1

The only reason Arthur Nicholson liked union meetings was that the men knocked off early for them. He swung the last box of coal round on to the rails and pushed it up the incline, trundling it along the unevenly fixed rails while his mate stayed to fix the jig—which controlled the boxes going to and from the coal-face fifteen feet above them at the side of the rails, where a pair of miners had been filling them. Arty pushed the box slowly, waiting for his mate to give an arm to it too. He stopped and looked back, holding the box still with one arm. The two miners caught him up; their eyes and teeth showed white under the lamps on their helmets; their faces and trunks were smeared with sweat and coal dust. They wore black singlets and trousers. They carried leather satchels at their shoulders.

‘Come on there you two, give us a hand!’ Arty said. ‘Sitting up there on your arses all day and me slaving my guts out down here!’

One of them walked on. ‘Ach, you bloody youngsters. You’re all the same—frightened of a bit of sweat.’

‘Why do you think we pay you truckers threepence a box?’ the other asked. But he pitted the heel of his hand against the rim of the box and began to push it up.

‘Let the lazy bugger do his own work,’ the first miner said. But he joined the other in pushing it, while Arty grinned, knuckles on hips, and shouted, ‘Watch out, Charley, it’ll run back on top of you if you don’t push harder! Look oop soonny!’ he called in mimicry of the underviewer who spoke as he had learned in Haltwhistle on the Tyne. ‘Look oop! Oh—oh—don’t overdo it now! Remember your wife and family! They don’t want you to drop before your time!’

One of them stopped. ‘I’ve got a — good mind to let the bugger run back and run off the rails. Just for your bloody cheek!’ They carried on pushing it.

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Arty stood grinning and his mate caught him up. ‘Take your time, don’t you, dig?’ Arty asked. ‘Leaving all the work to me.’

‘You got the miners working for you now, as well?’ his mate said. ‘Some people….’

The two miners fixed the box to the winch-rope and put a nail to the two wires to signal for the winch to start up.

‘That’s the last time I’ll do that for you, Nicholson,’ the miner said. ‘It’s only that you’re your old man’s son that I did it.’

‘Are you scared of him?’ Arty said. ‘I’m not.’

The four of them walked along the tunnel, past the main lay-by where another trucker was sending off the last boxes, and up the slant dip till they came to the place where the trolley could come for them, once the line was clear of boxes. There was soon a crowd of miners, truckers and timber-men. Some of them sat on a platform of coal dust caked with oil at the side, some of them stood; some of them were brooding with that conservation of energy and comment which heavy manual labour makes a habit; the youngsters barracked and outboasted one another loudly. Arty’s father sat quietly near, but Arty didn’t notice him. In the mine father and son were fellow-workers who called each other by their first names, and except in an accident, their relationship only belonged above-ground. These youths enjoyed showing off in front of their fathers and the men of an older generation from whom, as boys, they had hidden their mischief; checking men of all ages, boasting of a sexual callousness more imaginary than real, made them aware of the full taste of independence. The older men were sceptical and tolerant and remembered their own years of youth.

When the trolley came Arty pushed his way on to it. He collided with Joe Taiha, a young Maori chap who hadn’t long been in the pit. ‘Move along, you black bastard!’ Arty said.

Joe grinned and moved. ‘Who are you to talk about black?’ he said. ‘Right now you and me are both the same colour.’

Arty never thought about it till he was out of the bath-house, feeling fresh and clean walking in the mid-afternoon sun to the Miners’ Hall. He was with two of his mates, when his father passed him with Jock McEwan. ‘Here you,’ Ben said. ‘Not so much of this “black bastard” business when you talk to Taiha. Understand?’

‘Oh, Christ!’ Arty said, surprised and annoyed. Ben and Jock walked ahead and Arty spat.

‘Your old man thinks we work in a — Sunday school,’ one of his mates said, but Arty didn’t answer. He didn’t talk all the way to the hall.

As if he’d meant it seriously. It was just a way of talking. He page 29 never spoke to anyone without insulting them one way or another. Surely his father knew him by now. When Arty felt well-disposed towards anyone he insulted them or mocked them. That was all there was to it. Did his old man expect him to start being polite? Say, ‘Excuse me, Mr Taiha—oh, don’t bother, I’ll move along instead’?

His old man was too bloody serious, that was the trouble with him. As if Arty cared two hoots about the colour bar, one way or another. Colour bar, that was something you read about, happening in America and South Africa, not here. And anyway the Maoris were different from the nigs, a bloody sight more intelligent. And they liked you to be rough-mannered with them, they didn’t go for this pansy stuff: ‘So sorry, Mr Taiha, I didn’t notice you meant to sit here.’ Colour bar—more of his old man’s book stuff about class struggle and imperialism and exploitation and warmongers. All words that didn’t mean anything to Arty Nicholson. You went to work and you got paid once a fortnight and then you went and spent it. You only went to work because you had to get some money, and you did as little as you could get away with—your mates always kept you up to it, though; naturally they didn’t want to carry any passengers. But the boys weren’t overworked, there was plenty of work, an eight-hour shift and the promise of a seven-hour one; they had good conditions, and there was a Labour Government in. What did his father worry about? Some people were never satisfied. There were more important things than politics to think about—the Stillwater dance on Saturday, women, a game of billiards, a few drinks with the boys. That was life—not worrying about work all the time. You only enjoyed yourself after work.

Colour bar—God, Flora had some Maori in her. That made him grin. His old man might have some little black bastards as grandchildren. How would he like that, eh? Then he mightn’t be so keen to lecture him about colour bar. That is, if…. If…. He was jumping a few fences all right. He didn’t even know if Flora would have him. He hadn’t even asked her to go out with him regular. But that was his intention and tonight he’d ask her. He was tired of not knowing, tired of only thinking of her when he was in bed. If Arty wanted something, he wanted it soon or not at all.

The union meeting bored him. His father in the chair, Jock McEwan talking and getting worked up about another bloody watersiders’ dispute. The only time it brightened was when Jimmy Cairns said something; he would make you laugh whatever he did. They were amused too every time Pansy Henderson got up on a point of order, silly old fool. Talk, formalities, resolutions; what page 30 did it all mean? Well, it was better than working the full shift. Only they didn’t get paid for it. There they were, still pressing for a town water supply; they’d been doing that since he was a kid, and how far had it got them? Now they wanted another bus on a Friday night, and bus shelters. Bus shelters—that would mean regular stops.

Arty got to his feet. ‘If you ask me it’s a bloody silly idea,’ he said. ‘As it is the bus’ll stop anywhere to pick you up. If you have regular stops, a man’ll have to walk half a mile to catch it.’

The youths of his own age were moved to comment for the first time. They had been sitting like soldiers at a compulsory lecture. ‘That’s telling him, Arty!’—‘Lazy bastard! A walk’ll do you good!’

Jock McEwan got up, the secretary. He was a small man from Glasgow with red hair, a bit of a zealot—a bloody slave-driver, Arty often thought.

‘I’d like to know what the hell’s come over you youngsters today,’ he said. ‘When I was a lad we used our time to improve ourselves. We used to read and study to arm ourselves for the struggle. You youngsters spend all your time in the billiard room and the pub….’

‘Just a minute, Jock,’ Ben said. ‘Can you stick to the item under discussion?’

‘Well, if you’re too bloody lazy to walk a couple of hundred yards to a bus shelter, you might think of the women-folk with prams and babies and shopping-bags who have to stand in the rain.’

‘They can wait on their front verandas,’ another youth said.

‘The proposal is a stop every quarter of a mile or so,’ Ben said ‘So you’d only have to walk a couple of hundred yards at the most.’

‘You want to remember you won’t be young all your life,’ Jimmy Cairns said. ‘You want to think of old blokes like me.’ There were cat-calls from the youths at this contribution.

‘Do you see what we mean?’ Ben said to Arty. It gratified Arty that he spoke as if he was addressing any fellow-worker, not his son. Even so, he didn’t reply, only nodded.

The proposal was that they make representations to the manager of the local branch of the Railway Road Services; the vote was put and carried without dissent.

As Arty left the hall he felt more reconciled to union meetings. He turned down his mates’ invitation to come into the pub. He was still brooding on his father’s remark; a few beers under his belt and he might pick a fight with someone. Anyway he didn’t want his breath smelling tonight. He had to see Flora.

He had seen her often enough in the last seven or eight years, yet page 31 it was only in the last couple of weeks he’d taken any notice of her. It happened at the Stillwater dance one Saturday. He struck her in the Paul Jones, and seeing she was a good dancer, he’d asked her could he have the Destiny with her. The Destiny was the supper waltz, so they had supper together too. Dancing with her soft, rather slim body moving so lightly in front of him, following his steps intuitively—without any of those clashes and resentful apologies a man had to make whether it was his fault or not—he became conscious more than ever before of a woman who was somehow beyond his knowledge. He felt an unusual tenderness and wonder that humbled him, something you couldn’t boast about. He had taken girls outside the hall before, especially the ones who were known among the boys to be easy, for a cuddle in the bus, and sometimes more, if the night was fine, in a pozzy he knew of under the blackberries. If a girl hesitated, he took command; that was the principle he worked on. But with Flora he felt he would follow her. There was so much more to her—some small gesture, an intonation in her voice, would reveal depths and subtleties of life he had never before suspected.

It was strange the way the homeward bus trip was so different. Going there, they were a cheerful gang, laughing, singing the latest hits, taunting one another, all boys together with the girls joining in the fun. Going home they were more subdued, they were mostly paired off, and the boys who had missed out sat tired or drunk or disappointed in the back seat. The lights were out and no one threw off at anyone else, because he knew his own turn would come some day.

When Arty got out of the bus with Flora they walked round to the back of the hotel; the front door was locked, the back door left open all night.

‘Thanks, Arthur,’ she said, so softly, it struck him. So genuinely. Yet there wasn’t any come-closer in her voice, he noticed.

‘Can I see you again?’ He was glad he had to whisper, because it hid his strange humility.

‘The town’s not very big,’ she said. ‘We can’t help seeing each other.’

‘On our own though?’ He felt strangely daring, hoping he hadn’t said too much.

‘Tuesday then, after tea.’

‘Okay, Flora.’

‘Good night,’ and she was gone. It was only then that he realized he hadn’t attempted even to kiss her. ‘Good night,’ he said softly, but only to the night air, because she was inside now. He felt light- page 32 headed as he walked away. On the street he found a stone and ran behind it, kicking it, with his hands in his pockets, till he got to his gate. He felt fit enough to have gone on dancing all night; even so, he slept like a log.

So, now Tuesday was come, he got down his tea with such impatience that his mother commented on it. His younger brothers—still at Tech.—were trying to annoy him, but he only shouted at them out of habit. He was immune to irritation from them. His brothers didn’t know a thing yet; his mother was everyday, ordinary; if she knew much she didn’t let on. He went to his room and put his best suit on, with a clean shirt open at the neck, where a bush of fair hair sprang. His mother looked him up and down.

‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Who’re you meetin’ tonigh’?’ She spoke with a Clydeside accent stronger than his father’s.

‘Oh, jus’ takin’ a stroll,’ he said casually.

‘I can see we won’t be havin’ you with us much longer,’ she said.

And the kids chimed in: ‘Why? Where’s he going?’

Then his father came in for his tea, fresh from the pub.

‘Who’s the bloody dude?’ he said with some admiration. Arty was both flattered and irritated by this attention. ‘It’s only Tuesday night, you know.’ Arty ignored him. ‘An’ while I think of it, don’t forget what I said about Jocy Taiha. No “black bastard” talk around here.’

This was too much for Arty. ‘Oh shut up, can’t you?’ he shouted, and squared up to Ben.

‘Now, Arty!’ his mother said. ‘Don’t speak to your father like that!’ But the two men ignored her, and she stood staring at them. His brothers stood agog. ‘Arty, mind your suit,’ she said.

‘Now say it again and see what you get,’ Arty said.

Ben looked him up and down without raising his arms. ‘My, you’re in fine fettle, son. You won’t settle much with your fists, you know. Some day you’ll try that once too often and you’ll come off the worse for it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

Ben sat down at the table.

‘I don’t mean me,’ he said. ‘I won’t take you on. Someone else will some day, someone as young as yourself and a bit handier with his fists than you are.’

Arty lowered his fists. ‘You’re too bloody serious, that’s your trouble,’ he said. ‘Jocy Taiha’s a good mate of mine and I don’t need you sticking in your nose in talking brotherly love. You should ha’ been a bloody parson.’

‘You’ve got a lot to learn, son,’ was all Ben said.

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‘Now get along, Arty,’ his mother said. ‘Ben, eat your supper.’

Arty left surprised that he’d established his manhood so easily in his own home.

He was feeling in fine form when he waited, as casually as he could look, dolled up in his best suit on a week-day, outside the post office over the road from the pub. Five minutes later Flora came out of the side-gate by the pub, looking round, pretending to be casual like him. Arty was a little disappointed she hadn’t got herself up as flash as she was at the dance. Even so she looked classy; silk stockings, a chocolate-brown skirt and a wine jumper. And that black glossy hair of hers in natural waves! He didn’t step out to meet her: that would make it too obvious. She came to him.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he said.

‘I can’t be out too late,’ she said. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

That suited Art. Walking out with someone in this town was like a public declaration. She was announcing a permanent attachment.

They set off down the footpath between the fences and the road. Arty didn’t know how to start, what to say. For a while he felt proud and happy just to walk with this girl who had agreed to walk with him. It hadn’t struck him till now that it was so wonderful that she should want him the same as he wanted her. Or that up till a week ago they had passed each other frequently without a second thought; and here they were walking together.

‘Did you sleep all right Sat’d’y?’ he said.

‘You mean Sunday morning,’ she said. She pronounced it Sunday. ‘Yes, I always do. I was up at eight.’

He laughed. ‘That’s better than me. I wasn’t up till—till near midday.’ He had checked himself swearing. But he wasn’t sure with Flora: bragging about lying in on Sundays might be all right amongst the boys, but it might give her a bad impression. ‘Nothin’ else to do,’ he added in self-justification.

‘I had the breakfasts to get,’ she said. ‘I always let Mum lie in on Sundays.’ It was new to him to admire unselfishness, but it was good in a girl. ‘Then I went to church.’

‘Church!’ he said involuntarily, as if he didn’t believe her. ‘I haven’t been inside one in my life.’ Then he said: ‘That’s not to say I couldn’t start though.’

She didn’t comment and he wondered if he’d put his foot in it. ‘Just the way you’re brought up, I s’pose,’ he said. But that didn’t help, because she still didn’t say anything.

Her silence made him aware that her home life had been different from his. For the first time in his life he felt ashamed of his home. He didn’t know what he should be ashamed of, only that it wasn’t page 34 good enough to show her. How could he ask her round to his place? —to the house without paint, his father lying on the sofa in his socks, reading, the bickering kids, his mother always in the middle of baking or washing, the untidy kitchen? Yet what was wrong with it? He resented being made conscious of it.

They walked on for a while, and he tried again. ‘Have you been busy today?’

‘I’m always busy,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing the washing for Mum today.’

‘I don’t know how she’d get on without you,’ he said, but she took it as flattery and didn’t acknowledge it.

‘How will she get on if you ever leave home?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I can’t see my leaving home for a while,’ she said.

Arty gave up, and walked sullenly, yet still gratefully, with her. They could see the hills across the valley turning soft people in the dusk. The peaks of the Alps were dissolving into a darkening indigo sky, with odd pink clouds tinged with lemon. ‘The hills are lovely tonight,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think so, Arthur?’

‘I never noticed them before,’ he said, shrugging. But it was true, they were beautiful. He had lived here nineteen years and never noticed them. It was one more thing he hadn’t been conscious of till he met her. He was flushed right through with a warmth and tenderness for Flora, such as he had never known for anyone. But his love had no tongue and when he tried to think of something to say, he only felt gawky.

There was no one about on the road, but it didn’t occur to him whether there might be. His hand felt for hers. She let him take it, but her hand was disappointingly hard and unresponsive. They stood in silence that was too tense for Arty till she said, ‘A penny for your thoughts, Arthur.’

That jolted him into embarrassment. ‘You’re putting me on the spot,’ he complained. Then impulsively he said, ‘Flora, how about it? Would you be my girl?’

Her few seconds of pause were agony to him. Finally she spoke quietly. ‘Arthur,’ she said. ‘I knew you wanted to say that. I’ve never encouraged you.’

‘I don’t care about that,’ he said. ‘Would you go out with me?’

‘Listen, Arthur, don’t take it badly. I’ve been thinking it over. I know it’s a hard thing to say, but it wouldn’t work out. We haven’t got much in common. I like you, Arthur, but it couldn’t go any further.’

‘Why, Flora?’

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‘I just know it couldn’t. Mum and Dad wouldn’t hear of it for a start.’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘I just know they wouldn’t.’

‘Well, we don’t need to care about them. It’s how you feel I’m worried about.’

‘I wouldn’t go against them, Arthur.’

‘Then you won’t?’

‘Now don’t take it so hardly, Arthur. Everything about us is different. Our ways, the way we were brought up, everything.’

‘You mean I’m not good enough for you?’ he said angrily.

‘I don’t mean that, Arthur. I’m just being sensible, looking facts in the face….’

‘Then why did you come out with me tonight? You knew you were going to say this!’

‘Because I knew what would happen, Arthur. I wanted to spare you. Once Mum got wind of you being interested in me she’d have asked you round every night….’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘She’d keep rubbing it into you that your home life was different; she’d be always showing you up, to make sure that it didn’t come to anything. She’d make you feel small.’

‘What’s wrong with my home? I’m not ashamed of it. And if she’s as bad as that why don’t you walk out and please yourself?’

‘Arthur, you mustn’t repeat what I said. I like Mum. It’s the first time I’ve ever breathed a word against her. Because I’m not against her. She’d be right. She and Dad did bring us up properly. She’d be doing it all for me, Arthur.’

‘You mean I’ve been dragged up?’

‘Don’t be awkward, Arthur. I’ve only been trying to make it easier for you … I’ve been honest, Arthur. I’ve been straightforward. I couldn’t let Mum ask you round and see you made a fool of. I had to tell you myself.’

‘That’s decent,’ he said ironically. ‘I’m not good enough for you, that’s what you mean.’

‘Oh, Arthur,’ she said. ‘You mining folk are so blunt and crude. You never take a hint gracefully. You’re all so unpleasant about things.’

‘I’m only a common old miner; so that’s it!’

‘I know myself it wouldn’t work. I told you I’m just being realistic.’

‘Let’s go back,’ he said. They walked back quickly without speaking. At the pub Flora said, ‘Good night, Arthur,’ with an page 36 undertone that implied a tacit understanding, but Arty didn’t answer.

2

Flora wasn’t anywhere near so cool as she had made out to Arty. She had deliberately suppressed a strong desire for his manly young figure and the coarse simplicity of his affection. She kept telling herself she was only being sensible; but what she feared most was breaking with her family. There had been difficulties when Doris, her sister, had married Frank Lindsay who worked at the mine. One Doris in the family was enough. Nor had Arty been the first of the local chaps to take an interest in her. But she had always fended them off with her deliberate politeness—which never gave an impression of coolness because her face was so warm in colour, so ripe in its outlines, and her voice so sensuous in tone. Her inaccessibility had earned her a reputation of respectability. She was a girl most of the young men thought highly of, and her name was never nudged and leered over in bars and billiard rooms. Many a young man would have been glad to get her but not many had tried because she seemed to demand that a man should be on his best behaviour. The only model of better conduct they knew was one of suburban respectability and they avoided that like hypocrisy. Everyone knew them for what they were, and for a man to change his ways suddenly for a girl might expose him to the taunts of his friends. Yet no one thought of Flora as snooty, only distant.

When she came in from Arty, Flora’s coolness dissolved and she was full of conflicting emotions. It was a relief not to have to face the difficulties with her mother, yet she felt sorry for Arty. But how could she console him when she herself had hurt him, gone out with him intending to hurt him? She should have been easier with him—but then she had been so afraid of letting him see that she felt something for him. How stuck-up she must have sounded, but she hadn’t dared be otherwise. And it couldn’t have worked out. She had no wish to settle in Coal Flat, to have children in one of those ugly little houses without paint, without gardens, with a husband never going out but he would come back with beery breath, with children learning to swear and act rough from the other miners’ children. No, she wanted a man who would not take her for granted, would set her up in a new house in a suburb of a town, and work at a clean job. It could be all very romantic for a start, going with Arthur, she thought, but after a year or two the glamour would be gone and she’d be stranded in Coal Flat, saddled with a page 37 baby, up to her eyes in work, like any of the women of this town—gossiping, backbiting, outspoken, careless of their hair and dress and language, sometimes brawling in their kitchens with their husbands. It was as if she had shaken off a temptation, getting rid of Arty like that. There were better men, who had been brought up the same way as she had. And already, though he had hardly been in her mind since he had come, there was Paul Rogers.

Paul had never given any hint of wanting her, though before he had gone into the army, she remembered she had loved him in a moony, adolescent way. She didn’t feel the physical attraction to him that she had felt to Arty. Yet he was more fascinating, more difficult to fathom. He was educated, and Flora had great respect for anyone who was educated. She wondered what it would be like to be a schoolteacher’s wife? Would she have to take the girls for sewing? … But she checked herself. Paul was hardly five minutes in the house—two days, to be exact—and they hadn’t had more than a word together yet and here she was thinking things about him that she would be ashamed to own.

The parlour was empty. Through the wall she could hear the noise of men in the bar. She settled down in an arm-chair that was slightly battered and greasy from heads. Mum always said they wouldn’t get any new furniture till they got a house of their own again—the customers would only spoil it in a hotel. She picked up some papers; she pushed Truth aside: scandals and crime were too disturbing. The cable page of the Greymouth Evening Star meant nothing to her, except that she got the impression from the headlines that the Russians were being difficult at a United Nations meeting. She read the Local and General and the personal notes. Then she picked up Truth again, and in spite of herself, got deep in a divorce-case with adultery and drinking—parties and nude bathing and goodness knows what, a prominent radio sports commentator mixed up in it all too; she pored over it, pondering the strange things that happen in the world. Then she read the details of a horrible murder case, then of the trial of a woman abortionist; though she couldn’t put the paper down, she felt by now that she would have bad dreams that night. The world was a queer place, once you took the lid off…. With an effort of will she folded the paper up, put it under the cushion of the chair and sat on it. Then she picked up the Auckland Weekly News and read, more calmly and with growing admiration, an article on the habits of the two English princesses. She stared closely at a photograph, blurred with tiny dots, of Princess Elizabeth, and wondered if she ought to do her own hair that way: that hat—perhaps hats like that would come into page 38 fashion; she’d have to look out for them. How lovely it would be to be born a princess … but what a tiring life they must lead!—and all in the interests of their country.

Then the door opened and Paul came in. Flora looked around and smiled. Rogers grinned and stood over her.

‘What are you reading?’ he said. ‘Oh no! Not the royal family?’

‘Why not?’ she said in a hurt voice.

‘Well—’ Rogers hesitated. He knew what he thought, but he was impeded by that decision to conform, as much as he could, with what most people thought. ‘Well—they do take it too far, Flora. What have those princesses done for you and me?’

‘That’s not the way to look at it,’ she said. ‘They’re only young yet. The King and Queen have done a lot.’

‘What have they done?’ he said, grinning tolerantly.

‘They stuck by their people all through the war,’ she said passionately. She recalled a newspaper phrase that had struck her. ‘They shared the common danger.’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’ he said.

‘They could have gone to Canada,’ she said.

Rogers found it too difficult to soft-pedal. ‘Why should they have been privileged?’ he said. ‘They’re only ordinary people like you and me. Why should you admire them for doing no more than the British people did? The King and Queen never got bombed out.’

Flora, confronted by direct blasphemy of her dearest opinions, was at a loss and responded, like most of her countrymen in the same situation, with accusations.

‘Paul Rogers,’ she said. ‘You’re talking like a Communist. I thought the army would have cured you of all that tommy-rot.’

‘No, Flora, there you go,’ Rogers said. ‘How many times do I have to explain to people? I’m not a Communist, never have been, never will be. I’m anti-Communist, if you want to know. I’m a Labour supporter, that’s all….’

‘It’s nothing to boast of.’

‘I’m not boasting, Flora. I’m only stating my position. Every man’s entitled to his opinions, isn’t he? It’s a free country.’

‘Everyone doesn’t go round telling you what his politics are,’ she said.

‘Well, you forced me to.’

She didn’t say anything and he found his bearings again. ‘But all this royalty business. These newspaper articles. They treat them like film stars. I’m not against constitutional monarchy. But I reckon they should live more like ordinary people, that’s all. Live page 39 on a salary. Ride bicycles. Travel on trams and buses, like everyone else….’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘That’s being mean. They’re entitled to better than other people.’

‘They’re only ordinary people, only they were born into royalty. It’s not democratic to fawn on them.’

‘I’m not discussing it, Paul,’ she said. ‘You do talk a lot of tommy-rot. I only hope you won’t let Mum hear you talk like that, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you know Mum hasn’t got any time for Communists.’

‘But, Flora, how many times do I have to tell you, I’m not.’

‘I can’t see the difference.’

‘I don’t think you even know what a Communist is.’

‘Trouble-makers, that’s what they are,’ she said. ‘Always stirring up strife, and strikes, and always asking questions. They can’t let well alone…. I believe in living in peace and helping people,’ she said more quietly. ‘You used to be like that, I thought anyway.’

‘I am, Flora. We both want the same things,’ he said. ‘Peace, justice, a society based on co-operation. We disagree on the way to get them.’

‘Well, I’m not discussing them, Paul. I know I’m right, and I’m not getting bogged down in arguing about it.’

‘Let’s change the subject,’ he said resignedly. But they found it impossible to talk of anything else, with the argument unresolved.

‘Why do you always have to be asking questions?’ she said.

‘You’re always disturbing things. Everything decent people take seriously.’

‘Oh, that’s silly, Flora. You’re making out I don’t believe in anything.’

‘You must be a cynic then. Making fun of the decent things of life, the things decent people believe.’

Internally Rogers heaved a sigh. For all her beauty, Flora was no better than other people. What could you do with people? he thought. How could you win people to a happy society against their own wills? How could you remove these prejudices, this refusal to ask questions? It made him feel superior even in his despair. What was the use? Wouldn’t it be better to conform? Or at least to pretend to?

‘I’m going to bed now,’ Flora said, and softly she wished him good night. By her tone he knew he was forgiven, yet he felt guilty like a naughty dog. Let them think what they like, and let them leave him alone. If he wanted to be left alone, then he’d have to take page 40 care not to provoke their accusations. Flora would no longer call him a cynic. But that was what he would be then.

Flora undressing asked why it had had to happen like that. She had hoped vaguely that she and Paul could have talked amicably, revealing themselves, warming to each other. But at first impact they had squabbled like children. Would he take much notice of her again? Perhaps there was something in what he said. Next time she ought to listen before she let off steam.

Rogers in bed kept seeing her hurt flushed face, kept sensing her spirited temper. It recurred to him with a new wonder how beautiful she was.

3

Though it was dark by now Arty couldn’t go home so soon. Dressed in his best he couldn’t pass off his excursion as something casual. His mother would have smelt something; she might have probed him or, what would be worse, she might say nothing and watch for clues. In any case he wouldn’t be able to settle in that kitchen, reading the paper or one of the westerns he usually read in spite of his father telling him they were trash and opium. If he went to the billiard saloon or any of the pubs the boys would twit him about his clothes. The prospect of a long walk by himself offered no relief, he was so wild with Flora that he could hardly bear his own company; yet he kept walking, not knowing where he was going.

He was so wild that he had forgotten for the time that he had loved Flora. Not good enough for her—who did the Palmers think they were? Hadn’t he a fit body like anyone else, good for a lifetime’s earning for her and a family? Hadn’t he a heart that would feel for her, a tongue to talk with her, a brain to plan for her, muscles to work for her, a body to embrace her? Did she want a film-star? It was his ways, she said, his bringing-up. Well, he wouldn’t change those for any woman. But she hadn’t even asked him to change; she had turned him down flat, there and then, as he was. She must have known he couldn’t change. Yet what was wrong with him? Did she want him well-mannered, smooth and sissy? She was as bad as his father, with his preaching. Or was it that he didn’t have enough money to suit her parents? Let her bloody well sink then, let her go without him. Some day, he hoped she would be sorry and he would have no pity for her: there would be other girls. Yet he knew it would be a long time before any page 41 other girl could do more than touch off a sour pang of longing for her.

He noticed now that he was passing a group of huts put up by the Mines Department to house single young men working in the mine. Without knowing why he headed under some hawthorn trees across the thick grass to Joe Taiha’s hut. He even knocked on the door, though roughly, before he pushed it open.

Joe’s hut was simple: wooden walls with two small square windows, a roof of corrugated iron, a bunk with a wire mattress, a plain table and one chair. At the end was a small stove, and from nails on the wall hung a saucepan, an oilskin raincoat and some working clothes. The bed was neatly made up. There was a suitcase under the bed, and in a fixed wardrobe without doors in one corner, hung Joe’s sports clothes and a selection of gaudy ties. The hut was lit by a hurricane lamp on the table.

Joe was washing up the enamel plates he had just used for his dinner. He was surprised to see Arty fling the door open and walk in without any over-hearty or abusive greeting, with only, ‘Good day, Joe’.

‘Ah, Arty,’ Joe said. ‘You just caught me doing the washing up. Some day I’ll have a woman to do this for me.’

Arty sat on the bed and Joe put the plates on the table, hung up a saucepan and spread the tea-towel outside the sill to dry. He pulled in a towel which had been drying during the day.

‘Will you have a cup of coffee and milk? I’ll just put the kettle on,’ Joe said. ‘Oh, wait a minute, I think the tin’s nearly empty. No, we’ll have a beer.’

‘Not out of a mug,’ Arty said.

Joe grinned and produced two glasses from his wardrobe. ‘I got these from Palmers’,’ he said. They drank while Joe chatted cheerfully about the mine and Coal Flat, and Arty only commented with grunts and brief questions. Arty found Joe’s company relaxing, and in a dim way he envied Joe his ease. He kept wondering if there was some secret the Maoris had. Joe seemed to be able to enjoy being alive, not just the better moments of life. His nerves were easy, almost lazy. Arty thought he was an easygoing chap, but alongside Joe he seemed to be a tense bundle of worries.

As far as Arty knew Joe came from Arahura farther south, on the coast. There had been a paa at Greymouth, twenty miles north, in the old days. But when they sold the land, the Maoris shifted to this town of unpainted wooden houses on one of the pieces of land reserved for them, and drew rents from their reserve at Greymouth. Joe had worked there on the gold dredge, then he had come to the page 42 dredge at Coal Flat; from there he went to the mine because the money was better. His girl lived in Arahura and he went home to her every week-end. He was saving up to get married. In a few months, he said, he was going whitebaiting in one of the rivers of South Westland, a region still hardly settled. He would make big money there.

‘By crikey, Arty,’ Joe said. ‘It’s not often the Maori bothers to gave up. It’s a hard job for me all right. But I got to get enough for a house. Then we’ll go up to my home.’

‘I thought you lived at Arahura,’ Arty said.

‘No. I’m from the North Island,’ Joe said. ‘Ohinemutu, at Rotorua. I’m an Arawa. I came down with my mates to see the sights. And then I met Kahu. My mates have gone back home. I get homesick now and again. Arahura’s not the same.’ He pronounced it differently from Arty. ‘We live better up home.’

At last Joe asked Arty what he had been wondering since he came in.

‘You look worried, Arty,’ he said. ‘You don’t often come to see me, oh?’ He said this with such simplicity that it didn’t offend Arty, as it would if one of his mates had said it. ‘This is the first time, Arty. Why did you come?’

Arty couldn’t answer directly. ‘You know the Palmers, Joe?’

‘They keep the pub,’ Joe said.

‘They’re Maoris. What do you reckon about them?’

‘Ah, no,’ Joe grinned gently. ‘They’re not Maoris, Arty. Old Mum, she got Maori blood in her all right, maybe quarter-caste. They’re paakehaa, Arty. She married a paakehaa. They live like white people. I bet they can’t even talk Maori.’

Joe’s easy face looked mildly scornful. ‘They’re proud, Arty, too proud to be like the Maori. They got money in the bank. Show me the Maori who’s got a lot o’ money in the bank, eh? Not in the South Island anyway. No Maori’s got a hotel of his own, eh?’

Arty kept watching Joe as he learned over from the chair, his arms on his knees; with his shining black wavy hair, his relaxed and lively good-looking face, his ready grin, his eyes that did not mask his feelings, he was so much more alive than Arty, and without being aware of it. Alongside Joe Arty felt self-conscious and habitually defensive, a man who was always posing before his mates. But as Joe talked he could feel himself relaxing slightly.

Joe’s eyes looked hurt suddenly. ‘One day I went in Palmers’,’ he said. ‘There’s no one else in there. Only Mum behind the bar. She said to me, “Come on Joe, we’ll have a tangi together.” Then she said something from a haka. She got it all wrong. She was insulting me!’

page 43

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Arty said. ‘She was letting you know she’s got some Maori too.’ He said this out of curiosity, because he wasn’t in any mood to defend Mrs Palmer.

‘She’s only part Maori. I’m all Maori,’ Joe said. ‘She was reminding me.’

‘How?’ Arty said. ‘What’s wrong with being a Maori?’ He remembered his father’s words now and felt foolish. He wished he hadn’t asked the question.

‘Don’t you think I’m ashamed of it! Oh no! I’m a full Maori and proud, too. You don’t understand what I say. Old Mum she meant that I’m still a savage, that’s what she meant. Just quietly, eh? Haka and tangi.’

‘But you do have tangis when someone dies. In the North Island, ‘specially.’

‘You don’t understand what I mean, Arty. Haka and tangi; Haka that’s what we do when we welcome someone who visits us. Tangi we have when someone dies. A tangi isn’t celebrating. It’s being sorry. You don’t understand. I’m not ashamed. We still do those things up there, Arty. We’re proud of them. Down here … my girl couldn’t even speak Maori till she met me. I’m teaching her. It’s not what old Mum said, it’s the way she said it. What she meant was she’s got past all that sort of thing. She’s a bloody paakehaa now. She catches me when there’s no one to see, so she steps down to my level, just for a minute. That’s what she meant.’

‘You’re too thin-skinned, that’s all,’ Arty said, and Joe forgot about it. He grinned. But Arty brought him back to the subject.

‘What do you think of Flora?’ he said, resenting having to mention her name.

‘Well, you take Flora as a white girl, she’s a very nice girl, I think,’ Joe said. ‘She’s always very friendly to me, at a dance if I go to Stillwater. But usually I go home to Arahura to the dance. She doesn’t talk down to me, just that little bit, like old Mum. She talks friendly, only she keeps her distance. She’s not a warm-hearted girl.’

‘She just turned me down,’ Arty said, looking at the wall away from Joe.

‘What’s that?’ Joe said, grinning as if he wasn’t sure if Arty had made a joke.

‘I wanted her to go out with me,’ Arty said. ‘She wouldn’t.’ It humiliated him to have to tell this to anyone. Yet if he’d told anyone but Joe he never would have felt safe that it wouldn’t be blabbed around the town.

Joe looked steadily at Arty, his lips open in sympathy. ‘She’s been listening to her mother, I think, Arty.’

page 44

‘She said we’d been brought up different. Our ways were different. She wanted someone with more money, I s’pose,’ Arty said bitterly. ‘The bloody Nicholsons aren’t good enough for the Palmers.’

‘You’re only a common old miner,’ Joe said gently. ‘I’m only a common old Maori, eh? We’re both common. We got that in common, eh? Yes, the Palmers are a proud family. Not Flora, I didn’t think. I thought Flora was better. That other girl too—what’s her name? Doris. Doris—she married Frank Lindsay at the mine. Yes, I thought Flora would be better. That’s a pity. She’s got ambitious like her mother.’

‘It won’t worry me,’ Arty said. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘You’re sorry now, Arty. But tomorrow maybe, you’ll be a little better. Then the next day. In a week you’ll be happy again. Ah, Arty, you want the Maori girl to make you happy. She doesn’t think about money and what’s your job and are you good enough, as long as she knows you love her and you can keep her and the babies.’ Joe’s mouth opened wide in a smile, thinking of his own girl-friend. Then his expression changed to one of tender curiosity. ‘Flora hurt you, Arty. You got no one to tell. So you come to see me, eh?’

Arty nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said reluctantly.

Joe beamed and leaped from his chair. ‘Then we’ll get drunk properly!’ he said. ‘You and me. We’ll forget our troubles.’ He got out more bottles of beer and filled the glasses for, already, the sixth time. From under the bed he produced a guitar and he began to strum and sing lazily and pleasantly, while Arty listened. The songs were mostly current American song hits, yet he gave them a peculiar lilt that made them seem more human.

‘This one was composed by a woman from the East Coast,’ Joe said. It was Arohaina mai. Arty bawled the English words but he only got as far as, ‘Love walked right in …’ because he didn’t know the rest.

After a while Arty said, ‘Joe, when are you going whitebaiting?’

‘In August. Then I don’t come back to Coal Flat.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Arty said impulsively. ‘There you go! I’ll go with you and we’ll go halves in everything!’

Joe beamed agreement and sang again. Now Arty joined in the singing, belatedly because he knew his coarse voice would be out of tune, but irresistibly because they were partners and were going whitebaiting together.

The noise of drunken singing brought chaps from the other huts page 45 who, Arty had no doubt, were only sniffing out some free beer. It pleased him perversely that they had to go back to their huts for mugs. He was jealous of their intrusion but he was happy again and took no offence. At about eleven he left them still singing and went home and slept immediately.