In Her Mothers' Shoes (7 page)

Except her mother had said she wasn’t allowed to keep it.

Why couldn’t she decide for herself what she was going to do? No matter which way she turned, the decisions would be made by her mother, her father, Peter. She felt like a stick floating in the tide, pushed around without any say where she went. Her life was no longer her own.

Most of all, she wanted to be with Peter. But what if he didn’t want to be with her?

There was a timid knock on her door.

‘Lizzie.’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘Lizzie, can we play mothers and fathers now?’

Chapter 3.

Christchurch, October 1950

The night she caught the overnight ferry to Lyttelton, Lizzie’s mother took her out to a big hotel near the steamer wharf and treated her to a slap-up meal. They were early and had the dining room to themselves.

‘Anything you want, Lizzie,’ she said when the waiter brought the menu. ‘I’m paying. I won’t tell your father how much we spent.’

That afternoon, her father had left the house just after lunch with the excuse of an appointment at his club. Lizzie knew he’d made it up – he never went to his club on a Saturday. It had fallen to her mother to supervise the packing and transport to Customhouse Quay.

Packing had been stressful, her mother wanting her to take warm, practical clothes and sensible shoes; Lizzie arguing for the skirts and dresses she liked best. The arguments, however, hid the real friction: the reason she was going. Lizzie suspected her mother might have been close to tears; she’d never seen her like that before, which had made her feel even worse.

‘I’m sorry Daddy’s not here with us,’ she continued. ‘He wanted to come, but he was just too upset. He’d have ruined the dinner for you, he said.’

Lizzie felt wretched – her father was so ashamed of her, he hadn’t been able to face this final meal together.

‘I know. I’m sorry too.’ She studied her place setting, the gleaming silver, the cut crystal, the starched white table cloth. It was something special to be taken out to dinner, but the occasion had lost its shine. At first she’d been relieved her father wasn’t able to come – he would have made it too formal, fussing over which knife and fork went with what, asking the waiter endless questions. But now she was missing him. Knowing it was her fault only made the sight of the empty place setting worse. The waiter had whisked it away quickly enough, but the white space where it had been mocked her.

When they’d ordered and the menus had been removed, her mother said suddenly, ‘I hope you’re going to be all right down in Christchurch. If there’s anything I can . . .’

‘I’ll be fine, Mummy, don’t worry.’

‘But I do worry about you. If I’d met that heartless man who did this to you, I’d have given him a piece of my mind.’

‘I know. You said.’

‘You know your father and I would have done the right thing by you, don’t you? We’d have put on a good wedding for you if you’d wanted.’

‘I know.’

‘But you said you didn’t want that. And I think you made the right decision to go to Christchurch instead.’ She fiddled with her fork as the waiter returned with a glass of sherry. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled briefly up at the waiter and as soon as the man disappeared, continued, ‘When all this is over, you’ll see, it’s for the best. You can come back home and get a job. Or you can go to secretarial school like your father said. You can take your pick, a good education like yours.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s all come as a bit of a blow you know, Lizzie . . .’ She looked across at Lizzie, waiting for some acknowledgement.

She gave her mother a rueful smile. ‘Yes.’

Her father had been furious after Mummy had told him. But she’d expected that. She knew she deserved it. He’d stormed out of the dining room, slamming the door, and driven back to his club, where he’d stayed until well after midnight – she knew because she’d been unable to go to sleep. She heard him come in and waited for his footfall on the stairs but it had never happened. He must have stayed in the kitchen or living room until after she’d fallen asleep.

It was her mother who’d borne most of the brunt of his anger. And like all his other outbursts, it had been followed by a long period of silence, when he’d refused to speak to his daughter for close to a fortnight.

‘Your meal, Madam. Miss.’ The waiter delivered their plates.

Lizzie had chosen the chicken. It came in a thick creamy sauce, with perfectly roasted potatoes and a pile of green peas and carrots, followed by ice cream and chocolate sauce.

It was the peas and carrots she recognised as she leant over the toilet in the bowels of the overnight ferry while the floor heaved up and down underneath her. She’d no idea she’d eaten so many pieces of carrot. She particularly wished she hadn’t eaten so much ice cream. She could taste the chocolate sauce as it came up again. It was a foul night at sea, with not much sleep, and she didn’t felt at all comforted when the purser told her it was a comparatively calm crossing.

As the ferry edged slowly towards the dock, she looked at the surrounding hills crowding down on the tiny port and felt a surge of sadness – she didn’t want to be here. She wished she was back home, at school with her friends. She wished her mother was with her to guide her down that awful gang plank she had slipped on when boarding, and to make sure she found her allotted seat on the boat train. She even wished for a moment that her father was there.

Bells rang somewhere, the signal, they’d been told, to head for the big doors that opened to the gangway. She pushed the heavy iron deck-door open, hurried down to her double cabin and picked up her suitcase, which she’d crammed with as much of her past life as she could squeeze into it – all she would have for the next five months until the baby was born. There were so many things she’d had to leave behind, so many things that could have brought her comfort while parted from her family. She’d managed to find room for some of her paints and brushes, her pens and pencils, and her art book – and worn old Mr Ted. But by the time her mother had folded and refolded her clothes and underwear and made sure there were enough warm things – ‘Christchurch is supposed to be very cold, Lizzie, you need to be prepared’ – there wasn’t room for anything else, not more than one of her favourite books nor even her thick winter dressing gown; she’d had to make do with the thin summery one. At the last minute, she’d grabbed a photograph of her family and forced the case closed again, and this morning she’d had even more difficulty repacking her nightdress. Her mother seemed to have a knack with suitcases, with anything that required organisation. Lizzie knew only too well she was hopeless at that.

The other overnight occupant of the cabin, a kindly woman much older than her mother, had already taken her bag and disappeared. Lizzie blushed, recalling the brief conversation they’d had as they’d readied for bed the night before. Lizzie had just returned from the lavatories, where she’d been ill and was still feeling fragile.

‘You’re all on your own, dear? I hope you’ll be all right?’ the lady had said after introducing herself as Mrs Parsons.

‘I’ve never travelled by sea before,’ Lizzie had said. ‘I’m sure I’ll come right.’

‘Never been on the ferry before? Goodness, and all alone too. I hope you have someone to meet you at Lyttelton. Do you have relatives in Christchurch?’

Lizzie swallowed. She didn’t want to lie to this nice lady but she couldn’t see any other way out of it.

‘Yes I’m going to visit my aunt. She’s meeting me at the station.’

‘Oh, that’s good then.’ Mrs Parsons fussed around with her spongebag, washing her face in the tiny basin and slathering a lot of white cream on her face.

Lizzie waited on her bed, wishing she could tell her the truth and go home with Mrs Parsons – she seemed homely, somehow, as motherly as her own mother would be if she were here. She bit her lip, pushing thoughts of her mother to the recesses of her mind. The intermittent sleep, interrupted by the thud of the engines and the shuddering of the ship, had heightened her yearning for some comfort.

She lugged her heavy case along the corridor and up several flights of stairs towards the exit. There was such a crowd she had to wait on the stairs then, when the doors were opened, she surged forward with all the other passengers, off the boat, onto the wharf and along to the boat train, which was whistling and spurting out a huge plume of steam.

The carriages were so full, she couldn’t find her allotted seat and had to stand all the way through the tunnel and into Christchurch, holding onto the overhead strap and balancing her case between her legs, terrified someone might make off with it and its contents, representing her entire existence for the next few months.

As the train steamed into the station, she craned her neck to see past all the heads in the way. She was to be met by a deputy matron of the home where she was to stay and had been told to look out for a tall woman in a tan coloured coat and hat. She was nowhere to be seen.

Alighting from the train at last, after waiting for all the families and other passengers in her carriage to go first, she found herself right in front of a tall, camel-coated woman.

‘There you are Elizabeth, and about time too. I was beginning to think you’d missed the train.’ The woman held out her hand. ‘Miss Mayhew,’ she said. ‘I take it you
are
Elizabeth Hamilton?’

‘Yes, Ma’am. Er, Miss Mayhew.’ She shook Miss Mayhew’s brown glove.

‘Well, come along then. Bring your case. It’s big enough. It must be heavy.’

‘It is.’ But Lizzie had no regrets – there wasn’t a single thing she would have left behind. If she could, she would have brought a second bag, but her mother had been firm on taking just the one. She hefted the big case along the platform, hurrying to keep up with Miss Mayhew’s bobbing brown hat disappearing towards the parked cars behind the station building.

She climbed into a large black car and Miss Mayhew drove out of the station and onto a big, wide bustling street. Towards the east, the sun was beginning to push through the low cloud but meanwhile the grey film gave the city an air of exotic mystery. She’d never been south before, never crossed Cook Strait even and a brief moment of exhilaration coursed through her as she realised neither of her siblings, nor her mother or father, had been this far south either. She was the first!

Avenues lined with towering trees, a winding river surrounded with drooping bright green weeping willows, a tall stone cathedral spire appearing from time to time between the city buildings, and so many buildings. They were different from the ones in Wellington, less formidable, not so big, not like all the government buildings around Parliament. And everywhere it was flat, unbelievably flat; she’d never seen anything like it. The massive hills between the port and the town had receded into the distance and now there wasn’t a hill in sight, not at all like Wellington.

Miss Mayhew was clearly not a conversationalist, remaining silent for most of the journey except to exclaim occasionally at the state of the traffic or behaviour of other drivers and cyclists. Lizzie had never seen so many bicycles.

‘Well, here we are then,’ Miss Mayhew said at last. ‘Fitzgibbon House.’

The car slowed and drew up at a semi-circle of gravel in front of a large, ugly, dirty-white weatherboard building. From the main door - a huge gaping hole like the mouths one of those fairground clowns - the building stretched the width of the section, its expanse interrupted at regular intervals by numerous, multi-paned windows. Its appearance reminded her, unhappily, of the Karori Pavilion.