The Prince Of What’s His Name – John Paul

The Prince Of What’s His Name John Paul

And Kindness Lay All About

Stories from the Christchurch Earthquakes

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Glenn Busch

John Paul

About half past four in the morning it was. I remember this rattly noise, almost like you could feel it coming up the road. I thought, goodness, this is an earthquake; I’ve never really experienced one before. And

then it started to rattle even more and we got these jolts pulling at the house, left, right, left. That wasn’t so bad, it was the fact that it went on

and on. I thought my goodness this is a beaut, we’ve never had one like this in Christchurch before, never. I just lay there in the bed until it was

over—thank Christ that’s finished. Not much point in getting up now.

We’ll have a look over it all in the morning, when the daylight arrives.

So yeah, I just stayed there, I’m just lying there, and about an hour later

a nephew of mine was banging on the door and I said, ‘Crikey, what do you want?’

‘Are you all right?’ He said.

‘Yes,’ I said.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m good as gold,’ I said. ‘Isn’t Wellington supposed to get

this? Christchurch doesn’t get earthquakes.’

‘Okay,’ as long as you’re all right. I’ll come back about ten,’ he said,

‘see if you’re still okay then.’

Of course when daylight came you get up and everything is chaos.

There is no power. You couldn’t get a connection. Did I have a torch?

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What else? Couldn’t get the radio going, the batteries that should have

been okay—were supposed to go—didn’t happen. But there was a wee bit of luck. I’ve got two artesian wells tapped under here. They were put to good use.

A bit later a friend from up the road, Doug, came down. He had a

thing that he could create a fire on so he put some petrol in it and we had a cup of tea. By this time it’s 11 o’clock—other people are walking

around and everybody’s looking here and there. Then I get the visit from the guy next door. He’s got a wife and two little kiddies. One was

about four, and the other somewhere around two. He came in and he says, ‘Have you got a crow bar? I’m looking for a crow bar.’

‘What on earth do you want the crow bar for?’ I asked.

He said, ‘I’m gone, I’m out of here.’

‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘this is the only one we’ll ever have in

Christchurch. It’ll be all right.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m going.’

I could see he was worried. He’s got a sort of verandah held up by

steel rods and obviously his wife was scared. Well, as I said, he was

worried himself, but his excuse for going, and not coming back, was that it would fall on the kids. I thought fair enough too.

‘Well what do you want the crow bar for?’ I said.

‘I can’t get into the garage, the door’s jammed. I can’t get it open.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I haven’t got one. Go up to Doug. He’ll

have one.’

Doug seems to be the one guy on the street that has everything.

So up he went and sure enough Doug’s got one. Smash, bang, he’d

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knocked the front out of the garage door. The sealed door was still

there but on each side he’d knocked out the slate, he got in all right.

Didn’t take him long and he got his car out and he’s gone. He was off.

Half past eleven he’s got the family loaded up and he’s driving down the road and never came back. It’s true. I’ve never seen him again.

Anyway, the old house was a bit stretched after that one. We came

here about twenty-two years ago. We put all that reinforcing in there, not just to change the look of it but to strengthen it and of course it never moved much. Well it did come off the foundations a bit and there was some cracking here and there, but all the cladding was still

okay. Maybe there was the odd brick, if you gave it a shove it would fall out, but of course you don’t do that. So that was all right. The water and

sewerage and the power, that was a bit different, that took weeks. But no, apart from all that, it wasn’t too bad.

Actually, I was the most popular person in the street for a few

days there because on the Saturday morning everybody rushed to the

supermarkets to get water, which soon ran out. And here’s me with this beautiful, clear, cold water just coming out of the ground. Pretty soon

the word got around and they’re helping themselves to the good stuff and it’s all free. They’re coming with drums and they’re ringing up their

friends; one part of it here we had a queue of eight, nine, ten people

getting this water and of course as the word spread the containers grew

larger and larger. Then as the water slowly goes back on in people’s homes the queues disappeared. But for days and weeks after it first

happened anybody just came in. It was automatic. You just came in and helped yourself; you didn’t have to go looking for me. Once we got the

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power back on I’d leave the light shining, just leave it on all night so the latecomers could come up and help themselves.

Life hasn’t always been lucky for me but I’m one of those people—

I’ll help if I can—and I go with the flow. Try not to be disappointed in anything. To be honest, I am a wee bit disappointed in the Council and all this silly business that’s going on. As a Cantabrian it’s disappointing

for me. You know, there was a man out here a little while ago, he was

on the radio, on that nine to twelve outfit and he’s from San Francisco.

He said, ‘If you live in Christchurch now, don’t start avoiding

what’s happened to you. You’ve got to front up to it, just like we are.

Christchurch is now among the cities of the world that are known as earthquake cities.’ He said there’s no use talking about it. You’ve joined

the club and it’s not going to change. I thought he’s right. He’s got the right idea. That’s what we are. We’re an earthquake city. There’s no use kidding anybody we’re not, especially ourselves. We’ve got a city to rebuild. Let’s get on with it. Stop all this bloody mucking about.

And something else, don’t go going back to the stodgy old place

we had, we’ve got an opportunity now. I’ve seen some lovely snapshots

of the way they can rebuild it. I like the greenery. I like the idea of building a park here along the river. Make what we’re going to lose into

a park. That’s the right sort of thinking. That’s smart stuff. In twenty years there will be a beautiful city here. Most of those crammed old

buildings in the square, most of them are being knocked over, some of the really ugly ones—don’t put them up again. I’m thinking of the

airport and the travellers coming down Memorial Avenue, round

Hagley Park; no matter who you are you’re thinking jez, this is nice.

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Just look at this. And then, if we do it right, you go into a city that’s

got its arms open to you, not crammed up with all that old bloody stuff.

It can be an opportunity if we are up to it. Okay, not for everybody,

that’s true. I have friends that have left the place, who just couldn’t face it. There are some that for all sorts of reasons will simply go.

A long while ago, before we came here, I was teaching in Canada

for a time and when the wife and I came back we bought our first place

in Avonside Drive. Now in Canada they had started putting up houses in the back of big sections and I said to my wife we could do the same

here. Well, I had a heck of a job getting a permit from the Council but

we finally did. We built it. And a week after the initial earthquake I went around to that particular house and there’s a lady coming out. I

said to her who I was, told her we use to live here. I said, ‘We actually built the flat on the back.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘he went the first morning. The tenant, he’s never

been back.’

I said, ‘Is that right?’

She said, ‘Everything’s buggered, it’s all tumbling down.’

‘It was a lovely flat,’ I said.

She just sort of looked at me, and she left the front door open. She

said, ‘It’s fallen off the foundations. You see that car out there, that’s my son. He’s taking me to Nelson. I’m going up there to live.’

‘Oh heavens,’ I said, ‘will I shut the door?’ But I don’t think she

cared.

She said, ‘You do what you like, I’m not coming back.’ She was off.

I went in and had a look around… my wife died twelve years ago

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now, so it took me back to things. I use to live here I thought—a long time ago.

It was a happy marriage but we had some sadness, a lot of sadness

with our babies. There was a defect, what they called in the old days, blue babies. Congenital heart disease. Today they put them in a plane

and you’re off to Starship Hospital and they’ll fix you up. But not… not sixty or seventy years ago. No, that didn’t happen.

The first one died after six weeks, a boy. The second one was also

a boy. He died when he was just on three. We were in Invercargill at

the time. My wife had brought him up to her sister who lived here in

Christchurch. Our bonny bouncy little boy. He virtually had a heart attack, just collapsed while he was up here. They rang the ambulance

but he was practically dead by the time they got him to the hospital.

They made a cut, put a tube down, it’s what they do to get the oxygen in

but… yeah… too late. Our third was a girl. She was born down South as well… same thing, six months. No more.

As I say, today they just pick them up. Take them straight to the

Starship. Change the blood. Do something to their heart. Send them home in three weeks. It’s unbelievable. But anyway, that was that. It

was a really sad time but that’s how life can be, can’t it. Perhaps it helps you appreciate what other people go through. But then… oh Christ I don’t know. A lot of times we don’t know what other people have been

through do we. My mother… we were born down in Washdyke, in

Timaru, and in the old days there is no such thing as a pill or anything.

So each year my mother was creating and in the end she had twins.

In half a dozen years she had seven children. And of course in those

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days abortion was… anyway it’s a long story, the short version is she’s pregnant and she died. She was twenty-nine.

No need to go into how she died, just that she did. I was four and

a half and there was all these bloody kids. The old man was this, that

and something else, so we were all packed off to Dunedin. We weren’t Catholics but the Catholic orphanage was the only one that would take

us. The three girls, off they went to St Patricks, the girls’ orphanage out there in South Dunedin. It’s a big church out there. And the rest, the boys, went to what they call the boys orphanage up in Waverley, on the side of the hill up there. The twins were separated, one with us, the other down with the girls.

So that’s where you grow up. The count was fifty-five kids. I was

there till I was twelve, when you get your proficiency certificate, and then of course—when there’s no one to pay for high school—you’re out. You’ve got to go to work. You’re out of the orphanage. Out to

whatever life has in store. Look to the future and develop the best you can.

Somewhere along the line I also got a sense of humour. I don’t

know that it’s inbuilt because I’ve got some very serious brothers and sisters. Fascinating that, all these brothers and sisters, we all went to

the same orphanages and little kid to big kid, we had the same bread

and dripping every morning. We lived on this bread and dripping.

Then on one Sunday, about every two or three months, we got bread

and butter on the Sunday night and if there was any jam going we got bread butter and jam. The funny thing was, I’d sooner have the bread and dripping, especially if you got the bottom of the dripping. There’ll

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be a few still about who know what I mean. And turnips. Every day we had turnips. Sometimes we got meat. Sometimes we’d have an egg

with it. Of course, you never knew what cake was. You never had soft

drinks. You never had anything like that. But of the seven of us, there’s two of us in our nineties, the rest of us are all in our eighties. All of us

alive and kicking still. None of us went back to our father who married again. I believe he ended up with 14 kids and all except one are still

alive. I used to call him Sir Tristram. He was obviously a prize stallion and they say you’re only as good as your genes. Perhaps what I got out of it was that sense of humour.

February, I was having a cup of tea in Temuka. I’d been down to a

funeral in Timaru and my niece was driving me back. We’d got as far as

Temuka and I thought why don’t we stop for a cuppa. We were sitting

there across from this other table and you could hear the chatter. Four

excited women talking flat out. ‘There must be ten dead at least!’ So naturally we’re ear wigging and thinking what on earth are they talking

about. Couldn’t be in Timaru, we’ve just left there. So my niece said, ‘Excuse me, has there been an earthquake?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there’s been a terrible earthquake in Christchurch

and at the moment,’ she said, ‘according to the airwaves, there are ten people dead.’

Well, we both looked at each other, surely not. The last time—the

other time—there was nobody. There couldn’t be ten people… maybe… maybe perhaps it’s an exaggeration.

We got to Hornby on the edge of the city by about 4 o’clock in

the afternoon and by this time we’re down to a stagger. We’re up this

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road and down that road, ‘No, sorry sir, it’s all blocked down this way, you’ll have to go back.’ By the time we got to Linwood Avenue, where

my niece’s mother lives, on the corner by the big supermarket there, Eastgate, it was 11 o’clock at night. We went in and had a cup of tea with her and then we all decided we’d go down to a place just off New

Brighton Road where we stayed the night. Things were strewn all over the place there as well but we could still make a cup of tea. It wasn’t so bad.

Next day this nephew of mine came around in his van, ‘Come on,’

he said, ‘we’re going to have a look at your place.’ You wouldn’t believe

how long it took to get there. Truly it took hours with the traffic on the road and the potholes down there and so on but eventually we arrived

and the whole of the back wall had gone. On the ground it was. You

looked at the blocks and thought hello—no, this really was a shake.

And having missed it I was a wee bit, not disappointed, but seeing the damage, I’d like to have known what a beast that could cause that much

damage felt like. It never—they never worried me—the coming and

going of the earthquakes, the shakes and shivers, not for one minute.

I never ever thought, oh gee, I’m going to get hit. Nothing like that. I

never even got out of bed for them. I’d just lie there and think, oh for God’s sake, piss off why don’t you.

That next one in June, an afternoon one wasn’t it? I think it was

about 1 o’clock. Then another one about 2 o’clock, something like that.

No worries at all. Neither of them worried me greatly, in fact I was completely engrossed. I was sitting on my garden seat out there when the first one came through and it was—it was utterly fascinating to

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see the trees go rocking backwards and forwards like that. I was so

absorbed with them that I never thought to look at the house. It must have been rocking somewhat with the way the trees where going but it didn’t worry me, and it didn’t seem to worry the trees either. They were

as good as gold. Straightened right up again and the house, well, the

cracks had got a little bit wider and the gaps up in the driveway wider still but we were in the red zone so what would you expect.

Of course, I’m ninety this year, so these earthquakes are not

something I wanted to happen. I was going to be here for the duration, quite content to stay and see it out here. Let them carry me out the front door. Well, life’s still got a few surprises it seems. One thing for sure, it’s not going to be this front door. I’ve been through all the

rigmarole with the insurance and the EQC people. They set up a place

you could go to down at the Avondale golf course where I spent a lot

of time waiting to see various people. Lucky I had all day to do it in.

If I’d been younger with work and other things to do—well, you just

wouldn’t be able to do it. Anyway, I finally got my money, everything

got put through and on Friday of next week, we shift. There’s another

guy I know, he’ll be staying until the very last, till they kick him out, because he has no insurance. Now that’s tough. He won’t be going

anywhere, not until he has to, but I’m a bit luckier. I’ve bought a nice

little place and my niece will come in with me. I’ll stay there until I lose my driver’s licence and then I’ll go into Windsor House or one of those. So, next Friday it all happens, as long as I don’t sneeze in the

meantime. I had one of those boys in the yellow jackets out after the June quake. Can’t remember his name, somebody’s son. He’s outside

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by the garage when I saw him. He said, ‘I’ve got to have a look at your house to make sure it’s red.’

‘Well, no problem there son, come on inside.’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t have to go inside.’

‘Don’t worry mate, you’ll be all right. Good as gold,’ I said. ‘As long

as you don’t sneeze.’

‘No, I’m not going in there,’ he said. ‘I can see all I need to see from

here thanks.’

I thought, God, what a boy, but he did have a point. You have to

have a laugh at times. I touch my bedroom door and it swings open like

magic and I’ll tell you what, I’m almost at a trot by the time I get across

to the other side. But then remember, I was schoolteacher; if you don’t have a sense of humour you’re a goner from day one.

There’s a lot of it about though isn’t there, this fear of going into

certain places. I will often go over to the mall and see a movie with a

mate of mine, in fact we went just the other day to see that War Horse

film, he’s a great horse fan. But it was strange, there’s usually such a buzz in these places—all these kids riding the escalators and making a good lot of noise. Well we go and there’s not a soul about except the

three girls behind the counter who work there, they’re trying to sell us popcorn and every other damn thing. Would we like to join the seniors club and so on? Usually it’s the busiest place in town and by the time the movie started there was eight of us in there. And this is a popular

film, it’s going to go very close at the Oscars. I’m looking out for fifty and sixty-year old’s but they are all in the seventy to eighty range. Me mate says, ‘There’s nobody coming.’

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I said, ‘Never mind. We’ll be all right. If there’s an earthquake you

take this side and I’ll take that side, I’m sure the two of us can hold the bloody ceiling up between us.’

He’s looking at me and shaking his head, ‘You’re a mad bugger,’ he

says, ‘you do what you like, I’ll be getting under the seat.’

That’s something we have to get over of course, and there’s a lot

that have. Twos and threes on the Richter Scale, most people in Christchurch these days will just keep walking. Fours and fives slow you down a bit, makes you think, but we don’t want to be slowing down do we. We need to get on with rebuilding this place, that’s what we

want. Here I am in my ninetieth year, I find it hard to walk a mile these

days. Slowly deteriorating; I won’t be seeing the finished thing perhaps

but you’ve got to have that Cantabrian spirit don’t you. Well, think of the Crusaders. You couldn’t get a more shining example than our footy

team. They’re good, one of the best, but they have been through their share of misery. And what do they do, they hang in. Hang in and don’t

let go. Half the World Cup team were Cantabrians, what you call solid stuff. That’s an example to anybody. Richie’s still here, Daniel’s still

here. You don’t see men like that copping out do you. You even get

the Prince of what’s his name—Prince William—coming here. I’ve never seen so many handkerchiefs out and being used. Christ, I had to

walk virtually all the way to that do, but I was one of thousands who

gathered that day. And that’s where you saw it. All those people letting you know. If you needed any proof, that’s where you got it. That’s where I knew. I might be fading away, but Christchurch never will.

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