CHAPTER 7

1955. The lawyer for the prosecution is a sleek, fair man named Gerald Timms. He isn’t tall, but he has a way of balancing forward on the arched balls of his feet and pushing his head up and down so that he appears to occupy the space of a much larger man. Beneath his gown he is dressed in a charcoal-grey suit with a snow-white handkerchief in his breast pocket. It is October, just two years since Albert Black came to live in New Zealand, almost to the day.

A girl stands in the witness box. She is wearing a black suit and a black beret slanted over dark and lustrous hair tumbling past her shoulders. She glances briefly at the man in the dock; their eyes lock for an instant, then she drops hers, straightening herself.

‘Miss Zilich,’ Timms began. ‘Will you please tell us your name, address and occupation.’

‘My name is Rita Zilich,’ she begins. ‘I’m sixteen years old. I live with my parents in Anglesea Street, Ponsonby. I’m a shorthand typist. I passed my exams with top marks in School Certificate, you know. At my school, that is.’ She turns to a youth seated in the gallery and gives a little wave. He’s dressed in tight black trousers and a red windbreaker that is unzipped all the way down the front, showing a white tee-shirt. He waggles one finger at her

‘Miss Zilich,’ the judge says sharply.

‘Oh sorry,’ she murmurs, and composes her face into the semblance of great attention.

‘Yes, thank you, Miss Zilich,’ Timms says. ‘That’s very good. If you could just tell us about what happened on the night of Monday, July twenty-fifth of this year, it would be a help. You knew the accused?’

‘Oh yes, you couldn’t help but notice him. He’s pretty good-looking, if you go in for those kind of looks.’ In spite of herself, she throws a cool appraising glance in the direction of Albert.

Timms breathes deeply and makes a steeple with his fingers. ‘Very good. I’d like you to tell the court in your own words what happened. How long you knew him, whether you knew the deceased, what occurred on the night in question.’

‘I’ve written it all down in shorthand.’

‘Just tell the story, Miss Zilich, never mind the notes.’

Rita flicks her mane of hair back from where it has encroached across her shoulder, and launches into her account, the witness box becoming her stage. ‘I knew the accused for about three months before the twenty-fifth of July. I knew him as Paddy, that was the only name I’d heard. I knew the other guy too, Alan Jacques, only of course that’s not what we called him. He was Johnny McBride. But I’d only known him about, oh, maybe two weeks. I wasn’t keeping company with either of them. Actually, I’d been to the pictures on the night in question. I’d been to see Calamity Jane, you know the one where Doris Day sings “My Secret Love”, it’s an amazing picture. And I’m crazy about the song.’

‘Yes, of course. We appreciate your good taste, Miss Zilich. But you went to Ye Olde Barn cafe after you’d been to the pictures?’

‘Yes, this was about seven thirty, I suppose. I didn’t mean to, it was just that I was walking past, planning to go home, and there was a crowd there. Somebody called out, I don’t know whether it was Paddy or Johnny, but I think it was one of them, and said come on over. So I went over, and Paddy said come on up to the house, we’re having a party tonight. I knew where he meant, it was at 105 Wellesley Street. I’d been to a party there before. Well, I thought, why not? I hadn’t arranged to meet Paddy or anything like that, but it sounded like a bit of fun. Actually, Paddy’s girlfriend was in the cafe, now I come to think of it. Bessie Marsh, that is, so obviously I didn’t mean to meet Paddy. I shouldn’t think she’s his girlfriend now, not now he’s gone and stabbed Johnny. He wouldn’t be mine, I can tell you that.’

‘So you went on to the party instead of going home?’

‘Well. Not exactly.’

‘Why not exactly?’

‘I’d told my parents I’d be home. Well, they’re not so keen on me going to parties. So I went home, and when they’d gone to bed I hopped out the window and went back to town. This was about quarter past ten.’

‘So what happened at the party?’

‘Well, Johnny and Paddy were both there, and Bessie, and one of my girlfriends called Stella, and a whole bunch of others, I guess about ten altogether at that stage, mostly guys, you know. Someone was playing a guitar, everything seemed normal. A normal party, that is. You know?’

‘We’re happy that you’re enlightening us, Miss Zilich. Please go on.’

‘Well, Paddy was sober. And Johnny was sober, is about what I’d say. Then Bessie said she had to go home because she had exams or something early the next day. She’s a student of some kind, I think. She’d gone off to the library after I first saw her. I think Paddy went and collected her later on while I was off seeing my parents.’

‘Misleading them?’

‘Um, yes.’

‘Never mind.’ Timms appears annoyed with himself.

‘Myself, I don’t have to be at work until nine, I’m a secretary at the Council, they have very regular hours. I mean, I wouldn’t start at eight unless I had to, but with my qualifications I can pick and choose. I got eighty-five per cent for typing, you know.’

‘Indeed.’ Timms was tapping his fingers on a folder, his eyes willing her to get to the point.

‘Well then, I think Paddy must have walked Bessie home, or to a taxi, I don’t really know, but he was gone a while, and when he came back he asked me to sleep with him that night. At first I said no, but then he asked me again, and I said I’d think about it. I was just putting him off, of course, trying to be polite.’

‘But he thought you meant it?’

Rita hesitates, pushing a strand of hair away from her face as it escapes from under the beret. ‘I didn’t want to give offence. I said it in a nice way.’

‘And you say the defendant was sober?’

‘I’d say so. Well, I didn’t know what he was like when he was drunk.’

Listening to her, Paddy thinks I can tell you what I’m like when I’m cut. But you wouldn’t want to know. Staggering, that’s what he is. He is back in Trentham and it’s late Friday afternoon. On Fridays the Post and Telegraph gang knocked off early so they could put in a few hours at the pub, a barn of a place, nothing like the pubs at home. They close at six o’clock of the evening, just about the time men are heading for their local back home in Belfast. The trick here in New Zealand is to drink as much beer as you can down in the least possible time. At first Paddy couldn’t bring himself to go in. He’d tasted ale before, just a glass or two with his da at the Sandy Row Arms, a quiet enough place, with low ceilings and carpet underfoot, a handful of men leaning against the bar, telling yarns. Here the bars are long counters, the walls sloped for easy cleaning because men vomit like fountains of spaghetti, the crush of men so dense the service is just the bartender pointing a pistol-shaped spigot at out-held glasses. The beer shoots out a white cuff of foam. The six o’clock swill, he’d heard it called, and looking at men lurching out of the bars he’d found himself disgusted. He shouldn’t be, because his da has come home two sheets to the wind often enough, but somehow this was different. Besides, here in New Zealand he was still an under-age drinker. His shoulders had filled out, his face darkened in the sun, and he’d grown a couple of inches since he landed. He passed for being older, but he still wasn’t legal to enter the pub.

There came an afternoon, the sky a high bird’s egg blue above the Naenae hills, and their throats as dry as old bones, when the New Zealanders in the gang called him and Peter out. What are you? Wowsers? they asked as they prepared to drop the two of them off at the huts. They had to make a detour to get back to the pub, which all took up time.

‘Okay, all right then,’ Peter said on this summer afternoon, ‘we’ll go with you today. Just one drink, mind you.’

The first beer slid down Paddy’s throat so easily it was like cool lemonade, with about equal an effect, he thought. Peter and he grinned at each other: this was no roaring Guinness, you could drink it like tap water. Phew, they joked, nothing to it, and held their glasses out to the spigot. After the second drink, Paddy felt warm fuzz in his head, his body dissolving. This drinking lark was easy. He found himself telling Peter and anyone who’d listen bad Irish jokes. Any moment he would be singing them all a song. Perhaps he did sing. ‘My Aunt Jane’. Rose liked that one; maybe he sang it to the men or maybe he went home and sang a verse to her, the one that made her and Evelyn, the wee cutie, laugh:

My aunt Jane she can dance a jig

Sing a song ’round a sweetie pig.

Wee red eyes and a cord for a tail,

Hanging in a bunch from a

crooked nail.

Yes, he must have sung that one, because now he remembers everyone laughing and singing along with him.

He remembers that he and Peter had their arms around each other, holding each other up. ‘My old mucker,’ Peter said, ‘you’re a bit of a laugh all right.’

My old mucker. His best friend. It felt grand that he had one.

After that he and Peter went with the men every Friday afternoon, until a day when too many beers slid down too fast. After the fifth or sixth, he lost count of them, the barman called time, meaning they had to be through in fifteen minutes. ‘Drink up,’ someone shouted, ‘time for another round.’ So that was part of the trick too, to order another drink before the pub closes, swallow it down and get another one in, in the last five minutes, because the barman can’t throw you out while you’re still drinking.

Paddy felt his vision blur, his knees tremble. And then it was over, and he and Peter were holding themselves up on a lamp post outside, and he was singing ‘Danny Boy’ at the top of his voice, and then, just as suddenly, he began to cry. ‘Oh holy shite,’ he said, ‘don’t mind me, it’s my little brother Danny I have in my mind right now.’ Some of the gang were shovelling him and Peter onto the back of the Post and Telegraph truck that had to be returned to the depot, and soon it began to weave its way back towards Trentham. A military band was playing, the brass making yellow noise; soldiers marched down the road, some special parade from the army camp. It reminded him of the Twelfth of July. He tried to stand up on the back of the truck and salute, was pulled back by the ankles just as he was about to topple over the edge.

‘So,’ he shouted above the noise of the truck, ‘you heard the one about the Black and Tans?’

‘Who are they?’ Clarrie asked.

‘Soldiers. Irish soldiers,’ Peter said. He was drunk too, but not as drunk as Paddy.

‘British soldiers actually,’ Paddy said. ‘Because you see we’re part of the UK.’

‘Nah, Paddy, you’re an Irishman,’ Clarrie said. ‘So go on, what happened?’

‘Well you see, there was your man called Murphy, the rain’s pissing down, and the Black and Tans are going to hang him. Murphy says to the hangman, it’s an awful day, wouldn’t you say? And the hangman, he says, wait for it, he says, you’re lucky, Murphy, I’ve got to walk home in it.’

‘Oath, that’s a bad story,’ Clarrie said.

Back at the huts, Paddy threw up in the grass. Peter stopped him collapsing in his vomit. ‘Jesus, Pete,’ Paddy said, ‘do people ever die from getting drunk?’

‘You won’t die, Paddy.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yeah, sure, I won’t let you die.’

‘I reckon you’ll last longer than me, Peter. You’ll live longer.’

‘That’s drink talking. Stop, Paddy, stop it.’

‘Pete,’ Paddy said, ‘I want to go home. I want my mam.’

In the morning, Peter said, ‘I said we’d get out of here. I reckon it’s time, Paddy.’

Gallows humour. Bad jokes, they come flooding back to him. That is what he is like when he’s cut, Rita. You don’t know at all.

So no, he wasn’t particularly drunk that night. What is the girl in the witness stand going to say next? Has he ever wanted to sleep with her? He supposes so. She had a jaunty air about her that night and a come-hither look. He sees the way the eyes of some of the jurymen follow her. Yes, probably most men would get into her knickers if they could. Not him, not anymore.

He knows the pale girl is not far away. He can almost catch her scent or what he remembers of it, a fragrance like fresh Irish linen airing on a summer’s day.

‘Well, anyway,’ Rita Zilich is saying, ‘round about eleven o’clock, Stella and I went to the toilet. You have to go outside and round the house to get to it out the back. We saw Johnny McBride outside the house, he came out after us. I mean, I don’t think he was actually following me, it just so happened that he came out at the same time. Johnny stood there and talked to us for quite a while, and then Stella went inside. Johnny and I stayed outside for about five minutes, and then Paddy came out from the room where they were having the party. He wanted to know what we were doing. We both said we were just talking. He didn’t seem to believe us. Not that he said so in so many words, but you could sort of tell. Well, as a matter of fact, Johnny McBride had kissed me, but that didn’t seem like Paddy’s business.’

The judge, a man who looks very old indeed to Albert, pushes his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. At times he looks as if he is being swallowed by his wig. He has a pale, pinched look around his mouth. His tongue hovers around his lower lip as Rita continues.

‘Anyway, they began to fight. I was going to go inside but they’d started this fight.’

‘Who struck the first blow?’

‘I can’t tell you that. I didn’t really see. I didn’t stay and watch the fight. I went inside and told the boys inside to go out and stop it, so they did. Paddy and Johnny didn’t seem too friendly after that. One of them said something about continuing the fight the next day. I don’t know who said that, honestly, I don’t. I saw that Paddy had a cut over his eye. After that he went and lay down on the bed. There was a boy called Mack who’d been trying to break up the fight. Paddy called him over to the bed, and all of a sudden the fighting started up again. I don’t know what that was about. Everybody joined in the fight and it spilled right outside onto the footpath. They were all mixed up in it. Johnny McBride was part of it. So then we tried to get Johnny into one of the boys’ cars, which he did do, and I got in too and so did Stella, but Paddy said I was to get out. I got out. Paddy was pulling at my arm.’

‘I see,’ says Timms, ‘so you were resisting. You were being dragged from the car by the accused?’

Buchanan bounces to his feet. ‘Objection, your Honour. The witness is being led to this conclusion.’

‘Objection sustained. Please continue, Miss Zilich. In your own words.’

‘Well, it might have been Paddy, or perhaps it was one of his friends, because Paddy was in a pretty bad way at that stage. Perhaps it was his friend Pooch Quintal.’

‘Why, what had happened to Paddy? To Albert Black?’

‘Prior to me getting in the car, Johnny kicked Paddy in the stomach. That affected him pretty bad. While I was standing by the car, somebody, I think it was Paddy, had a bottle in his hand, and he went for Johnny’s face with the bottle, so Johnny kicked him in the stomach and he doubled up.’

‘So Black attacked Alan Jacques with a broken bottle?’

‘Objection, your Honour.’

‘Objection overruled. Miss Zilich?’

‘Well. I’m not sure. It was in somebody’s hand and I presumed it was Paddy’s, because that’s who Johnny kicked.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Everybody went home, and there was just Paddy and me. I told Paddy I wanted to go home, and I started picking up glasses and bottles and things, tidying up the room. I put them in a beer carton, and also I put a knife in the carton. Paddy lay down on one of the two beds in the room. He asked me to pass him a mirror. I got one down off the wall and gave it to him. It was a big mirror. He looked at his face in the mirror and then he threw it on the ground and it broke. I said to him, what’s the matter Paddy? He said he was going to kill Johnny McBride. I told him not to be silly, if he did that he’d go to jail and get hanged, but he said it didn’t matter. He said he’d probably be dead in a year anyway. So I said to him, you’ve just had too much to drink. He asked me to stay the night but I said no, then I asked him to lend me some money for a taxi and he walked me a little way along the street, down towards the Civic where I caught a taxi.’

‘But he said he would kill Johnny McBride?’

‘Yes, he said that he’d kill Johnny. I didn’t see him again the next day.’