From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  Terence and Rosemary both burst into tears.

  ‘And you two can both pipe down. Go to your rooms if you can’t act like adults. Go on.’

  ‘Jonathan, don’t! Leave them alone.’

  But Terence and Rosemary didn’t have to be told twice and ran out of the dining room, bawling. Geoffrey went as well, walking stiffly, his head held high.

  ‘You bastard,’ Kathleen said. ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined their Christmas.’

  ‘I’ve ruined it? I’m not the one who’s made us sit round a table with more bloody china and silver and crystal on it than the captain’s table on the fucking Titanic, when we could just as easily have had a picnic somewhere.’

  Kathleen’s skin prickled and a stab of dread pierced her, as it always did when they argued like this. ‘Well, I’m not the one who’s been drinking since ten o’clock this morning and has now terrorised the life out of his children. And I just wanted to make our Christmas nice.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You wanted to make our Christmas better than anyone else’s. It’s what you always want, Kathleen, to be better than everyone else. For God’s sake, I’ve never met anyone so obsessed with class and status as you. It’s just so . . . common.’

  ‘You bastard, Jonathan. You’re drunk. You’re always drunk.’

  ‘No, only when I’m home. I never drink when I’m flying. I wonder what that could mean?’

  ‘So you say.’

  Jonathan threw a piece of cheese at her, hard. It hit her right between the eyes and bounced onto the table. ‘You know, Kathleen, sometimes I really don’t like you.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t like me perhaps you shouldn’t have married me,’ Kathleen snapped, though she could hear the wobble in her voice.

  Jonathan stood and snatched up a bottle of wine. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have,’ he replied, then marched out through the French doors and into the garden.

  Kathleen sat for a while, surveying the shambles on the table. Then she carefully took the damask napkin off her lap so that crumbs wouldn’t fall on the floor, and started the clearing up.

  *

  Sonny and Allie arrived at Awhi’s place at about half-past four, still uncomfortably full after their meal at the Robertses’. There were quite a few vehicles parked out the front, kids shouting and laughing and chasing one another around on the lawn and a lot of noise coming from the back.

  Allie knew that just about all of Sonny’s brothers and sisters and their families would be there, plus various aunts and uncles, so it would be crowded. He had five brothers, aged thirty-two to twenty-four, who had nine children among them, and five sisters, aged twenty-eight to seventeen, who had eight children. The only sibling missing would be Gilbert, who was in Mt Eden gaol serving a long sentence for manslaughter. Awhi would have been to visit him that morning. There wouldn’t be any presents as gift-giving in such a large family was prohibitively expensive and complicated (though she had bought something for Gina, which she’d leave on her bed), but everyone would have brought along food, which she thought was quite a good idea. At least that way you didn’t end up with a present you didn’t particularly want but had to pretend you really liked, like the salmon pink bloomers Nan sometimes gave her, Donna and Pauline and which they wouldn’t be seen dead in.

  The back lawn was packed and everyone was talking at the tops of their voices. The marquee was up, the hangi was in its usual spot and someone was yelling at the kids not to run all over Awhi’s veggie garden. There was a table set up in the shade and laden with snacks, and underneath were several half-gallon drums holding bottles of beer in ice. Alongside the table was another drum for the empties. Allie sighed. Parties at Awhi’s place were always the same: the same marquee, the same hangi, the same faces, the same beer, the same noise, the same drunken behaviour later on, the same fights. Mind you, you didn’t even have to add alcohol at her parents’ house to start a fight, just a stroppy sixteen-year-old.

  Sonny waved at everyone on his way to grab two beers, then cracked off the lids with his teeth. Allie winced.

  ‘Don’t do that. We can’t afford the dentist!’

  ‘You tell him, Allie, the useless bugger.’

  This was from Polly, reclining in a deckchair, drink in hand, gin bottle beneath her seat. She was wearing black capri pants, a white sleeveless top and enormous black sunglasses, and looked fabulous. But then it didn’t matter what she threw on, she always managed to look effortlessly stylish.

  ‘Hi, Polly. How’s things?’

  Polly shrugged. ‘Same as usual. You?’

  ‘Good.’ Allie made a face. ‘Though we just had lunch at my parents’ place and I’m still stuffed.’

  ‘Go and have a spew,’ Polly suggested.

  ‘My sister said that. Where’s Gina?’

  ‘Running round here somewhere.’

  Allie spotted her, racing around after some other little kids, laughing and screaming her head off, her feet bare though she was wearing the most beautiful frothy, lacy confection of a dress. ‘We’ve got that little dress at work.’

  ‘I know. That’s where I bought it.’

  ‘You must have robbed a bank, the price of it.’

  Polly shrugged again, drained her glass and stared into the bottom of it for a moment, then felt around under the deckchair for the bottle. ‘She deserves it.’

  ‘Steady on with that gin, sis,’ Sonny warned.

  ‘Bugger off.’

  Sonny grinned. ‘Bugger off yourself.’

  Allie remembered a party she’d attended here at Awhi’s, when she first started seeing Sonny, and Gina was just nine months old. Polly had been really drunk and hadn’t wanted to give her her bottle — hadn’t wanted much to do with her at all, in fact. Gina had been living with Awhi more or less full time even then. Polly had been hopeless, apparently incapable of looking after her and, unforgivably in Allie’s eyes, also incapable of loving her. But she loved her now, that was obvious, even though Awhi was raising her. Allie didn’t know what had happened to make Polly suddenly start loving Gina but she had, and by the time the baby had turned one, Polly was round at her mother’s at least a couple of times a week, taking Gina out, lavishing gifts on her and promising her the world. Privately Allie thought Polly had always loved her but wouldn’t admit it even to herself, though God only knew why. Who couldn’t admit to loving a beautiful little girl like Gina?

  Awhi appeared at the back door, balancing a huge tray of sliced and buttered bread, and made her way carefully down the steps. Sonny took the tray off her and carried it to the table under the marquee, which appeared to be a signal for the hangi to be brought up. The kids all crowded round and were shooed away as the dirt was scraped off the top of the mound and the sheet and sacks were carefully lifted, in case someone fell in and got burnt. There were loud expressions of appreciation as four large baskets of food were raised, wafting their distinctive aroma.

  Actually, Allie didn’t like hangi food. It was too smoky and sometimes it tasted greasy to her, and she found the meat in particular to be unpleasant. But she always managed to nibble some potato and the steamed puddings could be nice, especially with cream. She wondered whether it was because she wasn’t used to hangi food, or because she was a Pakeha. She said this to Sonny once, who laughed his head off and said that was like saying only Pommies liked fish and chips because the English invented them. And that wasn’t true, was it, because everyone liked fish and chips.

  To avoid being handed a big plate of hot, smelly food, she slipped into the house straight after the karakia. As always she had to check, and there he was in the sitting room, resplendent as was customary every Christmas. Not in person of course, that would be horrifying, just his photograph — Sonny’s late father, Major Pera Manaia, hero of A Company, 28th (Maori) Battalion, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and pillar of the Ngati Whatua community. Across the top of the photo frame hung the velvet ribbon displaying his seven war medals, and cascading across that were ropes of si
lver beads held in place at the corners by red velvet bows. At the base was a carefully arranged selection of painted glass Christmas ornaments, including bells, balls and pinecones. Nothing else in the room — or the house, in fact — was decorated, just this photograph. Allie had once asked Sonny why, and he’d shrugged and said his mother did it, as though that was an answer in itself. Perhaps it was.

  She waited a good fifteen minutes, sliced and buttered some more bread, and took it down to the table under the marquee.

  ‘Thanks, dear,’ Awhi said. ‘Did you get plenty of kai?’

  ‘Lots, thanks,’ Allie replied.

  In the end she didn’t eat anything, just chatted to people and drank beer, which was possibly a mistake, because by the time they went home she was really quite pissed, but the sex was so good — despite Mr De Valera sitting in the bedroom doorway watching them with avid interest — that she didn’t care, even though she knew for a fact she’d have quite a rough hangover the next morning.

  *

  The very early hours of the last day of December 1955 are quiet at Auckland Hospital, the sun nowhere near the horizon and the birds still all fast asleep, like most of the patients in Rose Murphy’s ward. Some snore gently while the breath of others struggles through respiratory systems failing gradually from age and disease. A lone nurse sits at her station at one end of the ward, working beneath the light of a desk lamp, listening now and then in the dimness of the room, her ear attuned for changes in breathing, for chokes and splutters that might indicate assistance is required. Occasionally she stands and walks the length of the ward, her shoes gently squeaking, glancing down at her patients, but mostly she stays where she is, writing notes, yawning and waiting for the end of her shift at eight o’clock — a long way off yet.

  But Rose doesn’t see or hear the nurse, though she isn’t asleep; she’s somewhere else altogether. She’s slipped back in time, back to her beloved Emerald Isle — not that her bit of Ireland is particularly green. Dublin, in fact, is the shitty grey of tenements and bricks and cobbles and soot, and of bone-scraping poverty. She’s always lived in a dank, cold tenement and after she marries the absolute love of her life, Patrick, no matter how hard they both work, they still can’t earn enough to afford anything better. Then when Colleen comes along Rose shocks everyone by handing her baby to her mother and carrying on working at the brewery. Patrick works on the wharves and they’re both bloody lucky to have jobs.

  They love Ireland, though, and want the English out. Not even Home Rule will do. Patrick joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood and she joins the women’s movement Cumann na mBan, but both in secret of course or the Black and Tans will be on them and gunning them down in the street, because that’s what they do, the dogs. Her mother tells her she’s asking for terrible trouble but she doesn’t care, she can’t just stand by and let the English carry on pillaging her beloved country.

  Then comes the Easter Uprising in 1916. She’s thirty-three and it’s the most exciting event of her life, even though it fails and so many of their friends are killed. But it does change things — she knows that even as it’s happening. Things will never be the same in Ireland again. Then someone dobs Patrick in to the Black and Tans so they take Colleen, who’s nine by now, and run. They go from Dublin to Liverpool, then, after the war ends, to Australia, then finally arrive in New Zealand. Patrick gets work on the Auckland wharves, she finds a job in a luggage manufactory, and Colleen settles in at school. She and Patrick make more money than they ever could in Ireland and their standard of living is far better than they’d hoped. When the second war starts Patrick doesn’t volunteer. Of course at fifty-nine he’s far too old for the proper forces, but he won’t even sign up for the Home Guard because he refuses to serve under a British flag. Fair enough, she thinks, though she doesn’t mind knitting socks for the boys overseas. Feet get cold and wet whether they’re English or Irish — or German, for that matter.

  And then, just after that war ends, Patrick dies. At work, pushing a trolley-load of goods off a ship. His heart. Apparently he just dropped. It takes her a long time to get over that.

  But she’s had a good life, and an interesting one, and now it’s over. She doesn’t mind, not really. Colleen and Sid will be all right. Sid can be a clown and sometimes talks shite, but he loves Colleen dearly and that’s the most important thing. It always is. The girls will be all right, too. Pauline will stop fighting and settle down eventually and Allie will sort out whatever’s been bothering her. She’s a clever girl and that lad of hers will stand by her.

  The minute hand on the clock above the nurse’s station moves around. The nurse takes another walk down the ward, checking each bed, then ducks out to the staff toilet, smelling of Knight’s Castile soap when she returns. She takes a moment to blow her nose, then settles again at her desk.

  Rose tries to open her eyes, but can’t. She listens to her own heartbeat pulsing faintly in her ears, like a gently outgoing tide. She feels as though Mr De Valera’s sitting on her chest but she doesn’t think he actually is. It’s just that she can’t breathe any more. She’ll miss Dev a lot.

  She isn’t in pain and she isn’t frightened.

  She knows where she’s going and she knows Patrick will be there to meet her.

  She lets go.

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  January 1956

  Colleen didn’t have a black dress — well, not one that fitted properly any more — and hadn’t been able to bring herself to buy a new one, thinking that if she held off, her mother might not die.

  ‘You could wear your grey one,’ Allie suggested, looking through Colleen’s wardrobe.

  ‘I don’t want to wear my grey one,’ Colleen snapped. ‘It’s a funeral. My mother’s funeral. Don’t young people know anything about etiquette these days?’

  Allie ignored her. She was allowed to be upset. They were all upset, going around with swollen red eyes and dissolving into snivels all over the place. Even her father looked like a blinky little pink-eyed mouse, blowing his nose all the time and pretending he had a cold. Hearing the news from the hospital yesterday had been such a shock. Rose had said she wouldn’t see in the new year but neither she nor Sonny had actually believed her. Well, at least she hadn’t. Her poor mother was devastated. She hadn’t even said goodbye.

  She, Allie, hadn’t said goodbye, either. She hadn’t said a lot of things. She’d so wanted to tell Rose about the vague, unformed sense of dread that ate away at her every day and blighted her sleep. Why couldn’t she relax? Why did it seem so hard just to get from one end of a day to the other? Why was she so bloody frightened all the time? What was wrong with her? She had been sure her nan would know because Rose was old and wise and seemed to know everything, and even better she never judged, especially if she saw you were in pain, but now it was too late. It was too late to ask, and it was too late to thank her nan for always being there, and it was too late to say goodbye.

  They’d been to see the funeral director that morning, a man Allie hadn’t liked at all. His name was Grimwade — what a name for an undertaker. But he was Irish and he’d organised Granddad Patrick’s funeral and her mother thought he should do Nan’s as well. He was tall and skinny and pasty-skinned and looked like he should be in a coffin himself. He was exceedingly polite and solicitous but cracked his knuckles all the time, as though he couldn’t wait to get stuck into whatever undertakers did to dead bodies when no one was looking.

  He was bad enough but there’d already been some unpleasantness before that. The funeral wouldn’t be till Wednesday, three days away, because her mother was worried people would be on holiday until then and no one would come. Her father had said what did it matter if it was only them — Nan wasn’t going to be there to care. Which was true but it had really upset her mother. Then the priest from Nan’s church, Father Noonan, who’d turned up at her parents’ house yesterday afternoon, pointed out that if they wanted to delay the funeral Nan would have to be embalme
d, given that it was the height of summer. And bloody Pauline had said, ‘Why? Will she start to stink?’ And her mother had marched across the front room and belted her on the arm, in front of the Father. Then, while everyone else had stared in shock, Sonny took Pauline outside, bawling her head off, while her mother sat down and said, ‘Sorry, Father, but she deserved that,’ then burst into tears herself.

  That had all been smoothed over, but now her mother was working herself into another tizz. Sometimes Allie wished her mother drank, because this would be a good time for her to relax with a nice brandy or a gin, but the closest she ever got was a sweet sherry on very special occasions, which this definitely wasn’t.

  ‘Well, you might have to wear the grey,’ Allie said. ‘The shops are all shut till Wednesday morning. You won’t have time to buy anything new. Have you got a black hat and gloves?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not what I need. I need a black dress!’

  Allie pulled out a black frock. ‘Is this the one that doesn’t fit any more?’

  Colleen nodded. ‘It’s too tight round the middle and across the bust.’

  ‘Can you let it out?’ Allie inspected the seams.

  ‘I already have.’

  Allie put the dress back. ‘I think you should just wear the grey. It’s very smart.’

  ‘I can’t, Allison. People will talk!’

  ‘It’s Nan’s funeral, Mum, not a fashion event. We’re saying goodbye to her. It doesn’t matter what colour your dress is.’

  ‘It does!’ Colleen wrenched the wardrobe door out of Allie’s hand and slammed it, then stamped out of the room.

  Allie was pretty sure there was a large dollop of guilt swirling through her mother’s grief because Nan had died alone. She felt utterly awful about that too. And to atone for not being there Colleen wanted the funeral to be perfect, which was impossible because how do you make the last rites and burial of someone you love dearly ‘perfect’?