Fire

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘So here we are,’ she said after a long moment, ‘booted up to Boot Hill, with no marae, no meeting house, no land, no mana, no nothing.’

  ‘But isn’t it nice having a new house?’ Allie asked, and Mrs Manaia gave her a look of such gentle pity that she knew she’d just said something unutterably stupid.

  ‘They’re too small, e hine, and they don’t suit us. People are leaving and families are falling apart. Many of our elders have died since they came up here, of broken hearts. Without family, and without the land, we are nothing. And now Te Puea‘s gone as well. Everything has gone, everything that made us who we were.’

  They sat in silence, Allie trying not to but feeling as though she was personally responsible because she was a Pakeha, and wishing she’d brought her bag inside so she could have a cigarette and give her shaking hands something to do.

  Chapter Ten

  By ten o’clock more people had arrived and the party was in full swing; to be heard Allie had to yell at Sonny over the noise. It was fun, though. Whare had stopped fiddling with his guitar and was now playing it so energetically that Allie was worried his fingers might start to bleed. He had a lovely voice and he’d been joined by three others on guitars.

  They played only a few songs that Allie knew. She was able to sing along to ‘Silent Night’, but only in English when just about everyone else was singing it in Maori, and the chorus to ‘Maori Battalion’ but not the verses, shouting along with everyone else, ‘Maori Battalion march to victory, Maori Battalion staunch and true!’ She especially enjoyed the final ‘Au-e! Ake, ake, kia kaha e!’ ‘Blue Smoke’ she also knew, and parts of ‘Now is the Hour’, and she was delighted when Whare started in on ‘Ha-ere Mai’, which she particularly liked.

  Into Sonny’s ear she sang, ‘Ha-ere mai, everything is ka pai, you’re here at last, you’re really here at last’, then sat back, wondering if she might not have had a bit much to drink.

  But he only smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘That’s what I should be singing to you. Because you are, you’re really here at last.’

  ‘At your mum’s house on Kitemoana Street?’

  ‘No, with me. It doesn’t matter where it is, as long as it’s with me.’

  Allie snuggled up to him and he stroked her ponytail.

  ‘You’re not wearing any of that sticky stuff on your hair,’ he said.

  Allie giggled. ‘Well, no, not after last time.’

  ‘And none of that stuff on your face. I think you’re prettier without it.’ He gazed at her for a moment. ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’

  Allie’s face lit up. ‘On the motorbike?’

  ‘Yeah, come on.’

  He took her hand and they went around the front where he carefully removed three small children who were sitting on the seat of his bike one behind the other, noisily going ‘Brooom, brooooom!’

  ‘You kids be careful of that, it’s not a toy,’ Sonny said.

  ‘’Tis!’ the middle one insisted, his shorts at half-mast. None of them had shoes, but they were all wearing enormous grins.

  ‘It’s very late,’ Allie said. ‘Shouldn’t you be tucked up in bed by now?’

  ‘No,’ the smallest one replied defiantly.

  ‘Well, you should go inside anyway,’ Sonny said. ‘And don’t play on the roads in the dark. You might get run over.’

  Three small heads looked up, then down the street: not a moving vehicle was in sight.

  ‘Go on, go inside,’ Sonny said again, aiming a very gentle kick at the closest one. ‘Ask Aunty Maria if there’s any steamed pudding left.’

  The kids looked at each other, their eyes sparkling, then shot off towards the house.

  ‘Little buggers,’ Sonny said, but he was grinning.

  They rode down to Tamaki Drive, then turned right and followed the shoreline around to Mission Bay. Allie pulled off the elastic band holding back her hair, relishing the feel of the cool evening air on her scalp. It was even more exhilarating being on the bike at night, almost like riding through velvet.

  Sonny pulled up at the side of the road, then turned off the motor. Silence rolled over them after the deep, rumbling throb of the engine. A car went past, its tyres swishing on the still warm tarseal. Another was parked a hundred yards away, the two heads silhouetted close together in the front seat suggesting that the occupants were aware of nothing but themselves.

  His hands in his pockets, Sonny asked casually, ‘Want to go for a walk along the beach?’

  Allie looked out across the long expanse of sand, pale silver in the moonlight, and listened for a second to the soft hiss of small waves as they touched the shore.

  ‘OK, that would be nice.’

  Holding hands, they walked across the stretch of grass between the road and the beach, then stepped down onto the sand. Sonny unlaced his boots, tugged them off, then pulled off his socks and stuffed them inside.

  ‘What?’ he said, as he became aware that Allie was watching him. ‘You don’t walk down the beach with your shoes on.’

  So Allie kicked off her shoes and set them neatly next to his boots. The sand felt cool and moist between her toes, even though she knew they were far enough above the high-tide line for it not to have been submerged all day. They wandered down to the ocean’s edge, and stood for a moment, gazing out to sea.

  ‘What can you see?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Allie said truthfully. It was too dark to discern where the ocean joined the sky, although the surface of the water sparkled under the moon for what looked like miles and miles. ‘I can smell it, though. Sort of a cross between chalk and salt.’

  ‘It’s not chalk,’ Sonny replied. ‘That’s the smell of rain coming.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not, or the work picnic tomorrow might be cancelled.’

  ‘It’ll only be a shower,’ Sonny said. He turned and started walking down the beach.

  Catching up with him, Allie asked, ‘What was it like, when you were kicked off your land last year?’

  ‘I don’t know, I was away. But I think it was the last straw for the old man. He was always a hard bastard and he got all those medals in the war and all the rest of it, but he knew we couldn’t win when it came to the land and it killed him.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Drank himself to death.’

  Allie was silent for several minutes. Then she asked, ‘How do you feel about it? About getting kicked off your land.’

  Sonny stopped walking, and sighed. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Allie, but I’m not sure you’d understand. But for us the land’s important, more important than anything else. And especially Orakei, our traditional home. It was all ours once, all this around Auckland, and when we lost more and more of it, Okahu Bay was sort of our last stand. And now that’s gone, too. And so have we.’ He tapped his chest. ‘In here.’

  ‘I know, you mother told me,’ Allie said, but Sonny had turned away.

  They started walking again.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in South Korea?’ she asked.

  Sonny shrugged. ‘Dunno. It just…it was just something I did, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you join the army especially?’

  ‘No. I went into camp for call-up just before the war started, so I thought I might as well have a go at what I’d been trained for. And the old man and my uncles had all been to war, so I just carried it on. Let’s sit down, eh?’

  They wandered over to the grass at the edge of the sand and made themselves comfortable at the shadowed base of an enormous, ancient pohutukawa. Even in the moonlight its heavy mantle of bristly crimson flowers was visible, a sign that this year’s summer would be long and hot. Sonny put his arm around Allie and they looked out at the sighing sea.

  She jumped slightly as he suddenly turned and kissed her lingeringly, his hand sliding from her shoulder down her arm before settling on her waist, making her surreptitiously suck in her stomach. His mouth tasted faintly of beer, cigarettes and h
angi-ed chicken. His lips were soft and warm and the tip of his tongue danced lightly against hers. She shivered uncontrollably.

  Sonny pulled back. ‘Cold?’

  ‘No, just…no.’

  ‘Can I keep going?’

  Oh, please, please, please! ‘If you like.’

  ‘No, only if you like, Allie. It’s up to you.’

  Allie nodded, too embarrassed to say how very much she wanted him to continue.

  He kissed her again and this time his arms slid around her, his hands petting and stroking her face, her hair, her neck and her breasts over her shirt. The muscles in his arms and shoulders were hard, and his skin smelled of fresh sweat and that cedar smell again, and he was getting very close to needing a shave. She felt warm and safe and very excited, the slippery heat between her legs increasing by the second and making her squirm. She’d been waiting all night for this, she knew it now, and wondered how she could have behaved so normally all evening in front of his friends and family, all the while knowing that everything that she and Sonny said and did and thought would lead up to this.

  But first she had something to tell him. She pressed her face against his warm neck so she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘Sonny? I haven’t done this before.’

  She felt the muscles move in his throat as he swallowed, then he pulled back so he could see her.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s up to you.’

  Allie bit her lip at the understanding in his voice. ‘I don’t want you to be disappointed.’

  Sonny stared at her for a second, then laughed. ‘Disappointed? Christ, girl, I’ve been thinking about this non-stop for weeks! I’m not going to be disappointed!’

  ‘Yes, but it’s just that, um, I’m not sure what to do,’ Allie whispered.

  ‘It’s easy,’ Sonny said. ‘You just do this’—and he kissed her—‘and this’—and he kissed her again—‘and then this’—and then he started unbuttoning her shirt. Slipping his hand inside and then into her bra to caress her nipple, he murmured, ‘OK?’

  ‘Very,’ she said, closing her eyes. But when he tried to slip her shirt off, she grasped his wrist. ‘What if someone comes past?’

  But a moment later the shirt was off and Sonny was unhooking the back of her bra. He slipped the straps down her arms and took it off, leaving her bare from the waist up, the gentle night breeze playing across her skin and giving her goosebumps, before handing her the shirt to put back on. He ran his fingers lightly over her belly and breasts, then tugged his own shirt out of his jeans, pulled it off over his head and tossed it aside. His stomach was flat and muscled, he had hardly any hair on his chest and his small, dark nipples were erect. Allie looked down; so were hers, embarrassingly so.

  Kissing her shoulder and licking a wet trail from there up to her ear, Sonny murmured, ‘Still OK?’

  Allie giggled. ‘Still OK.’

  He pushed her gently back onto the grass; it was kikuyu, coarse and pleasantly scratchy against her hot skin. Grunting slightly, he rolled on top of her, supporting his weight on his elbows and smiling down at her.

  ‘I’ve got you now,’ he said.

  ‘You have,’ she replied, loving the way his skin felt against hers, and marvelling at how hard his erection was. It was digging into her pubic bone and she wondered if it was getting squashed between them. She thrust up her hips slightly. ‘Are you comfortable? You’re not getting…sore down there?’

  ‘Not sore, no. And don’t do that or it’ll be over before we get started.’

  Lifting her up a little, he slid his arms under her back so she was cradled beneath him, then began slowly to rub himself against her, his breathing becoming heavier as he covered her face and eyes and throat with kisses. Allie raised her legs and clamped her thighs around his buttocks, holding him tightly and instinctively moving against him, feeling a natural rhythm beginning and wanting desperately to get her jeans off so that their flesh touched everywhere. She moaned and then squeaked as he gave a particularly energetic thrust that almost knocked the breath out of her.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sonny said. ‘I can’t wait much longer.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Allie replied, and she’d never meant anything more.

  He rolled off her, reached down to the zip on her jeans and slowly pulled it down, making every fraction of her skin beneath it crawl with anticipation. Then he was tugging her jeans to her knees and, finally, off over her bare feet. His hand slid down her flat belly, under her pants and into her pubic hair, where his fingers began to massage gently at first, then more insistently. Allie wriggled, feeling the prickly grass beneath her back and the breeze on her skin and more desire for Sonny than she’d ever imagined was possible.

  When he undid his own trousers and pushed them down his thighs, she couldn’t stop herself from staring; he wasn’t wearing underpants and his erection sprang straight up, grazing against his muscled stomach as he sat up to shove his jeans down past his knees. She’d never seen a penis before, and certainly not an erect one, and it was sort of what she’d expected, and sort of not. She reached out and touched it, making it jerk upwards. She hadn’t realized that the skin would be so silky, or the end of it quite so, well, purple. Or would Miss Willow call it heliotrope? Allie clamped her lips tight against the nervous, excited giggle that seemed to want desperately to escape.

  Sonny rolled on top of her again, nudging her legs open with his thighs.

  ‘Ready?’ he whispered.

  She nodded, her face pressed against his neck. She felt his fingers on her, opening her, and then he pushed. She gasped as a sharp little pain stabbed her, and then it was gone.

  ‘OK?’

  Not trusting herself to speak she nodded again and moved her hips, centring herself beneath him and making herself more comfortable on the grass. Sonny sighed and rested for a moment, his forehead against hers, then began to thrust, slowly at first but then faster and faster. Allie curled herself around him, holding on until he threw his head back, exposing the taut sinews in his neck and the sheen of sweat on his throat, and shuddered once, then again, then once more. A moment later he slowly subsided on top of her.

  Allie gazed up at the black branches of the pohutukawa canopied above them, feeling Sonny’s heart thudding against her ribs until, after several minutes, it began to beat more calmly. He said something into her shoulder and she thought it might have been ‘God almighty’.

  He rolled half off her, propped himself on one elbow and smiled ruefully down at her. ‘Sorry, love, that wasn’t a very good first time for you, was it?’

  ‘It was lovely,’ Allie said, running her finger playfully down his nose.

  And then she had a thought so horrible she actually cried out.

  ‘Oh, no, Sonny, we didn’t use anything!’ How could she have been so bloody stupid? She sat up and scrabbled for her clothes. ‘Oh, God, what am I going to do?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, sitting up himself, although to Allie’s ears he sounded a lot more confident than he suddenly looked.

  ‘It is not. What if I’m pregnant? What am I going to do?’

  He took hold of her hand. ‘Calm down, sweetheart, come on. Don’t worry, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘It bloody is!’ she almost yelled, snatching her hand back.

  ‘Shut up, love,’ he said gently, taking her hand again. ‘When’s your, you know, your bleeding due?’ He inclined his head towards her belly.

  ‘My period? Why?’

  ‘When’s it due?’

  She had to think for a moment. ‘Monday. Maybe Tuesday. Why?’

  ‘Because you can’t get pregnant just before it starts.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ she replied, wavering between disbelief and hope.

  ‘Mum. The old man was useless at that sort of thing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she demanded, her heart still galloping.

  Sonny nodded. ‘I think we’re fairly safe.’

  Allie was slightly mollified by his use of the w
ord ‘we’ rather than the very lonely-sounding ‘you’. But she still said, ‘You could have used something.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got something in my pocket, but I got carried away. I’m really sorry.’

  Allie suddenly became aware that they were sitting almost naked on Mission Bay beach. ‘We should get dressed. Someone might see us.’

  They got back into their clothes, Allie pulling a face as a trickle of semen dribbled out of her. She hadn’t realized that it would come out quite so soon, if at all, but given her blind panic a minute ago, she was very pleased that it had.

  Then all of a sudden her eyes prickled and she wanted to cry. She turned away from Sonny, so he couldn’t see her face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, coming to stand behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But, apart from the fright, that was lovely.’

  ‘So are you,’ Sonny replied, giving her a gentle squeeze.

  Leaning her head back against his shoulder, Allie whispered, ‘And so are you.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday, 20 December 1953

  When Allie got up to go to the toilet the next morning she felt agitated, worried and very grumpy. But when she came out that had all evaporated because there had been a pink smear of blood on the paper, which surely meant that she hadn’t been caught out the night before? Her usual pattern was that she would spot one day, nothing would happen the next day then her period would start properly the following day, and she would know she was safe. That they were safe.

  She crossed the back porch into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. No one else was up. Good—she could have the bathroom to herself for a while. But when she got there the door was closed. She knocked on it sharply.

  ‘Go away!’ It was Donna.

  Allie could hear the sound of the bath running. ‘I need to go first, Donna,’ she called. ‘I’m going out this morning.’

  ‘Too bad. So am I.’

  Sometimes, Allie thought, she could easily murder her little sister and would happily swing for it.