Hoi Polloi

by Craig Sherborne

  I lean out my bedroom window. The Senior Sergeant’s blue bobby helmet is nodding down below. Other bobby helmets nod around him. Black curly heads nod back: “Here for a good time is all boss.” An arm lifts up and wants to rest on the Senior Sergeant’s shoulder. It’s a denim arm with frayed, grimy cuffs. The Senior Sergeant slowly pushes the arm away and holds his hands up to stop any more denim arms being placed around his shoulders. “Here for a good time is all boss.”

  On the denim backs are skull and cross-bone patches with tongues poking out of the skull. Winks is also down there standing near the Senior Sergeant. He’s saying he doesn’t want a repeat of past years. He wants the hotel entrance to be clear at all times for patrons. He tries to touch a denim shoulder but his hand is shrugged away. “Here for a good time is all boss.”

  A black curly head bends back to drink from a beer bottle.

  “No drinking in the street,” say the bobby helmets.

  “Not drinking in the street boss. Drinking on the footpath.” Denim arms try but fail to offer bobby helmets a swig.

  “Too fucking good to drink with us?”

  Come the night, Heels is crying. She says she’s sick of this life. The hori gangs are behaving like animals downstairs. That’s all they are, animals. But what can we do? Ban them and they start a fight. Let them into the bars and they start a fight. This festival good for the town? Utter rubbish.

  A cultural event? A joke. The bars are full but so what, count up the damage at the end of the night—glasses, windows, stools, toilet doors, God knows what else. Count that up and say Spring Festival is good for business. Not to mention the cash we’ve forked out to footballers to become bouncers for the night. Sell up and move to Sydney before there’s nothing left to sell because of those animals down there. Sell up and move to Sydney. “I never want to see another hori again,” she sniffles.

  Winks lies in his clothes on the bed beside her. He rests his arm across his eyes. The air stinks of the bar-smoke on him. What if Winks was ever killed by the animals? Don’t the horis think about that? What would happen to us? To me? Don’t they care? How dare they not care.

  “Are we r-r-really m-m-moving to Sydney?” Winks doesn’t answer me. The phone rings. He jumps up and answers that instead. Out he goes through the door. I check the clock: ten to nine. I’m more frightened than usual when the phone rings late. It’s Heels’ crying. Would she please stop crying! Stop it. Stop. I hop onto her bed. The makeup is melting from her eyes. Normally she wants me to kiss her on the lips and hold the kiss for a while. I hate it and always wriggle away. I try to kiss her now that way to please her but she’s not in the mood. She covers her face with her hands.

  I want to go to the phone box with a tray of dregs and then sleep, but I couldn’t sleep anyway, not with horis gangs down in the foyer. How could I sleep when Winks is dealing with the animals and in such danger. What use am I asleep! I should be alongside him helping him. Helping instead of what I usually do when he’s fighting—stand, watch, bawl. I could guard the stairs and shout out if the horis start climbing them. I’m too scared to do a thing like that. No I’m not. Yes I am. I could stand beside him and be brave like him. I could take a weapon. Some baby I’d be then. The knives in the kitchen. If I had one of them then because I’m tall for my age I could reach up and stab a hori in the stomach.

  I go to my room. It’s beside Heels and Winks’ room. Heels is lying on her bed silent now between sobs so I better be quiet pulling my clothes over my pyjamas, doing up my shoes. I put a pillow under the blankets to fake my body. I crawl low on hands and knees so Heels won’t notice my shadow pass her door towards the front door which is always locked. I’ll have to take the spare key from the hook beside the front door to get back in. Once through the door floor-boards creak all the way along the guest hall but who’s going to hear my footsteps above the din of bar voices below?

  What sort of knife? Choose one. I’m taking too long. I don’t really want to go downstairs and help Winks. That’s why I’m dilly-dallying here in the kitchen dark. I should choose a knife with a pointy end, the ones with rough sides are good for nothing but bread. I select one with a smooth side and hold it up to the streetlight light shining through the window. This one’s good, a bit heavy but pointy. This one is the one to take. I’ll name it Sword.

  The stairs dog-leg down to the lobby. The bend in the stairs, the part where the stairs become floor for a second, is what I consider the top of the stairs because it’s my lookout perch. The swing doors of the Public Bar are directly below and in front of me. The Lounge Bar is off to the right. The phone box is tucked away to the left at the foot of the stairs. Further left is the hotel entrance, the foyer. I crouch behind the stair post. I use my sleeve as a sheath for Sword but the blade is cold and might cut my arm so I slip it under the loose carpet on a step.

  “Why no pool cues boss? Can’t play pool with no cues boss?” Winks will not put the cues back on the table because they’re for pool, not for hitting someone across the head.

  “Can’t play pool with no cues boss.”

  Winks tells the hori who’s saying this that he has to leave, get out of the hotel, he’s not allowed back in the bar. He grabs him by his denim elbow. The hori jerks his elbow free. Winks tells him to get out now or there’ll be a carry-on. He tells him he’s got to the count of five. He tells two footballers with rolled-up sleeves and dented noses to pick up the motorbike blocking the front door and if its owner won’t move it then feel free to throw it into the fucking street. One. Two. Three. Move. Four. Out. Five.

  Winks grabs a handful of the denim hori. Should I run down now to help? I pull Sword from the carpet. The denim hori is bigger than Winks but Winks is fast, his aim is good. His blows hit the denim hori’s face. The denim hori misses with his fists. Winks’ buttons rip off. His shirt hangs out, torn. He tips the denim hori to the floor and a footballer helps him to snatch and yank on denim and hair until the hori has been dragged out the front door while yelling long and wordless.

  Two other denim horis barge through the Public Bar swing doors and stomp towards Winks with their fists held up. They call the hori who was just dragged out their brother and shout that Winks is a cunt. Three footballers run out of the Public Bar after them, tackle them to the ground. Winks comes back through the front door, tucking his shirt in, but there’s another denim hori behind him who’s shaking out a length of thick chain. He’s going to swing it at Winks, I can see it coming. I open my mouth and scream “Chain” with all my body but no sound comes out as in a dream when I run but don’t get anywhere. My voice is frozen inside me and will not shift. My legs, my fist clenching the knife, are frozen. I push and push but no sound. The chain hits Winks across the neck. Still my voice is frozen. No sound. Winks catches the end of the chain and is tug-of-warring with the horis. My legs are so weak they tremble and are about to buckle under me. I can’t help him. I can’t make it down there to lend weight on the chain.

  “Hey little boss. Look at the little boss.” One of them is climbing the stairs. He laughs, head thrown back close enough to me that I see the black holes in his gums from having no front teeth. He gulps from a beer jug and has to grab the balustrade to steady himself. “What you going to do with that knife, little boss?” He is one step from me. Stab him, I roar in my head.

  But I haven’t stabbed him. I couldn’t stab him. I run and he follows up the stairs into the dim-lit guest hall, a shadow man in the dark with a high hori laugh like a boy. “Where are you, little boss?” he calls coming towards the kitchen. I huddle where the sacks of potatoes go under the sink. The heaving breath and tears in me are making too much noise. Surely he’ll find me. I no longer hold the knife. Where is it? I don’t know where it is. I’ve dropped it. If he knew I no longer held the knife he might just go away. Has he picked it up for himself?

  The kitchen-to-dining room door squeaks open. “Little boss. Little boss.”

  “Hey. Get out of there. Get out of there.” It’s Winks�
� voice getting closer in the hall. The thud and heavy squeak of the door pushed wide. Heavy boots slap across lino. The tap-tap-tap of rawhide soles, Winks’ soles, pursues them.

  “Hey,” Winks bellows. “Hey.”

  I hear grunts, the thump of hands on bodies trying to grab a hold. The fire-escape door rattles, a pane of glass smashes. Then nothing but the blood-ocean sound of my palms squashing my ears deaf.

  I relax my hands and open my eyes. Bar noise from below and the farmy smell of hessian and potato soil seeps into me. A cold draught blows about the floor. I don’t want to leave my hiding place but it’s becoming chillier here by the second as if inside has suddenly become the outside. My feet have gone to sleep and my legs ache with cramp. I climb out onto my hands and knees and peep around the sink corner for any sign of Winks or the hori. No one. The fire-escape door is ajar and rocking on its hinges from an icy breeze. There—the knife’s silvery blade beside the Formica table. I tip-toe to collect it, put it back on the drawer. I run as fast as I can on tip-toes to the apartment, aim the key at the lock with trembling fingers and crawl past Heels and Winks’ room. Heels is talking angrily on the phone, “Why has no divvy van arrived yet? We pay our taxes and when we need police you people won’t do your job.”

  I get into bed and lie there, wide awake.

  Still wide awake. And now Winks has returned. He’s telling Heels something. He’s trying to keep his voice down. She talks that way too, not loud enough to be an argument but obviously more important than any argument. I can tell in their whispery voices a great worry, a panic. I slip out of bed, Craig Sherborne • 29 cup my hands to my ears and press against their door. She’s saying, “Leave him there” and “It will look like a fall.”

  He says, “I’m in trouble with this one. Jesus.”

  “We should drag him off the premises. Turf him into the street.”

  “You think?”

  She keeps asking him the same question—“What exactly happened?”—and he keeps giving the same answer and wishing it could be different. He keeps saying, “It was a lucky punch. It was a lucky punch.”

  I’ve worked out what they’re doing. They’re making a plan. It’s to do with the denim hori who was in the kitchen. Winks has punched him and the denim hori has fallen backwards down the fire-escape, all those steel steps, and he’s dead. Dead. He’s lying on the concrete where he landed and not breathing, not moving, and there’s no pulse. Maybe the police will treat it as a robbery, Winks says. The hori was drunk and lost his balance in the act of burglary.

  “Drag him off the premises,” Heels repeats. “Deny any knowledge. For Christ’s sake, you could go to jail otherwise,” she says in a hushed shout.

  Jail? How could Winks ever go to jail? The denim hori was a hori. Horis go to jail. Pakehas don’t go to jail. Winks has his jobs to do in the morning, he’s a busy man. He’s my father and can’t be taken away. But what about Mr Chipper-field? He wasn’t a hori and he worked at the bus company and they still took him away. If horis are just animals, I’ve been on farms where there are animals and the sheep have their heads cut off and insides pulled out and no police put anyone in jail. Horis are not like animals at all in that case. Why all along have I been told they were when they weren’t, they were men all along. The denim hori was a man and now Winks is going to jail because of me standing at the bend in the stairs and now a man, not an animal, but a man, is dead.

  They’re still whispering. Heels is saying again to get the hori off the premises, out into a side gutter. It will look as if he and his gang friends blued. She’ll help Winks drag him, though she can’t stand the thought of touching the hori or his dirty clothes so she’ll wear gloves.

  I scurry to my bedroom before their door opens. I wait till I hear them leave the apartment, then I follow, not directly to the fire-escape via the kitchen which is the way they’re going, they’d see me, but down the staff steps which end at the door with mesh on it that leads onto Tui Street. I unsnib the latch, hop out onto the cold footpath and crash the heavy door closed behind me. There are denim horis and their old cars and motorbikes everywhere. Horis drinking from flagons, the women too, sitting on car bonnets, smoking, or in the gutter or half-leaning half-lying with their backs against the hotel wall for a pillow. They kiss with the women and put their hands into their clothes and the women do the same to them. The air stinks of stale beer, cigarette smoke and petrol fumes, and of denim with BO soaked into it.

  I sprint through it all, jumping over the stretched legs and broken glass, shutting out the hoots of those who catch sight of me. One hori tries to grab my ankle but misses and rolls on his side drunk and laughing while the fat woman with him shouts for him to fucking-well leave me alone. She herself lets out a chesty laugh then a wet cough. I run up the hotel’s liquor store driveway to the courtyard where the fire-escape slopes overhead to the ground.

  Why are Heels and Winks standing there staring at the concrete at the foot of the fire-escape? Where’s the denim hori? Winks makes small chuckling sounds as he speaks. “He was here,” he says. “Right here. Exactly this spot.”

  Heels puts her hands, which are gloved in black evening gloves to the elbow, on her hips as if waiting to do a chore. “He’s up and gone. That’s what it must be. A lot of fuss and worry for nothing.”

  What thick skulls those horis have, Winks marvels. Then he says, “What if one of his mates dragged him away dead?”

  Heels lets out a snorting sound, almost a laugh. “Who cares? They’ve done our job for us in that case.”

  Winks says it would be a weight off his mind to know the hori was actually still alive, but Heels says, “He’s off our hands, isn’t he? That’s the main thing, isn’t it?” She peels her evening gloves from her arms.

  In the darkness, over there by the beer-crate pen, a long loud sigh. Another sigh, louder, longer. The denim hori staggers into the moon and star light, shaking his cocko dry though lengths of pee still flow out and land on his boots.

  “Him!” I shout, pointing and running towards him, elated. I turn to see how relieved Wink must be. Yes, he’s smiling and pointing too. But the smile lasts only a second. He orders the hori to “put that thing away.” Heels is grimacing. She holds her gloves up to shield her eyes. The denim hori recognises me, grins and makes a stabbing motion as if holding a knife. “Little boss.”

  “Put that thing away or I’ll belt you good and proper this time,” yells Winks.

  TYPICAL STAFF. A tray of empty glasses in the phone box. Not just on one occasion but all the time recently. They won’t own up. Typical. Who else but staff would keep leaving a tray of glasses in such an odd place! Our son? They’re accusing our son? They’ve seen our son coming out of there? What on earth would he be doing with trays in the damned phone box? It’s preposterous. “And it’s the lowest thing I can imagine,” Heels juts. The lowest thing an adult can do—blame a child. An innocent child. Her child no less. “It’s an insult. I’ve got a good mind to sack the lot,” she sucks and scratches.

  Winks asks me one night after dinner, “You don’t know anything about trays of glasses in the phone box, do you?”

  “No,” I reply. I know from previous lies I’ve told that it’s best to look into people’s eyes. “Look me in the eye,” Heels and Winks say, and teachers and children at school. That way people automatically believe you. I could say, “I swear on my grandmother’s grave” which people also take as the truth but I’m not sure yet that there’s no afterlife and that my grandmother couldn’t haunt me as a punishment.

  From now on Heels keeps a close watch on the comings and goings at the phone box. No more trays appear.

  There is, however, another matter. Mr Atkinson has me standing opposite his dark wood desk. His pipe isn’t lit but he’s clacking the mouthpiece between his brown teeth and his office pongs of puffed tobacco. “Look me in the eye, young man.”

  Young man? I’ve never been called young man before. It sounds threatening, as if he has my measure. Have
I reached an age when more will be expected of me, judgments will be harsher, punishments more severe? I’m ten now. Has Mr Atkinson started giving the strap to pakehas like he does the horis? Will he give me the strap now that I’m ten? It’s somewhere in this office, the strap. What drawer? That cupboard? He won’t give me the strap—he drinks at the Heritage Hotel and Winks serves him. Why is he calling me young man then?

  “Have you or have you not been throwing stones at cars?”

  I look him in the eye. “No.”

  “You haven’t been?

  “N-n-o.” I blink and swallow without meaning to.

  Mr Atkinson isn’t treating my No as truth. Two boys have been seen just outside the school gates throwing stones at passing cars. A car’s windscreen has been broken and one driver, an elderly woman, was very shocked and upset by the impact and was taken to hospital for a lie-down. One of the boys fits my description. The other boy fits Tamoa’s description.