The Paua Tower (22 page)

‘Max,’ said Stella, drawing the cloth over the prongs of a fork. ‘I think that’s a really good name for a boy.’

‘Rupert, too,’ said Lal, who, like Stella, had recently read Anthony Hope’s
Prisoner of Zenda
books.

‘No,’ said Stella, ‘it’s not so good, somehow. Suppose it’s because of Rupert Bear and his little checked trousers, though then again there was Rupert Brooke …’ She trailed off, thinking of Vic.

‘You know how Roland was so keen on calling baby Peter, if ours is a boy?’ said Lal, rubbing the shaft of a spoon really hard. ‘Would you believe, yesterday he said why didn’t we consider Pierre — you know, the French form? Just imagine — Pierre Crawford!’

‘That sounds a bit funny,’ Stella giggled.

‘Funny?’ said Lal angrily. ‘It’s one of the many potty ideas Roland seems keen on at present.’

Stella stopped rubbing the fork and looked at Mrs Crawford in her green viyella smock with the white pique collar.

‘I’m sure you’ll find the perfect name once you and Mr Crawford actually see the baby,’ Stella said kindly. She knew there was something wrong between the Crawfords and wished she could put it right. Mrs Crawford sounded resentful when she spoke of her husband, and Mr Crawford didn’t seem to see his nice wife, as if his mind was always elsewhere. Yet they were such lucky people, Stella thought, looking around the warm kitchen. Their cups and saucer weren’t chipped, there were no holes in the linoleum on the floor, pots with flat bottoms lined the cupboard, not old uneven ones like Stella was used to, there was a leg
of mutton in the meat safe — Stella knew because she’d brought it back from the butcher — and a sack of potatoes in the pantry. They had decent clothes without tears and darns, a bed with sheets and blankets and a feather eiderdown specially sent from a shop in Christchurch, yet none of it seemed to count.

‘I’m so glad you’ll be here, Stella, when baby comes,’ said Lal. ‘Roland doesn’t seem interested, somehow, but maybe men aren’t. You and I both with little ones: that’ll be such fun.’

Stella felt so grateful to the Crawfords for allowing her to stay on at the vicarage after her own baby was born. She felt the comforting weight of her full stomach against her thighs and imagined the baby curled inside her like a walnut in a shell, a tiny scrap of life with her alone to protect and nurture it. She knew people whispered about her disgrace when she walked along Sebastopol Street or into Davidsons’ to order the Crawfords’ groceries, and she didn’t like it, but she also knew that the baby, her baby, was more important than what anyone said.

‘There’s bad news,’ said Roland, coming in and taking off his overcoat. ‘Clive Purchase in the barber’s had heard it on the wireless. Those marchers have just gone through Kakati.
Apparently
there was trouble and they called in the Special Constables. There was a riot or a brawl or whatever and it looks as if one man mightn’t live and another’s badly hurt.’

‘That’s terrible!’ said Lal.

‘Who got hurt?’ asked Stella, thinking of Vic. ‘Was it anyone from around here?’

‘No,’ said Roland, putting his gloves on the table by the silver basket. ‘They weren’t names I knew.’

V
ic’s jacket was too small. Drenched and dried over and over, it had shrunk so much that the sleeves were now far too short and the back too tight. Mrs Mulcock, Tiny’s mother, had sewed up the rip he’d got the night of the meeting, but as Vic walked he could feel the stitches breaking at the shoulder seams. He supposed he’d have to go to one of the depots and look for another jacket but he hated the thought of visiting a charity place and asking for someone else’s cast-offs. All right for women with kiddies but worse somehow for a man. Since the bad times began, Vic had managed with the clothes he’d originally bought new, but it seemed that small luxury was over. Just have to swallow your pride, my boy, and be like every other out-of-work citizen, he told himself.

It was a glorious morning. The air had the nudging warmth of springtime: there were lambs in the fields and occasional daffodils
in farm gardens. Pukeko stalked through paddocks on their long articulated legs and trees were covered in tight green buds. Vic and Gilchrist were on their way to the place where the Otway marchers were camped, to organise events for the following night. Chased off public property by the authorities, the marchers were camping on land belonging to sympathetic farmers.

‘What do you know about this chap Sandy Armstrong who’s leading the march?’ asked Gilchrist.

‘Not much,’ said Vic. ‘Heard he was a union man before he lost his job, big in the Labour Party, worked in a canning factory or something. Great on organisation, this Otway crowd — there’s a thing or two they could teach us about running talks and lectures, writing pamphlets, all that sort of stuff.’

The camp was in a paddock surrounded by gorse hedges, which opened onto a track leading to the main road. Fifty or sixty men moved around three lorries parked on the site. Some of the men stood around open fires cooking with billies on trivets.

Sandy Armstrong, a muscular man in his forties with a battered hat and reddish moustache, was sitting on the grass, his back against the wheel of a lorry, eating rice pudding off a tin plate when Gilchrist and Vic arrived.

‘Come and join us, comrades,’ he said convivially, waving his spoon. ‘Cowan and Gilchrist, the bad boys of Punawai, eh? Not just unemployed but kicked out of a slave camp as well — pretty good achievement, by my reckoning. Here, have some tucker. One of the locals brought us in a sack of rice and a kerosene tin of sugar this morning, so it’s rice pud for lunch. No currants, mind, but not bad all the same. Hey, Ted, get these two gents some grub.’

A barefoot boy of about thirteen, who had been sitting on the bonnet of the lorry, slid to the ground.

‘My son Ted,’ said Armstrong by way of introduction. The boy vanished behind the truck and came back with two plates loaded with rice pudding and a couple of spoons, which he handed to Vic and Gilchrist.

‘How’s it been going?’ said Vic, hunkering down on the grass beside Armstrong. ‘Sounds like a bad business for you lot last week in Kakati.’

‘Bloody awful,’ said Armstrong. ‘We had to leave my mate Dave Pim in the hospital up there. The good news is that it seems he’ll be okay, but we still don’t know about the local Kakati bloke, Peter O’Rourke — he took a terrible hammering from one of the Specials. Head injury, that sort of thing.’

‘Barbarians,’ said Vic. ‘Supposed to be a democracy and you get your brains bashed in for taking part in a peaceful march down the main street. Heard the bosses were putting pressure on men to join the Specials and swell the numbers, as if they didn’t have already enough farmers and property owners happy to join up and thump the unemployed. Mrs Mulcock knows a bloke working for the county council who was told his job would be on the line if he didn’t volunteer.’

‘Bloody fascists,’ said Gilchrist, his mouth full of pudding.

‘At least we’re giving the Wellington bastards the shits,’ said Armstrong. ‘We’ve had spotting planes and police chasing all over the country after us. The cops lost us for three or four days — how’s that for a joke?’

‘Pretty good,’ grinned Vic, spooning up the rice. He and Gilchrist had pretended to Mrs Mulcock, where they were staying, that they had friends who supplied them with food, so they weren’t a burden on her meagre larder. In fact neither men had eaten anything that day and little the day before, so the food tasted particularly delicious. ‘None of us want a repetition of what happened in Kakati in Matauranga tomorrow night,’ Vic added.

‘You can say that again,’ said Armstrong. ‘I wouldn’t worry. Our men won’t cause trouble — we don’t believe in provocation, as you know. So long as the Matauranga unemployed don’t start anything, we should be okay.’

‘No rotten fruit, catapults or broken windows,’ said Gilchrist. ‘We’ll make that clear.’

‘Do that.’ Armstrong swatted at a sandfly that was biting his hand.

Lal had pains that afternoon. She hugged her side under her corduroy smock and her pale brown eyes glistened with excitement. At last the baby was coming. Stella wanted her to lie down but Lal insisted on walking about the house.

‘It feels as if it’s started! It’s only two weeks to go, so I suppose it could be,’ she said.

‘Will I get Dr Cunningham?’ asked Stella, who was on her knees in the hall dusting the ornate skirting boards that ran through all the rooms in the vicarage.

‘No, better wait, at least till Roland gets back,’ said Lal, pressing her fingers to her big belly as if she were playing the piano. ‘I don’t want the doctor coming and it being a false alarm.’

Lal lay on the bed partly undressed and looked at the mirror on the wardrobe door. She didn’t want to catch Dr Cunningham’s eye or see the hairs that sprouted in his ears as he bent over examining her. What he was doing hurt badly and it was really embarrassing, especially since he was one of the parishioners. Lal wondered how she would ever be able to offer him an asparagus roll or a rock cake at a church social again. Still, she thought, clenching her teeth together and shutting her eyes, if this was what you had to put up with to get a baby, it’d be worth it.

‘Seems fine to me,’ said Dr Cunningham, pulling Lal’s tweed skirt back down to indicate he’d finished. ‘Though I can
understand
why your husband wanted me to check. Many women get these latent-phase contractions for weeks before the actual labour. Wouldn’t worry about them; expect you’ve some way to go yet.’

Lal felt she was about to cry. Silly, of course, but she’d been waiting for the baby so long that the thought of holding out even a few more days seemed hugely disappointing. Be sensible, she
told herself. Say something, distract yourself, ask the doctor a question.

‘Does it hurt a lot when the baby comes?’ she said, pulling up her stockings as she sat on the side of the bed.

‘No good thinking about that.’ Dr Cunningham picked up his bag from the ottoman. ‘Used to be a bit rough sometimes, but since we’ve got the new Twilight Sleep you just go to sleep and when you wake up there’s your baby.’

‘A false alarm,’ said the doctor to Roland, who was waiting outside the bedroom door in the hall.

‘You think it’s some way off still?’ Roland handed the doctor his hat and felt pleased that maybe he’d get to rehearsal that evening after all. ‘Should I stay home tonight just to be on the safe side?’

‘Please yourself, but don’t imagine there’s any need just yet,’ said the doctor, running his hand over his curly red hair. ‘Everything seems fine with your wife, which is more than can be said for what’s going on out there in the town. Don’t like the way things are shaping up, what with that crowd coming in from Otway and the Specials been sworn in. We could be in for
something
nasty.’

‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Roland, opening the front door.

At dusk they marched into Matauranga six abreast. The men in the front had megaphones; behind them came a small band — a drum, two trumpets and a bugler. The Otway marchers formed the party at the front, followed by Vic, Gilchrist and the members of the Matauranga Unemployed Workers’ Association. The various trade unions and sympathetic political parties walked behind. Each group carried a painted banner made from an old sheet, which flapped above the marchers’ heads. Some of the men, old soldiers used to parade-ground drill, brought a sharp precision to the march as the band played ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’.

Vic, shoulders back and head held high, felt exhilarated. The
presence of Sandy Armstrong and the Otway men with their easy camaraderie, experience of demonstrating and efficient
organisation
cheered and encouraged him. The number of people on the street was also heartening. Not just the idle sightseers or men standing outside pubs, beer in hand, but the ordinary people who crowded the pavements ready to join the march. There were husbands in stained trilbies, youths in their fathers’ old jackets, mothers in cloche hats that had long since lost their shape, shabby ill-fed people smiling at him and the others.

Some gave the thumbs-up sign, or shouted support. ‘Good on you, mates!’ ‘When you get to Wellington give those bastards hell!’ ‘Tell them they’ll have to reckon with me if they take my husband to a slave camp!’ Lorries had brought people in from surrounding areas and the workers of Matauranga, both in and out of employment, had turned out in force.

‘Plenty of police but don’t see any of the Specials,’ said Vic to Gilchrist as they marched past the war memorial and saw two police vans parked behind it.

‘Probably safely locked up at the moment. I heard the cops can’t stand them. They think they’re undisciplined scum — no idea about anything but cracking skulls,’ Gilchrist replied.

‘Let’s hope they stay in their cages,’ said Vic, and the two men laughed.

The public meeting started well. The cinema was packed and every space was crowded with people sitting or standing. Enthusiasm for the event was such that the doors of the Adelphi had to be shut to prevent more people forcing their way in. Vic, sitting on the stage behind Sandy Armstrong and the other speakers, just hoped there wasn’t a fire, as he couldn’t imagine how people would escape in the crush.

The walls of the theatre were covered in pleated gold fabric decorated with gigantic silver stars and cardboard figures of movie goddesses. Vic let his gaze wander around Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Vilma Banky and Mary Pickford with their perfect
features and luscious clothing, then his gaze dropped to the seats below. He looked at the rows of worn faces, sagging shoulders and work-stained hands. My sort of people, Vic thought. He scanned the seats, hoping Stella was there, but supposed it was most unlikely given her condition. Outside the cinema the crowd was chanting. ‘Tell the bastards we want work!’ ‘Jobs, jobs, we want jobs!’ ‘No more slave camps!’

Sam Langdon, the mayor of the town and headmaster of the central Matauranga primary school, had agreed to take the chair. A tall man with dark brilliantined hair and faint blue eyes, Langdon was a popular figure in the town, widely respected for having set up free lunch and other schemes to help the children of the unemployed. He seldom raised his voice and he spoke now in the low humming tone that made people strain to hear. After welcoming the audience, Langdon paid tribute to the marchers and the Unemployed Workers’ Association members, who were doing sterling service supporting those out of work and
endeavouring
to find new ways to solve the terrible problems facing New Zealand. He spoke of his interest in the various programmes that had been set up by the unemployed in Otway, and his desire to see similar things established in Matauranga. He commended the marchers on their willingness to put personal comfort aside in order to bring their grievances to the law-makers in Wellington. Then he introduced Sandy Armstrong.

As Armstrong pushed his chair back from the table and stood up to speak, the noise outside the Adelphi turned to a roar. Vic saw the back doors of the auditorium heave open and a crowd of men erupt into the cinema. ‘The Specials!’ one of the men shouted wildly. ‘There’s blood on the street!’ Confusion followed and everyone was on their feet. From outside the hall came the sounds of shouting and chaos and inside the crowd pushed backwards and forwards. Men climbed over seats and rushed for the exits. A woman in a brown coat stood on her seat and began to scream hysterically.

From the stage Sandy Armstrong shouted, ‘Sit down, sit down! Keep calm! No violence!’ but his voice was lost in the uproar.

Sam Langdon banged his gavel. ‘No need to panic,’ he said, but that, too, was ignored.

‘Better get outside and see what’s going on,’ said Vic to Armstrong. ‘There’s a back way out behind the curtain.’

Armstrong grabbed a chair off the stage. ‘My soap box,’ he said as he followed Vic. ‘If I can get out there, I’ll try to calm things down.’

Together the men crossed behind the curtain and went down the short flight of stairs that led to the street.

Grey Gates, where the play rehearsals were being held, had a large wood-panelled entrance hall with a substantial staircase at one side. Mrs Hildred, who fancied the idea of being the chatelaine of a manor house, had scoured Wellington antique shops for
baronial-looking
furniture, ornately carved chairs, hunting prints, brass fire irons, and standard lamps with parchment shades and barley sugar pedestals. The extemporised play furniture consisted of a Jacobean table and an assortment of chintz fireside chairs. Roland and his on-stage sweetheart Eleanor Mathews — the nineteen-year-old daughter of Matauranga’s newspaper editor — were sitting on a pair of leather-and-wood thrones, pretending to be in a London café.

‘Darling,’ said Roland, leaning across the table, looking straight at Eleanor’s eyebrows without seeing them and thinking of Amélie, ‘since I met you the world has turned —’

‘Stop, stop right there,’ called Mrs Hildred from her commanding position on the stairs. ‘Passion, Vicar, more passion, that’s what’s required. I want to see you really
look
at Eleanor. I want to hear the romance, the heartache, the fervour in your voice. Let’s have it again from when Giovanni and Philip come in and Giovanni says, “It is my duty”.’