Union Belle (17 page)

She stared down at his hands, at the long fingers and the blunt fingernails, clean now from being off work, thinking how many times she’d imagined how they might feel on her bare skin.

‘Ellen, are you happy about this?’ he asked.

She felt herself trembling, and hoped he couldn’t feel it. ‘I’m not sure if happy’s the right word.’

Jack lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. ‘Do you want to do this? Because I don’t want us to do anything you might regret.’

‘I do want to.’ The inside of his thighs felt warm and hard against her legs, and she leaned into him a little more. ‘But I love Tom, I really do.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s just that…’

He reached up and touched his fingers to her lips. ‘Not now, we won’t talk about that now.’

He slid his hands around her waist and drew her even closer. She could smell him now, clean and masculine.

‘Lie down with me, Ellen.’

He took her hand and she climbed onto the bed beside him, awkward and shivering with anticipation. She kicked her shoes off in case they were dirty, wincing as they clattered loudly onto the wooden floor. Her heart was thumping so violently she was sure he’d hear that, too. She was stunned by what was happening to her, by her expectation and her desire; she hadn’t felt like this in years.

No, she’d never felt like this.

He rolled over onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

‘You’re so lovely,’ he said.

So are you, she thought.

He kissed her again, with more urgency this time. Her hand came up and she ran her fingers through his hair. It was thick and sleek and still far too long.

His lips were soft but insistent, and she felt herself responding with equal urgency, turning to meet him and pressing herself against him. He groaned, his hardness prodding her thigh.

She felt him smiling, and pulled back.

‘What?’ she whispered. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing’s funny,’ he whispered back.

‘You’re smiling.’

‘I know,’ he said, and kissed her again.

Then his mouth moved off hers and trailed over her chin and down her throat, where he licked the delicate skin beneath her jaw, then bit. The sensation was electric, and
her body jerked involuntarily.

She moaned then, too, unable to stop herself.

He rolled half on top of her, his leg settled between hers, and rested his weight on his elbows.

‘Am I squashing you?’

She shook her head, then grunted softly as he shifted his leg so it pressed more firmly against her. The heaviness of him was erotic beyond belief, and her hips began to move in a gentle rhythm with his. Kissing her again, he slid one hand down and cupped her breast, and her back arched to meet his touch.

She was breathing harder now, and so was he; together, in the bare little room, they were beginning to sound like a pair of panting dogs, and she nearly giggled.

He groped behind her back and felt for her bra fastening.

‘Can I?’

She nodded and lifted herself to give him access. But the hooks wouldn’t open, and when he swore she rolled onto her side so he could see what he was doing. She pulled her jumper up and wriggled out of it, then undid the buttons on her blouse and slipped it off.

On her back again, she looked down at her breasts then quickly up at him. She felt herself blushing and turned her face away, unable to meet his eyes.

He gazed down at her. ‘God, you’re lovely,’ he murmured.

He reached out and began to trace delicate patterns over and around her breasts, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples until they became so erect they ached. She shuddered again and a rash of goose bumps marched across her bare skin.

Jack sat up and pulled his shirt off over his head without even bothering to unbutton it. His arms and chest were
muscled and the dark hair on his chest started at his throat but thinned below his nipples, converging in a line that ran down his hard, flat stomach and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers. Then he turned and settled himself gently on top of her, and the feel of his skin against hers came close to snatching Ellen’s breath away.

Her knees came up around him and he began to move with a slow but powerful rhythm, the hardness of his erection almost hurting her. Turning her head to inhale the fresh sweat in his armpit, she savoured the sharpness and the tang of his maleness. She stuck out her tongue and tasted it.

He groaned and buried his face in her hair, his hips thrusting more urgently now.

Then, abruptly, he stopped and moved off her. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said, grimacing. ‘I’m getting carried away.’

Ellen reached for the buttons on her slacks and undid them, then slid them and her pants down to her knees, at which point Jack took over and pulled them the rest of the way off and tossed them onto the floor Then Ellen waited with her thighs modestly together while Jack extricated himself from his own trousers.

‘You’ll have to forgive my lack of manners, it’s been a while. It could be a bit quick, too, sorry,’ he said as he rolled back towards her. ‘My God, you’ve got a beautiful body.’

She laughed. ‘So have you.’

He parted her knees and lowered himself, and she let out a small cry of pleasure and need as he slid into her. He found his rhythm immediately and she raised her legs and wrapped her arms tightly around his back, drawing him as close to her as she could. The strength of his thrusting increased, his hips driving her into the mattress and the muscles in his arms and back tensing.

She hung on, feeling her own, rather unexpected, climax begin to radiate out from the base of her belly, the delicious
spasms jerking her limbs and contorting her spine.

Jack threw his head back and gasped, ‘Oh God, oh shit,’ and with an almighty groan, emptied himself into her.

Ellen cupped her hands around the back of his head as he shuddered once, then again, then collapsed on top of her, drained and sweaty, his heartbeat racing almost in time with hers.

‘Oh Ellen,’ he said, his face pressed into her neck. ‘Oh Ellen, my lovely girl.’

And she knew, then, that this was it, this was what had been missing.

The day before Ellen and Jack went to bed together, Jock Barnes had given Walter Nash a letter stating that the WWU was now prepared to accept Holland’s plan, without any major qualifications. But only on the condition that the WWU was reregistered.

Nash passed the letter on to Holland, who went on the radio the same night declaring that he did not consider the watersiders’ condition of reregistration to be a bar to ‘an honourable settlement of the trouble’. All over the country, thousands of trade unionists began to believe that they might soon be heading back to work. Barnes had finally compromised, and all the government had to do was reregister the national watersiders’ union.

But twenty-four hours later, Holland did a complete about-face and announced that he was adding an extra ‘irrevocable condition’ to his seven-point plan: new, separate port unions would have to be established and the national union broken up. Barnes withdrew his olive branch, and what had looked like a probable end to the strike skittered out of reach once again.

It was disappointing, but the unions still out remained
stoic, not happy but willing to tighten their belts further if it meant victory in the end. Even Tom was disappointed, telling Ellen he saw little sense in the miners staying out any longer than they needed to. But he was angry at Holland more than anything else.

When Pat came around on the Saturday for a yarn, Tom was still going on about how Holland didn’t know his arse from his elbow and shouldn’t be in charge of running a bath, never mind a country. But Ellen suspected that rather than being dismayed by the prospect of the strike dragging on, Pat was almost pleased by Holland’s turnaround.

‘It wasn’t right, Tom,’ he said, sitting at the table with his hat balanced on his knee, ‘and Barnes knew it. He’s never been one for compromise.’

‘I know it wasn’t bloody well right,’ Tom said, ‘he’s always been against conciliation and arbitration. So have we, otherwise we might as well have listened to Prendiville and Crook.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Pat said, ‘Tony Prendiville’s cashed in his chips, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘It could have worked, though, if the watersiders had been allowed to reregister.’

‘No, it couldn’t,’ Pat said.

‘Then why did Holland near as buggery say they could, on the radio the other night?’

Pat shrugged. ‘I’m buggered if I know. But it’s better this way, we all still know where we stand. We’re not going back until the watersiders do, and they’re not going back until Holland agrees to a fair and reasonable settlement, end of story.’

But Ellen wasn’t really listening now. She was thinking back to yesterday, to lying with Jack, sweaty and with her hair all over the place, wishing she didn’t have to get up and go home.

But she had, and in plenty of time before the boys arrived back from school. She’d had a thorough wash to remove every trace of Jack from her body, but hadn’t been able to get even the tiniest little bit of him out of her mind. She’d also checked the mirror to see if she looked any different, because surely she must have changed somehow? She felt horribly guilty, and was sure that what she’d done must be written all over her face. She had just shattered her marriage vows, betrayed her husband and children and made love to a man she couldn’t wait to see again.

Then she’d made tea in time for when Tom got home from Auckland, and he’d been so shitty about Holland’s latest stunt that he hadn’t even noticed he didn’t have the same wife any more.

May 1951

E
llen, have you heard?’

‘Heard what?’ She took a jar of Marmite off the shelf and checked the price. No, she didn’t have enough money for that.

Avis Hale moved closer. ‘The railway bridge at Mahuta, somebody blew it up last night!’

Ellen gave her a look.

‘The bridge? There isn’t a bridge at Mahuta.’

‘Well, the tracks over the culvert then. But somebody had a go at it last night with gelignite, and this morning the train nearly went straight over it. They could have been killed, the lot of them!’

Ellen assumed Avis meant the passengers, who at that hour would have been the opencast men travelling from Huntly out to work. But Avis was prone to exaggeration, and tended to enjoy a good story, so she wasn’t unduly perturbed by the news. Something must have happened, though. She finished her shopping, asked Fred to please put it on credit and went home.

Tom was at the table, reading the newspaper and shaking his head.

‘Avis Hale said someone had a go at the culvert at Mahuta,’ Ellen said, setting her parcels down on the bench.

‘I know,’ Tom said, ‘I’m reading about it.’ He tapped the copy of the
Herald
open in front of him and quoted, ‘“It is only by the grace of Providence that families in the Waikato
coalfields are not mourning the loss of forty or more lives by violence.”’ He shook the paper, folded it neatly and put it aside. ‘What a lot of bullshit.’

Ellen sat down. ‘But what happened?’

‘Apparently—and this is only what Bert got off Vic this morning, who heard it off someone else—someone stuck six sticks of gelignite into the sleepers over the culvert and blew them.’

‘Just before the train was due to go over?’ Ellen was moderately shocked.

‘No, during the night. But the charges were badly set, against the grain, and the sleepers only splintered. Sounds like someone who knows about dynamite.’ Tom smirked. ‘Sounds like an underground miner to me.’

‘It’s not funny, Tom, someone really could have been hurt.’

‘I doubt it, because whoever did it also laid sleepers across the track and put up white flags on both sides of the culvert to warn the engine driver. Who hopped out, had a look, took the train over and hauled three hundred and fifty tons of coal across it on the way back in. So it can’t have been that bad. But he already knew about the culvert before he got to it because he’d heard the blokes on the train talking about it.’

‘How did they know?’

‘I don’t know, that’s just what Bert told me. Is there any tea?’

‘Yes, it’s in the caddy, but I’ve got my women’s auxiliary meeting and then I’m handing out food parcels so you’ll have to make it yourself. Did the police have a look?’

‘They were all over the place, apparently.’

Ellen eyed him as he opened the paper again and turned to the sports pages. He hadn’t gone out at all last night, so she knew it couldn’t have been him.

‘Who did it, do you know?’ she asked.

He looked up. ‘No, I don’t, but when I find out I’ll be buying him a pint.’

Ellen frowned. ‘Holland will go to town with it, you know. We’ll end up looking like a pack of complete anarchists.’

‘Who will?’

‘We will, the Waikato miners.’

‘It was just a warning to the opencasters, that’s all. Don’t worry about it, love, it’ll be a seven-day wonder then everyone will forget about it.’

There were no scones with cream and jam at Rhea’s this time, and hadn’t been for some weeks now. Ellen suspected that she and Pat were feeling the pinch as much as everyone else, even though they didn’t have children still at home to feed. In fact, they were probably passing on any spare money to their sons, who were both miners themselves, and to their daughter who was married to one.

Rhea, as always, was smartly dressed and wearing her matching earrings and brooch: standards mustn’t be allowed to slip just because there was a strike on. Ellen had always thought Rhea and Gloria should have been good friends, but for some reason they weren’t.

Rhea didn’t want to discuss the Mahuta explosion, except to comment that the government had probably done it themselves to make the miners look bad. Instead, she wanted to talk about the petition that the Huntly Women’s Auxiliary had collectively written and sent to Holland two weeks ago. There had been a fair bit of debate about what it should say, but agreement had eventually been reached.

We Women of the Huntly district, wives of the miners who are on strike against the Emergency
Regulations, wish to associate ourselves whole-heartedly with our men in the struggle against these Regulations.

We demand the immediate repeal of the Regulations. We demand that freedom of speech be restored, and that our own men in the Miners’ Union be given the right, along with the Watersiders and others to state their case freely over the publicly owned radio and in the press. We consider it a gross tyranny that your side of the case should be presented while the other side is suppressed.

We demand that trade union rights be restored immediately, and that police protection of the strike breakers cease.

We demand that Parliament be called together. We consider that your Government should use the secret ballot you so ardently advocate for trade unionists and submit yourselves to a General Election.

No reply, official or unofficial, had been received yet, and Ellen wasn’t the only woman on the auxiliary to think that there would not be one either, but Rhea wanted to tell them about the support for the petition they’d had from other women’s auxiliaries around the country.

She held up a handwritten letter and beamed. ‘This one is from Freda Barnes herself, saying she is very proud of us and hopes we can keep up the good work.’

Freda Barnes, Jock’s wife, was co-ordinating the efforts of the watersiders’ wives at ports around New Zealand, and Ellen suspected that Rhea saw herself as sort of a Waikato version of Freda. And why not? While Freda Barnes was working her fingers to the bone in Auckland and elsewhere, there was no denying that Rhea was doing the same thing
here. But they’d all been working hard to assemble and distribute the food packages on Tuesdays, to take the time to chat to the local women about how they were getting on, and make sure that no one was about to crumble under the strain. Except for Dot, of course, who had been moved from Waikato Hospital to Tokanui three weeks ago.

But Dot aside, most of the women seemed to be bearing up reasonably well. It was very difficult, though, because unlike the bigger towns and cities, the Waikato could offer the strikers few work opportunities. The central council had decided a while ago that if any of the men wanted to go off and earn a few shillings on the quiet mending fences and digging the odd drain for farmers, then good on them, as long as they weren’t back on the coal. And a few had done that, but there just wasn’t enough casual work to go around.

Some of the men had taken to spending more and more time in the pub, which was causing problems in itself. God only knew where they found the money to do it, but they did, and there had been more than one loud, public scene as a result. Ellen could only imagine what happened behind closed doors.

There was trouble in the district with stealing, too. Several cockies had complained about missing sheep and pigs, and though the police—Sergeant Ballantyne himself, fortunately—had investigated, not much had been done about the charges because everyone knew that the meat from the pilfered stock was ending up in the weekly relief packages. It wasn’t so much that the animals had gone, one cockie told the sergeant, it was more that no one had asked permission to take them. It was a matter of courtesy, more than anything else.

The bad feeling between people who held different views on the strike was also getting worse. And there were, in
fact, increasing grumbles from the women about the lack of money coming in, because they were the ones who had to make ends meet, and tell their children there would be no treats, or new winter shoes, or special outings. But so far there had been no overt signs of wavering from the underground miners, and the women on the auxiliary took this to be a sign that the local wives were still prepared to stand behind their men.

But in spite of all this, the community was probably functioning together better than it ever had and there were plenty of examples of compassion and generosity. The local shopkeepers were extending as much credit as they could, and so were the businesses in town. Last week, one of the mine managers had turned up on Rhea’s doorstep one night with several boxes of clothes and bits and pieces, all perfectly serviceable if not brand new, with strict instructions that they be passed on to a certain family known to be in dire straits. But the donation had to be made anonymously, or it wasn’t going to be made at all, and Rhea had told only the women on the Pukemiro auxiliary.

It was this sort of thing that was keeping the community together, but only just, and they all knew it. Ellen wasn’t the only one beginning to think that of all the unionists on strike throughout the country, the miners might be the worst off: coalmines were very rarely located close to big towns and cities.

And as the days passed, news of the strike’s progress just hadn’t got any better. Last week the FOL had announced that it had formally resolved to take no action against the emergency regulations. That had been a very bitter blow. Then the news had come that a scab union of almost 200 men was being organised to start work on the Auckland waterfront, right at the very heart of the strike. The following day the number had risen to 500, but everyone had had
a good laugh when the Labour Department was forced to admit that at least half of the names put forward were fictitious. But now the newspapers were reporting that the number was rising again, and that the applicants were genuine this time. On Saturday, the day of the explosion at Mahuta, the government had gone through the public charade at the Auckland town hall of officially forming the new union, and thousands of the original watersiders had gathered outside to noisily register their protest.

And now Rhea was saying that overnight Holland had widened the scope of the emergency regulations. He’d also authorised the immediate formation of a voluntary emergency organisation to ‘assist in the preservation of law and order’, and was calling for every able-bodied man who might like to join in and ‘serve his country in the present crisis’.

The women were stunned.

‘Where did you hear that?’ Milly asked.

‘It was in the
Auckland Star
,’ Rhea said, looking as dismayed as the others felt. ‘The editorial says that the government should ban anyone from the WWU from going near the wharves, and that if they do show their faces they should be shot.’

‘Shot!’ Ellen was astounded.

‘Yes, shot.’

‘But that’s absurd, this is New Zealand! Surely they can’t print things like that in a public newspaper?’

‘Well, they have.’

Ellen swallowed. Had Tom heard about this yet? If not, she would have to tell him: they didn’t take the
Auckland Star.

Then, to her consternation, she realised that the person she really wanted to talk to about it was not Tom, but Jack. At the mere thought of him her stomach fluttered with excitement. But she made an enormous effort to put
him out of her mind; she couldn’t even think about him around anyone else, she was so afraid that her feelings would show.

Rhea went over what would be required of them during the coming week, plus confirmation of the details of a strike dance they were planning soon, then closed the meeting with the assurance that the moment she heard anything about a response to their petition, she would be sure to let them know.

Outside it was starting to rain, and Ellen turned up the collar of her coat.

‘Bloody hell,’ Milly said. ‘My washing’s still out.’

‘I did all mine on Sunday,’ Lorna said. ‘I haven’t had to do half as much since Vic’s been off work.’

Milly snorted. ‘You’re lucky, Billy and Evan are even filthier than ever.’ Then she said, ‘Billy reckons he saw you the other day, Ellen, last Friday morning.’

Ellen forced herself to keep walking. ‘Did he? Whereabouts?’

‘That’s the funny bit. He said you were walking along the gully at the bottom of the hill behind your house. So I said, “Don’t be a drongo Billy, what would Ellen be doing mucking about in the gully?” And when I asked him what he was doing in the gully during school hours, the little bugger went bright red and it turns out he was down there having a quick smoke. Ten years old and he’s smoking! That’s Frank’s fault, you know.’ She paused. ‘Still, if that’s the only habit he gets off his father I suppose I should count my blessings. So, was it you?’

‘Yes, it was, actually,’ Ellen said, praying that her voice sounded normal.

‘Oh. What were you doing?’

‘Looking for Fintan.’

Milly frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Fintan, Davey’s parrot. He got out.’

‘Oh, yes, the parrot! Evan’s being going on and on about it, he wants one too, now. He’s not bloody getting one, though. Did you find it?’

Ellen nodded, feeling sick.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. It had been four days now since she had seen him, and it would be another agonising forty-eight hours before she might see him again.

There had been no dances on anywhere last Saturday night, so she and Tom had taken the boys to the pictures at the hall, but there’d been no sign of Jack. She told herself he was probably out drinking somewhere—Tom certainly had been, all afternoon at the pub, and fell asleep as soon as the film started. It was
A Streetcar Named Desire
, with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando, which Ellen had been wanting to see for weeks. Neil and Davey couldn’t have cared less, much preferring cowboy or war films, but they’d insisted on coming anyway because it was better than sitting at home with Grandma Gloria, who always made them clean their teeth and get into their pyjamas at seven o’clock. But they’d amused themselves by yelling out ‘Steeellaaaa!’ at the tops of their voices all the way home after the picture finished, so she supposed they hadn’t been too bored.