From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  So she was surprised when Sonny came home that it was five o’clock and she’d been lounging around reading with Dev draped across her legs for nearly three hours. And he wasn’t alone.

  ‘This is Don Allen, my army mate. Don, this is my wife, Allie.’

  Don inclined his head. ‘Hello, Allie. Nice to meet you.’

  Mr De Valera hissed at him.

  ‘You too, Don.’ Allie thought she could have done with a bit of warning. She was dressed in sloppy old clothes, her hair was scraped back in a ponytail, her feet were bare, and her face was completely without make-up.

  ‘I’ve brought Don home for tea. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

  Allie tried to remember how many sausages she had. ‘Yes, lovely. I’ll get started now.’

  Sonny followed her into the kitchen and got some beers out of the refrigerator. ‘Ah, nice and cold. Hope you don’t mind me bringing him home, love. He’s just passing through and I haven’t seen him for ages.’

  Allie didn’t mind. Lucky she’d cleaned the bathroom.

  To eat they sat at the kitchen table, where Don, who was, Allie decided, a very nice bloke, entertained them with funny stories about working at Patea freezing works down in Taranaki.

  ‘You two ever get sick of the big smoke you should move down there,’ he said. ‘Bloody nice country.’

  Sonny shook his head. ‘Nah, I’m Ngati Whatua, man. I can’t leave here. And Allie’s whanau are from here too. Might come for a visit, though. Sounds nice.’

  After the main — sausage casserole (to make the sausages go further) — Allie served tea, and Afghan biscuits she’d made during the week. As she poured she became aware of a change of atmosphere at the table and glanced briefly at Sonny. What was going on?

  ‘Um, Allie,’ Don said. ‘Do you mind if I talk about something personal?’

  Alarmed, Allie wondered, Personal to who?

  ‘Sonny said you were in that department store fire a couple of years ago?’

  Conscious that the cup was rattling badly in its saucer, she passed Sonny his tea. ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘That must have been pretty bloody terrible.’

  Allie just nodded, not trusting her voice.

  ‘Sonny said some of your mates died.’

  Another nod.

  Don blew on his tea then took a really noisy slurp, and Sonny laughed, which broke the tension a little. ‘Have you ever heard of a thing called battle exhaustion?’ Don asked.

  Mystified, Allie said no.

  ‘It used to be called shellshock.’

  Well, yes, she’d heard of that. The poor old man up the road had it, and was rumoured to only come out of his house on Anzac Day, his nerves were so fragile.

  ‘Lots of soldiers have it,’ Sonny said. ‘Some never get over it.’

  ‘True, eh,’ Don said. ‘Quite a few of the fellas down my way suffer from it, on and off, and there’s a few completely off their rockers. Just didn’t come home the same, from the big wars and from Korea. But apparently you don’t have to be a soldier to get it. It can happen to anyone who’s had something really stink happen to them, like, say, being in a really bad fire.’

  Allie took her teaspoon out of her tea and touched it to the chocolate icing on her biscuit, melting it. After a moment she asked, ‘What happens to people with battle exhaustion? How do they know they’ve got it? You said they go off their rockers?’

  ‘Well, not all of them. From what they say — and to be honest they don’t talk about it much, mostly only in the RSA or the pub after a few beers — it sounds like they have a lot of nightmares about being in combat, or something terrible they’ve seen, or mates getting killed and things like that. They reckon sometimes the nightmares happen in the daytime too, though I’m not sure how that works. Like a vision, I suppose. And they feel blue a lot, and angry, and nervy, like something bad’s going to happen all the time. They can’t keep their minds on anything and don’t give a shit about life. And they drink. Bloody hell, do they drink.’ Don reached for a biscuit. ‘Do you drink much?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Does any of the rest of it sound like you? Because Sonny was telling me about your nightmares and I thought, shit, that sounds like battle exhaustion.’

  Allie unstuck the teaspoon from her biscuit. ‘If it is, how would you . . . how would I get better from it?’

  Don sat back in his chair. ‘Well, this is the stink bit. I don’t know many who have.’

  ‘But you know some, though, eh?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘A few. You’d think the government would do something to help other than paying them a piddly war pension, but no. It’s sign up and fight for your country, and if you come home fucked — ’scuse me, Allie — too flaming bad. But yeah, a few seem to have got on top of it.’

  ‘Well, how?’ Allie almost snapped.

  ‘You’re working in another big store now, eh?’

  Allie said to Sonny, ‘Did you spend the whole afternoon talking about me?’

  ‘No, we talked about old mates as well. Not that you’re not my mate.’

  ‘Crikey, you don’t hear a fella say that about his wife too often,’ Don remarked.

  ‘Why do you want to know where I’m working?’ Allie asked.

  ‘’Cos being in another big store’s probably reminding you of the one that burnt down. Every time you walk in there you’ll be getting a bad memory. You should get a job somewhere else, somewhere completely different. And you should talk about the fire. Have you?’

  ‘No. Who would I talk to?’

  Don nodded at Sonny. ‘Your man. Other people who were there. Your family.’

  ‘Sonny doesn’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘How do you know I don’t?’ Sonny said.

  ‘And the people who were there just want to put it behind them,’ Allie said.

  ‘How do you know they’re not all feeling the same way you do?’ Don said. ‘Have you asked them?’

  ‘No. It’s just something . . . I mean, I don’t even see a lot of them now.’

  ‘Well, change your job, start talking about the fire, and have a good stiff drink at night to help you sleep. But just one before bed, don’t keep going all night and the next day. You don’t want to turn into an alkie, eh?’

  Scowling, Allie said, ‘I tried that. I had a whiskey before bed once and the nightmares were worse. I’m never doing that again.’

  Don laughed. ‘Everyone’s nightmares are worse when they drink whiskey. Try something else. I dunno. Brandy? Gin?’

  ‘It can’t be that easy, though,’ Allie said, ‘or everyone would be getting better.’

  Don took a biscuit. ‘These look nice. I don’t think it is that easy. I’m not really sure why some fellas come right and some don’t, but I think, I think, the ones who get better are the ones who find something to do that’s got nothing at all to do with what fucked them up. Whoops, sorry. You know? They fill their lives with other things, good things and busy things, so there’s no room left for the bad stuff. Those are the fellas who seem to be doing OK.’

  Allie nodded, because it did sort of make sense. She knew, though, that it would be a lot easier to talk about than to actually do.

  Sonny said, ‘You can leave work now if you like, and be a lady of leisure while you look for something else. We can afford it. There’s money left over from the Indian.’

  It was very tempting, Allie thought. No more panicking every time she walked through the staff entrance of Smith and Caughey, no more breaking into a sweat whenever a customer walked by smoking, no more obsessively checking rubbish bins in the staff and customer toilets for fag ends that might not quite have been extinguished. But what would she do instead? All she knew was how to sell dresses and make-up. She had no experience with anything else. But then neither, she supposed, did plenty of other women who managed to get jobs.

  ‘Did he tell you what he did?’ she asked Don.

  ‘He did and I can tell you which one I’d rather have.’ D
on thought for a second. ‘Mind you, those cold beers were bloody nice.’

  *

  Two days later, on the Monday morning, Allie said to Peggy, ‘I’m handing in my notice today.’

  Peggy, who was applying her make-up at the counter though she’d been told several times not to by the Head of Cosmetics, said, ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I came back to work too early after Hana died, and I’m still having trouble with my feelings about the fire.’

  ‘Really? Right-oh — it makes sense, I suppose. Dunno what I’d be feeling if all that had happened to me. Just being in the fire would have been bad enough, but you lost so many friends. And then to lose Hana, and now your Nan. I don’t think I’d have come back to work after any of those things. I’m not sure I could have. So good on you – you need some time off. Take care of yourself. Read some good books, sleep in, eat chocolate, plant a flower garden, concentrate on getting pregnant. You know, whatever makes you feel better! I’ll miss you, though.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too. You’ve been great.’

  Peggy blotted her lips and put the lipstick back with the testers. ‘You too.’

  Allie hesitated, then said, ‘I’ll tell you who I won’t miss.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Kathleen Lawson. What a bitch.’

  ‘Well, sweetie,’ Peggy said, ‘you live and learn.’

  *

  Hawke’s Bay, June 1956

  James Murdoch opened the buff-coloured envelope and slid out the photographs, letter and itemised account.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said when he saw what Ted Hollis had charged.

  Then he went through the photos. They were in colour, which explained some of Hollis’s exorbitant fee, but certainly not all of it. There were some just of Polly, a lot of a little girl playing in a backyard, including close-ups, and some with Polly and an older woman, and a few of two houses — one a state house and the other a rundown two-storey affair — including the letterboxes. James didn’t think they needed to be in colour. He had a good mind not to pay Hollis’s full invoice.

  The child was pretty and, he had to admit, looked like both Drew and Kathleen had at that age, except her skin and hair colour were darker. Kathleen and Drew had both been fair, and this child was obviously her mother’s daughter, but the similarity was there. His heart sank.

  ‘Show me,’ Lucy said eagerly.

  Suppressing a sigh, James passed the photos across the lunch table. Ever since he’d confessed his infidelity (and its disastrous outcome) to her, she’d been brooding about it and, he’d suspected — rightly, as it turned out — scheming. Kathleen and Jonathan had three children and, though they didn’t often see them, Lucy conceded three was probably a sufficient contribution. And then there were Duncan and Claire, who had Lorraine. Lucy, who believed in big extended families, didn’t think one child from them, making a total of four grandchildren, was enough. Privately James wondered if Lucy’s yearning for lots of grandchildren was a misplaced response to the loss of Drew, their poor, lost, younger son. Like his older brother, and James himself, Drew had gone to war, and though he’d eventually come home he’d been a ghost of the young man who’d left. He’d spent years as a Japanese prisoner of war — an experience James couldn’t even imagine and one Drew had certainly never spoken about — and in the end he’d succumbed to whatever horrors had haunted him and taken his own life. It had been a bitter, bitter blow, and a tragedy the family had never quite overcome. Perhaps understandably, Lucy had grieved terribly after Drew’s death, and still did, and James wondered if it might have turned her mind a little. Something had, because it seemed Lucy’s latest plan to augment the number of Murdoch grandchildren pivoted on Duncan and Claire adopting James’s love child.

  When she’d first suggested it, he’d said, ‘Lucy, you can’t just move people around like chess pieces. Anyway, the child has a mother.’

  ‘But she’s a prostitute. If that little girl is yours I don’t want a Murdoch child brought up by someone morally bankrupt enough to sell her sexual favours.’

  James chose not to point out that she was married to someone morally bankrupt enough to purchase someone’s sexual favours. ‘And what about Duncan and Claire? Do they want another child? Have you asked them?’

  ‘Not in so many words. But Claire has women’s problems and I know she would have had more children if she could.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re getting dangerously close to meddling.’

  ‘I’m not meddling! There’s a little girl out there, James, your little girl, who needs a decent home and upbringing, and we can make sure she gets it. That woman Polly doesn’t really want her. She was using her to gouge you for money, and God only knows where that’s been going. Alcohol? Fancy clothes? Her boyfriend?’

  At least that had stopped, James had thought with relief. He’d gone into town the day after he’d made his confession and ceased the order for payment.

  Now, in silence, Lucy studied the photographs intently, making two piles as she worked through them, one depicting the child alone, and the remainder, which she handed back to James. ‘I don’t need to see those.’

  James agreed. He probably wouldn’t want to look at photographs of someone Lucy had illicitly slept with either.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Lucy asked.

  For an awful moment James thought she meant Polly, then realised she was referring to the little girl. He thought he knew her name, from Polly’s instructions regarding the blackmail payments, and Ted Hollis’s letter confirmed it.

  ‘Gina.’

  ‘That’s a bit common,’ Lucy said.

  ‘It’s just a name. I think it’s quite nice.’

  Lucy went back to staring at the photos. ‘She does look awfully like our children when they were little. She has exactly the same chin Kathleen had, and see here? She has Drew’s eyes. And Duncan’s. I bet if I could see her ears they’d be the same too, but she has such lovely thick hair. I bet she has Murdoch ears.’ She looked up beseechingly. ‘We have to rescue her, James, we really do. Please?’

  And James, who already felt as guilty as hell for cheating on her, didn’t say no.

  *

  Auckland, June 1956

  Kura and Wiki had been knitting like mad. Wiki had already made enough for three babies since she’d been let go from the hospital in March, but now that Kura was also out of work they’d made so much they could have opened a stall at the market. They knitted obsessively: very fine gowns and leggings and rompers, cardigans and jumpers, and hats and booties and mittens and wraps, and two full sets for the sleeping basket consisting of mattress covers, blankets and quilts. Every day something new was finished and added to the lovingly folded pile, and Henare asked Wiki if she was giving birth to a rugby team. Wiki said she bloody well hoped not.

  Then one day Joshua and Henare had a talk, and told Kura and Wiki that neither family could afford to buy any more wool and the knitting had to stop. And when it did Wiki and Kura looked at everything they’d made and realised that things probably had got a bit out of hand. It was funny in a way but not really, because neither understood what had driven them so persistently to do it. Kura’s daughter Patricia said they’d been doing ‘angry knitting’, but Kura didn’t know what she meant, and didn’t ask her to explain in case she heard something she didn’t care to know about. In the end Wiki chose what she wanted to keep from the pile and Kura took the rest to a shop on Ponsonby Road that sold craft items on commission. A week later Wiki had woken up early with a dragging pain in her lower back and knew things were moving along, but didn’t tell anyone. In April she’d reluctantly been to see a doctor because she’d had a bit of bleeding, which had turned out to be nothing much, and he’d made arrangements for her to go to the women’s hospital at Cornwall Park to give birth. But she didn’t want to. She’d had all her other babies at home: why shouldn’t she have this one at home, too? Henare had told her she’d be much better off in a modern city hospital where they had all the f
lash machines and proper doctors and nurses, but she disagreed. Kura could help her. Kura had pushed out eight babies and she’d had five — what they didn’t know about childbirth between them didn’t matter. But Henare went on and on about it, making her wish she’d never told him about the women’s hospital in the first place, so in the end she’d said yes, she would go.

  And now the baby was coming so she shut up about it until the little kids had gone to school and Henare and the big kids, Rena and now Vicki, had left for work. Then she gathered together the bits and pieces she’d need to deliver the baby, and got on with clearing the breakfast things, doing the dishes and making the beds, taking her time and resting when she needed to. At about eleven o’clock she went across the street to let Kura know what was happening, but she wasn’t home. That was OK — she knew she wouldn’t be far away.

  Then she hung out some washing that hadn’t dried properly the day before; you couldn’t leave it on the line overnight because it got nicked. After that she had a rest and made herself a bit of lunch. It was only a slice of bread and a bowl of veggie soup with a few ham bones thrown in, but she felt she needed something in her belly, even if it would all come back up later when the baby was on its way out. Then the cramps started in earnest so she walked — up and down the hallway, into the front room, out the back round their little yard, and back along the hallway again. Her waters broke when she was lumbering up the back steps.

  Yvonne and Eddie came home a little after three. Not Charlie, though, but then he always loitered.

  Wiki said to Eddie, ‘Run across the road, love, and tell your auntie the baby’s coming.’

  Eyes big, Eddie shot off.

  Yvonne looked thrilled. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Kura appeared within minutes, standing in the doorway, her hands on her bulky hips, looking cross. ‘I thought you were supposed to be having this one at the women’s hospital?’

  ‘Too late now.’

  ‘Bloody hell, girl.’

  Wiki flapped a hand at her. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Will you? You’re no spring chicken these days.’