This Mortal Boy

by Fiona Kidman

  Rose averted her eyes. She had heard the rumours, of course. The shadow of Oswald Mazengarb hung heavily over the Valley. The world, according to him, might be all shook up with madness, but he was going to put it right, write a blueprint to set it straight.

  ‘Third Form kids, they meet at Elbe’s. They’re up to things all right,’ Sally said. ‘Petting and stuff. You know, below the waist and all that.’

  Rose turned her back on the woman with her vulgar gestures. In her opinion, the committee was doing more harm than good, titillating people’s imaginations, making them think more about sex than before. It wasn’t that she had forgotten the pleasures of her past. There were days when she sat on the step of the house provided by the state in Naenae and looked out over the market gardens that stretched along the valley floor, lettuces, sharp green and crisp in their rows, tomatoes on the vine, strawberries in summer, and thought that life in all its abundance was passing her by. But now she had the children to consider, and it was unthinkable that they be touched by scandal. She knew of children who went to school with Ned and Harry who had new ‘fathers’ every weekend, men who emerged wearing next to nothing at their mother’s bedroom door and told them to hop off now, their mother was busy. None of this was what she wanted to discuss with Sally with her bright, excited eyes.

  The woman, sensing her distaste for the conversation, sniffed and said, ‘Well, if it’s not one thing it’s another. The country’s full of foreigners these days. Wogs everywhere. Spicks. Jews. Chinamen. All sorts, if you ask me. We were better off before the war.’

  Rose knew this was directed at her boarders. As far as Sally was concerned, they were foreigners too.

  The happiness she had experienced while choosing items for their room ebbed away as she steered Evelyn in her pushchair along the street that led to home. Surely the young men who had come to live with them wouldn’t harm others? She thought back again to the evening of their arrival. Her own two boys, just a year between them, were kicking a ball in the back yard. Peter, the older man, had walked over to them, flicking it between them with an expert move.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Ned asked, and before they knew it, Peter was demonstrating stopovers and scissors and drags. Every evening he taught them new tricks that he said he had learned at school in Liverpool. Nothing special, he’d said, I never made the team, but I always wanted to.

  As for Paddy, he had squatted in front of Evelyn, his face level with hers, and asked her name. When she replied, he’d said, gosh, if I had a sister I’d like her to be called that. It’s a beautiful name.

  But however Rose defended them, the young men were different. They might be from the UK, but their accents gave away their backgrounds. She had chosen to accept them as they were.

  One afternoon, when Peter was playing soccer with Harry, Ned hung back.

  ‘What’s the matter, don’t you want to play?’ Peter called to him.

  ‘Can you teach us some rugby passes?’ Ned said.

  Peter stilled the ball with his foot. ‘Rugby. Not sure about that.’

  ‘My mate says soccer’s for sissies.’

  ‘Rich sissies,’ Peter said, his voice even. ‘Rich boys play rugby where I come from.’

  ‘Everybody plays rugby here,’ Ned said. ‘We’ve got the All Blacks. They can beat the Poms.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Rose called, tapping at the kitchen window.

  For a day or two the games stalled, Harry wanting to play while Ned sulked. By the weekend it was game on again.

  On some Saturday nights her boarders changed into jackets and good grey flannel trousers and caught the train to Wellington. Going dancing, they said, and sometimes they didn’t come back until the next day. Paddy stayed out more than Peter. She didn’t ask, although now and then they would refer to dance halls they’d been to. The Realm in a suburb called Hataitai was one of their favourites. She knew the ballroom, tucked away in a village near the sea. She and her husband danced there when they were courting. Just thinking about it stirred up a yearning she would rather forget, for now at least. She imagined the young men sleeping over in one of the little wooden houses on the hillsides, perhaps in a girl’s bedroom, but she hoped it might be on the sofa. Perhaps she had made a terrible mistake. When she got home she would phone the mart and cancel the delivery of the chair she had found. And when the time was right she would calmly tell the boarders that their time was up, it was never her intention that they stay for long.

  As she rounded the corner of the street, Rose saw a van stopped at her gate. A man was unloading timber, supervised by Peter and Paddy.

  ‘Surprise,’ they shouted.

  The timber was for building a play shed for the children, an early Christmas present. They had marked out a patch of ground at the back of the house. The next weekend, and the one after that, were spent sawing and hammering. Peter had designed the building, there seemed no end to his skills, although there were mistakes and lengths of timber sawn too short, hammered thumbs, muffled curses. But the shed was built, high enough for the children to stand up in, and Rose too if she bent her head. Evelyn moved her dolls in, and Ned and Harry had shelves for their soccer gear. The season was over, but they carried on with the practices, honing their skills. There wasn’t another kid in Naenae who could match them now that they had an in-house coach. The boarders went to the dances again, but for a time they didn’t seem as keen, now they had a stake on her territory. It was as if her house was as near to home as they could get, although Rose noticed that Paddy rushed to the table by the door where she put the mail as soon as he came in each day. Almost every week there was a letter postmarked from Belfast, and his name, Mr Albert L. Black, written with a soft flowing hand and a small curl at the end of each word. She guessed the letters were from his mother.

  When Christmas came around, she sewed herself a new dress, made from polished cotton with a floral design, with small cap sleeves and a fitting bodice and a skirt that whirled around her calves. The boarders said they wanted everyone to have a good Christmas, and insisted on each donating an extra pound on top of their board money so she could get food with trimmings — ham and roast chooks, freshly dug potatoes from the market-garden stall, and trifle and pavlova and everything. It was their second Christmas in New Zealand; the first had been spent at Clarrie’s place. They knew what should be on the table.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ she protested. ‘You put all that money into the play shed.’ They gave her the money anyway.

  Just before Christmas a parcel arrived for Paddy. His mother had sent him a white shirt, and a woollen scarf each for him and Peter, and a linen tablecloth for Rose. She fingered the heavy cream fibre, patterned with pale blue flowers, with its perfect hemstitching. ‘She shouldn’t have. This parcel must have cost her the earth.’

  ‘I told her about you,’ Paddy said.

  Rose was embarrassed; she had bought each of the boys a box of chocolates. The beautiful cloth was an heirloom, something to be passed on to Evelyn one day.

  Paddy read out his Christmas letter. Kathleen Black had written: ‘My dear son Albert, another Christmas passes and I will lay a place at table for you, our absent one. I hope you are doing well in your life. We miss you but wish you well. Daniel has grown another two inches this year, you would hardly recognise him. I will get his photograph taken soon so I can send it to you and you will see for yourself. I bless the people who are taking such good care of you. God bless you, son, be sure you live a good clean life until you return to us. Your father sends his love, as I do mine. Mother.’

  Rose would never forget that Christmas Day. They all dressed up and, as if there hadn’t been surprises enough, Peter and Paddy had one more, a music box that they had got a shop in the city to order from London. On top of it stood two miniature figures of a prince and princess who twirled in unison as the box tinkled ‘The Blue Danube Waltz’. Evelyn stood clapping her hands with delight, and Paddy lifted her by her hands and stood her on his feet, waltzing h
er around the room in time to the music.

  In the afternoon, when they were drowsy and sated with all the food, they went onto the front lawn and took it in turn to take each other’s photographs with Peter’s camera. There were no pictures of all six of them, because someone had to take turns behind the camera. When Rose looks at them in years to come, she finds herself missing in almost all of them, although she thinks Paddy took one with her in it to send to his mother. She will find one of Paddy cradling his favourite of her three cats in his arms, and Evelyn clinging to the leg of his trousers. His skin is deeply tanned from working in the sun, his shoulders broad and packed with muscle. The roses are in full bloom, the sun shining, and she will think that they looked a happy prosperous bunch, like one of those English families you saw in magazines. Or, like a summer afternoon at her parents’ house in Thorndon, in a time before the Depression when her family still had money, and pretty dresses and music lessons were taken for granted. In the evening she sat at the piano, and at Peter’s request she played ‘White Christmas’ and Paddy’s voice soared, just as if Bing Crosby was in the room recalling the Christmases he once knew, and everyone sang along and clapped their hands.

  ‘Actually,’ Peter said, ‘I don’t care if I never see another white Christmas, I just like the song.’

  Rose saw an expression flicker over Paddy’s face. He doesn’t agree, she thought, and it occurred to her, not for the first time, that he was pining for home. She called for quiet then as she began to play ‘Silent Night’, and this time she could have sworn a tear slipped down his cheek, but it seemed best not to let him see that she had noticed.

  The next day, Boxing Day, Paddy came into the house, his hands cupped around a spiny brown bundle. It was a hedgehog. ‘His leg’s hurt,’ he said, his voice agitated. ‘I think one of the cats got it.’

  ‘A cat wouldn’t hurt it, it’s too prickly.’

  ‘It would, I’ve seen it at home. I saw a cat go after one. They can’t run, you know, that’s why they keep getting run over. We see them all over the place when we’re out on the truck. Splat. We should be looking after the little blokes.’

  ‘What do you think we should do about it?’

  ‘Have you got a box I can put it in?’

  Rose dug around in the laundry cupboard and came up with a shoebox that had held Ned’s school shoes. ‘How about that?’

  Paddy found some newspaper and made a nest for the animal. That night he put the box in the room he shared with Peter. The arrangement was a failure. Peter looked irritable and sleepless in the morning. The hedgehog, it transpired, had snuffled and scratched against the walls of the shoebox most of the night.

  ‘Hedgehogs have fleas,’ he said. ‘He who lies down with the dogs rises with the fleas.’

  ‘Oh shut up your face, it’s just a little fella,’ Paddy said. He volunteered to sleep in the play shed with it the next night.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Rose said.

  Paddy seemed childlike in his devotion to the creature and wilful in his determination to protect it. The matter was resolved in the evening. It was clear the hedgehog had died. At first Paddy insisted that it had just curled up as if hibernating, and refused to accept the death. After a while he retreated to the play shed, still holding onto the box with the dead animal inside. The children could see it would be a bad idea to follow him. Eventually, Rose went out to him, holding a mug of tea. She found him sitting inside, his expression morose, his knees drawn up under his chin. He looked big, filling up half the shed; she reminded herself that he was only nineteen.

  ‘Paddy,’ she said, ‘what’s bothering you?’

  He turned his face away from her. ‘The bloody hedgehog died, that’s all.’

  ‘You missing home?’ When he didn’t reply, she said, ‘Why don’t you phone your mother and talk to her. I’d pay for it. I didn’t give you a proper Christmas present.’

  He rested his eyes on her, puzzled, as if she couldn’t see a thing. ‘My mam doesn’t have a phone,’ he said. ‘My folks, they don’t own much, you know.’

  So she saw how it was, her in her little state house, giving music lessons to make money stretch and taking in boarders — because, yes, the money they brought in was helping, no doubt of it — seemed rich in comparison to where he’d come from. And yet, the mother had given so generously at Christmas. She saw how so much was invested in the faraway son, what his absence was costing her.

  The school holidays passed, the weather flickering in and out of summer, the heat interrupted by storms, Wellington’s wild windy weather sweeping up through the Valley, making the house shudder and creak at night, but it was always short-lived and for a while the heat abated. The linesmen returned to their jobs, busier than ever after the holiday break and the high winds that had brought lines down. These school holidays had that endless quality that came around every year in late January. The boys got tired of eeling and swimming, and started hanging around the house. In the market garden the corn had grown as high as an elephant’s eye, just like the song.

  Only, Paddy had stopped singing. Three weekends in a row he went off to Wellington by himself, or so he said. Peter, the more homely-looking of the two, and more of a homebody in himself, looked anxious. He and Rose listened to the request sessions on the radio after the children had gone to bed, or sometimes a talk on the concert programme. In October he and Paddy would be free to take up jobs of their choice, their indenture to the government over. He confided that he had visited the hospital laboratory to see what sort of training he needed to become a technician. Medicine had always interested him. He wasn’t ready to settle down and marry, not just yet. When the time was right he’d find a decent girl. The emphasis was his. If could stay here while he got his career sorted out, it would make a difference to his future. Neither of them mentioned Paddy in these conversations. The last time he had come home, late on a Sunday, he was wearing stovepipe trousers, his hair slicked back from his forehead.

  At the grocer’s shop one afternoon, Rose ran into Sally. ‘See your lad’s spending a bit of time at Elbe’s,’ she said. ‘Turning into quite a lady’s man, I hear.’

  ‘They sell very good ice-cream sundaes at Elbe’s, I’ve heard,’ Rose said, as if it was of no consequence. But she knew straight away that Paddy hadn’t been telling her where he went. He was changing before their eyes and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  As she walked up her path, she heard shouting inside the house. Her pace quickened.

  Ned was dancing around in front of Paddy, holding a letter in the air. ‘Paddy’s got a girlfriend, Paddy’s got a girlfriend,’ he chanted.

  Paddy leapt on the boy. ‘Give it here. I’ll fucken do you.’ His hand was raised in a fist. Rose stood transfixed by what was unfolding before her. She moved forward to stop him as Paddy’s fist descended, and then he stopped himself, perhaps because he sensed her there, or maybe he understood just in time that it was something he couldn’t do.

  ‘Ned,’ she said. ‘Stop it. Give Paddy his letter at once.’

  ‘Paddy’s got a girlfriend,’ he said, his face a knot of defiance.

  She recognised the writing on the envelope. ‘If he does it’s none of your business,’ she said. ‘As it happens the letter’s from his mother, which is not your business either. Go to your room. Now.’

  Rose turned to Paddy. The possibility of violence was not something she had calculated inside the four walls of her home when she took the young men in; she felt ashamed. ‘Would you have hit him?’ she asked her boarder.

  He stood, smoothing the envelope against his work overalls. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You need to think about it.’

  ‘I’m thinking of leaving,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to. We can sort this out. I’ll speak to Ned. You just need to remember that he’s a little kid and not lose your temper.’

  He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t live in a better place.’

  ‘Then what? Peter doesn’t
want to leave. Is it a girl? Have you met someone?’

  He gave a half-grin. ‘I’ve met a few of those,’ he said. ‘I reckon I just don’t fit in here. In New Zealand, I mean. It’s not like home.’

  So there it was again. Home. Belfast. ‘Of course it’s not. But you’re like another son to me.’

  Paddy shook his head, his smile apologetic now. ‘And you’re young enough to be my girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said, more sharply than intended. ‘I won’t have that sort of talk.’

  ‘I want to go to Auckland.’ He leaned his elbow against the mantelpiece, fingering the casing on the old black clock, with its gold gilt numbers and hands, which had once belonged to her father. It still chimed on the hour. ‘I reckon I could earn more money there. You see, I’ve been looking into going home. Do you know, I was a ten-quid Pom but it costs twelve times that amount of money to get back? One hundred and twenty pounds. I can’t save that much on P & T wages.’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know. It’s a lot. Perhaps if you had a savings plan, a pound a week.’ Although as she said this she knew it was an absurdly large amount of money for him to save. For a moment she considered offering to let him off some of his board money, but she had her children to think of, and although the rent made a difference, having lodgers cost money too. They had to be fed, and besides, she ironed their shirts, and changed their sheets once a week, pretending not to see semen stains on them, and kept the house warm.

  ‘A quid a week. Rose,’ he was saying, ‘that would take two and a half years. I can’t wait that long. It’s like New Zealand is a prison. I’ve been talking to some jokers. They reckon there’s good casual labouring jobs up in Auckland, good pay.’

  ‘But you can’t go until October. Your time doesn’t finish till then.’

  ‘I can’t hold my horses until then. I need to go home. I don’t have any choice, Rose, don’t you get that? Please say you get it, because it does my head in.’ His hands were clenching and unclenching.