‘Okay!’ said Vic, perching on the arm of a sofa that already had several others sitting on it.
‘Remember, sit tight and if anyone asks you say, “We’re having a party, guests of Pratt’s sister.” Isn’t that right, Mrs Thurlow?’
Mrs Thurlow, who was squatting on a leather pouf, still holding the pot plant, but no longer with her children, nodded. She was the only woman in the room.
Looking at her in her washed-out beige dress, darned stockings and broken shoes made Vic suddenly nervous. He knew she depended on him to save her and her children from eviction, yet he’d no idea whether the plan would work. Sitting on the furniture had seemed such a bright idea when they’d talked about it last night, but now, here in the house, with so many men he hardly knew, and the police liable to arrive at any minute, Vic felt anxious and fearful. He was also aware that he and the other Punawai men were AWOL from the camp. He hoped it wouldn’t give Forster the chance he might well be looking for to send them all down the road. Vic had at least a few days’ work each month with Maguire, but the others had nothing. His leg started to tremble, as it did when he was nervous. He pushed it hard against the side of the sofa and hoped the others wouldn’t notice the repetitive shiver.
‘The cops, they’re coming!’ someone shouted from outside.
A ripple went through the house. Vic could feel the men’s fear.
‘Listen,’ said Vic, though no one moved. ‘This may get nasty. If anyone wants to go, do it now. No questions asked. If you stay, then do as I say. Just keeping sitting where you are, and if the cops arrest you, go quietly. No scuffles.’
Quigley on the sofa made a move to stand up, but the man next to him pulled him down with a ‘Don’t be a bloody sissy’. There was a nervous laugh. No one else moved.
Vic wondered if he could keep them sitting when the boys in blue arrived. He hoped to God the police wouldn’t draw their batons.
‘It’s a party, for Christ’s sake,’ said Miller. ‘We need an item, a recitation. You, Cowan — give us a poem.’
For a moment Vic could think of nothing, then it came to him:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Outside he could hear the sound of Gilchrist’s voice on the megaphone, and then a motor engine stopped. There was a dull roar from the crowd.
Vic hesitated in his recitation and glanced at the window, where the net curtains had been looped back. The police van was at the kerb on the far side of the road, its back doors were open and men in dark uniforms were getting out — there seemed a lot of them. The police formed into a neat group on the pavement. They were pulling out their batons. Vic could see the sun glint on the polished wood. He had never in his life fallen foul of the law and he was terrified. He imagined the crack of a baton against his head, the jagged and all-encompassing pain.
‘Keep going, Cowan,’ said Miller, giving the thumbs-up sign.
Police helmets like dark blue beetles were bobbing about among the crowd on the steps to the house.
Vic felt as if he were suffocating. He ran his fingers through his hair, took a swig of air and tried to remember the lines.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
‘Charge for the guns!’ he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
His voice sounded odd and narrow, as if it were coming from someone else.
Chapter 8
Amélie was looking into the triple mirrors of her dressing table. Sometimes she felt that she could already see signs of her reflection sliding off into the ether. She imagined how it would be, the hard New Zealand light moving imperceptibly forward, eating away definition, like the peroxide she used to bleach the tiny coloured hair on her top lip. Gradually she would become invisible.
Amélie needed to be noticed, admired, praised, as she had been since babyhood. It required more effort as an adult woman to elicit such praise and attention, but it was effort Amélie was happy to make. Rubbing her elbows with lemons, pushing back her cuticles with an orange stick, wearing a chin strap when no one saw, so that her neck was firm and swan-like, and a hundred other little disciplines and artifices. In return men smiled and turned, women looked, compliments were paid. Amélie was confirmed, defined, in control — at least that was how it would have been in France.
Here on the downside of the world, in this settlement of stick buildings, women shapeless as wool bales, men who conversed with grunts like farmyard animals, Amélie felt her sense of selfhood falter. The people she met in the street — or at the evening parties of Dr Cunningham, the vet Tom Squires, or the stock and station agent Ian Fyffe — treated her with indifference or occasional disdain. The women, when they considered the bank manager’s wife, which they didn’t very often, tended to the view that her dresses were too short, or too long, her jewellery too showy. She kept a maid; who did she think she was, anyway? The men, for the most part, thought her ‘a good looker’, if uncomfortably foreign, but kept both opinions to themselves.
One of the few exceptions was the young clergyman. Amélie guessed that she had turned Roland Crawford’s head, and the thought amused and diverted her. The way he gazed at her mouth as she corrected his pronunciation made her consciously overemphasise the words ‘Bonjour’, ‘Bonsoir’, ‘Adieu’, lingering over them, giving them a rich, chocolate breathiness. Amélie needed men to look at her like that to make her blossom, and there was so little of that magic light in New Zealand. Here the two sexes seemed forever parted, men hunched in pubs or kitchens around a beer keg, women pinned to the walls of lounges talking of cakes and the ways of stains. Where were the flirtatious looks, the delicious stares, the deliberate positioning of wrist or ankle?
And then there was her husband, Jack. Jack forever coughing, talking nonsense about angels, worrying about his wretched bank and its clients. Who could he save? Who was going to be sold up? In bed so utterly predictable, his mouth, his hands, his sex moving like a clockwork toy. In recent years Amélie had begun to feel that Jack regarded her as if she were a breakfast cream jug or some other piece of pretty china that appeared regularly in his life but for the most part was of little consequence and lost from view.
Amélie was a believer in matrimony, if not in faithfulness. She supported the idea of the sacredness of the marriage bed, though the combination of Jack’s growing indifference to her pearly flanks invitingly positioned beneath his hands, and the frequent nightmares and attacks of breathlessness her husband suffered while she endeavoured to sleep, made her increasingly consider other bedroom arrangements.
In Amélie’s view, marriage was immutable, discretion more important than fidelity, affairs a matter of personal taste. Now there was the business of Maguire. Amélie was in two minds about Maguire. She picked up the pink quartz and gold bracelet that he had sent her and held it up to the mirror. She didn’t know what to do about him or his gift. She had already dealt the cards three times, seen the moon on each reading, and the devil twice, but nothing clear had emerged. It was all hazy and uncertain.
Some men, like that rather sweet clergyman, were content to be endlessly invited to tea, to be smiled at, flirted with, offered hints and half promises. Men whose devotion was held and rewarded by a titillating display of Amélie’s softly pouting lips mouthing a creamed éclair, her warm breath against their neck as she turned music at an evening party, or the brushing of a flannelled knee ostensibly removing a crumb that both knew was imaginary. Maguire was not such a man. With each visit his expectations became more obvious, the flirtatious talk more explicit, the innuendoes more numerous.
The card with the bracelet said: ‘Can’t get you out of my head and other places. Saw this pretty thing and it reminded me of you. JM’.
The man is vulgar, Amélie thought, re-reading the message and remembering the two-tone shoes he wore and how she’d once seen him in an almond-green fedora —
but what choice had she in this dowdy little town? At least Maguire knew what he wanted. Got it, too. It was a trait Amélie admired. She wished she could be like that herself, but so far life seemed a conspiracy to frustrate her, and after the infrequent, polite matrimonial fumbling of Jack there was something exciting about being the object of another man’s forthright lust.
Amélie imagined herself and Maguire in a tangle of sheets in the porous light of a hotel bedroom. She saw his hands caressing her naked stomach and thighs in long repetitive strokes, the tart feel of the gold signet ring he wore as the band of metal travelled back and forth. She imagined the confusion between her thighs, pleasure shooting through her body as the stroking went on and on and eagerness grew. And Maguire would know how she felt, and at the exact moment when thwarted desire tipped towards desperation, he would lift one of her legs over his shoulder and come boring into her, breaching each layer of expectant flesh.
Amélie held the bracelet to the light. The interlocking stones were like a baby’s cheeks bonneted in gold. Pretty in a confectionery sort of way, the ornament was a little too obvious for Amélie’s taste, but it was expensive, very expensive — an Auckland or Wellington piece, no doubt about that.
Stella had been to lots of dances — the Oddfellows, the St Peter’s parish, the RSA — but never with a partner, never with Vic. In the past she had gone with her parents, taking part in the grand march on her father’s arm. Her shyness meant that she spent much of those evenings in the kitchen with the older women, whipping cream, decorating a sponge cake, or sitting out on one of the benches around the walls as other, flashier girls were whisked onto the floor. Now Vic had said, ‘You will come with me to the fundraising dance, Stella? Promise you will.’
Peg Morgan gave her daughter an old blue velvet dress she’d had from before the war. The fabric had a weary look, some places scuffed almost to the nap. Stella, helped by Mrs Thurlow and her sewing machine, cut the back out of the dress and used the material to give it a loose halter neck. Low backs were the fashion; Stella had never had a backless dress before. She wondered if her father would approve, and decided it might be better to wear her old shawl draped around her when she left the house in case he didn’t.
The dance was in aid of the unemployed, though as everyone knew it was really to raise money for the fines that Vic, Gilchrist and the other three Anti-Eviction organisers had to pay as a result of the action at Ena Thurlow’s house. None of the men arrested had got a prison term; the landlord, intimidated by the fuss, and the fact that it was unlikely he’d get another tenant, had allowed Mrs Thurlow to stay in her rooms and agreed to extended time to pay her rent. Everything, as Vic said, had ‘worked out a treat’.
‘Heard what happened over in Horatio Street?’ people asked each other, smiling at the thought of it. There were mates out there who’d stand by you, front up to the bosses on your behalf — see you right. You mightn’t have sixpence to jingle together but you weren’t alone.
Chains of crêpe paper had been hung across St Peter’s Church hall, there was a string of coloured lights over the stage and bunches of balloons pinned to the curtains. The wooden forms had been pushed back against the walls and jam jars of flowers decorated the windowsills. A ball of mirror fragments hung from the ceiling. Chalk was being spread on the floor, making it smooth for dancing. Younger brothers and sisters, too young for dances, but there all the same, ran and slid and showed off. A boy in a bulky jacket that looked like an adult one cut down and a girl in a crocheted hat were pulling each other over the floor on an old jersey.
‘Did you do that when you were a kid?’ Vic asked Stella as they watched the children.
‘Suppose I did,’ said Stella, smiling at him. Vic was wearing a tie and his hair was smoothed back rather than falling onto his face. Stella thought he looked very smart.
‘Wish I’d been there to see you sliding about,’ Vic grinned.
‘Why?’ asked Stella.
‘Dunno,’ said Vic, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘Don’t like to think there was a time in your life when I wasn’t around.’
The orchestra, three men from Taihape — piano, accordion and drums — came onto the stage.
‘Look at them all wiping their mouths,’ giggled Stella.
‘Bet there’s a keg out the back,’ said Vic. ‘They’ll be in and out all evening, getting more stoked all the time.’
‘Might make them play better,’ said Stella.
‘Could do.’ Vic imitated a drunk playing the drums and they both laughed.
The hall was filling up. There was much slapping of Vic on the back, jokes about sitting on furniture, and good-humoured banter. Everyone seemed in a cheerful mood. Vic couldn’t keep his hands away from Stella: they kept gliding back to grasp her fingers, hold her shoulder, circle her waist. Stella leant the back of her head on Vic’s chest and could feel the warmth of his body against her neck. Vic introduced her to Gilchrist, Miller and Legatt. Stella smiled and twinkled and said, ‘How do you do?’ and ‘Do you live up at the camp?’ and thought how fortunate these men were to be with Vic every single day, when she was lucky to see him once a week. She wanted to ask them about him, what he said, what he did, but knew it’d be embarrassing.
Stella and Vic danced the quickstep, their movements keeping pace — smart and staccato. Then there was the Gay Gordons, where everyone changed partners, and a waltz, which Stella danced with Gilchrist.
‘Sorry I’m hopeless,’ said Gilchrist as his leg bumped Stella or he stepped on her toe. Stella hardly heard. She was looking over Gilchrist’s shoulder to where Vic was standing waiting for her, waving a fallen streamer.
The next dance was another foxtrot. Stella glided about the floor, her feet matching Vic’s steps. It seemed some marvellous invisible thread held them together.
‘You’re a wonderful dancer,’ Stella said.
‘Depends who I’m dancing with,’ Vic said as he kissed Stella’s ear; the brush of his mouth sent bright spangles through her body.
‘Saw that, Cowan,’ said Gilchrist, who was close by.
Vic ignored the comment and began to sing along with the music. Very low so only Stella heard:
Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you!
Embrace me, you irreplaceable you!
Earlier that evening, when Stella came into the Morgans’ kitchen in her long velvet dress, Vic had been there to collect her. He turned as she came through the door and began to smile.
‘You look so beautiful,’ he’d said, ‘like a princess.’ After that his eyes never left her.
Stella, who had had few compliments in her life and had spent a great deal of time on her dress, her hair, and the shoes she had painted with black ink to cover the scratch marks, thought she’d never known such happiness, but even that moment was not as good as the dancing. The tenderness of Vic’s singing and the touch of his hand on her naked back made her feel she would melt.
Lal Crawford hadn’t wanted to come to the dance. It was Roland who said they must show solidarity with the unemployed and go. He’d had a real barney with Ces Nesbit and some of the other parishioners for permitting the dance to be held in the church hall in the first place. ‘Godless communists’, ‘troublemakers with no respect for the law’, the more conservative men on the vestry had said about the Anti-Eviction members and their activities. Roland had reminded them, with some satisfaction, of Jesus’s special concern for the poor and the widowed. He had also cast his deciding vote to overrule objections about this specific use of the parish hall.
Lal only wanted to be left alone, dreaming of motherhood. With choir practice, Young Wives, the Bible study and prayer groups there were few spare evenings when she could sit undisturbed by the fire, lost in a private reverie. Roland had said she mustn’t get too excited just yet, and nothing was definite for three months, when the doctor would do the test, but Lal had no such doubts. God had heard her: she would have a child. At first Roland’s reservations had disappointed Lal but as the days
passed and her conviction grew she hardly heard them. She hugged her state about her, as if encased in a miracle, and thought of her baby.
At the dance, Lal felt alive and pretty and unexpectedly pleased to have come. She had stitched a new bunch of artificial violets to the waist of her rainbow net evening dress, and put a diamante slide in her hair. She knew she probably looked much too formally dressed, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Lal waltzed with Roland. Her hand was on his sleeve, his arm around her waist. My husband, Lal thought: the father of my child. The swinging lights on the mirrored ball, the sound of the band, the swishing clothes seemed bright and beautiful. In reality most of the women’s dresses were old and worn. They were too big or too small, with sweat marks around the arms and stubborn stains on the bodices, but Lal didn’t notice. All she saw was colour, and light, which whirled and swooped. She thought of butterflies, birds, flying.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ Lal said as if it were the first dance she’d ever attended.
‘Mmm,’ said Roland absently. He was looking at Amélie Baldwin, who had just arrived with her husband. Roland was surprised to see them there: a dance in aid of court fines for unemployed men was hardly where one expected to see the bank manager and his wife, but then Jack Baldwin seemed an unusual chap, good-hearted and compassionate. Amélie was wearing a silvery bias-cut dress, which clung alluringly from shoulder to knee where the skirt widened, falling in watery folds to the floor. A mermaid, Roland thought, and wondered if it would be permissible to ask her to dance.
Lal and Roland were just going into the foxtrot sashay when Lal seemed to wilt, slump and fall forward. Roland held her up and tried to carry her off the floor but it was impossible with the crush of dancers. The people around them stopped moving and a circle gathered as the music slithered to a halt.
The Paua Tower Page 9