‘Have you seen her since then?’ Bill asked.
Reluctantly, the woman shook her head.
‘Where’s that list?’ Sid demanded. ‘That cop over there said there’s a list.’
The woman retreated into the crowd, then reappeared a moment later. ‘This is George Lynch,’ she said. ‘He’s ticking everyone off.’
George asked, ‘Who are you looking for?’
‘My daughter, Allie Roberts. She works in the dress department.’
George nodded and ran his finger down the list, turned the page, then flicked it back again. He met Sid’s gaze and looked quickly away. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Roberts, but she isn’t here. But she could be outside somewhere and we just haven’t seen her yet.’
Sid’s heart sank, but he nodded his thanks and walked away, back towards the young policeman.
‘Hey, Sherlock!’ he called. ‘Who’s the head honcho here, for the fire brigade?’ He felt Bill’s hand settle on his shoulder.
‘Are you talking to me?’ the constable said, looking non-plussed.
Bill murmured, ‘Calm down, Sid.’
Sid ignored him. ‘Yes, boy—you!’
The young cop pointed towards a member of the fire brigade who had his head down over a set of plans.
Sid ducked under the barricade and marched over.
‘Are you the boss here?’ he demanded.
The fireman glanced up. His eyes were reddened by smoke and there were bits of black stuff stuck in his teeth. ‘I’m the senior station officer, yes.’
‘Well, get your arse into gear and get those fucking ladders up! My daughter’s up there!’ Sid shouted right into his face.
The fire chief stepped wearily back. This fire was the worst he’d attended in his twenty-four years of service, and it was tearing him apart, having to stand around down here on the ground like a useless bloody idiot, knowing that there were still people in there.
‘We’re doing everything we can, sir,’ he said.
‘No you aren’t!’ Sid roared. ‘Why aren’t those fucking ladders up?’
‘Because the verandah’s in the way. The ladders can’t reach the windows. But we’re looking at getting some men into—’
Sid threw a punch at him, but in his anger missed by a mile.
The crowd gasped and Bill put his hand over his eyes. Two police constables ran over and took hold of Sid’s arms.
Standing well back now, the fire chief said, ‘I realize you’re upset, sir, but we’re doing everything we can.’
‘Well, it isn’t enough, d’you hear me?’ Sid shouted as the cops half dragged, half walked him towards a police car. ‘It isn’t bloody enough!’
One constable opened the back door of the car while the other pushed Sid into it.
‘Hello, Sid,’ Sonny said.
Sid, who had whacked his head on the way in, rubbed his ear and looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Sonny? What are you doing here?’
Sonny nodded at the handcuff still attached to both his wrist and the door handle. ‘Had a bit of bother.’
‘So did I,’ Sid said, and burst into tears.
Sonny looked out the window and let him get on with it. Eventually he said, ‘She’s a strong one, Allie, eh? If there’s a way out, she’ll find it.’
Not counting Mr Crowley’s lot, there were only thirteen of them left now, Allie thought. A very unlucky number.
She lit a cigarette. She’d lost her bag somewhere but had spotted a packet in someone else’s, so she’d pinched them.
‘Does anyone else want one?’
Irene and Louise both nodded, so she slid the packet across the table. They were back in the caf, sitting with Miss Willow and Miss Button. The others were standing over by the window. They seemed to be arguing.
‘We’ve never smoked,’ Ruby said. ‘Have we, Bea?’
Beatrice shook her head. ‘It was terribly fashionable in our day, though, wasn’t it? All the bright young things used to do it. My sister used to have the most wonderful long, ivory holder.’
Louise said, ‘Do you really think anyone’s coming for us?’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Or is this it?’
‘Don’t worry, dear,’ Beatrice replied gently. ‘They’ll be doing their very best, I’m sure of it.’
‘Yes, but is anyone coming?’ Louise put her head in her hands. ‘It’s driving me spare, just bloody well sitting here. Just waiting.’
Nobody said what they were all thinking: that soon they would have no choice left but to jump.
Allie remarked, ‘I’ve lost my bit of cloth.’
She felt very strange. She still had that sensation of being detached and everything seemed hazy, as though she were looking at everything with a stocking pulled over her face. She was still scared stiff, she knew that, but now it felt as though it was someone else who was terrified, not really her. She supposed it was the shock. But it was nearly funny, sitting around the table enjoying a relaxing cigarette while the floors beneath them were burning with such intensity that they could all hear the fire, and great sheets of black smoke were whipping up past the windows outside and blocking out the sky. She looked at her watch: only thirty-seven minutes since they’d all gone running out of the caf. It felt like they’d been stuck up here for ever.
She wondered what Donna and Pauline were doing. And she thought about her mother. Was she still at work? Had she heard? And what about her dad? He was supposed to be painting with Bill this afternoon, but they were probably in the pub right now. Bill was a good bloke, but he freely admitted that Sid could always lead him astray. She loved her family very much: the notion of not seeing any of them again was just…absurd, really.
‘Is anyone here a Catholic?’ Louise asked.
‘I am,’ Irene said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Well, I was. I’ve lapsed.’
‘So have I,’ Beatrice said. ‘But my family are strict Methodists, not Catholics.’
‘I haven’t been to church since I was thirteen,’ Irene went on. ‘Except for when Martin and I were married, but that was in an Anglican church.’ Irene looked at Louise. ‘Why? Are you?’
Louise nodded. ‘I was raised a Catholic, but I don’t go to church that often. But I was just thinking that someone might want to, well, you know, that we should…’
‘Confess our sins because we’re all about to die?’ Irene finished for her.
There was a moment of silence. Then Louise said, ‘Yes, I suppose. I’d like to, anyway, if nobody minds.’ When no one objected, she took a deep breath. ‘When I found out I was pregnant with Susan, I was really upset because I didn’t want a baby so soon. I wanted Rob and me to work for a few years and save some money and put a deposit on a nice little house and buy all those things that married people buy together. You know, a fridge and a lounge suite and a washing machine and a decent car and all the rest of it. I certainly didn’t want to be stuck in a poky little rented house boiling nappies in the copper and wondering what to do with half a pound of mince for the fifth night in a row. I was only about eight weeks at that stage and I hadn’t told anyone, not even Rob.’ She put her hands on the table, stared at a spot between them and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘So I went to see a woman who I’d been told could…take care of that sort of thing.’
‘An abortionist?’ Irene said, sounding very surprised.
Louise nodded. ‘And it went against everything I’d ever been taught. You know—“all human life is sacred, for it is created in the image and likeness of God”. But I was so angry because I wanted it to be just me and Rob. I felt like this…accident had come along and we didn’t have anything ready for it and it was going to come between us before we even had a chance to really have a life together. You know, just us. So I went to see her, and she was this really kind woman and I thought she was going to be awful with dirty fingernails and a fag hanging out of her mouth and a bare mattress in a back room. And she told me very gently what she would be doing and what to expect, and was I absolutely one hundre
d per cent sure it was what I wanted? And I started crying and I couldn’t stop and she told me to go home and think about it overnight and come back in the morning if I still wanted to go ahead. So I went home, and I did go back, but only to tell her I’d changed my mind.’ Louise was crying now. ‘And thank God I did, because otherwise I’d never have had Susan and, well, I can’t even imagine what my life would be like without her. I never told Rob. I’ve never told anyone.’
She glanced around the table, looking for censure and judgment, but there was none, only soft eyes full of sympathy and love.
‘So that’s it, that’s my confession.’ She gave an enormous sigh. ‘God, that feels better.’
‘I’ve got something,’ Allie said, ‘though it’s nothing like Louise’s. But it’s something that’s sort of…stayed with me.’ She reached for the cigarettes, then pushed the packet away again. ‘It was when the waterfront lockout was on. I was eighteen and I was going out on a first date with a boy. His name was Brian, Brian Ingham, and he was twenty-one and I just thought he was the bee’s knees. It was about three months into the lockout, I suppose, and we were going to a party with some of his friends. He was at the university and he was very posh and educated—I’d met him down at the tennis courts. And halfway through this party, people started talking about the lockout and how all the watersiders were communist shit-stirrers and ruining the country’s economy and should be locked up, not out, or sent to South Korea to do a decent day’s work for a change, and they were laughing but some of them were getting quite het up about it. And I was sitting there, smiling away in the new dress I’d made especially and thinking how wonderful I was getting invited out by such a clever, good-looking boy, but terrified in case I said something stupid and he never asked me out again. And anyway he turned around and asked me what my father did. And I said he owned a building company.’
‘But your dad was a wharfie, wasn’t he?’ Louise said.
Allie nodded. ‘And that night, I bloody well knew he was biking around Auckland with some of his watersider mates delivering food parcels to other wharfies because they couldn’t even afford to buy their kids bread or milk.’
No one said anything for a moment, and Allie could see in their faces that they understood.
‘Did you go out with the boy again?’ Ruby asked.
‘No, I never heard from him after that.’
The subsequent silence was filled by Beatrice, who said brightly, ‘Well, my turn, I suppose. I’m a child of Satan.’
Ruby laughed.
‘Pardon?’ Irene said.
‘I’m a child of Satan,’ Beatrice said again. ‘According to my mother and father, anyway. They were very religious, my parents. My father’s dead now, of course, and my mother doesn’t know what day it is.’
‘Why are you a child of Satan?’ Louise asked, frowning.
Beatrice raised her eyebrows questioningly at Ruby, who nodded. ‘Well, you see, Ruby and I are lovers.’
Allie shot a look at Irene and Louise, but they were both staring round-eyed at the two older women.
‘And we have been for over twenty years,’ Beatrice went on. ‘Naturally, it’s not something we advertise, but we’re very happy together, aren’t we, Ruby?’
Ruby nodded and settled her hand on top of Beatrice’s, smiling fondly at her. ‘We are, dear, we are.’
‘So this isn’t really a confession,’ Beatrice amended, ‘but it is something that I wanted to…announce. Before whatever’s going to happen here, well, happens.’
Allie didn’t know what the others were thinking, but she was lost for words. Who’d have thought it? Who really even knew that women actually did that? But the more she considered it, the more sense it made. They seemed to be very close, Miss Willow and Miss Button, and neither was married, and they shared a house, and, well, it was actually quite nice, really, that they had each other. And that couldn’t be a bad thing. And they were together now.
But she wasn’t really alone either. Sonny wasn’t here—and thank God for that in many ways—but she had Irene and Louise. Daisy had managed to get out, so she would be all right, and whatever was going to happen to the rest of them, they would face it together. Knowing that made her feel better, a little less frightened.
Louise said, ‘So your parents thought you were a child of Satan because you’d…um, taken up with a woman?’
Beatrice suddenly made a pained face.
Allie asked, ‘Are you all right?’ Miss Button looked like her father did when he was anticipating one of his more subterranean attacks of wind.
Beatrice’s features relaxed slightly. ‘I’m fine. A touch of indigestion, I think. No, my mother and father never realized that. It was because I’d decided to leave home. I’m the youngest daughter and they’d assumed I was going to look after them in their old age. But instead, I went off and learned how to make hats and went half-shares in a little house, and they were very disappointed with me. It was my duty to dedicate my life to them, apparently, and I let them down.’
Irene took a big breath, then let it out again slowly.
‘I’ve got something,’ she said. ‘And this isn’t a confession either, because I never actually did anything wrong, I understand that now, but it is something I need to get out.’
The others waited, quiet and acquiescent, knowing that whatever Irene had to say, no matter how shocking or embarrassing it might be, it would be all right, because she was one of them; she was their friend.
‘There were five of us at home,’ Irene began. ‘I was the eldest with two brothers and two sisters. Being a Catholic my mother couldn’t stop popping us out, although I think she wanted to. She got quite sick after Roy, he’s the youngest, and either she couldn’t have any more babies or Dad left her alone, I’m not sure which. Dad was a sharemilker and we lived out at Tuakau, in a little cottage on the farm. We all went to primary school out there and we were really poor. I mean dirt poor. We didn’t wear shoes to school and our clothes were full of holes Mum was always trying to patch and darn.’ Irene frowned. ‘Mind you, hardly anyone wore shoes to school, not just us or the Maori kids. There were quite a few Maoris at the school and they used to ride in from all over the place on horseback, three or four of them to a horse, and I used to be really jealous because I always wanted a horse but Dad said I’d never look after it. Which was probably true.
‘And we all used to help on the farm, when we were old enough. I’d help Dad in the milking shed in the mornings and in the afternoons when I got home from school, and the little ones all learned to do that as they got older. Mum didn’t like it—she said it stopped us from doing our homework—but I still did mine, at night. It wasn’t an easy life, I suppose, but we were happy enough, for a while anyway. Mum was a good cook and she could turn anything into something worth eating. And she grew most of our vegies and made bread and did all those sorts of things a good wife’s supposed to do.’ Briefly, Irene smiled. ‘Unlike me. I can’t cook to save myself. Poor Martin. So we were all right for food, but we hardly ever had money for anything else, which is why all of us kids went around looking like we’d got our clothes from St Vincent de Paul’s. Which we did sometimes. Mum used to go into town once a month and stock up, I’m sure of it. And sometimes she’d come home from her CWI meetings with things from the other ladies, but we hardly ever had anything new. No, actually that’s not true. I had a lovely coat once, that the farmer’s wife gave me. It was royal blue wool and had a scarf attached to it with white fur pompoms on the ends. But Mum told me I could wear it only for best, and seeing we never went anywhere nice, it hardly ever got worn. It got handed down of course, and when it got to my two little brothers, Mum just cut the pompoms off so it didn’t look so girly. But they didn’t get to wear it much either, and I think by the time we all grew out of it, it was still nearly as good as the day I was given it.’
She reached for a cigarette and lit it, the others waiting patiently.
‘Dad started drinking heavily when I wa
s about six. There were only three of us kids then. He fell off the tractor one day while he was feeding out, and the back wheel ran over him and broke his pelvis. He was in hospital for quite a while and apparently when he was discharged the doctors told him he would have to find a less physical job. But hell, no, my father was a man of the land and that’s where he was going to stay! According to him, anyway. He couldn’t accept it. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know. Anyway, when he came home I would hear him and Mum arguing in the kitchen late at night because she wanted us to move into town so Dad could get a job that wouldn’t be so hard on him, and he wouldn’t have a bar of it. “Do I look like a bloody townie, woman?” he’d shout back at her. And if she went on about it, which she sometimes did, he’d just stomp out of the house and we wouldn’t see him ‘til milking the next morning, and he’d always stink because he’d have got stuck into the booze and slept in the barn. But we got used to that.’
Irene paused for a moment. ‘And then, when I was ten, it started. A man told me one day that I was a very pretty girl, and after that he started paying me a lot of attention. By the time I was eleven I was sleeping with him.’
Louise gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Having sex?’ she whispered, her eyes wide with shock.
Irene nodded, her white, soot-smudged face impassive.
Ruby and Beatrice exchanged quick, horrified glances, but Allie stared directly at Irene, marvelling at the calmness—or was it a deep, flat emptiness?—in her friend’s eyes.
‘And that went on for about three years,’ Irene continued, ‘until I started getting my periods. After that he said it would be too dangerous, that I might get pregnant, and then he left.’ Her mouth twisted in a sort of half smile, half frown. ‘He left me.’
‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’ Allie said, aghast.
‘I…I just couldn’t, that’s all,’ Irene replied, staring down at the table top. ‘And he said that if I did tell, no one would ever love me again.’ She looked up and added almost casually, ‘Mind you, he said that anyway. He said I was used goods and no one would want me after what he’d been doing. And that I’d always belong to him.’
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