Rose and Peter and the children knew the date of Paddy’s birthday and sent presents, carefully addressed to Mr P. Donovan. The children had chosen after-shave lotion, and Ned, the older boy, wrote in an accompanying note: ‘Peter says you’re old enough to shave now, ha ha.’ Peter’s gift was a new razor, a sleek steel one with a handle that fitted perfectly in his hand. They must have had a conversation about his whiskers, he thought. Because his beard was so dark his chin always had a bluish tinge by evening. If he was going out he would shave twice a day. Rose sent a wooden box that contained jars of homemade marmalade, a pullover she had knitted, and a book called East of Eden which was the latest novel by her favourite writer, John Steinbeck. ‘It’s a big book, Paddy,’ she wrote, ‘and you might not have time to read it straight away but here’s hoping that someday you will find it as enjoyable as I did. It’s about good and evil, and country places, like out here in Naenae with the market gardens all around, and it starts with a character who is a young Irish immigrant, just like you.’
That wasn’t what his father would have said. He imagined his sharp reprimand, reminding Rose that his son was an Ulsterman. The pullover was made from soft green and brown flecked wool with a knobbly texture. When he was sick he put it on for extra warmth and thought again that he shouldn’t have left them. He shouldn’t have left anywhere.
His mother’s parcel arrived after the birthday, and he had wondered if she had forgotten, but it was forwarded on from Rose’s address so she must have posted it months earlier on a very slow boat. The mail was a problem for him. He hadn’t had the nerve to tell his mother that he went under a different name here in Auckland. Just send it to the Post Office, Mam, with the name Albert, c/- of Mr Donovan, he had written to her. Mr Donovan and he lived at the same address. The parcel contained a white shirt, not one he would have chosen, a little stiff-collared and formal for the life he led now. He thought that it was something she couldn’t afford.
She wrote: ‘To think that I have a son out of his teens now, a man of twenty years. I will never forget the first moment I saw your bonny wee face, I could have sworn you smiled at me the moment you were born. What it is for a mother to fall in love with her child. Or a father, for that matter, and it is a pleasure I hope someday you will have. Of course next year will be your true coming of age, the big twenty-first. I don’t suppose we will see you for that grand occasion, but your da and I are saving for something special when it comes round. We have in mind a good watch. Well my dear son, I expect you will celebrate this milestone of two decades of life with all the friends you are making in New Zealand. Be sure and have a happy day and all.’
It was this letter from his mother that got him thinking. Now that Mrs Wallace was coming back, it might be time for him to move on. Or that is what he could tell Johnny McBride, if he turned up. Johnny’s suitcase was still in the room and clothes strewn around, his possessions a dead giveaway, even if Paddy packed up the stuff himself and hid them in a wardrobe. She would be bound to find them. In the front room Johnny’s toenails lay on the carpet, in the kitchen ants ran over uneaten food and scummy dishes from the boarder’s last meal. In the toilet, out at the back of the house, there was a dried spill of vomit. Paddy began a ferocious round of cleaning. He was moving out, that was his story. Perhaps he would leave anyway, he was yet to decide. If he could find a smaller, nicer place that would be more suitable for Bessie to visit, he might see more of her. It might really be goodbye to 105 Wellesley Street.
In the meantime, he could celebrate his recent birthday and have friends around, and Bessie might come if he asked her in advance. As soon as the idea took hold of him, it seemed like a festival of treats. There would be music and they would dance.
He sat down and wrote to his mother: ‘Thanks a bundle for the shirt Mam, I’ll look real sharp in that. I’m doing very well here, fortunate to have had a great place to live these last few months, although I’m thinking of moving on soon. Mr Donovan will probably shift with me, he and I will set up somewhere together. I’ve got lots of friends and plenty of work to be had. Well, who knows whether I will get back to the old Dart any time soon. That is what British people here call the home country. Some people just speak of home, which I do in my heart, and others call it “the mother country”, although the citizens of New Zealand seem very independent in their spirit and for how long will us immigrants think of ourselves as separate from them is hard to say. Anyway, now that I’m twenty I’m starting to think about settling down in this country, looking towards a steady way of life. I’ve met a really nice girl but perhaps I will tell you more about her another time, this is a different girl from the last one I told you about, I really like her. Your always loving son.’ He failed to mention that he had just nine pounds left over from his last job.
It took him a while to get through to Bessie. The matron allowed calls only at certain times. He wondered if Bessie had been avoiding him, but there were exams coming up and the last time they had spoken she said she was studying hard. This was a disappointment, for he imagined they might have gone to the zoo over the weekend, now that the weather had fined up, but she had been adamant that she could not see him then.
‘Can you ask for a night out?’ he said, when they finally spoke. ‘Stay at your grannie’s? They wouldn’t mind that, would they? Sure c’mon, girl.’
After a silence, she said, ‘I need to see you, Paddy.’
‘You’ll stay the night?’
‘They don’t give us leave except at the weekend, you know that.’
‘Not even with Grannie?’ He drew circles with his finger round the telephone while he spoke. He could see her perfect face that made him think of Grace Kelly. She was, he supposed, too good for him, he had figured this from the beginning.
‘I don’t think so, no.’
‘But you’ll come to the party? Bessie, it’s my birthday and all. Well, it was, but you know, I had the flu and that.’
‘I didn’t know it was your birthday.’
‘I was twenty last week. You don’t need to buy me a present. Well, ha ha, I don’t expect you would anyway, just bring yourself, that would be a fine present. How about I come and meet you at around eight o’clock at Ye Olde Barn?’
And she said yes, yes she would see him there, but she doubted she could get a late pass, as it was a weeknight, and perhaps she would just have some coffee after they’d had a chat, they would have to see how things went. He found this conversation mysterious, but then Bessie had been that from the start. But she was going to come, and as a last part of his preparations he tidied out the side room where he slept and made it up with clean sheets, smoothing the bed cover, plumping the pillows.
On Tuesday afternoon he found Rainton Hastie, or Ray as they called him, and Ted Quintal, and Henry, the Englishman who had stayed with him at Wellesley Street, drinking in the Albert. There was Jeff Larsen, who hung out with them from time to time. He’d come from Rotorua, a town he left to get away from playing rugby, which his father wanted him to keep playing after he left school. Well, that wasn’t for him. Paddy liked him, a bloke with a laugh or two up his sleeve. He was a freckle-faced man, twenty-two or thereabouts, trailing a couple of convictions for burglary. He’d been in Borstal but he’d steer clear of that in future, he could tell you that. It was a mug’s game. He could give hot tips on the races. And there was Lloyd Sinclair, who they called Cookie and looked just a wee fella, a bit young to hang out with; he was another child immigrant, and Henry was keeping an eye on him. Paddy had hardly got the word out that he was having a party than Ray was organising it, as if it were his own gig. Ray was one of the flamboyant blokes, a permanent partygoer if you believed half of what he said. He was wearing a floral shirt under a blue jacket, and white shoes with heels. ‘We’ll get Pooch on the guitar. We can hire a steel guitar at the Maori Community Centre. We’ll buy some beer.’ Pooch was Ted’s brother.
‘A bottle of gin for the girls,’ Paddy said. Afterwards, he thought it should have been Pimm’s, that’s what girls drank, not so alcoholic. His mother liked a gin and tonic on the odd occasion she let her hair down, not that she’d have admitted it if you asked her. He’d seen his da bring home a bottle on her birthday and she’d had a quarter of a tumbler, and then, when she thought he and Daniel weren’t looking, she’d whisper to his da that perhaps another one might not go astray. It was gin he bought anyway, and Ray bought two dozen beer. Ray said they ought to go along to Ye Olde Barn and find some girls. As they were preparing to leave, Johnny McBride walked in. He saw Paddy and turned his back. He was accompanied by a youth so baby-faced it seemed impossible that he would be served at the bar, but he was.
‘He’s not invited,’ Paddy said. If Johnny heard, he didn’t let on. Paddy was overcome with sudden panic. ‘We can’t have too many people,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to keep the noise down. The neighbours, they’ll tell my landlady.’
‘Too late, my old son,’ Ray said, ‘we’ve bought the booze. You’re on.’
Henry followed them to the door. ‘I’m supposed to be putting out to sea tonight. I won’t be coming to the party,’ he said.
‘Not to worry, some other time.’
Henry said, ‘Paddy, you want to be careful of that guy.’ He nodded towards Johnny, who was hunched at the bar with his head down.
‘Is he your mate? I wouldn’t have thought it,’ Paddy said. It came out mean, which was not what he intended.
‘Go easy,’ Henry said. ‘He’s a crazy mixed-up kid.’
‘What do you know that I don’t?’
Henry shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’s not as bad as you think.’
‘He’s a piece of shite, a skitter if ever there was one.’
‘If you say so, Paddy. I’m just saying, mind how you go. Johnny doesn’t always mean trouble but he makes it anyway, it’s how he is.’ Henry turned away, sharp in his waistcoat and long pale-grey coat, his skinny tie, his shiny shoes. He didn’t seem to care that New Zealanders looked at him sideways in the street. Paddy had been with him one day when a man with a red boozy complexion had stuck his face in front of him, saying, ‘Don’t you think you’re looking for trouble when you dress up like a queer?’
He recalled the calm way Henry had answered. ‘I wasn’t trying to attract attention,’ he’d said. ‘I just like these clothes. They’re the same colour as yours, just a different cut.’ The man had backed off. Paddy remembered that Henry had been a companionable, kindly guy while he stayed at the house. Some chill of apprehension passed through him, a feeling that he might not see Henry again, and it made him shiver, like somebody had walked over his grave. It was not like him to have premonitions: those were for the old people back home. He held out his hand. ‘Henry?’ The other man turned back to him and they shook. ‘No hard feelings?’
‘Go well, Paddy,’ Henry said.
Will he see Henry again? Much later, when Paddy is in prison, he will wonder whether they did actually see each other again. But surely that wouldn’t have been possible, for Henry was going to sea that night? Henry was about to become part of a blur of shadows that would overtake him very soon. It must be, he will come to tell himself, that Henry is a presence.
For now, Ray was ordering a taxi to take the beer to the boarding house. He and Paddy and Ted piled in for the short ride up Queen Street and over the Wellesley Street ridge. Ray put down a dozen of the beer inside the house, looking around with a critical eye. ‘You haven’t done much to liven the place up, have you?’ he said.
‘It’s not mine.’ Paddy thought he’d explained all of that to Ray.
‘Well, you know, if it was me I’d put in some black wallpaper and nice white carpets and plant a few pretty girls all dressed in pink around the place, kind of accessories, if you know what I mean. Some nice mirrors round the walls so we could see the girls dancing double time.’
‘I’m not planning to stay much longer.’ Already he was certain about this. He’d made up his mind.
‘Hey, it’s time we rounded up a few people. You can’t have a party without guests,’ Ray said.
Paddy said then that it was too early, the party wouldn’t start until after eight, but Ray was off and out the door, Ted following. Paddy felt a new wave of anxiety. If he didn’t follow them, there was no telling how many people would turn up.
It’s a party, it’s a party, a party. The words flicked around Ye Olde Barn cafe. He saw Rita Zilich, dressed in a tight red sweater tucked into a skirt so slim he could see every curve of her buttocks. He had seen her before and thought, in the past, that he might sleep with her if she were interested. That was before he was taken. Rita ran the tip of her tongue around the arch of her top lip.
‘Paddy,’ she said, ‘why it’s you. On your own, are you?’
A tune had just finished on the jukebox. He made his way over to it. He wanted sex: for a minute or so he wanted Rita, here, there or anywhere. He slipped a sixpence in the slot and selected ‘Danny Boy’. Slim Whitman was singing and the song was all the rage, a hit-parade favourite. Funny how the old songs came back. Rita was at his shoulder. ‘Well, Paddy? Ray’s asked me to your party. I’ll be there a bit later.’
‘I’m meeting my girl,’ he said. ‘I’m meeting Bessie.’
‘Pity,’ she said. ‘Any time you’re free.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ he said.