The Paua Tower

by Coral Atkinson

  Deciding to go to bed, Jack stood up and caught sight of his reflection in the wall mirror. How ill and haggard he looked. He was not yet fifty but his face belonged to a much older man, his eyes withdrawn into his skin, his cheeks sagging on the bones. Jack looked away as he pulled the firescreen over the grate.

  ‘My God,’ said Vic as they came out of the side door of the cinema into the darkness of Marlborough Avenue. The street was surging with men running forward, throwing anything they could lay their hands on and running back. Everyone seemed to be shouting and from the main street came the sound of breaking glass. Vic saw the big figure of Tiny Mulcock in the mêlée and grabbed his coat.

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’ Vic asked.

  ‘The crowd’s huge — they tried to get into the meeting and the police stopped them,’ panted Tiny, his face red and damp.

  ‘It wasn’t the police,’ said Vic. ‘The doors had to be shut — there were too many people in there.’

  ‘Buggered if I know what went on,’ said Tiny, ‘but someone spat at a cop and then one of the Walsh boys started smashing shop windows and everyone’s gone berserk. It’s fucking awful; the Specials are clobbering everyone.’

  ‘We need to get down there,’ said Vic.

  ‘What for?’ said Tiny. ‘Unless you want your block knocked off.’

  ‘He’s right.’ Sam Langdon looked about in panic.

  ‘Something needs to be done,’ said Armstrong.

  Vic nodded. ‘If this keeps up, people’ll get killed.’

  ‘Things look way out of control already,’ said Langdon. ‘Can’t see anyone stopping it now.’

  ‘We’re going to have a bloody good try,’ insisted Vic, pushing his hand through his hair.

  With Gilchrist and Armstrong he shouldered his way through the moving throng to the corner of the main street.

  ‘Can’t see anything except police-horses’ bums from here,’ said Gilchrist.

  ‘The fire escape,’ said Vic, looking at the side of the cinema. ‘If we can reach the bottom of that we could make it to the veranda.’ The three of them looked at the extendable metal ladder, which dangled from the building, tantalisingly beyond their reach.

  ‘Too high,’ said Armstrong, who was still holding the chair he had grabbed in the cinema.

  ‘The rubbish bins over there — we could use them,’ said Vic.

  They dragged the bins together and piled them on the chair to make a precarious tower against the side of the building. Helped by the others, Vic climbed to the top, then reached up, his hands grazing the metal of the ladder’s bottom rung. Suddenly the crowd was pushed back, knocking the structure from under him and he was thrown to the ground. He got to his feet, brushing down his grazed hands and tried again. The bins creaked and swayed.

  ‘Watch it!’ Armstrong shouted.

  Vic caught the rung and pulled himself up just as the top container collapsed. Once on the ladder he was able to push down the extension for the others to climb.

  Behind the façade of the cinema Vic could see the main street, a confusion of soft hats, caps and berets swirled under the streetlights. There was a wild, explosive feeling in the night, as if all the pent-up rage, the years of humiliation, the lack of food, proper wages and a decent job had goaded men beyond endurance. Despair and frustration were cresting and breaking over the town like a gigantic wave.

  In front of the cinema the Specials in their tin hats and police in helmets pressed forward in a ragged line, endeavouring to disperse the crowd by driving them back down the street. Vic could see that the people in front were trapped as the throng behind surged forward. The Specials were swinging their long hardwood batons as if they were drum majors heading some extraordinary band. Heads were being thumped seemingly at random. Over the uproar Vic could hear the deadly thwack and shouts of pain as men dropped back and vanished into the swaying fray. He could hear the high whinny of the police horses as they were forced against the crowd. He saw a large woman in a dark cardigan kicked by a horse’s hoof. Screaming, she stumbled backwards and disappeared. A rubbish bin flew overhead, breaking the window of Gillmans the drapery with a cataclysmic smash. A man in a long overcoat was being shoved into a police van. Vic thought it was one of the Nicholson brothers from Punawai but it was hard to be sure. On the footpath, boys with shanghais were weaving about peppering glass with stones; individual fights were erupting in shop doorways and alleyways. In the vacant section next to the Adelphi, men were ripping apart the paling fence to provide weapons and protection. There was a yawning, tearing sound as each slat broke. A youth in a checked jacket pitched forward out of the crowd, stumbling perhaps over a foot or a kerbstone; Vic saw a Special raise his baton and beat the young man about the head and shoulders until he fell. The fire engines arrived at the corner of Waterloo Street and the firemen start unrolling hoses. Were they planning to turn them on the crowd?

  Armstrong was on the veranda roof calling for calm, though without a megaphone his voice was lost in the uproar.

  Vic, who was sheltering with Gilchrist behind the façade at the side, saw two Specials look up at the cinema and make for the fire escape.

  ‘Run, Armstrong!’ Vic yelled as he and Gilchrist dodged past the Otway leader along the top of the corrugated iron veranda. ‘They’re after us!’

  Vic slithered down a drainpipe outside Pearsons’ with Gilchrist behind him; Armstrong had disappeared but Vic didn’t know if he had escaped.

  ‘This is a disaster — people are going to get killed,’ Vic gasped as the crowd pushed him and Gilchrist against an old hitching post outside the shop.

  ‘Could be real bloodbath, just what the bosses want,’ shouted Gilchrist above the din.

  ‘Got an idea,’ said Vic.

  ‘What’d you say?’ said Gilchrist.

  ‘We could turn the streetlights and electricity off. If those bloody Specials were in the dark, they’d find it harder to belt people up,’ said Vic.

  ‘Could you do it?’ mouthed Gilchrist.

  ‘Think so,’ said Vic, beginning to struggle against the crowd. ‘Have to go to the substation on Trafalgar Street. You coming?’

  ‘Course,’ said Gilchrist, following him.

  The men jostled their way along together. They were clouted by elbows and shoulders as the crowd pressed against them like a shouting, shuffling wall. All around was the smell of old clothes and human sweat. The mass of people carried the two friends forward, then just as suddenly fell back, and on the return movement Gilchrist vanished. There was no time to look about so Vic pushed on alone. It was difficult manoeuvring among the solid wedge of bodies — men wearing war medals on tatty coats, young men in unravelling jerseys under old suit jackets, and occasionally a woman, propelled Vic back towards the cinema.

  Alongside Davidsons’ grocery were a corrugated iron fence and an alleyway that came out in Trafalgar Street close to the electricity substation. Vic shoved and heaved his way out of the crowd into the shortcut. He knew he had to hurry before things got even worse and someone was killed. It was darker than on the main street but as he ran down the lane Vic could make out a group of people around an elevated door. It looked as if the side entrance to the shop had been smashed and a young man in torn trousers was on some steps leading to the broken opening. He was pulling what looked like bags of flour and sugar through the aperture and throwing them down. A man in his shirtsleeves was packing them into a homemade pushcart while other people were carrying the sacks away.

  ‘The Specials, they’re coming!’ someone shouted. The youth jumped to the ground and everyone scattered. The man with the loaded cart pulled it behind him, but as he did so a wheel broke free. There was confusion as the exit to Trafalgar Street was momentarily blocked. Vic leapt for the fence, hoping to escape. His hands gripped the top of the barrier and as they did so he heard the sound of hurrying feet and felt a crack across the side of his head like a cannon exploding in his ear. A flurry of shapes, garish leaves harried by a hurricane, rose
before his vision and Vic’s fingers uncurled from the fence as he tumbled to the ground.

  Vic felt as if a wedge had been cut off his head by a bacon slicer, and one of his eyes was difficult to open. He’d no idea how long he’d been lying on top of the pile of cardboard boxes but he doubted it was for long. The lane was empty, except for the overturned handcart spewing the looted sacks, but there was still the noise of mayhem in the main street. Vic pulled himself up, holding onto the fence supports. When he put his hand to his face he could feel it damp: he supposed it was blood. Forcing himself to his feet, he went unsteadily down the lane. When he turned into Trafalgar Street he could hear sounds of hitting and agonised cries coming from an abandoned building near the corner.

  The Nell Gwyn Crystallised Fruit Works had boarded-up windows and doorways covered by rusted metal gates, most of which were torn adrift and flapped in the street. The noise was coming from the main entrance. Head blazing with pain, Vic ran towards the old building, where a streetlight illuminated the factory doorway. Looking in he saw a familiar figure in a Specials tin hat with a baton, beating the head and shoulders of a man struggling on the ground. The dark moustache and ample girth were unmistakable: it was Jim Maguire. At his feet was Gilchrist, arms around his head and his face covered in blood like a dark mask.

  Maybe there was a split-second when Vic thought of what Maguire had done to Stella, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that when he drew back his fist and hit Maguire on the jaw, it was like a train charging at a mountain. Maguire, caught off guard, stumbled and clutched at the loose metal gate as it swung behind him. His tin hat tumbled off and he fell across the doorway, hitting the back of his head on the edge of the concrete step with a cracking thump.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Vic, putting his hand out to Gilchrist, who was endeavouring to stand.

  ‘No, I’m fucking not.’ Gilchrist’s voice was indistinct. ‘Think my shoulder’s broken.’

  ‘What happened?’ said Vic.

  ‘Got caught up with looters, lost my glasses, can see bugger all without them. Hid here ’cause the Specials were after me. That bastard you’ve just decked followed me in.’ Gilchrist tried to pull himself to his feet, his hands clutching the doorframe.

  ‘I seem to have laid him out cold.’ Vic peered at the prone Maguire.

  ‘Bloody good job if you killed him,’ said Gilchrist, wiping his face with his jacket sleeve.

  The substation on Trafalgar Street was a wooden structure built high off the pavement. It had no windows and a pair of narrow doors that were always locked. Vic, who had passed the building numerous times, thought of the locks as he ran, and hoped he’d be able to break them. He’d left Gilchrist sitting in the gutter beside the supine Maguire and promised he’d be back as soon as the job was done. Grabbing Maguire’s baton, he’d headed off.

  Vic leapt up the steps and hit the doors with the hardwood truncheon as heavily as he could. Once, twice, three times. Nothing happened. He hoped there were no police or Specials about, but guessed most of them were fully occupied in the main street. He thumped again and again. His head hurt and every time he swung the stick he felt dizzy. On he went, bashing at the door, until suddenly he hit a weak spot and a slice of wood splintered and broke. Vic attacked the broken part like fury and soon had done sufficient damage to force the lock. The doors opened inwards in front of him.

  The interior was in utter darkness. There was a slight rumbling noise — sometimes loud, sometimes low — coming from the building’s heart. The place seemed alive and possessed by its own weird conversation. Fear fluttered through Vic.

  Find the switch, must find the switch, he told himself as he stepped tentatively into the mumbling blackness. If only he’d worked on municipal supply, or wired up the place himself, he’d know immediately where the light switch was. Probably behind the door, he guessed as he scrabbled about, but he found nothing. Maybe the other side. Vic pawed the wall for a moment, then his fingers touched something that felt right. He pushed down and the light went on.

  The place was bare and functional. In front of him was a huge slab of marble covered in brass contacts with fuses plugged into them. Take it easy now, this looks like live metal, Vic thought, gazing around and seeing the big switches on the other side. He needed the switch for the main part of town, but how in heaven would he know which one it was? There was no time for reading labels and fiddling about. Better to go for the main incomer — cut everything off at one fell swoop.

  Vic looked about and saw the huge metal cabinet of the transformer, then, glancing back, he saw the levers sticking out of the switches like a row of spade handles. Careful, he said to himself, this is high-voltage stuff. He peered at the switch cabinet, searching for the button. It had to be somewhere but he couldn’t see it. Hurry, hurry, people may be dying as you’re messing about! Just try the lever and hope like crazy it’s the right thing.

  Vic grasped the handle and pulled. At first it was stiff, reluctant to move, and then he felt it yield under his pressure. Vic jumped in fright as there was an almighty bang and everything went dark. There was a pause, a shudder from the machinery and silence. Vic groped his way to the door and looked out into the street. The street and shop lights were off: everywhere was black. He had done it.

  Almost by instinct he pulled the doors of the substation closed again and fumbled to secure the lock. Then he felt his way down the dark steps to the pavement.

  Chapter 21

  It was dark as Stella came down Sebastopol Street. Blinds were drawn over windows and dogs, locked away for the night in yards and kennels, barked as she passed. There was no moon and few streetlights. Stella tried to alternate running and walking between the lampposts as she had as a child, but she found running difficult with her belly bouncing under her jacket, so she walked as quickly as she could and hoped it was fast enough. The closer she got to the main street the more noise she could hear — an angry, jumbled sound of men shouting and scurrying feet. The unemployed march should be long over by now and the meeting in the cinema must be almost halfway through. What were all these people doing running and shouting in the darkness?

  A few hours before, after Roland had left for his rehearsal, Stella and Lal had been sewing in the vicarage back sitting room. Stella was working at Lal’s treadle machine making a baby gown, and Lal was by the fire embroidering blue and pink flowers on a little pillowcase. Roland didn’t approve of the way Lal treated Stella as more of a friend than a servant, but whenever he’d raised it Lal had rounded on him. Accused him of being a snob and a hypocrite — and wasn’t Jesus’ own earthly father a working man?

  ‘How are the pains now?’ asked Stella, pausing in her work.

  ‘They’re getting worse,’ said Lal. ‘Not all the time, but when they come they really hurt.’

  ‘Maybe you should go to bed,’ said Stella.

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ said Lal, laying the pillowcase on the top of her open workbasket.

  When Lal went out of the room Stella sat with her feet idling on the treadle of the machine and thought about Vic. She knew about the big meeting in town that night and she hoped he would be safe. She wished she hadn’t felt the need to send him away when they’d met in the library, but once her baby was born things would be different. It was odd, Stella thought, but as the months passed, the recollection of what had happened with Mr Maguire was slowly changing, like a persistent stain that fades after many washes. The baby was hers and hers alone, though one day she hoped it would also belong to Vic. Stella imagined being together with Vic and the child; holding hands as they pushed a wicker pram along the street, or sitting together on the grass, the baby in a white smocked top propped between them.

  ‘Stella!’ Lal called from the bedroom. ‘Stella, quick!’

  Stella ran down the corridor. Lal was sitting on the side of the bed looking at a damp mark on the floor.

  ‘My waters have broken; I think baby’s coming.’ Lal was half crying and half laughing as she hugged her sto
mach.

  ‘You get into bed and I’ll go and fetch Dr Cunningham,’ said Stella, getting Lal’s nightdress from under the pillow. ‘And I’m sure Mr Crawford will be back before too long.’

  At first Stella mistook the dark shape for a bag of coal. Coming nearer she saw it was a bare-headed middle-aged man, sitting in the gutter holding his head in his hands. He looked up.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Stella, seeing a smear of what looked like blood on the man’s face.

  ‘Think so,’ said the man, his speech slightly slurred. ‘The Specials whacked me.’

  ‘It looks nasty, needs seeing to,’ said Stella.

  ‘Reckon I’ll live,’ said the man, taking a scarf off from around his neck and winding it turban style about his head, ‘though I wouldn’t go down to the main street just now if I were you.’

  ‘Got to,’ Stella said, feeling fearful.

  ‘Well, keep down this end of the town then,’ the man said. ‘There’s merry hell going on around the Adelphi.’

  When Stella reached the main street she saw for herself. Mr Halsall, the newsagent, was standing in the open door of his shop holding a rifle, and a man was outside Bonds Hardware nailing wooden slats across the window. Three boys were climbing on the roof of the public toilets. Stella saw one stand up with a slingshot in his hand and aim at the windows of the Chinese greengrocer across the road. There was a plopping noise as the stones punctured the glass. When Mr Halsall shouted and brandished his rifle the boys disappeared into the shadows of the roof.