From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, but she’s not working today.’

  ‘No, I don’t want . . . I just want to talk to her.’

  ‘You’ll still have to pay.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m her brother.’

  Flora frowned, then bent and picked up a dog. ‘Is Polly in trouble?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘A private investigator was asking after her a few weeks ago. A month, perhaps? He wanted to talk to her as well. And he wanted her home address. Naturally I sent him away with a flea in his ear. My girls are entitled to their privacy, and I told him so. Nasty little man.’

  ‘Did you get his name?’

  ‘I didn’t need to. It was Ted Hollis. He’s often loitering across the street trying to take photographs of my customers as they leave. Stupid man doesn’t realise we have a back door.’

  ‘Did you tell Polly he’d been around?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘I didn’t think it was worth worrying her about.’

  ‘And when did Polly last come to work?’

  ‘Let’s see, that would be three days ago? But you’d know your sister. She comes and goes as she pleases. Is she in trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Thanks for your help, Mrs MacKenzie.’

  ‘It’s Miss MacKenzie, and you’re welcome.’

  Back in the truck Sonny said, ‘She’s not there, but we need to find a private investigator called Ted Hollis.’

  ‘A private — Why?’

  ‘Because he was asking after her and I want to know why.’

  ‘God, who’s that?’ Allie asked, looking out the window.

  It was Flora MacKenzie, sailing across the street, her odd garment flapping around her. She tapped on the glass.

  Allie opened the window.

  Flora passed in a piece of notepaper. ‘Here’s Ted Hollis’s phone number and business address, if you want to speak to him, though I don’t know if you’ll get much out of him. I looked it up in the telephone book.’

  Another round of thanks and Sonny and Allie were heading back towards the city and Wellesley Street. Ted Hollis had an office on the first floor of quite an old building. The lift and its brass cage doors rattled so alarmingly that they wished they’d used the stairs, and the corridor leading to Hollis’s office was dimly lit, laid with dull, scuffed linoleum, and deathly quiet.

  ‘I usually expect clients to make an appointment before coming in, you know,’ Ted Hollis said as they sat down, even though he’d opened his door barely a second after they’d knocked.

  Sonny looked around. The office was small, and contained a desk with a telephone, a metal filing cabinet on which sat a wilting peace lily, and a wall calendar for 1955. Also, the room smelt like sardines. It didn’t look like he could afford to be choosy about his customers, or when they came in.

  ‘Anyway, you’re here now. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You’ve been asking questions about my sister,’ Sonny began.

  ‘Well, that depends on who your sister is,’ Ted Hollis said.

  What a smartarse, Sonny thought. ‘Polly Manaia. She works at Flora MacKenzie’s brothel. You were there not long ago. I want to know why.’

  ‘You’d have to ask her. Why does any girl work in a brothel?’

  Sonny wondered if Hollis wanted his face punched in. He leant forwards. ‘Why were you asking about her? Who was paying you?’

  Ted Hollis sat back in his seat, making it creak. ‘Normally discretion is my middle name but, as it happens, that particular client’s on my shit list. Pardon me, missus. He stiffed me on my bill. Says I overcharged him, which I can assure you I did not.’

  He made a steeple of his fingers and put the tips to his mouth, as though he were contemplating a decision, though Sonny suspected he’d already made up his mind.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Hollis said. ‘I’ll give you that information because that client doesn’t deserve respect. He’s not an honest man.’

  Sonny waited. Beside him he could feel Allie tense.

  ‘His name is James Murdoch. Apparently he’s the father of your sister’s child.’

  Allie gasped.

  Sonny felt equally stunned. ‘So who the hell is he?’

  Ted Hollis shrugged. ‘I never met him, though I talked to him on the telephone. An older bloke, I think. Married. Well-to-do. From Hawke’s Bay. Owns an orchard or something.’

  ‘And what did he hire you for?’

  ‘To provide him with photographs of the little girl.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘I gather he and his wife wanted to adopt her.’

  Sonny and Allie gaped at each other.

  ‘And was Polly in on this?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Can you give us this Murdoch’s contact details? Because they’re missing, you know, Polly and her daughter.’

  ‘No. That would be going too far,’ Ted Hollis said. ‘I’ve got scruples, you know.’

  *

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Sonny said when Ana came to the door. ‘Oh, are you on your way out?’

  ‘I was just off to visit Jack but I can catch the next bus.’

  ‘We can come back,’ Allie said.

  ‘No, really, it’s all right.’ Ana put her handbag on the kitchen bench. ‘Come in. How can I help? Would you like tea?’

  Sonny said, ‘No thanks, we won’t keep you. It was just something you said quite a while ago, about your family down the coast.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Ana urged.

  ‘Thanks. You said you were related to some Murdochs in Hawke’s Bay.’

  Ana nodded. ‘Which ones do you want to know about?’

  ‘Just their names would be good,’ Allie said, ‘if we’re not being too nosy.’

  ‘Of your living relatives. The Pakeha ones,’ Sonny added.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a complicated story. After my grandmother, Tamar Deane, had an illegitimate child, who I think I told you is my father, she married Andrew Murdoch and had James, Thomas, Keely and Ian, except Ian died during the war. The first one, that is, though he did leave an illegitimate child of his own.’

  Sonny asked, ‘So James Murdoch would be your . . .?’

  ‘My uncle. His kids, my cousins, are Duncan, Kathleen and Drew, but we lost Drew after the second war. Duncan was in the RAF and was badly burnt but he’s all right now. I’m not really in touch with Kathleen. Or rather, she’s not in touch with me and I’m fine with that. And then there are Auntie Keely’s children, and Uncle Ian’s boy, who’s really Billy’s son, my brother who died overseas, not to mention Uncle Thomas and his wife, but they don’t have any children. Do you mind if I ask what your interest is?’

  Allie fiddled with the brass buttons on her coat cuff.

  Sonny said, ‘Ah.’

  Blushing, Allie said, ‘This is really difficult to say.’

  ‘As difficult as chasing your naked father-in-law round the back lawn in front of the neighbours?’ Ana asked.

  That was a point, Sonny thought. ‘My sister Polly sometimes works as a prostitute.’ He checked Ana’s face for a reaction — nothing. ‘And she has a little girl. She’s three years old. Gina. We’ve just learnt that a James Murdoch from Hawke’s Bay, an older man who owns an orchard, is the father. Apparently he and his wife wanted to adopt Gina, and now she’s missing, and we can’t find Polly, either.’

  Ana was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘What a bizarre situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Uncle James. He always was a ratbag. And poor Auntie Lucy’s never been quite right since Drew died.’

  ‘So we were wondering if you could tell us how to find your uncle. If they do have Gina we’d like her back.’

  ‘I really don’t think he would have just taken her. Uncle James has done a few dodgy things in his time but he’d never kidnap a child.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’ Then, for the first time, Sonny said it out loud. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past my sister to sell one.�
�

  *

  Ana got off the tram near the hospital’s front gate and trudged down the long driveway towards the entrance. It was bitingly cold today and she was glad she’d worn her heavy winter coat and a beret. In her bag she had a hat and scarf she’d knitted for Jack, which she thought he might appreciate. Though who knew, with him?

  It wasn’t much warmer inside the hospital, though she knew the radiators in the corridors were going because she could smell them. It smelt like someone had draped dusty, dead mice over the fins and was slowly toasting them. Everyone she encountered seemed to have colds and bright red noses, and was sneezing and coughing and not bothering to cover their mouths. No wonder they were all sick.

  Jack wasn’t in his ward, and when she asked the sister on duty, an older woman today, where he was, she said she didn’t know. Ana sat down by his bed to wait, and that’s when she noticed the damp, dark yellow stain on his sheets. Revolted, she didn’t even need to sniff to know it was old urine. His bedding had never been this bad before. His water pitcher was empty and his teeth were sitting dried out in the bottom of a plastic cup. On opening his locker she saw that the clothes jammed inside weren’t even his. She caught the eye of the man in the bed next to Jack’s, who bared his teeth at her. Quickly, she looked away.

  Finally, she stomped over to the nurses’ station and demanded, ‘Look, you must know where he is. You’re supposed to be in charge of him.’

  ‘Well, he might be in the lounge, or outside in the garden. We don’t watch them every hour of the day, you know.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Ana said. ‘You should. At home I had to, otherwise he got into terrible trouble.’

  ‘Look, dear, this is a mental hospital. The place is full of people like your, er . . .?’

  ‘My father-in-law.’

  ‘Yes, and we just can’t do that here. There aren’t enough of us. Try the lounge or the garden. Or maybe the rec room. Or the lavs? He can’t get out, you know.’

  I bet he bloody could, Ana thought. ‘You look in the lavs. And he won’t be in the garden, will he, not on a day like this. Where’s the other nurse gone? Sister Simpson, the nice young one?’

  ‘She left. Got married, I think.’

  Ana made her way to the patient lounge, which, as usual, stank of wee and cabbage. Why, she wondered, did hospitals always reek of cabbage? Didn’t they cook anything else? Half a dozen men sat in the room, apparently listening to something on a radiogram from the New Zealand Broadcasting Service. Or perhaps they were just staring into space. At first she didn’t see Jack but then she spotted him, slouched in a chair near the window. Even though it was late morning he was still wearing his pyjamas, dressing gown, socks and one slipper, he hadn’t been shaved for several days, and his hair was unruly. As she approached she saw the remains of food crusted around his sunken mouth, and splodges of something on his pyjama jacket. And he smelt rank. She wondered when he’d last had a wash. Appalled, she felt like crying.

  He looked dazed and lethargic, but when he saw her a little light sparked in his eyes and he said, ‘Mary?’

  ‘It’s me, Jack, Ana.’

  ‘I don’t like it here, Mary. Take me home. I want to go back to the farm.’

  A huge pain swelled in the back of Ana’s throat and she couldn’t swallow. She’d visited Jack weekly on Wednesdays for the past three months, and with David on weekends, and he’d barely said a word to either of them. Not civil, sensible words, at any rate. This was the first time in ages he’d said something that contained echoes of his old self, and it hurt badly.

  She tried and tried to swallow, and finally some spit went down. ‘Wait here, Jack. I’ll be back in a second.’

  Hurrying back to his ward she grabbed his teeth from the bedside table and shoved them in her pocket, then looked around for his other slipper, found it, then returned to the lounge.

  ‘Come on, Jack, let’s go,’ she said, jamming his foot into the slipper.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Back to the farm.’

  ‘I don’t like it here.’

  ‘I know.’

  He lurched down the corridor beside her, tripping and banging into the wall. His balance seemed shot and Ana wondered what sort of medicine he’d been given. At the hospital entrance she put his new hat on him, wound the scarf round his neck, and tied his dressing gown belt securely. Then, her arm through his, they walked off the hospital grounds and out to Point Chevalier Road where they caught the next tram into the city.

  People stared, and no one sat near them on the tram, probably because of the way Jack looked and smelt, but Ana steadfastly ignored it all. At one point Jack wept, so she held his hand until he stopped. In the city they changed to a bus, attracting even more stares, and rode to Orakei. She looked out the window, wondering how taking him home would affect the children, and her. She’d made such plans — the wool was due to arrive from Wiri soon. She supposed she could appeal to Sid from next door to help keep an eye on Jack while she was busy, but that was a lot to ask from a neighbour, even good-natured Sid.

  When they got home, she ran a bath and washed Jack from head to toe like a child, dried him, dressed him in a pair of David’s pyjamas, and put him to bed in his old bedroom, where he fell asleep immediately. Then she threw his old pyjamas and things into the incinerator in the back garden and burnt the lot. When the kids came home from school she’d go down to the telephone box, phone the hospital and tell them she’d taken Jack home.

  Stuff them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  July 1956

  Sonny’s boss said, ‘Where’s your overall? Come on, hurry up, we’ve got loads to shift today.’

  ‘Actually I’ve only come in to ask for a few days off,’ Sonny said. ‘I’ve got some urgent family business I need to sort out.’

  ‘Not one of your week-long bloody funerals? You just had a sick day.’

  ‘No, but it’s important.’

  ‘Well, so are Smith and Caughey’s deliveries. You bloody Maoris have got no idea what commitment to the job means, have you?’

  Sonny, who’d only ever taken one sick day (yesterday) and statutory holidays since he’d started at Smith and Caughey, said, ‘I probably only need four days. I don’t mind taking the time off without pay.’

  ‘No. I can’t spare you.’

  ‘Well, I have to take it.’

  ‘If you do you’re fired.’

  Sonny didn’t hesitate long. ‘Then I’m fired.’

  *

  Before they left for Hawke’s Bay — in Sonny’s truck, which they really weren’t confident would last the distance — Allie and Sonny went round to Polly’s house one last time, and got a bit of a shock when she actually answered the front door. She tried to slam it shut again but Sonny shoved his foot in the way and barged in.

  ‘Where’s Gina?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Sonny grabbed her wrist and twisted it. ‘You do so. Jesus, Polly, you’re bloody unbelievable sometimes. Your own daughter!’

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘Please, Polly,’ Allie begged. ‘How much did they pay you, because we’ll have to give it back when we go and get her.’

  Polly looked both enraged and disconcerted. ‘Don’t interfere! Leave her. She’s better off where she is.’

  Sonny said, ‘Like hell! You’re bloody mad.’

  ‘How much?’ Allie persisted.

  ‘I didn’t get paid anything,’ Polly insisted.

  ‘Bullshit, you didn’t,’ Sonny said.

  Allie felt her belly knot up even more. If Polly wouldn’t tell them they’d have no idea about how much money they’d need. All they’d been able to scrape together was four hundred and seventy-five pounds. It was all they and Awhi had. Maybe the Murdochs hadn’t paid Polly anything, but Allie didn’t think so, and that upset her because she liked Polly.

  ‘Is she with James and Lucy Murdoch?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Polly said. ‘Now get out
of my house.’

  ‘She is and we know she is,’ Sonny said. ‘For Christ’s sake, stop lying.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Sonny let go of Polly and pushed her, just a little bit. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve done this, Polly. I can’t think why any mother would do it. You’ve just about ruined Mum. What’s wrong with you? Really, what’s wrong with you?’

  And then Polly looked at her brother with such venom that Allie nearly shivered. ‘You’ve got no idea, have you? No bloody idea.’

  ‘No. I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, then you can fuck off.’

  So Allie and Sonny did.

  *

  When Sonny and Allie had gone, Polly went upstairs to her room, sat on her bed, lit a cigarette and poured a glass of brandy. She was shaking badly. He didn’t have any idea and she was never going to tell him.

  She desperately hoped they wouldn’t bring Gina back. If they did they’d ruin her chances of ever having a decent life.

  And she hadn’t been paid any money. The three thousand pounds the Murdochs had given her was in Gina’s bank account, waiting just in case Gina might need it one day.

  She smoked and drank, and decided her time in Auckland was probably up.

  *

  Also before they left Auckland, Allie and Sonny paid a quick visit to Awhi. She remained distraught to the point that Sonny’s sisters, Ruth and Hine, and Hine’s three little kids, were staying at the house to keep her company.

  ‘We finally caught up with Polly,’ Sonny said.

  Awhi, who knew by now the story and background of what had happened to Gina, clapped her hands over her ears. ‘Do not speak that she-devil’s name in my house.’

  Sonny gently pulled his mother’s hands away from her head. She was fifty-five but at the moment she looked twenty years older, her eyes sunken with grief and her skin seemingly wrinkled overnight.

  ‘I have to say it, Mum. She says she wasn’t paid any money for Gina—’

  Awhi interrupted with a rude noise. ‘That harlot would sell her own nannie.’

  ‘Stop that, Mum,’ Hine said. ‘Saying nasty things will only make you feel horrible yourself.’

  ‘She is a harlot,’ Awhi said.