by Fiona Kidman
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ says Winnie.
Ma drops her arm. ‘All right. That’s fine. I wouldn’t waste my time. We won’t none of us bother telling you when she’s gone then. Reckon we’ll see to her ourselves.’ She turns back towards the Puzzle. Winnie waits for a moment, then calls out to her.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Please.’
They are shouting at each other now, like a couple of fishwives. Heads start to appear at the windows and across the street faces are looking out from the factory as well.
In Clara’s room they hear it too. They strain to make out words, but suddenly the voices drop away.
‘Keep on walking if that’s what you want,’ says Ma bitterly to Winnie. ‘What’s the likes of me got to tell you? So you didn’t know how she kept herself? I’ll bet she hadn’t told you. I can see why too. Nor what was the matter with her. She’s got more pride than you think. Not your kind of pride, but you can give me hers any day.’
‘Please, what’s the matter with my sister?’
Ma Hollis relents then. When Ma takes a shine to someone it’s like having a dog that’s crazy over you. It only sees the best parts. Ma is like that over Clara. Clara’s good and Winnie’s bad. Of course it is much more complicated than that, but this is none of Ma’s concern. She relents only because Winnie is shaken and near tears, and doesn’t now look quite as bad as Ma had seen her in her mind’s eye before.
‘You been through some bad times too, eh?’
Winnie nods.
‘Yes. Most of us have. Easy to forget when things look up. Not that they’ve done much for me. Except I got Billy. I guess I’m all right. And Clara. Well, she’s made a difference. I’ll miss her, I can tell you.’
‘Miss her?’
‘She’s not going to get better Missus. Can’t you see that?’
‘I didn’t know,’ Winnie whispers. ‘I could see she wasn’t well, but … are you sure?’
‘Haven’t you ever seen people go with the consumption? TB they call it now. Look Missus, we’re a rough lot round here but we do for each other. She says she never got round to sorting herself out. I reckon she’s got herself sorted out here. She done for us when she could, and now we do for her. That’s all.’
Maybe all along Ma knew her better than she knew herself, Clara thinks, hearing it later. She’s never known who she is, or what she is, Mumma’s or Winnie’s, Hamilton or the Junction. Perhaps it is true that now she is, as Ma says, sorted out.
Winnie hasn’t had time to think things through like Clara has, though. Later that night she says, ‘I still can’t understand why you didn’t get in touch with us. They might have helped at a sanatorium. They still might.’
‘No, not now Winnie. I met Ambrose, and he took care of me. I don’t reckon it would have made much difference. I just stayed on.’
‘That black man.’ Her voice is full of wonder still.
‘Yes. That black man.’
‘I can’t work it out.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t. But you know, Win, I said to Janice, just the other night, he was for my learning, and it turned out he taught me all I knew. Or ever will now.’
‘What about …’ Clara knows she is going to say Robin but Winnie sees the look on her face, and says, instead, ‘the others?’
‘Things always finish. This doesn’t.’
‘What’s he taught you?’
‘About love.’
‘Love? That’s craziness. To talk about love with someone like that, when you could have been getting help. You call that love?’ She isn’t arguing with her, only with herself.
‘Yes Winnie, I reckon it is,’ Clara says. ‘And I want — this time Win, I want to know all there is to know. All of it.’
After a while Winnie says ‘But he says you’ll come back to me after he’s gone.’
‘Yes, I told him that.’
‘Well that’s something, I suppose. Thank goodness it won’t be long. I wish you’d come away with me tomorrow though. You know I’ve still got hopes.’
Clara doesn’t reply.
‘He said it would set his mind at rest to know you were with me. He hasn’t given up hope. Oh Clara, you mustn’t either.’
Hope. She doesn’t know what hope is. Well, not what it means to her, anyway.
Still later, Winnie says, smiling at herself, ‘Would you believe it Clara, I had a proposal of marriage the other day.’
‘You did? Who was it?’
‘Oh a chap I used to know years ago. You wouldn’t remember him. He was a teacher at the Tech. Albie Tubbs his name was.’
‘I remember him. Are you going to marry him?’
‘Who’d want a name like Mrs Tubbs?’
‘It’d be all right. If you liked him. If you loved him.’
She seems amused. ‘I reckon I’m a bit old for that.’
‘There you are. Nothing stays the same for ever, does it?’
She looks at Clara curiously then and they drop the subject.
Outside the air is fresh and cool. The rain has moved away from the city. Clara hopes the sirens will leave them in peace for another night. A Hudson has droned past but otherwise the dark lies undisturbed. It is all right sitting there with Winnie, but she looks forward to her going in the morning. She needs Ambrose beside her. She has stopped trying to explain to herself or anyone else why she needs him with her.
Sitting here thinking about him, she tries to see him in another place but she can’t. This is their place. But of course he will go back to where he came from. As she has told him she will do. But when it comes to the point, she wonders. Still, she has promised.
‘What are you writing?’ asks Winnie idly.
She stalls. ‘I was thinking of writing a letter to Mumma,’ says Clara, scribbling away.
Winnie brightens. ‘She’d like that. I could take it back with me.’
‘Would she read it?’
‘Oh … I don’t know,’ she admits.
Clara would like to write a letter of love to Mumma. She has often thought of it. Maybe this is as close as she will ever get to it. Besides, the light is failing in Paddy’s Puzzle. But then she has been expecting that.
‘Win.’
‘Yes.’
‘Would they throw Mumma’s flowers out? Those people?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. I suppose so. I should have rescued them shouldn’t I? The plants?’
They pause. ‘I don’t expect I would have either,’ Clara says at last.
They look blindly at each other across the cold light of the gas flame in Paddy’s Puzzle. They think of Mumma, and Clara believes they know at last that they have both inhabited the same warm darkness. ‘I wouldn’t have had anywhere to put them,’ Winnie says.
‘No. Neither would I.’
*
‘Has it been all right then Ambrose?’
‘It’s been all right.’
‘Why? What have you got out of it?’
‘You ask too many questions.’
‘Yes, I know. But what?’
‘I got you, Clara Bentley. That’s what I got. What about you?’
‘Me. Oh, I dunno. A feel for living I guess.’
‘You ain’t had it before?’
‘Mmm. Oh, sometimes maybe. I just never saw all the possibilities before.’
‘You seen them now?’
‘Oh yes Ambrose. I’ve seen them near enough.’
She touches the dark plate of his head with her own.
Part Four: Winnie
13
Jeannie brought Winnie the telegram. There was a late frost and the clouds hadn’t lifted. A black frost, as they called it in the Waikato, when the ice lies on the ground all day. It had nipped and blackened the new spring growth. Winnie looked down the garden and thought it would take a while to recover.
She heard the knock at the door, and voices. Then Jeannie came through. She was a spotty girl and although
she was always washing her hair it only seemed to get greasier. Winnie guessed she would grow out of it. She loved her so much. But Clara was right, her daughter was going to have a hard time of it.
‘The telegram boy said it was bad news Mum,’ said Jeannie, frightened.
It was addressed to her, Mrs Winnie Hoggard. She knew before she opened it.
It read, ‘Clara died this morning before the ship sailed at noon. It was like a light went out. Ambrose tells you he’ll write.’ It was signed, Janice.
‘She never left,’ said Winnie numbly, to no one in particular.
‘Left where?’ said Jeannie, although Winnie had tried to explain to her some of what happened on her trip to Auckland.
‘The Puzzle. She never left Paddy’s Puzzle.’
Winnie gave Janice instructions over the phone and arranged to go up the next morning for the funeral. She wondered about putting it in the paper but she couldn’t see the point. She rang Miss Cresswell, and then she thought of ringing Robin. She supposed that in time he would have to know but when she had considered it, she decided there was time enough. He might feel he had to do something, go to the funeral, something like that. Or he might be embarrassed about it all. Clara wouldn’t have liked that.
Then she had to go and tell Mumma. She and old Mrs Hoggard were playing cards together. Winnie was afraid to tell her. She was so crazy about Clara when she was a little girl, and she had been asking about her lately.
It was strange though. When she did tell her she might not have heard her for all the indication she gave. She and Winnie’s mother-in-law went on with their game. ‘Did you like dancing?’ said Mumma, leaning over and murmuring confidentially to her friend. ‘I was very fond of it you know. Very fond.’
Winnie only stayed for the day in Auckland. She didn’t like leaving the girls again so soon. It would have been company to take Jeannie but she had exams coming up in a month or so, and she didn’t want to take her out of school. She wasn’t sure how she could explain Paddy’s Puzzle to her either. It seemed better to leave it. In a way she had almost come to terms with the place, for herself, and that was enough. In fact she was almost looking forward to seeing everyone there again. It had been quite a leave-taking the last time she left.
But things had changed, even in ten days. The Puzzle was still there and the smell of chocolate as thick as ever, overwhelming even the worst and vilest stenches in the old rabbit-warren. Janice was tense and anxious and apologised for being in a rush. She had to meet some man called Ron. It was fair enough, she had done more than her share.
As for Ma Hollis, she didn’t come to the funeral at all. There had been an accident, though the police were claiming it wasn’t. Biddy Chisholm’s daughter had been pushed off the top of the Puzzle the night before. They were saying that Billy had pushed her. It was a miracle she wasn’t killed, but her head was like pulp and Biddy had been taking on like a banshee ever since. Which was hardly surprising, seeing that the child would never talk properly again and it was said she was dreadfully disfigured.
As for Billy, he just kept shaking his head and laughing and saying that the bloody butcher done it. That’s what he had said about the last person to go over the edge too, only it couldn’t have been Billy that time. Perhaps it really was an accident, Winnie suggested to Janice before she dashed off. But Janice shook her head bleakly. It would kill Ma if they took Billy away, but you couldn’t have a loony like that roaming around. Well could you?
In the end there were only six of them at the funeral. Her and Janice; the manager of the chocolate factory; and Charlie Ambler and May Abbott from the Puzzle, May dressed in spotted lavender voile. Winnie and Clara’s sister Rita, looking pale and overdressed for the warm day, turned up too. She said Frank was tied up with the calving. And there were the hired pallbearers.
Winnie believed she felt the presence of Ambrose. Perhaps it was just her imagination let loose by his flowers on the coffin, but there was a feeling, someone at her shoulder, a dark and restless shadow. She didn’t understand about black men like him, these niggers, and about this one in particular, but she still felt him there.
On the journey back to town she looked out to sea. The Pacific rolled away, darkly blue in the late September sun, and she found herself wondering if Ambrose would make it home. Sooner or later. Clara had seemed sure that he would.
There wasn’t much left in her room. Not even a cake of chocolate she could have taken home for the girls. The place had been gone over pretty thoroughly. There were some papers covered with scribble. She nearly left them but then her curiosity got the better of her. They half-filled her big shopping bag.
She walked up to Parnell, sure of her direction this time, and got a tram to the railway station. As she left the Puzzle kids spilled out into the street. An American in uniform was coming towards them and they shrilled, ‘Got any souvenirs Yank? Got any gum Yank?’
She thought that she would never go back there again.
In the train she opened her bag and glanced through Clara’s papers. She was still trying to read them and sort them into some kind of order when the train pulled into Frankton Junction. Fragments of conversation, letters started and never finished, pieces that seemed to follow on, almost like a diary at times; names written over and over in patterns and variations, Ambrose’s written dozens of different ways, then her own and Winnie’s, her own and Robin’s, her own and Reg’s. In this last she supposed that there was some clue to the past, something she had half guessed and dismissed because it was absurd, or ugly, or both. Someday, when she was stronger, she might confront it. Along with herself. But that was asking too much now. What she did know then, was that she had loved her. She wished she had known so surely when she could have told her but then people are always wishing things like that. Dear Clara. Little sister. In spite of everything. Yes.
As the train rattled south she watched the landscape and the tender greening of the trees beside the wide slow river. On a far bank an old paddle-steamer lay grounded. She thought of her own secret inner life, constrained within her. She thought it might never be released now. Whereas Clara had lived hers out till there was no further to go.
It seemed that her death made more sense and a greater difference than she had believed possible while she was alive.
It was hard to measure the difference though. One evening she was sitting in front of the fire with Caroline. She asked Winnie what her Auntie Clara had really been like. She was, after all, only nine when she had left Hamilton. Winnie said that it was hard to say. ‘She was unusual,’ she said, but that sounded inadequate, so she added, ‘She was named after a film star called Clara Bow. Sometimes I used to think she was a bit like her. I don’t know any more.’
‘Whose idea was it to call her after a film star?’ asked Caroline.
‘Mine,’ she said, surprised at herself. ‘Yes, it was my idea.’
About the Author
Fiona Kidman was born in 1940. She has worked as a librarian, creative writing teacher, radio producer and critic, but primarily as a writer. To date, she has published 17 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1988 in recognition of her contribution to literature.
Copyright
A VINTAGE BOOK
published by
Random House New Zealand
18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand
First published 1983. This edition published 1999
© 1983 Fiona Kidman
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 9781775530312
Printed in Malaysia
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