This Mortal Boy

by Fiona Kidman

  Let us go, Lassie, go.

  But when it comes to it, they can’t sing the last line again, because Kathleen isn’t going anywhere. The summer is nearly ended, soon they will be heading into autumn and the heather finished flowering for the season, and next year — they don’t have a clue as to what will have happened.

  CHAPTER 4

  October 1955. At around the same time as Paddy is being put back in his cell, Ken McKenzie, the farmer’s son from up north, is gazing around him with sheer amazement that he can be occupying such an elegant space as the Station Hotel in Auckland. James Taylor, the bank manager who’d put up his hand to be foreman of the jury as if it were natural that he would lead them, has suggested they all meet for a drink ‘to get their strength up’ in the lounge bar on the hotel’s top floor. Nice to be put up for a few nights at the government’s expense, he’d said, and winked. Ken looks around at his fellow jurors relaxing in big chairs, drinks in their hands. Only the Classics lecturer looks remote and sour. The judge has asked him to return the next day wearing a dark suit. The lecturer, the judge is sure, must possess one.

  Ken is not sure what to do. Conversation flows around him, eddying in and out of the topics of the day. There is an intense dissection of the rugby test against the Wallabies that New Zealand won just weeks before by a precarious five points at Eden Park. Several of the men had been at the game, and they relived the nail-biting anxiety of the final minutes when the whole series was on a knife edge. The relief of it, not getting licked by the Australians. There had been a few jugs downed that night, they recall. Ken thinks the boy on the stand might have heard their voices raised in rejoicing from his prison cell just along the road from the park. Roy, the grocer, wants to talk about Princess Margaret and whether or not she is going to marry Peter Townsend, that divorced chap, and how the Queen has her hands full with the little minx. The accountant with the owl-like eyes says it would be a terrible sin, a stain on the monarchy, and what a shame the King had died leaving a young Queen in charge. Marcus, from men’s wear, says he feels sorry for poor Margaret because anybody can see she is really in love. James Taylor turns a look of such utter scorn on the speaker that Marcus shrivels. Love, Taylor says, and what would you know about that? There is a silence, a nasty pause before someone calls for another round.

  Ken walks to the window and looks out. There in the late October afternoon lies the Waitemata Harbour, all a-glisten and shimmering and animated with white caps, a spring breeze filling the sails of yachts. An incomplete structure, not quite meeting in the middle, spans the horizon like a giant coat hanger. Soon one side of the harbour will be connected to the other and people will be able to drive across it in a matter of minutes, a handsome bridge like the one that spans Sydney Harbour. But for now the march towards the new age seems unfinished and stalled, the hulk skeletal against the sky. Outside, trams rattle and shake their way along Queen Street. Across the road stands the railway station, like Grand Central in New York, as proud locals have it. Travellers spill out of its causeways and flood along the street. From here, at the top of the Station Hotel, people seem smaller, grey-clad ants for the most part, scurrying this way and that, although now that it is spring girls are shedding their coats in favour of colourful dresses. Oh, the girls. Ken cranes his neck to see if he can get a better view of them, but they are distant flowers.

  He is still marvelling that he has this chance to stand above it all in a top-storey bar, wearing a suit borrowed from his uncle, even if he is pulling the sleeves down every other minute to cover his bony wrists. His aunt had put darts in the trousers the night before.

  James Taylor beckons him over to the chair next to him. He leans forward, his manner confidential. ‘You’re a lad off a farm, young Kenneth, that right?’

  ‘I grew up on a farm, sir. I’m an electrician now.’

  ‘What made you leave the farm, may I ask? It’s the future of this country so far as I can tell.’ He smiles, a reflective glimmer in his eyes. Ken had noticed straight away what a thick-shouldered man he was, a great head of hair like a springy brush, ash blond as it greys, but he sees, too, that this is a man who doesn’t brook opposition. Ken sees him swinging a golf club but, perhaps, never an axe. ‘I get to see bank balances, it’s my job,’ Taylor says. ‘Not too many overdrafts in farmers’ accounts.’

  Ken feels a rising panic. Has the bank manager checked his father’s account? Is it possible that his father uses the same bank?

  ‘There were seven of us in the family, sir.’ Ken doesn’t know why he feels compelled to call the man sir, but there it is, he hasn’t mixed with company like this before. ‘There were too many of us to stay on the farm,’ he explains. ‘Some of us had to go. You know, too many Indians.’ Trying to turn it into a joke.

  The other man wipes his mouth carefully with his napkin, a gold ring on his winkie finger. Your peerie-winkie, Ken’s grandmother used to call it. She’d have said, too, that a gold ring on your finger was a bit flash. A flash Jack.

  ‘Indians? Your family were Indian?’

  ‘No sir, of course not, my family are Scots through and through. You know, too many chiefs, not enough Indians, it’s an old saying.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Taylor reddens, annoyed with himself.

  ‘My uncle offered to put me up while I did my apprenticeship. I’m through it now. It’s quite hard work, laying cables, climbing around in ceilings and all. A good thing I was used to hard work.’ Ken feels himself burbling away, trying to restore the conversation. Of course he was the one to go, the lank, puny one in the family, the weak link in the chain of siblings. It wasn’t said that way, but he knew it for what it was when he left the farm, a pimply nervous youth, not a sociable lad who fitted in at the stock yards or at the local dances in the Returned Services community hall, nor on the rugby field, even when they’d put him on the wing where the team didn’t have to pass him the ball if they could avoid it. He’d had a weak bladder as a child; when he is under pressure there is still that old fear that he will lose control.

  ‘I think if you will excuse me now, sir,’ he says to Taylor, pushing his chair back, ‘I should be getting on my way. I need to ring my uncle, he’ll be wondering whether I got called or not.’ He has seen the telephone booth in the vestibule near reception.

  ‘Oh well, tomorrow we do the next rounds of the circus, as it were. Tell me, young fellow, what do you think about this case? Are we going to send this bog-trotter down?’

  ‘I need to hear the evidence, sir,’ Ken says. ‘We need to find out whether Black meant to kill Johnny McBride.’

  ‘But a knife is a knife, surely? C’mon, New Zealand men don’t carry knives around.’

  Ken glances around the room, catching the eye of the butcher, Jack Cuttance, for a moment. He thinks he has been overheard, and a smile passes between the two of them. ‘Have you ever had a pocket knife, sir?’ he says, turning back to the banker.

  Taylor’s eyes have followed his. He grimaces then, as if to say point taken, although he can’t bring himself to say it.

  At Des Ball’s place, his wife has made dinner and put their children to bed. The dinner, roast beef and potatoes, with cabbage on the side, sits in the oven on a plate covered by another inverted one. All the dishes except those that harbour Des’s meal have been washed and put away. Marge Ball suffers from an early onset of arthritis. The evening’s housework has exhausted her. She had hoped her husband would be home by six, given that he is on a day shift. He has told her he has special duties today, although he hasn’t specified what they are. This is his way, not to tell her what he does at the prison. She reads the newspapers with care, and sometimes an item will catch her eye and she will wonder, trying to trace back his mood in line with the events in the news. It isn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that her black eye happened around about the day a man called Allwood was sent to the gallows. Had he been there at the scene, witnessed the man’s death? She knows better than to ask. Now and then he mi
ght say there is a new smart arse in the cells that he’s had to sort out. He isn’t a big man, thin as a whip, but wiry, steel in his forearms.

  Marge often dreams of leaving Des, but what would she do and where would she go? The world beyond her front gate is a scary place. The women wear bright lipstick and modern clothes. Girls are brazen in their behaviour. They run wild with boys, and smoke and parade in the street. Their little waists are held in with cinch belts, and their breasts are pert in their new Whirl bras. There would be no place for her among the shop girls and the secretaries; she can’t begin to imagine where she might find a job, crippled and all as she is.

  Now that the time has passed eight, she hopes he might come in much later, so she can limp down the passage and crawl into bed before he arrives. Her knees are the worst, sometimes looking like two pink soccer balls. Like her name since she married Des. His ball and chain, he will say, and laugh. There are nights when she crawls on her hands and knees; she wonders what will become of the children.

  There is that ominous click in the door, and she knows she has left her run too late. As soon as she sees his face, she puts the table between them.

  ‘It’s in the oven,’ she says.

  ‘In the oven, eh? In the bloody oven, what sort of a welcome is that?’

  ‘It’s gone eight.’

  ‘So, it’s gone eight.’ His words slur, his face, with its too long chin, shiny. She can smell his sour breath across the width of the room.

  He opens the oven door and lifts the top plate. The beef has curled at its edges, the cabbage pooled into an amoebic slime.

  ‘They lock you in at the pub?’ she says, before she can stop the words from falling out of her mouth.

  Des lifts the plate, his fingers curled around its edges, releasing it with force against the kitchen wall.

  ‘Clean it,’ he says.

  Rita Zilich’s house is a long, low bungalow, filled with polished brass and velvet cloths on the tables. It is redolent with the scent of mint and olives and wine. On Fridays her family eat only fish, and her mother has banned her from visiting her girlfriends on that day because you can’t trust them not to eat meat. The kitchens in her friends’ houses smell of steak and boiled vegetables, and the men drink beer. All that she has come to think of as normal. Her parents’ house embarrasses her.

  It is an hour before midnight. Rita sits in front of the mirror in her bedroom, practising smoking. The mirror is set in the door of a large wardrobe, an ornately carved piece of furniture that her grandmother brought with her on the ship when she came to New Zealand. It was one of her wedding gifts. Rita hates the wardrobe, which her grandmother left to her as the oldest daughter of her oldest daughter. When she suggested its replacement, her mother looked at her with such sorrowful reproach she had shut her mouth. It is part of an old story: the way Grandma had been a letter bride, her brothers on the gumfields up north asked by a friend for an introduction to a girl back home in Dalmatia whom they might marry, and the brothers, eager to help because they too were looking for wives, had suggested their sister.

  ‘And then,’ Rita’s mother would say, and her voice would drop almost to a whisper, ‘after the brides in the village received a letter with a proposal, they dressed up all in white finery, with a big bouquet of flowers, and had a party to celebrate before they set off.’

  ‘But that’s so weird,’ Rita had said. ‘I mean, getting dressed up in white without the husband. What if he died before she got there, would that make her a widow?’

  ‘Well of course not,’ her mother snapped. ‘There would be another husband waiting for her.’

  ‘What if she was ugly and nobody would have her?’

  ‘Ah, looks, there is more to it than that. She would make a good wife to any man, have children, make good dinners, wash his clothes, all the things a wife is supposed to do. Like you will do someday.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rita said.

  ‘You don’t understand, my child. Your grandma arrived in Auckland, and made the long journey to the gumfields with all her belongings, with your wardrobe, piled in a cart and pulled over the rough tracks up to the north. All around her was swamp and the stumps of kauri trees. She lived in a little — what do you call it? — a hut, a little shack, the roof thatched from nikau palm fronds. Well, her new husband wanted her to sell the wardrobe.’

  ‘Well, there you are, Mum,’ Rita had said, ‘he didn’t like it either.’

  ‘You make me angry, Rita. She held onto it because someday there would be a girl who deserved a gift as fine as her father had given her when she set out on her voyage. It is a piece of the old world. One day you will know.’

  Rita kicks the wardrobe and stubs out her cigarette. The look her mother had given her when she said she didn’t like it, and why couldn’t she have a pretty little dressing table like her girlfriends had, was nothing to the looks she is getting now. She is, her mother said, a girl who has brought shame on all of them, no wonder they call us Dallies and curl their lip. They are the general population of their adopted country, the people who called them aliens during the wars, who took any opportunity to belittle those who came from Dalmatia and to set them apart.

  ‘Nobody knows who I am,’ Rita said. ‘The lawyer says the judge is sure to give me and Stella name suppression. It won’t be in the papers when I give evidence.’

  ‘You think they are fools. The whole community knows who you are. They’re talking behind your back already. And when you go into that courtroom and tell them your story about how you lay on the bed with that man, they will know what you did, that you lay down beside a murderer.’

  Rita stares at the window, which has been barred for the past three months, ever since the night she climbed out of it and went to the party in Wellesley Street. She looks back at her reflection: not bad, her olive skin glowing with good health, her black hair tumbling over her shoulders. She arches her lips, leans forward to pick up the new lipstick she bought on the way home from work. She traces a deep dark-red curve over her mouth, pouts and smiles. She likes what she sees.

  The door handle rattles. Her mother stands there in her nightdress, clutching a candlewick dressing gown at the waist.

  ‘I smelled the smoke,’ she says. ‘Puff, puff. Only your father smokes in this house.’

  ‘I’m old enough. To smoke. To do other things. To get married.’

  ‘Old enough, eh? Oh Rita, my girl.’ She sits down on the bed. ‘We were only old enough when we were promised to the man we would marry.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Rita says. ‘I didn’t do that thing.’

  ‘But you would have,’ her mother says. ‘You have to be very clear when the judge asks you. That it was never in your mind to let this Albert do that to you.’

  ‘I’ll just have to tell the truth about what happened, I guess.’

  ‘Truth. Truth is what you tell the priest.’

  ‘Oh yes, and he forgives me, and then if I don’t tell the truth in court, I go and tell him that I’ve lied and he forgives me for that, too. Eh Mum?’

  Her mother pulls a handkerchief from the pocket of her dressing gown. There are stains on the garment as if she has washed up the pots while she was wearing it. Rita doesn’t know: she’s ducked out of dishes of late. Her mother is dabbing at her eyes in a way the daughter hates, so sorry for herself she is and all.

  ‘If you lay on the bed, you were willing then?’

  ‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’

  ‘So it’s true, you have given yourself to a man before.’ When Rita doesn’t reply, she says, ‘What will I tell your father?’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Mum, my father isn’t the priest.’

  Her mother makes a gesture, her hands clasping her face. ‘Why are you wearing lipstick at this hour of the night, Rita?’

  ‘Just checking the colour. I want to look good for court.’

  ‘For who? For the judge? For the boy?’

  ‘The boy. He’s nothing. I’ve got a steady boyfrien
d now. He’s coming to court with me.’

  Her mother slaps Rita’s face hard then, and walks out.

  Rita clings to the edge of the bed, holding her cheek. She doesn’t care. Soon she will be the star of the show.

  Her mother can’t imagine how hungry she is to feel truly alive.

  CHAPTER 5

  Young Albert would find out soon enough what came over his parents that afternoon when they were all daft and singing. Kathleen remembers the day she told him the news, the look of astonishment that turned quickly to red-faced embarrassment. She didn’t know if he knew where babies came from, although he had seen more than he should in the air-raid shelter at the end of Sandy Row the night a young woman gave birth in there, her screaming and shouting sweet Jesus, it’s coming, it’s coming and blood and placenta landing up at their feet, and then the squalling infant, its birth membrane glowing in the light of the fires. So he had a fair idea how a baby got out of a woman, but it is how it got put in that he might not know. She had said, placing his hand on her stomach, ‘Your da and I have a baby coming. A little brother or sister for you.’

  ‘You have?’ he said, and seeing the look on his face she guessed someone had told him.

  The baby gave a little kick and he pulled his hand away. ‘I don’t want a brother or sister.’ His face was screwed up, fighting tears.

  ‘That’s silly. Other children have brothers and sisters, why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘I like being your only one.’ It had slipped out, little black eels of words making their own truth.

  I have spoiled him, she thought at the time, spoiled him for anything but him and me on our own. But he was so precious to her, and she didn’t know how to explain this to him. For that matter, it was hard to explain to her husband, when he’d come home from the Front on leaves, the way the boy glowered and sulked while he was there, so that his father got cold and unpleasant with him on some occasions. If he had known that the boy, nearly ten by the time the war ended, still climbed into her bed and slept with her some nights, how she’d place her hand on his silky dark hair, her fingers entwined in his, he’d have been baffled, his bewilderment turning to outrage.