From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (9 page)

‘What about (Organic) Iced Rodents?’ she called, forgetting, in her small sorrow, about the camera. ‘Do you think they’ll still be going in two years?’

‘Cut!’ bawled Barney. He lowered the camera and scowled at
Ren. It was
so
amateur-hour to speak while the camera was rolling.

‘Hope so,’ said Sally. ‘But who knows? Things change. That’s my new refrain: Things
change
.’

This melancholy thought distracted Ren for some time, despite the cabinets and the interesting things Sally talked about.

Why
did things have to change, she wondered. Really, she would like everything in her life to stay just the same for as long as possible. She would be perfectly happy to be eleven for several years. It was definitely her best age so far.

When Sally stood beside the Childhood cabinet in the Today Room and compared the popular toys and games from Christmas 2000 and Christmas a month ago, Ren experienced a great regret for all the passed-over toys of her eleven-year-long life.

How could she have been so careless? She did still occasionally set up the Sylvanian Families village – when Henrietta or Lovie came round – but Mum had persuaded her to donate all the My Little Ponies and some old soft toys to the City Mission. Why had she agreed to that? She still had her Russian tin kaleidoscope, but what had happened to her Cheshire Cat pyjama holder? And her skipping rope with the sparkly handles? And, Penny, the old faceless rag doll from the Steiner School Fair? She had outgrown them, that’s what; she had ignored them and they had faded away without her noticing. It was exactly like
Toy Story
.

In the Yesterday Room Sally led them around the photo exhibition of shops and businesses through the decades.

These places and their people were like old friends. Ren had spent a good deal of time staring at all of them. The interior of Squires’ Fine Meats, for instance. She liked that a lot. Five beefy-faced butchers in striped aprons. Animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling on great meat hooks. Behind the counter stood two ladies in long skirts and stiff blouses; their faces were blurred: they had moved during the photo. Ren especially liked the ornate cash
register and the fearsome cleavers on the butchers’ block and the strings of sausages slung between the carcasses. Two years ago she had written a letter to the Sylvanian Families manufacturers in Japan and suggested they create a butchery complete with strings of little sausages.

Ren dawdled behind Sally and Barney as they moved along the wall. She liked to give each image a bit of time as she passed by. The rows of machinists at the Athena Gowns factory, their heads bent over fabrics. Mr Adamson, the proud proprietor of Adamson’s Fine Wines, with his billowing silk cravat. Mr Kenwyn, the watchmaker, in the sunlit window of his shop, working on a repair. He had a magnificent moustache, and a small trilby hat perched on his head. Miss Minnie Goulding, a barmaid at the Grenadier Hotel, and her pug dog, General Haig.

Most of them had lived nearly a hundred years ago when the Street had been just half built, when the roads were often muddy and horse-and-carriage drivers eyed motorcars with disdain and envy. Ren stared at Miss Minnie Goulding, General Haig cuddled in her arms. They looked strangely alike. They both had big creased faces and pouchy eyes. Miss Minnie had a large ring on her fleshy left hand, General Haig an elaborate collar that dug into his fat little neck. Ren wished she knew more about them. But there was only the photo and their names on the back.

‘– and, because of that,’ Sally was saying, ‘we decided we needed stories to accompany our photos for the future. That’s how the Story Archive began.’

Good. The Story Archive was a cheering thought. All the Street children loved it. They were all in it.

One Thursday a month Sally took her folding table (actually a vintage ironing board from Busby’s Emporium), her two folding chairs, her laptop and microphone and phone camera, and she set up a Story Archive station somewhere in the South City Precinct. In summer she parked near food caravans; in winter she parked in
the malls where people congregated in the warmth.

Izzy had painted a sandwich board for her, saying:
Tell me a story
. These were magic words, Sally said, the best kind of spell. Even cross and busy people stopped and looked, lured by the invitation. Before they knew it they were sitting down and talking into the microphone. It was Sally who wove the spell, said Mum, and Ren agreed. Sally was a most encouraging presence behind her ironing board, her hair erupting beneath a beanie, her brown eyes so friendly.

People told all kinds of stories. They related adventures at home and far from home. They talked about mysteries in their lives. About falling in love. About doing tapestry, or karaoke or going pig hunting, about their New Year’s rave or their runner bean crop or the choir they had been singing in for thirty-nine years. They talked about their dreams, their calamities, their sorrows and their great good luck. (One man had met his girlfriend at the scene of a car accident.)

Some people had long memories of the South City. Some were visitors. Some were residents, spread around the old over-the-shop dwellings or the smart new upstairs apartments. Most of the High Street residents had volunteered stories.

The High Street children were eager contributors.

Ren had described her walk to school, all the people and things she passed on the way. Benjamin had recounted Room 7’s famous Wild Goose Chase from the South City Precinct to the Port Hills and back again. Henrietta had reported on her first public ballet performance, describing her tulle costume with loving detail. Bingo had sung ‘Happy Birthday’ in Maori, Samoan and Italian.

When a story was finished Sally took a photo of the narrator, a quick snap, no frills, she said. Then the photo and the story were deposited on the Story Archive website. You could look and listen at the Museum or at home on your own computer.

If only Sally had been around when Miss Minnie Goulding
worked on the Street, thought Ren. Of course there were no laptops then, no digital devices. There were hardly any recording machines. Alas, said Sally, some people would remain mysteries forever.

Ren sighed, and farewelled Miss Minnie and General Haig. Sally and Barney were over the other side of the room now, nearing the end of the photo gallery. She had lost track altogether of what Sally was saying. But Sally didn’t need more questions from Ren. The displays posed the questions for her.

It was nearly lunchtime. Ren sped up the rest of her private viewing, mentally saluting the long-gone friends as she slipped by: Mr Fitzmaurice, the bank manager, and his wife, resplendent at the opening of the BNZ ninety years ago. Miss Marr, the district nurse, very tall and straight, fixing the photographer with a cool look. The pretty woman-with-no-name sitting on the steps of Stringer’s Picture Gallery. The group of laughing women in hats and coats outside White and Willis Department Store, their heads flung back under open umbrellas, though there was no rain.

The final photograph was Ren’s favourite: Mr P. D. Garfield of the Edison Hall beside his newly arrived Edison Triumph phonograph with its morning glory horn.

The phonograph horn was impressively wide, thrusting forward on its stiff metal stem, like a morning glory flower hungry for the sun. Ren had seen exactly that in South Island Gran’s kitchen garden, a pale blue morning glory, awake early, glistening with moisture and opened wide to the day.

P. D. Garfield’s hand rested on the morning glory horn and he flashed his crooked teeth at the camera, pleased as Punch with this latest merchandise. He wore a smart suit, cufflinks at his wrists. He was doing well in the world. But P. D. Garfield and his phonograph were only briefly interesting to Ren. It was the background of this photo that drew her attention.

Behind P. D. was the substantial Edison showroom counter, and behind that, running the length of the long room, shelves
storing Edison products: phonograph cylinders, storage boxes, records, Edison catalogues. Leaning against the shelves, to the right of the counter, was a boy, perhaps eleven or twelve, or even older – it was hard to tell. The boy wore trousers held at the waist by string, a collarless shirt and a jacket that was certainly too tight for him. His arms were folded and he gazed at the back of Mr P. D. Garfield, though not quite at the camera. The expression on the boy’s bony face was most inscrutable.

‘Enigmatic,’ suggested Sally once, as they considered the photo together. ‘And no name. Perhaps not dressed well enough to be staff. Or a customer, for that matter. Another mystery. What do you think?’

Ren came regularly to say hello to Mysterious Boy, as she thought of him. She liked to stand in front of the photograph and think about him and the look on his face. He
could
have been P. D. Garfield’s assistant, she thought – behind-the-scenes and fed up being the dogsbody, ignored at photo time. Or he could be the son of another shopkeeper, just stooging around. Perhaps he had skipped school. Perhaps he’d come from the country for the day and was exploring the city, shop by shop.

Whoever he was, Mysterious Boy stayed eternally the same age and eternally at the Edison Hall, in his tight jacket and braces. It was as if he had passed his whole life in the photo. He had never walked from Edison Hall and grown up, ventured into the world and worked or driven a car or had children of his own, as adults seemed inevitably to do. He had stayed leaning on the shelf, harbouring his thoughts, not quite smiling.

Ren was altogether fascinated by Mysterious Boy. Sometimes the look on his face seemed almost sad, sometimes a little scornful, perhaps mocking. It was slightly different each time she looked, which was both odd and interesting. And another thing: apart from the photo of the newly opened A. J. Perkins Furniture showroom in 1937 – in which a little girl sat sedately on a dining chair –
Mysterious Boy was the only young person in all of the Living History Museum’s Yesterday collection.

‘Why didn’t they take photos of children?’ Ren asked Sally. ‘Where
were
all the children?’

‘At home? With their nannies and nurses?’

‘Or school, I guess,’ said Ren. There were children in the old Kate Sheppard School photos, of course, but that was a separate display.

‘There were certainly street kids,’ said Sally. ‘There are always street kids. But they might have avoided photographers. Or perhaps people didn’t notice them.’

But Mysterious Boy was eminently noticeable, in Ren’s view. Once you saw him in the Edison Hall photo you couldn’t stop looking at him. He was such a dependable kind of puzzle, too. He would never be solved, she thought, pleased about this. He would always be here, reliably unexplained.

‘See you later,’ she murmured, as she turned from the photograph and followed the others from the Yesterday Room. She closed the door behind her, holding on to the handle for a few seconds, staring at the block capitals of the EXIT sign on the back of the door. Something loitered at the back of her mind, something about Mysterious Boy. What was it? Had he reminded her of something? Of someone, perhaps? But who could that be? Someone on television? Someone passed on the Street? A customer at Coralie’s?

Maybe Mysterious Boy was just reminding her of himself, of the last time she looked at him. She looked at him quite often, after all.

She had certainly got distracted in the Yesterday Room, thought Ren, guiltily. She had wandered
off task
! Perhaps Barney had been too busy to notice. The morning had gone well, anyway. They had started properly now. And it was Sylvie next. This afternoon would be
molto
fun. Sylvie was a good talker, and
bursting to dance for the camera. Barney and Ren were hoping for
fouettés en tournant
– Spinning Sylvie, as the Street children called it. It was Sylvie’s speciality.

Ren walked slowly, poking at the half-thought, half-reminder drifting just out of reach across her memory. Her stomach rumbled, a noisy complaint. She was hungry. Filming always made you ravenous. But Sally had brought biscuits and bagels.

Lunch was in the News Room, a vast space divided into three: a partitioned area for Sally’s office, a tea room with chairs and sofas for the volunteers, and an audio-visual lab where visitors could come and look through the Display and Story Archives. You could chat to Sally and the volunteers. You could write suggestions for Museum displays. You could leave a notice on the community corkboard under the large casement window.

Sally dispensed Gingernuts. She had a generous view of biscuits before meals. Barney lay on a sofa. He seemed to be eating three biscuits at once. Ren took a pre-lunch biscuit for each hand and headed for the corkboard.

‘What happened to you?’ said Barney loudly. He
had
noticed. ‘Did you lose consciousness or something? Did you astral travel? Did your brain get teleported? You left us all alone out there, Mrs Arch-Slasher.’

‘We were fine,’ said Sally, peaceably. ‘I only needed the first few questions, and they were very good.’

‘I got distracted,’ said Ren. It was true enough.

She stood before the corkboard, scanning the notices and neatly nibbling the circumference of a biscuit, which was how she liked to approach Gingernuts. She had different systems for different biscuits.

There wasn’t a spare centimetre of cork showing on the board. It was smothered in notices: apartment vacancies; flatmates required; employment needed; kayaks for sale; musical instruments for hire; puppies for free. There were notices for church services,
for wing chun classes, tai chi classes, zumba classes, yoga, cooking, diving, book binding, glass making. Piano lessons. A brochure for the Symphony Orchestra’s concerts. A flyer for the Kapa Haka Festival and one for the stockcar club. A poster for the Malthouse Theatre’s summer drama,
Six Strings Attached
. A poster advertising the annual river clean-up. There was a notice advising of a lost tortoiseshell kitten, and a notice for missing Rosy-Faced Love Birds.
Very sociable. Please call 021 169 26883. Owner heartbroken
.