by Lily Hammond
Helen leaned against the wall beside her, eyes dreamy. ‘Have you ever been there, Clemency?’ she asked. ‘To Auckland?’
Clemency shook her head, and got the key in the lock, and the door open. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Never been farther than Nelson, believe it or not. Never been to the North Island at all.’
Helen trailed into the studio after her, going straight to the big windows that looked down on George Street and pulling the heavy curtains back. Dusty light glowered outside the glass, and she hauled up one of the heavy sashes as well, before poking her head half out.
‘You’ll have the perfect reason to go now,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to visit us as soon as we’re settled.’ She turned around and perched on the sill. ‘Did you hear about the march on Saturday? It would have been a riot, they say, if those food parcels hadn’t been organized.’
Clemency nodded, flicking through the pile of mail that she’d picked up on the way through the door. ‘I came into town for it with my camera.’
‘The new one? Have you developed the film yet? Does it work just as well as you hoped?’
Clemency put the pile of letters down and grinned over at Helen, letting her delight bubble to the surface.
‘Even better than I’d dared to dream, Helen,’ she said. ‘It’s a regular marvel, that’s for certain.’ She shook her head in appreciation at the camera she’d had sent over specially from Europe. It was the latest thing, and the coupled range finder was fantastic. The lens was beyond superb. It was absolutely perfect for the street photography that had become her real passion.
‘I’ll show you the photographs later,’ she said, straightening, and walking over to the little room where they stowed their bags and made cups of tea. Filling the kettle, she turned on the gas ring and put it on to boil.
‘What have we got on today?’ she asked, standing there in the cupboard of a room, rubbing at the back of her neck.
The studio on George Street was befitting a society photographer, the waiting room, studio, and finishing rooms all well-appointed, and the address was ideal, on the main street, in view of Wardell’s, where the Unemployed Men’s march had threatened to spill over into violence.
Lately though, every time Clemency came into work, she felt oppressed.
Taking photographs of society matrons and their stiffly starched husbands and children was no longer her idea of a gratifying career.
She went and stood in the doorway, arms crossed. ‘Helen,’ she said.
Helen was at the reception desk, going down the list of appointments with one neatly manicured nail. ‘Mmm?’ she answered.
‘When did you say you were leaving?’
Helen straightened with a grimace. ‘I didn’t say,’ she said. ‘Because you’re not going to like it.’
Clemency’s shoulders slumped. It would be even worse without Helen’s cheerful help. ‘Just give it to me straight,’ she said.
Helen blew out a puff of air from pursed lips. ‘Next week.’
Clemency’s eyes went wide. ‘Next week?’
‘I know. It’s no notice at all, but that’s all we’ve been given too. Michael was only told on Friday, and the promotion came with a moving van already booked.’
‘I see,’ Clemency sighed.
Helen came over and enveloped Clemency in a jasmine-fragranced hug. ‘I’m sorry, Clemency,’ she said. ‘You’ll find someone else for the job though, I know you will.’
‘Won’t be the same though, Helen, and you know it,’ Clemency said as the kettle set up a shrill whistle behind her. She turned and lifted it off the hot plate, set about making tea, her thoughts a million miles away.
Helen was taking care of their last client, another newly married couple, when Clemency slipped out the door and behind the wheel of her motorcar. She needed to talk to someone, and there was only one person who could be relied upon to truly understand her.
She found Maxine in the kitchen, supervising the making of some concoction that made Clemency’s eyes water.
‘What on earth is that?’ she asked, pulling out a handkerchief and blotting her eyes with it. ‘It’s not edible, is it?’
Maxine rolled her own, perfectly dry eyes. ‘Not yet,’ she said briskly. ‘But give it an hour or so and you’ll be begging me to give you a jar of it.’
Eyeing the simmering pot of what smelled solely like vinegar, Clemency shook her head. ‘I really don’t believe so, Maxine,’ she said, backing out of the door into the fresh air.
Maxine strode after her, wiping her hands on the apron strung around her waist, and with something of a smirk on her face.
‘It happens to be beetroot relish, and I got the recipe from your own Riley.’
Clemency shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you. There’s no way I eat anything that smells like that.’
Maxine laughed and flung an arm around Clemency’s shoulders. ‘So what brings you here when you likely ought to be taking photographs of the loveliest conventional society has to offer us?’
Clemency felt the tickle of Maxine’s wiry black hair against her cheek. They moved away into the garden, to their favourite bench under the spreading wings of an oak tree.
‘Come on,’ Maxine said, knowing there was something on her friend’s mind, and patting the wooden seat next to her. ‘Tell old Auntie Max all about it.’
Clemency shook her head, took the seat, and leaned back to look at the patterns the oak branches made of the sky. There were faint patches of blue up there, as though high above them all, on the other side of the clouds, a whole new world was being born, knowing nothing of them, unknown to them.
‘I don’t know,’ she confessed.
‘What don’t you know?’ Maxine asked. ‘Because there’s an awful lot neither of us know on a great range of subjects. So if you could speak more specifically of your ignorance, we might get further.’
Clemency rolled her head towards Maxine and looked out at her from under beetled brows. ‘You’re being rather annoying,’ she said mildly.
Maxine stretched out her feet. She wore scuffed brown laceups and there were the usual traces of mud on the hems of her trouser legs.
‘Ah,’ she said, understanding her friend perfectly well. ‘So it’s the old problem, then, is it?’
Clemency turned her attention back to the oak branches. The leaves were a glossy green. There had been plenty of both sun and rain this summer.
‘What old problem would that be?’ she asked, keeping her voice neutral.
Maxine laughed, the rich sound rolling across the garden in delight. ‘It’s me you’re talking to, Clemency,’ she said, then sighed and reached out to pat Clemency’s hand. ‘You need to start looking again, you know you do.’
Clemency shook her head. This wasn’t the conversation she’d come to have with her friend. Was it?
‘I’m thinking of giving up the business,’ she said, turning her hand to thread her fingers through Maxine’s.
Maxine straightened beside her and shot her a look of disbelief. ‘What?’ she said.
That made Clemency shrug. ‘I’m bored with it.’ A small grimace. ‘It’s boring me.’
Maxine settled back down beside her. ‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me too terribly much,’ she said. ‘I’ve never thought that studio photography would be enough of a challenge for you.’
Clemency watched her speak, looking at the clear brown eyes under the mop of dark hair. Maxine’s brown face crinkled into the impish smile that Clemency loved so much on her friend. Maxine was half Maori by her mother, and Clemency often thought it was that smile that inevitably won people over to her cause – unless their initial shock of big, gruff Maxine having inherited the big house and a modest income proved too much for their delicate sensibilities.
Maybe that was why Maxine was so set on helping the city’s poor, she thought. Maxine knew what it was like to be an outsider, to be dismissed, to struggle for her rights.
Clemency was an outsider too, of course – that was part
of what had kept their friendship so tight for all these years, but at least she didn’t have her difference written all over her face.
‘But I don’t know if giving up the studio business is the answer to your problem,’ Maxine said, her surprisingly delicate eyebrows rising over her eyes.
‘It’s not?’ Clemency asked and looked away from her friend again. She couldn’t quite see the harbour from here, over the chimney pots below them, but she knew it was out there, and the ribbon of a road that raced along its left side towards home where the breathing in and out of the sea was a constant companion.
Maxine’s elbow nudged her. ‘You know it’s not. How long has it been now?’
A sigh, long and soft. ‘I’ve lost count of the months,’ Clemency said. ‘It might even be nearer two years since I’ve even…’ She trailed off.
‘Too long, then,’ Maxine said, her voice low, rich with compassion. ‘You have to start looking.’
Clemency shook her head, her own fair hair damp against her neck from the humidity. ‘Where?’ she asked and sat forward, twisting on the bench to look at her friend. ‘Where do I look? Where do I find this mythical woman who will need me the way I need them?’ She blinked, rubbed the heel of a hand at her temple and closed her eyes. Was Maxine right? Was this the reason she was so jumpy these days? The reason why she couldn’t seem to settle to anything that didn’t involve constant movement?
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said on a groan. ‘You have Ruth. You and Ruth have been together for years.’
Maxine’s voice was soft when she answered, full, even after all these years, of a sort of wondrous gratitude.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I have Ruth, which is why I know it is so important for you to find your own woman.’ Their hands were still linked, and Maxine squeezed Clemency’s fingers between her own. ‘She’ll be out there somewhere. You can’t get by on your own forever, not you.’
Clemency retrieved her hand and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Why though?’ she asked. ‘Why not? There are plenty of spinster women. I don’t hear all of them complaining.’
Maxine shrugged. ‘Perhaps you might, if you got close enough to them. People need connection, Clemency. Loneliness is a terrible thing.’
Clemency sighed and scooted back on the bench, gazed out towards the horizon, where she knew the ocean lapped up against the entrance to the harbour.
‘Maybe I should get a dog,’ she said, then laughed at her absurdity. ‘Or maybe I need to shut down the studio work and concentrate on my street photography.’ She looked at Maxine and nodded. ‘These are new times for this country, Max. Someone needs to be recording it.’
‘It is being recorded. Did you not see the photographs in the paper this morning of Saturday’s march?’
‘Bah. They were good enough – but they’re not what I’m talking about.’ She straightened, feeling the excitement of the ideas that had been tumbling around in her head. ‘I’m talking about really seeing the faces of it, Maxine. Photographing the likes of the women staying with you – their faces. The faces of the children you see down there playing in the gutter in Devil’s Acre. The hungry babies. The men, beaten down because they can’t find work. The ones forced to build useless croquet lawns for five shillings a day.’ She subsided, aware her voice had been rising. ‘Those are the ones, Maxine. What if I went all over the country photographing them?’ She spread out an arm in a gesture that took in everything. ‘It’s not just happening here. The Depression isn’t just going on here – the whole country is on a rush down the drain.’
‘We should have seen it coming a long way off,’ Maxine interrupted. ‘What with Britain cutting our exports in half. At least we didn’t have our money in stocks like the Americans did, right down to the shoeshine boys.’
Clemency nodded, but she was caught up in the vision of it all. ‘I could put together a book, Maxine,’ she said. ‘I could document it all.’
‘And you’d do this all on your own?’ Maxine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Clemency, but you’ve never even cooked your own breakfast.’
Clemency shook her head, exasperated. ‘That’s what inns are for, and tea rooms, and pubs, and cafes, Maxine.’
Maxine settled back beside her, crossing her arms. ‘Riley will not like this idea.’
Clemency jumped up from the seat. She shook her head. ‘I’m going to do it, Maxine. Riley will be fine. In fact, it will give her more to do.’
Maxine raised an eyebrow, dubious. ‘How do you work that one out?’
A wide smile bloomed on Clemency’s face. ‘You and her,’ she said. ‘You can get over there and requisition the house and garden for an extension of what you’re doing here.’ She waved her arms at Maxine’s huge house.
Maxine flattened her own lips into a line and shook her head. ‘You’d be advised to consult with Riley before overrunning her house with homeless women.’
Clemency shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe just one or two women, and the garden, then. She’d find that far more exciting than just looking after me, I’m sure of it.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘I’m going to do this, Max,’ she said, rubbing her hands together now. ‘I am. I really think I am.’
But Maxine simply shook her head again. ‘You’d be better off finding yourself a lover, Clemency,’ she said.
‘That’s what you really need.’
Chapter Eleven
Eliza was outside the café before it even opened, her mouth watering. She knew she was going to do something stupid, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Besides, if she could find a way to communicate with the waitress again, she might get what she needed, and then losing the two shillings she intended to spend wouldn’t be stupid; it would be an investment.
After all, she needed her strength to do all the walking.
Leaning against the wall beside the door, Eliza hugged herself, the handbag hard against the bone in her hip. She wore her thin summer dress and her stomach rumbled loud enough under it that Eliza hoped anyone walked past would not be able to hear it.
There was a rattle on the other side of the door, and the sound of blinds being drawn up behind the windows. Eliza stood and crept forward, peering gingerly inside the café. There was a sign hanging on a chain from a hook on the inside of the door, and she frowned at it as it swung to and fro, then reached out a tentative hand and touched the door handle.
It was wrenched out from her fingers and the door swung inwards.
‘We’re open,’ Jessie said flatly. ‘If that’s what you’re wondering.’
Eliza nodded and tried to smile, but Jessie was already clomping away, still in the same shoes with the worn, cracked leather. Eliza glanced down at her own shoes – they weren’t any better, and the thick winter stockings looked terrible with the dress, but what was she to do? She couldn’t afford new ones, and the shoes would rub too much if she went about with bare legs and feet.
She stepped into the café and looked around, jumpy, biting at her lip. There was no one else in sight, and she scurried over to the table where she’d sat before and slid onto the chair there, sitting her handbag down on her lap and digging out the red purse, ready.
It was woefully light of coins.
‘What will you have?’
Eliza jumped. She hadn’t heard Jessie come up behind her, and now she stood there, waiting to take her order. Eliza licked her lips.
Jessie stared at her, muddy eyes blinking. ‘Pot of tea?’ she asked.
Eliza nodded.
‘You want anything to eat with that?’
Eliza nodded again, more vigorously this time, and touched her hand to the coin purse that lay on the tablecloth.
‘You want the lot, then? Or just toast?’
Another nod, and Jessie frowned. The toe of her heavy shoe tapped on the floor and Eliza shrank back slightly in her seat.
‘Which?’ she asked. She was in a sour mood today, since the kid in the room next to hers hadn’t stopped squalling all night long,
keeping her awake.
Eliza sighed, just a huff of breath and hung her head. The woman in front of her wasn’t going to be able to help her. She’d been deluding herself into thinking so. There was a spot on the tablecloth and Eliza stared at it until it blurred in her vision and she wasn’t looking at anything any longer.
‘You want bacon and eggs?’
She jumped, jolting back to the room with the little tables, the hard chairs, the tablecloths that needed a good boiling in Reckett’s blue, and her mouth exploded with saliva and she nodded, reached for the purse. It clicked open in her trembling hands with a dejected little snap and Eliza dug her fingers in it, bringing out the last two silver coins and passing them over, watching them disappear into the waitress’s hand with pained eyes.
Jessie took them without looking and turned on her heel.
Eliza turned her face away from the interior of the café and blocked out the noises from the kitchen. Her heart was heavy in her chest and she pressed a hand against it as though she could somehow relieve the tension there.
She’d been stupid, and she knew it. The little red purse lay on the table, its fading sides flat, and Eliza knew if she picked it up and spilled its contents out onto the yellowed tablecloth, then there would be precious little there. Not enough for more than a couple loaves of bread. She touched the gold ring under her dress where it still hung around her neck on the piece of thread and shuddered at the thought of having to go back to the pawn shop, place the pale ring into the man’s waiting hand, and having to endure his leering. She really didn’t know if she could bring herself to do that – and the ring was the only thing left she had of her mother’s, of either of her parent’s.
She closed her eyes and wished for her mother. But under her eyelids, the green water swirled, and she saw again her mother’s red hair escaping the shroud she’d been wrapped in, vanishing under the water like some sort of exotic seaweed.
The teapot landed on the table amid the clatter of cup and saucer and Eliza looked guiltily at it. She should be drinking water. That was all she could afford. Bread and water.