Paddy's Puzzle Page 3

  She could see Winnie growing old as the knot of poverty pulled in. While she was older too, she was not old enough to be of any real help to Winnie. She tried hard, but that usually ended up by her being told she was in the way. Sometimes she rebelled and didn’t try at all, and then she got sent back to Mumma. At least, though, being older meant that she was allowed to get the bus back to Frankton on her own, which she preferred. There were more Maori than European children in Frankton by then, and some of them were her friends at school. Winnie disapproved, because frail tremulous old Mrs Hoggard did, and Winnie adopted the attitudes, if not the style, of the Hoggards as she first knew them. In those days, when Mrs Hoggard was more youthful, and pretty, and adorned with floating chiffon scarves like Isadora Duncan, they would go riding in the Hoggards’ car, a magnificent Daimler, and drive out past the pa at Ngaruawahia. ‘Pai korry,’ Mrs Hoggard would trill to them, imitating the Maoris, or inventing a whole new language for them, ‘Pai korry,’ and everybody in the Daimler would roar with laughter, Mr Hoggard doubling against the steering wheel, and catching his breath.

  Mrs Hoggard’s lifestyle might have changed, but her opinions still held sway. Winnie seemed to believe she had no choice except to think like her, even though these days she disliked, even despised her. The Hoggards had been her achievement. There had to be something left. Clara was disappointed. For a little while it had appeared that Winnie might be smarter than the Hoggards, but she had slipped into apathy and acceptance. And when she and Clara and the children got in a bus to go back to Mumma’s, Clara knew instinctively that she would sit beside a European before a Maori, and even if they didn’t notice, she saw it as a reproach. She would be torn in two, wanting to sit beside Winnie and sit beside her friends, and terrified in her heart of hearts that she was criticising Winnie.

  One day Clara saw Winnie standing at her bench as usual, but her face was white as chalk, as white as the bench which she scrubbed with ever-increasing vehemence each day. The hallstand had gone in the morning, nice polished wood, gone for ten shillings. Winnie had found fault with Clara all afternoon. Sometimes Clara wondered why she bothered to have her there at all. Was it only for the money which Mumma gave her, or simply to keep her away from Mumma in the hope that Mumma would love her less and Winnie more? The second was a vain hope. As long as she let Mumma twine her fingers through her hair she would love Clara more. Just so long as she did not have the work of looking after her.

  There was always a sense of duty to be considered, but it did not bear thinking about. She wanted Winnie to love her best, or at least better than Jeannie. It occurred to her that she was contrary in every way. Mumma’s arrangement suited her very well in fact, for Clara did not want to be looked after by Mumma any more than Mumma wanted to look after her.

  Though she was never quite sure why she wanted to be looked after by Winnie so much.

  She supposed that it was because Winnie looked more like her mother than Mumma did. Or had looked. But then she started to get so worn that Clara thought that it would not be long before they looked alike. She stared at her one day, looking for the first signs of the great ropey varicose veins that disfigured Mumma’s legs and was relieved to see how absolutely smooth and tapered Winnie’s still were. Her eyes travelled up her skirt and Clara saw that Winnie was bleeding. There was a big spreading crimson patch across her skirt.

  Clara began to shake, afraid that her sister was going to die. For once Winnie noticed that there was something wrong and asked what the matter was. She didn’t want to tell her. She wanted to protect her from the pain and terror of her illness, but at last she had to tell her.

  Winnie’s hand travelled slowly to her bottom and her face was wondering and disbelieving and joyful. Reg came in, and she was kissing him, and laughing for once. They spent some of the ten shillings on meat, and Jeannie had the largest portion which she didn’t want when it came to the point, so Winnie fed it in little cold forkfuls to Reg. Clara had no idea why they were so happy or whether Winnie would get better.

  Clara’s friends at school paid off. She was nine years old, but she knew where babies came from and how they got there. Winnie became fascinating for different reasons from any of the previous ones, and she fascinated Clara in a way that Mumma never could, even though it appeared that Mumma had had more to do with the whole business than Winnie. The evidence was, that at one time or another, Mumma had borne seven children, of which she was one, and Winnie was another, whereas Winnie hadn’t got past first base yet — as, later, the Americans were fond of saying.

  But now she realised that Winnie could have more children and that the fluctuating moods which afflicted her and Reg had much to do with the process of getting babies, or avoiding getting them. She understood that Winnie was desperately afraid of having babies and that this was sad because Clara knew that once she had wanted to have more, besides Jeannie. Clara wished she would have more too. Jeannie stumped round after her on her thick legs, increasingly demanding, aware that she had some sort of hold over Clara, though over the years the mothers of the two girls seemed to have forgotten what it was; their relationship was simply taken for granted. Clara knew that she had to look after Jeannie and that she made capital out of it. At first Clara would help her niece with her reading but after a while Jeannie caught her up. She was a determined child.

  Clara supposed that she and Jeannie were some sort of rivals, and that, as her aunt, she had an odd place in Jeannie’s life, being herself a rival to Jeannie’s mother and yet at the same time as much under her control as Jeannie was.

  She thought that she liked school and it didn’t occur to her to wonder whether she was good at her schoolwork or not. And she didn’t really know whether Jeannie was so much better and cleverer than she was either. What she did know was that, with this very determined streak in her, Jeannie caught up and learned everything she knew at the same time as she did, and, being two years younger than Clara, this made her appear like a genius. Clara decided quite early that she couldn’t be very clever in the light of Jeannie’s brilliance, but there was also a small warning voice inside her which made her determine to withdraw any useful information that would assist Jeannie in her bid for recognition. The easiest way to withdraw it was to never find out it existed in the first place.

  She discovered quickly, and even more later on, when she got to high school, that it was easier that way, and that it won her friends. There were more people who were not clever than there were clever ones. Clara had more friends than Jeannie ever did. And, although it was never discussed within the family, Clara was pretty, with bright blue eyes and curly nut-coloured hair, while Jeannie’s hair was straight and dull and nobody in their wildest dreams would say she was pretty.

  Just sometimes a teacher would hold Clara’s interest. Then she would start to get agitated and delighted as something clicked into place, especially in history and maths which seemed to have some curious parallel structure whereby you could unlock the secrets of the world, one by going back and the other by going forward. Occasionally she would ask a question. If the teacher had been smart enough to interest her in the first place then they were also generally smart enough to detect a spark beneath her lethargy. As soon as she saw that spark of recognition in their eyes she would close up. The result was usually a report that said ‘Not working to the best of her ability’ or, more concisely, and frequently, ‘Clara is lazy’. She took a special pride in these reports. They increased her following enormously. Perhaps they raised an aura of mystery about her. The thought that she could have done better if she wanted to, was more interesting than it seemed, than simply not being able to do better. It indicated a positive act of will, or choice, on her part. But then she would think that she flattered herself.

  She had no real proof that she could have done much better, even if Robin used to tell her that she could. But then Robin gave the impression of knowing a great deal when often she thought he was as ignorant as she was, or as any of the others.
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  That happened later though. But the seeds were sown then, and she knew she was sick of Jeannie tagging along behind, and demanding and demanding and always being in a position to get her own way. She wished that Winnie would give her some brothers and sisters who would relieve her of the responsibility of always worrying about her.

  Things came to a head one day late in the winter of 1933. The oak dresser had gone in the morning. Winnie had hung onto it for as long as she could. It was a piece of furniture she was very proud of, with nice grain, and heavy leaded-glass panels. Not that she was as interested in housework as she had been, though that wasn’t really surprising for there was hardly anything left in the house except essentials and even the effort of keeping them seemed too much for her some days. She would drag herself from one task to another and end the day asking where it had gone and complaining about how tired she felt. But she did still polish the dresser at least once a week, and her crockery sat twinkling behind the glass ready for use though there wasn’t much to put on the plates any more. For that reason Clara had stopped going there so often, and when she did, she usually took food from Mumma’s.

  But it was the holidays, and Frank had been in from the farm to see Mumma. He had cadged extra eggs and vegetables from the farmer. Mumma was pleased of the excuse to load Clara with food and send her over to Winnie’s, to spend a couple of days with her. She turned up on the doorstep armed with half a dozen eggs and a couple of cabbages. At first Winnie frowned when she saw her, but when she saw what she had brought, her expression changed to a watery smile. She fed two eggs to Jeannie and two to Reg, and Clara said that she had had some at home so then Winnie had one too and there was one left over. It sat in the kitchen cupboard for more than a day while Winnie turned over in her mind who was going to have it.

  She didn’t ask Clara for an opinion, but if she had, Clara would have said Reg, out of him and Jeannie, because Jeannie was still quite plump, all things considered. Winnie had started queuing for food up town three days a week and they made sure the children got as much as they could give them.

  It was Reg who was in a really bad way because by that time he was working for the Swamp Development League. The land round Hamilton was swampy peatland and some businessmen had got the idea of burning off the peat so that the land could be brought into production more quickly and there was an abundance of cheap labour for what was really a foul job. They did make some work for the men who had nothing, but still, as some people said privately, the businessmen stood to make a pretty packet out of it in the long run. Mumma said to Frank that you could go round in circles forever on something like that, because while it was awful to see what was happening to Reg, on the other side of it was all the money that his father had made out of people by extending high-priced credit and foreclosing on farmers in the days when he was on top of things. In fact if he hadn’t been so silly as to go jumping off the bridge he would probably have been one of the first ones to make a few bob out of it, more fool him.

  But now Reg was out in these stinking swamps, and everyone knew they were stinking, you couldn’t get away from it, there in the town. The fires would smoulder for months on end, and the air was laden for miles around with foul-smelling smoke, and if it got mixed up with river fog it would get down into the lungs of the townspeople, until they felt as if the air was being pushed out of them. Some mornings Clara would step outside and the sensation of choking would come up to meet her, and she would wonder how she could bear it for the day, and then at the point when it seemed as if it would just be easier to choke to death there would be a break for a few hours and some relief. She didn’t know whether other people felt the way she did, but she would panic in that dense evil air.

  Reg worked in the heart of the swamp with the wet underfoot and the smoke swirling in clouds above him, and some nights he was able to come home and others he camped out in the fields with the men.

  There was nothing much for him and Winnie to say to each other. He was gaunt and starting to stoop and it was hard to realise that he still hadn’t turned thirty. Winnie was bleak and pinched and when she did talk she tended to be sharp.

  The day the dresser went started differently.

  Clara thought Winnie would cry or do something violent or angry when it was carried out of the house. But she didn’t. She pocketed the pound the men gave her for it without saying a word.

  They looked embarrassed, and Clara guessed that they knew how little it was for such a good piece of furniture. One of them started to say something. Perhaps he wanted to say he was sorry but Winnie gave him such a cool look that he turned his face away from hers and said nothing.

  After they had gone Winnie went to the kitchen and stood at the bench staring out onto the little lawn. It was full of magpies but she didn’t remark on them. They circled around on the grass with little dancing steps, their heads held impudently on one side, and opened their beaks with stretching satisfied gestures. It occurred to Clara that they were surviving the winter better than any of them. Nothing had diminished the shine on their feathers and they were more daring than they had ever been. Winnie’s knuckles were clenched tight on the edge of the bench.

  ‘You’ll get another dresser Winnie,’ Clara ventured, wanting to console her.

  ‘What?’ She stared through Clara, as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘The dresser. I’m sorry it’s gone,’ she tried, braver than the removal man.

  ‘Oh. That.’ She gestured with her hands, but in a way that didn’t mean anything. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does. Winnie, it does matter.’ Clara started crying, without knowing why, and wished that Winnie would too, because then she would know what to do for her; she could put her arms round her and tell her that things would be all right, even if it were not true.

  But Winnie only stared at her as if she was being silly, and she stopped crying almost as suddenly as she had started.

  ‘Shall I take Jeannie for a walk?’

  ‘If you like. No. I don’t know,’ she said, making an effort.

  Clara waited.

  ‘Perhaps not. We’re going out later, you don’t want to get your coats damp now.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To queue for some lunch.’ She looked grim, and at the same time shaky. Clara wondered if it was like this every time she went, but it seemed as if she had something else on her mind besides lunch.

  ‘They don’t open till eleven and I might have to go somewhere else for a while. If we make sure we’re there at eleven we might get served early, but if I have to go away I want you to mind my place in the queue and look after Jeannie.’

  ‘Why don’t I look after Jeannie here? I could you know. I wouldn’t do anything silly,’ Clara said.

  ‘Because then if I went off, I’d lose out in the queue and have to start from the back again.’

  There was fine drizzle starting outside.

  ‘It seems a pity to take Jeannie out in this weather.’ Clara would have liked to go and queue with Winnie if it had just been the two of them.

  As if she could read her thoughts, Winnie rounded on her. ‘I thought you were coming over to help me. Are you going to help or do you want to go back to Mama’s?’ When she said ‘Mama’ she meant business.

  ‘Help,’ said Clara sullenly. She thought she hated Winnie. She wanted to give her so much and she never seemed to notice.

  ‘You’re spoiled. Mama’s made you a spoiled brat.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ Clara was at once terrified of what she had said, and brave in the one breath.

  Winnie looked at her. ‘I beg your pardon, young lady?’

  ‘You’ve got no right to talk to me like that.’

  ‘Oh haven’t I?’

  ‘You’re not my mother, you’re my sister. Sisters aren’t in charge like mothers. Sisters are supposed to share with each other.’

  Winnie’s face contorted. ‘Sister. Oh yes, you’re my sister a
ll right. Mumma ought to be ashamed of having had you. It’s disgusting. Sister. I could have died when you were born. It nearly ruined my life. I couldn’t get out of it fast enough when you were born.’ She advanced on Clara, her face almost unrecognisable with loathing and anger. ‘Don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to share with you.’

  She had her hands up as if to seize or hit her. Clara cowered back against the kitchen table, her eyes darting round looking for a way to the door. Her head banged against the corner of the doorway as she ducked. She reeled sideways, and Winnie caught her as she fell. Clara wriggled, half-dazed, trying to escape, expecting the attack. Instead Winnie was crying, as Clara had wanted her to do when the dresser went. She sat down on one of the chairs and rocked backwards and forwards with her head in one hand and the other arm encircling her sister.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clara, so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right.’ The back of her head was still hurting, and she had no idea what it was all about but she was aware of some new change, some redefinition of their relationship, which had taken place over the last few violent moments in the kitchen.

  Winnie looked as if she was going to try to explain something but then she shook her head slowly and touched the back of Clara’s head. ‘Is it all right?’

  She knew that Winnie meant is everything all right, not just her head, and it seemed easiest to say yes. In a way it didn’t matter, what had happened. She had said what she thought for once. She realised then that Winnie had spent a lot of their lives, certainly a lot of her life anyway, saying one thing and meaning another.