Orchard Street

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘Bike,’ Les said.

  I looked out the window at the street again. The neighbours were clustered in front of Pikes’ house. Mrs Pike and Mr Pike were wearing slippers and dressing gowns. There was no Bike, but that wouldn’t alarm them because he was supposed to be on duty at the bank. I saw Teresa running up the street with Mike and Jimmy and slipped out through the door Frank had left open. She stopped at our gate.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she cried.

  ‘Eileen got hurt. She’s not bad, just a cut on her face.’

  ‘Was it Bike?’

  ‘Sshh,’ I said, looking at his parents. ‘Les says it was. He’s still got the gun. They haven’t caught him.’

  ‘Where’s Eileen?’

  ‘In the house with Mum and the doctor. You should go home, Teresa.’

  ‘I want to stay here. Dad said I had to keep Mike and Jimmy home, but I had to know.’

  I could not tell her Eileen was going to have a baby, not yet.

  Sergeant Horton’s voice shouted from the back of our section: ‘Come down, boy. Come down from there.’

  ‘No. Stay away,’ Bike shouted, as clear as a swamp bird in the night.

  ‘Ian,’ Mrs Pike screamed. She ran across the road and up our steps, with her dressing gown open like rooster wings and her hair unravelled like a jersey. Mr Pike ran after her. I’m not sure what happened next down on the road because Mike said to Jimmy, ‘Come on,’ and they dived into the scrub on the section next door.

  ‘You two,’ Teresa cried, and ran after them. I ran too, without stopping to think. Helping Teresa was my job, it was what I did. We caught them in a clearing at the top of the slope.

  ‘Shut,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Up,’ Mike said.

  We looked where they were pointing, over the tea trees into our back garden. Moonlight filled it like water. Horton and Porteous were standing side by side, shining their torches into the pine tree at the end of the macrocarpa hedge.

  ‘There he is,’ Jimmy whispered.

  We saw Bike. He was up where the branches thinned, caught in the sliding torch-light; mouth as pink as a possum’s nose, eyes possum blind. He had not disguised himself for creeping in the night—a red cable-knit jersey, knitted by his mother; tan trousers; tennis shoes. He clung two-handed and turned his head away from the blinding light, then crept round the skinny trunk to hide behind it, and put his head out one side then the other.

  ‘Come on, son. No one’s going to hurt you,’ Horton called.

  Bike let go the trunk with one hand. He reached inside his jersey and pulled out the revolver. Horton and Porteous dived apart, flicking out their lights. The moon lit them like shrubs on a lawn; and lit Bike too. The pistol gleamed.

  ‘I’ll shoot myself,’ Bike yelled.

  ‘Put it away, Ian. Come down,’ Horton called.

  Mrs Pike ran past the army hut. ‘Ian,’ she screamed.

  ‘Get back,’ Horton bellowed. Porteous jumped and wrestled with her.

  ‘Ian, oh Ian, it’s Mummy here. Oh darling, come down, I can’t live without you.’

  Porteous dragged her behind the army hut, where Mr Pike was hiding. They carried her like firemen down the path and into our house, which was filling up. I saw Mr Redknapp at the door. Other neighbours had crept into our yard and stood leaning inwards at each other, whispering.

  ‘There’s a car going,’ I said. ‘It must be Eileen.’

  ‘I hope she’ll be all right.’

  ‘Just a bit of wood in her cheek.’

  ‘Why isn’t he shooting?’ Jimmy said.

  Porteous came back and Horton told him to clear the neighbours back to the road. He kept his torch switched off, watching Bike.

  ‘Don’t do anything silly, son,’ he called.

  ‘There must be more cops coming,’ I whispered.

  ‘With machine-guns,’ Mike said.

  ‘Shut up, Mike,’ Teresa said.

  ‘Look,’ Jimmy said.

  Someone else was climbing the tree. He was halfway up, as agile as a monkey. We saw his white hands and white face. Horton saw him too. He aimed his torch.

  ‘It’s Mr Redknapp,’ I said.

  ‘Redknapp. Get down from there,’ Horton yelled.

  Mr Redknapp kept climbing. Bike, alerted by Horton’s yell, was looking down. He pointed the revolver. ‘I’ll shoot,’ he cried.

  ‘No, Ian. I’m only coming up to have a talk.’ We heard his voice clearly, like a whisper in some secret cavern opened in the night. Then a breeze sprang up, stirring the tea trees. We heard no more; but saw Mr Redknapp reach towards the pointing revolver and tap it aside. He sat himself comfortably on a branch.

  Horton did not call again. He kept very quiet. Another car arrived in the street. Four policemen ran up our path, and Mr Raffills, hidden in the shadows by Redknapps’ hedge, yelled, ‘Shoot the bugger, why don’t you? He killed that girl.’

  ‘No,’ Horton cried, ‘she’s not dead, Ian. She’s not even hurt.’

  Two policemen grabbed Raffills and hustled him away. One of the others was senior to Horton. He took charge.

  ‘You two in the tree. Come down.’

  Four torches lit Bike and Mr Redknapp. They sat with the pine trunk between them, looking out over our house at the Waitakeres, almost as if they were admiring the view. The pistol hung in Bike’s hand, pointing down.

  ‘Throw down that weapon,’ the new policeman called.

  Mr Redknapp turned his head impatiently. ‘Switch off those damn torches,’ he said.

  ‘It might be best to do what he says, sir,’ Horton said.

  The torches went out. A long time passed.

  ‘He should shoot old Redknapp,’ Mike said.

  ‘Or himself,’ Jimmy said.

  Teresa was shivering. I would have held her to keep her warm if I hadn’t been in my pyjamas.

  ‘I won’t be a minute,’ I said. ‘I just want to see what’s happening in the house.’

  I crept back to the road and went in the front door and got into my trousers and thick jersey. Mum was trying to comfort Mrs Pike, who was melting and collapsing. She could not keep her head straight on her neck. Mr Pike was sitting in a chair, with his face to the wall. Frank Collymore was drinking Dad’s beer.

  ‘Where’s Les and Eileen?’ I asked Dad.

  ‘They’ve gone with the doctor.’

  A policeman ordered everyone out of the house.

  ‘What for?’ Dad said.

  ‘Cordoning the area off.’

  We went down to the road and I got away into the scrub when no one was looking. Bike and Mr Redknapp were still in the tree.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t know. I heard them say ladders and fire hoses, but no one’s gone.’

  ‘They should get the army. Flame throwers,’ Jimmy said.

  I took off my jersey and gave it to Teresa, then put my arm around her to keep warm. From time to time the policeman shouted at Bike to throw down the gun. I could not understand why Mr Redknapp did not take it away from him. Bike kept lifting it and rubbing his face with the back of his hand. It should have been easy to grab.

  Several policemen had gone into Flynns’ farm and taken up places by the fence. Another one had crept into the macrocarpa hedge. But Mr Redknapp said in a loud voice, ‘Keep away,’ and they kept away. I found myself hoping that the policemen in our garden would not find the typewriter in the compost bin.

  The moon had shifted halfway across the sky. I knew Mum would be looking for me. Teresa was yawning and complaining she was cold. Mike and Jimmy had lain down in the scrub and gone to sleep. My arm—the one not round Teresa—was numb with cold and my feet were freezing. I wondered how Bike managed to hold on to the pistol, and Mr Redknapp, who was ill, stay up in the tree. Once or twice I heard him coughing.

  ‘Something’s happening,’ Teresa said.

  I looked in the tree and saw Bike rub his face again; and Mr Redknapp stretch out his hand, as easily as reach
ing for a biscuit on a plate. Bike gave him the revolver. It winked like an eye. Mr Redknapp turned it over, working it out, then broke it open.

  ‘I’m throwing down the gun,’ he called. ‘I’ve taken out the bullets.’

  It flashed like a falling star. The senior policeman snatched it from the ground.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t climb up. We’re coming down,’ Mr Redknapp said.

  He came first, with Bike behind him. On the ground his knees gave way. He sank down, coughing. Bike stepped down. Policemen seized him, one on each arm. He cork-screwed his head as they led him away, and found Mr Redknapp at the base of the tree.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

  ‘Goodbye, Ian,’ Mr Redknapp coughed.

  Mike and Jimmy had woken up.

  ‘Is that all?’ they said.

  ‘You better get home, Teresa. Before your father gets there,’ I said.

  We went down to the road. Bike was already in a police car. Mrs Pike cried on her front porch, arms outstretched. I was relieved to see Mum holding her. The car drove away.

  ‘Teresa,’ I said, ‘Les and Eileen are getting married.’

  ‘I bet I know why.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. She walked down Orchard Street with Mike and Jimmy. After a minute they ran to get warm.

  Mr Redknapp was warming up too, wrapped in a blanket. He got into a car with Porteous and they drove away. I guessed he had a lot of explaining to do.

  Things didn’t settle down at all that night. Policemen hunted for bullets in the walls of the army hut and tried to work out where Bike had done his shooting from. Reporters turned up but we weren’t allowed to talk to them, which was just as well. We talked to the police, answering questions. Frank Collymore rang Teresa and told her Eileen was all right, and called her a good kid for looking after the boys. Then he went across the road and had a beer with Raffills in his shed. Mum spent most of the night with Mrs Pike, making cups of herbal tea for her. Dad sat brooding about Les—but I won’t go on. A story has to stop somewhere. I’ll just try to do what Charles Dickens did, tie up the ends, so you can sigh and say, ‘That’s that.’

  So who is first? Mum and Dad. The strike was over—the lockout, rather—as Dad had predicted. The wharfies had lost. Maybe that made the judge lenient. He fined Dad 100 pounds, and Dad came home and took all the firewood off the door and turned his hidey-hole into a storeroom. No more printing. He did, though, start up on his own a few years later, down in Loomis, and even hired a couple of men to help. Mum said, ‘Now if he’d only stop backing those darned horses we’d be all right.’

  She went back to being a secretary, part time, but never tried restoring the typewriter in the compost bin. Dad dug it up and put it out with the rubbish.

  Eileen was hurt worse than we knew. The splinter of wood was the size of my thumb and barbed like a fish-hook on the end. The doctor called an ambulance and Eileen had it cut out at the hospital. Les and she got married. Les had some sessions with a priest and became a Catholic just before the wedding, which went off well. Teresa was bridesmaid but I wasn’t best man. Les grew up, and lost some of his spark. That’s natural. They had five children and Mum tried to be a good grandmother. But I don’t think she ever changed her opinion that Les could have found a better wife. Ah, well. He drank beer with his father-in-law, but rarely too much. He turned dreamy now and then, thinking perhaps of passenger liners sailing out of the harbour round North Head. ‘Buck up, Les,’ Eileen would say. Once I saw him touch her scarred cheek. ‘That’s the mark of our true love,’ he said. ‘Clown,’ she answered.

  Frank Collymore was fined, like Dad. But he came out of it worse, because the tax department investigated him. He had to pay thousands of pounds. He never tried bookmaking again, but concentrated on the cartage business. Mike became an All Black and Frank never stopped skiting about him. Jimmy tried all sorts of things, some of them shady, but went in with Frank in the end. Collymore and Son. There’s still a firm with that name out in Loomis, although the son these days is Jimmy’s son.

  Mr Redknapp? He went up north and lived at the beach. I don’t know if his health got better or worse. He sent us a card at Christmas time for a year or two—and was careful not to make it a religious one. I hope he caught plenty of fish.

  I’ve mentioned how I met Bike Pike in the downtown square. We exchanged a few pleasantries, then he told me he managed a supermarket in Napier, and was having a break in Auckland with his wife. I saw that I might have only a moment or two, so I asked him what Mr Redknapp had said to him up the tree.

  Bike sighed. ‘We talked about the weather a bit of the time.’

  ‘Were you really going to shoot yourself?’

  ‘I thought so for a while. But then I kind of forgot. He never stopped talking and I couldn’t concentrate. It was freezing too. So I gave him the gun.’

  ‘What was prison like?’

  ‘Pretty grim. But he, old Redknapp, told me it would be. He told me when you do certain things you’ve got to take the consequences. He wasn’t trying to get me to go down. A lot of the time he talked about his life. About the war and getting gassed, stuff like that. I guess I saw how you can go on. And what a small part of my life Eileen was going to be. Anyway, like I said, I got cold. So I climbed down.’

  Bike’s wife arrived and took his arm. She looked at me curiously and smiled—a pleasant woman. He didn’t introduce us; just patted my shoulder, ‘So long, Dinky,’ and walked away. I thought he might have asked after Eileen and Les—but, as he’d said, they were a small part of his life.

  That leaves Teresa and me—and I’m not going to say anything. What we did, whether we went on—it’s a private matter. I became an astronomer. She became a dietitian.

  I showed her this story a while ago.

  ‘That’s the way to end it,’ she said.

  About the author

  Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers for adults and children. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Wattie Award, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award, the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.

  Maurice Gee lives in Nelson with his wife Margareta, and has two daughters and a son.