Ponies

 
It was just after the assassination of Indira Gandhi that I came into the employ of Jason Michael Stretch. Wellington is a city of hidden steps and narrow passages, dark tributary corridors which are rapidly being translated, courtesy of the new earthquake codings, into glittering malls and arcades, whole worlds of space-age glass and silver. Inside these places, on their several levels, there is a curious calm, which is now beginning to extend out on to the footpaths. No one points excitedly; people drift along, pale, ice-cold, gazing into windows in a way which is almost tranquil, or ride escalators which take them up and down but not quite anywhere. A few years ago - as, say, a first-year student - I think I might well have scorned these aimless citizens, or felt sorry for them: a bit superior, anyway. Now they strike me as somehow being beyond distress or temptation or anyone's genuine concern - as if they are busy at something which the city itself expects of them, and which they do rather well merely by moving from one place to the next.

A few people behave as if they know their way around. They lack the general air of glazed serenity. They don't quite merge into the crowd. They move marginally faster, like swimmers going downstream, outpacing the current; then they duck clear and vanish into a doorway or make a sudden dash across the road into the downtown traffic. For a few weeks I was running so many errands for Jason Stretch that I began to fancy that I myself must have looked like this. A man who stood out a little from the crowd. A busy fellow, someone with intentions and a destination.

Pepperell and Stretch was in Upper Cuba Street - down an alleyway, up a flight of stairs, several turns along a corridor. The footpath in Cuba Street has a richness which not only assaults your nostrils, it manages to hit you right at the back of the throat - as if having soaked up a full variety of human juices over the years it is eager to give something back. (You will see that in my weaker moments I would like to be a writer, not a part-time student of anthropology who has got himself lost somewhere between courses.) But maybe it is only because of the Chinese restaurant on the corner that someone with a spraycan has written Pong Alley just next to Drop the Big One - two messages which I had the opportunity to consider several times a day as I went by lugging a bag filled with items for the post or yellow leaflets for one of Jason's suburban letterbox runs.

There wasn't a Pepperell, not in the office. One of my jobs, though, was to take the Number 1 bus out to Island Bay once a week and remove from the letterbox of a house in Evans Street the about-to-be-current issue of Pepperell's Investment Weekly, a stockmarket tip sheet, all immaculately typed and centred on a sheet of white A4 paper. Then the thing would be to take this back to town, over to Kwikprint in Taranaki Street, and get fifty-seven copies run off ('Pepperell and Stretch's charge account thanks'); and that same day if there was time, or the next morning if there wasn't, I'd trundle back out to Evans Street, ring the doorbell, go and stare at the island for half-an-hour - and back again to find each of the fifty-seven sheets signed, All the best! Bob Pepperell, in a ragged blue ballpoint.

Mrs Watson said that the woman before her had told her that Jason had acquired Pepperell's Investment Weekly when he took over the firm, and that he had actually been a subscriber himself when he was still in Balclutha. Mrs Watson typed subscriber addresses on envelopes for me to slide the individually signed sheets into. She did one or two other jobs of the same sort; otherwise she typed student theses, paying Jason Stretch a 20% commission fee. She said this figure was 'very fair'. Jason looked after the horoscopes himself.

'A terrible business, this shooting in India,' said Jason Stretch. 'Two of Mrs Gandhi's bodyguards shot her seven times as she was walking from her home to an interview with the British actor Peter Ustinov. One of the assassins had been one of Mrs Gandhi's body-guards for eight years. The entire security unit of Mrs Gandhi's residence has been taken off duty and is undergoing intensive questioning. Unquote.'

He put down the Dominion and reached across the desk. I reached out my hand, since this was what he seemed to be expecting, and he took it. He shook it. (Was the grasp firm or limp?) 'Executed in cold blood by her own employees,' he said. 'These all have to be read for clipping and filing.' He gestured towards a pile of newspapers. 'Still, I doubt if you'll have time for that sort of thing. I very much hope you won't. Well, there we are. Nine o'clock tomorrow, then. Let's see how things go, Kevin.'

Well, there we were. As they say. I am inventing the words, for I have no clear memory of what they actually were. But I am doing my best to reconstruct the tone that I recall. Jason Stretch's communications to his employees (me and Mrs Watson) tended to jump about a lot but were somehow without energy or final form.

I had been expecting some sort of interview but apparently the job was mine. 'Editorial and administrative responsibilities,' the ticket at the job agency had said: 'Applicants must be steady and reliable but should also be comfortable with innovative thinking.' Apart from rotten pay, this added up to the expeditions out to Island Bay; a lot of time spent sitting in an old armchair next to Mrs Watson's desk and doodling on a clipboard; and looking after the post - which meant at least one cable car ride a day up to the Kelburn Post Office to clear the private box which Pepperell and Stretch had there.

Then there were the leaflet runs in the afternoons. 'But nothing too arduous,' said Jason Stretch. 'The experience of walking the footpaths is going to stand you in good stead I'm sure, but there's no point in wearing yourself out.'

Here he comes, the suburban packhorse . . .

Some afternoons I took a sheet advertising Pepperell's Weekly, and sometimes I had one headed 'Astral Readings', which started off with a whole lot of stuff about the Future and ended with an invitation to write in confidence at once, giving your date of birth.

'Send no money now but be sure to include a stamped addressed envelope for immediate return of your free "Astral Interpretation". Confidentiality guaranteed. Jason M Stretch.'

The 'Jason M Stretch' bit was a genuine signature. Each leaflet was individually signed. Jason spent a couple of hours every morning writing his name at the foot of his promotional leaflets. Perhaps it made him feel he existed more securely, perhaps the personal touch was company policy. Perhaps it came down to the same thing.

An odd thing: I must have glimpsed Jason's signature any number of times in an afternoon, but unless I was actually looking directly at it I could never summon up an image of it. Was it large or small? Neat? listless? a jovial flourish? What colour ink?

Come to that, as I trailed around suburban Wellington, pushing Astral Readings into the letter-boxes of Kilbirnie or Thorndon or Hataitai, I couldn't quite summon up Jason himself, I couldn't get him plainly into the forefront of my mind. He was in his late thirties, I'm pretty sure, certainly a good bit older than me. His hair was shortish, fairish . . . but was he balding or just closely cropped? Did he wear glasses all the time, or only for reading? Now I find myself wondering if he wore glasses at all. All I can call into being is the outline of a body and a head above a desk. There is no colour which I associate with the eyes of Jason Stretch, or with his complexion; not even with his clothing. He barely has being, for all the hundreds of times he wrote his name.

He ought to have seemed to me then - and no doubt ought to seem to me now - grotesque, colourfully Dickensian; but he is ordinary and indeterminate and unemphatic, like a dark brown desk viewed against a light brown wall, like the office furniture he sat at.

So there we were, and the truly grotesque discovery was learning that Jason's occasional references to the value of walking had a point. During January and February, he thought, I might like to lead small walking tours around Wellington. All the major cities had them, he said. There were more people than you might imagine - tourists, visitors from out-of-town - who liked to move around a city more or less at ground-level, maintaining a leisurely, unhurried pace yet all the while being kept amused and informed by knowledgeable and entertaining guides.

Jason already had two tours mapped out ($15.00 a head) and some provisional copy for the brochures. 'Historic Thorndon: a leisurely ramble through pioneer Wellington - home of prime ministers, birthplace of Katherine Mansfield,' 'Harbour City: come with us on a stroll around Wellington's busy waterfront; see views of the harbour that even Wellingtonians don't see; visit the historic Maritime Museum.'

'We'll improve the descriptive stuff; it needs to sound about two hours worth, wouldn't you say? How's Secret Wellington coming along, Kevin?

Secret Wellington was a walk which Jason felt we needed to have up our sleeve in case Wellington's weather made Historic Thorndon and Harbour City doubtful prospects. An indoor, under-cover route which stuck to Lambton Quay, Willis Street and Manners Street (for example) would be just the thing.

'Keep it in mind as you go about the city, Kevin. All the little nooks and crannies. A few historic sites. Some of the new malls and plazas. What about the new BNZ underground place? There might be something there. Check it out when you go for the post.'

So there we were, me and my prospects, sitting on the cable car in mid-November, worrying about January and how I could possibly handle the problem of knowing enough to be able to say anything at all to tourists and out-of-towners. And what if I bumped into someone I knew on one of these outings? I whimpered inwardly.

'You can always take them on the cable car,' a small inner voice whispered to me; and I suddenly knew what it meant to be able to say that your whole being glowed with pleasure. I turned over one of the airmail letters which came addressed to Jason Stretch from Pundit Tabore, 'India's Most Famous Astrologer', of Upper Forjett Street, Bombay, India. I beamed at it in all its beauty. The flimsy brown envelopes blazed out with coloured stamps. There was a woman doing gymnastic movements against a sky-blue background; against a red background a powerfully muscled man lifted weights. Five linked rings: the Olympics! But the odd thing about Pundit Tabore's letters (and here it was again) was that the stamps were always on the wrong side of the envelope. I mean, on one side of the envelope the man grunted and strained and the woman was graceful, while on the other was Jason M Stretch's name and Wellington address.

'They always seem to get through though,' said Mrs Watson. She was taking a break between chapters of a Communication Studies thesis. 'It must be their way of doing it. I'd love to know what that Indian's telling him.'

'Do you think he believes in it?' I said.

'Well,' said Mrs Watson, 'there must be about a dozen enquire each week, and three or four of them end up sending the $75.00 for the full reading. I suppose they learn something to their advantage. You need the place of birth for that, though, and the time of day as near as you can get it.'

Next morning I mentioned the cable car to Jason.

'Well Kevin,' he said, 'let's hang fire on that one for just a little while, shall we?'

He seemed tired, but very excited.

'You know,' he said, 'an old bloke in the Catlins once told me that if you're a real bushman and it's about to rain, then you can hear the drops hitting the leaves at least a couple of minutes before the rain starts coming down. Even before it starts spitting, that is. Well,' he said, his voice pleased and lowered and confidential, 'I like to think I can hear people who are about to spend their money in just the same way. You can quote me on that when I'm famous.'

Of course, I am inventing the detail of Jason Stretch's words again, but not, you may be sure, out of nothing. Jason needed words like these as back-ground and preamble to his main point, which was that he had seen on television the night before a panel discussion about nuclear winters. He had seen a way of making money.

'Horrifying. Makes you think. But it's a chance at last to combine real service to society with our own information skills. And it means real research work for you, Kevin. You'll have to move quickly, though.'

There must have been a look of reluctance on my face.

'I grew up in Balclutha,' he said, 'but here I am' - as if this would solve whatever it was that was making me so diffident.

He was jumping up and down like the man who invented hokey-pokey ice-cream.

I sat in the Wellington Public Library, researching survival techniques in sub-zero temperatures. I read about the Antarctic. Mrs Watson's uncle had watched the Terra Nova sail from Lyttleton in 1910.

'He said it was the next best thing to Noah's Ark. I never was much interested in the dogs really, it's the ponies I feel sorry for.'

'Ponies?' I said.

Nuclear Winter

War between the super powers grows more and more likely every day.

It is well known that in the event of a nuclear exchange human life will become extinct in many areas of the planet.

Are you aware that things may be nearly as bad outside the immediate blast areas? Do you know that even a small nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere may spell disaster in the South?

Smoke from fires burning in hundreds of cities will spread rapidly into the troposphere and stratosphere, severely limiting the amount of heat reaching the earth's surface from the sun.

A thick sooty pall. Darkness at noon. Temperatures will plummet. Imagine the cold and ice of an Antarctic winter. Many plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction. Many communities in the Northern Hemisphere will perish from the extreme cold.

In the Southern Hemisphere some of us may survive. Within three days, scientists have forecast, concentrated jet streamers of smoke and pollutants will have poured into the atmosphere above Australia and New Zealand. Those sufficiently prepared to cope with the sudden fall in temperatures may win through, but many will not - the problem is beyond the limited resources of Civil Defence. The only answer is individual initiative and forward planning.

Write at once for your 'Nuclear Winter Kit'. It contains information essential to your personal survival. Make sure you can meet all eventualities. You owe it to yourself and your children. Send $21.50 (Cheque or postal orders) to 'Nuclear Winter Foundation', Box 831-240, Wellington. We will send your 'Nuclear Winter Kit' by return post.

There were nineteen Manchurian ponies on board the Terra Nova, taken to Antarctica to haul sledges. They were crammed aboard the tiny ship. 'One takes a look through the hole in the bulkhead,' wrote Scott, 'and sees a row of heads with sad, patient eyes come swinging up together from the starboard side, whilst those on the port swing back; then up come the port heads, whilst the starboard recede.' The ponies' boxes were two or three feet deep in manure when the Terra Nova came in sight of Antarctica.

The ponies were Manchurian, white or (a few of them) dappled gray. They cost £5 each. Captain Oates, famous for other things, was hired to look after the ponies. There are photographs taken by Ponting of the ponies aboard ship and on the ice. They are so white, the ponies, that they must often have been hard to see against the landscape they had been taken to.

There is a photograph of Oates standing on the upper deck of the Terra Nova with four of the ponies. Man and animals are all perfectly still, posed for the image. Among the shore photographs there is one of a pony called Chinaman with his leader, Wright; Wright faces the camera while Chinaman is in profile. There is a photograph of Oates standing with Snippets. There is Cherry-Garrard with his pony, Michael, of whom he said, 'Life was a constant source of wonder to him.' Michael is rolling on his back in the snow. Cherry-Garrard holds him by a long bridle.

The ponies are grayish-white against the massive surround of ice and sky. They have coal-black eyes. The men are darker. The ponies seem to be moth-eaten; but maybe this is an effect of Ponting's photographs, or of the very rough photocopies which I made of them.

'A bit of fine tuning, but it's mostly there,' said Jason. 'We won't worry about any suburban deliveries with this one. They'll be flocking into town for Christmas shopping over the next few weeks. We'll distribute directly, pass them out in Central Wellington.'

(Bowers records somewhere that old pony droppings, distorted by the trick of the Antarctic light, could look like a herd of cattle on the horizon.)

Oates was the man who looked after the horses. He was a taciturn man, called the Soldier, who wrote letters to his mother. He gave two lectures on the management of horses to the men wintering over in Antarctica, ending each with a joke or anecdote. On the journey to the glacier he wrote: 'Scott realises now what awful cripples our ponies are, and carries a face like a tired sea boot in consequence.'

Of the original nineteen horses, only ten were alive when Scott and his party set out on their journey to the Pole. Some had died on board the Terra Nova on its journey to the Antarctic. Some had died on overland training trips. Others fell from ice floes into the ocean.

Only ten survived the winter and all of these were to be shot when the sledge parties reached the Beardsmore glacier; subsequently the men would haul their own sledges. The ponies were old, at the end of their working life; they had been bought cheap by a man who knew nothing about horses. 'Poor ancient little beggar,' Bowers wrote of Chinaman, 'he ought to be a pensioner instead of finishing his days on a job of this sort.'

On 24 November 1911, Jehu was shot. His body was cut up and given to the dogs.

On 28 November Chinaman was shot. Oates remarks: 'He was a game little devil, and must have been a goodish kind of pony fifteen years ago.'

Scott and his men were now having pony meat in their hoosh. They found it much improved.

On 1 December it was the turn of Christopher, a pony who had been 'nothing but trouble', requiring four men to hold him down whenever his harness was to be placed upon him. 'He was the only pony who did not die instantaneously,' wrote Cherry-Garrard. 'Perhaps Oates was not so calm as usual, for Chris was his own horse though such a brute. Just as Oates fired he moved, and charged into the camp with a bullet in his head. He was caught with difficulty, nearly giving Keohane a bad bite, led back and finished.'

Oates now took over the leading of Scott's pony, Snippets. Scott roved about on skis, photographing the ponies as he went.

The next pony shot was Victor. Bowers wrote: 'Good old Victor! He has always had a biscuit out of my ration, and he ate his last before the bullet sent him to his rest.'

On 4 December Michael was despatched.

A disastrous blizzard raged for several days. On 9 December the party reached the glacier. It had been a fourteen-hour march. One member of the party later recalled the condition of the ponies, 'their flanks heaving, their black eyes dull, shrivelled, and wasted. The poor beasts had stood,' he wrote, 'with their legs stuck out in strange attitudes, mere wrecks of the beautiful little animals that we took away from New Zealand.'

The last five ponies were shot on 9 December.

When Scott and his party were despatching the remaining ponies more than a month of overland sledge-hauling lay ahead of them. Amundsen would reach the Pole within a matter of days. It was Oates's work with the ponies which so impressed Scott that he asked him to join the smaller team which now made the ill-fated final 'dash'.

Rajiv Gandhi stood by his mother's flaming funeral pyre, surrounded by the dignitaries of the world.

As the flames spread, India's new Prime Minister stood with his hands clasped in prayer, receiving the condolences of official mourners. Behind barriers, tens of thousands of people also mourned the death of the woman they knew as Mother India.

Nearly an hour after setting the pyre ablaze, Rajiv was still on the surrounding platform waiting according to Hindu custom for the body's head to explode.

Mourners touched their foreheads to the platform.

'Tomorrow,' said Jason Stretch, 'I think we'd better make a start on distributing these, Kevin.'

There were half-a-dozen boxes of leaflets.

'I very much hope we'll need to run off a few more than this before we're finished. I think the thing will be to stick around the new shopping plazas. And we'll need to begin finalising the copy for the Kit itself. How's it coming along?'

I said that I'd picked up quite a lot of material on some of the Antarctic expeditions.

'Right. And it might be worth checking Civil Defence. They may have a few words of advice. Or tramping clubs and things like that. There must be plenty of stuff available. But see if you can get rid of a box of these first.'

I stood with my armful of leaflets outside the new AA building in Lambton Quay for forty-seven minutes before it came to me that I was never going to work up the courage to stick Nuclear Winter sheets under the noses of passing Christmas shoppers. At the same time I realised that it wasn't that I particularly disapproved of what Jason Stretch was up to. I probably did, but the real truth was I felt silly - or was scared I would look silly. Each moment that went by, I felt a little more potentially ludicrous. From time to time someone would gaze at me curiously. I tried to look as though I was waiting for somebody. Help! I tried to stand there as though I wasn't there.

I wrote out my resignation on the back of a Nuclear Winter sheet and posted it to Jason's box number. 'All the best to Bob Pepperell', I added. I dumped the pile of leaflets at the end of an empty counter in the Chews Lane post office. I don't know why I should have forgotten the ponies. You grow up knowing all that stuff about Scott and Captain Oates. Oates was in charge of the ponies. That's why he was there in the first place. They called him the Soldier. I am just going outside and I may be some time.

The ponies' names were James Pigg, Bones, Michael, Snatcher, Jehu, Chinaman, Christopher, Victor, Snippets and Nobby. After I had written Jason Stretch's name and address on the envelope, I stuck the stamp on the opposite side.

Bill Manhire is a New Zealand writer. His book of poems, Zoetropes: Poems 1972-82 is published by Allen and Unwin (New Zealand) and Carcanet. This story first appeared in the Australian magazine Meanjin.