Читать книгу Thomas and Rose - John Aitkenhead - Страница 12

Chapter Seven

It was a year later and almost Christmas, and our family were planning a trip to Invercargill on the train, to have Christmas with my mother’s sister April and her family. Gabby was also coming down from Christchurch, and it was to be a big family affair.

We had made a few trips to Invercargill mostly when I was much younger, so this was the first time I was old enough to take interest in the train and surroundings. The steam locomotive was huge, powerful, and wonderful; I was in awe. I loved the hissing steam, the hot smell and motion of the huge wheels as the train engine shunted into place. It gave me goosebumps.

Skipper was put into a pen in the guards van, and after we were under way, I was allowed to walk from carriage to carriage, and one carriage had an outside walkway down one side. When the conductor came through the train, I asked him about the engine, and he told me it was an NZR AB, which was a class of 4-6-2 ‘Pacific Tender’, one of the steam locomotives that operated on New Zealand’s National Railway System, and many were in operation throughout the country. I wrote it in the little notebook I kept for important things.

The train stopped at Kingston, Lumsden, Winton and a few little places I don’t recall, and when we arrived at Invercargill, my Aunty April was waiting at the station with her brand new Morris Minor station wagon. The little car had a luggage rack on the roof, and my dad tied down our bags. Rachel and I were jammed in the back seat with my mother; Skipper rode in the back, and my dad grumbled, ‘Why did we have to bring the dog?’

I was very impressed to see that Invercargill had traffic lights like Christchurch. When we arrived at the house, Gabby gave Rachel and I her usual bear hugs, and Aunty April seemed as though she wanted to outdo Gabby’s squeezing and kissing.

We stayed for a week in Invercargill while Charlie Owens and his wife, from a neighbouring farm, took care of our milking and fed our animals along with our farmhand; we did the same for them on occasions when they were away.

I noticed my mother having long discussions with Gabby and Aunty April, and once I saw Gabby wiping her eyes as though she had been crying. It wasn’t until we arrived back to our farm that my mum and dad sat me down and quietly explained that my mother had cancer, and her doctor had given her six months to live. This was the second time in my life that I became numb with fear, but this time there could be no happy ending.

And so the new school year was a good thing – a new teacher and a few new classmates to keep my focus away from my mother’s sickness. There seemed to be an element of sympathy, which, whilst appreciated, did nothing to alleviate my sadness.

I hadn’t read any more of The Voyage of the Beagle since Christmas as events had rather overtaken me, so I took the book from the bottom drawer of my bedside cabinet and resumed where I had left off. I was becoming quite absorbed in Charles Darwin’s writings as he travelled further throughout South America. He wrote about the Gauchos, the fearless horsemen of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, who became legendary and were much admired in traditional literature and folklore.

He spoke of their cooperation and kindness whilst at the same time disclosing their readiness to slit your throat and take your possessions if the opportunity arose. Still, much of his exploration on horseback was accompanied by Gauchos.

Much of the Beagle’s voyage of discovery was absorbed in peoples, particularly the many tribes of South American Indians and Spanish settlements – these locations I found on the map of Argentina. Charles Darwin’s recordings of plant life and geology, although interesting, did not take my imagination as much as birds and animal life.

My teacher now was Mr Blair, a tall thin man with longish grey hair, a big moustache and glasses with little round lenses. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and he always wore a tie. He went to the same church as my parents, so I thought I should be careful with the ‘evolution’ word. Mr Blair’s teaching and his personal interests were very different to Mrs Baxter. He liked cycling and sailing but didn’t ever express interests in birds, animals or nature. He had a small sailboat and lived at Frankton near the lake.

I would often catch up with Mrs Baxter after school to report on the latest chapter of The Voyage of the Beagle and ask her questions, always lots of questions. She was always ready to help although it was often very brief. After dinner, I would quickly do my homework and go to my room and read on.

They arrived at Buenos Aires, a city with a population of 60, 000 inhabitants at the time, and the Beagle sailed again from the Rio Plata after almost four months in the region. Later, the Beagle anchored in the Bay of Valparaiso, Chile’s chief seaport in sight of the Andes, the incredible mountain range continuing virtually through the entire length of South America from Southern Chile to Venezuela. Charles Darwin spent many months in Chile, mostly on land, meeting up with the Beagle at coastal ports from time to time, traveling on to Peru and finally reaching the Galapagos Archipelago on the fifteenth of September 1935.

Charles Darwin wrote: ‘We are led to believe that within a period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on earth.’

This part of the book had me spell-bound as I read through the incredible numbers of birds, animals, reptiles, fishes and insects nearly all unique to the Galapagos Islands and all recorded in great detail. Birds in particular were interesting in that they were almost completely tame, in spite of the fact that the local inhabitants caught them by hand for food, and so ‘the birds had not yet learnt that a man is a more dangerous animal than the tortoise’. I considered this for a long time, and it made me feel really sad that mankind had lost the respectful relationship with its co-inhabitants of the earth.