Johnny had a squiz but they just looked like rings to him. ‘See anything you like?’ he asked Pauline.
‘That one’s quite nice,’ she said pointing to a diamond flanked by two much smaller stones.
‘How much is that?’ Johnny said.
‘Two hundred and forty-five pounds.’
Christ. ‘See anything else?’
More minutes went by.
‘This one?’ Pauline suggested.
It was a single small diamond set in a circle of faceted platinum.
‘Price?’ Johnny asked.
‘Good choice, madam,’ the man said. ‘That particular model has an illusion setting, which really shows off the diamond, don’t you think?’
‘What’s the price?’ Johnny said again.
‘One hundred and eighty-nine pounds, sir. Anything less than that and you’re only buying diamond chips. Hardly a compliment to your fiancée, is it?’
‘Well, it’ll do for starters,’ Pauline said.
Alarmed, Johnny looked at her. She smiled back tranquilly.
He asked the man, ‘Have you got lay-by?’
A big, theatrical sigh. ‘We do. I’ll work it out.’ The salesman scribbled something on a pad. ‘Ten pounds deposit and seven pounds, four shillings and sixpence a week over six months.’
‘That’s nothing,’ Pauline said. ‘My fiancé’s working on the harbour bridge and you how much they make. In a year we’ll be back to get that ring with the really big diamonds.’
‘I’ll look forward to that,’ the man said as Johnny handed over ten pounds.
Outside he asked, ‘What did you say that for? I can hardly bloody afford the ring we’re lay-bying.’
‘I didn’t mean it. I only said it because the stuck-up bugger thought you were cheap and we’re rubbish.’
‘Me?’ Johnny was aghast. ‘I’m not cheap. I just haven’t made enough money yet. And we’re not rubbish.’
‘’Course we aren’t.’ Pauline tucked an arm though his. ‘Come on, let’s go down to the MCC.’
The Maori Community Centre was, as usual, packed. There was a new band playing tonight from Rotorua called the Howard Morrison Quartet and the gen was they were pretty good, but first on were Dave Dockery and His Rhythm Pals. By now Sonny and Pauline were very familiar faces at the MCC, and both were grinning like mad at their engagement secret, and it took them a while to extract themselves from friendly greetings, but eventually they made it onto the floor where a space immediately cleared for them. They were dancing so well together now they’d become an attraction themselves. And they made a striking couple; dark-haired, coffee-skinned Johnny with his muscular build and flashing white teeth, and Pauline with her fair skin, tawny hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her shapely little body.
But tonight Pauline seemed to be running out of puff.
‘You all right?’ Sonny asked as she avoided a move that would have flipped her over his shoulder, and instead danced a sedate turn.
‘Just knackered. Long day.’
‘D’you want to sit down?’
‘After this dance?’
They found a pair of seats and Johnny offered her a drink from his hip flask of whiskey smuggled in inside his jacket. He preferred beer but suitable amounts were hard to sneak in to the MCC under the watchful eyes of the door wardens.
Pauline took a huge gulp, and coughed until her eyes watered. ‘Bloody hell, I thought that was beer.’
‘Sorry, should have told you.’
She took another smaller sip and gave the flask back. ‘Can you get me an orange squash or something?’
By the time he returned Pauline was greeting a friend neither of them had seen for some time.
‘Hi, Gloria. Haven’t seen you for a while.’
Gloria looked embarrassed. ‘I’ve been away.’
‘Yeah? Whereabouts?’
‘Napier.’
‘Work or visiting?’
Gloria shook her head. ‘Neither. I got in trouble.’
Everyone knew what ‘in trouble’ meant. ‘Really? God. You kept that quiet.’
‘It’s supposed to be a secret.’
‘Was it Ihaka’s?’
Gloria glanced at Johnny. He knew Ihaka, who hadn’t said a dicky bird about getting Gloria up the duff.
‘He wouldn’t have a bar of it when I told him,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d get married but he reckoned his mother and father said no. Mine definitely did.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t think he wanted the responsibility. Had the fun, though.’
‘Bastard. Where did you have it?’
‘Bethany. Some Pakeha family took the baby.’
‘Why didn’t someone in your family take it?’
‘Too shaming ’cos I’m only sixteen. We’re all turning into Pakehas these days, eh?’
Pauline, bursting to tell someone she and Sonny were engaged, realised Gloria wasn’t going to be the right person. Perhaps it was best kept a secret after all.
*
‘For fuck’s sake, will you be careful!’ Sonny exclaimed.
‘Keep your hair on!’ Johnny said, a big grin on his face.
He was sitting on a girder, his legs swinging, not holding on and lighting a cigarette. He was using his beloved Zippo and the wind kept blowing the flame out. It was a bad weather day and Sonny was surprised they were on the job, but they were a little behind schedule and the boss was worried.
Johnny finally got his smoke going, shoved his cigarette packet and the Zippo in his pocket, then stood and walked nonchalantly along the girder to Sonny’s perch and sat down again.
‘You look a twerp in that hat,’ he said, grinning again.
Sonny said, ‘Probably, but it saves my ears.’
‘I’ve got cast-iron ears, me.’
‘Good for you. Come on, let’s get these rivets in.’
Sonny got to work but after a minute he noticed there wasn’t any hammering coming from behind him. He turned and saw that Johnny was eating a pie now. For God’s sake.
From far below and about twenty yards away, on the very edge of Northcote Point’s cliff, the boss bellowed through cupped hands, ‘Apanui! Eat on your own time!’
It was Sonny’s turn to laugh. ‘That’ll teach you.’
Johnny jammed the last third of the pie into his mouth, crumpled the paper bag and dropped it, then gave a cheeky thumbs-up, completely unable to speak. Soon he was bashing and clanging away along with everyone else. Sonny had to admit he was a good, fast worker when he put his mind to it.
Sonny put his head down (focusing on the girder and not the rippling waves below) and got into the swing of it: hammer a rivet in a hole, bash the tail end to secure it, complete the section, shuffle along on his arse, start a new section. So when he heard shouts he was jerked out of his rhythm with a hell of a fright. He looked up, then around at Johnny.
But Johnny wasn’t there.
Some of the blokes were scrambling along the girders while others seemed paralysed, staring down at the sea.
And then he saw a handful of men sliding down the less steep side of the cliff, and two already in the water, striking out.
Then he saw the body, floating face down in the ocean.
God, oh God no, please don’t let it be Johnny.
He crawled along the girder, scrambled down a ladder, almost falling himself, and scurried along the lower girders till he could jump onto land. Sticky with cold sweat and shaking badly, he raced for the cliff edge and scrabbled, leapt and slid on his arse down to the water’s edge, in time to meet the men with the body.
It was Johnny, and when they lifted him out of the sea a piece of the back of his head came away.
‘Ah, God.’ Sonny shut his eyes, dreadful scenes from South Korea briefly flooding his mind.
Someone vomited. Several men swore.
A voice said, ‘Someone go up and get a blanket or something. We’ll have to carry him up.’
Sonny
opened his eyes, took off his silly flappy hat and put it on Johnny’s head to cover the mess.
The boss arrived. ‘Ah, shit. Bloody, bugger, shit. He only just started.’
Someone said, ‘We’re getting a blanket to carry him up.’
‘Bugger that,’ the boss said. ‘We’ll take him up in the crane. Hang on.’ And off he went to organise it.
‘What do we do with that?’ a man asked, pointing at the piece of Johnny’s skull lying on the sand.
Sonny picked it up and popped it under the hat on Johnny’s head.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ the man said, then gagged.
Sonny ignored him. He’d done similar things during the war. And Johnny might need it for burial: he wasn’t sure whether or not Ngati Kahungunu needed all their bits and pieces to pass over.
Christ, what was he going to tell the Apanuis? And Pauline? She thought the sun shone out of Johnny’s backside.
Why hadn’t the stupid little bugger just held on properly?
*
The boss closed down the site for the rest of the day, and gave Sonny the following day off as well. Probably, Sonny thought, because he was so grateful he’d offered to tell the Apanuis their son was now lying in Auckland Hospital’s morgue.
Allie wasn’t in when he got home. He thought she was probably at Kura Apanui’s or Wiki Irwin’s, knitting. They’d been flat out with that lately. He hoped so, anyway — Kura would need her friends. He had a very quick wash, gave Mr De Valera something to eat, then jumped in the truck and drove over to Ponsonby.
He knew where the Apanuis and the Irwins lived as he’d been over to collect Allie often enough, but the closer he got, the sicker he felt. He was dreading doing this but Kura deserved to hear the news from someone she’d at least met. It was a pity Joshua would still be at work. And then there was Pauline. He’d have to take Allie to Smith and Caughey so she could tell her face to face. She was going to be heartbroken.
He parked the truck on the street and walked down the path at the side of Kura’s house, wincing as he heard laughter coming from inside. It sounded like they were having a party. He knocked on the back door, but no one heard, they were making that much noise. He knocked again. Still no answer so he went in, past the kitchen and down the hall.
‘Oh my Lord!’ Wiki shrieked, spotting him. ‘I thought you were a burglar!’
‘Not today,’ Sonny said.
There were five women in the room and four roared with laughter. Allie didn’t.
She said, ‘Why aren’t you at work?’
‘I need to talk to Mrs Apanui.’
They all fell suddenly silent.
‘It’s my Johnny, isn’t it?’ Kura asked, her knitting frozen mid-stitch.
‘It might be better if we talked in the kitchen, Auntie,’ Sonny said, using the term of respect for older Maori women to try and soften the blow. As if it could.
‘These are my friends, dear,’ Kura said. ‘You can say what you need to in front of them.’
Sonny wished he were anywhere but here, doing this. ‘It is Johnny, Auntie. He fell. I’m really sorry, but he was killed.’
‘He’s dead? My Johnny’s dead?’
Sonny nodded.
Kura put the piece she was knitting over her face, stamped her slippered feet like a child having a tantrum and let out a dreadful wail.
The women scattered like ants. One to the kettle, one to Vincent, who’d started bawling at the noise, one to hand round a packet of smokes, Wiki to comfort Kura, and Ana down the street to the telephone box to phone David and ask him to go and tell Joshua at work.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Sonny muttered, almost to himself.
‘You poor thing,’ Allie said, putting an arm around his waist.
‘We should go and tell Pauline.’
Allie closed her eyes. ‘Oh God.’
‘Is there anything we can do?’ Sonny asked Wiki.
Tears were pouring down Wiki’s face. ‘No, boy. Thank you for coming to tell us. You’re a good boy.’
‘He’s at Auckland Hospital, at the morgue. He’s . . . he hit his head. Quite badly.’
Wiki nodded. ‘Ae. Thank you.’
Sonny and Allie waited a few minutes more, then quietly left.
In the truck Allie burst into tears. ‘Poor Kura. All of them. Pauline said he was the apple of their eye.’ She threw her cigarette butt out the window and blew her nose. ‘How did he—? How did it happen?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know he’d fallen till I heard shouting and turned round and he wasn’t there. He must have banged his head on the way down. It was pretty bad.’
Allie winced. ‘His face?’
‘The back. His skull. I told him to hold on properly.’ Sonny belted the steering wheel, accidentally tooting the horn. ‘I fucking well told him.’
The driver ahead of them turned and shook his fist. Sonny gave him an angry jab of the fingers.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Allie said. ‘You shouldn’t think that.’
‘No, but I was . . .’ Sonny rubbed a hand over his face. ‘God. Bloody hell.’
They drove the rest of the way into town in silence and parked near Smith and Caughey, went in and up to The Cedar Room. Pauline wasn’t behind the counter but Mrs Fitch, her boss, was.
Allie said, ‘Hello, Mrs Fitch, can I talk to Pauline, please?’
‘She’s a bit busy at the moment, Allison. Can it wait?’
‘Not really.’
Mrs Fitch looked annoyed. ‘Well, as you can see, we’re just finishing the lunch run. She hasn’t got time to gossip.’
Sonny watched Allie’s head lift and her jaw set and thought, Good girl.
‘Someone’s died. She needs to come home. Will you please go and get her.’
‘Oh. I’m so sorry, Allison. In that case . . .’ Mrs Fitch hurried off.
Pauline appeared a minute later and lifted the flap in the counter. ‘What’s going on? Mrs Fitch said you wanted to talk to me?’
Allie took her arm and looked round for an empty table. ‘Come and sit down.’
‘Why? I don’t want to sit down.’
‘Just come and sit.’ Allie almost had to shove Pauline onto a chair.
Pauline looked from her to Sonny and back again. ‘What?’
Allie took her hand. ‘We’ve got some really bad news, love. Johnny had an accident this morning. We’re so sorry, but he’s died.’
There was a long, long moment of silence.
Then Pauline said, ‘Oh, piss off.’
Sonny had thought this might happen. Young people never thought death could be real. ‘It’s true, sweetie,’ he said gently. ‘I was there. He fell off the bridge.’
Pauline stared at him, then said, ‘Well, that’s just fucking great, isn’t it?’
After a moment she put her head down on the table and wept. Allie moved to stand behind her, patting her shoulder and stroking her hair, looking at Sonny in anguish.
People were staring now.
‘You take her to the truck. I’ll get her things,’ Allie suggested.
By the time they got Pauline home she’d stopped crying and was unnaturally silent. All she’d asked on the way was the whereabouts of Johnny now.
Colleen was at work but Sid was home, and he was incredibly sympathetic, as Allie and Sonny had known he would be.
‘My poor little honey bun,’ he said, giving Pauline a huge hug when they told him. ‘Your heart must be breaking, eh? What can we do about that?’
Allie put the kettle on while Sid sat Pauline down at the table and dragged his chair, with a horrendous screeching noise, next to hers and sat with his arm round her shoulders. At his ministrations she burst into tears again, collapsing against him, which made Sid cry too.
Finally, when Pauline seemed cried out, and Sid had blotted his red face with a hanky, Allie served tea.
Pauline took a single sip then pushed her cup away. ‘Where will they bury him?’ she asked Sonny.
H
e didn’t know but made an educated guess. ‘They’ll probably take him home, back to Hawke’s Bay.’
‘Because I want to go to the funeral.’
‘It’ll be a tangi. Three days,’ Sonny said.
Pauline frowned. ‘They haven’t got a car.’
‘Sorry?’ Sonny wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.
‘How will they get him there?’
‘The whanau will come up and collect him, and everyone else.’
‘Will they take me?’
‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask the family, I suppose,’ Sonny replied, feeling uncomfortable. She was in a bloody awkward position.
‘We were—’ Pauline began. But then she stopped.
‘We were what?’ Allie asked.
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.’
*
It wasn’t until she and Sonny were in bed, much later than night, that Allie was struck by a monumental realisation: when they’d gone into Smith and Caughey today there’d been no imagined smells of smoke, no illusive flickers of flame, no faint screams in her head from trapped and dying friends, and no crushing sense of dread. And now that she thought about it, she’d barely registered anything like that when she’d been in and out of the big stores with the knitting samples, only fleeting wisps of what had once utterly terrified her, nothing more than ghosts of ghosts.
And now even they’d gone.
Was she so busy now that she didn’t have time to be barmy? Was she getting better without even realising it?
*
Pauline went to view Johnny’s body two days later. After a postmortem examination he’d been embalmed ready for his final journey to Maungakakari, and was spending one last night at his family’s house.
Sonny and Allie drove Pauline over to Ponsonby, and when Pauline knocked on the back door, Kura’s eldest girl Patricia welcomed her with open arms. The house was jammed with people Pauline didn’t know but she found Kura, who enveloped her in a squashy hug.
‘Our beautiful boy’s gone,’ she said, her face puffy and her eyes red. ‘Come and say goodbye.’
Johnny was in the front room, his coffin set on a pair of sawhorses. On a little table near his head stood a plaster statue of Jesus, a photograph of Johnny grinning in his best clothes, and a vase of freesias. At first Pauline was afraid to look in case his lovely face was disfigured, even though Sonny had told her it hadn’t been, but she gritted her teeth and did.
From the Ashes Page 33