The Love Apple (15 page)

The child, face clenched in terror, made no move. He just pressed his face against the glass, beating at the pane with tiny hands.

‘Get back! Get back!’

It was no good. Oliver stayed where he was.

PJ ran to the spare-room window. With all his strength he swung the stirrups. The window broke and smoke poured towards him. PJ hit the glass again to widen the hole, and forced himself over the sill. The room was dim with smoke, thick and choking, the fresh air at PJ’s back cool and marvellous. PJ was not sure he could go on, not sure at all. Oliver in the next-door room was screaming louder than ever.

PJ had never been in these upstairs rooms before and the furniture reared up malevolently at odd angles. He couldn’t breathe. There was a terrifying crackling from the stairs and a bright gold light as the fire swept upwards. PJ’s eyes ached, his throat felt scalded, the rest of his body seemed very far away.

‘For Christ’s sake, PJ, if there’s fire, keep down,’ dead Mick Sullivan’s voice suddenly said. PJ remembered him saying that and dropped onto the floor. It was better down there. More air. He wriggled his way to the door and opened it. Crawling into the
heat on the landing was like entering an oven. On the floor among the furniture PJ was uncertain which way to go, but if he didn’t hurry he and Oliver were both done for. He made it across the landing with its searing heat and into the main bedroom. Oliver’s screaming had ominously stopped. The smoke was so thick now PJ could make out nothing. He headed for the murky patch of light that he imagined was the window.

‘Oliver! Oliver!’ he shouted. ‘Where are yiz?’ There was no answer.

Behind PJ the landing was now on fire. The bright crackling was at the bedroom door. The room seemed suddenly alive with gold lace — the hangings over the bed were alight. PJ pawed about the floor trying to find the child. There was an excruciating pain against his leg as a burning drapery fluttered down and set his trouser leg alight. His ankle felt as if it were in the grip of tigers. PJ rolled over to put out the flame and as he did so he touched Oliver on the floor. He caught the boy by his collar and stumbled to the window.

Firemen were running down the verandah. Firemen with hoses. PJ fiddled with the window, which stuck as he tried to push it up. His lungs were bursting, his arms were logs. He heaved harder and the window reluctantly moved upwards. With a huge effort PJ gathered Oliver in his arms and tumbled him out over the sill, then slithered over himself.

T
he burnt building reared up at Geoffrey from across the street. Elements of the house were still intact, appearing like the charred remains of some horrific creature, destruction having been partially controlled by the efforts of the fire brigade. The main bedroom, where Huia slept, had been totally destroyed and the brass bed had crashed through the floor into the studio. The studio, with all Geoffrey’s equipment, plates and photographs, was now a black pit, oozing dark water. Geoffrey’s room on the side was the most sound: the floor hadn’t given way there. The frame of the bed still stood.

It was five o’clock in the morning. Geoffrey couldn’t sleep. His mouth and tongue seemed covered in a pelt of evil-tasting fur and his head thumped. Behind him in the hotel bed, Huia slept. He was grateful for that. Her hysterical crying the night before had added another horror on horror’s head.

The first Geoffrey had known of the fire was Champ barking and a policeman shaking his shoulder.

‘Mr Hastings?’ the constable had said. ‘You’d better come with me, sir.’

Geoffrey had opened his eyes. It was getting dark and he was lying in the cemetery. What had he done? Was he being arrested? He glanced down at his waistcoat and saw the remains
of vomit on it, though he had no recollection of how it got there. Both his brandy flasks were lying beside him, their stoppers off. Good God, he thought: drunk and disorderly in a public place.

‘Glad I’ve found you,’ the policeman went on. ‘Someone told us they saw you headed up this way a few hours back. A bit under the weather, are we, sir?’

‘Am I being arrested?’ said Geoffrey, feeling he’d better know the worst.

‘Not that I know of. Just want to get you down to the station and have a chat about the fire. A bit of a worry, you and your wife and the servants off and the young nipper there alone.’

‘Fire?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Oliver, alone?’

‘Your place,’ said the policeman. ‘A real humdinger but all under control now, though at one stage the brigade thought it would spread all over the town, like in ’69. Thank God they got it in time and everyone out and accounted for. Sounds as if that Irish lad was a bit of the hero. Your boy wouldn’t have made it, if it hadn’t been for him.’

‘PJ?’ said Geoffrey, feeling his knees falter. Angels, broken columns and Celtic crosses whirled in a mad dance and the twilight sky sloped violently to one side.

‘Head between knees,’ said the policeman, his hand pushing down hard on the back of Geoffrey’s neck.

Birtwistle hated women’s fuss. Tears, sobs and carry-on really gave him the hump. It was always the same: you had a good time, a bit of a fling, and at the end there was the devil to pay.

No sooner had he told Huia he’d be off on Monday than she’d started. Wanting to run away with him — as if he could support her — pestering him about whether he loved her, and crying full bore all over his shoulder and the hairs of his chest. When the crying abated she got angry, flouncing about the room in her shift, shouting.

‘Bloody low-down louse,’ she ranted from the end of the bed. ‘No wonder your missus left you for the collar-stud man.’

‘Sewing-machine salesman,’ Birtwistle corrected her.

‘Who cares?’ said Huia.

‘Cut it out, Hu,’ said Birtwistle. ‘I’m off for three months, not three years. A quick skip around the towns and camps of the coast and I’ll be back. We’re not even leaving Westland.’

‘Still,’ said Huia, gathering her hair in her hand and stabbing hairpins in it. ‘You’re going and you don’t care.’

‘Course I care, Hu, there’s just no choice.’

‘I could come with you.’

‘Told you, Hu, I can’t support you.’

‘I could do something in the show.’

‘Christ almighty, what?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Huia. ‘Be one of the stocking ladies in the Greek tableau.’

‘Got two of them already.’

‘Tricks,’ said Huia. ‘I could do tricks on horses.’

‘You’re a loony,’ said Birtwistle, laughing. ‘Come here. Give us a kiss before you have to go.’

Still sulky, Huia came over. Birtwistle leant out of bed and caught her body, his hands under the shift. ‘There’s so little time left, Hu,’ he said, nuzzling her ear. ‘Don’t spoil it fighting. Hop into bed and I’ll get rid of that sourpuss face.’

Huia turned to him. ‘Stan,’ she said, ‘I’ve only got you.’

‘What about that kid of yours?’

‘Oliver?’ said Huia. ‘I’m no good with him. I think I’m a lousy mother or something.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Honest. It’s as if Oliver wasn’t really mine at all.’

‘Stop the breast-beating,’ said Birtwistle, running his finger around her navel.

By the time Huia got home the fire was out.

In the following days Geoffrey thought of himself and his wife as being like figures on a Glockenspiel clock. Shock had sapped emotion: they were a pair of automatons moving stiffly about on parallel paths, performing both solitary and joint tasks. Together Geoffrey and Huia visited and collected Oliver and PJ from the hospital, and agreed not to sack the remorse-filled Ruby in spite of her negligence.

‘Just hopped out for ten minutes, down to my sister’s,’ Ruby told them, gulping tears. ‘Master Oliver was fast asleep so I reckoned it wouldn’t hurt.’

Alone, Geoffrey decided what household articles were worth salvaging, spoke to the police, the fire brigade and the insurance company, and rented a house. Recriminations came later.

‘What I’d like to know, Huia,’ said Geoffrey, ‘is why you had to go out that afternoon, especially after I’d told Ruby she could go to her sister’s?’

‘Wanted to,’ said Huia.

‘Obviously,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And Oliver could have died, while you were off enjoying yourself. I’m not going to ask where, but I suspect with some man.’

Huia drew in her breath. ‘That’s a lie, a dirty lie. You always think bad of me.’

‘I’d like to think otherwise.’

‘And what about you, Mr Bloody High and Mighty? Why was I the one who should have been here? Why weren’t you looking after your darling boy, not up at the cemetery drinking yourself shickered?’

She was right, Geoffrey thought. They were both culpable. Oliver’s rescue from certain death by PJ, and the minimal burns both boys suffered, were undeserved as divine grace.

‘Point taken,’ said Geoffrey, overwhelmed by remorse. ‘When it comes to caring for Oliver, we’re both up to our necks in guilt.’

‘Hope you drown in it,’ said Huia, going out the door and banging it shut.

Bugger him! Huia thought later, sitting at her bedroom mirror, angry and exposed. Geoffrey knew she had been unfaithful. More infuriating, Geoffrey was right, of course. She should have been at home seeing to Oliver, not tumbling about the bed with Birtwistle. No good mother would have done what she did. She thought of the night Florrie had run away, remembering the feeling of terror and the cold wet earth reaching around her. Huia began to cry, tears slipping down her face and into the hairpin tray. Stan Birtwistle was the only person who cared for her or wanted her. Stan, she thought. Stan.

Stan Birtwistle was fixing the tent ropes. ‘Bloody thing,’ he said angrily, tugging on the rope and causing the ladder to sway with his effort. He hated the constant erecting and dismantling of tents and seats, carrying gear, heaving trunks. Birtwistle thought of himself as an artiste and found these other activities demeaning. Bodybuilding was, after all, a more genteel occupation than what the rest of the troupe offered, yet Stan with his superior strength was called on more than the others for these endless bloody tasks. McCaskey was adamant that every member of his company was expected to be a worker as well as a performer. When the vaudeville troupe led by the boy Hale — splendid in scarlet coat, gold leggings and playing a piccolo — arrived in townships and settlements, few would guess that the gorgeously dressed occupants of the decorated wagons would, in less than an hour, be transformed into washerwomen and labourers.

‘Someone to see you, Birtwistle,’ shouted McCaskey, coming into the marquee. McCaskey was an American. He wore a red silk scarf and a satin cummerbund. He styled himself a colonel and claimed to have fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. He bragged how he’d ridden with Buffalo Bill Cody
as a scout and ‘discovered’ him as a stage performer. Little of this was believed. The gossip among the artistes in McCaskey’s Royal Variety Troupe was that the Buffalo Bill story was pure
invention
, and that far from being a colonel, their boss had at best been a very junior army officer, imprisoned and cashiered for his part in the bungled hold-up of an Idaho stagecoach.

‘Hoof it, boy!’ said McCaskey to Birtwistle.

‘I’m busy,’ said Birtwistle.

‘It’s a lady, a real pretty gal.’

Birtwistle came down the ladder. Jumping off the
second-to-last
rung he turned to see Huia in her violet riding habit.

‘I’ve come,’ said Huia, throwing her arms around him.

‘Not here,’ said Birtwistle, conscious of the watching McCaskey. ‘Come on outside.’

‘Don’t be long, Romeo. You’re busy, remember?’ said McCaskey, lighting a cigar.

‘I’m not going back,’ said Huia. ‘I’ve left, left for good.’

‘You can’t stay with me,’ said Birtwistle, glancing about, hoping they weren’t being overheard.

‘Aren’t you pleased? Don’t you love me?’

‘Ah, Hu, that’s not the point. Just get along home and I’ll see you back in Hoki at the end of the month.’

‘You can’t stop me being here,’ said Huia.

‘No, but you can’t live off me, either.’

McCaskey appeared at the opening of the marquee. ‘Are you going to introduce me to the lady, Birtwistle? Or is this powwow private?’

‘Mrs Hastings, Colonel McCaskey.’

McCaskey bowed. ‘Honoured.’

Huia smiled. ‘You’re the boss around here, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘I sure am,’ said McCaskey.

‘You decide who takes part in the shows.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Would you watch me?’ said Huia.

‘For pity’s sake, Hu,’ said Birtwistle.

‘You’re an artiste,’ said McCaskey. ‘So pretty, I could have guessed. And what do you offer for our delectation?’

‘Tricks,’ said Huia, ‘on horses.’

‘A lady equestrian.’

‘I could learn other things, too. Dancing, wire-walking and that, if you wanted.’

McCaskey whistled as Huia rode into the small cleared area that served as a ring. She had removed her veiled hat, her skirt and her horse’s saddle. She rode bareback on Fleur in her tight violet trousers.

‘Quite a looker,’ said McCaskey to Birtwistle, who was sitting beside him on an upturned gin box.

Birtwistle snorted. He was already taxed keeping his relationship with Bubbles, one of the living statuary ladies, secret from Mademoiselle Ida, a high-kicking cancan dancer. He had no wish for the complexities of the situation to be further compounded by Huia. He was furious with her for following him to Charleston. Why couldn’t she stay at home in Hokitika? The idea of Huia fancying herself as a variety artiste added to Birtwistle’s annoyance. Hadn’t he slogged his guts out building himself up as strongman and stunt performer? What the devil did Huia, swanning about Hokitika dressed up to the nines, know about ‘tricks on horses’?

Huia rode around the ring. She paused her horse and sprang onto Fleur’s rump. She faced backwards and flipped head over heels onto the ground. Neatly, she mounted again, standing on the horse’s back; now she trotted Fleur about, balancing on one foot, leg outstretched, arms clasped in an arch over her head. When she passed the seated men she pulled the violets off her bodice, brought the posy to her lips and tossed it to McCaskey.

‘Is that it?’ said McCaskey, standing up as Huia reined Fleur in.

‘Yes,’ said Huia, dismounting. ‘What did you think?’

‘Seen better and I’m not much fussed on animal acts — too much damn trouble,’ said McCaskey.

‘Told you, Hu. Go home,’ said Birtwistle.

‘You don’t want me?’ said Huia to McCaskey.

‘Didn’t say that,’ said McCaskey. ‘We might make something of you. Dancing with the new limelight, trapeze work. Don’t normally hire artistes on spec, but I’m keen on adding a few new acts and you might just be what I’m after. Tell you what, bed and board for three months while you train, and you help Ida with the costumes as well. After that we’ll see.’

McCaskey was a realist. He knew that his shows were honky-tonk and third-rate, and that several of his performers were has-beens. He also knew the fortune he once planned to amass as showman and entrepreneur was slipping further away with every season. Dreams of hitting the big time were replaced by regrets for opportunities lost. Time was against him. The vaudeville that McCaskey had toured in the frontier towns of the United States and on the goldfields of Australia and New Zealand was rapidly being replaced by grander, bigger, more sophisticated imported shows. Tastes were changing: audiences that once had cheered delightedly at performing fleas and laughed uproariously at comedians with blackened faces telling ancient jokes now demanded full-scale Gilbert and Sullivan productions with trainloads of costumes and international leading ladies.

In consequence, McCaskey’s Royal Variety Troupe now stuck to the smaller settlements and mining towns, where expectations were modest. Places where weary men who had spent hours underground chipping at a coalface or up to their thighs in water sluicing recalcitrant gold from rock walls
hungered for a few hours’ distraction. They marvelled at Mr Hercules (Birtwistle) lifting weights with two men attached to either side; they cheered when McCaskey as Maximilian the Wonder Man sawed Beautiful Bubbles in two, they whooped and whistled when Mademoiselle Ida — who was on the wrong side of forty — kicked so high in the Parisienne Quadrille that you could see the very tops of her pink thighs. But you couldn’t go on trotting out the same old stuff forever. McCaskey wanted something popular, something new. He had recently rejected an offer of a pair of boxing kangaroos, and had toyed with the idea of engaging Lola and her trained snakes. But the animals involved in both acts put him off, though he’d heard that snake performers drew good houses.