It was no more than a crumb.
At the Greymouth library, I took down the Auckland phone book and looked under M for Model. Nothing. But there was a Modelling Society in Wellington.
An extravagant toll call in the calm of early afternoon when the girls were napping and playing.
‘Do you know anyone involved in modelling in the late 1950s?’ I asked the blithe young woman who answered.
‘You better call Maysie,’ she said. ‘Maysie Bestall-Cohen. You know.’
I didn’t know, but Maysie turned out to have been the doyenne of the emerging fashion industry. She sounded kind. The Modelling Society did not get going until the early 1960s, she said. ‘Write to Jeannie Gandar, she started everything at the Fashion Fiesta in Upper Hutt in 1961. She knew a lot of girls.’
I wrote to Jeannie at the Wellington Polytechnic, where she taught clothing design. I included a family studio portrait Bruce had won in a raffle. We were standing together in front of a mottled background, new baby Ruth in my arms. Rachel, the middle one, smiling whimsically, while Bonnie gazed down the lens. With nail scissors I trimmed away Bruce and the girls, until I was alone against the painted backdrop. Months passed, and I gave up any hope of a reply. After all it was an impossible task. I possessed just two facts about myself: my date of birth and ‘Her mother was a model’.
‘I’m replying to your letter,’ Jeannie said in her deep voice. ‘At first I thought, how ridiculous. It happened to so many girls I knew.’ She drew breath and I was sure she was smoking. ‘To be honest, I threw your letter away. But something woke me in the night and I thought: That’s Pamela’s girl. Has to be. The likeness is uncanny.’
My chest tightened. Pamela. Her name is Pamela.
‘I got up and drove to my office and saved it from the bin as the cleaners came through.’
I had the impression Jeannie was tall, imposing. The kind of woman everyone noticed. She explained she’d taken months to call because she’d been researching. She’d lost touch with Pamela but found Fred, Pamela’s father, living in Waikanae. He remembered the name of the doctor in Napier.
When Jeannie was sure, she’d called Pam in Madrid. Just the word conjured something in me. Madrid. Spain. The opposite of coal-town Runanga with its shuttered mine, roaming dogs and born-again Christians.
‘It’s remarkable, spooky even,’ Jeannie laughed. ‘You writing to me, and me knowing your mother.’
‘You know my mother.’ More wonder than question. My mouth was dry.
‘I do. Or at least, I did. You look so like her.’
I’d never felt so tired. ‘What should I do now?’
‘No need for nerves. Write a letter and send a photo.’
‘To Spain?’ The idea of mailing a letter from Runanga to Madrid felt impossible. I took down Pamela’s address.
‘I’ll give your letter time to get there, and call Pam back, see if we can arrange a meeting.’
I pressed my forehead to the cold window. Bruce’s reading light reflected a bright spot against the native bush that enclosed us. I put down the phone and said nothing.
The bathwater was still hot. I caught my breath as though I was warm and the water cold. My hair floated over the surface and a picture of my mother formed. She would be tall with pale eyes and straight hair that hung thick and glossy, the opposite of my thin plait. I sat up in a rush. I never intended to stay under the water for so long. The stillness induced an amniotic slumber, until a frantic signal from my brain propelled me up, finally desperate for air.
The next morning, with the girls playing, I returned to a version of the letter that began with the wind and the bush. Outside, in a patch of unexpected sun, I read about our lives. Desperation soaked into every word. I tore the paper into tiny pieces. The chickens consumed the flakes before they realised it was not an early meal.
The next version was more natural.
My name is Barbara. I may be your daughter. I have three girls. I married young and had a family to keep from killing myself.
I started again.
We live on the West Coast of New Zealand, in a small cottage. I’m not sure how we ended up here, but it seems to suit us. Bruce, my husband, drives the local bus and makes things from wood, for the tourists who find their way here. He is kind to us.
Eking out our lives in the middle of nowhere and he is kind to us.
We would love to meet you.
I rewrote the letter in my best handwriting, folded it over another photo and went out to mow the lawn.
What if it was a practical joke? What if Jeannie did not call back? The girls watched from the big window as I forced the push mower through the long wet grass.
Rachel pressed her hand to the glass and it began to drizzle. If only Bruce would take over the mowing. But he was a man of extremes. Bowling greens or wilderness, with nothing in between. So I cut sweeping curves in the overgrown lawn, the blades of the mower clogged with wet grass.
‘You’re wet,’ Bruce said when I came in. The girls were making cushion forts, hungry and niggling each other. Ruth needed breastfeeding. Sharon Crosbie was on the radio, reading a poem cobbled together from weather reports. ‘Gusty south-easterlies easing afternoon.’ The cadence and beauty struck me. In Runanga, the fine spells were not increasing.
Bruce disappeared to the garage beneath our house to turn wood, the whir of his lathe a distant train coming towards us.
After lunch, I strapped Ruth to my chest and walked the girls to the general store. The postmistress leaned across the counter. Her large breasts flattened on the glass as she held out lollipops.
‘Airmail to Madrid. That’s in Spain.’
I remember my embarrassment. I wanted to remain separate from these people,
