by Fiona Kidman
When she and Jessie had eaten, and homework had been done, Irene put the light out and lay down. Her hand strayed between her thighs. She tried to summon Andrew’s face, the loved contours of his body, but he was gone. She had lost sight of him. But still the feeling persisted.
THE DAY FOLLOWING JOCK’S VISIT was a Friday. A bus took the workers to town for shopping, the only night the shops stayed open. Everyone got dressed up. Dixie wore polished cotton dresses with flaring skirts and coiled her hair in rolls over the top of her head. After the shops closed, the workers flocked either to the picture theatre or the dance hall. High Street turned into a tide of people. You could almost pretend you were in the city.
An hour or so before the bus was due to leave, Jock appeared, wearing fawn slacks and a woollen pullover with a fresh blue shirt. Dixie was sitting on her step, painting her toenails scarlet. Jessie sat close to her, hoping that Dixie would dab her nails, too.
‘Well, well, Jock,’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘You’re never coming to the dance tonight, are you?’
‘I was thinking about it.’
‘Well, how about that? You told us all you couldn’t dance.’
‘I’m no good on foxtrots, I’ve got two left feet. But I can call, if you’re doing a square dance. Allemande, promenade to your left, all bow,’ he cried, clapping his hands to demonstrate his talents. ‘Altogether now.’
‘You old dog,’ Dixie said, shrieking with delight. ‘Where did you learn those tricks?’ She leaned over and popped a splash of colour on Jessie’s fingernails.
‘Oh, you know, over the Coast,’ he said, assuming a modest pose now that his secret was out. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if Mrs Sandle was coming to town tonight?’ He glanced at Jessie. ‘You need to put your shoes on, lassie, if you’re coming with your mother.’
‘Irene?’ Dixie said. ‘You’re looking for her?’
Irene had come to the door wearing a blue and lemon print dress with a nipped-in waist. Jock’s face reddened.
‘The bus is due to leave soon, Mrs Sandle. You coming into town with us?’
All thoughts of going to the dance and meeting more people fled. ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘I got enough groceries to last me last week.’ She stood there, trying to pretend that wearing a pretty dress was what she did every evening.
Dixie’s eyes had clouded over. She put the cap firmly back on the nail polish. ‘You’d better go home to your mummy,’ she said to Jessie, her voice none too friendly. ‘Perhaps Bert Butcher will come calling while we’re out.’
‘Is it true?’ Jock asked.
‘No, it’s not,’ Irene said, her cheeks stinging.
Jock turned on his heel, without a word.
‘Dixie,’ Irene said, after Jock had gone, ‘I’m not — it’s not like that.’
‘Oh no? The whole camp knows he comes here at nights.’
‘He’s never set foot in our bach.’
Dixie just raised her eyebrows, her expression sour. ‘I know pipe smoke when I smell it.’
WHEN THE BUS GOT INTO TOWN, Jock went to the phone box on the street corner. He had a handful of coins. He rang the operator and asked for tolls. The number he gave was on the West Coast, in one of the mining towns he knew so well. After that, he worked through another list of numbers, all to mining bosses. He pushed one coin after another into the slot and for once he didn’t think about how much money he was spending.
IRENE KNEW THIS WAS THE MOMENT she really should leave. She would pack up her few things. In the morning she would go to the owner’s house and ask to use his phone and ring for a taxi. She and Jessie would be gone.
But Dixie was right. While Jessie lay sleeping, and the camp of huddled baches lay empty, Bert Butcher did come to her. Very quietly, so as not to wake the child, they put their arms around each other. He whispered her name in her ear, and some endearments she did not understand. It seemed, suddenly, that she had wanted him from the beginning, the moment she had seen him alighting from the bus. Her body, so slow to warm, was overcome with heat. She followed him outside, as if mesmerised. They lay down in the grass together. The sky above them was a plain of stars. An echo of caution signalled in the back of her head, but it was too late for that, her mouth and all of her so hungry she was taking him in, in great gulps. He took her with almost foxy stealth, knowing she would be there for him, that she wouldn’t ask him to stop.
Afterwards, they sat on the step together. ‘I’ve been thinking of leaving here,’ she said.
‘I can’t lose you now.’ His jacket lay beside them. He picked it up and dug his pipe out of his pocket.
‘We could both go,’ she said.
‘People would notice.’ In the flare of the match, as he lit the pipe, she saw his anxious frown.
‘Does that matter?’
When he made no reply, she asked him, ‘Who are you? Really?’
‘We should wait a little while,’ he said, evading her question. They could leave separately. He would meet her in Wellington. Or they could travel further north. Auckland was a good place. They had to be careful.
She didn’t understand this. But she knew she wasn’t going to leave this man any time soon.
‘Are you afraid of Jock?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think he would hurt me,’ she said, as evasive as he had been.
‘I’d kill him,’ Bert said. ‘With my bare hands.’ He held them up for her to see in the moonlight, long sinewy hands; she felt the power in them when he touched her.
In the still distance, they heard shouting and laughter, the noise of an engine, the bus returning from town.
‘I’ll see you again soon,’ he whispered. ‘As soon as the way is clear.’
‘You sound like the highwayman,’ she said, and laughed.
‘Who is that? This highwayman?’
‘A poem. Never mind.’
‘You’re a poet?’
‘Just go,’ she said.
Towards dawn, she slept, just a sheet covering her nakedness. She dreamed she was a child again, and all of life lay ahead of her still. She half woke, remembering Bert’s touch, running her hands over her body again, reminding herself of what had taken place in the night, that it was true.
A FEW DAYS LATER, JESSIE got into Dixie’s nail polish when Irene and Dixie were at work in the fields. She sat on Dixie’s white coverlet and opened the bright polish in order to paint her toenails. With the bottle propped beside her, she painted one toe after another. Then the bottle tipped over. The red varnish spread like blood, a swelling stain across the ocean of Dixie’s bed.
Irene was preparing dinner, two lamb chops and a tin of peas, when Dixie arrived at the door, the coverlet in her hands. ‘Where’s that child of yours?’ she spat.
Deep in her own thoughts, Irene hadn’t noticed that Jessie was missing. She went outside and called. Just as she was beginning to panic, Jessie appeared from behind a clump of bushes, her face tear-stained. Her small toenails gleamed. ‘I wanted to be pretty, Mummy,’ she said. ‘Pretty like Dixie.’
‘Pretty like me. You want to give this kid a bloody good hiding. I’ll hold her while you do it.’ Dixie reached for Jessie.
‘Don’t you dare touch her,’ Irene said, stepping between them. She snatched the coverlet from Dixie’s hands. ‘So what’s so fine about this that it can’t be replaced?’
‘Slut!’ Dixie screamed, lunging at her.
Irene smacked Dixie’s face hard then, a thwack that made the woman stumble backwards. ‘It’s just a bit of cheap material. I’ll get you another cover on Friday night.’
‘You bitch, you can’t even say sorry. You can’t control your brat.’ Dixie had her fists up.
Irene picked up the frying pan and lifted it. ‘Don’t you touch one hair of her head,’ she said. Dixie’s eyes bulged with sudden fear. ‘You were the one who taught my kid tricks like this. You know what you look like? An old whore, that’s what.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew how b
ig her mistake was. ‘I’m sorry, Dixie,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that. I said I’ll buy you a new cover on Friday.’
This was how she came to go to town on Friday night, instead of waiting in for Bert. The next time he saw her, he turned his face away, as if they were strangers.
THE DAYS FOLLOWED ONE OTHER. The sun shone with harsh bright constancy, not letting up. Irene lost a layer of skin and then another, and then it started to harden. The pain that had been so intense at the beginning had become bearable. When she looked in her pocket mirror she saw that she was ripe and brown. At night her breasts tingled, her nipples hard, as she thought about Bert Butcher. The harvest was a good one, the days lengthening as the labourers worked longer and longer hours, filling the kilns. She thought perhaps it was difficult for him to get away. He hadn’t been near her again and she hadn’t had a chance to explain why she wasn’t there on the night she went shopping.
The cover she bought Dixie was better than the one that had been ruined but the words between them hadn’t gone away. The older woman was withdrawn. She had taken to drinking with a group of workers at the far end of the camp. One night she stood between her bach and Irene’s, and puked. Irene offered to get her a cold cloth. She’d seen her father puking more than once during the strike.
‘What do you care?’ Dixie said, gasping for breath. ‘I know a thing or two about you.’
‘You said. Just let me get you cleaned up. Go to bed and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
‘Oh, bugger off,’ Dixie said, turning and staggering towards her door.
One night, Irene put Jessie to bed and told her to be a good girl, that she would be back in half an hour. ‘You’re not to go outside,’ she said. ‘I want you to stay awake until I get back. Read a book or do some colouring in.’ Already she was worrying about the consequences before she had gone, but she couldn’t stop herself.
‘Where are you going, Mummy?’ Jessie asked.
‘I have to see someone.’
‘Is it Mr Butcher? He likes you, doesn’t he, Mummy?’
‘Who said that?’
‘Dixie told my friend Laurel. What if Dixie comes?’
‘She won’t, she’s gone down the camp to see her friends.’ She leaned over and kissed the top of Jessie’s head. ‘I’ll be quick, darling. I have to go.’
She walked along between the rows of baches towards the singing and drinking. It was a colder night than she expected, the sort that made the tobacco growers anxious. A late frost would ruin them all. She wished she had worn a cardigan. Men whistled as she emerged in the circle of light where they were gathered. Some of the women signalled for her to come over. A couple of the girls were doing a hula, holding enormous tobacco leaves in front of their knickers, pretending they were skirts, swaying their hips. Somebody offered her a beer. Have a brown bomber, sweetheart. C’mon. Bert was sitting on the step of his bach, tamping tobacco into his pipe. He was wearing his battered leather jacket. She knew that he had seen her and kept on walking towards the rustling fields where work had stopped for the day. When she was far into the rows, she stood still, and waited. Soon she felt his footfall behind her. She didn’t turn around. ‘I had to go to town that night. I couldn’t help it,’ she said.
‘I know about that.’
‘Oh, surprise me,’ she said. ‘Is there anything anyone doesn’t know in this place? Is that why you haven’t come back?’ she said. ‘Didn’t you like what we did?’ This newfound assertiveness surprised her. But then, she thought, perhaps I’m behaving more like a spurned woman in a nineteenth-century novel. They always came to grief. She turned to leave.
‘I’m being watched,’ he said. His hands had closed around her elbows, holding her back from walking away.
‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘An excuse. I don’t believe you.’ But as soon as the words were out, she thought, he isn’t lying.
He kissed her hard on the mouth, and drew away. ‘You’re being watched, too.’
‘Why should anyone watch me? You and I have done nothing wrong. You think we’re the only ones who do things?’ It was a black night, stars hiding under cloud cover that suggested the possibility of rain, rather than frost. She could hear the singing from the camp: ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’ Yet today my love has flown away. She thought fleetingly of Andrew. Flown away all right. I am without … Without. Jessie was without her. ‘I have to go,’ she said.
He spoke as if he hadn’t heard her. He pulled her close to him, nuzzling the back of her neck, his hands cupping her breasts. ‘The woman who lives across from you told Pawson you were up to no good, said you couldn’t look after your kid. I heard her.’
‘What did he say?’
‘It was none of his business, he said. So she told him you were a Commie.’
‘A what? Oh, for God’s sake.’ She was aware of a strange smell in the air, that she couldn’t yet identify. ‘My father was a wharfie. He was in the strike. What does he think I am, a trade union official in disguise?’ She laughed, wildly, a little madly. Something else had just occurred to her: her swollen tender breasts and the period that hadn’t come.
‘He said you’d get over it in time. He thinks you’ll go with him.’
‘I never would.’ She stood for a moment, thinking. ‘I’m going to tell him I’m leaving here tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If you’ve got any sense you’ll come away, too.’ She lifted her head. ‘Burning,’ she said, ‘something’s burning.’
Behind them smoke was rising and the singing had turned to cries of panic. From one of the kilns a coil of flame was rising in the sky.
‘Jessie!’ Irene screamed.
Bert was racing ahead of her, faster than she could run.
Beyond the tobacco fields, everyone was running. This was the disaster that could strike — the furnace out of control, the kiln burned down, the harvest lost. The fire was snaking higher and higher, green and yellow flames, the air heaving with the smell of nicotiana. As she sprinted down through the camp, Irene saw Jock Pawson outlined against the burning building. Above him the power line that linked the kiln shed to the pole outside the baches was arcing above his head.
He saw Bert. ‘Butcher.’ And then, putting his hands to his mouth to form a trumpet, he screamed, ‘Bottcher, where are you, Hans Bottcher? You’re needed.’ He gestured towards the twisting power line. Go up the pole and disconnect it.’
Already Bert was clambering up the pole. That was the moment Jessie appeared from the bach and began running towards her mother.
‘No,’ shouted Bert, and as the line fell he threw himself from the pole, trapping Jessie in his arms and rolling her free.
‘Run, Jessie!’ Irene shrieked. ‘Run fast.’
Jessie threw herself into her mother’s arms, the power line danced like a skipping rope and Bert caught it as he fell, tearing it from the pole, his body arching in a terrible writhing motion before he lay still. As Irene ran forward, Jock Pawson threw her to the ground so that her body didn’t connect with that of the dead man. And still plumes of flame pierced the night sky, curling and licking and caressing the hurrying clouds, and there was nothing anyone could do except watch the crop burn and stare aghast at the blackened body of the man who had called himself Bert Butcher.
The owner had come down from his house, leaning on a stick. ‘Who was in charge of the furnace?’
Jock’s head snapped around, as if caught in a trap. Then he collected himself, pointing at the dead man. ‘It was him.’
Someone had fetched a wooden-handled broom so they could push Bert’s body away from the line without getting electrocuted, in case it was still live, for it seemed to the watchers that his blackened body was still twitching. Soon the police came from town, bringing men out from the power board. By that time the kiln was a pile of golden cinders.
THERE WASN’T MUCH LEFT TO DO. The police interviewed everyone there. Irene didn’t say that she had been in the fields with Bert when she noticed the fi
re. She didn’t believe that it was Bert who had been left in charge of the furnace. It was hard to credit that he would have been sitting there tamping down his pipe that night, but the story that he had left his post satisfied them all. He was, in the end, a hero, they said, as if that excused everything. He saved the little girl’s life. There was a brief story in the newspaper about the fire and the death of a worker.
The identity of the man who died has been difficult to establish, as he was carrying no papers, and has no known next-of-kin. He matches the description of an Austrian called Hans Bottcher, who was sought as a ship deserter before the war. This man was a German, perhaps with Jewish ancestry. It was thought he was seeking asylum from Nazi Germany. When faced with the possibility of detention and subsequent deportation, he found work in the West Coast coal mines throughout the war. Inquiries are proceeding. His remains will be buried.
‘I don’t forget a face,’ Jock said. ‘I knew I’d seen him before.’
Irene waited for the body to be moved. Jock went to town with the police when they left with it. The workers had retreated to their baches, a pall fallen over the place. She went to the spot where Bert had died. The area had been cleared; there seemed nothing to see except scorch marks on the bare earth. She began to walk away, through the long grass that led beyond to the apple trees, then stopped. At her feet lay some small objects, things that must have flown from Bert’s pockets and from his clothes. She picked them up and wrapped them in her handkerchief.
