Me and Tommy’s One-Night Stand


From where I stand the Celtic Rugby Clubrooms look like they are on fire. Thin grey smoke streams from under eaves and through a solitary vent in the roof. Bright light flickers yellow and orange through streaming windows, and a loose window frame vibrates to a steady bass thump.

The Celtic Rugby Club is not on fire. This is the Ashburton College after ball party, and I am at the scene as one might be at the scene of a good-natured football riot. The centre of the event is a heaving, pulsing mass of human energy but here, just a few metres away, a sort of objective calm holds the bystanders.

Not that we’re gathering to seek autographs or admire the outfits. We are a safety net discreetly wrapped around the event; a cordon of parents, youth workers and security men whose job is to mop up the drunks, calm down the hot-heads and make sure everybody gets home safely at the end of the night.

There’s not much to do. The kids have arrived, divested of their ball gowns and tuxedos and hauling a small distillery of alcohol (cans only – no glass). They have produced their tickets and disappeared into the now-pulsating club rooms. An orange quarter-moon has set demurely over Allenton, leaving the stars in command of the sky and us below, stamping our feet and hunching deeper into our jackets. As the frost settles on the footy pitch and around my ankles I resign myself to a long, dark, cold and uneventful night.

Then I meet Tommy.

Tommy is one of three large Pacific Island men assigned to our small group to earn us a little respect from erstwhile gate-crashers. We stand together in darkness at the entrance to the car park.

I ask Tommy where he’s from.
“Wellington,” he replies.
I am taken aback by this answer. “No,” I want to say, “I mean, where are you from? Which sun-washed outpost of the tropical Pacific does your brown skin hark to?”

Tommy senses my query and guides me to safety. His parents came from the Cook Islands and he was born here, in Wellington. It is a simple whakapapa and a generous one, forgiving my small-town ignorance.

Nevertheless, I am startled by my presumption. Tommy, the child of immigrants, is as much a New Zealander as me, except his parents came from the Cook Islands, which makes him a Pacific Islander, whereas my parents came from Holland, which makes me a kiwi.

As the long night passes Tommy tells me his story. He came to Mid-Canterbury five years ago with the first group of meat workers brought here by WINZ and CMP. I remember their arrival – the sudden influx of street-wise Maori and PI kids into our schools.

“They brought us down for a week’s trial. We all stayed in the motels across the bridge and it went pretty well. I said to them, ‘can you promise me two things: a job as a slaughterman and a house?’ They reckoned they could, so I signed up there and then. My wife was up in Wellington. She said, ‘if you think it’s a good thing, we’ll come down’.”

Tommy never looked back. “We couldn’t believe it down here. There was so much work – we were never out of a job. In my first off-season I worked for a farmer at Dromore, on the lambing beat. I didn’t know anything about farming but he showed me how to mother an orphan onto the ewe. I told him, ‘all my working life I’ve been killing lambs and now I’m keeping them alive!’ ”

We pace in the darkness at the back of the clubrooms. I notice a small movement against the iron fence and call Tommy over. He shines his flashlight over the fence. “Come on out of there,” he says softly. A young couple emerge from the shadows and, under the beam of Tommy’s torch, walk guiltily to the front of the building. Tommy talks quietly to them for a moment before one of the youth workers escorts them away.

Tommy rejoins me in the darkness. “Thought they’d try to get in, I suppose. I hope someone gives them a lift home.”

Moving to Mid-Canterbury was a culture shock. “We were living in Methven and when we walked down the street people would say hello to us. We’d turn around to see who they were talking to, or we’d look at them to see if they were having us on. Where we come from you just don’t say hello on the street.”

“Now we’ve moved to Ashburton to be closer to the works. We’ve got a lady in the bank who’s helping us save a deposit for a house. She says ‘don’t buy anything until you can afford it.’ You know, up in Wellington nobody would ever think like that. None of us would think about buying a house. The PIs up there, we all spend the money. But it’s different here.”

“A lot of my family are down here now; my brother, and my uncle and others. We’ve got a culture group and COGs is helping us set up an incorporated society. We’ve got a church. When I go back to Wellington I tell them they should come and visit me at home. ‘But you are home’ they say. ‘No I’m not,’ I tell them, ‘my home’s in Ashburton’.”

A group of partygoers spills out of the clubrooms and is shepherded towards the courtesy vans. I ask Tommy if his teenage daughter is here. “No. She’d like to be but I don’t want her near the drink.”

We get busy as the party closes, the courtesy vans fill and we tidy up the strays. I move inside to help with the cleanup. As I leave I notice Tommy and one of his mates supporting the last young drunk of the evening. I pause to watch this large man, an immigrant to our community, gently lift the partygoer into a van and fasten his seatbelt.