The Paua Tower (10 page)

Lal and Roland were just going into the foxtrot sashay when Lal seemed to wilt, slump and fall forward. Roland held her up and
tried to carry her off the floor but it was impossible with the crush of dancers. The people around them stopped moving and a circle gathered as the music slithered to a halt.

‘Lal?’ said Roland, kneeling beside her. ‘Lal? Quick, someone fetch Dr Cunningham!’

Roland saw Amélie move through the crowd and kneel beside him. He smelt her perfume as her silk dress brushed his leg.

‘Your wife just needs air.’ Amélie flapped her beaded handbag over Lal’s face. ‘See, she is better.’

Lal opened her eyes. The silver fabric of Amélie’s knee and the concerned stares of the dancers rotated above her.

‘Are you all right?’ said Roland anxiously.

‘Yes,’ said Lal as her vision steadied. ‘I think so.’

‘Here, hold my arm,’ said Roland, lifting Lal up, ‘and I’ll take you home. We’ll get someone to fetch the doctor.’

‘It’s all right, Monsieur Crawford, she’s not sick,’ said Amélie. ‘Just maybe in — what do you say? — a delicate condition.’

‘You know?’ said Roland, embarrassed by both Amélie’s knowledge and her remark, as he helped Lal to her feet.

Amélie nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I suppose fainting like this proves it,’ Lal said, smiling
gratefully
at the bank manager’s wife.

The crowd moved apart to let the Crawfords pass. Roland knew he must take Lal home but the smell of Amélie’s perfume lingered, making him reluctant to go. It was as if he were leaving a garden.

‘Poor Mrs Crawford,’ said Stella as the doors of the hall closed behind the vicar and his wife. ‘I’d hate to black out here with all these people about.’

Vic took a quick look to see no one was looking and pulled back the velvet strap of Stella’s dress. As he bent to kiss her bare skin he saw she had a freckle on her shoulderblade. The tawny imperfection floated like a leaf on water.

‘Don’t think you look in any immediate danger of keeling
over,’ Vic said, but his mind was on the entrancing mark on Stella’s flesh.

The supper waltz was a Monte Carlo. The dance floor was divided into four parts, by lines painted on the floor, each quarter represented a suit of cards. The band played and then stopped.

‘All those in Spades off,’ the MC said, looking at a drawn playing card.

Stella and Vic were in the Hearts quarter. There was more music, and another break.

This time it was Diamonds who were eliminated. Again Stella and Vic were safe. And so it went. Vic and Stella danced, the music stopped, a card was drawn and each time they remained on the floor. Finally there were only two other couples left.

‘We’re going to win,’ said Vic into Stella’s hair.

‘How do you know?’ said Stella, excitement fizzing inside her like a kettle on the boil.

‘Magic,’ said Vic, grinning.

The music started and Stella and Vic swung in each other’s arms through the moving, shredded light. When the music stopped, the other two couples were both in the Clubs corner.

‘And the winner is …’ The MC paused for effect. There was roll of drums.

‘Mr Anti-Eviction himself, Vic Cowan, and Miss Stella Morgan! A big hand for the lucky couple.’ The bystanders clapped and cheered.

The band struck up with the Desert Song waltz and for a marvellous and extraordinary few moments Vic and Stella were alone on the floor, dancing and turning as the ball of mirrors spun above them, throwing broken pools of brightness on their faces and on the ground.

‘I want this to last forever,’ said Stella to Vic.

When the waltz ended, Stella and Vic were each given a box of chocolates and everyone clapped again.

‘Haven’t had a box of chocolates in my whole life,’ said Stella,
feeling absurdly happy as she looked at the picture of a thatched cottage on the lid.

‘Never had a box either,’ said Vic. ‘Might send mine down to my mother.’

‘Oh, you should,’ said Stella. ‘I’m sure she’d be tickled pink, and you can have mine to take back to the camp.’

‘Don’t be a silly,’ said Vic, as they made their way in to supper. ‘It’s your prize; you’ve got to keep it. Anyway,’ he lied, ‘I’m not all that keen on sweet stuff.’

After supper Stella danced every bracket with Vic. The best dance was the last. As the band played the Destiny Waltz, the lights were turned down and she and Vic swayed together, their arms gently around each other’s necks, cheek against cheek, mouth brushing mouth. Stella, afloat on a tide of tenderness, felt soft and velvety as her dress. She wanted the evening to go on forever but she knew that very soon she’d be alone in her bedroom, looking at the scuffed wallpaper, and Vic would be on the other side of town.

T
he following Wednesday, when Stella came up the path at number 37, she knew something was wrong. Everything about the house looked the same — the faded cream paint peeling off the weatherboards, the letterbox which had fallen off the fence propped up with bricks, the frayed holland blinds evenly a quarter way down the windows in the way her mother liked, and smoke from the kitchen range coming out of the chimney. Stella’s father’s bike wasn’t outside the front door but that was hardly unusual. Now he was unemployed, Doug often biked over to see his sister in Rawakore in the afternoon; sometimes he stayed the night.

Wednesday was Stella’s favourite work day: she finished work early and had the afternoon off. There was always work to be done in the house, of course, but the novelty of being at home midweek and alone for a few hours with her mother made the time special.
They did the ironing, bottled black boy peaches from the tree in the garden, preserved eggs, cut out underclothes from carefully unpicked and washed old flour and sugar bags. As they worked they talked — about Peg’s childhood, the country school she’d gone to, riding in some mornings on a pet cow, the blackberry pies Granny Pickering made, the day Peg had caught a five-foot eel, the boys who’d gone to the war and never come back.

Stella paused on the path, wondering why she felt uneasy. Had something happened to Vic? Pneumonia, diphtheria, a ruptured appendix, an accident? He’d told her about the way boulders dislodged from the working area at Punawai sometimes came charging down and how one man lost his leg as a result. Stella imagined the Works project, Vic face down in the oozing
gingery-yellow
earth, his hands grasping the loose shingle, his body bloody and smashed. She looked across the road to the mountain. The solid flanks and topping of snow like a crocheted milk-jug cover were calm and reassuring. She told herself she was being stupid, flighty. Maybe this was what happened when you loved someone — you became fanciful, anxious, always imagining accidents and disasters.

‘I’m home,’ Stella called as she came through the back door. There was silence, except for the ticking of the kitchen clock and a wasp caught against the glass of the window.

Peg Morgan was sitting on the end of her bed, holding a bundle of newspapers in her arms and swaying from side to side. Tears rolled down her cheeks, making shiny little tracks like snail marks.

‘Mum, what’s the matter?’ said Stella, who seldom saw her mother cry.

‘Oh God, what are you doing home?’ Peg said in reply.

‘Wednesday, my half day off, you remember?’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Peg, clutching her sides and rocking more violently.

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’

‘The pains, the pains.’

‘You’re sick — I’ll get Dr Cunningham. I’ve got two and six in my rainy-day box: not much but I’m sure he’ll come.’

‘No,’ said Peg, going red in the face and crying harder. ‘Promise me,
promise me,
Stella, whatever you do, you won’t get the doctor. It’s not the money, it’s … Oh, never mind.’

‘What is it, Mum?’

‘I can’t, I can’t tell you, Stell. Just don’t go calling any doctors or neighbours or anything.’

At that Peg was overtaken by such a frenzy of pain that Stella was sure her mother was about to die. She sat on the bed beside her and took her hand.

‘You need help. If you don’t tell me what’s wrong and why you don’t want the doctor I’m going to get him now.’

‘Promise, really promise you won’t go telling this to anyone — the doctor, Dad, anyone — and I’ll tell you.’

‘Course,’ said Stella, looking at her mother’s rough, reddened hand in her paler, softer one.

‘I’m about to have a baby,’ said Peg, a tear rolling down her cheek and dropping on the counterpane.

‘A baby!’ said Stella, horrified. Her mother was old,
forty-something
she thought, though she’d never been told exactly. Surely no one of that age could have a baby.

‘Don’t want it, of course,’ said Peg.

‘How did it happen?’ asked Stella. The thought of Peg and Doug doing whatever in the sagging iron bed seemed beyond anything she could or wanted to consider.

‘Usual way, we slipped up. Your father doesn’t know and he’s not to be told. He’d go mad with worry if he knew.’

‘Not to be told?’ said Stella in astonishment. ‘How could you have a baby and not tell him?’

‘I’m not going to have it, I’ve seen to that,’ said Peg. ‘Help me, Stell.’

‘I don’t know … I don’t know what to do.’ Stella’s voice came
out in strange frilled bunches. ‘You’ve got to tell me. What’s going to happen? What did you do?’

‘Used a knitting needle. Don’t look like that. It’ll be all right, I’ve done it before. Rough at the time but okay after.’

Stella put her head in her hands. The room seemed to be moving, the picture of the nymphs bathing, the decorative shoe that held a pincushion on the bedside cabinet, the framed Home Sweet Home motto, all going around as if in a carousel.

Stella knew and didn’t know what her mother was talking about. At work she’d heard the whispered comments about gin and hot baths, the girl in Taumarunui who had died trying to ‘do it’, and how you could go to prison if you were found out. Stella had never been part of the conversations; now here was her mother clutching her stomach and saying this is what she had done — and not just once.

‘Newspapers,’ said Peg. ‘Lots of newspapers. I’ve been saving them in the cupboard by the range. The pains are better now for a minute but they’ll get worse again. And I could do with a cup of tea.’

‘But why?’ said Stella. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Have some sense, girl. I’m forty-four. We can only just get by as it is with Doug out of work, and you only earning a few bob. Imagine another mouth to feed.’

Stella piled newspapers and an old bit of cardboard she found out back on the bed. She got her mother into her nightdress and made her lie down. She brought her a cup of tea, with two sugars, as Peg liked it. The pains came and went.

At first there were short breaks in Peg’s distress, and Stella, who had scant idea what to expect, hoped her mother was getting better and that somehow the worst was over. But each time the pains came back stronger, gripping Peg in angry flurries. Stella had never seen so much blood — there seemed no end to it. It seeped and dripped and trickled, turning the newspapers, which Stella did her best to replace, into a shimmering crimson lake and
giving the room a tight, dark, repugnant smell. Sometimes Peg drew her bloodstained legs up to her chest and cried out, but mostly she just held her daughter’s hand, gripping it hard with the sudden spasms until Stella felt as if her own fingers would break.

Then Peg made a long, low, bellowing sound. Once, twice and then, in a sudden rush of blood, Stella saw something solid slip out from between her mother’s legs.

‘Get the old tin basin,’ instructed Peg between clenched teeth.

When Stella brought it back from the kitchen, Peg’s face was as pale as the pillow, her grizzled hair crumpled like unravelled knitting damp against her cheeks.

‘Now push the basin down on my stomach as hard as you can,’ she said.

‘Why?’ said Stella, trembling all over.

‘Gets rid of the afterbirth,’ said her mother.

Stella did as her mother had said.

‘Harder!’ groaned Peg.

Stella pushed the basin down harder and harder. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to know what was happening. She didn’t want to look any more.

The stained newspaper bundle lay half under a chair on the kitchen floor. Stella knelt down, her hands shaking. She knew it would be easier to do as Peg said, just take it outside, close her eyes and empty the whole bloody mess into the dunny, yet
something
made her want to open the rough parcel. As she unwrapped the newspaper a thick smell hit her and her stomach heaved. The thing lay in the midst of the blood-soaked mess, like a tiny crumpled sock or a broken scarlet fern frond. Big head, cupped body, but recognisably human, like the little passé-partout kewpie doll Stella had had as a child. It was so small, so needy. Stella wanted to take it up, to wash away the dreadful clinging blood, to wrap it as you would a proper baby.

‘You poor, poor little thing,’ Stella said, tears running down her face. ‘How could Mum have done it?’

Stella thought of the dunny with its stinking human waste and the night-soil man coming clinking up the drive emptying the buckets. There was no way she would consign this tiny creature to that disgusting place. She must bury it secretly — but where? The backyard was small and her father would notice if she started digging under the silverbeet or rhubarb. And there was the Scanlons’ dog, Mickey, from next door, to consider as well, for despite Peg and Doug’s angry shouts, Mickey often jumped the fence and went scavenging about in the Morgans’ garden.

Stella went into her room and fetched a tablecloth she’d started to embroider but given up when she couldn’t afford more silk. Shutting her eyes and choking back her retching, she picked up the tiny bundle of slippery flesh and laid it on the linen; then, as if she were rolling a diminutive bathing costume in a towel, she wrapped it up.

Lal Crawford couldn’t sleep. She had been up several times already, going to the lavatory, making herself a hot milk drink, reading the day’s portion from her Scripture Union notes, and now she was standing on the back veranda of the vicarage looking at the sky. It was still night, but off to the east was a smudge of brightness announcing the dawn. Lal pulled her wrap around her as she watched the growing rosy light.

There was something moving among the graves. At first she thought it was a dog or an opossum maybe, but then the shape straightened up and she could see it was a person. Lal set off through the vicarage garden towards the fence and opened the gate. She was not normally particularly brave and had a phobia of feathers and spiders but now she felt no fear, as her certainty of pregnancy swung about her like a protective coat.

Moving closer, Lal could see the figure hunched over the ground as if weeding.

‘Who’s there?’ Lal called as she walked between the graves.

The person jumped and stood up. In the faint light, Lal could see it was a girl in what looked like a man’s overcoat. It was Stella Morgan.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Lal.

‘Is it you, Mrs Crawford?’ said Stella, glancing around, her voice unsteady with panic.

‘Yes,’ said Lal, moving towards her.

‘I’m …’ Stella stopped. ‘It’s a secret. I’ve promised not to say,’ she added in a mumble as she dropped her head.

‘You were burying something,’ said Lal, seeing the trowel in Stella’s hand. ‘Are you in trouble, Stella? Is something wrong?’

Stella began to cry.

‘Come on inside. I’ll make you some tea,’ said Lal. ‘And you can tell me.’

In the vicarage kitchen Lal rattled up the range and made a pot of tea. She put two Anzac biscuits on a plate and handed it to Stella.

‘Have one,’ she said. Stella looked at the biscuits without seeing them and wondered what she should do. In a few minutes Lal would ask again why she had been digging in the graveyard. There was hardly any point in not telling, as Lal could go out and see for herself. Maybe a vicar’s wife was special, like a Catholic priest in confession — what you told couldn’t be repeated. Stella wasn’t sure.

‘I need to know what you were doing,’ said Lal, sitting down at the table.

‘Can you promise not to tell anyone if I tell you?’ said Stella.

‘Sorry,’ said Lal, pulling her wrap more firmly around her, ‘but I can’t. I’ll try not to tell, but it does depend.’

There was a noise in the passage and Roland, wearing a
camel-coloured
dressing gown over pyjamas, came into the kitchen.

‘What on earth? Stella, this is certainly an early call.’

‘Morning, Mr Crawford,’ said Stella, not looking up.

‘Stella’s in trouble but she’s not sure if she should tell us,’ said Lal.

‘Can’t help if we don’t know,’ said Roland, cheerfully going to the dresser and taking down another cup and saucer.

‘Well,’ said Stella, taking a deep breath and talking very fast, ‘Mum was going to … she was going to have a baby. We couldn’t afford it, so she did something and it came. She wanted to just throw it out but I brought it here because I thought it needed to be buried properly.’

‘Oh, Stella,’ said Lal, her eyes filling with tears. ‘How terrible.’

Roland sat down suddenly. ‘Dear Lord,’ he said.

‘You did the right thing,’ said Lal. ‘And of course we won’t tell.’

‘Not so fast, Lal,’ said Roland. ‘This is serious, very serious. A crime’s been committed.’

‘For goodness sake,’ said Lal. ‘You don’t want Mrs Morgan punished?’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Roland.

‘Poor, poor woman. Can you imagine how desperate she must have been to do such a thing?’ said Lal.

‘I’m well aware of how difficult the times are, and people are being forced to desperate measures. But this … the authorities need to be informed … And do we even know it was Mrs Morgan’s baby? Other people might draw different conclusions,’ said Roland.

At first Stella had sat there watching the Crawfords, their mouths opening and closing. She felt as if she were outside looking in through a window, but Roland’s mention of the authorities, his hint that maybe she was lying caused a great surge of anger to rise from her chest and move up into her neck and face.

‘What I told you is the truth,’ said Stella forcefully.

‘I didn’t say you weren’t telling the truth; I just said that there were aspects to be thought over and maybe the police and a doctor should be informed,’ said Roland.

‘I thought vicars were supposed to be loving and forgiving.’ Stella stood up and her voice rose. ‘In your sermons you’re always saying how people should sacrifice themselves for others — don’t you see that’s what my mother did yesterday afternoon? You didn’t have to listen to her scream and think she was about to die. She went through that not for herself but for us, her family, for Dad and me …’

Stella’s tears started again.