All Day at the Movies

by Fiona Kidman

  Paola takes deep breaths to steady herself. ‘The company is sending all the men back to Italy. You know there are only a few of us left?’

  ‘I do know that. Yes.’

  Paola gives her a sideways glance. ‘Perhaps you do.’ She wears a kerchief over her head, tied at the back, a dark jacket and a long brown skirt that covers her calves. ‘They call it the repatriation. Lorenzo has our tickets, we go the week after next. No, he goes. The thing is, I am not going back.’

  At first Janice doesn’t understand. ‘You’re staying here? Hey, that’s great. I didn’t think Lorenzo would.’

  ‘Lorenzo will go back,’ Paola says, her voice measured and flat, as if she’s explaining to a child. ‘I will not. Tonight the bus for Auckland passes through around seven. I want to be on it. I don’t wish to look like old Paola, I want to look like new Paola.’

  Janice’s stomach lurches. ‘What do you want me to do?’ Janice has done enough risky things in her life — running away from home when she was still supposed to be in school, living with a man she wasn’t married to, having a baby, smoking a great deal of dope at one time or another, although not while she lived in the camp, and hardly ever, now that Darrell’s gone.

  ‘I am going to change my clothes. I have been up to Rotorua today and bought jeans, same as Kiwi girls wear. New jacket. Look, leather.’ Paola holds up a black coat. It is as soft to the touch as a baby’s shawl. ‘See, I put these clothes on. I have been, too, to the Woolworth shop. There I have bought glasses.’ The spectacles have big blue frames.

  ‘You’re not really going to do this,’ Janice says. ‘You’ll still look like you. Well, sort of like you.’

  ‘No, because now you are going to cut off my hair. Very short like that of boy.’

  ‘Paola, I can’t. You know I can’t. Nonie would kill me.’

  Paola fixes her eyes on Janice’s, reflected back in the mirror. It’s unspoken, but Janice knows that this is about payback, that she owes Paola.

  Janice tries a different tack. ‘You won’t be able to stay in the country if Lorenzo goes. The company will tell the immigration people.’

  ‘I have my passport.’

  ‘They’ll find you and send you back to Italy.’ Janice doesn’t know how she knows this. But there has been so much talk of the conclusion of the contract, the last Santa Barbara festival to bless the workers, the end of the tunnelling and the return home. Lorenzo has made enough money to build a house on the edge of the Adriatic Ocean, where he and Paola and his mother and father and his sister who isn’t yet married will all live. For those who are staying, there’s paperwork to be done, immigration to consult. It’s a process that will take time.

  ‘Cut.’ Paola picks up the scissors and hands them to Janice. As she slides off her old jacket, preparing to sit in the chair, she reveals a new red silk blouse that shows off her curves. ‘He will not find me. I will get a job in Auckland. After a while he will go back to Italy, you see. Then I will find people to help me. Those women’s liberation people, what do they call them? They have houses. Refuges. I will go to a refuge and tell them they have to help me, I help other women, now it is your turn. I will be dead if I go back to Italy. Cut my hair, Janice. Now.’

  ‘Okay, but I’ll have to be quick. Heaven’s minder’ll be ringing Nonie soon to see where I am.’

  Janice picks up a swathe of the glorious hair. It feels full of energy, pulsing, a living skein of black silk in her hand. The first cut seems like a blow she is inflicting on Paola, but her friend doesn’t flinch. Janice can tell from the set of her mouth, the angle of her jaw, that she’s going to go through with this. She cuts beneath the collar line, until the hair lies in her hand, free of its owner. She lays it on the counter with something approaching reverence. She has seen long hair cut before, but never anything like this.

  ‘More,’ Paola says. ‘Hurry.’

  Janice picks up the clippers and shears the hair up shorter, so that only a bang falls over Paola’s left eye.

  ‘That is good.’ Even as she speaks, Paola is stripping away her skirt, pulling on the jeans and leather jacket. Then she fishes for some lipstick and applies a generous slash of deep glossy red. Janice sees that she is a stranger to her, but so astonishingly beautiful that she thinks everyone will notice her.

  ‘Your hair,’ Janice says, holding it out.

  ‘The hair is for you. Perhaps you sell it.’

  ‘I couldn’t. It belongs to you.’ Janice hesitates. She knows she’s not going to see Paola again. She loves Paola, she realises, with an intensity that’s almost physical. ‘It’s part of you.’

  Paola laughs, a deep throaty chuckle, as if she is already adopting some new persona. ‘I am not a holy wafer,’ she says, but this is lost on Janice, who doesn’t know what this means. She holds up a set of keys. ‘I am going to leave the keys in the Land Rover. It is in the car park near the grocer’s shop. If anybody asks, you tell them you do not know where it is. You have not seen me. You understand?’

  Janice nods in agreement. She is wrapping up the hair, looping it through in a knot so that it doesn’t all fall apart, and slipping it into her duffel bag. She wants Paola gone, so that she can clear away all traces of her deed as quickly as possible. When Paola has left, she’ll give the minder a quick call to say she’s on her way.

  At the doorway, Paola hesitates. ‘You should leave, too. Soon.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Of course not. Hey, do not look like that. They would pick me up very quick if there was a little girl along with us. But I think you might get trouble soon.’

  ‘Why? Paola, you’d better tell me right now.’ The shoe’s on the other foot now, she thinks. She’s the one with the power now that she knows what Paola’s up to. She has Heaven to guard and she will do what it takes.

  Paola says in a quick frightened voice, ‘Darrell’s back.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘Lorenzo saw him yesterday at the petrol station. He told him about Tommy.’

  ‘What about Tommy?’

  ‘You know what about Tommy.’

  ‘Were you going to go without telling me?’

  ‘I have told you. And now I am — what is it that you say? — I am out of it. Pick up your girl, Janice, and leave. Go while you can.’

  JANICE HURRIES NOW. SHE REARRANGES the counter so that it will be neat and ready for business when Nonie arrives in the morning. After a moment’s hesitation, she takes thirty dollars out of Nonie’s till, the bit of change that she keeps there. Janice has told her in the past that she’s a fool to leave it there, but Nonie says easily, who would rob her, and it wasn’t that much money. To Janice, thirty dollars is thirty dollars and will buy her and Heaven a ticket out of town, just like Paola. She’s not sure where, perhaps to Rotorua, a town she knows from the days when she and Darrell used to ride the roads. She hasn’t been further north than that.

  The woman who minds Heaven for her is impatient for the child to be gone. She’s in her sixties, heavy ankles, a not very clean apron tied at the waist. Her kitchen is steamed up from cabbage cooking on the stove top. It’s past the hour when she likes to release the cork on a bottle of wine. Heaven stands at the door, already wearing her coat, and grabs Janice’s hand. The kid always acts like she hasn’t seen her mother for weeks and clings to her as if she’s a lifeline to happiness.

  They set off at a brisk pace, and even as they go, Janice is formulating a plan in her head about packing up as soon as they have eaten dinner that evening and being ready to go first thing. It’s not that she owns much. The house was furnished when it was let to her and Darrell. There are some pots and pans she will have to leave behind, but she might be able to stuff some of the bed linen and towels into her suitcase. Otherwise it’s just their clothes and Heaven’s toys.

  As Janice walks down the road with Heaven at her side, she sees a glow in the darkness that’s falling over the town on this spring evening. The street lamps are coming on, poking fingers of light over
the houses with their drawn curtains, tentacles of mist from the mountains descending and curling around the ragged attempts at vegetable gardens, illuminating the new paling fences. But this flickering brightness isn’t the street lamps. A sixth sense tells her not to round the corner. But Heaven pulls on her hand and it’s too late.

  There’s a burning cross laid out on her lawn and a man stands in the shadows cast by the flames near her gate. She thinks, for an instant, that it’s her lover awaiting her return. But it’s too tall for Tommaso and she knows it’s Darrell. Her feet won’t move.

  She gets to say, before the first smash of his fist, ‘I’m over you, Darrell.’

  ‘You belong to me,’ he says. ‘You’ll burn in hell if I don’t save you.’

  The blows falling on her head are swift and sure. She’s on the ground and a boot smashes the nose that has healed and is now broken again; she hears the crunch of leather on bone. Her eardrum shatters at the second kick. Janice throws her body over Heaven. All the time she screams, a long thin howl, the word ‘help’ over and again.

  Another man appears from out of the dark; dimly she hears some methodical punches. She knows who it is but she won’t say his name. The beating Darrell is receiving at Tommaso’s hands is something she knows he’ll never forgive. If she survives this round, she won’t last another.

  People are coming out of the houses to see what the commotion is about. In a few minutes a police car arrives, lights flashing. By then Tommaso has gone, and so, too, has Darrell. Then everything goes black as she slides into unconsciousness.

  When she wakes in the hospital in another town, she asks, as soon as she can speak, where Heaven is. At first the nurse thinks that Janice believes she’s dead. When she’s able to explain, the nurse says right then, she’ll get the social worker who’s been dealing with her daughter to come and talk to her.

  Heaven, it turns out, has been taken into care. They’ve been searching for Janice’s relatives to see who can take the child in, but so far they’ve had no luck. Surely there must be someone who can look after her? Janice says she has a sister, but she’s got enough kids of her own, from what she’s heard, and anyway she’s turned into a stuck-up bitch. Janice doesn’t want her looking down on her. Besides, she wants to get out of here and get her kid back.

  ‘It might take a little while to arrange,’ the social worker says. She’s an older woman, her manner formal, wearing a grey pants suit, her mouth a little scarlet bow. ‘What did you say your sister’s name was? Belinda Anderson? Funny, that name rings a bell. Pawson? Anderson? Oh well, it’s hard to keep track of you all.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in years.’

  ‘Well, I could be mistaken,’ says the woman, who has introduced herself as Miss Borrell. ‘I thought I might have met her when I was working down south.’

  ‘She’s not getting my girl. Anyway, it’s that Darrell you should be after,’ Janice says. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Well, maybe not. Nonie says she forgives you for the money you took from her till.’

  ‘Okay then. I was scared. I’m sorry about that.’

  Miss Borrell breathes long and hard through her nose, pursing her mouth. ‘The police found some illegal substances in the house where you were living.’

  ‘Look at me,’ Janice says. ‘You think my life is a bowl of chicken soup?’

  ‘What sort of life do you think you’re going to give your child? Always on the run. You can’t even read and write properly.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with it?’ But it stops her and she looks down to the edge of the sheet, humiliated and sullen. ‘Heaven won’t get anywhere if she doesn’t have me. She’ll pine away and die. Please.’

  ‘We’re going to give you a chance,’ Miss Borrell says, as if satisfied that she has the upper hand. Of course, she’s known all along what was going to happen, Janice thinks afterwards.

  The social worker explains how a protection order will be obtained, how Janice and Heaven will go to Auckland and live at a secret location, known only to the social workers. She advises Janice to change Heaven’s name as it will show up too easily on the school roll. Janice, too, is advised to use a different surname. To all intents and purposes, she’ll become a new person. She’ll live clean of drugs, she won’t drink or go to hotels, she won’t try to contact the Italians who have said, anyway, that they want nothing more to do with her, she’ll learn to merge into a big city and become unseen. She’ll be happy and grateful. The last isn’t actually said, but Janice knows that this is what’s expected of her.

  Later, a letter will be sent, addressed to Janice, care of the post office in Turangi, marked ‘Please Forward’ on the envelope. It reads:

  Dear Janice,

  A woman I used to know a few years ago has been in touch with me (you can probably guess who this is). She wouldn’t tell me what it was all about, because it’s confidential and so on, but I gather you’ve had some sort of bother and she’s worried about you. I’m sorry about this and hope it’s not too serious. I’ve been pretty lucky so far, things have gone better for me than I expected. I’ve lost track of the family and I’d really like us to all get back in touch with each other. I know where Grant is now, and our big sister Jessie has her name in the papers, though she doesn’t answer my letters. But I have no idea where you are and I miss you. I’m here if you need me, you only have to say.

  Love from Belinda

  The postmaster doesn’t know where to send this letter. Eventually it will go to headquarters to be destroyed, along with other undelivered mail.

  Janice changes Heaven’s name, for now, to Paula. It keeps alive that brief flame of friendship she shared with the Italian woman. In time, she believes, her daughter will be Heaven again.

  9

  All day at the movies

  1992

  IN THE STILL PART OF SUMMER EVENINGS, Grant Pawson would catch a No. 3 bus to Karori. One or two people who were regulars on the route would nod to him as if his face were familiar although they couldn’t quite place him. He could be any almost middle-aged man going home to his wife and family. At the stop before the turn-off to the cemetery, he alighted, walking briskly to his destination, briefcase in hand, suit coat unbuttoned, his tie, usually red-patterned, flapping if there was a breeze. To his left, as he entered the gates, lay a rose garden at the centre of radiating plaques for those who had been cremated, their surfaces so small that only miniature versions of tombstone inscriptions could be engraved on them. Beyond, on his right, as he made his way along the avenue that ran through the cemetery, was the Small Crematorium chapel. Its interior reminded him of little dark chapels in Europe, without the overwhelming presence of saints and martyrs bleeding in plaster, or the scent of incense on the air.

  The cemetery covered a large tract of land, forty hectares in all, and housed, if that were the right word for it, more than eighty thousand human remains. To read the laments of the bereaved on each stone could take many months, if one was so inclined. Some famous people were buried there. Grant always hesitated before the tombstone of Labour prime minister Walter Nash, and that of his wife, Lot. A good man who shouldn’t be forgotten. Grant sometimes plucked leaves or pieces of flowers off nearby graves and placed them on the stone. There were separate sections for Chinese and Jewish and Greek and other varieties of humanity, Roman Catholics and war veterans, and so on, and this refined Grant’s search. He knew what he was looking for and none of these fitted, except perhaps Roman Catholics. There were nuns and priests mingled with worn-out workmen and women who’d died in childbirth, and among them there was the possibility of an acceptable find.

  After he had visited his mother’s grave, as he did on each visit, he would look for the graves of children, small graves tucked among the larger slabs, often right alongside them, as if keeping the grown-ups company. Sometimes he would find the name of a child added to the stone on a family plot, so that he could never take for granted that the larger monuments might not have one
sad line added, recording the loss of ‘dear Boysie’ or ‘our wee angel only lent’.

  The cemetery had become crowded and now most of the burials took place at the cemetery along the coast road, where untouched land stretched far and away into the scrublands, but all of those graves were too new. So he continued to search among the tombstones that had gathered moss. And this solitary pastime, which may have seemed strange to anyone observing him, gave him an odd comfort, a sense of direction that made his everyday life, down the road at Parliament, seem tawdry and insignificant.

  Often, as he was leaving towards dusk, he stopped at the rose garden and touched the plaque where Allan Johnson’s ashes were planted. After his friend had taken his own life, nobody had come forward to claim his ashes, and once a suitable amount of time had passed the funeral director had allowed Grant to take the urn. For some years it sat in the wardrobe of the apartment Grant rented in the city, until he first set off to travel abroad. He feared that he might not come back safely and that the ashes would be discarded, a macabre discovery for some unsuspecting future tenant. Grant had bought one of the little bronze plaques, so that Allan could be remembered in the rose garden, as if he had been a real person, not just the figment of Grant’s imagination that he occasionally seemed to be, after nearly twenty years.

  But he was close to exhausting the possibilities of the perfect match for what he was seeking at Karori cemetery. Soon he would have to get out his blue Peugeot car, with its sweetly purring engine, and drive to cemeteries further afield: the Taita Lawn Cemetery, or the one at Akatarawa in a bush-clad valley. And beyond those lay little towns, the out-of-the-way places where families moved on and children became history. There were all of those, beckoning to him. Sooner or later he would find the right one.