CHAPTER 26

30 November 1955. After the weekly Cabinet meeting of the ministers of the Crown, the Executive Council meets to decide Albert’s fate. The Council is the highest formal authority of government, and its members also comprise the ministers, the institution through which the Government collectively advises the Governor-General. The Governor-General of the day is Sir Charles Willoughby Norrie. An Eton man, he has fought in both world wars; he plays polo and hunts foxes when he is at home in England. According to his reputation, he is a man averse to sentimentality.

It’s a short meeting. The Prime Minister, Sid Holland, remarks again on the undesirability of men like Albert Black in New Zealand. If they can’t be sent back to where they came from, they have to be prevented from pursuing further crime in New Zealand. The reports on him suggest a highly immoral lifestyle, something that he and his friend Mr Mazengarb aim to stamp out. It will not just punish the crime that has been committed but serve as a short, sharp reminder to those who follow reprehensible modes of living and are sexually promiscuous.

Ralph Hanan says, ‘So Black is to be made an example in respect of the Mazengarb Report?’

‘None of them were up to any good. The youth who was killed had been reading banned books. He even modelled himself on one of Spillane’s characters.’

‘So two men die, thanks to Mr Mazengarb. Aren’t we, as a government, not succumbing to lynch law?’

The Attorney-General rolls his eyes, and the rest of the Council members sigh and look away.

The Prime Minister says that unless there are any further objections, it will be recommended to the Governor-General that Black’s execution take place forthwith.

There is a time frame for the procedure. Once the Council has made its recommendation the penalty must be imposed within seven days. Hanan looks at his colleagues one at a time, until they look away from him and drop their eyes.

4 December 1955. She knows it cannot be long now. Kathleen feels like stone. She cannot move, she cannot cry, so removed does she feel from reality. The winter is closing in. She should have lit the fire, but it can wait. At last, hearing Daniel coming home from school, and throwing his bag down, she stands up from where she has been sitting on the edge of what used to be Albert’s bed. Like an automaton, she moves to the wardrobe. It is mostly Daniel’s clothes that hang there now, but there is still a jacket that his brother left behind him when he left for New Zealand. He wore it in his last year at school; she had saved up the money to buy it for him. Now she slides her hands into its pockets and holds them inside. His hands have been there. In a pocket she finds a piece of chewed gum rolled up in its wrapper, an unused matchstick, a small twig that he might have pulled carelessly from a hedgerow. She puts her face against the fabric, inhaling, as if she might catch his scent.

‘Mam,’ Daniel calls, ‘are you there?’

He is hungry and she needs to tend to him, to still be the best mother she can. When he is sat at the table with a piece and a cup of hot milk, she says, ‘Would you like to look at the photographs?’ She rummages in the bottom drawer of the dresser and there it is, the little album where she has kept the pictures.

He pulls a face. ‘Andy is waiting for me, can I go over to his house for a bit?’

‘As long as you’re not late,’ she says. And the fact is, she would rather be on her own.

As the door closes behind him, she opens the album. First up, there is a studio picture of wee William, his baby face pinched. It was an extravagance but she had wanted the picture so bad, as if she knew he wouldn’t make old bones. And here is a picture of her with Bert, and she is holding Albert in the doorway of their first house in Tate’s Avenue. She is wearing a summer dress, her arms bare. The baby is swaddled up in a shawl, just the top of his downy head where the caul has been and the tip of nose showing. Her mother must have taken that one, because all three of them are there, and she remembers now that her mother, who did not have so long to live after that, had come round to greet her when she came home from the hospital. And there Albert is again, in his little cotton hat, holding her hand. It is one of those street photographs, and he is pointing with his free hand and laughing at something beyond the edge of the picture. She wishes she knew what he was looking at then. Now, there they all are in this next one, her and Bert and Albert and Daniel, on their holiday at Ballycastle, the headland rising from the sea in the background. Oh, wasn’t that such a nice time? Who took that picture? A passer-by, she thinks. Bert had dug out his old Box Brownie his parents gave him when he was a we’an and his family still had the money. Perhaps they’d asked some stranger to point and click in their direction? In the next one Albert is on board the Captain Cook, his springy hair that resembles her own like a dark halo round his head, riffled by a breeze, his hands crossed and loose before him, and again the sea’s horizon at his back. Peter Simpson has sent her this, as he has the two remaining ones of Albert. These last two have been taken in New Zealand. In one there is Albert, holding a cat and surrounded by children, on Rose Lewis’s lawn. It’s Christmas Day, the past year. She had felt a pang of envy when she took that one out of its envelope. It was like Albert had another family in New Zealand. The last picture is more formal and it’s not a true photograph at all but a newspaper clipping. Albert is dressed smartly, his hair tamed and stylishly cut. His tie has a jaunty diagonal stripe, and the white shirt looks like the one she sent him for his birthday. He is looking a little away from the camera, not towards her.

Horace Haywood is drunk and entirely on his own. He wishes he had some company, is nostalgic for the presence of Des Ball. But Ball doesn’t work here anymore. He thought he knew Ball, but it seems he was wrong. He wonders, in moments like this, when his head is floating and his thoughts off their tether, if it is the killings that have done it for Des. Some men have more fragile hearts than they let on. He wishes he could have helped him. For that matter, he wishes he could help himself. Tomorrow there is a job to be done.

Why is he not at home with Ettie? He is as guilty of neglect in his own way as the other man. But she will be busy with her plans for the men’s bowling trip on Wednesday morning. Ettie always has a plan.

Oliver Buchanan is so restless his wife is becoming irritable. No, that’s not fair. She knows what is going through and through his mind. There is nothing she can say to calm him down. He can’t look at her or the boys. He has decided to go for a walk, he tells her. It’s a warm night and he doesn’t take a jacket, leaving the house with his tie loose and his shirtsleeves rolled up. It is a Sunday night; he knows that the execution must take place very soon. He has been expecting the news every morning.

He walks for a while around the wharves, watching ferries come and go, the evening light dropping over the sea. Don’t worry, I might be a while, he’d said as he left home. The streets are almost deserted. He takes the route along Queen Street, and almost decides to cross Albert Park, but something makes him keep walking, on and up past the turnoff to Wellesley Street, on further until he comes to Ye Olde Barn cafe. He expects it to be crammed with young people, but it too is nearly empty. Perhaps people have stopped coming, or perhaps the weekend has taken its toll; he wouldn’t know. The last time he was here, to study the scene of Johnny McBride’s killing, music spilled forth and the cubicles were full, as if nothing untoward had happened here at all. At any rate, there is just one man sitting by himself on a stool at the counter. He’s a Teddy boy, turned out like a male model, a mannequin in a shop window, so perfect his grooming.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ Buchanan says. Silly, really, he thinks, when he’s not seeking company. There is something about sitting down in one of these empty cubicles that makes him uncomfortable. He orders his coffee from the man he recognises as Laurie Corrington, the man who had run down the street to find a policeman, blood splattered all over his apron.

The young man grins, offers his hand. ‘I’m Henry,’ he says.

‘Oliver Buchanan,’ he says, offering his hand.

‘I know you,’ Laurie says from along the counter. ‘Can’t keep away from the scene of the crime, eh?’ He turns to Henry. ‘He’s Paddy’s lawyer.’

‘One of them.’

‘You haven’t saved him from the noose, have you?’ Laurie hands Buchanan the coffee and walks away. As if to liven the place up, he takes a coin from the till and wanders down to the jukebox. The Ink Spots are singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

Henry says quietly, ‘I’ve been at sea these past months. I heard what’s happened to Paddy.’

‘It hasn’t happened yet,’ Buchanan says, sipping the scalding treacly liquid. ‘Tomorrow, I expect. You knew him?’

‘He was my friend. I stayed with him a time or two.’

‘You did? How did you find him?’

‘Paddy? He’d give you the shirt off his back. He was a good bloke, kind-hearted. I was in here the night McBride was killed. I was sitting just near Paddy. He didn’t see me when he came in. I was supposed to have gone to sea the night before, the night he had his party. I went down to the ship, but sailing was delayed for a couple of days. It was too late to go to the party, so I turned in for the night. Next day, we did some work on board ship and then I came up here for a coffee before we sailed. I was in my seaman’s clothes, so perhaps it didn’t occur to him to look my way. He was in a state, I could see that, and Johnny was rarking him up something awful, so I thought just let them sort it out.’

‘In what way was he rarking him up?’

‘Oh, you know, Paddy was trying to play “Danny Boy” on the jukebox over there. You can override that Wurlitzer, so when Paddy put his money in Johnny keeps wanting to play “Earth Angel” and cuts him out.’

‘Nobody told me that. There were other witnesses. That’s not what they said.’

‘Well, it’s what I say. He cut him out two, maybe three times. Perhaps his mate Jeff saw it too. Jeff Larsen, that is, though I wouldn’t know. I haven’t clapped eyes on him again.’

Buchanan stirs his coffee, pausing before he speaks. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

‘They didn’t want to know. We stood there, there were three of us who saw it happen, the whole thing, eh Laurie? You saw us.’

Laurie busies himself with folding some tea towels, as if he hadn’t heard.

‘We waited. The police came in. We said we were here when it happened. They told us they were busy, it was a crime scene, and we should get on out of it. Perhaps it was our accents that put them off. I’m a Pom, you know — well, I guess you’ve worked that out. They’d rounded up plenty of good Kiwi blokes. They must have thought they had enough witnesses.’ His tone is bitter. ‘Later that night my ship sailed.’

‘Did you see Johnny hit Paddy?’

Henry sits thinking, tracing a muddy pattern in spilled coffee essence on the counter. ‘I didn’t, to tell you the truth. I’ve heard since that that’s what he said to Larsen on the way to the police station. But I didn’t see that. Things happened too quick. Paddy sat down, then got up again, and next thing Johnny’s dropped against that post, and Laurie here is yelling blue murder and there’s chaps rolling him over on the floor. I reckon that wasn’t the best thing either. All they did was stick the knife in deeper.’

‘But you did say Johnny was provoking Paddy?’

‘Oh yes. You know, I think Paddy was sick of getting hidings. He wasn’t a big guy, not a fighter. Look, would it have made any difference to Paddy if I’d spoken up more? Not gone to sea that night?’

‘I don’t know,’ Buchanan says. ‘It might have made a difference to what the other men said. But perhaps they were all telling the truth the way they saw it. In which case I doubt it would have made much difference. The thing is, your story is closer to Paddy’s than that of the others.’

Henry’s face pales. ‘I could have done more. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not on your own there. But thank you for telling me.’

‘If he hangs, it’ll haunt me the rest of my days,’ Henry says, ‘I can tell you that.

‘I fear that’s a fate we’re bound to share,’ Buchanan says, offering his hand.

And so the night passes. It’s lights out as usual. Paddy stays awake so that he can savour the minutes, one by one. He has been shifted to a ground-floor cell near the kitchen. It is also alongside the courtyard area where the gallows stand. Knowles watches over him, or at least he is supposed to, although now and then he dozes off.

Before Paddy left the upper cell he wrote two letters. When Peter Simpson gets his, he will see that the ink is smudged over his name and above it there is a mark that looks like the shape of a teardrop.

‘Dear Peter. No doubt you have read in the press of the Executive Council’s final verdict and have guessed what my fate is to be. I should like to take this opportunity to say goodbye, and to wish you many years of future happiness. You have been a very staunch friend of mine.

‘I look back to many days of good fun we had together. Ah yes, one always thinks of happiness never the unhappiness. I too remember our first Christmas together in New Zealand. You know Peter, I always thought you would outlast me in life. I did not take the latter seriously enough, but Peter, I guess this is God’s will that my time is up and I have come to accept that. Well, I always believe the shortest goodbyes are the best, so I shall close forever, always remembering our friendship. I guess it’s goodbye.

‘Your friend always, Albert.’

When it came time to write to his mother, the letter he had left for last, he found there was nothing to say. Mam, he had said in the silence of his cell. Oh, Mam. How could he explain to her that which he could not explain to himself? Instead he had written some lines of the song she had sung to him so many times, the one about the wild mountain thyme on the moorlands. When he came to the lines Let us journey together, Where glad innocence reigns he faltered. Had there ever been a time of innocence? The two of them together perhaps, picking berries in the sun, not knowing what was coming, before the bombs and the blazing streets and the wartime shelters. Or that time at Ballycastle when the four of them stood side by side, one happy family. The face of his brother Daniel swam before him, trusting and innocent, believing that he would always be there, the big boyo who would look out for him. Well, Daniel would know better now. He couldn’t write the last line, his Mam knew it anyway. He hesitated before writing a p.s. ‘Love to my da.’ He put the sheet of paper in its envelope, wrote the address and put it with his letter to Peter to be posted.