How far ahead had they planned for this? There was something chilling about how, for all promises and oaths and vows made to not fire the last shot, they’d had such carefully-laid plans to protect baubles like this, just in case they were lying. How else did you whistle up a choir and all the fancy togs just like that?
Front and centre was the ancient wooden chair, intricately-carved but far less gaudy than David had expected, standing at the foot of the altar; he shared a chuckle with Lionel when one of them said something about a Coronation Seat. Beneath the chair – which was, depending on whether Gerry was right, either the real McCoy from the thirteenth century or something knocked up last week and splashed with deck stain – sat a heavy, lead-lined box. This was quite definitely a recent addition, constructed for a price which could only be considered insane these days to house the still-irradiated Stone of Scone, retrieved from the heart of dead London at a similar premium.
Lange – and half the rest of the audience – gave a start when the trumpets blasted like air-raid sirens as bishops filed in, before the King-to-be entered with an abridged escort of pages to help cart the trailing robes of state. The choir sang out as Charles-cum-George passed them, seating himself on the Chair of Estate to the right of the maybe-or-maybe-not-King Edward’s Chair, before the Bible, paten and chalice were placed on the altar and the King stood again to turn and face east, as Archbishop Runcie of Canterbury began to speak.
“Sirs, I present unto you King George, your undoubted King: wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?”
“God save King George,” came the reply, setting off the trumpets again. The King made his way back to the Chair of Estate, where the Archbishop challenged him.
“Sir, is your Majesty willing to take the Oath?”
“I am willing.” For the first time, the monarch’s voice rang clearly through the Cathedral.
“Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand…”
The rest of the service passed in a blur of gold and ermine. The King returned to his seat, an interminable communion preceded the anointing in King Edward’s Chair, and the heavy gold coronation robe was finally draped across the King’s shoulders.
More sacred yammering and the crown was finally came the aisle on a velvet pillow and lifted reverently by the Archbishop, who turned with ponderous precision to place it on Charles’ head.
“God save the King,” the audience intoned as horns rang out, “Long live the King.”
Outside, thunder roared across the harbour as the ships present fired a royal salute. Most didn’t have the ammunition to spare for a full twenty-one rounds, let alone the additional twenty-one in memory of London, but the armourers of Portsmouth had done a good job of scrounging sufficient supplies to meet protocol. Some things were too important to let the end of the world get in the way.
That didn’t keep the newborn prince from wailing in Queen Di’s arms, though; from the moment the first shot rang out to the time the procession left the cathedral, his cries were audible in the gaps in the rest of the long, long service. At least it kept the audience awake; while the Archbishop’s drone hadn’t quite sent him to sleep, it had lulled a jetlagged David into half-consciousness in the warm press of bodies.
After a lifetime, the royals made their way out and the parade around Portsmouth began, the Sovereign riding in an open-topped car flanked with very serious-looking and very well-armed men.
Following them, David made his way with the crowd into the bright day, and a new age.
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A surge of national pride!
Is welling up inside…
From Hobson, Z. “Conclusion,” in World War Terminus: The End of the World at the End of the World.
Hamilton: Waikato University Press, 2024.
We’ve spent forty years recovering from the tragedies of 1984. As we’ve seen, some never recovered. Indeed, it’s possible that nobody has recovered properly; anybody who can live through the end of the world without noticing it is probably too far gone to be worth considering in any case.
But most of us have moved on, in our own ways. The old scars remain, though they’re fading year by year. We still have the annual silences and the days off – February is still one long state holiday – and the collective expression of competitive mourning. And through the ashes, new shoots have grown to the point where they eclipse the mourning generation. The generation born into the world left after the bombs fell are now seeing their own children off to university or even becoming grandparents; schoolchildren now ask why we observe the annual silence and despair during the height of summer. They shake their heads in bemusement at our descriptions of a pre-war world where you could go overseas to visit the ancient cities of New York, Paris, or London with little more than a few forms and calls to the Bank, the armed forces weren’t omnipresent, and you could blast down the highway in a gas-guzzling V8 on a whim without having to live on rice and potatoes for a fortnight afterward to cover the expense of fuel.
Now, a cavalcade of names and dates and figures and opinions greet the reader of the history books, cold and sterile to those of us who saw and did it. The story is broadly agreed upon: the devil is in the detail. That dark and uncanny warm winter of 1984 gave way in its own time to spring, and then to the long hot summer of ’85. As millions around the world fought and toiled and died in unknown wars and forgotten famines and unmarked ditches, New Zealand began to rebuild, setting aside what it dismissed as self-indulgent navel-gazing in favour of the hammer and shovel.
Those who had fled Wellington and Auckland returned home, or settled where they’d stopped. Auckland was the first to return, the dedication of Hundertwasser’s koru-derived Rebirth statue at the 1990 sesquicentennial marking the beginning of the Reconstruction period. Slowly, the buildings began to rise again, the tide of destruction receding from the Red Line halfway down Dominion Road towards Ground Zero; it is a rite of passage for many secondary school students to visit the Peace Park in old Devonport, crossing the renovated Harbour Bridge with its sweeping vistas of a city reclaiming its position as our greatest city.
Lacking the same drive, due in no small part to the exilic Parliament putting down roots in Christchurch and the lack of Auckland’s vast and influential émigré constituency, Wellington has taken infinitely longer; its recovery further hampered by fears of irradiated soil, I won’t live to see it return to its former vibrancy.
Throughout all this, the gentlemen’s agreement between the politicians gradually fell apart, as the 1986 election gave way to that of 1989, and partisanship returned in an initially stunted version to our political landscape. By now, one can hardly tell there was ever a Unity Government.
But then, that’s the way of things. Time marches on, and we’re all taken along for the wild ride of history whether we wish to go or not. Whether clinging to the saddle or dragged along behind the thundering hooves of events, we’re riding into the sunset.
For those of us who lived through the black days of 1984, a year in which all were dragged kicking and screaming through the mud and blood and shit, it is jarring to see the most important experiences of our lives relegated to the history books. Our time is passing. Whether it’s good or bad, it’s what is so; no historian can deny that.
What we survivors of World War Three are tasked with, then, is ensuring that that inevitability is a force for the good. We must tell our children of the significance of those silent hours on sunlit days, make understood to them the realities of our suffering and hardship, so that they may never wish to participate in the kind of wholesale slaughter we stumbled into.
On a more human note, we must make sure that those who passed before us do not pass unremembered. Three hundred thousand human lives were extinguished in this country alone in that great global exsanguination, a drop in a bucket of blood shed by the entire world. It is vital to our humanity that we remember those lives not as statistics, but as people who lived alongside us and contributed, each in their own way, to these islands we call home.
Yet every one of them was a story, telling of a life lived and lost. If each one of us can remember even a part of one of them, their deaths will not have been completely meaningless. What’s more, it’s vital to remember these stories because with our collective memory doing its best to repress the memory of the absolute worst of man’s inhumanity to man, we must fill the void left over with something or else risk blanking it out altogether and set ourselves up for a repeat performance…
…that we’ll never recover what was lost in 1984. It is a task for academics and authors better than myself to speculate on what might have been if the war hadn’t happened, or if it was in fact inevitable. All the rest of us can do is get along with the business of getting along, and try our best to build a world better than the one we inherited – or, in the case of we truly old folks who were already adults when the bombs fell, the one we made first time round. New Zealand survived the end of the world, and we shouldn’t understate that. It now falls to us to make it a country worth the fight we put up for it, for the sake of both the living and the dead.
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We're learning, we're learning!
We're learning to like ourselves again...
