This Mortal Boy

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘The same place as you, by the look of it. I didn’t mean to follow you. Sorry. I’ll go back when the boat turns round.’

  ‘I’m Bessie Marsh,’ she said, in quite a formal manner, ignoring his apology. ‘I’m going to see my grandmother.’ Her complexion was pale and milky, almost devoid of make-up, her light-brown hair curling around the edges of the head scarf tied beneath her chin. The perfect oval of her face made him think of Grace Kelly, and it occurred to him that she had no idea of how pretty she was.

  ‘I’m Albert Black,’ he answered, suddenly wanting to be inside his own skin.

  ‘My gran’s place is like home these days. I live in a hostel. I miss everything from the farm.’

  ‘Yeah, I miss home too. I miss my mam.’

  ‘You’re Irish,’ she said. ‘Come with me and meet my gran, she’s Irish too.’ Only, when they got to the grandmother’s house, she wasn’t there. Bessie found them some lunch in the pantry, a round of bread and cheese, and a beer from the fridge for them to share. The kitchen was painted a pretty shade of yellow, like daffodils, and there were pictures on the walls of all the rooms. ‘Gran won’t mind,’ she said. ‘There’s always something to eat if I come over. She expects me to help myself.’ He supposed the two of them, he and Bessie Marsh, must have made some small talk as they ate their lunch, but he doesn’t remember it later on. He did sing to her, the old skipping song that came and went through his head.

  My aunt Jane, she took me in,

  She gave me tea out of her wee tin.

  Half a bap with sugar on the top,

  Three black lumps out of her wee

  shop.

  Bessie laughed and clapped her hands. ‘You’re like my brothers,’ she said, ‘they like to sing.’ And then, somehow, they were in a bedroom that had dolls on a shelf, and Paddy, who for the moment had returned to being Albert, guessed that Bessie had been staying here in this house on and off all her life.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, when they were lying in a tangle of limbs on the bed. ‘I don’t do this as a rule.’ He thinks he might be her first, he can’t be sure, but she’d wanted him — he hadn’t taken anything she didn’t want to give — with an intensity that took him aback, made their encounter astonishing to him. As he studied her, her skin seemed translucent; she had a mole on her left thigh. She was touching his face with her fingertips, as if absorbing his features. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed. She sat up, pulling her knickers from around one ankle. ‘My gran might come home,’ she said, panic-stricken. ‘I shouldn’t have, her house and all.’ There was a small trace of blood on the counterpane that she was frantically rubbing.

  ‘Are we going to wait for her?’ Paddy asked. He was sure this must be love; there was something delicate and different about Bessie, as fresh as the breeze on the water they had passed over. He felt dazed and almost unbearably happy.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘You should go.’ Pleading with him now. He understood she was suddenly ashamed that she had defiled the house of the grandmother she loved, and that if her grandmother came home she would know and there would be all sorts of consequences. But he didn’t think she was ashamed of being with him.

  As he buckled his belt he glanced above him. He hadn’t noticed this particular picture before. It was the Sacred Heart of Christ, the crucifixion of Jesus, depicting a crown of thorns and the wound of the spear. Beneath it hung a small wooden cross.

  ‘You’re a Catholic?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m a Protestant. Northern Ireland.’ As if that explained everything. Did it matter? he wondered. He had never thought to ask a girl her religion before, or not since he left Belfast, where it was spelled out in black and white whether you asked or not. He closed his eyes. Would she have made love with him if she had known? But he thought he knew the answer. There had been no stopping to think. None of it mattered to him. He’d been in Clodagh’s house in Belfast; he knew more Catholics than he could shake a stick at. But he saw it mattered to her, as if the sin were worse, more mortal, for their difference. ‘When will I see you again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, flustered and uncertain.

  He told her where he lived, and how she could find him most evenings at the cafe. She was hurrying him now. When he reached the wharf back in the city he realised he hadn’t got a phone number for her, or an address for the hostel where she lived.

  He didn’t see her again for a long time, and it occurred to him that she wasn’t a girl who would come looking for him at a boarding house or hang out round the cafe. After a month or so he stopped looking for her, as if she had been a vision of some kind. There was still Raewyn, holding out for her engagement ring, and the other girls.

  Some days he worked and his pockets were full of money; other days he was counting out the cash to make it last for another night on the town. As the man on the train had told him, it wasn’t hard to find work in Auckland; there was often seagulling to be had on the wharves or concrete to pour on a construction site, or trucks to stack with furniture for removal firms. He tried his hand at being a waiter, but spilled coffee over a customer on his first day at work and wasn’t invited back. The yacht club gave him some cleaning that he liked because it was close to the sea and less gruelling than hanging on the end of a shovel. That was what his father did, and look where it got him. One afternoon a boatie’s wife came back after lunch to pick up a jacket she had forgotten, one of those sleekly tanned women whose skin looked as if it’d been polished. She wore gold sandals and hooped earrings. When he asked if he could help, she took a quick look about the room and motioned to the washroom. Her skirt was round her thighs as quick as a fish jumping. Why do you think I came back, she said as he ploughed in. She moaned like an old sow. Would he be working here again? she asked. He smelled tobacco and gin on her breath. After she’d left, he found five pounds in his pocket. A wave of disgust washed over him. But a fiver was money and he didn’t work for a week, just hanging out at the cafe, or playing a game of pool and drinking beer with his new friends. There were mornings he woke hungover, and when the nausea passed he would remember why he came to Auckland, what he was supposed to be saving for, but his pockets would be empty and it would start all over again, good resolutions and no willpower when it came to shouting a round.

  He stopped for a beer, one evening, at the Albert Hotel down Queen Street and ran into two of his mates, Ray and Mack, and they said, C’mon the drinks are on us. The Albert, just like his name, as if he owned it. Later, when he turned up at the cafe, Raewyn was sitting in a cubicle, a coffee in front of her, talking to a man. Albert will think of him as a man; when he stood up he was half a head taller than Paddy, with wide shoulders and a swagger.

  ‘Raewyn,’ Paddy said, ‘sorry I’m late.’

  ‘This broad’s already taken,’ the man said in a strange phony American accent.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Raewyn said quickly. ‘We were just having a chat. Johnny’s been telling me about life at sea. Johnny, this is Paddy, my boyfriend.’

  ‘Boyfriend, now — my, my, if that just don’t sound like serious talk. Paddy, I’d shake your hand, but you know I’m sure a bit offended that the little lady didn’t tell me she was already on reservation and you’re here to take her away.’ He flexed a fist in the air.

  ‘Take it easy, mate,’ Paddy said.

  Raewyn was looking fluttery and nervous. She said, ‘Paddy, Mum’ll have dinner ready, and I really need to go. Unless you want to come with me? I’m sure she’d set another place.’

  ‘Best not.’ The beer he’d drunk at the Albert lay thick on his tongue. ‘Another time.’

  ‘Well, any time you’re looking for a real gent, just come looking for me, Johnny McBride,’ the man said.

  Raewyn looked perplexed for a moment. ‘That’s the name of a Mickey Spillane character. He’s in The Long Wait.’

  ‘Now fancy a nice little lady like you knowing that.’

  ‘We used to
exchange those books at school. We got over them.’

  He shrugged, accepting he had been put in his place. ‘I’m just another Johnny,’ he said, ‘him and me, brothers under the skin.’

  After Raewyn had left, Johnny said, ‘You don’t happen to know any boarding houses round here, do you? I’m in port for a few days.’

  ‘If you’ve got the cash, sure, I can put you up,’ Paddy said. He guessed Raewyn had already told Johnny he was in charge of a boarding house. All the same, he knew it was a mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d kept his word to Gladys and never charged anyone before.

  The next time he saw Raewyn she told him about the book, how the central character (she didn’t say hero) was a man who had lost his memory and his identity, and how he dealt with adversity by creating chaos, chain-smoking butts, getting drunk and beating people up. It is odd, she remarked, the way the man talks. Is Johnny McBride his real name? Paddy didn’t really care. He hoped he wouldn’t see him again.

  This was also the night Paddy told Raewyn they were finished. At first she was tearful, but then she said with a sniff, ‘My mother said I could do better than you.’

  Rita Zilich is making her way to the gallery to sit with her friends. Now she has given her evidence she can be part of the audience. As she steps from the witness stand, Paddy tries to remember why he had asked her to stay that night. Wounded pride, perhaps, but not over her. He had never really wanted Rita. Did Johnny McBride want her either, or was she just an excuse for him to pick a fight? Rita is walking away, into her own story. On that night in July, when they had fumbled and groped on the bed, and his groin ached with unresolved pain, she told him a little of herself. Soon, although she hasn’t come to these conclusions yet, she will stop being a widgie; she will marry someone she may not yet have met in a white wedding dress and have children. Paddy’s own name will fade into some private part of her life that her children will never know. He sees it all.

  Bessie had come back to him; she came looking for him. Nobody had heard of Albert Black, she said, when she asked around. She had gone to the door of 105 Wellesley Street and the man who opened it said there was no Albert here. But she had seen him from the window of a bus as he walked down the street. She knew she hadn’t imagined him. She knocked on the door again, and there he was.

  ‘Teach me to dance,’ she said that night. ‘I’ve never been any good at dancing.’

  He turned on the radio, found music and began with a slow waltz, holding her close. She was his girl then.

  CHAPTER 11

  In the beginning Paddy got along well enough with Johnny McBride after he turned up at the boarding house, though he had his reservations. It was not the first time he had allowed someone to stay over. There was a young Englishman called Henry whom he particularly liked. Henry seemed to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but when Paddy got to know him he thought he understood his problem better. Henry was a child migrant, he said, meaning that he’d been sent off to New Zealand without any choice in the matter. He was just a kid and was despatched straight to a farm, treated like a slave and lived in a shed at the bottom of the farmer’s vegetable garden. He got hidings if he didn’t milk the cows fast enough. God knows he’d never seen a bloody cow until he reached New Zealand. Henry stayed a couple of times, a seaman now on a coastal scow, a Teddy boy when he was in port, his clothes so sharp he could walk in a fashion parade, Paddy thought. ‘I don’t know why I was sent out here,’ Henry said. ‘After my parents got divorced they stuck me in a foster home.

  But I liked it there, it wasn’t too bad. Next thing I know, my father signed papers saying I was to be put on a ship and sent out here. I don’t really know who I am and nobody wants to tell me.’

  ‘I know about those we’ans,’ Paddy told him. ‘There were some on the same ship as me coming out here, miserable-looking little buggers. I felt kind of sorry for them. I was having a great time.’

  ‘I never asked to be transported. You’ve got no idea the things that happened to us kids. Mind you, we didn’t know what was in store for us on the voyage out. Some of the farms we landed up on, this country ought to be ashamed of itself. Your choice to emigrate, not mine.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. I figure you’re right about that.’

  Henry was ironing his trousers, intent with perfecting a razor seam, while they had this conversation. ‘You don’t sound so sure.’

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ Paddy had said easily. It was best to believe in this, to tell himself it was true. It was meant to be a great adventure, and there was not really a lot to complain about, especially now he had a real girlfriend. He might get used to living in New Zealand and not in Ireland. Although, dreaming ahead, perhaps she would like to go and live in Ireland. Well, chance would be a fine thing, but he couldn’t help but imagine showing her the old town, taking her on the train to the countryside. Grand that would be, yes it would. For now, he had a roof over his head, enough to eat, as many girls as will listen to his chat-up line, though his mother would say they’re a bunch of hussies. Not that he was chatting up any more girls now there was Bessie. He’d told her she was his girl, the only one. It was all very new, this feeling of being in love, and he had to remind himself now and then to keep his eyes to himself. He wished Bessie would stay with him some nights, but she wasn’t free to come and go, he understood that. The hostel where she lived was called Rocklands Hall, a big old mansion set among trees out at Epsom. He once called for her there and felt as if he should be looking for the servants’ entrance, it was so grand. The chatter and laughter of girls filled the stairwell. Before Bessie left with him, he had to meet the matron. She eyed him with cool appraisal: only very special girls stay at Rocklands, her look seemed to imply. That was a night when there was nobody but him staying at 105 Wellesley Street. Later Bessie lay on his bed, her body like a pale flung star. ‘I wish I had somewhere better to take you,’ he said.

  Still, 105 was where he lived and he liked to have company in the big empty boarding house, not to have to listen to the creaking boards in the night and wonder whether there was an intruder and whether he would have to bang someone over the head, or get clobbered himself. Henry was a decent bloke, wild like all of them and fired up when he was on the piss, but he was up first most mornings with a fry-up for breakfast. When he went back to sea, the house felt ghostly again, night shadows dancing on the window panes as cars passed, the hooting of their horns leaving trailing echoes in the dark. July was cold, and rain settled over the city so that some nights he couldn’t hear himself think for the sound of it pounding on the iron roof. On Sunday mornings the bells of St Matthew’s woke him, reminding him he had promised his mother he would go to church when he came to New Zealand but never once has he done that. Sunday in Auckland turned his stomach: so pious, the pubs shut, Queen Street so quiet you could shoot a gun straight down the middle and nobody would come running.

  And yet, when Johnny McBride turned up on the doorstep with his suitcase, Paddy wished straight away he hadn’t told him he could come. There was something he couldn’t fathom about McBride. He was big, perhaps six two in his socks, his shirt bulging with muscles, but he wasn’t given to standing to his full height, rather in a slouch with his head dropped between his shoulders. Like Henry, he said he was between ships, coastal vessels for the time being, but soon he’d be on something bigger, one of the ships going to England. And he was buggered if he’d be coming back.

  ‘Are you one of those migrant we’ans?’ Paddy asked. Johnny had this strange hybrid accent, part American, part cockney.

  ‘Never you mind where I come from,’ Johnny said. ‘Where I come from, that’s my business, you know. I don’t ask you questions and you don’t ask me. We straight on that?’ His face set in a scowl.

  ‘Sure, dead on.’

  ‘I’m no kid, all right? I’m twenty-four years old and nobody tells me what the fuck to do.’

  Paddy felt himself flinch. ‘My landlady’s going to be back here v
ery soon. You can’t stay too long because I’m not supposed to take in boarders.’ This was true, for Gladys had phoned the day before to say that her friend’s mother was recovering well and that, at the end of the month, she would be back and she hoped all would be in order.

  Johnny backed off for a while after that. Paddy thought Johnny needed him more than he needed Johnny. He decided not to charge him anything after all, so then he wouldn’t be beholden to him for the money. One morning when Paddy was in the kitchen, he heard Johnny singing to himself in a harsh, boyish voice. He stood still and listened. It was a song he’d heard often on the boat coming out, but never quite like this, with such an edge of despair:

  Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner

  That I love London so

  Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner

  That I think of her wherever I go.

  Paddy walked out to the front room, raising his voice to join in, but Johnny stopped short as soon as he appeared.

  ‘You know nothing,’ Johnny said. ‘Shut up.’

  For a few days more, the lodger slid around the house, keeping himself to himself, sleeping late. He got up earlier one morning and cooked breakfast, sausages and bacon, with a good side of toast he’d made on the wire grill. ‘You see, I’m not just a pretty face,’ he said, presenting the meal with a flourish, a tea towel laid on the table as a place mat.

  Paddy thought that actually there was nothing particularly good-looking about Johnny, his nose bent as if someone had punched him, his slicked hair thin for a person of his age, as if he would bald early. One of his front teeth was missing, and Paddy wondered what it must be like for a girl to kiss a man with a hole in his gob. Johnny had had a girl to stay over the night before, but she’d gone by the time they sat down to eat.