The Love Apple

by Coral Atkinson

  ‘Horses,’ said Rosaleen, running through the grass to the bush. Oliver followed her.

  The horses were two fallen trees just above the creek. They had rope bridles and sacks for saddles. Rosaleen called her horse Lovely because she had once found an orchid growing on the tree’s trunk. Oliver’s horse was Zebra. Oliver and Rosaleen had been promised ponies of their own in a year or two, but for now they had Lovely and Zebra. On them they rode with the Galway Blazers, the Tips, the Scarteen Black and Tans: famous Irish hunts that Geoffrey Hastings spoke about. They won prizes at the Kumara Races and the English Grand National. They were knights and ladies, and Red Indian braves riding the prairie.

  Light was dappled over the horses. Oliver watched it floating in bright flakes on his skin. His hands looked odd — it was as if they belonged to someone else. Oliver glanced down to where his sailor-suit breeches ended under long stockings. His legs seemed those of a boy he was observing, not his own. He looked across at Rosaleen. She had her head down against Lovely’s ‘mane’, her arms clasped around the tree trunk. Her hair dripped over the bark, her broderie anglaise pinafore was extravagantly white above the dark ferns of the bush floor.

  I will remember this moment, Oliver thought. I will remember it always.

  The two children lay in the grass. It was damp and you weren’t supposed to lie on wet grass — it gave you something called rheumatic fever. They didn’t care. The toffee was thick in their mouths. Teeth wallowed in the sticky mess, distorting speech.

  ‘There’s a giant potato on top of a spoon,’ said Rosaleen, looking at a cloud.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s a blacksmith holding a horse’s hoof.’

  ‘You sound like a frog when you talk,’ said Rosaleen.

  ‘You sound like a frog that’s being squashed by a mangle,’ said Oliver.

  Rosaleen hit his arm with a seeding grass head.

  ‘I’m going to marry you when I grow up,’ said Oliver.

  ‘I’m going to marry PJ,’ said Rosaleen.

  ‘PJ?’ said Oliver, amazed and disbelieving. ‘He’s old!’

  ‘He won’t be old when I marry him.’

  PJ being a potential rival had never occurred to Oliver. PJ was his friend — hadn’t he worked for the Hastings family forever? But PJ was also a grown-up, inhabiting a different world. And what did Rosaleen know of him, anyway? PJ only came up to Simpson’s Bridge to deliver Oliver in the wagon or bring tomatoes for sale at the Pascoes’ store. PJ belonged to Oliver and Hokitika. What right did Rosaleen have fancying herself marrying him?

  ‘Why do you want to marry him?’ said Oliver.

  ‘He’s nice,’ said Rosaleen. ‘He was my Uncle Mick’s friend. Uncle Mick was a hero for Ireland: that’s why he died.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ said Oliver angrily, using a forbidden word.

  Oliver rolled over in the grass, feeling cross. Betrayed. He was angry with PJ. It seemed a desertion that Rosaleen claimed him. PJ — who had always supported Oliver, been on his side. Everyone knew the story of how PJ had rescued him from the fire. PJ was like that. Dependable. PJ could never be Rosaleen’s; PJ was Oliver’s. Just as Rosaleen was Oliver’s. His.

  Oliver had been coming home from school one day, walking with Ben Lockwood to where the road forked to Ben’s place; after that Oliver was on his own. The trees were packed close to the track, like people standing very close together at a horse race. Ferns pushed between the trunks like children peering through adults’ legs. The trees looked at you, Oliver was sure of that. And they talked — talked to one another. Oliver could hear them. It’s just the birds, he told himself, but the talking persisted, louder now. Oliver began to run. The talking ran with him.

  ‘Tart’s kid,’ a tree said.

  ‘Mammy’s a jam tart,’ said another.

  ‘Jam tart, jam tart, jam tart!’

  Oliver shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the talking trees. He ran as fast as he could. Home soon, he said to himself, though he knew it was a lie: he had a good mile to go. Oliver’s throat and his chest hurt. Something hit hard against his face. A stone. The trees were throwing stones. Oliver opened his eyes and saw boys running out onto the track. Green, Pierson, McDowell and Kelly: older, from school. They were waving flax flowers and shouting. Kelly had a shanghai in his hand. The boys stood in a ring around Oliver.

  ‘Your mammy’s dirt,’ said Green, giving Oliver a hard shove.

  ‘See that shit?’ said Pierson, gesturing to a pile of horse droppings on the track. ‘That’s what Hastings’ mother is.’

  ‘Maori shit,’ said Green, gripping Oliver’s collar.

  Oliver could feel tears cluster like swarming insects behind his eyes. He clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms.

  ‘Want to taste some of the shit?’ said Kelly.

  Pierson caught Oliver by his collar. Kelly and McDowell grabbed at his arms and legs and swung him off the ground. Oliver was frightened: he was sure he would wet himself.

  ‘Let me down,’ he said, wriggling unsuccessfully to break free as the trio dragged him over the stones. ‘I’ll give you my yellow and glass taw if you let me go.’

  ‘’Fraidy cat,’ said Pierson, tightening his grip. ‘’Fraid of a little bit of shit.’

  There was the sound of hooves.

  ‘Put him down, bloody little gurriers!’ shouted PJ, galloping into the group. The boys dropped Oliver in astonishment. There were yelps of pain as PJ flailed about with his riding crop. ‘I’ll larn youse. I bloody will if I catch any of youse at him again,’ PJ shouted, as Oliver staggered to his feet. The four boys disappeared into the bush.

  ‘Come on up,’ said PJ, gathering a weeping Oliver onto the saddle in front of him. ‘Yer all right, Master Oliver. One peep more from those chancers and they’ll have me walloping them good and all.’

  Jogging along, enclosed by PJ’s arms holding the bridle, felt safe and comforting. Oliver stopped crying.

  ‘What’s a tart?’ said Oliver.

  ‘Sure yiz know,’ said PJ. ‘A pudding, like.’

  ‘They said my mama’s a tart,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Pay no heed,’ said PJ. ‘That lot say more than their prayers.’

  Oliver put his nose down into the grass. It smelt of mud. The morning didn’t seem the same as before.

  ‘Are you sulking?’ said Rosaleen, her face close to his ear. ‘Sulking ’cause I’m going to marry PJ?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Oliver, without looking up.

  ‘I could marry you as well as PJ,’ said Rosaleen.

  ‘It’s not allowed.’

  ‘Who says?’ said Rosaleen, taking a lump of toffee out of her mouth and rolling it in her fingers.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Oliver, feeling oddly sullied even before the words left his lips, ‘your papa wouldn’t let you marry PJ. PJ’s common.’

  PJ had grown several inches, put on weight, filled out. On the outside he looked a young colonial; inside he was all Irish. Unlike some immigrants who were quick with new allegiance, PJ felt his Irishness like the rare gold nugget that drunk miners boasted of finding: a lodestar in his heart. Hokitika was full of the Irish. ‘Sure, I’m sorry for your trouble’, ‘Going about she was in her figure’, ‘A scunner, he had a real scunner’, the voices said as you walked through the town. At St Mary’s Church PJ would loiter about after Mass: to catch up with the gossip about Ireland, to hear the latest news on Home Rule and Mr Parnell, sometimes just to watch his countryfolk with their faces big as meat plates and to hear the speech of home.

  ‘Do you ever think of going back, Mr Hastings?’ he asked one morning as Geoffrey was dictating a letter to a Dublin seed merchant.

  PJ was an apt pupil learning to read and write. He worked at both skills with a fierce determination and now, though his spelling needed assistance, he could write a creditable copperplate hand. His grammar was improving also, and Geoffrey had even taught him that ‘you’ was both singular and plural and that ‘yiz’ and ‘youse�
�� had no place in ‘correct’ English usage. Along with the other changes PJ had a new name, not that anyone used it.

  ‘You can’t go about without a proper name,’ Geoffrey told him.

  ‘Sure I was always just PJ. Never knew more than that.’

  ‘Let’s suppose the PJ is for Patrick Joseph.’

  ‘That’s what they wrote on the passenger list when I came out here.’

  ‘Well, what about it, Mr Patrick Joseph?’

  ‘Good as the next,’ said PJ.

  Geoffrey put down the seed catalogue he was holding. ‘I do intend going back to Ireland,’ he said, ‘but not now. Maybe when Oliver gets to university. I’d like him to go to Trinity in Dublin; perhaps then.’

  ‘Do you miss the old country?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Geoffrey. ‘My home’s here now, I suppose. I came to New Zealand for my health originally, never intended staying, but things creep up on you and you find yourself increasingly tied to one place. I’ve got so interested in these damned tomatoes; I just can’t imagine leaving them even for a short while.’

  ‘I want to go back,’ said PJ. ‘I’m not ungrateful like, and don’t I think it grand out here, in spite of what some folk are saying about there being a depression these last years, but sometimes I feel it wasn’t right running off from Ireland just because there’s somewhere better to go. Mick Sullivan, Mrs Pascoe’s brother, always used to say there was no mitching till a job’s done, and people should stay and put things right in Ireland rather than been so keen on the emigrating. Being in New Zealand makes me feel proper poorly sometimes, as if I shouldn’t rightfully be here.’

  ‘Well, I for one am enormously glad you are,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Don’t you know, Mr Hastings,’ said PJ, ‘that sometimes I imagine I’m back in the old country walking about just looking at the grass and ditches and the boggy parts and the dandelions so big you could blow your nose in them. And there are nights I’m all for remembering, remembering a bit of an old wall or even a hedgerow. There was a place I knew at the edge of a boreen; in spring it was full of them primroses and violets and when you walked past you could hear little creatures moving about. Honest to God, I couldn’t say what they were but I liked to think of them creatures in there in their homes.’

  Geoffrey smiled. ‘Some of us make good immigrants and some don’t, though I suppose the things we notice as children have a special pull.’

  PJ didn’t reply. He took a deep breath and said very quickly, ‘I was wondering, like, if it would be all right for me to go over to Goldsborough tomorrow? They’re having a grand welcome for Mr Dillon and the delegation of Irish Home Rule members of Parliament there, before coming on to Hokitika for the big meeting.’

  Irish Home Rule politicians whipping up patriotic fervour even here at the end of the earth, Geoffrey thought as he flicked through the pages of the catalogue without properly seeing them. John Dillon, with his inflammatory tongue, preaching nationalism and anti-British sentiment; hadn’t the man been imprisoned more than once in Ireland for his fiery speeches? Geoffrey could just imagine the singing and the speechifying and the feelings of division and bitterness that such an event would bring to the town. Irish differences spilling over into New Zealand, Catholic pitted against Protestant, unionist against republican, even him against PJ; the past reached inexorably forward to shadow and finger the present. There was no escape.

  PJ, noticing Geoffrey’s hesitation, added, ‘Mr and Mrs Pascoe will be going to the big meeting. I met them at the post office on Friday and they said.’

  ‘Yes,’ Geoffrey said wearily, ‘I’m sure they’ll be there.’

  When it came to Irish politics Geoffrey was aware of the divide between him and his friend, Arthur Pascoe, whom Geoffrey felt was overly influenced by the views of his pretty wife. Geoffrey avoided controversial subjects when socialising with his friends at Simpson’s Bridge but it was a different matter with PJ, who lived under his own roof. PJ was young, eager and worshipped the dead Mick Sullivan, who by all accounts had been up to his neck in Fenian activities. It was pointless arguing with the lad, Geoffrey thought, though he was glad that 12,000 watery miles separated Hokitika from Dublin. He had no enthusiasm for violence, believing that the boycotts and intimidation, the threats and assassinations carried out by the more extreme nationalists just added to Ireland’s misery. He recoiled from such senseless excess and as the son of a landlord he feared for his family and friends. At present, with most hopes pinned on Home Rule, things seemed to have calmed down in Ireland; nevertheless, had PJ not emigrated, there was no knowing what republican plotting and illegal mischief the boy might now be part of.

  In the early days of PJ’s employ Geoffrey had felt hostility towards the boy’s views, but PJ’s rescue of Oliver from the fire had diminished his antagonism. Now, whenever Geoffrey was about to criticise those hungry for Irish independence, he thought of how a Fenian sympathiser had saved his son’s life.

  ‘So you’ve got your heart set on going to the welcome at Goldsborough?’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Ah, I have,’ said PJ.

  ‘Then I suppose,’ said Geoffrey, vigorously underlining the address of a Dublin seedsman with his propelling pencil, ‘you’d better go.’

  It seemed every mount in the town had been pressed into service. Hunters and cart-horses, carriage horses and shepherds’ hacks, even the rundown piebald nag that pulled a bread wagon had found a rider.

  The road to Goldsborough was a mêlée of horses, carts and coaches pushing forward to meet John Dillon and his group of fellow Westminster MPs who were touring the world to win support for Irish Home Rule. There was no way the citizens of Hokitika would have it said that their welcome was inferior to any other in the colony, so they turned out to do the delegation proud. In past weeks the progress of Mr Dillon and his fellow parliamentarians had been met with wild enthusiasm up and down the country. New Zealanders, or at least the native-born Irish settlers, were enchanted by the bright-eyed, eager-talking Dillon and his fellows. There were torchlight processions, packed meetings, purses stuffed with gold sovereigns and other generous donations to the Evicted Tenants Fund. There was much singing of Irish songs. Once, after a rendition of ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’, Dillon declared that the song made him think of the ‘wail of a nation and the loss of Ireland’s best and bravest sons’, and there was universal dabbing of eyes and noses.

  The settlement of Goldsborough was in happy chaos as horses, carriages and carts clogged the streets surrounding the official welcoming party. PJ had just manoeuvred his horse to the water trough when he saw a jack coach lumber into the township, packed with people. Musicians with brass instruments in their hands sat on the fly seats; young men hung on straps and clutched more securely seated passengers. The interior of the coach was overflowing: PJ recognised Seamus McGuire from the livery stable alongside a girl in a Watteau hat. The two were hanging over the window of the carriage holding a torn green satin banner that read Cead Mille Failte in gold lettering.

  It was a long wait with many false alarms. There was much convivial kicking of heels in the sunshine and speculation as to when the delegation would finally arrive from Kumara. Little girls in lacy dresses and hoops of flowers pulled at their hair ribbons; mothers shone faces with handkerchiefs and spit. The schoolchildren detailed to present the address wandered off to play marbles or leapfrog in the side street. Bouquets bobbed brilliant in gloved hands and there were constant cries of ‘They’re coming!’ and ‘Fooled you!’ from the local jokers.

  In one corner of the crowd a lad with a penny whistle played a jig and a group of young men and women danced, laughing and shouting. Priests who would normally have had a stern word about such flinging arms and flashing busts walked by smiling. It was that sort of day.

  And finally Dillon’s party arrived and the crowd roared. PJ, who had the advantage of watching the scene from horseback, felt tears on his face. Here before him, stepping up to meet Mr Northcroft, representative of
the Hokitika citizens, and Mr Horgan, of the Irish National League, was John Dillon, member of the Westminster Parliament, Parnell’s right-hand man. Speeches were made, bouquets given and the errant children who had been marshalled back into ranks delivered an address. It all took rather a long time but eventually the party, with the large crowd of well-wishers, was on the road again for Stafford and Hokitika.

  At half-past seven that night PJ was already in his seat at the Duke of Edinburgh Theatre. Looking about the rapidly filling auditorium he felt suffused with pride. He was not alone in his care for Ireland: all these people, here in New Zealand at the other side of the world, were like him, caught up in the struggle. Together they would see the ancient wrongs righted, the land finally free. What did it matter being an orphan when one had so many like-minded countrymen and women? So many kin?

  Arthur and Maeve Pascoe came down the stairs and moved along the seats into the dress circle. Rosaleen was with them. Looking up, PJ could see the girl’s fair hair wafting between the seats behind her mother’s shoulder. Wasn’t it grand they’d brought Rosaleen, PJ thought. She was so young, only eight or nine maybe, but a night like this she’d never forget.

  The meeting started and the mayor took the chair. On the platform were the gentlemen of the reception committee and resident and visiting Catholic clergy. John Dillon was introduced and addresses read. It was Dillon himself that the audience wanted to hear and there was prolonged cheering when he got up to speak. PJ listened, hungry for every word, as Dillon outlined the situation in Ireland, the ongoing problems and misery of evictions and the things for which the Irish parliamentary party was striving. Dillon’s words did not merely proffer information; they reassured the Irish of Hokitika how much they mattered. They were vital to the cause, still Erin’s beloved children. It made PJ want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  He was still effervescent with excitement as he came through the doors of the auditorium into the theatre foyer at the end of the meeting. He felt stirred and fired by what had been said.