Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance (6 page)

That might have been the end of it but for a rumour that the recruitment office at Egger's ‘cut and shave' was soon to close. All the important news flowed through Egger's—wool prices, coal volumes, marriages, deaths, births, and, significantly, which boys had still to sign up.

White feathers were sent Billy and Henry in the mail. People weren't shy about making their thoughts known either and often within earshot. Billy Pohl heard himself described as ‘death's guide'. The association wasn't so unreasonable. The first thing the officers did on arriving at the station at Little River with their envelope of condolences was look around for Billy Pohl. Billy was the station guard and knew where everyone in town lived and the shortest route to any house. So when grieving families played back the moment their lives took an unforgettable turn there was the clipped figure in uniform, and there in the background stood Billy Pohl.

On 10 December 1916, Billy Pohl and Henry Graham received letters of official notice that they had been called up. The letter asked them to present themselves at Egger's. Tom Williams went along to speak on their behalf and to explain the ‘mix-up'. Billy Pohl and Henry Graham hadn't signed up for anything. Without a word the Recruitment Officer opened his drawer and retrieved two sheets of paper and dragged his finger down to the line with Henry and Billy's forged signatures. The meeting had been reasonably amicable up to now. Tom Williams told the RO , ‘You might as well know you can place a rifle in their hands but I can tell you right now they won't shoot.' Royden Thompson's grandfather was in the chair. Two other men as well sat waiting with magazines open in their laps listening to the snip, snip of Egger's scissors. It was perfectly obvious to all what had happened.

Louise came home to find Billy and Henry and Tom Williams in her kitchen. There was an air of gloom. Billy sat chewing his nails. Henry with his head down, scrutinising the floorboards. She did not need to be told the outcome. She boiled some water. She set out some cups and saucers. She poured the tea. Finally, she said, ‘I know a place. A hiding place.' There was a cave her father had once pointed out to her. It was five miles outside town. You could stand above it, right over its lip, without knowing what lay beneath you. From the sea it looked like a half-closed mouth; but that was from a moki reef half a mile out. One moment there was the sheer beauty of all that sky and sea and the next you were struck by a devastating loneliness. It was the perfect place for fugitives. Whenever she'd been there with her father the tide drew all the way up to its mouth and cut you off from the world. She was about to talk up its features when Tom Williams cut her off, ‘I don't want to hear it, Louise, and it's not because I'm not interested. But should someone ask me where the dickens those boys are you know I won't want to lie.'

They arranged to leave that afternoon. Louise packed away flour and salt, some preservative, three lemons, bagged a number of apples and pulled up some young carrots from the garden. She stuffed everything into the basket strapped to her handlebars together with handy comforts such as old newspapers, soap, the last of the plum tart, and wheeled her bike out to the street.

On the edge of town she stopped to pick some plums from the branch overhanging the fence round the Robertsons' yard. Boyd's mother saw her and put down her washing basket. She said, ‘Louise, let me get you a bag for those plums.'

She didn't see another soul until Lion's Rock, and then it was Billy Pohl with his bag and fishing gear. She cycled up to him and told him to walk another two miles, until he found himself at the bluffs, near the nikaus, and to wait there.

She climbed back on her bike and coming up to Jackson's Crossing she saw Henry rise out of the tall roadside grass. Tom Williams was with him. Jackson's was as far as Tom would allow himself to go.

Louise dismounted and stood while the two men shook hands. ‘Louise will take you from here, Henry.'

‘You'll tell me mum and dad, won'tcha Tom? I don't want them coming after me. Tell them I'm fine and not to worry.'

‘I intend to tell them you are in the pink of health and in excellent company.' That wink was for Louise. She smiled. A slow grin showed up on Henry's face.

‘In a cave.'

‘I didn't hear that, Henry. All I know is that you are going to a safe place.'

‘So long as you tell them it's nicer than whatever it really is.' Then he asked, ‘What will you tell them, Tom. What, really? I'd like to know.'

Louise watched the older man think for a moment. Henry had just alerted him to a problem he didn't have an answer for yet. He tapped the side of his head—like it was all brilliantly stored upstairs—and placed a hand on Henry's shoulder to point him north. ‘Come on, Henry. Louise won't want to be cycling back in the dark.'

They were some distance up the road before Henry said, ‘About the dark, Louise. I wouldn't worry. Cycle slow, and steer the front wheel by the breath of the cows. Sometimes you can feel their heat.'

She was so surprised to hear this she stopped wheeling the bike.

‘When you think about it, Louise, it's the difference between a stew just cooked and one left to cool a day later.'

She wasn't sure whether Henry had made a joke or whether she had just come into startling new knowledge.

At the bluffs they had a thirty-minute wait until Billy caught up. They listened to the sea pounding on the rocks below and the noise sent Louise's eyes to the long white band on the horizon.

They were sitting on the very edge of the country. This was as far west as one could go.

With her father they had always gone by boat and from the sea you saw a neat line ruled through the nikau trees. The cave, she recalled, was about an inch north of it.

At the nikaus she wheeled her bike in far enough until she was sure it couldn't be seen from the road and laid it down. A green filmy light hung in the treetops. The ground was damp, rich smelling. At first the sound of small twigs snapping marked their progress. But as they walked on the sea grew louder, to where eventually they could smell the salt spray in the trees. After ten more minutes of dark passage under the trees they came out to the great Tasman sky. Huge and blue-lit. Spray rose past their noses from the sea cannoning into the rocks below. They had to shout to hear one another. It was easier to just point the way down to a thin cuticle of white beach. They picked their way down, grabbing and sliding; Billy Pohl with the basket of food. They slid down to the beach and sank up to their thighs in white sea foam.

The next bay was more sheltered.The inshore water was a still, dark jelly bubbling with light and sea necklace. The beach was piled high with kelp torn from the ocean floor; stuck in the craw of its rubbery stalks were stones and small paua. With every footfall black clouds of sandflies flew up at their faces. Billy slapped them away. ‘I hope you're sure about where this cave is,' he said. It was the first anyone had spoken in a while and Billy sounded fed up.

She was worried herself that she might not recognise the cave entrance. Four years had gone by since she was last there. Anything could have happened. The entrance might have subsided—the coastline was constantly nibbled away at by the sea. She didn't say anything and they walked on. They walked for another twenty minutes. She was on the brink of admitting to some uncertainty when a cleft in the bank behind the beach caught her eye. ‘There,' she said, pointing.

A dry creek bed took them inside the mouth of the cave. Its roof lowered and bent away to the left; it turned dark and then light again as they came around the corner to a large area—the size of several rooms. Henry knelt down for a handful of dry sand, which he let trickle through his fingers. He gazed up at the pitched roof. Billy looked around at the walls and Louise saw them thinking, ‘This isn't so bad.' She watched them poke around, though they did not pay the cave the same close attention as they would have moving into a strange house where every new thing comes in for investigation. They hadn't yet reached the point of thinking about the cave as a place to live. For now, it was just a bivvy to crawl inside until the storm blew over and Tom Williams was able to come to some arrangement whereby they were saved a premature trip to the cemetery.

They left the cave to look north. Beyond the rocks was a long finger of white sand. Higher up the beach lay thickets of driftwood.

‘There's your firewood,' Louise said. Henry stared up the beach. He didn't looked so pleased. She watched him turn and gaze back at the cave mouth. His face grew vague, then calculating:

‘Louise, do you think if my father was to…' She shook her head. Whatever Henry had intended to say he ended himself. ‘No, I suppose not,' he said.

An hour later she was pedalling home in the dark, listening out for the soft-breathing cows.

8

Several days passed before the policeman paid her a visit. She couldn't take her eyes off his acne-scarred face. In his youth the policeman's face had been famously covered in boils.

‘Seems we lost two boys, Louise.' He gave the thinnest of smiles as he juggled his notebook and tried to look past her into the hallway.

‘That's what I hear, Ryan,' she said.

‘There was a thought that you might be of help to our inquiry.'

‘Inquire away,' she said. She stepped aside to let him in. He poked his head up the stairwell. His foot was on the first stair when his head gave an unnatural jerk.

‘What's that?' he asked.

‘A piano.'

‘Who?' he meant.

‘Mr Schmidt. The piano tuner.'

‘Schmidt…' he repeated after her, experimenting with the sound, the unusual shift it caused in his mouth. He wanted to see for himself.

The lid on the piano was lifted and the piano tuner was sprawled over the piano strings.The backs of his elbows stuck up in the air. Once a year the tuner came and stayed several days and attended to all the pianos up and down the coast. The new man Schmidt was so fully absorbed he didn't notice them standing there. The policeman coughed for his attention and even then the piano tuner was slow to respond. His attention was elsewhere and Louise could see him thinking, whatever the diversion was it could wait a moment. He plucked at the C chord.

The policeman waited; he switched his weight. Finally Schmidt raised his head and Ryan nodded. That was all. He had just wanted to look. He turned to Louise. He said, ‘I'll take a peek upstairs if you don't mind.'

She gestured to the stairs.

‘After you, Ryan.'

‘It's my job,' he said.

Ryan went ahead. She followed close behind. She let him discover on his own which doors led where. There was one awkward moment when he pocketed his notebook and gave a quick look of apology before kneeling to look under the beds.

‘You won't find anything there, Ryan,' she said.

‘You think this is a joke, Louise. It isn't.'

He looked in the closets, parting racks of coats and dresses. His hand rested on a cotton dress.

‘Not really you,' she said.

‘There you go again,' he said.

As he came down the stairs, once more the piano tuner's stabbing notes diverted him.

He stopped to ask her, ‘How do you spell Schmidt?'

She told him, and he bowed his large head, his lips curling and uncurling as he printed the name. ‘Thought so,' he said.

After he left she hurried to the front window where she pulled the curtain back. She saw him out in the street. He was gazing back at the house. He didn't see her though. He bent his head to scribble in his notebook.

Louise wondered what he had seen. She tried to assess the piano tuner through local eyes. She thought his smart clothes set him apart. The cut of his suit. It wasn't the sort of thing you saw much of on the coast. Was he a bit too handsome? Perhaps. Confident? Yes. Look how his face held beneath its surface a glimmer of a smile. The presence of the policeman had amused him. Some might find that patronising. Especially someone who had once found it painful to look in a mirror. She let the curtain go.

She waited a short while, then went into the other room to ask the piano tuner what he fancied for dinner. He looked surprised, happily surprised to have been asked. He glanced over at the clock and it occurred to her that it was a bit early in the day to ask such a question.

‘You decide, Louise. I'm sure whatever it is it will be excellent.'

English, she decided then. He's definitely English.

Near the butcher's she became preoccupied by the word ‘excellent'. It wasn't a word you heard often. She'd gone and encouraged his anticipation too, now that she thought about it. Never a good thing. A man like the piano tuner, in a suit like his, would have his standards. She pushed through the fly screen and pointed to a fleshy red steak. She paid more for it than she'd ever paid for Schmidt's predecessor, Angus Wright. Angus Wright used to accept her offer of lamb's fry with a boyish glee. ‘Yes, please, Louise.'

Expensive steak warrants new potatoes. She bought a bag and walked home with an empty purse, sick at heart for thinking how poor Billy Pohl and Henry Graham were making do with apples, baby carrots and whatever else they could drag from the sea.

As she turned in the gate she heard the piano. It was her piano, but the music was different from anything she had ever heard. Angus Wright would signal a job well done by rattling off ‘Greensleeves'.

Inside the house she put down the groceries and went and stood in the doorway of the front room. The piano tuner looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her. He played on, his shoulders tilting forward as he pressed down on the piano keys. She stayed in the doorway, listening. It was a slow melody. She couldn't place it at all.

Once Schmidt laid his head on his shoulder and tried to coax her over. She thought, oh no. She couldn't. No. No. She tossed her head back and shook it. She laughed. No. Absolutely not. Then the piano stopped.