CHAPTER 10

There is a queue waiting for admission to the court in the morning. An air of excitement rustles through the crowd. The horns of passing cars are tooted, as if the drivers want to add to the carnival atmosphere. Middle-aged women in dark coats over twin-sets and pearls set off with white gloves and sensible hats, men holding onto their trilbies against the breeze: all huddle together, in wait for the doors to open. Overhead, the oak trees cast their dappled green spring light. Young people swarm, wearing their Technicolor clothes.

Rita Zilich, ushered in by a side door, is still dressed in her fitting black suit when she resumes her place on the witness stand. Oliver Buchanan appears relaxed, even warm, as he begins his cross-examination, a small smile hovering at the corner of his mouth as if he and Rita were about to have an intimate conversation that excludes the rest of the court. He balances his foot in a casual gesture on the rail of the stand. He begins by leading Rita through the same events that the prosecutor took her through the previous day. On the subject of her leaving home on the night of the party, he lingers for a time.

‘So could you just tell us again, Miss Zilich, about your decision to go to this gathering. You’d been invited by my client, and his invitation was so irresistible that you decided to go, even though you knew your parents would disapprove? You must have found him very attractive.’

‘He was just a casual acquaintance, he wasn’t a special friend. There’s a crowd that goes to the Olde Barn cafe. That same crowd has parties together. They drink a bit of liquor when they get together. When Paddy invited me to the party it was just like I was one of the crowd. My girlfriend Stella was going.’

‘All the same, you went home, your parents saw you, and they went to bed believing that that was what you had done too?’

‘Yes.’

‘You left through the window?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, Miss Zilich, as I understand it, you arrived at the party and you and your girlfriend went outside to the lavatory somewhere near midnight. And there, Johnny McBride came upon the two of you. That right? You’re nodding, we can agree about this. So what happened next?’

‘Well, first he kissed Stella. Then she went inside, and Johnny kissed me.’

‘So you sent Stella inside?’

‘She’s quite young. Just fifteen. I didn’t think it was appropriate.’

‘Oh, I see. But you, at the ripe old age of sixteen, thought it was all right to kiss this man. Perhaps you decided that this was your mark for the night, not Paddy?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Well, Paddy came out and asked us what we were doing. I was standing against the wall and Johnny was standing beside me — well, actually he was facing me. We said we were just talking. Paddy said we’d better go inside, meaning both of us.’

‘Didn’t he say “The neighbours will be complaining about the noise and will report it to my landlady”?’

‘He never mentioned his landlady.’

‘So did you do as he asked, or did you stay there with Paddy and Johnny?’

‘I stood there a couple of minutes, then I walked away to the back steps. I stopped there. Paddy and Johnny had started fighting, I could hear them. I looked back. They were fighting at the end of the path by the fence.’

Buchanan pauses for a moment, his hand on his chin. Rita’s expression is uncertain.

‘Hmm. I take it that because you were walking away you never saw who struck the first blow?’

‘That’s right,’ Rita says. ‘I never saw who started it. I went to the front room and got all the boys to come out and stop the fight. When it was broken up, somebody suggested Paddy and Johnny shake hands. I don’t know whether Paddy was willing.’

‘And what about Johnny?’

‘Johnny wanted to continue the fighting. He said to Paddy “I’ll come back tomorrow and finish this fight.” They stopped then. Then we all went back into the front room and the party continued. At that stage Paddy went and lay on the bed, it’s off to the side of the front room.’

‘So he didn’t seem very well?’

‘I’d say he wasn’t too happy. Well, he had got hit in the eye. It was all red and swollen.’

‘I see. He’d taken a real hiding then?’

‘I guess so.’

‘You guess so. I want you to think hard and try not to guess. Do you remember what you or the others had used that evening to open bottles of beer with?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see some of the boys using a knife with a bottle-opener on it?’

‘I didn’t notice what they opened the bottles with. I only had one glass of beer that evening. But then some more fighting broke out and Paddy got up and he was in the fighting too. Johnny was standing by the fireplace, talking to some of the girls. I didn’t see him holding a bottle of beer. There were bottles of beer all over the place, I suppose there were some near Johnny, but if you’re asking me, I didn’t see Johnny McBride throw a bottle of beer across the room towards Paddy. It was a long evening, Mr Buchanan.’ The girl’s lip trembles. ‘I’m tired,’ she says, ‘just tired of all this.’

‘It’s a compelling narrative, Miss Zilich. A carefully crafted one, if I may say so.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘I’m not calling you anything, Miss Zilich, except your name. But we still have some ground to cover.’ Buchanan’s smile leaves his face as he calls for a recess. The witness needs some time to compose herself, he suggests to the judge.

In the holding cell, Buchanan talks to Paddy. He wants him to focus his recall. He believes he has the witness on the run. They have gone over Paddy’s story several times, but Buchanan needs to be sure. He could have kept going with the girl and she would have cracked and gained the jury’s sympathy. He doesn’t want to be seen as a bully. His next line of questioning is vital. ‘Think very carefully about Johnny McBride,’ he says, ‘and what happened next. I need to keep ahead of this young lady.’

Paddy shakes his head. He has told the story so often there are times he no longer knows for certain what happened himself. He is often confused these days. Buchanan looks frustrated.

‘I’m doing my best,’ Paddy says.

After the recess Oliver Buchanan leans forward, raking the witness’s face with a long, quizzical expression. ‘Miss Zilich,’ he begins, ‘who asked you to the party on the night of the twenty-fifth of July?’

‘I’m not sure. Well, perhaps it was Ray Hastie.’

‘Oh, not Paddy now? I see, so it was Mr Hastie. Well, let’s just go back to the party when everyone was fighting. It started to break up, is that correct? I take it that nod means yes. Was Johnny McBride mixed up in the fighting then?’

Rita stretches her hands with their scarlet nails in front of her in a gesture of anxiety. ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And you went outside to the front of the house where people were starting to leave? You stood outside and watched this fighting going on? Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see Johnny McBride kick Paddy in the stomach?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in amongst this someone had a bottle in their hand. In your statement, you said you assumed it were Paddy.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you weren’t sure that it was Paddy who had a bottle in his hand? You assumed it.’

‘Somebody did.’

‘You think it was Paddy because Johnny had kicked him?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Johnny may have kicked Paddy for some entirely different reason, couldn’t he?’

The girl touches the tip of her tongue, like someone removing a fleck of tobacco from their mouth. ‘He could have.’

Buchanan casts eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Miss Zilich, what did Paddy do when he got a kick in the stomach?’

‘He doubled up. He just bent over. Mack Thompson was there with his car, and I was going to get in it. When I got in the car, Paddy was leaning by the gate. Johnny and my girlfriend Stella got in the car. So when I got in the car, Paddy straightened up and came over and asked me to get out. I got out.’

‘Of your own free will?’

‘Not exactly. Paddy and Pooch Quintal came and pulled me out. Actually, I wanted to go home.’

‘But you’re telling me that Paddy was doubled up against the gate. He can’t have been doubled up from a kick in the testicles and pulling you out of the car at the same time.’

‘I didn’t know he’s got kicked in the goolies, not then. Well, perhaps it was Pooch, I’m not sure.’

‘Did you ask anyone to help you? … Miss Zilich?’ Buchanan’s dark eyebrows brood above his eyes.

‘Well — no.’

‘Isn’t what really happened, that Pooch Quintal took your hand and helped you out, and you followed him back inside the house?’

‘What I’m trying to tell you is that I wasn’t very willing.’

‘But still you went inside, without resisting or asking anyone to help you. Anyone left inside?’

‘Some of my girlfriends were there picking up their coats.’

‘And still you didn’t decide to go off home with any of them. The Quintal boys left then, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Paddy asked you to stay with him and you agreed?’

‘He asked me to stay the night. I said I wanted to go home, but then he started looking around for the first-aid kit. After that he asked me to give him a mirror. He looked at himself and he threw the mirror on the floor and it broke.’

‘Did he appear to you to be a bit drunk at the time?’

‘No, not really, he didn’t act as if he was drunk. His shirt and trousers had been ripped in the fight. He seemed pretty sick, and he was upset. Pretty upset with Johnny McBride. He said he’d kill Johnny.’

‘Did you think he was just joking?’

‘I told him he was. Anyway, I said to Paddy that if he killed Johnny he’d only get hung and it wouldn’t be worthwhile.’

‘So then Paddy lay on the bed and asked you again if you would stay the night. Yes? And did you not say, “I can’t stay the whole night”?’

‘Well, yes. I lay on the bed beside him. Eventually I said I wanted to go home and he lent me some money. Then he walked me part of the way to the taxi stand at the Civic and left me to go home. I don’t know what time that was.’

‘Miss Zilich, between the time that you lay on the bed and you decided to go home, can you tell us what happened?’

‘There wasn’t any hanky panky, if that’s what you mean. I mean, there was no intercourse. He did try it. But after a bit he said he wasn’t all that horny.’

Buchanan lets out a sigh. He digs under his gown and takes his handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiping his face as if he wished to rub something away, something he didn’t want to see. ‘You may stand down now, Miss Zilich. I have no further questions.’

As he listens to her from the dock, Paddy sees the story in slow motion, as if it were a film played frame by frame. From Belfast to Naenae to Auckland. From his mother and father and little Danny boy to Rose and Peter and the children to a boarding house where people came and went, even though they weren’t supposed to. When it came down to it, he couldn’t say no to the men he met at Ye Olde Barn cafe. There were men off the ships with nowhere to go when they were in port; drifters like himself, or as he had become; lads who had run away from homes somewhere in the provinces. They got over it and went home after a day or two when they ran out of money or their parents tracked them down.

Johnny McBride had stayed at the house in Wellesley Street.

In these unfolding frames, Paddy sees again his first meeting with Johnny at the cafe, when the newcomer tries to cut in on a girl he was seeing then. Her name was Raewyn. He wasn’t sure why he and Raewyn were going steady. She said she would let him go all the way when they were engaged but not before. One weekend she took him home to meet her parents, the father careworn and older than he expected, the mother a bustling woman who worked mornings at Smith & Caughey’s, the department store on the corner where his street joins up with Queen Street. The dinner was good, roast beef with all the trimmings and steam pudding to follow; the house was comfortable, as if the family had money. ‘You’ll look after our Raewyn, won’t you?’ the mother said, as if much had been decided that wasn’t at all.

Still, there was a certain allure in a good girl. Raewyn was small and fair with a high laugh; she worked for the transport department, a government job, filing forms, so he deemed her clever, a bit of a trophy. In a letter to his mother, he wrote: ‘Mother, I’m going out with a nice girl, her family are very welcoming to me, her name is Raewyn. She would like us to get engaged but I’m not ready for that, being only nineteen and all. I don’t plan to marry until I’m at least twenty-five with a bit of money in the bank.’ It was baloney, pure and simple, but he understood what Raewyn was about as far as he was concerned, a girl he could introduce to his mother if he had to, and also a girl who was there to get him out of scrapes when he got in too deep with some other girl, an excuse not to see them again. For there were other girls, a whole gala of girls like petals falling from flowers, and some of them he made love to in the creaking old house where he stayed. If Raewyn knew, she didn’t let on. He thought perhaps she didn’t (he wouldn’t know, standing here in the dock, because Raewyn has been in the past for some time). There were times when he felt sad for her, a try-hard girl.

It hadn’t been difficult to find friends at Ye Olde Barn cafe. There was no where did you come from? and who are you? or any of that routine, although Raewyn’s parents wanted to know all of that. There was just a crowd of people who took it for granted you were one of them. It wasn’t like Elbe’s in the Hutt. He had stood at the door of Elbe’s and looked in one night, and a girl had come out and offered herself to him. He thought she was about thirteen, and he had turned and walked away in disgust. He wasn’t going to get hooked up with carnies. Once Rose had asked him if he went to Elbe’s and he’d said no, and she’d looked at him disbelieving. It hurt, that she would think that. Instead he had caught the train into Wellington and wandered through the empty streets. He had come to a brothel in Vivian Street, its dull red light spilling across the windswept street. It was a moment of deep loneliness. When he thinks back, he sees it as one of the moments that had turned him towards Auckland. Finding a girl, going to a dance, it was all too complicated when he lived in the Hutt.

Music spilled through Ye Olde Barn cafe and out over the street. Often people jived beside a cubicle, lost in a world of their own. The girls were older here, more sophisticated, although how to define this he wasn’t sure. Some girl would give him the eye, and next thing they’d be off to a dance together, the night that frenzy of movement he loved, the body pounding, feet whirling, and he’d be intoxicated with it all and, as often as not, she would end up at 105 Wellesley Street, and he’d be inside her and joyful. The next night it might be another girl. One night it was a girl called Mamie, who worked in a bookshop; another time Sue, who worked in a chemist’s shop selling make-up and worried about her boss finding out what she got up to. Him, he had no worries.

And then, one day, there was a girl called Bessie, a student teacher and a farmer’s daughter from the Waikato, near Hamilton. Suddenly he was in love. Just like that. They met, if meeting her is the right way to describe how they encountered each other, when he was working on a building site near the ferry terminal. That was where she was heading. On an impulse, he walked off the job and followed her onto the ferry leaving for Devonport. He couldn’t explain why he did this, it was just a compulsion to be near her.

‘Hullo Mr Stalker,’ she said, when he sat down beside her. There was something about her that rendered him silent as they sat watching the sea churning in a wake behind the ferry. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘The same place as you, by the look of it. I didn’t mean to follow you. Sorry. I’ll go back when the boat turns round.’

‘I’m Bessie Marsh,’ she said, in quite a formal manner, ignoring his apology. ‘I’m going to see my grandmother.’ Her complexion was pale and milky, almost devoid of make-up, her light-brown hair curling around the edges of the head scarf tied beneath her chin. The perfect oval of her face made him think of Grace Kelly, and it occurred to him that she had no idea of how pretty she was.

‘I’m Albert Black,’ he answered, suddenly wanting to be inside his own skin.

‘My gran’s place is like home these days. I live in a hostel. I miss everything from the farm.’

‘Yeah, I miss home too. I miss my mam.’

‘You’re Irish,’ she said. ‘Come with me and meet my gran, she’s Irish too.’ Only, when they got to the grandmother’s house, she wasn’t there. Bessie found them some lunch in the pantry, a round of bread and cheese, and a beer from the fridge for them to share. The kitchen was painted a pretty shade of yellow, like daffodils, and there were pictures on the walls of all the rooms. ‘Gran won’t mind,’ she said. ‘There’s always something to eat if I come over. She expects me to help myself.’ He supposed the two of them, he and Bessie Marsh, must have made some small talk as they ate their lunch, but he doesn’t remember it later on. He did sing to her, the old skipping song that came and went through his head.

My aunt Jane, she took me in,

She gave me tea out of her wee tin.

Half a bap with sugar on the top,

Three black lumps out of her wee

shop.

Bessie laughed and clapped her hands. ‘You’re like my brothers,’ she said, ‘they like to sing.’ And then, somehow, they were in a bedroom that had dolls on a shelf, and Paddy, who for the moment had returned to being Albert, guessed that Bessie had been staying here in this house on and off all her life.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, when they were lying in a tangle of limbs on the bed. ‘I don’t do this as a rule.’ He thinks he might be her first, he can’t be sure, but she’d wanted him — he hadn’t taken anything she didn’t want to give — with an intensity that took him aback, made their encounter astonishing to him. As he studied her, her skin seemed translucent; she had a mole on her left thigh. She was touching his face with her fingertips, as if absorbing his features. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed. She sat up, pulling her knickers from around one ankle. ‘My gran might come home,’ she said, panic-stricken. ‘I shouldn’t have, her house and all.’ There was a small trace of blood on the counterpane that she was frantically rubbing.

‘Are we going to wait for her?’ Paddy asked. He was sure this must be love; there was something delicate and different about Bessie, as fresh as the breeze on the water they had passed over. He felt dazed and almost unbearably happy.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘You should go.’ Pleading with him now. He understood she was suddenly ashamed that she had defiled the house of the grandmother she loved, and that if her grandmother came home she would know and there would be all sorts of consequences. But he didn’t think she was ashamed of being with him.

As he buckled his belt he glanced above him. He hadn’t noticed this particular picture before. It was the Sacred Heart of Christ, the crucifixion of Jesus, depicting a crown of thorns and the wound of the spear. Beneath it hung a small wooden cross.

‘You’re a Catholic?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’m a Protestant. Northern Ireland.’ As if that explained everything. Did it matter? he wondered. He had never thought to ask a girl her religion before, or not since he left Belfast, where it was spelled out in black and white whether you asked or not. He closed his eyes. Would she have made love with him if she had known? But he thought he knew the answer. There had been no stopping to think. None of it mattered to him. He’d been in Clodagh’s house in Belfast; he knew more Catholics than he could shake a stick at. But he saw it mattered to her, as if the sin were worse, more mortal, for their difference. ‘When will I see you again?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, flustered and uncertain.

He told her where he lived, and how she could find him most evenings at the cafe. She was hurrying him now. When he reached the wharf back in the city he realised he hadn’t got a phone number for her, or an address for the hostel where she lived.

He didn’t see her again for a long time, and it occurred to him that she wasn’t a girl who would come looking for him at a boarding house or hang out round the cafe. After a month or so he stopped looking for her, as if she had been a vision of some kind. There was still Raewyn, holding out for her engagement ring, and the other girls.

Some days he worked and his pockets were full of money; other days he was counting out the cash to make it last for another night on the town. As the man on the train had told him, it wasn’t hard to find work in Auckland; there was often seagulling to be had on the wharves or concrete to pour on a construction site, or trucks to stack with furniture for removal firms. He tried his hand at being a waiter, but spilled coffee over a customer on his first day at work and wasn’t invited back. The yacht club gave him some cleaning that he liked because it was close to the sea and less gruelling than hanging on the end of a shovel. That was what his father did, and look where it got him. One afternoon a boatie’s wife came back after lunch to pick up a jacket she had forgotten, one of those sleekly tanned women whose skin looked as if it’d been polished. She wore gold sandals and hooped earrings. When he asked if he could help, she took a quick look about the room and motioned to the washroom. Her skirt was round her thighs as quick as a fish jumping. Why do you think I came back, she said as he ploughed in. She moaned like an old sow. Would he be working here again? she asked. He smelled tobacco and gin on her breath. After she’d left, he found five pounds in his pocket. A wave of disgust washed over him. But a fiver was money and he didn’t work for a week, just hanging out at the cafe, or playing a game of pool and drinking beer with his new friends. There were mornings he woke hungover, and when the nausea passed he would remember why he came to Auckland, what he was supposed to be saving for, but his pockets would be empty and it would start all over again, good resolutions and no willpower when it came to shouting a round.

He stopped for a beer, one evening, at the Albert Hotel down Queen Street and ran into two of his mates, Ray and Mack, and they said, C’mon the drinks are on us. The Albert, just like his name, as if he owned it. Later, when he turned up at the cafe, Raewyn was sitting in a cubicle, a coffee in front of her, talking to a man. Albert will think of him as a man; when he stood up he was half a head taller than Paddy, with wide shoulders and a swagger.

‘Raewyn,’ Paddy said, ‘sorry I’m late.’

‘This broad’s already taken,’ the man said in a strange phony American accent.

‘No, I’m not,’ Raewyn said quickly. ‘We were just having a chat. Johnny’s been telling me about life at sea. Johnny, this is Paddy, my boyfriend.’

‘Boyfriend, now — my, my, if that just don’t sound like serious talk. Paddy, I’d shake your hand, but you know I’m sure a bit offended that the little lady didn’t tell me she was already on reservation and you’re here to take her away.’ He flexed a fist in the air.

‘Take it easy, mate,’ Paddy said.

Raewyn was looking fluttery and nervous. She said, ‘Paddy, Mum’ll have dinner ready, and I really need to go. Unless you want to come with me? I’m sure she’d set another place.’

‘Best not.’ The beer he’d drunk at the Albert lay thick on his tongue. ‘Another time.’

‘Well, any time you’re looking for a real gent, just come looking for me, Johnny McBride,’ the man said.

Raewyn looked perplexed for a moment. ‘That’s the name of a Mickey Spillane character. He’s in The Long Wait.’

‘Now fancy a nice little lady like you knowing that.’

‘We used to exchange those books at school. We got over them.’

He shrugged, accepting he had been put in his place. ‘I’m just another Johnny,’ he said, ‘him and me, brothers under the skin.’

After Raewyn had left, Johnny said, ‘You don’t happen to know any boarding houses round here, do you? I’m in port for a few days.’

‘If you’ve got the cash, sure, I can put you up,’ Paddy said. He guessed Raewyn had already told Johnny he was in charge of a boarding house. All the same, he knew it was a mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d kept his word to Gladys and never charged anyone before.

The next time he saw Raewyn she told him about the book, how the central character (she didn’t say hero) was a man who had lost his memory and his identity, and how he dealt with adversity by creating chaos, chain-smoking butts, getting drunk and beating people up. It is odd, she remarked, the way the man talks. Is Johnny McBride his real name? Paddy didn’t really care. He hoped he wouldn’t see him again.

This was also the night Paddy told Raewyn they were finished. At first she was tearful, but then she said with a sniff, ‘My mother said I could do better than you.’

Rita Zilich is making her way to the gallery to sit with her friends. Now she has given her evidence she can be part of the audience. As she steps from the witness stand, Paddy tries to remember why he had asked her to stay that night. Wounded pride, perhaps, but not over her. He had never really wanted Rita. Did Johnny McBride want her either, or was she just an excuse for him to pick a fight? Rita is walking away, into her own story. On that night in July, when they had fumbled and groped on the bed, and his groin ached with unresolved pain, she told him a little of herself. Soon, although she hasn’t come to these conclusions yet, she will stop being a widgie; she will marry someone she may not yet have met in a white wedding dress and have children. Paddy’s own name will fade into some private part of her life that her children will never know. He sees it all.

Bessie had come back to him; she came looking for him. Nobody had heard of Albert Black, she said, when she asked around. She had gone to the door of 105 Wellesley Street and the man who opened it said there was no Albert here. But she had seen him from the window of a bus as he walked down the street. She knew she hadn’t imagined him. She knocked on the door again, and there he was.

‘Teach me to dance,’ she said that night. ‘I’ve never been any good at dancing.’

He turned on the radio, found music and began with a slow waltz, holding her close. She was his girl then.