From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  Feeling tears coming she sat at the table and dabbed at her eyes with a tea towel. It smelt of sick and needed a good boil and she hurled it across the kitchen in frustrated despair.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ someone asked.

  It was Colleen Roberts at the back door.

  Wiping quickly at her face with the back of her hand, Ana said, ‘Oh, no, you’re right. Please, come in.’

  They’d chatted over the fence and progressed to calling each other by their first names, but Colleen had been very busy lately and Ana hadn’t seen much of her.

  Colleen set two jars on the table. ‘Lemon curd and strawberry jam, made from our garden. Thought you might like some. Oh, look at the size of your fridge! I’ve got one too, but not that big.’

  ‘Lovely, thank you very much. Yes, we had it on the farm. We lived such a long way out it was essential, really. No work today?’

  ‘I’m not on till twelve. It’s a part-time job, but a lot of days it might as well be full time.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Ana said. ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘Still in hospital. Six weeks now, it’s been. She had an X-ray the other day and they say the bones aren’t mending yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Thank you. Still, it’s early days,’ Colleen said.

  Ana didn’t think six weeks was early days for bones to mend, especially when you were old and running out of days, but said nothing.

  ‘And how’s your father-in-law?’ Colleen asked.

  ‘Oh, you know. Jack’s just being Jack.’

  ‘Yes, er, Sid saw him the other day. Out by the clothesline.’

  Ana winced. ‘That day he went out in the nude?’

  Colleen nodded.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I was hoping no one saw.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean to be unkind,’ Colleen said, ‘I really don’t, but Sid said it was the funniest thing, you running round after him and him ducking and diving.’

  ‘Yes, the kids thought it was hilarious too.’

  ‘It must be so difficult, having to keep an eye on him all the time. Like having an extra child, I should imagine.’

  ‘He is like a toddler, but in a grown-up body.’ Ana was very tempted to tell Colleen how aggressive Jack could also be at times, but couldn’t quite bring herself to share that. Jack being a clown because he was mentally unwell was almost acceptable, but his rage and nastiness wasn’t. To her it felt shameful, a secret that should be kept. She poured hot water into the teapot.

  ‘It’s tricky, isn’t it?’ Colleen went on. ‘There comes a point when your parent stops being a parent and becomes a child again.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Though I expect that doesn’t happen with everyone’s parents.’ Ana couldn’t imagine her mother and father ever reverting to childhood. ‘How old’s your mum?’

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but have you given any thought to what will happen if your father-in-law —’

  ‘Oh, look, you’ve seen him in his underpants and your Sid’s seen him in even less. You might as well just call him Jack. He won’t care and I certainly don’t. You take sugar, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes thanks. Have you thought about what you’ll do if Jack gets worse?’ Colleen asked.

  Ana put cups and saucers, milk, sugar and the teapot on the table. ‘I’ll let you pour when you’re ready. I like my tea really strong so I’ll wait. We haven’t really, no. David won’t even take him to a doctor. He dreads the idea of him being put in a mental hospital.’

  ‘But they can’t make you do that, can they?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. I’d say only we could do that.’

  ‘Does he know there’s something wrong?’

  Ana glanced towards the hallway, and sighed. ‘Before we moved up here I would have said yes, but now I don’t think so. I think we’ve just about lost the old Jack.’

  ‘That’s very sad.’ Colleen reached across the table and touched Ana’s arm. ‘I feel for you, I really do.’

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’

  Colleen sighed. ‘And while we’re being honest, my mother isn’t doing too well.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, Colleen. That is bad news. But I’m sure your—’

  ‘Rose. Her name is Rose Murphy.’

  ‘I’m sure Rose is getting the best care possible.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Ana poured her own tea and they drank in companionable silence.

  Then Colleen asked, ‘Have you made many friends here yet?’

  ‘Not really. It’s hard to get out with Jack. I imagine I will eventually.’ Ana hoped she sounded more convincing than she felt.

  ‘You’re lonely, aren’t you?’ Colleen said.

  ‘The kids are good company.’

  Colleen said, ‘Mine aren’t, pair of madams. Oh, Donna’s not so bad these days, I suppose, and she’ll be moving into the nurses’ home in January anyway. But Pauline’s a proper little witch. I really worry about her. She’s only sixteen and she’s sneaking out at night and running round with all sorts of lads, thinking she’s one of these Wodgie girls.’

  ‘I think it’s Widgie.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Widgie. Bodgies and Widgies.’

  Colleen nodded. ‘Them on the motorcycles.’

  ‘Does she work?’

  ‘In the tearoom at Smith and Caughey, but she’s got this grand idea of being a stewardess for TEAL. The airline?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with having an ambition.’

  ‘Except you have to be twenty-one before you can do that, and that’s nearly five years away. She’ll have changed her mind by then and want to fly rockets to Mars, but she won’t be able to because she left school at fifteen. She hated school. She’ll end up like me, still slogging away in a tearoom at the age of forty-eight, with kids and a husband who doesn’t work.’

  ‘He puts a lot of time into your garden, your Sid,’ Ana said. ‘I see him out my kitchen window, digging and planting away. Must save you a lot of money, that garden.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, I meant to say, come and help yourself, any time.’

  Ana felt her face redden. ‘Oh, I wasn’t hinting!’

  ‘No, I know, but Sid gives half of it away anyway, so you might as well take your pick. I didn’t want to suggest it before, in case your husband was insulted, but, well, I know you a bit better now.’

  ‘David wouldn’t mind.’ Actually, he might, Ana thought. He didn’t like the idea of receiving charity, but she doubted he’d even notice, he was so seldom home. And it wasn’t charity; it was just the Robertses being neighbourly.

  ‘Well, come and grab a few veg now. Might save you going down the shops.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Colleen. I’ll just tell Jack I’m popping out.’

  He was still in his room, walking round and round in a circle, following the outline of a floor rug.

  ‘You’ll get dizzy doing that,’ Ana warned. ‘I’m just going outside for a few minutes, all right? Stay in here, please. Don’t go out the front door, and don’t go in the kitchen. I’ll only be a few minutes. Jack? Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Jack replied, still going round and round.

  ‘What did I just say?’

  ‘Stay here, no front door, no kitchen.’

  ‘Good. I’ll only be a few minutes, all right?’

  No response. Ana watched him a moment longer, then shut the door on him.

  She grabbed a shopping bag (not her biggest, as she didn’t want to appear greedy), and met Colleen by the tall wooden fence separating their properties. At some point several slats had broken away, and Collen squeezed through to her side.

  ‘We were going to fix this,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘but I don’t think we’ll bother now. Saves going all the way up to the street when we want to visit.’

  That gave Ana a
nice, warm, neighbourly feeling and she happily ducked through after Colleen. The Robertses’ vegetable garden was indeed magnificent, better even than the plot she’d grown herself at the farm. The soil here must be really rich. Of course, a green thumb helped and clearly Sid had two of those, plus eight green fingers. She filled her bag with beetroot, radishes, broccoli, swedes, peas, carrots, celery, silver beet, courgettes, even sweetcorn, but, sadly, no kumara.

  Colleen was jamming some rhubarb into the top of the bag when suddenly she let out a strangled yelp. ‘Christ, Ana, your kitchen!’

  Ana glanced back towards her house to see dark smoke billowing from an open window and the back door, and dropped her bag and ran, Colleen close behind. Arriving at the top of the steps minus her slippers, which had slipped off and she’d barely even noticed, she tore inside to find the kitchen filled with acrid black smoke, and on each of the stove’s three red-hot elements a slice of incinerated bread. She quickly grabbed each piece and tossed it into the sink, ran the tap, then turned off the stove. Then she opened all the windows and stood back, hands on hips, breathing heavily.

  ‘Bloody hell, that was close,’ Colleen exclaimed. ‘Are you all right?’

  Ana nodded, then shouted, ‘Jack! Jack! Come out here!’

  Colleen said quickly, ‘I’ll get your bag of veggies, shall I?’

  ‘Thanks. I’m sorry about this, Colleen.’

  But Colleen waved her apology away as she headed off. Jack appeared in the doorway and Ana glared at him, then took a deep breath as she reminded herself that he was ill. It didn’t really help. ‘Come here, Jack.’

  ‘I’m not allowed in the kitchen.’

  ‘But you came in anyway, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You did, and you turned the stove on, which you know you’re not allowed to touch, and put bread on the elements. Bread! What on earth did you think you were doing?’

  ‘Making toast.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Breakfast.’

  ‘But you had breakfast, with me and the kids.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Ana lost her temper. ‘You bloody well did, Jack! I bloody well made it for you!’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ Jack said, stepping towards her.

  Ana could see Colleen standing in the porch, looking embarrassed, clutching the vegetables, but it was too late now, so she ploughed on.

  ‘I’ll talk to you however I like. You could have easily burnt our house down!’

  ‘Not my house,’ Jack shot back. ‘This isn’t my house. I don’t even know you, and I don’t know her, either,’ he added, pointing at Colleen. ‘So get out, both of you. Or I’ll get my gun.’

  ‘Shall I get Sid?’ Colleen said from the doorway.

  ‘That’ll only confuse him more,’ Ana said without taking her gaze off Jack. She moved towards him. ‘Go back to your room. Go on.’

  He took a few steps in her direction, his eyes narrowing and his lips pressed together in a hard line. Then he raised a fist at her.

  ‘Touch me and I’ll knock your block off,’ Ana warned.

  Several long seconds passed, then he turned and walked away. A moment later Ana heard the door to his room close. She sat down at the table as she didn’t trust her shaky legs.

  Colleen crept in and put the vegetables on the bench. ‘My God, Ana, is he always like that?’

  ‘No, usually he’s fairly manageable. Just now and again he gets a bit unpleasant.’

  ‘Has he got a gun? I’d take it off him, if I were you.’

  Ana managed a smile. ‘No. He had several on the farm, but we took those away ages ago.’

  ‘And he doesn’t know who you are?’

  ‘Not often, not these days. Sometimes he thinks I’m his wife.’

  ‘Does he recognise your children?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘How awful for them. And you. What about your husband?’

  ‘He does seem to know who he is, on and off, but of course David’s hardly here, so that’s not much help, is it?’

  Colleen bent and gave Ana a quick hug, and Ana felt herself responding with real gratitude.

  ‘Well, any time you need help,’ Colleen said, ‘you just yell out or send one of the kids over, all right? Or come over yourself. Any time, day or night. I mean that. Sid might be useless in some departments and he can’t run very fast because of his leg, but I expect he could be quite handy if you needed help with Jack. And I can swing a mean handbag myself, so don’t hesitate, all right?’

  ‘Thank you very much, Colleen. I really do appreciate that,’ Ana replied.

  Then she turned away, so Colleen wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. When her neighbour had gone she stood and thought for a moment, the assurance that she could ask for help already easing her despair and frustration. She had a little weep, then let out a huge, wobbly sigh, padded down the hallway to Jack’s room and knocked on his door.

  ‘Jack?’

  No answer.

  She opened the door and peeped in. He was sitting on his bed, staring at the floor. ‘Jack, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know you didn’t mean to do it.’

  But he wouldn’t even look at her, and after a while she closed the door and left him to it.

  *

  Donna Roberts held her nose as she emptied yet another bedpan into the sink in the Bethany Home’s sluice room, wondering how anyone could do a poo while they were lying down. She knew she certainly couldn’t. But the owner of this one hadn’t had much choice as she was in labour and confined to bed — nurse’s orders. She shouldn’t have been doing a poo at this late stage anyway as she’d had an enema four hours ago, but sometimes there was too much soap in the enema water and the girls got the runs, which was a bit of a nightmare.

  Poo aside, she quite liked working here, though she was doing all the lackey work and none of the glamorous stuff, but she was only getting work experience so she supposed that was fair enough. The girls in the home were nice. Most of them were around her age, or even younger, though there were a couple of older ones, who you’d think would have known better than to get caught out. She’d only met two so far who planned to keep their babies; the rest were giving them up for adoption. She didn’t know if she could do that, either. If you didn’t want a baby you should make sure you didn’t fall for one, or you should do something about it before your pregnancy got too advanced, that was her opinion, even if she had been raised a Catholic. Not that she’d ever been in that position herself. True, she had run around a bit when she’d been younger, but she’d kept her legs firmly shut when it had mattered.

  She felt sorry for the girls giving up their babies. They were so lovely and no matter how determined the girls were to be brave, when the babies went, or when they went without their babies, there were nearly always tears and sometimes a lot more than that. It must be so tempting for the girls at the last minute to grab their children and tell themselves it would be all right, that the stares and the nasty comments and the stigma and the lost opportunities wouldn’t matter. But they would.

  And they were just ordinary girls. Not sinners, not sluts, just the sorts of girls you might have gone to school with. Sometimes the staff at Bethany could be a bit judgmental, she thought, especially some of the real dyed-in-the-wool Salvation Army ones, who told girls off for reading Mickey Spillane books and gave them a Bible instead. But others weren’t, and treated the girls almost like friends, asking them about their families and where they came from (hardly any of them lived in Auckland, and were only there to have their babies), and what their hobbies and interests were. That was the sort of nurse she wanted to be.

  And she liked Bethany Home itself. It was cosy, like a real home. It was in Grey Lynn and was a big old multi-storey wooden house with dormitories and a lounge for the girls where they lived while they waited for their babies to arrive. Some were there for months, sent away from
home when they really started to show. And there was a delivery ward and a nursery and all the bits you’d expect in a standard maternity hospital, so she was getting real nursing experience, if only just the basic bits.

  In December she’d turn eighteen, which meant she’d be old enough to join the January intake of trainee nurses at the Green Lane School of Nursing at Green Lane Hospital, and she couldn’t wait. She’d live at the nurses’ home at Green Lane, do her introductory training at the Market Road Preliminary School, her ward training at Green Lane, and attend lectures at the Central School of Nursing at Auckland Hospital. Thank God for public transport! The course was three years long and she’d been warned the pace was hectic for the entire time, but she thought she could manage that. She was even looking forward to living in the nurses’ home because it meant she wouldn’t have to live with her family any more. She loved them but sometimes — often, actually — they drove her around the bend with their boring, nit-picking, go-nowhere behaviour.

  Her mother was lovely but she worried so much it was stifling. And the things she cared about — making preserves, the buttons on her cardigans matching, her refrigerator, what other people thought — were things she, Donna, just didn’t give a toss about. She wanted a career, a proper job that would earn her enough money to be independent, so that when she met the right man she wouldn’t have to rely on him to bring in the money. That way if he turned out to be like her father — that is, very lovable and a laugh, but, let’s face it, not really a provider, not these days — she’d still have a job she enjoyed and not be forced to go out and make egg sandwiches and sausage rolls to keep the family afloat.

  And as for Pauline, she’d had just about enough of her. She needed a bloody good boot up the toot, but it didn’t matter how much you tried to give her one she just smirked at you and kept on being a bitch. She was going to get into real trouble one of these days: Donna was sure of it. She was either going to fall off one of those motorcycles she loved and hurt herself badly, or possibly even get arrested. And if she got her name in the papers, there went her job at Smith and Caughey, and all the rest of her pie-in-the-sky dreams. But apparently that hadn’t occurred to Pauline; she never seemed to think any further than the weekend. Honestly, what was wrong with her?