The Paua Tower (25 page)

‘It is a fairytale,’ said Amélie, looking up.

They went up the newly laid path that led to the gate. Roland could hear the sound of the river; he could feel the pressure
of Amélie’s body on his arm. Excitement nudged and seethed and crackled within him, exaggerating his senses, as if everything had new definition and was unusually clearly felt and seen. He could hear the thumping of his heart and Amélie’s breathing. The night’s clotted darkness brushed against him, the air touched his lips, and from somewhere, far off beyond the black willow trees and the paddocks, he could discern a dull human roar.

‘Let’s climb up,’ said Roland as they crossed towards the tower in its the circle of light.

‘Listen,’ said Amélie. ‘There’s shouting coming from the town.’ The pair paused and looked towards Matauranga.

‘It’ll be the march,’ said Roland, dropping his arm and taking Amélie’s hand. He was not going to think about the unemployed just then.

‘Should we go back?’ Amélie raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

‘In a minute.’ Roland hoped she wouldn’t insist on immediately being taken home. ‘We’ll just go up the tower first.’

The stairs were narrow. Roland went in front, and Amélie’s high-heeled shoes twittering on the wooden steps behind him as she climbed. In the distance the shouting went on.

At the first small landing they stopped. Amélie leaned her elbows on the rail and looked out into the darkness.

‘I suppose you have climbed lots of towers in France,’ said Roland.

‘I wish,’ said Amélie, turning back towards Roland, the hint of tears in her eyes. ‘I wish this were France.’

‘I am sorry.’ Roland bent forward and kissed her, a peck as if acknowledging her hurt, and then again and again, and again, each time longer and deeper until the pair were locked together by their lips, their bodies moving and shoving and pounding together against the rail.

‘God, God,’ Roland repeated to himself as his tongue pushed further into Amélie’s mouth. What he was doing was wrong, wildly wrong. They were both married; Lal was just about to have
his child. Roland knew this and he also knew he couldn’t stop. His mind churned in a riot of confusion, while his body directed his actions, powerful and in control. He felt delirious with tension, overwhelmed with lust. It possessed him like an umbrella opening in too small a space. Maybe he was going mad.

There was a crack and a ripping, wrenching sound. Amélie screamed and stumbled as the wooden barrier at her back opened. Roland gripped her but she tumbled away from him, and fear clenched blood as his footing went. They were falling,
plummeting
together into the night, flying backwards through the air. The ground rushed gleefully to meet them and the world turned black.

In the farm kitchen Andrew Carey was sitting at the table
re-reading
his son’s letters by the light of an oil lamp — the house had no electricity. Carey kept the letters in an old cardboard suitcase and every few months he would lay them out to read yet again. After so many years he knew the contents by heart but that did not lessen his need to touch and smell them, see the ink on the paper, the sweat marks of Melvin’s arm on the sheets. Carey hadn’t much schooling; he read slowly and aloud with his finger following each word.

‘Just to let you know I am alive and kicking.’ ‘The grub’s foul but the other chaps are corker.’ ‘Today I’ve ridden in a rickshaw, seen a Kaffir war dance and eaten a ton of grapes.’ ‘Can’t wait until I can get a crack at these Boers.’ The old man chortled again at the story of Melvin being chased by the donkey, and the account of the posh English officer whose trousers split on the parade ground.

‘A real card, that boy of mine,’ Carey muttered, smiling. He thought of the new spotlight on the tower and decided he’d go and check it. They had turned the electricity on a few nights before, and seeing the tower bright within the veil of darkness gave Carey great pleasure. A satisfaction that almost, though not quite,
outweighed his anger over the way the way the rest of the project had been handled.

He stood up and went into the tiny corridor that led to the front door. The door always swelled in winter and he had to pull repeatedly at the handle to open it. On his fourth attempt it swung towards him and he went onto the veranda, instinctively stepping over the rotten floorboards. There was no welcome plume of light, no dazzling chalice of colour; the tower was in total blackness.

Blasted vandals been at it, I suppose, Carey thought. Or maybe those shit-shoddy cables they put in have gone already.

As he looked out he heard a voice, which sounded like a woman shouting, ‘Ow secateurs!’ over and over. What the devil was that about? Suppose I’d better have a look, thought Carey, shoving his feet into his boots, which lay by the door. ‘These bloody people — will they never leave me alone?’

I
n the main street the loss of light was greeted by a wild yell from the demonstrators, grateful for the protection the night offered. Corners and alleyways suddenly provided safety. Hunted men melted into the thick shadows and moved as if
invisible
; baton-wielding Specials slowed their steps and abandoned pursuit of prey. The crowd that had been pressing forward towards the cinema fell back and drifted away into the smaller side-streets. People began to disperse — some home, some to the lorries that had brought them into town. The injured struggled to the hospital supported by friends; the police withdrew. The churning,
hysterical
impetus of the event slackened, spluttered and gradually died, until the only sounds were the occasional tinkle of falling glass and intermittent shouting as looters were arrested.

When Vic returned to the disused factory Gilchrist and Maguire had both gone.

‘Cowan, is that you?’ A voice hissed out of the darkness of a bush by the door. ‘It’s me, Miller.’

‘Thank God. I thought it was the police,’ said Vic, going over to where Miller was standing.

‘I’ve been waiting for you; Gilchrist said you’d be back,’ said Miller. ‘Saw you in the crowd in the main street earlier and guessed you were up to something and might want a hand.’

‘What’s happened to Gilchrist and Maguire?’ asked Vic.

‘I got here just after you left and saw they needed help. I managed to find a police van down by the alleyway and they got an ambulance that picked them up. Gilchrist’s hurt quite badly, probably fractured his collarbone and got some sort of head injury as well, but he should be okay. Had a look at Maguire and …’

‘What?’ said Vic.

‘He’s dead,’ said Miller. ‘And it looks like the police are pinning it on Gilchrist.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Vic.

Stella sat in the wicker chair beside the range. It was warm in the kitchen and the clock on the mantelpiece had a comforting tick. She must have slept for some hours for when she woke the room was cold and the clock said twenty past two. She was shovelling coal into the dying fire when Dr Cunningham came into the kitchen wearing his coat and holding his hat and gloves.

‘I take it Mr Crawford’s still not back,’ he said.

‘I’ve been asleep, but no, I don’t think he is.’

‘I see,’ said the doctor.

‘How’s Mrs Crawford?’ asked Stella, putting the coal bucket down.

‘Resting comfortably,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve given her
something
to keep her asleep. The nurse will look after her.’

‘And the baby?’ said Stella eagerly. ‘Has it come?’

‘A fine boy,’ the doctor replied, smiling.

An hour later Stella left the house, shutting the back door
carefully behind her. The lamp she carried threw a knot of
brightness
on the ground as she crossed the vicarage garden. The electricity was now restored but she took the lamp, not wanting to turn the lights on in the church and attract attention. A lorry or car passed in the distance and from somewhere in the darkness came the noise of hammering — a shopkeeper securing his goods — and an occasional shout. After the chaos of a few hours before the town had an ominous calm.

Stella felt both happy and tearful over the baby’s safe arrival. Nurse Huddie had permitted her only a tiny peep at the crumpled little creature in the cot but it was enough. Lal had her baby, all she had ever wanted, and the thought made Stella glad. Stella touched her own belly with her hand and felt comforted by the movements coming from under her old grey skirt. After seeing the infant she had lain down on her bed fully clothed but been unable to sleep. Recollections of the town as she’d seen it a few hours before, the thud of wood against flesh and bone, the sounds of breaking windows, the bloodstained faces and angry shouts, churned about in her mind. It seemed unimaginable that Vic had escaped injury. She thought of him felled by a baton, trampled under boots in some alleyway, his face smashed, blood matting his hair. Eventually she’d decided to go across to the church.

Stella sat in the pew facing the St George window. It was impossible to see the picture because of the darkness; all she could make out in the glow from the lamp was the sheen on the saint’s armour in the blackberry night of the window. ‘Please God,’ she prayed, ‘wherever Vic is, look after him.’

‘Stella,’ a voice said.

It was as if the window had spoken.

Stella jumped. Her body tightened with fright and her throat felt gripped by an iron peg. There was movement in the gloom and the shadows clotted together into a human form. A man, a young man, blood on his face and one eye swollen, came towards her.

‘Vic?’ said Stella.

There was no hesitation between them, the months of
separation
and uncertainty erased by need and the horrors of the night. They were in each other’s arms, mouths pressed together, tongues insisting into each other, hungry and urgent. Stella touched the blood-lank tangle of Vic’s hair and wiped the dark trickle on his cheek with her hand.

‘You’re hurt,’ she said, feeling his body shaking against her.

‘Got thumped by one of the Specials,’ said Vic, putting his hand to his forehead. ‘It’s not much.’

‘It looks awful.’ Stella’s eyes were round with sympathy. ‘But what are you doing here? You should be getting that cut seen to.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Vic. ‘I wanted to lie low for a bit and recover my bearings. I thought the church would be a good place to hide and I was hoping to slip in and see you when the coast was clear.’

‘Hiding?’ said Stella

‘Something bloody awful’s happened.’ Vic was holding Stella very tight, his hands splayed across her back, his fingertips digging into her shoulderblades.

‘I know,’ said Stella.’ I saw some of it — men hit, windows smashed, the Specials going berserk.’

‘Not just that,’ said Vic, rocking her in his arms.

‘What?’ asked Stella.

‘I’ve killed Maguire.’

In the trembling light of the tilly lamp Vic opened Stella’s blouse and, as the V of exposed skin grew, he bent to kiss the bare flesh. They were lying on the pile of red velvet curtains in the corner of the storeroom at the end of the church. The curtains had been taken down from the vestry doorway so missing rings could be replaced but so far the women of the St Peter’s Dorcas Guild hadn’t got around to fixing them.

Afterwards, when Stella went over it in her mind, it seemed fantastical, like something she dreamed or made up. It was, she
decided, a night unlike all others, and the things that happened could not have taken place at another time. She remembered how she and Vic had kissed and held each other in the aisle of the church, as he’d told her about Maguire and how he had turned the lights out on the town. Mr Maguire dead and Vic having killed him. The idea seemed hardly credible; it was altogether too big and difficult to deal with then, so she’d packed it away in her mind to consider another time.

Stella thought, too, of the smell of Vic that seemed to wrap her about, and the longing for him flaring in her breasts and between her thighs. She could see his shadowy, bruised face and the way he looked at her, loving and beseeching. ‘I can’t wait until November,’ he said. ‘They’ll catch me and it’ll be prison, but before they lock me up, let me show you how I love you. Let me make you my wife now.’ And Stella, putting Vic’s hand against her big belly, had led him down the aisle of the church to the
storeroom
and the curtains in the corner waiting to be fixed.

Vic’s lips were on Stella’s breasts, his tongue trailed across her skin, sending bright, surprising messages through her flesh. He took her nipple in his mouth and Stella felt her whole self contracting into that one point of flesh, offering, wanting. ‘Let me,’ said Vic as he fumbled with the safety pin on her skirt. For a moment Stella dreaded the thought of Vic seeing her pregnant nakedness, but as he drew her clothing off he kept kissing her, running his face over the mound of her stomach and down to her thighs. She wanted the feel of Vic’s mouth against her to never end.

‘Lovely, so lovely,’ Vic said, pushing his lips into the hair between her legs.

‘You don’t mind about the baby,’ said Stella, her eyes closed for fear of what he might say in reply.

‘Mind?’ said Vic, kneeling to pull his shirt off and open the buttons on his trousers. ‘Course I don’t mind, but I’ll be gentle, very gentle.’

Stella put her hands up and touched Vic’s naked chest.
Her fingers felt the blood in the flesh, the density of muscle, the hairs entrancingly growing in little whorls. She had never touched a man’s chest before.

Vic lay between her legs. His penis jostled and rubbed against her. Stella felt hollow in her need of him and she was afraid.

‘My love,’ said Vic, taking her hands and interlacing Stella’s fingers with his, ‘my only love.’

Stella opened her eyes. She saw the lamp with its strand of light and she saw Vic’s clenched face as his flesh pushed into her. Her body was a stranger to her now, foreign and unpredictable. She was a dark house of many rooms.

Vic moved like a glimmer through her, the dazzle of his progress illuminating walls, floor and ceiling until it seemed that fire was pressed against her spine. There was a fluttering swoop and Stella was caught in a frenzy of pleasure. It was unlike anything she’d ever known.

Hand in hand, they lay silently together as if felled by some external force.

‘You will marry me?’ said Vic, pulling Stella close. ‘I’ve got less than bugger all to offer you and it looks as if I’ll end up in prison, maybe for some time. It’s a pretty crook deal by any
standards
but for God’s sake, say yes.’

Stella rolled over onto her front, put her hands around Vic’s neck and kissed his mouth.

‘Yes,’ she said between kisses. ‘Yes, and if they do put you in prison I’ll wait until they let you out. But do you really have to give yourself up?’

‘Reckon I do,’ said Vic. ‘Can’t let Gilchrist take the rap on my behalf when I was the one who decked Maguire.’

Stella lay very quite beside him.

‘Sweetheart,’ Vic said, ‘we haven’t much time and it must be almost morning. Can we do what we just did all over again?’

Stella stretched her arms out to Vic and drew his face to her body and his mouth to her breasts.