The Paua Tower (20 page)

Of course she shouldn’t be buying another hat. Jack, who’d had his salary cut twice already, had spoken to Amélie several times about the amount she was spending on clothes but the thought of having something new to wear when she went to the play rehearsal on Saturday afternoon was very tempting. Selecting a hat made Amélie think of France and those few months of frantic shopping before she sailed for New Zealand. She must have appropriate and becoming clothes for her new life, her mother had said: it was a wife’s duty to do her husband credit. Jack was an officer and a bank manager, so Amélie and her parents assumed he was a man of substance and private means. It was many months later that Amélie discovered he had no more than his salary to live on and that was scarcely enough. Worse still, he didn’t even see the need of employing a maid, said they couldn’t afford one. If it wasn’t for Amélie’s mother sending small remittances from France, even that necessity would have been denied.

Madame Durand and her daughter had gone to Reims to buy a set of hats for the trousseau. Amélie remembered choosing the picture hat covered in peonies, and the velvet Dolly Varden with the silk ribbons. She thought of the dressmaker, her mouth full of pins fitting dresses and skirts; and going to the local convent to order underclothes — exquisite embroidered petticoats, camisoles and knickers made by the nuns.

The day Jack had returned to Le Manoir just after the war ended they had walked in the woods together. Amélie could still
see the trees, stark and leafless, and the coppery bloom from the late afternoon sun making the ground glow with a slippery light. She had looked at Jack’s long legs clothed in his officer’s trousers as he walked beside her and felt a ripple of attraction run through her. That was the moment she decided to accept if he asked to marry her. She recalled the khaki legs striding out, and desire running like a fiery ribbon through her body.

And there was the alluring promise of the ocean voyage right across the world and living in another country. New Zealand. A land like a jewel, with crystal mountains and sapphire water under a gilded sky.

What a silly little goose, thought Amélie, heedlessly saying yes to Jack, as if he had asked for a moment together on a dance floor or offered an invitation to a picnic. How little she had known, agreeing to entwine her life with his, promising to plait herself together like a twisted loaf, condemned at nineteen to the dreadful intimacy of marriage with an increasingly sick man, privy to the cough, the wheeze, the gobs of bloodied phlegm, the struggle for breath, the sweating skin and yells in the night: all the anguish and terror of Jack’s world.

They got married on a day of intermittent snow. Amélie’s wedding dress was trimmed in white swansdown and she and Jack stood on a fur rug laid on the cobbles when they had the photographs taken. Snowflakes blew as they smiled at the camera and tiny ice crystals hung on their clothing like pearls.

Later, in the hotel in Paris, when Jack had kissed Amélie’s hands and feet and peeled back her stockings as if preparing to eat an orange, she had almost swooned with excitement and delight. The rapture had been short-lived, Amélie thought, reaching forward and picking up a little black hat decorated with a set of coloured ceramic reels. After a brief honeymoon she’d been crammed into a troopship returning to New Zealand; separated from Jack, she’d shared a four-berth cabin with other officers’ new wives.

No, she decided the black hat was not a success and the coloured reels looked cheap. Cheap like some of those women she’d travelled with from Southampton. Loud English girls who spent a great deal of time in front of the cabin mirror in their
underclothes
, squeezing their blackheads and talking about knitting.

Amélie slid off the chair so she could get a better view of how she looked in the red hat.

‘Very becoming, Ma’am,’ said the assistant, hovering beside her.

Amélie turned looking at herself from left and right. She accepted the proffered hand mirror and inspected the hat from the back.

‘Non,’ she said, ‘I do not think so, though perhaps it is the shoes. I do not think I am wearing the right shoes to choose a hat.’

‘Struth, we should have rented bigger rooms,’ said Vic to Gilchrist as the two pushed through the doors of the Mechanics’ Institute and saw how many were already there. Smelling of sweat,
overworn
garments and mud-encrusted boots, the place was packed with people — mostly men, though a sprinkling of women in hats and berets were sitting with husbands and brothers. Doug and Peg Morgan were crammed together on a three-person bench beside Arnold Pratt and his sister Ena Thurlow. They were lucky to have found a seat, as the rows of bentwood chairs had filled quickly and many people had had to prop themselves against the walls or squat on the floor. Some were forced to stand and listen from the corridor.

The poor and jobless of Matauranga had turned out in force. They had put up with enough and the government’s threat that married men claiming the dole would also be sent to the camps was the last straw. It was the tail end of winter and people were tired, cold, ill-fed and angry. The Otway marchers were moving down the country, a wave of protest rippling through New Zealand. The government was scared, trucking in police reinforcements and
swearing in special constables in every town the marchers passed. The unemployed were saying that Coates, Forbes, the politicians and bosses in their Burberry coats and hand-stitched suits, those bloody bastards, had it coming. They’d asked for it and by God, when the march reached Wellington, they’d better watch out.

‘Said you should have more faith in the proletariat,’ Gilchrist said to Vic, looking about. ‘And it seems we rallied our lot quite well — I’d say there were a couple of dozen at least from the Punawai.’

‘Looks like it,’ said Vic, smiling. ‘And some of these other blokes like Bailey over there, who’s a postie, and Latham in telegraphs aren’t even out of work, even if they are on strike. Bloody corker to get their support.’

‘Legatt was saying earlier he’d heard the postal-service men were backing the marchers all the way down the island,’ said Gilchrist as he and Vic swung themselves onto the stage, rather than using the steps. Vic heard the back of his jacket tear yet again as he levered himself up. He’d already tried to mend it several times but the fabric was rotten and exhausted.

‘Blast the thing,’ he said, putting his hand to his back and feeling the ripped material. He felt embarrassed at the thought of the crowd, particularly the Morgans, seeing his state. It was one thing to be shabby — everyone was — but torn clothing
suggested
laziness, that you didn’t care.

The meeting when it began was loud and heated. The major matter to be considered was what to do when the marchers reached Matauranga, along with details of feeding and accommodation, though that was quickly handed over to a sub-committee. Everyone seemed to have suggestions: there should be a monster meeting, Matauranga should go on strike, grind to a standstill, the war memorial should be covered in red paint to symbolise vainly spilt blood, a blockade should be put across the main road after the marchers left, the unemployed should take over the town, a soviet should be declared. Every time someone spoke, others interrupted.
Men who knew each other shouted encouragement across the hall. There was heckling of the moderates, laughter, swearing and a huge sense of camaraderie. There was also fear.

‘The Specials will be here; they’ll belt the hell out of us, like they’ve done in Matewai and Kenny,’ said one man, holding the lapels of his sad grey raincoat.

‘We’re not scared of a few poofters and college boys!’ shouted someone.

‘It’ll be the army with machine guns more likely,’ said a woman with plaits wound around her head. It was the first time a woman had spoken and everyone looked at her in surprise.

A male voice struck up with ‘The Red Flag’, only to be hushed by neighbours.

Gilchrist, who was chairing the meeting, had difficulty keeping order. ‘Silence, silence!’ he’d say, banging down the gavel. ‘Comrade Wright has the floor,’ or ‘Just a minute, Cooper, our comrade in the corner hasn’t finished.’ Vic, who was frantically taking the minutes, was constantly having to refer to the
vice-chairman
, Dave Barnes, an out-of-work bricklayer, to find out exactly what had been said, or whisper with the treasurer to check that he had the remits correctly stated.

In the end it was unanimously decided that a full turnout of the unemployed and trade unionists would escort the marchers from the outskirts of the town to the Adelphi cinema, which would be rented for the occasion on account of its size. A series of demands would be drawn up at the meeting and sent with the marchers to Parliament, most probably including one calling for the immediate resignation of the government.

‘Pretty good, eh?’ said Vic, pushing his hair back off his face with his hand and grinning at Gilchrist.

The meeting had finished and the two of them, along with the others on the committee, were tidying up the hall. Gilchrist was stacking benches in a corner.

‘Hell, yes,’ said Gilchrist, giving one of the benches an extra shove. ‘There seemed a real feeling of solidarity tonight; it’s as if people are so riled that finally something’s going to happen.’

‘Too right it is.’ Vic picked up a pair of chairs and put them up on a table.

‘Do we have to sweep the place?’ asked Miller, coming over.

‘Could do,’ said Vic, ‘if you can find a broom.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ said Miller, opening a cupboard under the stage and peering inside.

‘You walking back to Punawai, Vic?’ asked Gilchrist.

‘No,’ said Vic. ‘I’ve got something I have to do here in the morning so I’m dossing down at Tiny Mulcock’s. Do you want to stay too? I’m sure Mrs Mulcock wouldn’t mind.’

‘No, I’ll be off back to camp,’ said Gilchrist.

‘Can’t get enough of the place, is that it?’

‘Something like that, you daft bugger,’ said Gilchrist, biffing Vic on the ear with a copy of the
Workers’ Weekly.

The couch in the front room of Tiny Mulcock’s mother’s house was covered in stiff moquette that rasped Vic’s face when he turned. It was very hard and much too short but that wasn’t what prevented him from sleeping as he lay with his legs over the arm looking at the dying fire. The sparks were burning on the back of the chimney and Vic smiled as he remembered his mother’s
childhood
story about how these were people with little candles going on a journey.

The meeting had excited and stimulated him. There were a hundred things to be done and attended to before the Otway marchers got to Matauranga — letters to be written, people to see. Tomorrow there was Maguire; Vic was determined not to go back to the camp until he’d confronted the man, called him a bastard to his face, given him a piece of his mind and a taste of his fists as well. And floating through everything was Stella in her yellow jacket, surrounded by the grey blur of rain.

The clock struck two and Vic imagined Stella at that very moment on the other side of town at the vicarage. He had never been inside a vicarage and wondered what it was like. Did it seem like a church? Were the walls hung with pictures of Jesus and scenes from the Bible? He couldn’t guess. He saw Stella in bed, curled up around the child she carried, and he yearned to be near her, to smell her faint soapy scent and to circle her light body in his arms. Could he really stay away from her for three more months? And when the baby came and Stella let him come back, what would happen then? People said having a kid could do things to a woman; no sooner did they become mothers than they lost interest in their men. Would Stella be like that with him? The thought was troubling, but Vic wasn’t going to let it bother him too much. Stella was not so fickle.

He looked about the room — or what he could see of it in the cheerful light of the fire. The multi-coloured hearth rug made of knotted rags, Tiny’s boots on the fender stuffed with newspaper to stop them shrinking as they dried, family photographs in the recesses of the mantelpiece and a framed picture of a kitten sitting in a basket of balls of wool. After the dour discomfort of the camp the place was sweet and friendly. Vic imagined such a room for himself and Stella. They would sit together on just such a sofa by the fire, and he’d tell Stella about the people and their little candles and she’d laugh and kiss him. One day when they were together forever. One day. Vic clutched the comforting promise to himself as he drifted towards sleep.

Everyone in the office looked up as Vic opened the door.

‘You’re Vic Cowan?’ said Gertie, putting down the magazine she was reading.

‘Yes,’ said Vic, blushing as the women stared.

‘She’s not here. Handed in her notice and left months ago,’ said Gertie, swinging her bleached hair.

‘But
we’re
here,’ said Dorothy, giving Vic a wink and what she hoped was one of her Jean Harlow smiles.

‘I wasn’t looking for Stella,’ said Vic. ‘Wanted to see the boss, Maguire.’

‘Mr Maguire’s not here either,’ said Gertie. ‘Gone down to Wellington.’

‘When will he be back?’ said Vic, feeling cheated.

‘A week, two weeks, can’t really say,’ said Gertie, flipping through pages of the magazine. ‘He’s down there talking to the big-wigs in the government; he’s on some committee about
unemployment
.’

‘Holy shit,’ said Vic, hitting his cap against his palm with
irritation
. ‘Sorry for the language but —’

‘It’s okay,’ said Gertie, smiling. ‘We’ve heard worse.’

‘You made it up with little Stell yet?’ asked Dorothy.

‘Hell, Dot, you shouldn’t ask him that,’ said Valerie.

‘Yes, no — rather not talk about it.’ Vic was embarrassed by the obvious interest of all the women in the office.

‘Like that, is it? Well, she’s a gem, is Stella, and if you’ve an ounce of sense you’ll hang on to her,’ said Gertie.

‘I know,’ said Vic, running his finger around the rim of his collar as if it were suddenly too tight. ‘I bloody know.’

He walked down the drive that led from the tannery back to the road. It was a sunny morning; plump clouds scudded about the sky and a stiff wind turned the leaves of the rangiora white and forced Vic to keep his hand to his cap. He felt frustrated that Maguire was not about, but he also knew it didn’t matter if their confrontation was postponed. The driving need for immediate retribution had left him. In its place was an icy determination that Maguire was not going to get away with what he’d done; the man would eventually be called to account. There would be a time, sooner or later, when he’d make Maguire pay. Meanwhile, Vic thought, as he looked at the sunlight catching the dazzle of oil spilt in puddles and turning it to a rainbow sheen, the Otway
marchers would be in Matauranga in less than a fortnight. There was other work to be done.