Kokolosi was wearing a subdued tapa cloth design dress in brown and black, and snakeskin shoes which were hurting so she had slipped them off and now she was doubt ful she would ever get them on again. She sat on a steel and vinyl chair in a corner of the university professor's office, holding a cup of tea and eating a sausage roll.

It had been a long day, the town hall graduation ceremony, lunch at a restaurant with a French name and a bottle of German wine which had made her almost tiddly. Photographs had been taken with her son, his hand on her shoulder, by a photographer who had warbled 'Watch for the dickey-bird" before each flash.

She had walked around the university complex with other parents, been shown lecture halls and offices, the cafeteria, the radio station. And her son was a part of this world of brains.

The professor in brown suede shoes and a yellow tie had congratulated her on having such a brilliant son. She had nodded and smiled.

Kokolosi felt old. And she was old. An old Island Mama, too fat, grey haired, she could only see across to the other side of this room by screwing up her eyes. She should be wearing glasses.

She became aware of an old couple, he in a suit that didn't quite fit him, a tie which was the wrong width - even Kokolosi knew that. Beside him a faded white-haired woman with wrinkled skin. He was dropping pastry flakes from his sausage roll on his waistcoat. She was tssk tssking and flicking at them with a paper napkin.

Then the old woman was looking at Kokolosi who turned her gaze away, politely, observed. them from beneath lowered lids. They were vaguely familiar. She had known them - years ago?

A burst of laughter from a group of young women gathered around her son in his university black gown and mortar-board cap, like butterflies, laughing and giggling.

She had felt proud as her son had walked across the stage and gone through the cap ritual and received a roll of paper and went back to his seat amongst all the other young men and women who had plenty of brains. He would wear a suit to work every day, with a collar and tie, and drive a big flash car and live in a big flash house in Remuera with a spa and a swimming pool, and he would have holidays in Honolulu and Surfer's Paradise, and his friends would be lawyers and doctors.

He would never know the hot days of hoeing weeds in the vegetable garden, of planting bananas and taro and tapioca, of fishing under the hot sun from an outrigger canoe, of not quite having enough to eat many days. He'd never have the job of gathering wood from the beaches for the cooking fire. She had left all that behind when she had come to New Zealand, abandoned her parents, though it was all different, so she heard, everybody back on the island ate tinned fish and tinned peas, there was bottle-gas, television sets and a video shop, and even a fish and chip shop in the village, and there was electricity and telephones.

She had escaped from the island in the time when there was no money. no real jobs. She had disliked hard work? Who didn't, but she had endured it for a time because that's what life had ordained for her.

In New Zealand she had married a man from her own village who had also escaped in the old difficult way, together they had discarded the old ways and they had taken up the New Zealand ways, they didn't go to the markets in Otara. they did their shopping not in K'Road, but in Queen Street, they weren't fresh off a plane from the Islands.

They had a bungalow in Mt Eden. Her parent's house had been a shack with a thatched roof, no stove, they cooked on an open fire. In Mt Eden they had a television, a video recorder, deep freeze, automatic washer, drier. spa bath, clock radio, cake mixer, FM radio, automatic toaster, electric carving knife. A microwave oven.

"Who they?" Kokolosi whispered urgently to her son.

"I don't know."

'Find out."

It was a nice day, but she'd be glad to get home and rest.

Even the Europeans she had worked for as a young housegirl, back on the island, had none of those things. Oh, the last one had a kerosene refrigerator and a wireless which ran off a car battery sitting on the floor underneath it, they were almost as poor as the Islanders, those Europeans of long ago who worked in the government.

Sometimes. thinking of island mornings with the sun up, dew on the grass, fresh picked pawpaw, fresh bananas, a fresh fish just brought in from the canoe and grilled on a fire of coconut shells, the wind in the palms, the sound of the sea on the reef, it was enough to make her physically sick. But it was all so isolated, a peasant economy, subsistence farming. No good for modern people.

She remembered the housegirl's work of washing white shirts and shorts in the concrete tub, no washing machine, and a wood stove. All the administration houses had wood stoves, no air-conditioning. There were mosquito nets and insect screens, and a boat once a month with icecream and fresh meat and vegetables and new films for the village picture show.

Her family had no money, except when Papa shipped bananas, or when Mama worked as a housegirl. And then Kokolosi got a job as a housegirl. She was paid ten shillings a week, that was one dollar in today's money. But things were not so expensive then. To get into the pictures was only sixpence, that was five cents now, and she was fed and she saved money.

She had worked for several families, until the last one, and there she had got lucky. Very lucky indeed. Her son reported back, bringing,a plate with a cream cake.

"The grandfather of one of the men in my group, Mr Warburton."

"Ahh." His grandson was so like him, the spitting image.

Kokolosi looked at old Mr Warburton as he dabbed his red-rimmed eyes with a handkerchief. His spectacles were horn-rimmed and impressive beneath his still large eyebrows, grey now. She remembered how long the hairs were, she had stroked them lovingly. Mrs Warburton wore spectacles, metal rimmed, but she had always worn glasses. "Blind as a bat," Mr Warburton had always said. "Couldn't see a thing."

Kokolosi should go across and introduce herself? He wouldn't remember now of course, all those years ago, when he visited her in the housegirl's room at the rear of the cement bungalow when his wife was asleep. Kokolosi had thought it just a part of the job, it happened to some girls, not all. But it did happen. She didn't really mind, that was the way it was.

If she did introduce herself it might embarrass him, and she didn't want to embarrass anybody. She smiled to herself. She hadn't thought about him in years. She'd loved him? Maybe. He said he had loved her. Held made plans. He said he would get a divorce. He called his wife 'The Dragon'. She had sometimes giggled inside as she had worked with the missus in the kitchen. They were sharing the man of the house and the missus didn't know. Kokolosi sometimes felt guilty, but it,wasn't her fault. Mr Warburton had made the approach. She couldn't help it that she was fifteen, had a slim body and big breasts, something white men seemed to like. And his wife was old - why she must have been 35? The missus had been a hard worker, involved in many organisations, the golf club, tennis club, women's interests clubs, they said she had been a good schoolteacher. Of course everybody knew that Mr Warburton was having it off with Kokolosi, but the missus would never know.

In later years Kokolosi had read about Mr Warburton in the 'Pacific Islands Monthly' magazine. He had progressed, become a very important Resident Commissioner with a pith helmet. Maybe she might have become his wife? She would have been a Mrs Resident Commissioner?

It would have taken her many many years to save the fare to New Zealand with a wage of ten shillings a week. But then the unexpected. There had been a raffle. There were always raffles on the island, for the Boys Brigade or the church, with prizes of a 70 lb bag of sugar, or a bag of flour, or a pig or half a dozen chickens, but this one had been for money. Twenty five pounds was first prize, organised by the Play School Centre of which the missus had been president. And the missus had bought a lot of tickets and given Kokolosi one. And by incredible luck Kokolosi had won the twenty five pounds.

Kokolosi could remember that ticket, it was pink paper. The number 69 stamped on it in black ink with a number machine.

It was not unusual to be given presents. The missus sometimes gave her a fathom of new material for a dress, and Kokolosi got all the missus's cast-off clothes; when they went into the village store there were icecreams for everybody, including the housegirl, and she'd sometimes give her sixpence on Saturday night to go to the pictures. Yes, she had been a generous woman.

Within a week of her raffle win, and she had been given the prize in five pound notes. Kokolosi had her boat and plane ticket arranged by Mrs Warburton and was aboard a wooden lighter going out to the MV 'Tofual' at anchor off the reef.

Aue! What a day that was, all the family crying, she was the first of her family to leave for New Zealand, but there was a distant aunty who would meet her and look after her. It was easier these days of course. Then, it was difficult, to come down the old sailing canoe track aboard the 'Tofual', leaving the island at 4 p.m., spending the night wrapped in a mat on the hard deck, uncomfortable, crowded because the captain or the first mate was making a quid on the side by carrying more passengers than manifested. And they were quids in those days; no food provided, but PagoPago at 2 p.m. the next day and there was the big Tafuna airport as one sailed into the sunken volcano harbour, and then economy to Auckland aboard a DC6. Now the people making the same trip flew in 737s, or 767s, just a few hours direct with in-flight films, free booze.

When Kokolosi got to New Zealand, cold. no warm clothes, like the inside of a kerosene refrigerator - and smell the same too. She stayed with aunty in Ponsonby and had a good time. She had gone to the pictures every night, and she rode on the trams. all trams gone now. trams good, buses not the same.

She worked in the hospital laundry, that was a good job, hot and steamy, just like home, good in the winter. Mrs Warburton was suddenly coming towards her, holding a large slice of cream sponge on a plate. Majestic she was, Kokolosi suddenly remembered how she had been afraid of her then, and she was suddenly afraid again.

Mrs Warburton was above her. Kokolosi tried to stand. She almost dropped her cream cake. Mrs Warburton was looking at her coldly from a great height, with a triple chin and those lines face powder couldn't conceal. "Kokolosi." There was no warmth in her voice, no friendliness. "If you so much as speak to my husband I'll claw your eyes out, you hussy."

After all these years?

"I knew all about you - and him. Who gave you the money to leave the island? Did you think it was a free trip, a lucky ticket?"

Mrs Warburton was jealous of Kokolosil Still! Raddled. And him. almost blind. And herself. Old old old, all three of them. but it was as if they were still young. Amazing! Really amazing.

Mrs Warburton waddled back to her husband. Yes, she waddled, she had got very fat. Kokolosi delicately atw the last of the cake. Thereld been no need for that outburst. Kokolosi wasn't stupid. She remembered when Mrs Warburton had given her the ticket with her week's wages of one red ten shilling note. "A present, maybe we'll be lucky," she had said. That was it, she still remembered the missus had said 'we'. "Would you like another cup of tea?" Kokolosi's son asked. 'Thank you.' Kokolosi looked across at Mr Warburton. She couldn't be sure at this distance but she thought she saw him wink. And she smiled a little. It was nice to see old people from the old days.

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