by Fiona Kidman
Wry, moving, beautifully observed and politically astute, this latest novel from one of our finest chroniclers pinpoints universal truths through very New Zealand lives.
Life isn’t always like it appears in the movies. In 1952, Irene Sandle takes her young daughter to Motueka. Irene was widowed during the war and is seeking a new start and employment in the tobacco fields. There, she finds the reality of her life far removed from the glamour of the screen. Can there be romance and happy endings, or will circumstances repeat through the generations? Each subsequent episode in this poignant work follows family secrets and the dynamics of Irene’s children. The story doesn’t just track their lives, but also New Zealand itself as its attitudes and opportunities change — and reverberate — through the decades.
‘… she is at a literary point when age is all gain — consummate craft, passion aplenty, the complex resonance of memory, and the edginess that comes from knowing about loss’ — Roger Robinson, New Zealand Books
ALL DAY AT THE
MOVIES
Fiona Kidman
VINTAGE
FOR VINCE AND HELEN AND KIRSTY
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
1. The smoke harvest, 1952
2. Clay particles, 1963
3. Blue Monday, 1970
4. Telling lies, 1972
5. How high the sky, 1974
6. Staying up late, 1977
7. Walking the line, 1981
8. In desert country, 1982
9. All day at the movies, 1992
10. Running in the dark, 2000
11. Home truths, 2012
12. The light healer, 2013
13. The beautiful flower, 2015
14. The book of leaving, 2015
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Fiona Kidman
Copyright
Follow Penguin Random House
1
The smoke harvest
1952
IT WAS LIKE MOVING to another country. The city of tram lines and crowded houses left behind, and now this wide open landscape. The bus lurched around another corner, hitting corrugations in the road. Irene Sandle perched on the edge of the slatted wooden seat and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. The child was six going on seven, a freckle-faced girl, who her mother suspected would grow up to be plain, but it wouldn’t matter because she was clever. Like her father, the airman, who had died so close to the end of the war. Irene tried not to dwell on that, the unfairness of it, him coming home for that short sweet halcyon leave and going back to a conflict that was due to end soon. He was lost over the Pacific but he had left her Jessie.
They had departed from Wellington early in the morning, a storm tossing them around as the ferry made its way beyond the heads. Walls of water had drenched the city and the wind slapped at the eaves of her mother’s house as they said their goodbyes. Now here they were on the other side of the strait, the sea ironed as flat as a linen tablecloth when they arrived in Picton. As the bus wound its way through country roads the sun glittered between the leaves of beech trees. The greenness of the countryside astonished Irene, used as she was to living in streets of houses side by side, with neighbours talking over back fences while they hung soggy washing on their clotheslines. And ahead of them lay a shining estuary, a silver swathe across the landscape, and before they knew it, they had arrived in the main street of a small town: a few tall houses, but most of them modest wooden dwellings with flower beds around them, some churches, all the shops you would expect — butcher, grocery, dress shop. Everything about Motueka was awash with glowing light.
‘Where are we?’ Jessie asked, her thin face puckered in an anxious frown. She had been sick on the boat and still seemed listless, as if the bus ride had drained the last of her resources.
‘Nearly there, pet,’ Irene said. They were stopping at a depot where the driver signalled the passengers to alight. Alongside it was a large building with a tall clock tower ornamented with glass panels, and the tobacco company’s name emblazoned on what looked like the reception area of a factory. Shiny Buick and Studebaker cars were parked in a row in front.
Irene was so concerned about Jessie she hadn’t studied her fellow travellers. As she waited her turn to step into the aisle, she saw among the men a handful of young women like herself, carrying their suitcases. They were dressed more casually than she, several with hair tied up in scarves, wearing slacks, something women did more since the war. None of them were accompanied by children, although one woman looked older, and full-figured, as if she might have had some. She wore a thin wedding band and although she, too, was dressed casually, her make-up was heavy, her lipstick bright red.
Irene was embarrassed by her cream blouse adorned with pearl buttons, her navy blue pencil skirt, white gloves and polished shoes. But after all, she was going to a new job. It wasn’t exactly an interview, because she’d already been told that there was a place for her, and that she could bring a child if she wanted. But still, it was beginning again, meeting a new employer.
A man stood holding a clipboard that he glanced at as each person stepped from the bus and gave their names. He ticked them off one by one. Irene waited to the last, or so she thought. The man looked her up and down. ‘Name?’
‘Irene Sandle.’ She held out a gloved hand. He studied it in silence before extending his own.
‘Jock Pawson. The kid?’
‘Jessie.’
‘Same name? Sandle.’
‘Of course.’ She hesitated, not thinking she would have to explain. ‘I’m a widow. Jessie goes to school.’
‘I understand. I have to keep a record. So you want to work in the tobacco fields, Mrs Sandle?’ He had faded ginger hair and a frayed beard that he tugged with his free hand as he studied her. His fingers were tobacco-stained.
‘They said there was a place for me. I’ve got a letter. They said I could have a house.’
‘Och, aye, don’t panic. If you’ve got a letter, nobody’s saying you can’t have it. I’m just wondering if you can manage outdoor work. Picking tobacco’s hard work.’
‘I’m willing to work hard.’
‘I daresay you are. They all say that. Fourteen hours a day. Did you do farm work in the war?’
But she wasn’t going to tell him what she did in the war. She didn’t care for this ruddy faced man with his stomach beginning to billow over his trousers, the crumbs in his beard. He made her think of plantation overseers in books she’d read. It was hard to tell his age — she guessed mid-forties at least. She noted, though, that he had powerful-looking arms beneath his checked shirt and something about the set nature of his expression suggested that he liked to get his own way. There seemed little point in telling him that she had worked in a city library throughout the war, a job she’d loved more than she could ever explain; that shelving musty books and choosing ones to take home had offered her a world of endless possibility; or that she had dawdled over morning tea so that she could read an extra chapter before resuming her duties, and that her fellow workers had often said, ‘Quit dreaming, Irene, there’s customers waiting at the desk.’ Not that she hadn’t done her fair share of work and, because she knew so much about the books, she’d been the one whom the customers liked talking to anyway. Irene didn’t think all of these things at once, but she had thought about them, and other matters, often enough to know that her life history was her own and none of this was what she wanted Jock Pawson to learn. Besides, the war was beginning to seem a long time ago. The world around them was changing already. She was aware of him staring at her. Something in her recoiled. Jessie was tugging at her skirt, and the child’s white frightened face tore a
t her heart.
The whole awkward moment was broken when Jock’s attention turned to a movement behind her. It was the stealthy action of someone trying to slide past without being noticed. Jock’s hand shot out.
‘And who are you and where do you think you’re going?’ He was holding the arm of a man Irene had seen boarding the bus in Nelson. He must have gone right to the back. The man wore a battered leather jacket, worn into soft folds, with unusual buttons. He was thin as a whip, his eyes the colour of strong black tea, his skin swarthy. Irene detected threads of grey in his soft unruly hair.
‘I heard there was work here.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Butcher. Bert Butcher. I’ve worked in the mines over the West Coast. I’m just after a change.’ Irene thought she heard the trace of an accent. ‘I could be useful around the place. I did some electrics in the mine.’ He tamped down a slim pipe as he spoke, preparing to light up.
‘Where did you come from?’
‘I’m a Maori fella. Sir.’
‘You look like a Jew boy to me.’
‘Not me, no sir.’
Irene said, ‘Is there anywhere I can get food for my daughter?’
There was a grocer’s shop where she could buy provisions, Jock told her. Everyone else had headed that way already, so she’d better be quick. The bus would be leaving for the fields any time now. She needed to stock up.
He gave a curt nod in the direction of the man who called himself Bert Butcher. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to bunk down in the single-men’s quarters. That’s if you can find a bed.’ Irene saw how Jock’s eyes followed the man.
Before he moved on, Jock thrust a parcel in her arms. ‘Overalls and boots,’ he said. ‘They get deducted from your last pay before you leave.’
A workers’ bus came round and picked everyone up from the grocer’s shop. Irene bought bread and butter, some bananas, milk and tins of baked beans. She couldn’t think what else to get. The woman with all the make-up introduced herself. Her name was Margaret, although everyone called her Dixie. ‘You know, like the song.’ She warbled a line of ‘I Wish I was in Dixie’ and hooted with laughter. ‘Yeah, I wish all right. It’s been a long time between drinks,’ she said. ‘You’re in the next bach to me. I can tell you the last fella in there was a dirty bastard. You’ll need some Lysol, and a scrubbing brush. Get some eggs, too, they’ve got them here.’ She glanced at Jessie. ‘She always as peaky as this?’
On the crowded bus, Dixie sat herself across the aisle from Irene so they could continue their conversation. ‘I’m a regular, I come here every season. The kids are old enough to look after themselves. My hubby died at the beginning of the war. Silly bugger, he didn’t need to go — he was thirty-six and we had two kids. I said to him, “Bob, you’re more use to us here than dead.” “Well,” he said, “conscription’s coming in, I’ll have to go. I don’t want any white feathers poked through my letterbox.” I let it go, what could I do? You get used to it, being on your own. You have to, don’t you? Well, you’re young, you’ll find somebody else without any trouble. Be glad you’re not fair, fat and forty. I like the singalongs here, and we go to the dances. You like square dancing? No? Oh, you’ll get the hang of it. You get to meet some fellas, too. You met Jock? Yes, now he’s a card, but he doesn’t dance — not the type.’
The bus pulled up at two rows of small shacks that were almost as close to one another as the houses in Wellington. One row was for women and the other for the men, Dixie explained. ‘If you do meet any fellas, best keep it to yourself. The owners are a bit funny about stuff going on, know what I mean?’
Irene saw a homestead not far away. An old man sat on the verandah in what looked like a wheelchair, wreathed by smoke. Some of the tobacco farmers had been here a long time, she would learn, built the farms up from scratch and worked until they were done for. Now they needed managers, men like Jock Pawson.
The one-room bach allocated to Irene and Jessie was more like a wooden hut than a house, with a corrugated-iron roof and a lean-to containing an iron bath. A tank stood on a stand outside. ‘You need to watch how much water you use. It doesn’t rain much here,’ Dixie said. ‘Though, thank goodness for that, or we’d all be out of a job.’ Dixie said she was lucky they had the power on; further along the line the baches hadn’t been hooked up. They put the Maori fellas in there, they were used to going without. Irene saw that they were hooked up to a pole that carried electricity to larger buildings towering beyond. These were the kilns, standing twenty feet high, that housed the furnaces where the tobacco was cured. Before them lay fields of tobacco plants, their coarse broad leaves like a green sea rolling across the plains. The air was filled with a strange shimmering scent.
The man who called himself Bert Butcher had helped Irene to carry her groceries to the door, without saying a word. When she turned to thank him, he was gone. She thought he looked foreign.
The room held a rank foetid smell. There was a mattress on an iron bed and another one on the floor. A pot and a kettle stood side by side on an iron stove.
‘Mummy,’ Jessie said. ‘Mummy, don’t cry.’
Irene glanced around. ‘Andrew,’ she said aloud, ‘why aren’t you here?’ She still sought him in moments of despair. He had always known what to do.
Andrew and Irene had met at the technical college where they were both in the A-stream for English. She was doing the academic course and he was in engineering, and neither of them had ever looked at anyone else. He’d gone into the air force before war was declared. She was so proud to be seen out with one of the boys in blue, Irene who always had her nose in a book, transformed by love. First love. Only love. Dead love. They had to get their parents’ permission to marry, they were so young, but it was wartime and that made a difference.
She would still be working in the library but for Jessie’s birth. When she went back to ask for her old position after the war, it had been filled. The land girls who had worked in the countryside came flocking after jobs in town. She did have a war widow’s pension after all and a roof over her head, the head librarian explained. It wouldn’t be fair to take her back. That wasn’t exactly the point, because the roof was over her parents’ house. For a time that was all right, but it wasn’t any more.
Now, when Irene looked at the scared little girl beside her, whom she had named Jessie after her dear love’s late mother, she was overwhelmed all over again. Jessie lit up her life, had made it possible for her to go on, to live without Andrew. She didn’t care about the lost life at the library, or the years spent under her parents’ roof, nothing at all really, except that she and Jessie might at last have a place where they could be alone and safe and free. At this moment, she wasn’t sure that she’d found it. The flight from Wellington, and all that was familiar, was fast becoming a nightmare.
‘It’ll be all right, Mummy,’ Jessie said, a sudden smile illuminating her face. She clapped her hands. ‘Our very own house, Mummy,’ she said. ‘Just like you said.’ Her daughter, comforting her.
Irene gave Jessie bread she had torn from the loaf and some milk. She didn’t feel at all hungry, and after she had drunk the milk, Jessie didn’t want the bread either. Her eyes were heavy. Irene scanned around the room. There was so much to do. First, she opened a suitcase. She had known to bring sheets and a blanket; the letter had told her that. She smoothed a sheet across the mattress, then lay down on it, pulling Jessie alongside her. Once she got her settled, she could make a start on things.
THERE WERE SOME THINGS THAT, in time, Jock Pawson would tell his future wife, and then only once. He wasn’t a man given to small talk. And there were things he would keep to himself.
It was young flesh Jock hankered for. It was beginning to look as if it were too late for what he was after, that perhaps young women would never be interested in him. His older sister, Agnes, who lived up north, had said to him, time and again, Jock, you’d better get moving. Goodness knows, I tried to have bairns but
I never could. The end of the line. Think how our parents went through all they did to bring us out here. We’ll all be gone before we know it, if you don’t find yourself a woman soon.
At times Jock did question whether their parents had made the right decision, bringing them from Scotland. He was a boy at the time, just thirteen, and the Great War not long finished. You need more education, lad, his father said. You’re not going to get it here in Glasgow. They lived south side of the Clyde and his father had spent his whole working life on a factory production line, making munitions. That is what would become of Jock, too, and Agnes would marry into the same sort of life, was what he said. We want to be in charge, not just the bloody workers, we need to be able to say what’s what for ourselves.
When they arrived, his father worked for a year in the mines. He earned enough money to set up a dairy in Dunedin, a place he thought would do them because there were kinsmen there, other Scots. Jock stayed at school until he was fifteen. Now that was an education. You would nae have got that in Glasgow, lad, his father said. Agnes married a young man who came to the university to train as a dentist. Those should have been good times.
They hadn’t counted on the Depression. Jock had to choose between relief work or going down the mines where there was still work to be had and his father knew someone. It was a job but it got to him, the dark tunnels, the soot that stayed under his nails even when he scrubbed himself raw, the cold mists that hung in the West Coast valleys. He wanted a woman then, but the women were already taken, or on the make, or they wouldn’t look at him. There were plenty of men in the mines who had their own wives. He didn’t ask for much, a feed at night, a warm bed, a woman. He paid for flesh now and then but that wasn’t the answer, furtive encounters that began on street corners, and the chance of getting caught. He got the clap once, and when it was cleaned up he knew he wouldn’t go down that road again. The doctor had stared at him with distaste when he asked for sulphonamides. You brought it on yourself, man, the doctor said.
