by Alison Wong
After two years of marriage her mother had said, ‘Katie, it’s time you were getting on with the business of life. Doesn’t Donald deserve a son?’ She spoke quietly, as one who had borne nine children, five of whom had survived.
And so it was that Robbie was born. And within the year, Edie. Another pregnancy followed. Morning sickness. Excruciating pain. The rush to hospital in the back of a cart. The sweet, lingering dizziness of chloroform.
When she woke, the doctor said he had removed the embryo. Katherine blinked and looked away.
The doctor cleared his throat; told her there would be no more children.
Katherine bit her lip. Wasn’t this what she wanted?
She vomited.
The doctor waited until she was finished, then said her tubes were blocked with scar tissue – not only the left side where the embryo had implanted. She’d had pelvic inflammation some time in the past. He paused; told her she should be careful. Gave her a look that made her blush.
‘I expect, Mrs McKechnie,’ he said, ‘you do not want to be the subject of your husband’s newspaper.’
*
Katherine opened her eyes. The relief of waking in half-light, the slow roll towards summer. She almost pulled herself out from under the bedclothes. And then she remembered. She lay back again, watching night fade, sunlight slip through the blinds, leaving, unexpectedly, a window of brightness over the bed. This, she decided, was pleasure. A luxury to be grasped. To be hoarded greedily.
Every morning she had risen at 5.30, leaving Donald to sleep another hour. She would empty cold ashes onto a copy of Truth. Blacklead the grate and polish the hearth. Strike a Vesta – burn its red head into a new day’s fire.
Today she would burn the Bible. Not the Lord’s Authorised Version but Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping Book. The one Donald’s mother had sent upon news of their betrothal.
Before work each day, as if he’d learned Mrs Beeton’s precepts by heart, Donald would inspect his collar and the cuffs of his sleeves and God forbid if he found even the merest hint of uncleanness; he only gave out five shillings at a time, expecting her to account for every penny, and when he came home he ran his hand over the furniture and if he found dust, admonished her.
As sunlight crept slowly up the bed, up to her face, into her mind, Katherine remembered the dictionary – the one with gilt-edged pages, the one that had passed from McKechnie father to son, the instrument he had fashioned against her. She wanted to burn it in the brown-edged lap of Mrs Beeton – and yet she was afraid.
Broken Bíscuíts
Katherine sat in the front row of the church wondering which of the women Donald had slept with. Plump Mrs Paterson, the baker’s wife, who had fussed so effusively? ‘Poor, poor thing,’ she kept saying. ‘Such a loss, such a terrible, terrible loss.’ Geraldine McCorkindale, the eighteen-year-old with pouty lips from the office? Or perhaps the pretty brunette sitting at the back, slender hands clutching a wet kerchief over her growing belly?
Katherine closed her eyes. The fragrance of lily of the valley bloomed in her mind. She listened to Donald’s friends pay homage – to a dedicated family man; passionate wordsmith and newspaperman; avid cricketer (who hadn’t seen him down at the Basin on a Saturday afternoon with his son?); good ole mate, always in for a drink and many a fine tale.
She needed to hear people speak of his life, his tragic, untimely death. To give his absence form. Solidity. She gazed at his casket, its profusion of flowers. Which has more colour, she wondered. A man’s life? Or his death? Draped in black, she sat quite upright, willing herself, unwilling herself, silently to believe.
Afterwards – after the endless cups of tea and polite farewells – Katherine returned home with her children, Edie dry eyed and utterly silent, Robbie tearful and clutching his father’s pocket-watch, stopped at 3.05, the exact time he had hit the water.
Since his death, every window had remained covered, like Donald’s dead eyes; each day darkened like water closing over. Yet even as Katherine raised each blind, her spirit did not lighten. After her initial delight, lying in bed luxuriating in a tumult of wicked thoughts, she had been suitably morose, relief giving way to a rising fear.
She took in laundry and sewing and a succession of distasteful boarders. Edie learned even better how to cook and sew and wash and iron. Robbie got a job selling newspapers, which Katherine disliked intensely, but how else could they get by? When the boarders didn’t work out, Katherine had to find somewhere smaller, shabbier: a rundown two-bedroom villa on Adelaide Road with no bathroom or hot water. Edie shared a room with her mother.
They’d received a little money from Donald’s colleagues at the paper and from Mr Truth himself, John Norton, but this did not last long, not after funeral expenses. They received a couple of shillings each week from the charitable aid board, but Katherine hated the way the inspector wiped his fingers on the door frame and across the grate, the way he checked that she bought nothing extravagant like butter or oranges, the way he inquired with the neighbours about any unsuitable men who might come calling.
Sometimes Katherine had hated Donald for living; now when the bills arrived she could hate him for dying. I’m so, so sorry, she would write after she’d deliberately sent an empty envelope and then received a polite but firm reply. It is the shock of it all. I do not know how I shall recover from my poor husband’s sudden passing. Please find the cheque enclosed.
The first time she visited the neighbourhood fruit and vegetable shop, the Chinaman added free unblemished fruit to her bag of cheap, speckled ones. She felt the heat rise in her face and left quickly. Afterwards she didn’t even know if she’d given the courtesy of a thank you.
Sometimes they went to the soup kitchen, and again Katherine felt ashamed. What would the neighbours think? What would her mother? Yet the children needed to be fed, and Mother Mary Aubert and the sisters were kind – there was never a hint of condescension.
Robbie got a job as a butcher’s boy after school, something he was far too young for, but as a favour from Mac Mackenzie, who’d enjoyed a beer with Donald in his time. Mac taught Robbie how to sling the basket of meat over one arm and urge on his mount with the other. It was a job Robbie loved, especially racing the boys from Kuch’s and Preston’s; and they got the odd free mutton bone, knuckle or kidney, and some money to help pay the rent.
They ate bread and dripping or bread and jam, broken biscuits, turnips and carrots and cabbage, marked-down apples or the occasional overripe banana, the good fruit the Chinaman gave them, and meat once or sometimes twice a week. Katherine quietly despaired, searching the newspaper’s Wanted columns, inquiring at offices, factories, shop counters, even knocking door to door, seeking work.
Apples
The first time she came into the shop, Yung was polishing apples, rubbing them with a soft grey cloth till the skin gleamed red with promise. With each apple he took a pair of secateurs and cut each stalk to the same neat length, then took the soft green apple-paper and wrapped it back round the fruit like a nest. One by one he placed them on the wooden shelf, a perfect slope of apple-green and red.
As he looked up he saw the black dress, the long full skirt pulled into the waist, the ample bosom above. Black. The sign of an old woman. Or a widow. Her long auburn hair was pulled up under her hat, a few strands fallen, a touch of grey, tangled from the wind.
‘Good day,’ he said.
She looked up from the vegetables, managed a tired smile. ‘Good day,’ she said.
He was surprised. Her voice was deeper than expected. ‘Carrot velly good. Velly flesh. Sweet.’
‘Are they?’ she asked. She looked again at the cabbages and selected the largest half from the stack.
He picked up an apple, one he had already polished, took the paring knife from the shelf behind the counter and cut them both a wedge. ‘Apple velly good,’ he said, biting into his slice. ‘Help yourself.’
She hesitated. At last took small bites, chewed
slowly, deliberately, as if trying the fruit for the first time, and he thought he saw her eyes close for a moment and her lips lift in a slight smile, but she did not pick up the remains of the apple or the knife he had left for her.
She bought the half cabbage, a bundle of carrots tied with flax, and three spotty apples from the marked-down bin. She did not look at his face and he understood that she was embarrassed that she had not bought any of the good apples he had offered.
He wrapped the cabbage, then the carrots in newspaper, put the fruit into a brown paper bag and quickly, without fuss, added the rest of the good apple and one other. He saw the look of surprise, then a brief searching of his face. There were dark shadows under her sad, green eyes. She thanked him and he watched her walk into the street, the strands of her hair teased by the wind.
She came into the shop every Monday and Thursday. Each time she was very courteous. Sometimes she would smile, and he would see the fine lines about her eyes and across the freckles of her nose. Her white teeth.
One afternoon after she’d walked out the door Mrs Paterson tsk tsked. ‘She buys day-old bread too, you know. Poor wee thing. You know the place with the peeling-off paint? The broken fence and the falling-down gate? She’s got two children and obviously not enough to feed them. Such a pity about her husband. Donald McKechnie was such an attractive man.’
And so, when his brother couldn’t see him, Yung added one good piece of fruit to the speckled or bruised ones Mrs McKechnie selected. If she chose three overripe pears, he added one shiny crisp apple. If she chose three speckled bananas, he added one juicy sweet orange. He would take the paring knife and offer her a taste of any new fruit that had come in, and even if some was already cut and left by a previous customer, he always gave her a new whole piece. When he passed her the vegetables and fruit, he said, ‘Good day, Mrs McKechnie,’ and he smiled, hoping that today would be the beginning of good fortune.
The Purlíeus of Haíníng Street
Under a loose floorboard in his room, Robbie stored a small mound of coins – tiny farthings, threepences, large copper pennies – taken from the jar his mother hid in the pantry, or small amounts he kept back from his pay each week. He took one, two, at most three coins each week: quietly in the night, while she was outside hanging out the washing, when she went shopping.
Then every Friday he’d take a tram, each time choosing a different route, standing on the outer ledges with the men and the big boys. Every Saturday he’d buy a copy of Truth and take it to the Basin to read. There he’d lie back against the trunk of a cabbage tree and read the latest gossip.
He loved the colour of the words. They leapt from the page with the voice of his father. Stories of divorce and fallen women, the malodorous Chow and the Jew. Robbie didn’t understand every word – what was malodorous and what about purlieus . . . the purlieus of Haining Street? – but he understood what was important. This was the world. The world of his father.
As Robbie chewed blades of grass and shared pages of Truth with Wally, he remembered his father at the Basin bowling a Chinaman, hitting a six as well as he could down a whisky. Sometimes on the longest days of summer they’d come down to watch the clubs practise or to have a few hits, or of a Saturday afternoon sit on the grassy slopes, his father smoking cigarettes, Robbie eating blackballs and peppermint rock, watching Wellington play Canterbury or Otago, and once even New Zealand play Australia.
Wally couldn’t bowl (or bat) if his life depended on it, and even reading Truth made him bored. After a while Robbie put the paper down. ‘Want some chuddy?’ he asked.
They picked themselves up and ran along the winding paths, past the picket fences and wooden turnstiles, past Mr Strong’s white horse – the one that pulled the giant roller on the grounds – and out the gate to the street.
In Fitchett’s grocery Wally bought a packet of gum for a ha’penny and a small wooden box of sherbet. In the sherbet, wrapped in tissue, he found a tiny gadget made of tin. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his whistle and fitted it to his find. Then blew it. It sounded bonzer.
Mrs Fitchett frowned.
Robbie bought some bull’s eyes and a lucky bag, rummaged through it hoping for a threepenny bit. Nothing but boiled lollies. He gave Wally a couple of bull’s eyes; Wally gave Robbie some sherbet and a strip of chuddy.
They wandered across the grounds of the barracks, round the huge brick walls, into Buckle Street and down Taranaki. Past Haining Street, Frederick, Ingestre and Jessie. The purlieus of . . . Robbie did not turn his head. He crunched on a lolly and looked straight down Taranaki, at the butcher boys racing their horses, at the trams rolling along the tracks, the trammies swinging along the outer footboards, at the hawkers and fishmongers and men in straw boaters.
Along the waterfront they passed queues of horses and carts, men whistling, shouting, loading wooden boxes, barrels, earthenware jars. They found a spot on the jetty and sat down, the taste of sugar, mint, salty air in their mouths, their legs hanging out over the water. A cool breeze swept the smell of fish into their faces; gulls hung in the sky, shifted then fell, swooping over the boats. A steamer of West Coast coal was being unloaded. They watched the huge cane baskets being winched into the hold, then back up full of coal, the black-dusted men trundling them down the gangways, tipping them into the carts, then trundling them back up again, a haze of coal dust floating in the air.
Robbie took a stick of gum from his pocket, put it in his mouth. ‘What’s purlieus?’ he asked, his voice barely audible above the gulls. ‘The purlieus of Haining Street.’
Wally smiled. ‘Why don’t we go and take a look. You ever been down there? The opium’s so strong you can cut the air with a knife. It makes your skin creep, all them Chows – but you have bonzer dreams.’
Robbie stopped chewing. ‘Dad said if you ever went down Haining Street you got kidnapped and boiled in a copper and made into preserved ginger.’
Wally laughed. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you? C’mon, I dare you.’ He looked across at Robbie out of the corner of his eye. Smiled. ‘I’ll go too – make sure you do it.’
They walked back along the waterfront, up Taranaki, past the greengroceries, laundries and pawn shops, past Ghuznee, Ingestre and Frederick. Then stood on the corner, looking down the narrow, dusty street. On each side there were small wooden houses, some two-storey, some only one, some with wooden fences, some without. ‘Filthy cesspits,’ Robbie’s father had said, ‘dirty slums.’ The houses didn’t seem much different from any of the others in Te Aro. They had the same red roofs and sash windows. No sign of the rats and open sewers he’d been warned about.
Outside one of the houses, two boys were crouched, bending over something.
‘You ready?’ said Wally. ‘Get set . . . GO!’
And they were off, running as fast as they could, straight down the middle of the empty road, hardly daring to look around. The boys on the footpath looked up, and Robbie realised they were playing marbles. He could feel their eyes on the back of his head, their yellow faces watching. And he was running, running, leaving Wally further and further behind. He could smell something strange. Food cooking, meat and vegetables, sour and sweet and salty smells. It made him feel hungry and sick and hungry all at the same time. But he kept on running, dust pounding up from the road, his eyes straight ahead, running.
At the end of the street, he waited, panting, watching Wally huffing towards him.
‘Did you (huff) smell the (huff) opium?’ Wally asked, as he came to a stop.
‘Yeah,’ Robbie lied.
‘It was coming from those houses with no windows. Did you see them? They were all boarded up.’
‘Sure,’ he said, looking back down the street. He wasn’t sure whether he could see them or not. ‘But did you have any dreams?’ he asked.
‘No, did you?’
‘Nah, ran too fast. But you were in there longer. You might have them tonight.’
‘That’s what purlieus means.’ Wally smiled.
‘That’s them dreams you get from all that opium.’
*
As they walked up Adelaide Road on the way home, Robbie took the purple mass of gum out of his mouth. It had lost all flavour – now it was only good for leaving on Edie’s chair or for sticking things to or making into bullets. Wong Chung Bros was coming up on the right. He took the slingshot out of his pocket and aimed it at the window. There. A purple blob on the glass. From a distance, it looked like a piece of bruised plum, staring from the window amongst the shiny red apples, oranges, bananas.
Wally laughed. ‘Shot.’ He picked up a stone. ‘Here,’ he said.
Robbie hesitated.
‘Come on, Robbie. Show ’em how it’s done.’
Robbie looked at the gum stuck to the window. This was the shop his mother went to. He hadn’t been inside, didn’t know what the Chinks looked like, but he’d seen her go in and out. Sometimes as a treat, instead of parsnips or potatoes or spotty pears, she brought back a banana without a mark on it, or a glossy red apple that looked like it had been polished with Brasso. She would cut the good fruit, the beautiful, sweet fruit, in half, and give one half to him and the other to Edie, while she cut the rottenness out of the bad fruit for herself. Edie protested, saying the good fruit should be cut into three, and when their mother ignored her, neither of them would finish their share, each leaving half for their mother. ‘We’re full,’ they would say, trying to hide their craving, until at last she started cutting everything into three.
‘Robbie?’
Robbie looked into Wally’s eager face. His outstretched hand. He took the stone – it felt heavy, too heavy – pulled back the sling.
