‘I’m sorry,’ said Roland, ‘I never intended it to turn out like this.’
‘It’s too late saying sorry now,’ said Lal. ‘I’m doing what I want for a change, and I’ve already made plans.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve decided to take Peter and go to Auckland.’ Lal looked up. ‘I’m going to live in the house Aunt Babs left me and run it as a boarding house for unmarried mothers. Stella’s coming with me.’
‘You certainly have got it all cut and dried.’ Roland felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. ‘And what am I to do while you are playing angel of mercy? I take it I don’t figure in this plan.’
‘It’s not up to me to say what you should do,’ said Lal, stroking Peter’s head. ‘I just think we should go our separate ways for a while and you’ll have to make your own decisions, though with the stink Mr Nesbit is making I don’t think the church will want you either.’
‘I don’t much want the church myself at the moment,’ said Roland, getting up and going to the window. ‘I’ve already decided to resign.’ He looked at the vicarage garden with its cabbage tree and the neat row of blue hyacinths, which he had planted. Beyond the garden a bearded man wearing a torn jersey, corduroy trousers and gumboots went past carrying a kerosene tin with a wire handle. Further off, Roland could see the mountain, huge and imposing like a white cathedral. He thought of how he’d always intended climbing it and knew now he never would.
Chapter 24
The harbour was a blue quilt neatly tucked into the land as the Oceanic Empress left the city wharf heading for the open sea. Amélie sat comfortably on her steamer chair, leather travelling cushion at her back, and reviewed the passengers who clung against the rails, eager to get the last glance of the country they were leaving. Young women in bias-cut figure-hugging dresses and peep-toe shoes were laughing and throwing streamers into the sea; spoilt daughters of Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury sailing to Southampton hoping to find rich British husbands, Amélie decided, feeling a whiff of jealousy at the girls’ obvious youth. The men she had seen on the deck so far seemed a disappointing lot. Too old or too obviously married, none held her attention for long. Amélie hoped there would be some entertaining bachelors on board — an early-retired colonel, a successful medical man — to escort her in to dinner or partner her at the dances and whist evenings the trip promised.
Amélie put her head back in the chair and let the scenery slide by. Under her hat brim she could see the houses clinging like coloured sugar crystals to the hills and the dark folds of the bush-covered land. She felt no regret at leaving, though she idly considered whether she would ever see New Zealand again and decided probably not. What would it be like returning to France after all these years? She had left as a girl and returned a woman and a widow. Would there always be a hole, a missing place in her life that belonged to the South Pacific, or would the years grow over it quickly, like grass on some wounded patch of soil? And Amélie thought about Tad: the notion of him in France made her anxious. She wondered what the child would think of her country, and hoped her parents wouldn’t find her son with his stumbling French, his tendency to tie his jersey around his hips, his seemingly perennially grubby knees and scuffed shoes too wild and savage. And where was the boy now, for that matter?
Amélie walked about the deck, glancing down gangways, peering into open doors and behind liferafts.
‘Looking for something?’ said a curly-haired crew member who was swabbing at a large sticky patch on the deck where a steward had recently dropped a jug of lemonade.
‘My son,’ said Amélie. ‘A boy of eleven in grey shorts.’
‘Saw a kid like that,’ said the sailor. ‘He’s up on the boat deck. He was hanging out on a rail. Told him to get down before he fell.’
‘That’s him,’ said Amélie, smiling.
‘I know you.’ The young man pushed his glasses back towards his eyes and leaned on his mop. ‘You’re from Matauranga. I’m Joe Gilchrist. I used to be in the relief camp near there — saw you in the town. You’re were the bank manager’s wife or something.’
‘Yes,’ said Amélie stiffly, resenting such easy familiarity, ‘though my husband has recently died.’
‘Heard that,’ said Gilchrist.
At that moment Tad came running down the gangway. ‘It’s a corker ship!’ the boy shouted as he came towards his mother. ‘There’s a beaut place to climb and when you jump it’s like flying over the sea.’
‘I’d watch myself if I were you,’ said Gilchrist, pulling the thrums of the wet mop through the mangle on the top of the bucket.
‘I’m a good climber,’ Tad said, grinning. ‘I’ve a magic rope on my leg so I can’t fall.’
Lying beneath the upturned boat, as hail flicked pellets of ice on the keel in a sharp artillery, Roland remembered the monks he’d read about who slept in coffins and wondered if such an arrangement could have been any worse than his present position.
Earlier that evening Roland had spread his blanket under a tree on the beach by a small lake, assuming that sand would offer a good mattress, but once he lay down the ground seemed insufferably hard and stones he hadn’t noticed kept digging into his back. The night had been overcast and fine but as darkness fell the weather changed. Now it was cold and hailing.
Roland had pulled the rowing boat on top of himself to provide shelter but he felt suffocated by the dark structure with its heavy smell of mud and fish. His back ached, his hands were raw with blisters and he was very hungry. The day had been a bad one and the night was proving worse.
Some days before, he had headed out of Matauranga on foot, leaving the town in the very early morning so none of his former parishioners would see him go. Once word had got around of the vicar’s disgrace, and how he and Mrs Baldwin had been found injured at the Paua Tower, Roland’s contact with the people of St Peter’s had been a perpetual embarrassment. He would walk to Timata and catch the train there, to avoid chance encounters at Matauranga’s main railway station.
It was still dark as Roland closed the front door of the vicarage and went down the path to the front gate. Lal, Peter, Stella and her new baby, Alison, along with the Crawfords’ furniture, had left for Auckland the previous day, and Roland, in a gesture he regarded with some pride, had sold his car and given the money to his wife. He had decided to spend the next year on the road as a swagger. Lal said she doubted he’d last a month.
Roland thought of the figure he struck as he walked down Sebastopol Street, swag on his back, a billy at his side and a manuka staff, made out of the washing pole, in his hand. He imagined himself as having joined the company of heroes who, from time immemorial, had set out on journeys in search of adventure, new understandings and other lives. He took a couple of deep breaths and adjusted his pace to the even, measured tread of the seasoned outdoors man.
He saw the sun rise as he crossed the river by the tannery. The sky, streaked in brilliant tulip colours of orange, red, yellow and gold, looked magnificent and Roland thought how closeness to nature was something he would enjoy in his new life. The sun was well up when he got to the Timata railway station and he was pleased to find no one he knew on the train. He got off at a randomly selected halt, where there was only a corrugated iron shed with the words Oho over the entrance. On one side of the railway line were rolling paddocks; on the other a landscape of low hills, humped and irregular like children playing under a green blanket. Roland saw a dirt road leading into the hills and decided to follow it.
The afternoon was sunny and he had a holiday feeling as he walked. He met a group of young Maori cooking eels on a spit over a fire on stones near a creek. One of the youths offered Roland some pieces of eel flesh, which tasted greasy but good. Later that night he lay down on the pine needles in a timber plantation. The place smelt sweetly of the trees and the night was gentle and warm. At dawn he was wakened by the sound of moreporks.
The next two days passed agreeably. Roland had brought a little foo
d and money with him — to get started, as he told himself. He bought bread, tomatoes and honey from a woman who was hanging out washing at a hut on the roadside and this kept him going a couple of days. He knew that very soon he would have to work for what he got, but Roland was terrified of the thought of having to go up to a farmhouse and ask for some small employment in return for a meal and a place to sleep. It was several days before he was forced to do this, by which time he was without food, his small stock of money was exhausted and he was bitterly hungry.
A rough track led from the road to what Roland presumed would be a farmhouse. There was no immediate sign of habitation; stony, unfenced paddocks devoid of stock lay on either side of the driveway, with a derelict dipping pen where the track turned by a stand of gum trees. Beyond the corner a small house came into view, its weatherboards silvered from lack of paint. Roland was considering whether or not to go on when the door of the house opened and a man with a long white beard came out, pointing a rifle.
‘Get off my land or I’ll blow your head off!’ the man shouted. Simultaneously a large black dog raced forward, barking and growling. Roland turned and ran back down the track to the gate. Back on the road, a safe distance from the farm and the dog, he sat down in the grass as his heart thudded and hunger tugged at his stomach. He felt like weeping.
The next farm Roland tried was up a long drive planted with poplars. The trees rubbed their leaves together in the afternoon breeze and Roland felt that such an avenue must lead to something more promising than his previous attempt.
This farm was a long, low building with old armchairs on the veranda and a border of snapdragons and bog sage by a front lawn. Roland went around to the outbuildings at the back, his feet scrunching the stones as he walked.
‘Morning,’ said a man wearing braces over a singlet and carrying two buckets, which he put down as Roland came towards him.
‘Good morning.’ Roland was embarrassingly aware of how plummy his voice sounded.
‘You wanting work?’ The man looked Roland up and down.
‘Yes,’ said Roland, feeling pleased he hadn’t had to ask.
‘Know how to use a slasher?’ Without waiting for an answer the man moved towards a nearby shed. ‘There’s a bank needs clearing,’ he said, taking an implement off the wall. ‘Pay you a shilling for doing it and give you a feed.’
The bank was covered with scrub, mostly gorse, broom and kanuka. Roland hadn’t liked to say he didn’t know how to use the slasher but once left alone to clear the area he wished he had. The implement with its savage blade and long handle seemed impossibly heavy in his grasp. Roland stumbled about, taking swipes at the vegetation, endeavouring to master some sort of rhythmical swing, his hands and back hurting fiercely. After twenty minutes there was little to show for his work and Roland, thoroughly exhausted, was not sure how long he could last; hunger and the promise of a meal kept him going.
‘Bloody hell,’ the man in braces shouted as he came across the paddock. ‘Call that scrub-cutting? What sort of a pansy are you?’
Roland stopped. ‘Sorry,’ he said, embarrassed, as he put the slasher down. ‘Never used anything like this before.’
‘I can see that,’ the man said. ‘Well, it’s not a charity around here. I’m not paying good money to bloody drongos like you. Just give me back the implement and clear off.’
Roland handed over the slasher and followed the man back across the paddock towards the farmhouse. ‘The meal,’ he said, aware of hunger stabbing at his guts. ‘I don’t expect money but I could do with some food.’
The man walked on in silence as if he hadn’t heard. When they got to the farm buildings he said, ‘Wait here.’ He went into the house and came back with two cold baked potatoes, which he handed to Roland. ‘Now bugger off,’ he said.
The potatoes were long gone by the time Roland got to the lake. He thought of them wistfully as he lay beneath the boat. Maybe, Roland thought, I’m not cut out for this sort of life. Maybe Lal was right and I should just toss in this whole swagging thing and admit it didn’t work.
The hail had stopped. Roland pushed the upturned boat away and sat up in the damp night.
Over the lake, the moon had appeared out of the cloudy darkness like a daisy on some shabby lawn.
Roland considered his situation. He was cold, tired, sore and famished. He couldn’t be sure where he was or what he would eat tomorrow. If he gave up now he’d have to admit failure to himself and Lal. It was still early days, too soon to call it quits. He sat up very straight. No, he thought, I’m not ready to give this up, at least not yet.
Stella put her face close to the tram window to check where she was. She could see the chemist shop with the big coloured-glass bottles in the window, and alongside, the peeling hoarding with the bearded sailor advertising tinned salmon. The Farrington Street corner — time to ring the bell.
Arms full of parcels, and looking forward to reaching home, Stella clambered off the tram. It was almost two months since she had come to Auckland with Lal but she still found travelling into the city an adventure. The place was so big and busy after Matauranga; there were so many people pushing up and down on the pavements and cars and trucks nudging and hooting on the streets. Today Stella had been shopping. She’d bought curtain hooks and braid, some terry-towelling to hem as nappies for the babies, she’d remembered they needed a new bottle of turpentine, and she also carried a big bundle of felt scraps which she’d been lucky to get at a discounted price and a roll of kapok, both intended for the soft toys she and Lal were planning to make for sale. She walked down the road, her breasts heavy with milk, and thinking lovingly of Alison. She thought of her daughter’s puckered mouth like a tiny carnation flower, and the infant’s little body, plump and white as uncooked piecrust, and marvelled at the joy the baby had brought to her life.
There was another reason Stella was happy. Today was Friday and on Sunday she would see Vic. Instinctively touching the wire ring through her glove, she glanced up at the sky and saw how fragile it looked, as if there wasn’t quite enough blue to go around and the colour had been stretched out wide and thin. Perhaps at that moment Vic was looking at that same sky; Stella hoped he knew she was thinking of him.
Many of the houses on Alexandra Crescent had been built since the Great War. They had red Marseilles-tile roofs, shingles reaching up to the windows with coloured leadlights in the corners of the glass and fancy porches protecting recessed front doors. The men who lived in these houses had jobs they went to in suits and bowler hats; their wives wore coats with fat fur collars and their daughters, in patent leather strapped shoes and white socks, played pianos in the front rooms. Number 9, which Lal had inherited from her great-aunt, had a laurel hedge and a gate ornamented with diamonds cut as holes into the wood. On the gate was a plaque decorated in burnt-poker work, which said New Dawn House. Lal and Stella had chosen the name, made the sign and put it up only a few days before. Lal had used the money Roland had given her from the sale of the car to extend the house; three pregnant women were moving in just as soon as Stella and Lal had finished painting the bedrooms. The boarding house for unmarried mothers was soon to become a reality.
Stella put her hand on the twisted metal circle that opened the latch and walked up the path to the back door. The kitchen was steamy and smelt of talcum powder, washing hung from the ceiling drying lines and tins of paint stood on the floor on pieces of newspaper. Lal, wearing a long white apron and with her sleeves pushed up beyond her elbows, was standing at the table bathing the babies in an enamel basin.
‘You’re just in time for the bath,’ said Lal, looking up as Stella came through the door. ‘The little ones both got grizzly so I thought this would cheer things along.’
‘Hope Alison wasn’t a nuisance,’ said Stella, coming to the table. ‘How’s my little cherub?’ she said as she looked tenderly at her daughter.
The infant, her head supported in Lal’s hand, stretched and kicked and gurgled with pleasure.
‘Yes,’ said Stella, putting her hands into the basin and taking Alison. ‘Got some felt for the bunnies’ clothes, a really big bag of offcuts for ninepence.’
Peter flicked the bath with his fist and water splashed into all their faces. Lal and Stella laughed. It seemed to Stella that since Alison was born and she had moved to Auckland, she and Lal were always laughing. Painting the walls, putting up curtains, taking the little ones out in the pram were all occasions of giggling mirth.
There was a knock at the hall door and Lal, leaving Stella to look after the babies, went into the front of the house. She came back carrying a large parcel.
‘It’s for you,’ she said, putting it on the linoleum floor beside the paint cans.
‘Whatever is it?’ said Stella.
‘Let’s get the kids out of the bath and you can open it,’ said Lal.
Stella, with Alison on her knee, cut the string and pulled back the wrapping paper. ‘It’s an old gramophone,’ she said, ‘and some records. Who would send me that?’
‘There’s a letter,’ said Lal, holding Peter in a towel with one hand and picking up a piece of paper out of the wrapping with the other.
Stella looked at the letter. ‘It’s from Vic’s mother,’ she said. ‘Vic wrote telling her we planned to get married and she’s sent the gramophone as an engagement present. She says she would have sent it sooner but hadn’t got the money. Apparently she’s just managed to get a new job as a housekeeper, so she could afford to send it now.’
‘Isn’t that lovely?’ said Lal, smiling.
‘It’s the very first present Vic and I’ve been given,’ said Stella, running her hand along the shabby side of the case with pleasure. ‘He’ll be so chuffed when I tell him.’
The Paua Tower Page 28