The Paua Tower (21 page)

R
oland had never considered acting as a career, but as the rehearsals for
Tea for Two
advanced he became absorbed with the pleasures of the stage. At first he thought he’d be just passable in the part of Reginald Winterbottom, but as he became more fluent in his lines and more confident in the part he decided he might have real talent.

‘Let me remind you that I only asked for two teas and the plain cakes,’ he’d repeat to himself as he shaved in the morning, or ‘Darling, we have our whole lives ahead of us,’ he’d say as he stopped the car at the intersection of Sebastopol and Majuba streets. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked laughingly, brandishing his umbrella when he went for his French lessons, and he’d feel absurdly pleased when Amélie replied in the lines from the play, ‘Monsieur is too kind, too kind altogether.’

Roland flicked through his Concordance. It was Saturday
afternoon and he was supposed to be writing a sermon — at least that’s what he’d told Lal he was going into his study to do. He fiddled distractedly with a rubber band on his desk. Roland had recently seen a photograph of Napier following the earthquake. Huge cracks and canyons parted what had once been a smooth suburban street and a man was standing knee deep in one of the fissures. It seemed to Roland like a metaphor for what was happening to him. Leaving aside the play and his French lessons, everything else was cracking and breaking. Take his sermons. There had been a time when ideas flowed out in a steady stream; in fact Roland sometimes had so many thoughts for a single Sunday that he’d kept a notebook to record all the points he’d been unable to use. Now he found himself squeezing and straining to get enough for ten minutes’ worth, let alone the twenty required. Worse still was his increasing uncertainty whether he believed what he preached. Once he began questioning central tenets of the faith, like the virgin birth or the divinity of Christ, the whole structure slipped and swayed and threatened collapse.

Then there was Amélie. Since rehearsals had started, Roland had seen much more of the bank manager’s wife. It was now once a week for the French lesson and twice for rehearsals and, since Mrs Hildred had insisted on having the rehearsals at her home at Grey Gates (‘so much warmer and cosier than the freezing church hall’), Roland had taken to driving Amélie to and fro. When they were together their hands met and touched as if by accident and they smiled a great deal at each other; for Roland the week was strung between the times he saw Amélie and the days he didn’t. Those days were drear and lethargic as wet washing in the rain.

Lal hadn’t said much about the play but Roland knew she was against it. The subject had remained largely undiscussed until one Saturday morning when the post arrived. Lal was sitting at the kitchen table, her apron straining over her smock, cutting up lemons and oranges for marmalade. Roland was rummaging in the drawer of the dresser looking for a packet of drawing pins when
Stella came in with a letter.

‘Post for you, Mrs Crawford,’ said Stella, putting the envelope down beside Lal.

‘Thanks,’ said Lal.

‘I’m just going to give the brass on the front step a polish.’ Stella picked up a cloth and tin of cleaner and went back into the hall.

‘Who’s the letter from?’ asked Roland.

‘Beauchamp and Benedict,’ said Lal. ‘They sound like
solicitors
.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the envelope. She didn’t speak for a moment, and then let out a little squeal. ‘It’s marvellous, absolutely marvellous! Do you know what? I’ve been left Aunt Babs’s house in Epsom.’

Thinking back on the scene, Roland wished it could have stopped there: he and Lal in the kitchen, thrilled to at last have a house of their very own, even if it might be years before they lived in it. But very quickly they were arguing. Roland wanted the Auckland house rented out for as much as they could get; Lal was all for letting it for a peppercorn rental to a needy family.

‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Roland,’ Lal said, standing up and stretching, her hands against the small of her back. ‘You don’t seem to care about anyone these days except yourself — not me, not baby, not the poor. It’s no wonder people have started to talk about you.’

‘Talk?’ said Roland. ‘What are they saying?’

‘Oh, I don’t know really,’ said Lal, sitting down again. ‘They’re not going to say much to me but I gather there’s comment about how you can’t be bothered with the parish and you’re only
interested
in the play and running about after that silly Frenchwoman.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ Roland leaned on the back of a kitchen chair.

‘Is it?’ said Lal. ‘Because it’s what I think, too.’

Stu Forster was sitting on a stool in the kitchen of his house at the
Punawai camp, digging at a verruca on his foot with a penknife. The wart was excruciatingly painful when he walked and he was determined to get rid of it. The pain and the ticking off he’d just had in a letter from the authorities had put him in a bad mood, which a cupful of whisky had done nothing to soften. Forster paused in his self-butchery and shouted for his wife to do
something
about the baby’s crying. He heard her cross the hallway and say something to the baby and after a moment the roaring stopped. She’s probably feeding the brat, Forster guessed. He imagined Moana’s freeing her ample breasts from the constraints of her blouse as she sat on the sagging bed and felt a pang of desire. He could do with a nuzzle on those tits himself. There had been nothing but short rations for him since that baby came.

And now there was the business about the camp. ‘Lax’ the letter had called him, the Punawai camp getting a name in the area for harbouring communists and troublemakers. It had been reported from a police informer that a number of men from Punawai had taken part in a recent meeting of the unemployed in the town, where various criminal and seditious suggestions were openly discussed. Furthermore, some of the Punawai men were apparently office-holders in this and other undesirable
organisations
. And it wasn’t the first time the matter had been drawn to Mr Forster’s attention, the letter went on. The government had no obligation to provide relief for men of untrustworthy political disposition, just as it could not tolerate camp supervisors who deliberately, or through repeated negligence, permitted known anti-government agitators to remain in the camps. If Mr Forster wished to continue in his current position, these persons were to be weeded out and dismissed immediately.

Forster took another lunge at his foot with the penknife and shuddered with the pain as blade met flesh. The truth was, he didn’t know what to do. He had no wish to lose his job, but at the same time he had a sneaking admiration for Cowan, Gilchrist and the others. Of course he could have sent them down the road
months ago but something had held him back. He knew that if he were out of work he would feel much the same as they did, though he doubted he’d have their guts. Expulsion from the camp was pretty drastic — how did you survive on your own as a single man with no work and nowhere to go?

There was a small area at the back of the lorry shed that Forster used as an office. It was really just a counter with a chair on one side, a safe, a couple of filing cabinets, a rubbish bin and a calendar from a local garage showing a woman in fishnet stockings. First thing in the morning, when the men were getting on the lorries, Forster had pulled Vic and Gilchrist aside.

‘Want to see you two jokers. You first, Cowan,’ Forster said as he limped into the shed.

‘I smell trouble,’ said Gilchrist to Vic.

‘Weevils in the porridge, green mould on the bread and now an audience with his lordship. What more do you want to start the day?’ Vic grinned.

‘There’s been a complaint,’ said Forster. ‘Sedition, criminal activities been publicly discussed at some event of yours.’

‘Sedition?’ said Vic, genuinely puzzled. ‘Criminal activities? What on earth are you on about?’

‘That Unemployed Workers’ meeting of yours in town. Talk of bringing down the government, defacing property, setting up some sort of commie state. You were there, Cowan — you should know.’ Forster glanced quickly at the letter he was holding and scratched his balding head.

‘For crying out loud,’ said Vic, ‘that was talk. People are angry, very angry, and rightly so. They talk big but none of that’s going to happen.’

‘You’re sailing perilously close to the wind, Cowan. You and your mates are being watched, I can tell you that for nothing. One false move and you’ll be up on a charge of sedition.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Vic, looking at the woman in the calendar with her fleshy lips and voluptuous backside and thinking
longingly of Stella.

‘Look here, Cowan, you may not realise it but I’m trying to help. I don’t agree with your politics but I can see you’re not a bad sort, so if I were you I’d keep my head down. Anyway, suit yourself, but you’ve reached the end of the road as far as this camp is concerned.’

‘You mean I’m being thrown out?’ said Vic. ‘No more relief work?’

‘’Fraid so,’ said Forster. ‘To tell you the truth, Cowan, it’s not my doing. I’ve turned a bit of a blind eye to the antics of you and your cobbers these past months — running up and down to town, doing other work, treating the place like a bloody hotel, stirring up all sorts of commie nonsense among the men. Even that wireless of yours — never believed the cock and bull story about how you came by it, most likely stolen for all I know, but that’s over and the pressure’s on to get rid of you. I’ve got a job to keep, and a wife and family to consider.’

‘And Gilchrist?’ said Vic.

‘Same,’ said Forster, getting up and unlocking the safe. ‘I’ve got the pay owing to you totalled up and then it’s out, and if I see you hanging about Punawai after this morning I’ll have you arrested.’

‘Don’t we get to say cheerio to the blokes on the site?’ asked Vic, thinking of Miller and Legatt and the others he counted as friends.

‘No,’ said Forster, turning back to face him with a manila envelope in his hand, ‘you don’t. I’m not a fool, Cowan. You’re popular with the men. I don’t want a mutiny on my hands.’

‘Bloody fascist prick,’ said Gilchrist as they carried their
possessions
in sugar bags down the track past the supervisor’s house. They had left a note and the hectograph jelly pad for the others. Vic hoped the camp newspaper would survive their leaving, but somehow doubted it.

‘Forster’s got a wife and family to think of,’ said Vic. ‘Sounds
as if the bosses have put the screws on him.’

‘Fucking toady, if you ask me,’ growled Gilchrist, wrinkling his nose.

‘Forget him,’ said Vic. ‘It’s what we do now that’s the worry.’

‘Bum down to Wellington, I suppose,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Could pick up a job on the ships.’

‘But the march?’ said Vic. ‘Got to be here for that.’

They were passing the hole in the flax hedge that served as a back gate for the supervisor’s house when they heard Mrs Forster’s voice.

‘Hey,’ said the Maori woman, coming towards them across the rough grass. She was wearing a floral pinny over her clothes and her long wavy dark hair was secured by two yellow combs.

‘Morning,’ said Vic. Gilchrist angrily ignored her.

‘Heard you were leaving,’ she said, holding out a paper parcel. ‘I was making some scones and thought you could do with some kai.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Vic, smiling.

‘I put butter and homemade jam on them too.’

‘You’re a beaut.’ Vic took the lumpy package.

Halfway to town the two men sat in the long grass on the side of the road and opened the parcel.

‘God, it smells good,’ said Vic, partly closing his eyes and drawing in the scent of the fresh baking. He held out the food.

‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Gilchrist, attacking a scone with relish.

Vic took a bite. It seemed years since he’d eaten raspberry jam and the fruity rush in his mouth tasted of his boyhood. Gilchrist passed Vic the lemonade bottle of water they’d brought with them. They sat in silence, too absorbed in the pleasure of eating to speak.

Raspberry jam was always a treat. Vic’s mother had made it for her employers. He could see Joy, wooden spoon in hand bending over the bubbling crimson liquid, her face shiny with perspiration. When the jars were full, Vic would be allowed scrape up the
sugary red tide left on the rim of the pan. He thought of the
anticipation
of waiting for it to cool, and how often his impatience was such that he ate too soon and the heavy sweetness burnt his mouth.

Without even the small amount he’d been sending from his relief pay Joy would be worse off now than ever. He had to find work — but where? Tiny Mulcock and his other mates in Matauranga would see him through for a week or two, and after that he could go south with the march: maybe Gilchrist’s
suggestion
of seeking jobs on the ships wasn’t such a bad one. Yet the thought of leaving Matauranga pained him. Stella was here and, even if she was currently beyond reach, there was at least comfort in her nearness. He would wait and see what happened before making any decision.

He looked at the mountain, very white against the sky like a broken cup on a blue tablecloth. The fields on the side of the road were strongly green after the winter rain and the sun shone.

‘You know, Joe,’ he said, stretching his arms in the air, ‘here we are absolutely on our uppers, kicked out of the camp, no means of support and the whole country gone to hell, and yet somehow I feel sort of cheerful, as if it’ll eventually come right.’

‘Can’t imagine why you think that,’ said Gilchrist, putting the cork back in the half-empty bottle of water. ‘My guess is that the fascists are just starting to show their muscle and things are about to get a bloody sight worse, both here and in Europe.’

The Crawfords’ entire collection of silver objects was gathered on newspapers on the kitchen table. There were the canteen of cutlery, the napkin rings and the teapots, two hot-water jugs, a pair of candlesticks, a set of cake forks, some bonbon dishes, a school tennis trophy, Lal’s dressing table set — mirror, buttonhook, hairpin tray and hairbrush, a brandy flask they never used, an
everlasting
calendar Roland had inherited from his grandfather and a fruit dish that looked like a basket. Stella and Lal were sitting at the table cleaning. Stella put the polish on and Lal rubbed it off.
It was an operation they undertook every second week. Stella had never handled silver before and she liked touching the objects, with their ornate embossing of arabesques and flowers. She also liked working with Lal, talking as if they were family rather than servant and mistress. The topic they discussed the most was babies and today, as they had several times before, they were talking about possible names.