From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  The back porch was up some rickety steps and on a bit of a lean, but there were two rows of shoes neatly lined up along one wall.

  ‘And your whole family lives here?’ Pauline asked.

  ‘Yep, nine of us. We don’t wear shoes inside.’

  Pauline slipped off her shoes.

  Johnny opened the back door and called, ‘Mum! Visitors!’

  The faces of three boys peered out from what seemed to be a bedroom. One boy chanted, ‘Oooh, Johnny’s got a girlfriend!’

  ‘Shut up, Sam. These are my brothers, Willie, George and Sam. Hop off, you lot. Mum’ll be in the kitchen.’

  She was, along with Johnny’s sisters, Patricia, Mary and Margaret.

  Mrs Apanui, a big, nice-looking lady, gave Pauline a squashy hug. ‘Hello, dear, welcome. It’s nice to meet you at last. We keep telling Johnny to bring you home. You want to stay for some kai before you go out?’

  Pauline looked at Johnny, who said, ‘Might as well. Mum’s a good cook.’

  Tea was pork chops and great bowls of vegetables from the garden. There wasn’t a kitchen table so everyone sat on the floor in the sitting room around a tablecloth.

  Pauline liked Mr Apanui too, who asked, ‘What does your father do, Pauline?’

  ‘Not much. He was a watersider but got run over when he was a bit shickered coming out of the pub during the strike, and now he’s on the sick, but he does the odd job house-painting when he’s up to it. Under the table, though.’

  Mr Apanui roared with laughter.

  Mrs Apanui belted him. ‘Stop that, Joshua. It’s not funny.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘We thought it was,’ Pauline agreed. ‘Well, Mum didn’t.’

  ‘Sounds like a bobby-dazzler, your dad.’

  ‘Oh, he is. You should meet him one day.’

  ‘That’d be good.’

  ‘And your mum?’ Mrs Apanui asked.

  ‘She works in the tearoom at Mission Bay. She’s been there for years. Runs in the family now ’cos I work at The Cedar Room at Smith and Caughey, but one day I’m going to be a stewardess for TEAL.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to have ambitions,’ Mrs Apanui said, looking pointedly at Johnny.

  ‘What?’ Johnny said, reaching for more sweetcorn. ‘I’ve got ambitions.’

  ‘Be nice to know what they are,’ Mr Apanui muttered.

  ‘My current ambition is to finish my tea and get to the MCC. Hey, I’m a poet!’

  ‘Honestly, how do you put up with him?’ Patricia asked Pauline.

  Pauline laughed.

  After a pudding of jelly and hokey-pokey ice cream, Mrs Apanui wouldn’t let Pauline help with the dishes and shooed her and Johnny out the door.

  ‘Go on, off you go and have a good time. And you make sure she gets home all right, Johnny. No sticking her on a tram by herself. You take her all the way home.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Thanks for tea, it was lovely,’ Pauline said.

  ‘You’re welcome, dear. Come again any time you like.’

  Outside Johnny said, ‘Shall we walk down the hill or get the tram? I think I’ve eaten too much to walk.’

  ‘Me too. Tram,’ Pauline said, stifling a burp and lighting a cigarette at the same time, which was quite complicated. ‘Smoke?’

  Johnny nodded. Pauline gave him the cigarette and lit another, and they crossed into the middle of College Hill Road to wait at the tram stop. They rode down into Victoria Street as far as the Halsey Street intersection, then hopped off and walked to the Maori Community Centre at the intersection with Fanshawe Street. Pauline was quite pleased she’d worn flat shoes, which were best for dancing anyway.

  The MCC was a big square ugly building that looked exactly like what it was — an American army warehouse left over from World War II. But, according to Johnny, it was a thriving meeting place for city Maori who came to dance on Friday and Saturday nights and on Sundays after church, and to play sports and attend cultural events and eat boil-up and Maori bread. Tonight they could hear the band from the footpath, and had to fight their way inside because it was jam-packed and already hopping. Johnny dumped his sports coat (no leather allowed at the MCC) on a vacant chair and Pauline set her handbag on top.

  She loved it there, and felt a thrill of excitement as she followed Johnny straight onto the dance floor. Why waste time saying hi to friends when the band was pumping out good rock and roll? There’d be time for socialising later.

  Johnny grabbed her hand and they swung into the familiar steps — right, left, a step behind, then a spin, and again — and then she was sliding through his legs and barrelling into another couple who skipped out of the way, then turning as he yanked her back to her feet. Soon, once they’d warmed up, she’d be flipping upside down, over his shoulder, spinning out, spinning back, getting dizzy, and never once losing the beat. She loved dancing and there was no one better to dance with than Johnny Apanui. Then the song ended, the guitarist said something funny that made the whole hall laugh, and the band started into a jive number, so off they went again, similar dance steps but twice as fast.

  After twenty minutes the band announced a short break and dancers drifted off the dance floor.

  Pauline lifted her arm and sniffed her armpit. ‘Yuck.’

  Johnny laughed. There were large damp patches under his own arms and down the back of his bright blue dress shirt. ‘Me too. We’ll probably stink by the end of the night.’

  They never did, though, Pauline thought. They smelt of sweat, but they never stank. And lately they’d smelt of sex, from doing it in the grandstand next to the MCC in Victoria Park. Who knew sex actually had a smell? It was sort of like feijoas. Or was it guavas? Going home afterwards on the bus they’d be sitting there and there’d be this whiff around them, especially if the night was warm, and they’d look at each other and wonder if anyone else on the bus could smell it. It was actually a bit embarrassing, the idea that people might be looking at them and thinking, those two have just done it.

  Johnny used French letters, though she couldn’t see what was so French about them. He said he got them from his mate at work. They came in a little tin and you could buy them from the chemist, but he reckoned he was buggered if he was going in and asking for them because the chemist asked you a whole lot of questions. What she couldn’t work out was, if the stuff that came out of Johnny all went into the French letter, which he threw away afterwards, and not her, why could you still smell what they’d been doing it? Johnny thought maybe having sex changed the smell of their sweat — and they did get pretty sweaty doing it — so perhaps that was it. She was too embarrassed to ask Allie, and Donna wouldn’t know, being all prudish and holier than thou now she was a student nurse, and her mother would knock her block off.

  Maybe she’d ask one of her girlfriends. When she got round to it.

  *

  Jonathan crossed to the drinks cabinet and refreshed his brandy. ‘I suppose we’d better hire a new nanny.’

  ‘No,’ Kathleen said. She was curled on the sofa, nursing her own drink. Well, not exactly nursing — it was her third.

  Jonathan added about two drops of bitters to his brandy, swirled his glass, then turned to face her. ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘No, we’re not hiring a new nanny. You’ll only end up sleeping with her.’

  Sighing heavily, Jonathan said, ‘Christ, do you have to bring that up again?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I bring it up or not, does it?’ Kathleen snapped. ‘The fact remains you still did it.’

  ‘Yes, I did, and I’ve apologised till I’m blue in the face. I really don’t know what else you want me to do, Kathleen.’

  ‘I want you not to have done it in the first place!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I did. And if we’re not going to get another nanny, who’s going to look after Rosemary and cook the dinners? You?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘You’re the one who insisted you had to h
ave a nanny in the first place! How will you go shopping and out to lunch with your friends with Rosemary trailing along? Being a proper mother and a housewife takes work, you know.’

  ‘I know it bloody well takes work!’ Kathleen shouted, because she did know, and she really wasn’t sure she could manage it.

  It was all very well preparing one Christmas dinner, but Evie had done most of the family’s cooking, all the housework, had looked after Rosemary much of the time, and the boys after school. Jonathan was right. If she, Kathleen, had to do all that there’d be no time left to do anything just for her. And she suspected she would hate having to be an ordinary housewife. It wasn’t what she wanted out of life at all. But then neither was having a philandering husband, an odd son and women she could really only call acquaintances rather than friends.

  But she wasn’t leaving Jonathan and neither would she ask, or tell, him to leave. She couldn’t anyway: he was right about that too — the house was his. She wouldn’t leave him even though she knew that if he was boorish enough to screw Evie in their home, then he was probably screwing other women as well. The stewardesses on his flights, perhaps? Women in cities in which he had stopovers? But then she’d suspected that for some time, hadn’t she, but had never permitted the idea to crystallise into something tangible that could really hurt her. Well, now it had, but she couldn’t bear the shame of a divorce, and she was too old to start again. So she would continue doing the things that brought her a measure of satisfaction, if not happiness, carry on spending Jonathan’s money, and do her best to ignore his infidelities.

  Jonathan sighed. ‘Look, would you feel better if we hired an older woman? Someone in her sixties perhaps, and more of a housekeeper? I mean, Rosemary will be at school soon anyway. It’s time you stopped mollycoddling her. You can’t keep her at home forever.’

  It was probably the best solution — surely even Jonathan wouldn’t try to bed a woman in her sixties — but Kathleen didn’t want to agree with him, so she said nothing.

  ‘Why don’t you telephone the agency?’ he suggested, heading for the door. ‘I’ll leave it with you, shall I? I’ve got things to do.’

  Kathleen sat on the sofa for a while longer, listening to Rosemary thumping about upstairs. She must be practising her ballet. Then she went to the French doors and looked out into the garden at Jonathan, sitting under a tree on a deck chair, with his booze and his newspaper.

  ‘Bastard,’ she whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  May 1956

  Donna dithered for nearly a month. She’d gone back to the doctor’s surgery near Market Road and had been told she was ten weeks pregnant, according to the date of her last period.

  Suddenly overwhelmed by panic, she’d blurted, ‘I’m not married. What can I do about it?’

  And the doctor had stared right at her and said, ‘You made your bed, young lady, you lie in it.’

  She’d told no one but Helen, who’d said, ‘I knew it, you know.’

  Startled, Donna had asked, ‘What, that I’m pregnant?’

  ‘No, that Slippery Sullivan was bad news.’

  ‘Slippery Sullivan? Who called him that?’

  ‘Most of the registered nurses.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘You never gave me the chance. You thought the sun shone out of his backside.’

  It was true, Donna thought, she had. And now he’d gone, transferred to another hospital a week after he’d told her he wanted nothing to do with her. Matron had been the one to tell her. She’d stopped her in the corridor of Ward Three one day.

  ‘I hope you’re not looking for Doctor Sullivan, Nurse Roberts.’

  ‘No, I’m on duty here this morning.’

  ‘Because he’s gone to Auckland Hospital. For good.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Then Matron, with her heavy legs, formidable bust, homely face and quick, sharp eyes, said, ‘And if you want my opinion, which possibly you don’t, you’re a lot better off without him.’

  Donna had opened her mouth, then shut it again.

  ‘Men like Robert Sullivan are ten a penny. We’ve all known them. Yes, even me. I suggest you do whatever it is you need to do, then get on with the business of learning to be a nurse. You show promise. It would be a shame to waste it.’

  Then she’d turned and marched off.

  Donna had nearly died of embarrassment. Had Matron known the whole time? And, even worse, did she know about the baby? She’d rushed into the nearest toilet and looked in the mirror but there had been nothing — that she could see — that gave any indication she was expecting.

  But still she’d put off making any arrangements, until finally Helen told her that if she left it any longer it could be too late and she’d have to have it.

  ‘But I don’t want to have it. I’d have to go away somewhere then give it up.’

  ‘Then get off your bum and do something about it,’ Helen said. ‘Why won’t you? Is it your religion?’

  Donna had thought about that and had realised she wasn’t enough of a practising Catholic to let that bother her. ‘No. I think . . . I think I’m just scared.’

  ‘Well, which is worse — being scared, or having to chuck in your nurse training? Because I don’t think you’d be allowed back after having an illegitimate child, even if you did give it up for adoption.’

  ‘Giving up nurse training would be worse, but you hear all these terrible stories about abortions.’

  ‘Yes, and I know a couple of girls who’ve had them and they’ve been fine,’ Helen said. ‘Just make sure you go to someone reputable.’

  ‘How do I know who’s reputable?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I haven’t had one, have I?’

  ‘Can you ask those girls you know?’

  ‘Me? They might think I need one.’

  ‘Say it’s for a friend,’ Donna suggested.

  ‘Well, obviously. I can try, but not till the weekend. People are careful who they talk to, though, because of, you know, the police.’

  Donna nodded. That would be a nightmare — ending up in court being prosecuted for having an abortion. And in the newspapers. ‘I’d be very grateful if you would, Helen. I really haven’t got a clue where to go. And you’re right, I do need to do something, and soon.’

  *

  The following Sunday night Helen gave Donna a name, an address and a time for the Wednesday evening of the coming week.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment for you. It’s up to you whether you go or not. If you want me to, I’ll come with you.’

  Donna took the piece of paper and put it in the pocket of her uniform, a uniform that just in the last week seemed to have become slightly more snug across her belly. ‘Thanks, Helen. I really do appreciate this. And this person, does she have a good reputation?’

  ‘She was the one who looked after those girls I was telling you about. And it’s thirty-five pounds, not thirty. Do you have the extra five?’

  Donna nodded. ‘And thanks for offering to come with me, but if something goes wrong there’s no point you getting in trouble as well, is there?’

  Helen’s face fell. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. But thanks.’

  The next few days dragged past, especially Wednesday. But finally, after work, Donna caught the tram into town then to Mount Eden, then walked the last half mile to the address she’d been given. The house was a nice tidy little cottage painted white with lattice-work trim along the top of the verandah, and a brick path leading to the front door. She knocked and waited until a middle-aged woman opened it. Her greying hair had been nicely set and she was wearing a cardigan over her apron.

  Donna’s stomach roiled with apprehension. ‘Mrs Harris?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I have an appointment with you. Donna Roberts?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Come in.’

  Donna stepped inside. The house smelt of Dettol or something similar.
r />   ‘First room on your right,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘Everything off from the waist down, please, and wait for me on the bed. I’ll be in in a minute.’

  The room looked like a normal bedroom. Donna didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it wasn’t this. There were a couple of framed pictures of flowers on the walls, a bookshelf, and a set of drawers on top of which sat half a dozen family photographs — presumably Mrs Harris’s relatives. A crocheted lampshade surrounded the ceiling bulb, pink drapes and heavy white nets hung at the window, and a burgundy candlewick bedspread covered the single bed. The only indication that anything medical might occur in the room were the tray on a bedside trolley containing a couple of surgical-looking instruments, and a rubber sheet covering the bottom half of the bed.

  Donna undressed as asked and sat down, feeling sick now and listening to the blood pound in her head, wishing she hadn’t come. But she’d had to; she’d had no choice.

  Mrs Harris returned carrying a steaming bowl of water, into which she dropped a speculum from the tray, and what Donna was pretty sure was a fine gauge steel knitting needle.

  ‘Do you know how far along you are, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘I think three months, maybe three and a half?’ Donna said.

  ‘Lie down, please. All right, bend your knees, heels against your bottom, legs apart. I’m going to start now so try to relax. You shouldn’t feel too much.’

  Donna felt something nudge the opening to her vagina and immediately tensed.

  ‘Try to relax, please. This is just the speculum. You know what a speculum is? It opens you up. I need to be able to see what I’m doing.’

  Of course she knew what a speculum was. Donna felt it go in and gasped as Mrs Harris released the opening mechanism.

  ‘You must relax.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Then the knitting needle came out of the hot water and Donna squeezed her eyes shut. The pain was actually pretty bad and she bit down so hard she felt a piece of back tooth break off, but Mrs Harris seemed to have a deft hand and didn’t poke about for too long. Just enough to dislodge and destroy anything growing in there. And then it was finished.