The Paua Tower

by Coral Atkinson

  Then there was Amélie. Since rehearsals had started, Roland had seen much more of the bank manager’s wife. It was now once a week for the French lesson and twice for rehearsals and, since Mrs Hildred had insisted on having the rehearsals at her home at Grey Gates (‘so much warmer and cosier than the freezing church hall’), Roland had taken to driving Amélie to and fro. When they were together their hands met and touched as if by accident and they smiled a great deal at each other; for Roland the week was strung between the times he saw Amélie and the days he didn’t. Those days were drear and lethargic as wet washing in the rain.

  Lal hadn’t said much about the play but Roland knew she was against it. The subject had remained largely undiscussed until one Saturday morning when the post arrived. Lal was sitting at the kitchen table, her apron straining over her smock, cutting up lemons and oranges for marmalade. Roland was rummaging in the drawer of the dresser looking for a packet of drawing pins when Stella came in with a letter.

  ‘Post for you, Mrs Crawford,’ said Stella, putting the envelope down beside Lal.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lal.

  ‘I’m just going to give the brass on the front step a polish.’ Stella picked up a cloth and tin of cleaner and went back into the hall.

  ‘Who’s the letter from?’ asked Roland.

  ‘Beauchamp and Benedict,’ said Lal. ‘They sound like solicitors.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the envelope. She didn’t speak for a moment, and then let out a little squeal. ‘It’s marvellous, absolutely marvellous! Do you know what? I’ve been left Aunt Babs’s house in Epsom.’

  Thinking back on the scene, Roland wished it could have stopped there: he and Lal in the kitchen, thrilled to at last have a house of their very own, even if it might be years before they lived in it. But very quickly they were arguing. Roland wanted the Auckland house rented out for as much as they could get; Lal was all for letting it for a peppercorn rental to a needy family.

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Roland,’ Lal said, standing up and stretching, her hands against the small of her back. ‘You don’t seem to care about anyone these days except yourself — not me, not baby, not the poor. It’s no wonder people have started to talk about you.’

  ‘Talk?’ said Roland. ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know really,’ said Lal, sitting down again. ‘They’re not going to say much to me but I gather there’s comment about how you can’t be bothered with the parish and you’re only interested in the play and running about after that silly Frenchwoman.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Roland leaned on the back of a kitchen chair.

  ‘Is it?’ said Lal. ‘Because it’s what I think, too.’

  Stu Forster was sitting on a stool in the kitchen of his house at the Punawai camp, digging at a verruca on his foot with a penknife. The wart was excruciatingly painful when he walked and he was determined to get rid of it. The pain and the ticking off he’d just had in a letter from the authorities had put him in a bad mood, which a cupful of whisky had done nothing to soften. Forster paused in his self-butchery and shouted for his wife to do something about the baby’s crying. He heard her cross the hallway and say something to the baby and after a moment the roaring stopped. She’s probably feeding the brat, Forster guessed. He imagined Moana’s freeing her ample breasts from the constraints of her blouse as she sat on the sagging bed and felt a pang of desire. He could do with a nuzzle on those tits himself. There had been nothing but short rations for him since that baby came.

  And now there was the business about the camp. ‘Lax’ the letter had called him, the Punawai camp getting a name in the area for harbouring communists and troublemakers. It had been reported from a police informer that a number of men from Punawai had taken part in a recent meeting of the unemployed in the town, where various criminal and seditious suggestions were openly discussed. Furthermore, some of the Punawai men were apparently office-holders in this and other undesirable organisations. And it wasn’t the first time the matter had been drawn to Mr Forster’s attention, the letter went on. The government had no obligation to provide relief for men of untrustworthy political disposition, just as it could not tolerate camp supervisors who deliberately, or through repeated negligence, permitted known anti-government agitators to remain in the camps. If Mr Forster wished to continue in his current position, these persons were to be weeded out and dismissed immediately.

  Forster took another lunge at his foot with the penknife and shuddered with the pain as blade met flesh. The truth was, he didn’t know what to do. He had no wish to lose his job, but at the same time he had a sneaking admiration for Cowan, Gilchrist and the others. Of course he could have sent them down the road months ago but something had held him back. He knew that if he were out of work he would feel much the same as they did, though he doubted he’d have their guts. Expulsion from the camp was pretty drastic — how did you survive on your own as a single man with no work and nowhere to go?

  There was a small area at the back of the lorry shed that Forster used as an office. It was really just a counter with a chair on one side, a safe, a couple of filing cabinets, a rubbish bin and a calendar from a local garage showing a woman in fishnet stockings. First thing in the morning, when the men were getting on the lorries, Forster had pulled Vic and Gilchrist aside.

  ‘Want to see you two jokers. You first, Cowan,’ Forster said as he limped into the shed.

  ‘I smell trouble,’ said Gilchrist to Vic.

  ‘Weevils in the porridge, green mould on the bread and now an audience with his lordship. What more do you want to start the day?’ Vic grinned.

  ‘There’s been a complaint,’ said Forster. ‘Sedition, criminal activities been publicly discussed at some event of yours.’

  ‘Sedition?’ said Vic, genuinely puzzled. ‘Criminal activities? What on earth are you on about?’

  ‘That Unemployed Workers’ meeting of yours in town. Talk of bringing down the government, defacing property, setting up some sort of commie state. You were there, Cowan — you should know.’ Forster glanced quickly at the letter he was holding and scratched his balding head.

  ‘For crying out loud,’ said Vic, ‘that was talk. People are angry, very angry, and rightly so. They talk big but none of that’s going to happen.’

  ‘You’re sailing perilously close to the wind, Cowan. You and your mates are being watched, I can tell you that for nothing. One false move and you’ll be up on a charge of sedition.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Vic, looking at the woman in the calendar with her fleshy lips and voluptuous backside and thinking longingly of Stella.

  ‘Look here, Cowan, you may not realise it but I’m trying to help. I don’t agree with your politics but I can see you’re not a bad sort, so if I were you I’d keep my head down. Anyway, suit yourself, but you’ve reached the end of the road as far as this camp is concerned.’

  ‘You mean I’m being thrown out?’ said Vic. ‘No more relief work?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ said Forster. ‘To tell you the truth, Cowan, it’s not my doing. I’ve turned a bit of a blind eye to the antics of you and your cobbers these past months — running up and down to town, doing other work, treating the place like a bloody hotel, stirring up all sorts of commie nonsense among the men. Even that wireless of yours — never believed the cock and bull story about how you came by it, most likely stolen for all I know, but that’s over and the pressure’s on to get rid of you. I’ve got a job to keep, and a wife and family to consider.’

  ‘And Gilchrist?’ said Vic.

  ‘Same,’ said Forster, getting up and unlocking the safe. ‘I’ve got the pay owing to you totalled up and then it’s out, and if I see you hanging about Punawai after this morning I’ll have you arrested.’

  ‘Don’t we get to say cheerio to the blokes on the site?’ asked Vic, thinking of Miller and Legatt and the others he counted as friends.

  ‘No,’ said Forster, turning back to face him w
ith a manila envelope in his hand, ‘you don’t. I’m not a fool, Cowan. You’re popular with the men. I don’t want a mutiny on my hands.’

  ‘Bloody fascist prick,’ said Gilchrist as they carried their possessions in sugar bags down the track past the supervisor’s house. They had left a note and the hectograph jelly pad for the others. Vic hoped the camp newspaper would survive their leaving, but somehow doubted it.

  ‘Forster’s got a wife and family to think of,’ said Vic. ‘Sounds as if the bosses have put the screws on him.’

  ‘Fucking toady, if you ask me,’ growled Gilchrist, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Forget him,’ said Vic. ‘It’s what we do now that’s the worry.’

  ‘Bum down to Wellington, I suppose,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Could pick up a job on the ships.’

  ‘But the march?’ said Vic. ‘Got to be here for that.’

  They were passing the hole in the flax hedge that served as a back gate for the supervisor’s house when they heard Mrs Forster’s voice.

  ‘Hey,’ said the Maori woman, coming towards them across the rough grass. She was wearing a floral pinny over her clothes and her long wavy dark hair was secured by two yellow combs.

  ‘Morning,’ said Vic. Gilchrist angrily ignored her.

  ‘Heard you were leaving,’ she said, holding out a paper parcel. ‘I was making some scones and thought you could do with some kai.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Vic, smiling.

  ‘I put butter and homemade jam on them too.’

  ‘You’re a beaut.’ Vic took the lumpy package.

  Halfway to town the two men sat in the long grass on the side of the road and opened the parcel.

  ‘God, it smells good,’ said Vic, partly closing his eyes and drawing in the scent of the fresh baking. He held out the food.

  ‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Gilchrist, attacking a scone with relish.

  Vic took a bite. It seemed years since he’d eaten raspberry jam and the fruity rush in his mouth tasted of his boyhood. Gilchrist passed Vic the lemonade bottle of water they’d brought with them. They sat in silence, too absorbed in the pleasure of eating to speak.

  Raspberry jam was always a treat. Vic’s mother had made it for her employers. He could see Joy, wooden spoon in hand bending over the bubbling crimson liquid, her face shiny with perspiration. When the jars were full, Vic would be allowed scrape up the sugary red tide left on the rim of the pan. He thought of the anticipation of waiting for it to cool, and how often his impatience was such that he ate too soon and the heavy sweetness burnt his mouth.

  Without even the small amount he’d been sending from his relief pay Joy would be worse off now than ever. He had to find work — but where? Tiny Mulcock and his other mates in Matauranga would see him through for a week or two, and after that he could go south with the march: maybe Gilchrist’s suggestion of seeking jobs on the ships wasn’t such a bad one. Yet the thought of leaving Matauranga pained him. Stella was here and, even if she was currently beyond reach, there was at least comfort in her nearness. He would wait and see what happened before making any decision.

  He looked at the mountain, very white against the sky like a broken cup on a blue tablecloth. The fields on the side of the road were strongly green after the winter rain and the sun shone.

  ‘You know, Joe,’ he said, stretching his arms in the air, ‘here we are absolutely on our uppers, kicked out of the camp, no means of support and the whole country gone to hell, and yet somehow I feel sort of cheerful, as if it’ll eventually come right.’

  ‘Can’t imagine why you think that,’ said Gilchrist, putting the cork back in the half-empty bottle of water. ‘My guess is that the fascists are just starting to show their muscle and things are about to get a bloody sight worse, both here and in Europe.’

  The Crawfords’ entire collection of silver objects was gathered on newspapers on the kitchen table. There were the canteen of cutlery, the napkin rings and the teapots, two hot-water jugs, a pair of candlesticks, a set of cake forks, some bonbon dishes, a school tennis trophy, Lal’s dressing table set — mirror, buttonhook, hairpin tray and hairbrush, a brandy flask they never used, an everlasting calendar Roland had inherited from his grandfather and a fruit dish that looked like a basket. Stella and Lal were sitting at the table cleaning. Stella put the polish on and Lal rubbed it off. It was an operation they undertook every second week. Stella had never handled silver before and she liked touching the objects, with their ornate embossing of arabesques and flowers. She also liked working with Lal, talking as if they were family rather than servant and mistress. The topic they discussed the most was babies and today, as they had several times before, they were talking about possible names.

  ‘Max,’ said Stella, drawing the cloth over the prongs of a fork. ‘I think that’s a really good name for a boy.’

  ‘Rupert, too,’ said Lal, who, like Stella, had recently read Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda books.

  ‘No,’ said Stella, ‘it’s not so good, somehow. Suppose it’s because of Rupert Bear and his little checked trousers, though then again there was Rupert Brooke …’ She trailed off, thinking of Vic.

  ‘You know how Roland was so keen on calling baby Peter, if ours is a boy?’ said Lal, rubbing the shaft of a spoon really hard. ‘Would you believe, yesterday he said why didn’t we consider Pierre — you know, the French form? Just imagine — Pierre Crawford!’

  ‘That sounds a bit funny,’ Stella giggled.

  ‘Funny?’ said Lal angrily. ‘It’s one of the many potty ideas Roland seems keen on at present.’

  Stella stopped rubbing the fork and looked at Mrs Crawford in her green viyella smock with the white pique collar.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find the perfect name once you and Mr Crawford actually see the baby,’ Stella said kindly. She knew there was something wrong between the Crawfords and wished she could put it right. Mrs Crawford sounded resentful when she spoke of her husband, and Mr Crawford didn’t seem to see his nice wife, as if his mind was always elsewhere. Yet they were such lucky people, Stella thought, looking around the warm kitchen. Their cups and saucer weren’t chipped, there were no holes in the linoleum on the floor, pots with flat bottoms lined the cupboard, not old uneven ones like Stella was used to, there was a leg of mutton in the meat safe — Stella knew because she’d brought it back from the butcher — and a sack of potatoes in the pantry. They had decent clothes without tears and darns, a bed with sheets and blankets and a feather eiderdown specially sent from a shop in Christchurch, yet none of it seemed to count.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ll be here, Stella, when baby comes,’ said Lal. ‘Roland doesn’t seem interested, somehow, but maybe men aren’t. You and I both with little ones: that’ll be such fun.’

  Stella felt so grateful to the Crawfords for allowing her to stay on at the vicarage after her own baby was born. She felt the comforting weight of her full stomach against her thighs and imagined the baby curled inside her like a walnut in a shell, a tiny scrap of life with her alone to protect and nurture it. She knew people whispered about her disgrace when she walked along Sebastopol Street or into Davidsons’ to order the Crawfords’ groceries, and she didn’t like it, but she also knew that the baby, her baby, was more important than what anyone said.

  ‘There’s bad news,’ said Roland, coming in and taking off his overcoat. ‘Clive Purchase in the barber’s had heard it on the wireless. Those marchers have just gone through Kakati. Apparently there was trouble and they called in the Special Constables. There was a riot or a brawl or whatever and it looks as if one man mightn’t live and another’s badly hurt.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’ said Lal.

  ‘Who got hurt?’ asked Stella, thinking of Vic. ‘Was it anyone from around here?’

  ‘No,’ said Roland, putting his gloves on the table by the silver basket. ‘They weren’t names I knew.’

  Chapter 19

  Vic’s jacket was too small. Drenched and dried over and over, it had sh
runk so much that the sleeves were now far too short and the back too tight. Mrs Mulcock, Tiny’s mother, had sewed up the rip he’d got the night of the meeting, but as Vic walked he could feel the stitches breaking at the shoulder seams. He supposed he’d have to go to one of the depots and look for another jacket but he hated the thought of visiting a charity place and asking for someone else’s cast-offs. All right for women with kiddies but worse somehow for a man. Since the bad times began, Vic had managed with the clothes he’d originally bought new, but it seemed that small luxury was over. Just have to swallow your pride, my boy, and be like every other out-of-work citizen, he told himself.

  It was a glorious morning. The air had the nudging warmth of springtime: there were lambs in the fields and occasional daffodils in farm gardens. Pukeko stalked through paddocks on their long articulated legs and trees were covered in tight green buds. Vic and Gilchrist were on their way to the place where the Otway marchers were camped, to organise events for the following night. Chased off public property by the authorities, the marchers were camping on land belonging to sympathetic farmers.

  ‘What do you know about this chap Sandy Armstrong who’s leading the march?’ asked Gilchrist.

  ‘Not much,’ said Vic. ‘Heard he was a union man before he lost his job, big in the Labour Party, worked in a canning factory or something. Great on organisation, this Otway crowd — there’s a thing or two they could teach us about running talks and lectures, writing pamphlets, all that sort of stuff.’