Paddy's Puzzle

by Fiona Kidman

  Biddy is a sight. Her blonde straw-like hair falls to her shoulders in a matted tangle and blood shows through near the crown as if a piece of hair has been torn out, and there is black kohl running down her face, incongruous in itself, for already her eye and the cheekbone beneath are a violent blue-black. She is wearing a skimpy scarlet chiffon robe, only it is torn from her shoulder. She isn’t a beauty at the best of times but now she looks horrifying, and she babbles incoherently.

  Ambrose leans across and smacks her on the side of her face. Clara opens her mouth to scream at him but when she looks at his face she changes her mind. There is a look of grey fear in it, such as she hasn’t seen before.

  ‘Shut up you goddam bitch. You wanna bring the M.P.’s roun’ here like a swarm of locusts woman? What say you shut up your mouth and let all of us off, eh?’

  ‘I thought he was going to kill me,’ she whimpers.

  ‘He still might. Don’t you see woman, no matter what he done to you, you must keep quiet,’ he hisses.

  And Clara can see what he is getting at. If the M.P.’s turn up now anything can happen. And if the man thinks they are going to find a woman screaming he will try to stop her mouth for good before they get to her.

  ‘There’s two of them,’ says Biddy. ‘The first one was all right but the second one, he did me over.’

  ‘Why? What did you do to him?’

  ‘Nothing. Honest. It was my black eye, he reckoned he’d been done. He was plain nasty from the minute he walked in and then there was no stopping him.’

  ‘Where’s Kathie?’ says Janice sharply.

  ‘She’s run down to Ma’s. He’s shickered, that’s half the trouble, or he’d have stopped by now.’

  ‘Can you stop him?’ Clara asks Ambrose.

  But even as they listen the noise drops. The quiet is worse than the noise. Ambrose balances on the balls of his feet, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘How do I know eh? Maybe, maybe not.’ His drawl has changed. He is the man of the streets, not seen before, and he has a subtle menace, a stillness of presence, even as he moves. ‘Depen’s whether the ma-an has rank, or whether he is like me. It depend whether he is too drunk to know he is in trouble bad, or whether he wants to move his arse out of it for himself. It is a matter too, of whether the man is — white or black.’

  ‘I think he’s a captain,’ says Biddy. ‘And he’s white.’

  ‘Go.’ Clara tells Ambrose. ‘Get away from here and — and phone the police, get one of our bobbies, we’ll look after Biddy.’ It makes sense and he’s tempted, but he says, ‘I won’t leave you with trouble.’ He looks around the three of them and sees that they are confident that everything will be all right. He begins to back towards the door, still tense and ready for whatever might be beyond, and she knows that in less than a minute he can be out across the roof where all the chimney pots and broken timber on top of Paddy’s Puzzle stand up in the blacked-out night. That is where she wants him, away from them, and danger. She doesn’t want him caught like an animal, here in the sewerlike corridors of the Puzzle, beaten by the M.P.’s and thrown in a jeep and not to see him for days, or weeks, or ever, as the case may be.

  But it is too late. Even as his hand touches the door there is a wild cry from the flat across the passage, Ma Hollis’s voice and a child’s thin scream, and that same instant they hear the jeeps pull to a halt outside and feet running. Ambrose opens the door; the American outside has Ma’s kitchen knife at the little girl’s throat. The captain is a white doughy man, with more chins than are good for him and sweat stands out on his forehead.

  ‘Man,’ says Ambrose, standing very still, ‘You must drop that knife.’

  The captain looks at him and all of them. His face curls like a sea anemone’s that has been touched, and it is full of contempt.

  ‘You telling me what to do, boy?’

  Inside of her, Clara wants to shout again to Ambrose to go, to leave as fast as he can; a part of her wants that even more than she cares about Kathie, slithering now in the soldier’s grasp like a little wounded pink piglet, not understanding, as Ambrose does, that her salvation is in stillness. ‘Mum,’ she shrieks, and Janice’s arm shoots out like a steel band holding Biddy back. Ma’s and Billy’s faces are glazed masks.

  Downstairs, two flights, there are raised voices. The M.P.’s don’t come in unless there is a complaint; usually they just throw a cordon around the place. Somewhere in the building someone has got scared maybe, or perhaps it was the captain’s mate.

  No one can tell what goes through a man’s mind when he is as crazed as this one. For an instant more he and Ambrose look at each other with the hate they both understand from far back in time.

  ‘I know a way outa here, man,’ says Ambrose softly.

  Even the captain who wants to kill the world and is planning to start with Kathie, and then move on to Ambrose and whoever might get in his way after that, can hear the police now. He starts shuddering.

  ‘C’mon man,’ says Ambrose urgently. ‘You want them to take you? I sure ain’t waiting round for them to take me.’

  The fog lifts from the man’s brain. He doesn’t just drop the knife, he has the presence of mind to whip out his handkerchief and wipe the handle, then put it on the floor and kick it backwards with his foot into Ma’s flat.

  He drops Kathie, and she collapses on the passage floor in a huddle. ‘Show me boy,’ he orders Ambrose, turning on his heel.

  ‘Ambrose,’ Clara whispers. ‘Leave him.’ For she knows what a man like the captain might do to her lover once he has helped him free. He has a big wet plasticine mouth. She knows he will use it against Ambrose.

  But they are away down the passage without a backward glance and in seconds they disappear into the shadows. The police emerge at the end of the passage moments later. Kathie is still on the floor crying and Biddy has her arms around her, her big rawboned face presses against the child’s, rocking her to and fro, whispering endearments in her ear.

  The police come up then, with their batons on the ready and walking wide-legged like they do in ‘The March of Time’ at the movies before the main picture starts, and the one up front says, just like in the pictures too, ‘Well, what’s it all about?’

  They look from one to another. ‘Nothing,’ says Ma Hollis.

  ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with this kid?’ says the cop. It would seem that he means Kathie, but it is to Biddy that he looks.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Biddy, looking up from the floor. ‘There’s nothing wrong. My little girl’s highly strung.’

  ‘She always belt you in the face? I wouldn’t stand for that if it were my kid,’ says the officer.

  ‘Ah, look now,’ says Ma Hollis. ‘I can give witness to that. That was a fall the lady had in the street not two days ago. I was there, now I was out pickin’ a little bitty puha for mine and the boy’s tea here,’ she says settling herself comfortably against the doorway, ‘and my friend comes along, and she has been doins the shopping and she has a very full basket, well as full a basket as one can get nowadays …’

  ‘All right, all right, we’ll take your word for it.’ He looks down at Biddy. Jesus, Clara thinks, he can’t be so dumb he won’t ask Kathie what happened. But he is. He doesn’t ask her anything. Well, Jesus wept, she thinks, but that really is how dumb he is.

  ‘We’d better take a look round if you ladies don’t mind,’ says one, and she thinks of the new crockery and the brandy, and gathers up her courage to refuse because she’s entitled to, them having no authority over New Zealand citizens, but she is saved.

  A man’s scream strips the night bare. It lasts only seconds, but it is unearthly while it does. And the sirens start, that long sad note, and overhead the first drone of a Hudson, followed by the high-pitched whine of the Harvards. The night is alive, and no one knows where anything is coming from any more.

  ‘You got to get to the shelter,’ says the policeman, distracted.

  ‘We will, we will,’ they chorus at him, and
outside there is more commotion, and yet another of the M.P.’s comes up from off the street and shouts that some dumb bastard has jumped off the roof.

  It is as well that none of them are watching Clara for her hand flies to her mouth to stifle Ambrose’s name; but then, they are dumb, so bloody dumb, as she has already seen. She wonders how it is that they can like any of the Yanks when she sees these dumb oxen waving their batons like they enjoy hitting people, and just not thinking, even though right now that’s the last thing the Puzzle people want them to do.

  ‘It’s one of our boys,’ says the policeman that’s come up the stairs. ‘A captain, they’re just looking out his I.D.’

  Now they’ll ask us, she thinks, they must. But they don’t. They just trundle off muttering and swearing about their fallen comrade and already it sounds as if they are telling it as if their captain is a slain hero and Paddy’s Puzzle is the enemy.

  Which perhaps it is.

  They crowd into Clara’s room and drink more brandy. Biddy is very quiet and takes Kathie off to bed in a few minutes and then Clara begins to cough, so Janice and Ma get her into bed. She keeps straining her ears towards the blackout curtain to see if she can hear anything that will let her know that Ambrose is safe but there is only the whine of the sirens. They have all decided, without discussion, that none of them will go to the shelters. Clara takes a last peek under the curtain, and can see by the moonlight that the Military Police are being hampered by the blackout in their clean-up operations, and after scrabbling around in the dark they throw the body of the captain on the back of one of the jeeps and drive off.

  None of them in the room have been looking out for Billy, and Ma gives no indication of whether she has noticed him gone or not, but as they are tucking the bedclothes around Clara he comes up the passage and stands in the doorway, his head wobbling; he is licking his lips in a frenzy to get something out.

  ‘The bloody butcher did it, the bloody butcher did it,’ he shouts, and begins to laugh hysterically.

  ‘Hush, hush now, don’t you see Clara is going to sleep,’ Ma soothes him.

  ‘The bloody butcher did it,’ he says again, and retreats into the Hollis’s flat. His high laughter continues behind the door.

  They put out Clara’s light and leave her. She is tempted to get up and put the gas light on again but she is too tired. It is just that she would like to be able to see things solid and real, even if it is the contents of this room in Paddy’s Puzzle.

  May sits upright in her tidy sitting room. Her eyes don’t seem to be focusing properly even with the help of her spectacles. That silly old fool, Ma Hollis, had shrieked and yelled at her before to come out and show herself. As if there was anything she could have done. The novel had been giving her such pleasure, a real delight, with the heroine walking through primroses to meet her lover. Now it is all spoilt. She has had a bad evening and she is not as young as she was. They ought to know better than to pester her like this.

  The all clear sounds. Clara wonders about the butcher.

  9

  A night full of dreams, more dreams. Not of blood and violence as Clara might expect from a violent night of sudden death and strange happenings. Here in this maze a child has been threatened with her life, a woman terrorised; on the rooftops a man has died. The war. Maybe nobody has any sensibilities left. For all they sing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ in the lunch hours down at the Town Hall and the smoke drifts amongst the people and they smile and nod to each other as if they have known each other all their lives, Auckland is a hard place these days. She knows this better than most. It is a reality that can be lived any day or night. But in her sleep she dreams of Winnie and their lives together. Of Hamilton. And of Mumma. Beginnings. Roots. But they are only half-dreams in a way, for she wakes and sleeps fitfully and the dream will begin in her sleep and when she starts out of it she finishes it off for herself, awake.

  It seems strange to be nineteen and trying to impose an order on things, a pattern to your life.

  Young to be looking back as old men and women do. What was it Ambrose had said to her? Just a child. No Ambrose, she is not a child any more. She is not divided by age from any of them now. At the time of her dying she will be like all the rest of them, like the men who are still boys, like his friends, getting ready to head back up into the Pacific and die. None of them, including her, are children any more.

  It might have been easier to forget. Yet she can’t. It is tempting to believe in Paddy’s Puzzle that the only people who matter are the people who live there, the people she has chosen; Ambrose and Charlie Ambler, Janice and May and Ma Hollis, Billy and Biddy — what a pattern their names make. She had thought that she could cut out all the others and watch the procession of sun and stars across her window until she was well enough to leave or it was all through; either way she could shut them out, those other voices. But it hasn’t turned out that way, even though it has taken her so long to admit that this is so. It is Winnie’s letter, written by her busy thickening hand, that has finally convinced her.

  Winnie has become a physical presence and with her she has brought back the presence of all the others.

  Clara opens the windows. She cannot bear the heavy blanket-like material that blocks out the night. It seems safe enough. She won’t be lighting the lamp again tonight. Now that she is settled she does not want to move and even if she does have to get up the moon is bright enough for her to pick her way around, although pale clouds scud past from time to time, casting shadows in the room. There is the steady hum of sound. It is difficult to identify the individual noises in the Puzzle but they accumulate, and the building is never really still; as hard to sleep soundly as it is during the day.

  Winnie. Mumma. Winnie again. Her childhood unfolds. But it is easier with Winnie. Up to a point, she is a positive figure. Except that point exists, at which she sheers off. She thinks she will come back to it. But Mumma is a shadowy figure who does not add up. Dotty and vague, not quite real, although of course she was. Clara knows that whichever one of them she is going to wrestle with, there are the men in their lives to be considered too. She is forced to confront the fact of her father. She struggles in her dream, half wakes, and knows that of all she has been seeking to forget, he is the most important. He was there at the beginning. The rest is already history. He has never been. She sighs; accepts him into the night.

  Her father and Frankton Junction.

  He was an engine driver, a great big powerful bull of a man, as handsome as the day, with a ruddy shining brown skin and a mouth full of flashing white teeth. It was from their father that Winnie got her polished look, her shining healthy skin, and it was from their father that Clara got her head of curls, for under his peaked hat there was a mass of tight chestnut locks lying damp against his skull. He had a chest like a barrel and when Gus Bentley laughed from deep down inside of him, you could hear him all over the railway yards. And his eyes would glow, even at the end of the day; or entering the light after he had had come off the line at dead of night, rimmed with soot they still shone like the coals with which the stoker had fired his machine, all through his shift.

  Women loved Gus. At the railway socials they flocked around him, and he would lift them up on his arm until they screamed for mercy, laughing themselves sick all the while and begging him in the same breath not to stop. Some of them would look at him with special eyes and Clara would look to see if Mumma was looking, but as far as she could tell she never was. She would be talking away earnestly in a corner to Nellie Potter’s handicapped sister, or somebody else’s aged mother. She just never seemed to be looking. Clara couldn’t take her eyes off her father when he was like that, for there was so much life and vitality about him that she would be almost sick with love for him herself.

  Then she would look back to Mumma and creep over to her, not exactly knowing why. Sometimes his eyes would follow her, considering.

  There is a rumble like an earthquake that makes her sit bolt upright. She looks ou
t the window and sees three military trucks passing on the street below. They don’t seem to have any particular purpose, but her grim thought is that they will give them no peace round here tonight. Before she drifts back to sleep, she thinks how much she likes her name, in spite of everything. Viewed from Winnie’s later standpoint that it belonged to her great-aunt it is a curious old-fashioned name; mothers go in for a good modern Claire these days, rather French and considered to be classier, but she likes Clara. It means bright, and it sounds like clear light which is lovely to think about because she has always gone round looking towards the light if she can. Even though it is everywhere, some lights are clearer and brighter and purer than others and those are always the lights that take her by surprise. ‘I am Clara,’ she says aloud. ‘I am Clara. I am Clara.’ She laughs at her own silliness and knows that it is a foil for the darkness that has descended.

  He was killed when she was eight. The train he was driving was derailed and it was over as quickly as that.

  And even though she has dwelled on the others, it is he who has been lurking there all the time. She has always thought that it was Winnie that counted, with Mumma trailing along behind, not to be taken too seriously. But it had never been true. It is Father who has always been there, lurking in the background.

  Why has she always left him out, this big handsome man? She watched for him often enough, standing on the overbridge at the Junction, peering into the distance of those ongoing railtracks, waiting for the cloud of steam that heralded his arrival. So why was she at Winnie’s so often when she had someone as exciting and splendid as that, there at home?

  The answer was simple and the pieces fitted together quite easily.