Paddy's Puzzle

by Fiona Kidman

  In this spasm of anger her cough begins, and she thinks that she is actually going to die then, but Ambrose holds her until it is over.

  ‘I’m going to die anyway, aren’t I Ambrose?’ she says, as he mops up the sputum and wipes her wet face.

  He lies her back on the pillows. ‘I’ll get your medicine,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she says.

  ‘You got to,’ and there is a hurt desperate look in his eyes. He is such a mixture, one moment confident to the point of arrogance, the next so vulnerable. In that moment she feels that she has more power to hurt than if she had bitten him a hundred times.

  ‘You must take it,’ he repeats.

  ‘Just make me a cup of tea.’ She doesn’t think the medicine will do her any good, though she does not tell him this. It is just a collection of patented powders and syrups that Ambrose has bought from the chemist. He sets great store by them.

  It has also been recommended by her neighbours that French brandy, or cold strong black tea mixed with cream, is helpful. She’ll take the brandy anytime, if he will give it to her, and she never reminds him that they also suggest cod-liver oil, though sometimes he thinks of it himself.

  ‘No med’cine, no tea.’ He is back to himself. She has had her moment and she will take her medicine. Ambrose and her illness have decreed it. They rule her life.

  Her illness. She shrinks from it. She has tuberculosis. Janice has given her a book. She wheedled it from her, seeing it at her place before any of them knew how ill she was although she had already suspected it, and thought that Ambrose had too.

  The book had belonged to Janice’s mother. It was called the Homeopathic Vade Mecum. She had asked Janice whether her mother had used it during her illness, and Janice, unsuspecting, said yes, it was what she used for everything, but Clara had already been through it and seen the thumbed pages under Consumption. Janice was furious when she found out what she’d been up to, but when Clara put it to her, she had to admit that she would have done the same.

  So she had it in black and white. ‘A wasting constitutional disease in which the lungs are destroyed by the caseous degeneration of morbid deposits, tubercles, pneumonic exudations and consequent ulceration. The terms Tubercular Disease, Tuberculosis, and Phthisis are synonymous.’

  Charming. It really sounded charming. ‘Symptoms. The early indications are often obscure. The chief symptoms are impaired digestion, loss of appetite, red or furred tongue, thirst, nausea, vomiting; more or less cough, chiefly in the morning; hoarseness or weakness of voice; irregular pains in the chest; dyspnoea on slight exertion (she doesn’t know what that is but she expects she has it); debility, langour and palpitation; persistently accelerated pulse; heightened temperature; night sweats; and progressive emaciation … Emaciation, one of the earliest symptoms, extends to nearly every tissue of the body, the adipose, the muscular, and the bony; (so much for thinking herself slender) and even the intestines and the skin become thinner …’

  And I want him to make love to me, oh my God, thinks Clara. Ambrose, remember I had thick curly hair once, and that my blue eyes which have always seemed marvellous and strange to you, just because they are blue, were once very bright, and do not think, just, that it was the onset of fever, even then at the beginning, because I was always told they were bright, Robin said they were bright … only I don’t think about him because he’s not important now … and remember that my body was quite rounded and full …

  ‘… even the intestines and skin become thinner …’ Oh my God, that is horrible.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ she says aloud. ‘I really am.’ She has made so many false starts at getting up but now she has to believe that she will go through with it, for both their sakes.

  ‘Your sister will look after you when she gets here,’ Ambrose says. She looks at him to see if he means it. ‘No,’ she says sharply when she sees that he does.

  ‘What d’you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean that I don’t want her to know.’

  He shakes his head. ‘That you’re sick? Girlie, now you is dumb, she can’t miss it.’

  ‘Yes. If I’m careful.’

  ‘You mustn’t hide it from her,’ he says carefully, and she senses that she is getting close to what has been in his mind all along. ‘You mustn’t try. She might help you to get strong again.’

  It is out now, she can see quite clearly what he has been thinking. She can hardly speak for the panic which is overwhelming her, it feels as if it is clogging her pores and closing her throat and mouth.

  ‘No, no you don’t see … if it’s strength you’re talking about, she’s strong all right … she’d do all the right things … take me back to her place … fuss over me … I don’t want any of that.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ he says. ‘You say you care for her. You care for her enough to let her come here, see how you live.’

  She closes her eyes, trying not to see the things he is seeing. Sometimes she pretends to herself that he sees her room in Paddy’s Puzzle as if it is an ordinary place, as if (and she feels condemned in her own eyes for thinking this but she cannot escape it) he accepts it because he is used to it. But now he is saying, in effect, that he has no illusions about its awfulness, that it is a dreadful place and a terrible lot that she has come to. Suddenly she wants to tell him about Mumma’s stuffed cushions and her crochet work on all the tables, about the china cabinet with all the good glasses in it and the little plot of garden where she used to skip rope and knock the heads off the dahlias. It hadn’t seemed much at the time, but now she can see that it was not so bad.

  And she closes her eyes against something else too.

  ‘Well, you care for her or don’t you?’ he says.

  ‘Yes I do, Ambrose. You don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you damn right I don’t understand at all girlie. Why don’t you tell this sister of yours that you’s sick? This sister, this one who is so sensible, gonna see right away that you sick, why you want to try an’ hide these things from her?’

  ‘I’d have told her by now if I wanted her to know.’

  ‘You’re stubborn, that’s all Clara. And proud. Don’t get you nowhere, no ma’am.’

  ‘That’s not what you told me. You told me being proud is the only thing kept you alive sometimes. You said that Ambrose.’

  ‘All right. All right then. Make me understand then. Tell me how come you’s don’t want her to know, even if she could help you get better.’

  ‘She’d make me leave you.’

  ‘What’s more important to you, Clara?’

  ‘Staying with you, Ambrose.’

  There is a silence between them. He sighs, sits stroking her hand.

  At last he says, ‘We better straighten things up nice for her, eh?’

  They straighten up as best they can. Even though it is so awful Ambrose has made it brighter than it was when she first lived there. For a start there are the mats he got up in the Pacific; they are bright and cover the worst of the ugly congoleum, and they have hung some on the far wall from the window too. The cloth on the table is unpleasant, a thick heavy oilcloth, but as it is hard for Clara to get much washing done and Ma Hollis is already doing so much of it for her with a bit of help from Biddy and one or two of the others, she has had to cut down where she can. At least the cloth is basically white though the impossible flowers which can never have grown in any known garden are luridly coloured. The centrepiece is the gramophone which Ambrose bought for her. It is grander than anything she ever thought she would own, but there it stands, His Master’s Voice, with nice wood panels and a pile of records sitting alongside of it. The greatest pleasure.

  Then there are the flowers, the real flowers that Ambrose brings, and they have cut-glass bowls for them, for he has insisted that if he brings flowers they won’t just be pushed into jam jars that are too small to contain them. The bowls are his doing.

  So is the arrangement of flowers which he does this evening. And
he goes up to the roof and gets down the towels and tea towels and sheets that Ma Hollis had hung there to dry in the morning. The early morning damp which had threatened to hang in the gully all day had lifted before lunch and a small breeze had whipped the clothes all afternoon, so that everybody is up there, he tells her, getting in bundles of sweet-smelling clothes, crisp round the edges where the fresh air has caught them. When he brings them in Clara buries her face in them and inhales their freshness. So often clothes will hang for days in the alleyways of Paddy’s Puzzle, grey and turning to mildew, fusty and as unpleasant as before they were washed, by the time they are dry.

  Now everything is folded, and she has helped him, hanging onto the ends of the sheets, tugging them straight so that they sit neatly. They have enough to change her bed and to make up Winnie’s too. Clara has decided that she will sleep on the camp stretcher and although Ambrose is unhappy when she tells him this she says that Winnie would find it queer if she didn’t give up her bed for her.

  He inspects the camp stretcher with some misgivings when Billy brings it in but he can see that her mind is made up, so he says nothing more about it.

  She is really glad that he is there when Billy comes because she doesn’t like being on her own with the kid. He is fifteen, but he spends his time with the children. He is strange, this Billy, and his grandmother knows that he is, but she loves him so much that Clara feels that she must never let her know that she minds about him so much.

  It is not that she cares that Billy is strange, it is just that he scares her when they are alone. He seems all right until you look closely, and even then it is hard to describe just how one detects that he is different, but you do know, all the same. It is not that he steals with such dexterity, as he would have done when Ma sent him to the shops earlier in the day, because every kid in Paddy’s Puzzle has learnt to steal from the time it could toddle; it’s not because you have to read the most simple things out to Billy; not even, altogether, because he is always with the little kids, though that does have a bearing on it, and Clara knows that Biddy worries from time to time as far as Kathie is concerned, though she would never say a word because of what Ma is to them all.

  No, it is something else again, a sort of fanatical gleam in his eye and the sense of him being very strong, and that neither of these things show in an obvious way, so you don’t quite know what he’s going to do next.

  Billy brings the camp stretcher in, dangling it under one big arm as if it is a box of matches.

  ‘Put it up, eh Clara?’ he says. He stalks in, full of importance, knowing that she cannot refuse him entry this time on the pretext of not feeling well, as she usually does.

  ‘Oh thank you. Thank you Billy,’ she says, making her voice hearty. ‘Isn’t it lucky Ambrose is here? He can do it.’

  Billy scowls. ‘I knows how to put it together,’ he says, defying them to send him away.

  ‘All right,’ says Clara. ‘You put it up then Billy.’

  But it turns out that Billy has forgotten how to put it up and gets the struts jammed the wrong way round and Ambrose has to do it after all. It is smoothed over with a packet of candy, and a handful of loose change out of Ambrose’s pocket, and Billy goes away smiling.

  They both survey the room with pride.

  ‘It looks all right now, doesn’t it?’ says Ambrose.

  She is feeling much better. Everything looks clean and bright. Well, almost. That might be going a bit far, but at least it looks homely and livable. Yes, you could live in it. Her spirits rise.

  ‘We can have tea now,’ she says. It is the first time she has felt like eating all day.

  ‘Not me girlie, I got to get back to base.’

  ‘Oh no, please.’

  ‘Hey, c’mon you know how it is.’

  She does know, and has promised that she will not make it hard for him to leave. For all he does for her, it is the least she can do by way of return, and he knows that she has company around her and will not be alone. It makes many things about Paddy’s Puzzle more acceptable.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says, and she tries hard to make it sound as if she means it.

  ‘I’m going to fix you up a little somethin’ to eat before I go.’

  ‘You don’t need to, I’ll get something for myself. I promise I’ll cook one of the eggs you brought and have some hot milk.’

  ‘True?’

  ‘Yes, true.’ And she does mean it too, because she knows it will make him happier if he believes she really is going to look after herself. She goes to the sink and starts getting out a pan and a pot and lights the gas stove.

  It is quite dark outside now and the damp is coming down again, a foggy August night. Ambrose has lit the gas mantle, and its harsh white light illuminates the room, leaving no shadows. He watches her as she starts to prepare her food.

  ‘It’s good to see you’s doing that,’ he says.

  ‘You make me feel so much better. You’ve done me the world of good. And the roses … oh Ambrose, they’re so nice. However do you find things like that at this time of year?’

  He pulls the blackout curtain across the window. ‘I got ways.’

  ‘Did you steal them?’

  ‘Why should I steal them, it’s easier to buy them,’ he says, and she knows from the lazy edge in his voice that he wishes he could stay, which in a roundabout way makes it easier to let him go. It is not so bad when you can sense that someone is longing to stay with you, it’s holding them back against their will which hurts.

  ‘You Americans. So much money,’ she says. ‘Nobody buys flowers.’

  ‘Flowers just keep on growing, little one,’ he says. ‘If you know where to look they’re there. Even when everythin’ else run out you just can’t stop the flowers from growing and the trees from burstin’ into their green dresses, come the springtime. And it’s nearly here, real near.’

  ‘Are the trees out in the park now?’ she asks him.

  ‘Jes’ coming on, the very first.’

  She can see them in her mind’s eye, the bright growth starting on the bare branches in contrast to the dark pohutukawas that stand above the bay. If she breathes deeply she believes she can smell the scent of the newly heaped earth in the rose beds, and she is so close to it that she can hear the sad cry of the shunting in the railway yards below and the sweet sound of the tide slapping on the shoreline as they walk beneath those bursting trees.

  ‘Will we walk out to see them soon?’ she asks.

  ‘When the days are warmer,’ he says. But she knows he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. He goes into the bathroom and comes out wiping his hands on his handkerchief. She guesses that he doesn’t want to dirty one of the fresh towels seeing as she is having company. ‘You hardly got any soap,’ he says.

  ‘You know it’s rationed. Don’t look so worried. Maybe she’ll bring her own.’ She laughs. ‘Winnie probably won’t expect me to have any.’

  Still he fusses and fossicks around, and his eyes light on the crockery she is taking out of the cupboard. He picks up a cup, fingers a chip.

  ‘Now just don’t you be silly,’ she says crossly. ‘You know we tried to get me some more cups the other week, and there was nothing you liked when you went to look and you said these would do.’

  ‘They’ve gotten worse. You goin’ to get some germs sticking round in these chips, huh?’

  ‘Don’t carry on.’

  ‘You should mind. With her coming.’

  ‘Who are you worrying about, her or me? Oh go on, leave them alone Ambrose.’

  She tries to snatch the cup from his hand and between them they break it. She stands glaring at him. Suddenly he sits down at the table and puts his head in his hands.

  ‘What is it?’ she says. He continues to sit, and if he is not exactly weeping, it is something close to it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Ambrose, it was my fault.’

  She feels that it is too, for her moods veer all over the place, high one moment, sh
arp and bad-tempered the next. Half the time she doesn’t understand what is happening to her, but for the moment that seems a bad excuse.

  ‘She’ll take you away,’ he says.

  Clara doesn’t know whether to laugh or to join in his sorrow. So recently they have been quarrelling because he wanted Winnie to look after her.

  He straightens up and glances at his watch. She knows that, as usual, there are no resolutions, and no way that he can stay with her tonight though that is what they both want, both of them, more than anything. She is overcome, as she has been before in moments of belief, that Ambrose actually loves her. She is sure that he surprises himself. He might as easily despise her and possibly would like himself better if he did.

  ‘Ambrose, what colour would our children be?’ she asks on an impulse.

  ‘Children? Why d’you ask me that?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  Which is true. She has often wondered, but she has never had the nerve to ask before. She doesn’t know why she has unexpectedly had the courage now, except, she supposes, that some sort of impending change seems to be in the air and there is urgency in what they say. And often, as the long days of her isolation have passed, she has dwelled on what would be the outcome for other people — those who in some sense must be considered ordinary in a way that they can never be — of their tangled nights together, and the loving. He had always been careful, protecting her with one of the tightly rolled little rubbers that come out of the Peacock tin, so it never seemed immediate, but the possibilities were no less real. And when, in the past, she had put her mouth to his, when they had fitted together with the snug tightness of a couple invented just for those particular encounters, there must be more to it in the end, she thought.