CHAPTER 13

Paddy did not, as Rita had told Oliver Buchanan at his trial, go home after he left her at the taxi stand. How would Rita know where he went? Instead, he began walking blindly towards Epsom. The trams were stilled, silence blanketing the streets of Auckland. He needed to find Bessie. No, that was not right, he was deceiving himself. He knew where she was and that he wouldn’t be able to see her, but it seemed that if he could be close to where she was, where she lay sleeping, or perhaps was wide awake like he was, he could connect with the spirit of her, make her understand what had happened that evening. The piercing cold of the July night entered his bones, but still he kept walking, mile after mile towards Epsom and the grand old house where he knew Bessie was.

He wanted to explain to her that after he had drunk a beer, or perhaps two or three, he didn’t remember now, he looked at the time and saw with a start that eight o’clock had been and gone. He had left the party and gone running up the rise, down the hill, down past the old low Albion with its pressed tin ceiling, past the church, and the mannequins in Smith & Caughey’s, to meet Bessie at Ye Olde Barn cafe. The place was full, every cubicle taken. It took him a few minutes to spot her, sitting alone on a stool, an untouched coffee at her elbow, as if she had just bought something she didn’t want in order to keep her place at the counter. She was staring into space, seemingly oblivious of everyone around her. When he walked up and tapped her on the shoulder, she jumped, her eyes possum lamplights. ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said. ‘Well, I was beginning to wonder. Can we find somewhere to talk?’

‘We can talk later,’ he said. ‘When everyone’s gone. Everybody’s up at the party now.’

‘Can’t they have the party without you?’

‘Not really.’ He was suddenly uneasy, aware that he was in charge of the house. The place was filling when he slipped out, there were more people than he expected, like word had got round all over town. The girls had tied a piece of string across the room, attached to the two chairs. The competition was to see how low they could go as they danced beneath it, knees bent, faces turned upwards. They were shrill with laughter as they bent and doubled. He knew he had to get back.

‘Paddy, you know I can’t stay,’ Bessie was saying. ‘I’ll get thrown out of the hostel if I’m not back in time.’ Her voice held a pleading note that grated with him. It was not what he expected from her, not like the girl he had met on the ferry.

‘Just for a little while. C’mon.’

She’d climbed down off the stool, followed him reluctantly out of the cafe. She didn’t look like someone dressed for a party. Under her coat she wore a pleated tartan skirt and a green woollen jersey. At that particular moment Rita appeared, her hooped earrings glittering in the streetlights, her lips painted in a glossy red curve. She had changed her blouse for a bright-blue satin one.

‘Made it,’ she said, hooking her arm through Paddy’s. ‘Thank goodness my parents go to bed early. So who’s this then?’ she said, looking Bessie over as if she hadn’t seen her before.

‘This is my girlfriend, Bessie,’ he said, and untangled his arm from Rita’s.

Bessie stepped up her pace and began walking ahead of them.

‘So are you in the dogbox or something?’ Rita said, and laughed.

‘Bessie, wait,’ he said. She wheeled around, looking at him and Rita. ‘It’s not what you think.’

Rita flicked him a glance and spoke to Bessie. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘it’s okay. Ray Hastie was the one who asked me to the party. I had to go and check in at home. We just bumped into each other, Paddy and me.’

Bessie appeared to relax. The two girls drifted ahead of him, beginning to chat. He thought then that it would be all right, the two of them would get on. Rita was telling Bessie about her job, and how fast she was at shorthand, and how her boss had told her she’d get a pay rise. That was a relief, because she was fifteen when she started work at the beginning of the year and you don’t get taxed until you’re sixteen. But now she had had her birthday and her four pounds a week had gone down six shillings. Bessie was nodding her head. Four pounds a week sounded like good money to her, she said. At training college that was nearly what she got paid a month. Mind you, she had her board and nice meals. Rita clucked her tongue and said something like, what a pity, they should be paying brainy girls more, chattering away until before they all knew it they were back at the boarding house.

Bessie stopped at the bottom of the stairs, letting Rita go ahead.

‘We can talk out here,’ she said.

‘I need to make sure everything’s okay,’ he said. Music was wafting down the street; someone was singing ‘Twilight Time’. He joined in, mounting the stairs, with Bessie trailing behind him each day … just to be with you and held out his hand to her. He recalled later that she had looked very pale, almost ashen-faced.

Rita threw off her coat and straight away Ray Hastie began to dance with her, the pair of them shimmying together, thighs touching and parting. Paddy couldn’t help watching her. In fact, the whole room stopped to watch and applaud. That was the moment he looked across the room and saw Johnny McBride leaning against the mantelpiece.

He walked across. ‘You weren’t invited here,’ he said.

‘I’m your lodger, remember,’ Johnny said, and laughed, showing the gap in his teeth. ‘This is my mate Stan,’ he said, indicating the baby-faced boy who had been in the pub with him.

Rita spun round, saw them and disengaged herself from the dance. ‘Do you want to dance, Paddy?’ she said, and flicked her provocative little tongue over her top lip again.

‘Not now,’ he said. Bessie stood transfixed in the doorway. She hadn’t taken off her coat.

‘Bessie won’t mind, will you, doll?’ Rita said. ‘Oops, I think she does.’ So that he knew that under all the friendly talk Rita had been setting Bessie up for humiliation. She turned to Johnny. ‘You’ll dance with me, won’t you?’

Bessie stared coldly into the room and turned to go. Paddy followed her to the door. ‘Bessie,’ he said, ‘I told you, it’s not how it looks. C’mon, just relax, have a good time.’

‘You’re all drunk,’ she said.

‘I am so not. I haven’t had a drink all day, I swear. Well, perhaps a couple, but I’m not pissed. Do I look pissed?’

Bessie kept on walking down the stairs. ‘I’m going to catch the tram,’ she said.

He found himself walking alongside of her, trying to keep up with her angry footsteps. He was beginning to feel furious too. ‘So what did you want to talk to me about? Eh? Don’t give me that silent treatment, I won’t have it.’

‘Oh, you won’t have it, won’t you? You don’t own me, Paddy,’ she said, still looking straight ahead. He saw that she was crying, and he thought there was defiance in her expression, the way she clamped her mouth shut in a tight line as if she looked down on him and all of his friends. They were supposed to have been her friends too.

‘What’s the matter? Have you got your pinny pain?’ he said, racking his brain for why she should be in such a mood.

‘My what? Oh, you don’t know anything.’

They had arrived at the stop and right on time the red Epsom tram rattled up, tram number 101, he remembered that, it was the same number back to front and upside down.

‘Tell me,’ he shouted. ‘Bessie, what don’t I know?’

She turned her cold face towards him. ‘You make me sick,’ she said as she climbed on the step.

He couldn’t believe she was saying this. While she could still hear him, he called, ‘Bessie, listen. I’ll be at Ye Olde Barn tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. Meet me. Please.’ She paused, just long enough for him to know that she had heard him, before she was swallowed up into the tram’s bright interior, moving away from him.

He kicked a rubbish bin as he passed, overtaken with fury. Perhaps, after all, he hated her. She had made a fool of him, turning up in her school-marm clothes, standing there at the party not speaking to anyone, walking out on him. A part of him wanted to go after her, jump in a taxi and follow her tram to its stop. But there was the party. The house. There was Johnny McBride to be taken care of. And there was the girl and he wanted her.

The music had reached a crescendo, the girls stamping their feet, belting out ‘Comin’ round the mountain’:

We’ll kill the old red rooster

when she comes, when she comes

We will kill the big red rooster

when she comes, when she comes

We’ll kill the big red rooster,

we will kill the big red rooster

We’ll kill the big red rooster

when she comes, when she comes

Oh yes we’ll kill the big red rooster

when she comes

The girl Stella, who was Rita’s friend, was running her fingers along the forearm of the young lad who wasn’t supposed to be there, tossing her red curls and arching her breasts. Johnny was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Rita. Paddy wanted to tell her he was free for the night. All he wanted now was to be beside a girl, feel the soft slide of her skin beside his, her hair beneath his hand, and he didn’t much care whose it was.

He put his hands in the air, signalling for them to keep the noise down. As it subsided a little, he heard a voice from outside. He knew the voice. Then it went quiet.

Outside, on the veranda leading to the back-yard toilet, Johnny stood kissing Rita.

‘Rita, come inside,’ Paddy said.

Johnny dropped his arms from around the girl’s waist, moved towards him, smashed his fist into his face. His brain felt detached from his skull. He raised his fists to hit back. Johnny said, ‘I’d watch it, you yellow Irish bastard, there’s no fight in you. I’ll kick you till your sides cave in.’

Rita had run screaming into the front room. The Quintal boys, Pooch and Ted, two others, Jeff and Mack, now appeared round the side of the house, grabbing his arms and those of Johnny McBride.

When they were all back inside, the party was subdued, the atmosphere turned morose, you could feel the way everything had turned flat. Paddy lay down on the bed in the cubicle next to the front room, his head beating like a drum. He called the boy, Stan, over. ‘Bring me that knife,’ he said. They had been flipping tops off bottles with a kitchen knife.

The boy stood, looking petrified. ‘Nah, mate, you don’t need a knife.’

‘I need to open a bottle of beer. Get me it, mate, I need a drink.’

‘Cool down, Paddy,’ Jeff Larsen said.

There were red lights dancing in front of his eyes. ‘I said get me the goddamn knife.’ He found himself lunging off the bed, taking Stan down with him, and then there was more fighting, all over the room, bottles smashing, chairs overturned. Girls started hurrying towards the passage where their coats were hanging; Ray began to pack up the guitar. Paddy rushed through the house, grabbed Johnny’s suitcase and ran back, throwing it at him. ‘Take your stuff … Don’t come back.’

Rita picked up her coat and started to leave in Johnny’s wake.

Paddy drew in great gulps of air, rushing down the stairs after her, a glass in his hand. Or was it a bottle, he couldn’t remember. Or had Johnny taken a bottle with him when he left? All of those moments so filled with confusion. Mack Thompson was revving the motor of his car and people were getting in. By the time he reached the street, Rita had climbed into the back seat beside Johnny.

‘Get out,’ Paddy said to her. ‘Get out of the car. You’re with me tonight.’

Johnny climbed out of the car then, fists and feet flying again, kicking him off balance, swinging his foot high, catching him in his groin, making his balls explode. Ted came down from the veranda and held him up while Pooch went over to the car, his hand held out to the girl. Johnny stood over Paddy, scowling at Ted and Pooch as they supported him against the fence.

‘I’ll be back to finish this off tomorrow,’ he said, before turning on his heel and returning to the car. When it moved off, Paddy saw that Rita was standing on the pavement.

Inside, she said nothing. Ray had finished packing up the steel guitar to take back to the Community Centre. The last partygoers left, some calling goodnight, most of them just slinking off into the shadows of Wellesley Street. He put his arm around Rita. The effort of standing was too much, so he lay down on the bed. The girl sat down beside him, unbuttoning the tight satin blouse, the bright white orbs of her breasts exposed.

‘Not now,’ he muttered. ‘Soon.’ Rita stood up again, starting to pick up beer bottles and put them in a carton, her blouse still carelessly undone. He found himself unmoved. The knife lay on the floor, one he had carried from his days in the Post and Telegraph for slashing pine trees and now used for peeling potatoes. Rita placed it in the carton with the bottles.

‘Never mind that,’ he said, ‘get me a mirror.’

She looked around distractedly, took down the one that hung over the mantelpiece; it was heavy and she held it stiffly before her as she handed it to him. When he saw his face with his swollen eye, he swore and dropped the mirror; it shattered into a thousand pieces. ‘I’ll kill him. I’ll fucken kill McBride,’ he said.

‘You want to watch it,’ the girl said, ‘he might kill you first.’

‘Stay with me, Rita,’ he said. ‘Stay the night.’

‘I can’t stay the whole night,’ she said.

Not that it would have made any difference, his dick a limp rag of beaten meat. What he said next would come back to haunt him: I’m not that horny tonight. He thought he had shamed himself, and her, and all of them. Most of all, he had shamed the girl he might have loved, taking her there when she was tired and she had wanted him to herself. He had let Rita make a fool of her. Well, that’s what he thought, for what else could he have done that made her so cold and distant towards him? She must know that she was his girl, not Rita, that it was her he wanted. Surely.

None of these were things he would tell to a jury.

He stood outside Rocklands Hall, breathing in the scent of magnolia, the slim tree branches trembling above him in the darkness. The blank windows gave nothing away about the occupants. The time before, when he had been to call for her, he had glimpsed the magnificent staircase, the elegant chandelier that hung in the entrance hall. Long ago it had been a grand country residence. A fine rain began to fall and he shuddered in the cold. He had walked so quickly, so heedlessly through the night he hadn’t noticed it before. The walk had for the moment made him oblivious of the pain he still felt in his groin, as if something were numbed there. After standing for ten minutes or perhaps longer, for time seemed meaningless now, he turned and began to walk back to town. The pain had returned, his chest full of phlegm so that his breathing came in ragged gasps as he stumbled one foot after another. The distance he had travelled in an hour or so earlier in the night now stretched before him like a far journey. The streetlights were dulled braziers in the misty rain, but he could barely remember the way he’d come.

As he lurched on, everything that had become vile and pointless in his life assailed him. He could not blame Bessie, nor Rita, and for the moment he wouldn’t blame himself. In all of heaven’s way, there was nothing more pitiful than the unforgiven. This was something his mother had once said to him. He could never forgive Johnny McBride for the events of the night. His mind was clouded with things that must and must not happen again. He must somehow see Bessie; he had to believe that she would come to him in the evening to follow, and that she would do the forgiving. He must contrive never to see Johnny McBride again. His hate was so fierce it carried him on further than he thought he could go, but with his hatred there was fear. He saw again the knife that McBride had shown him at the boarding house. At last he collapsed onto a bench at a tram stop. The rain had stopped but he was drenched through. Dawn was breaking, the clouds parting, sullen bonfires of light falling between them. The first tram of the day trundled towards him and stopped. He boarded it and rode back into the city. There was a stirring in the streets, a beggar uncurling himself from a shop doorway, the smell of bread from a bakery; a girl took her high-heeled shoes off outside the Albion Hotel and gave him a weary disinterested glance, business done for the night. He handed her half a crown and walked on.

He approached the house, and his fear re-ignited. In his haste to leave, he hadn’t locked the door. Johnny might have returned. Very softly, he slid the latch open. When he was inside and saw that the front room was empty, he placed his back against the wall and sidled along towards the passage like a man in an Alfred Hitchcock picture. Each room was empty. There was nobody breathing in the house except him. He stripped off his wet clothes and slipped naked between the sheets and slept. Again, his mother came to him in a dream. She was trying to tell him something but he couldn’t hear what it was. Something about buildings being on fire, flames lighting up St Anne’s Cathedral. It is the Blitz all over again, and somehow he has lost sight of her as bomb after bomb shrieks through the air. He has been so terrified he can’t move, and when he looks up he sees that she has gone on ahead and he is supposed to be following. A man beside him drags him down to the ground and another bomb comes. A woman on fire runs past him and he thinks it is his mother. He is hiding behind a wall as the bomb explodes. Bricks fall and loose mortar showers him. The smell of burning is everywhere, like paper held over a gas flame, like petrol, like meat. He doesn’t know how long he stays there. Then she is running back to him. Albert, she is crying, Albert, I thought I’d lost you. Oh God, dear God, how could I lose my son, Lord forgive me. It was the Easter Tuesday Raid and she was behaving as if he were the risen Christ. Perhaps none of that is exactly how it happened. He had an idea his mother had put him in a closet, and the shelter had come later. Never mind, he had heard the stories, everyone told stories of what they had seen in the shelters. There was fire; he knows he saw fire.

When he woke, several hours had passed. He could hear rain on the tin roof as the red dawn had predicted. It was another Tuesday and any day now the landlady would come. He reached up and turned the radio on, and felt himself slowly coming to life, although he felt so ill all he wanted to do was lie in bed.

He must clean the house, he must clean himself, his body, his clothes, the inside of his head if that were possible. He looked in the jar where he kept his money. There was fifteen shillings and eightpence, all the money he had in the world. The whole idea of a party had been nonsense. Tomorrow he’d have to find work again. Perhaps that was what his mother was telling him, that he must work hard and save one hundred and twenty pounds to take him home to Ireland, where she would care for him and keep him safe from harm.

Before he did anything else, he must speak to the girl. He rang the number at Rocklands Hall, and asked to leave a message for Bessie Marsh. There was a long pause. He gathered that the phone had been put down, and in the distance the voice of the woman who answered the phone called to someone. The brisk voice of the matron came on.

‘Who’s calling, please?’

‘Albert Black,’ he answered, and already he knew that something was wrong. ‘I want to speak to Bessie Marsh.’

‘Miss Marsh doesn’t live here anymore.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ he said. ‘Bessie lived here last night, I saw her off on the Epsom tram.’

‘Miss Marsh left the residence this morning.’

‘No,’ he shouted. ‘You’re lying. She wasn’t late.’

‘Mr Black, I’ve nothing more to say to you.’

‘Where has she gone then?’

The phone clicked and the line went dead.

He felt himself trembling as he replaced the receiver. Some dull chime echoed in his head, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Whatever had happened he must trust that Bessie would meet him tonight at the cafe. If she didn’t come, he would go to her grandmother’s house the next day. She would be there, or her grandmother, whom he had still to meet, would know where she was.

When he had finished cleaning the house, he dressed in a fresh blue linen shirt, his good brown jacket and dark trousers. His eye was swollen larger than the night before and the colour of grape hyacinths, but at least he felt respectable. In Queen Street he would get his hair cut, tired as he was of licking it back into a duck’s tail with grease. He would be a regular bloke again. At the door, he hesitated. The night before he had watched Rita throw the kitchen knife in the carton where she’d collected the beer bottles. The carton stood near the front door, ready for him to put out for collection. Somewhere, nearby, Johnny might be waiting to pounce, and the ache in his balls flared again. On impulse, he reached into the carton and the knife was still there, as he remembered. He took it out and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

After he had been to the barber, and seen his hair emerge in a luxuriant dark crest, his hollow stomach reminded him that twenty-four hours had passed since he had eaten. At the Continental Cafe, in Victoria Street West, he stopped and ordered a meal of steak and chips. The food lay uneasily in his stomach. He still had hours to pass until the time when he hoped to meet Bessie. A shifty sea wind was blowing rain in his face. Opposite the cafe stood the Royal Hotel, a comfortable large establishment with a tidy bar, a place not frequented by the Ye Olde Barn crowd. It seemed as good a place as the next to pass some time. He could be on his own. He liked to drink alone. In the Royal he wouldn’t have to go over the events of the night before. He figured that he was unlikely to encounter Johnny McBride.

He drank a beer, and ordered one for the barman. He needed to make it last, to keep some money for himself if he were to take Bessie out. Nor did he want to be drunk when he met her. His head throbbed and he felt his stomach churn. He ordered a second drink, hoping the fizz would make him belch. The barman was eyeing him up with an unfriendly look. ‘Another one for yourself,’ Paddy said, trying to buy favour. The second beer had dislodged the contents of his stomach. He made it just in time to the toilets where everything came up, a foul chunder, the sound of his vomiting loud enough to be heard next door in the bar.

When he emerged, the barman shook his head. ‘That’s enough for today,’ he said. ‘You’re cut, man.’

The bar was filling with workers finishing their day before the pub shut at six. A crush was mounting all around him.

‘I’m all right, it’s just that I’ve been crook,’ Paddy said. ‘I’ve had my spew, I’ll be fine.’

‘I reckon you’re too young to be drinking in this bar,’ the barman said. ‘Or any bar. I could call the cops.’ It was the first time his age had been questioned since he’d gone to live in Auckland. In the Albert, nobody really cared whether he went into the pub or not.

Out in the street, Paddy turned over the money that was left. One shilling in sixpenny pieces, and eight pence. And it wasn’t all right. There was nothing for it but to make his way to Ye Olde Barn and wait it out for the next hour until Bessie arrived.

It was not until he sat down that he saw Johnny through the archway. Johnny walked past and he could swear their eyes locked. The two of them, staring each other out. If he ran, he thought Johnny would follow him. If he stayed, there was safety in numbers. The Quintal brothers were there, and Jeff Larsen, a whole crowd of them, and over on the other side a crowd of Teddy boys in their finery, but he didn’t take all of them in. He was watching Johnny set himself in the last cubicle. The room was swirling with smoke. He walked to the jukebox and took out one of the sixpences, slipped it in the slot, choosing ‘Danny Boy’. As he waited to hear Whitman’s opening notes, Johnny walked towards the jukebox, his hand flicking forward and pressing the button that said ‘Press to change program’, overriding Paddy’s choice on the Wurlitzer.

‘Danny Boy. What sort of shit is that? Sissy yellow Irish junk.’ The space in the cafe filled with the sound of ‘Earth Angel’, the singer imploring a woman, his earth angel, to be his, his darling dear … Johnny laughed.

‘Go blow,’ Paddy said.

Johnny overrode the song again, and his sixpence was lost.

‘Come outside,’ Johnny said.

Paddy walked back and sat down beside the Quintal brothers. Johnny had called him a dirty yellow Irish bastard, had smashed him in the face. Is it now, when did it happen? Yesterday or today? Is it now, is it then, is it happening this minute? His head spun, and the walls seemed to cave in around him, the steadily rising rhythm of the angel bouncing back and forth across the narrowing walls. Johnny McBride still stood at the jukebox, hands on either side of it, head down, slouching his shoulders forward.

‘My eye,’ Paddy said, speaking to no one in particular as he touched his face.

Then suddenly everything seemed clearer and he knew what to do.

The air had a pure, singing quality that shut out the sounds around him, his head light.