"I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains."
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
This is a book about a journey, and in that sense it fits, but otherwise I admit that to choose as my theme a book about war and loss seems odd in the light of the jubilant reunion that these days encapsulate, as we meet up with good friends from home, Helen and Michael (pseudonyms), who have come all the way out here to join us on part of our New Zealand journey.
But, at least in this quote, there is an echo of hope, and the themes over these few days in Christchurch are twin. We celebrate our luck in getting to see our friends again, and we walk through a Christchurch which has been devastated only five years ago by a huge and cruelly unanticipated earthquake.
In the city centre, there is a monument to the people who lost their lives in that earthquake, and, by extension, to the people they left behind to grieve for them. It is a set of 185 empty chairs, one for each lost life. They are all painted white, and they all have attached to them a holder for a single flower. The chairs are all different. Because the lives lost were all different. There are armchairs and bar stools, rocking chairs and dining chairs, wheelchairs and baby bouncers. Death is no respecter of age.
It's one of the most affecting memorials I have seen.
And I very nearly called this entry 'Empty Chairs'. Because the metaphor works for any kind of absence. The empty chairs, for M and I, of those back at home, who we often find ourselves wishing could just be here and see this for themselves.
"So and so would love this" we say wistfully, be it an amazing brewery, a beautiful plant, or a jet boat experience. We are lucky, because our empty chairs, unlike those who have left the world forever, can be refilled.
Bereavement is not something to even begin to be glib about. And yet there is something beautiful about that remnant Hemingway talks of, the sense that the lost are not ever, in fact, lost.
Helen and Michael join us and walk in silence, each in our own thoughts, among the empty chairs in the memorial, remembering quietly the lost of Christchurch and our own lost, past and present, whose memories remain as solid as the chairs we walk among.
But before that, we have had the pleasure of seeing our own empty chairs refilled, in the form of each other. As M and I drive up from Dunedin, having stayed the night in a beautiful, autumn hued arboretum, I have the same sense of restless excitement that I did as we prepared to see Roxi and Cal, though I manage to resist the ridiculous impulse to put make up on in preparation. Both M and I are fidgety and jittery as we drive, and we have to stop just outside Christchurch to have a coffee and refresh ourselves, as the occasion feels too special to warrant us turning up half asleep and musty smelling from the drive. We have, in the UK, generally seen these people at least three times a week if not more. It's been seven months. What will they think of us now, I wonder, will we have changed beyond recognition, become more confident, more relaxed, more worldly wise?
Helen and Michael come running full pelt around the corner in the campsite to greet us, and everybody more or less leaps into each others arms.
"Oh it's so good to see you!" says Helen, happily, later, as we settle into each other's company again with absolute ease, "you haven't changed a bit!"
I am not sure what I think about this, though I understand how pleased she is because I too, am quite pleased to find them unchanged. They are the same easy company, the same fun, the same people I loved to spend time with in England, and now love to spend time with in New Zealand. They fit perfectly into their much familiar, much loved, empty chairs.
But that doesn't mean I want to be the same. I want to be quirky K, newly travelled and informed, unrecognisably confident cent and soaring far above all that inferiority that was me before I travelled. I want to be sage now, a guru, a fearless adventurer.
Who am I kidding? Helen's right, I'm just the same. And at the end of the day who am I to decide whether that's such a disappointment? I think Helen and Michael are perfect as they are. I love their quirks and their foibles, their moods and their humour. What change would I welcome given that status quo?
Only one change, I think, as we settle in to their, far more luxurious, camper van, to drink beer, wine and tea in equal measure, and begin a set of evenings that will characterise our time with them, playing increasingly silly card games, watching films, being us. Only one change, and that is the addition of Mark (pseudonym), who, in Southampton, usually completed this little set. There is a Mark shaped empty chair around our card table, and it is remarked on often. When we get home one of the first things we will do is call Mark, collect Helen and Michael - and complete the set. It will probably be messy. There is usually beer.
For now though, we laugh, drink, chatter and just relax again into each other's company, knowing of course that, when Helen and Michael leave, and we continue our journey, those chairs will be empty again, and all the more poignant for having been warmed.
But what are human relations if not poignant? And how much of what is always with us do we, inevitably, take for granted?
"Tomorrow can be a day of much valid action. Tomorrow can be a day of concrete acts. Tomorrow can be a day which is worth something. That tomorrow should come and that I should be there."
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Talking about Christchurch in terms of loss and damage is unfair.
As we walk through there is, admittedly, a very strong sense that the earthquake devastation us recent and visceral. Buildings are fenced off, standing, apparently in defiance of gravity, piles of bricks around them. There are building works and areas which are closed because they are unsafe. But even in the most tragically shattered remnants of old buildings there are, literally in one case, roses growing out of them.
A cardboard cathedral has been erected to be used whilst the long restoration process takes place on the original. The cardboard has a touching, transient quality, reminding us perhaps if the transience of our lives and the literal transience of earthly structures, particularly when built in an earthquake zone. It is a beautiful cathedral, cleverly crafted of cardboard pipes and tubes. It is an arresting design in and of itself, an artwork and a place of worship in its own right, not simply as a replacement for something else. There are numerous shops and restaurants which have rehoused themselves into colourful shipping containers, a tourist attraction in and of themselves, and doing perfectly good business. With this new way of living, this change to the norm comes a new hope which is much more than simply making do whilst the previous situation is restored.
Can old issues, geographical injustices be laid to rest in the new plans for the city? Are the shipping containers not beautiful in themselves? How sad would it be to see them go, replaced once again, by conventional shops?
Where change might be unwelcome in someone you love, or unnecessary in something you admire the way it is, it can also be a wonderful bonus.
I talk later with another friend about the expectations I had of being a new improved version, following this adventure and she laughed. "You might be the same person to sit down and have a drink with," she says, "but there will be subtler things, little changes in attitude or in the way you choose to see the world. And who wants a beer with a smug traveller anyway?" A good point. Am I trying to turn into Brad?
The fact is, of all the things I may or may nor have learned on my travels, one of the clearest is that there really is, however clichéd it might be, something beautiful in everything. Shipping containers, courage, cardboard tubes, Helen and Micheal coming here to see us over thousands of miles, a simple cup of tea or glass of wine with friends, cold drinking water and hot washing water, or ducks trying to climb into a small painted van, which in turn, due to a few sheets of MDF in the back, becomes a home.
Beauty and hope come in plenty of guises. Even a set of empty white painted chairs.
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