Fire (13 page)

‘What is it?’ Allie asked, and when he nodded at something across the street, she followed his gaze.

There were several cars parked there, with more than a dozen teddy boys slouched around them. Allie felt her stomach lurch: she knew they were just ordinary Kiwi lads, but for some reason they looked menacing in their stovepipe trousers, draped jackets, skinny ties and chunky shoes. She had heard, too, that they all carried flick-knives.

‘What are they doing?’ she asked nervously.

Sonny shrugged. ‘Waiting?’

‘What for?’

‘Trouble, probably. Come on, let’s go.’

Terry was waving out from his car a short way down the street, and they had almost reached it when the unmistakable thunder of motorcycle engines filled the air.

Sonny muttered, ‘Shit.’ He flicked his cigarette into the gutter and gestured for Allie and Daisy to hurry up and get into the car.

They scrambled in, just in time to see the cowboys come rumbling and back-firing up street, the lights from store windows and street lamps reflecting off the chrome and gleaming paint of their motorcycles. Allie recognized Gary in the lead, but her heart almost stopped when she also realized that one of the pillion passengers, her arms tight around the waist of a denim- and leather-clad boy, was Donna, wearing tight capri pants and a very skimpy halterneck top.

The cowboys cruised slowly past the teds, who gave them the fingers and yelled abuse. Then, deliberately stopping traffic in both directions, the motorbikes turned in the middle of the street and came back. Drawn by the noise, people were pouring out of the Peter Pan and gathering on the footpath.

Terry started the car. ‘Time to go, I think.’

‘My sister’s on one of those motorbikes!’ Allie blurted.

‘What, Pauline?’ Terry looked as shocked as Allie felt.

‘No, bloody Donna.’

Terry said, ‘Sorry, Allie, but I’m not grabbing her. I’ll get my head kicked in.’

‘Where’s Sonny?’ Allie looked around wildly. And then she spotted him, standing very still on the footpath, watching the teds. She wound down her window and called out to him.

He turned his head, but didn’t take his eyes off the teddy boys.

‘Donna’s on one of those motorbikes!’ she shouted.

Sonny did look at her then. ‘Your sister?’

Allie nodded.

Sonny swore. Then, almost inevitably, a bottle spun through the air and smashed against one of the teds’ cars, and they surged into the street, hitting and kicking out at the cowboys going past. Two went down, the big machines crashing onto the tarseal in a shower of sparks, the riders and pillion passengers scrambling out of the way. Realizing what had happened, the rest of the cowboys wheeled around, parked, leapt off their bikes and lunged across the street, throwing themselves at the teds. In an instant there were fists and boots everywhere, people yelling and swearing, and high-pitched screams from the girls of both gangs.

Watching from the safety of the car Daisy shrieked herself, and Allie gasped as a cowboy girl launched herself at a ted girl and yanked her hair viciously, then slapped her face.

‘Bloody hell,’ Terry said.

Allie looked for Sonny again but he’d gone. She spotted him a moment later in the middle of the mêlée, lashing out with his fists while also trying to pull a ted off Gary, who was face-down on the road. Then someone lurched up to him and punched him in the head, and he went down himself.

‘Oh God, Terry, help him!’ Allie wailed.

But Terry, his face the colour of porridge in the bright light of the street lamps, swallowed and said nothing.

Then a new noise was added to the din—police sirens.
A car and two vans screeched to a halt, disgorging cop after cop. The teds melted away and the cowboys ran for their bikes and roared off, though the police managed to collar several from each gang, bundling them unceremoniously into separate vans. It was all over in a few minutes, and the crowd outside the Peter Pan began to disperse, hurried along by several stony-faced constables.

Allie’s door was yanked open and Sonny fell in, a handkerchief clamped over his bleeding nose. ‘Put your foot down, Terry,’ he said in a muffled voice.

Soon they were driving along Parnell Road, heading for Orakei.

‘Are you all right?’ Allie asked when she trusted her voice enough to speak. Her knees felt like jelly even though she was sitting down, and her heart was only just beginning to settle back into its regular rhythm.

Sonny nodded.

Terry cleared his throat. ‘Allie, sorry I couldn’t do anything about Donna. Or give you a hand, Sonny. I…just couldn’t.’

Sonny waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. It was just a stupid bloody scrap.’

‘I’ll kill Donna when I see her,’ Allie said grimly.

They were silent again for a while. Then, just as they turned into Coates Avenue, Daisy asked, ‘Did one of those cowboys throw that bottle?’

‘I didn’t see,’ Allie said.

Sonny dabbed at his nose. The bleeding had stopped so he wound down the window and threw the bloodied handkerchief out. ‘Someone on the footpath chucked it.’

‘I’d better go straight in,’ Allie told Sonny when Terry had stopped the car.

‘Sorry about what happened,’ he said. ‘But Gary’s a mate.’

‘I know,’ Allie replied. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Are we still on for tomorrow night?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t we be?’

Sonny looked relieved. ‘I’ll pick you up at six then, eh? Meet me on the corner of Kepa Road. Oh, and wear long pants.’

Mystified, Allie looked at him. ‘Why?’

‘Wait and see,’ Sonny said.

After Terry had dropped her off at home, Daisy crept into her bedroom so she wouldn’t wake her parents, closed the door, and opened Miss Button’s secret present. It was a set of white, exquisitely knitted baby clothes—a gown, a jacket, a bonnet and booties. The card tucked into the tiny garments said, ‘To Daisy and Terry, congratulations and very best wishes regarding your soon-to-be new arrival. If there is anything we can help with, please let us know, from Beatrice Button and Ruby Willow.’

Daisy cried for the fourth time that day.

Saturday, 19 December 1953

A
llie sat up and lifted the blind at the window—another lovely, bright sunny day. Throwing off the covers, she slid out of bed and looked in the mirror. God. She hadn’t taken her make-up off last night and she looked a sight.

The floorboards were cool on her bare feet as she padded down the hall to the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and rubbed off the worst of the smeared mascara, then went out into the kitchen.

Everyone was there except Donna, and Allie felt her heart sink.

‘Morning, Sleeping Beauty,’ her father said, turning over a page of the
Herald.
‘You get in a stoush last night?’

‘What?’ Allie said, appalled. Was it in the papers?

‘A stoush. You’ve got black eyes.’

‘Oh. No, that’s just make-up.’ Allie gave an inward sigh of relief. ‘Where’s Donna?’

‘She stayed at Maureen’s house last night,’ Colleen said, breaking eggs into a spitting frying pan.

Allie nodded. That made sense. Maureen was Donna’s
friend from school, and they were always getting into trouble together.

‘Except I wasn’t allowed to go,’ Pauline complained.

‘You weren’t invited,’ Colleen said, shaking the pan so the eggs wouldn’t stick.

Pauline scowled. ‘It’s not fair, I never get invited to stay at anyone’s house.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Pauline, give it a rest, will you?’ Sid had been hearing this all morning. He snapped his paper shut. ‘Bugger-all in that today,’ he added, ‘except there’s been another scrap in Queen Street between those lads on the motorbikes and those bloody bodgies.’

‘Teddy boys,’ Pauline corrected.

Sid didn’t take the bait. Colleen put his breakfast in front of him. ‘Thanks, love, this looks good,’ he said, enthusiastically rupturing his fried eggs with a fork. ‘Who’s helping me in the garden today?’

‘Not me,’ Pauline said immediately.

Allie said, ‘I will, if you like.’

Sid shovelled in a mouthful of food and talked through it. ‘Thought I’d put in some beans and a bit of beetroot, maybe some broccoli—’

Pauline pulled a disgusted face. ‘Yuck.’

‘—and some celery, and I might even have a go at some snow peas.’

Colleen sat down at the table with her own breakfast. ‘Snow peas? They’re a bit posh, aren’t they?’

‘Dunno, but Bill reckons they’re just the ticket in a salad with a bit of lettuce and a hard-boiled egg. His missus grows them.’

Buttering a piece of toast, Colleen said, ‘When do we ever eat salads?’

‘Never,’ Sid replied, ‘but maybe we should start.’ He poked the roll of fat bulging over the waistband of his trousers. ‘That’s how you get rid of one of these, isn’t it? Eating rabbit food?’

‘But you’ve had that tummy for years, love.’

‘That’s right, but it occurred to me recently that the sheilas haven’t been whistling at me half as much as they used to, and I thought maybe it was the spare tyre.’

Fork halfway to her mouth, Colleen stared incredulously at her husband, then burst out laughing.

‘What?’ Sid said, trying to look wounded. Then he started laughing too.

Allie was giggling so much she had to put her cup back in its saucer.

Pauline, who had a pained expression on her face, said, ‘God, Dad, you’re pathetic.’

‘That’s enough, Pauline,’ Colleen warned, though there was no bite to her words. ‘At least your father can laugh at himself.’

Pauline muttered something under her breath, grabbed a piece of toast, and slouched out of the kitchen.

‘Bloody teenagers,’ Sid said cheerfully.

Allie sat on an upturned bucket, smoking a cigarette and watching her father swear as he tried to separate clumps of baby celery plants.

‘I’m buggered if I know why they can’t wrap each one up individually,’ he said.

‘That’d be a lot of newspaper, though, wouldn’t it?’ Allie countered.

‘Yes, but it only ends up around fish and chips anyway, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose,’ Allie said. She looked up as Donna appeared around the side of the house. Her sister was wearing a knee-length skirt and demure cotton blouse—no sign of last night’s rather revealing outfit—and the sort of sour yet shifty expression that only Donna could manufacture.

Sid said, ‘Hello stranger. Have a nice night?’

‘It was OK,’ Donna said, not meeting his eye. She hurried up the back steps and disappeared into the house.

Allie stood up, flicked her fag end into the nasturtiums behind the bomb shelter and followed her sister inside.

She caught up with her in the hall. ‘Where were you last night?’ she demanded.

‘At Maureen’s,’ Donna said.

‘All night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Liar.’

‘I am not!’

‘You bloody well are,’ Allie said. ‘I saw you in Queen Street at about half past eleven, on the back of some bloke’s motorbike!’

Donna glared at her, clearly trying to decide whether to continue lying or not. ‘So?’ she said, shrugging.

‘You were right in the middle of that bloody fight!’ Allie snapped.

‘So what if I was?’ Donna replied blithely. ‘You were there too!’

‘Donna, I’m twenty years old. You’re only fifteen! And
I
wasn’t wrapped around a milkbar cowboy!’

‘Well, at least I wasn’t wrapped around a
Maori
boy.’

Allie felt the last of her self-control slip away and she punched her sister on the arm.

‘Ow! What was that for?’ Donna cried.

‘What’s happening out there?’ Colleen called from the kitchen.

Allie lowered her voice and hissed, ‘For being so bloody rude! How dare you say that about Sonny!’

‘What? That he’s a Maori?’ Donna said, rubbing her arm. ‘Well, he is, isn’t he?’

‘It was the way you said it. As an insult.’

‘I think you’re hearing things, Allie.’

‘I think you’re being a bitch, Donna. Why?’

Donna was quiet for a moment. Then she shrugged again and made a vaguely remorseful face. ‘I don’t know. Sorry.’

‘And where was Maureen last night? Did her mother know you were in town?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What do you mean, “not exactly”? Did you sneak out?’

‘Didn’t have to. Mrs Johnson was at the housie.’

Allie frowned: she bet her mother hadn’t known that. ‘And where did you get those pants and the top? Mum’d have a fit if she saw you wearing them. You looked closer to twenty-one than fifteen.’

When Donna’s face lit up, Allie knew she’d said the wrong thing.

‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Kev says I looked beaut.’

‘Who the hell’s Kev?’

‘Kevin Donovan, from school?’

Allie cast her mind back: all she could recall of Kevin Donovan was a pair of knobbly knees beneath baggy school shorts and a bad case of acne. ‘Kevin Donovan’s a milkbar cowboy?’ she said disbelievingly.

Donna nodded proudly. ‘And my boyfriend.’

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid. You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend.’

‘I am so,’ Donna shot back, then burst out laughing. ‘You should see your face.’

‘It’s not funny, Donna. You could have been hurt last night. Or arrested. And motorbikes can be very dangerous.’

‘Oh, they are not.’

‘Well, if I even
hear
you’ve been out with Kevin Donovan again, I’m telling Mum,’ Allie threatened.

‘I’m telling Mum,’ Donna mimicked in a silly voice. Then, with a toss of her long blonde ponytail, she flounced into the bedroom she shared with Pauline and slammed the door in Allie’s face.

Allie stared at the door for a moment, then turned away to see her mother standing at the other end of the hallway.

‘What was that in aid of?’ Colleen asked.

‘Oh, you know. Just Donna being Donna,’ Allie said.

Colleen made an I-know-what-you-mean face. ‘Will you be wanting tea tonight before you go out?’

‘No, thanks, Mum. I think there’ll be food there.’

‘Allie, where exactly is this party you’re going to?’

‘It’s a twenty-first so I think it must be in a hall somewhere. Or it might be outside or in a marquee, because Sonny said to wear slacks. I don’t think it’s a dress-up thing.’

Colleen didn’t look entirely pleased. ‘Well, you be careful, Allie. You might not know anyone else there.’

‘I will, Mum, don’t worry.’

Allie took her time dawdling back from the shop that afternoon, enjoying the balmy weather. She fancied Sonny so much it almost hurt, and whenever she thought about him, which was frequently, her stomach flipped and she got fluttery feelings in the most embarrassing places. He had such beautiful eyes, and lovely muscled arms and a deliciously firm belly, which she’d felt through his shirt the other night. When he’d kissed her she’d wanted it to last for ever, and now she was starting to think that she wanted it to go further. The idea of it made her feel nervous and horribly excited—nothing like the way she’d felt, or not felt, about Derek.

Poor old Derek hadn’t been bad-looking, and they’d kissed plenty of times, which had been nice, she supposed, but things had never advanced beyond that. It was just that…well, he just hadn’t set her on fire. She used to catch herself looking at him sometimes, trying to imagine what he’d be like in twenty years’ time, and in her mind’s eye he always came out exactly the same: sitting on a couch reading the paper or talking about the All Blacks with her father. Except he might be a bit fatter. Yes, he would definitely be fatter. In fact, he would probably be a lot like her dad, and, though she loved her father very much, she certainly didn’t want to marry him. Mind you, her father had a wonderful sense of humour, which made up for a lot. Derek, unfortunately, hadn’t. She’d once told him a very long, absolutely hilarious joke, making her father laugh himself sick and almost wetting her own pants in the process, and all Derek had said at the end was, were there any more date scones? She supposed that had been a warning sign, really.

She sat down on a wall and lit a cigarette.

Sonny was nothing like Derek, though, and he certainly had a sense of humour, though it was a little drier than what she was used to. And even if he hadn’t had a witty bone in his body, she didn’t think she would care because he was just so bloody
sexy.
Irene’s word really did describe him perfectly. The question was: what was she going to do about it? She was a virgin, but it wasn’t that she was deliberately saving herself for marriage or anything like that: she just hadn’t met anyone who’d tempted her enough. But now she had. And if she did sleep with Sonny, presuming that he wanted to sleep with her—which she thought was a fairly safe bet—would he still want to be with her afterwards? Or would he think she was easy and cheap? It wasn’t fair. Boys could go around sleeping with as many girls as they could talk into dropping their knickers and no one blinked an eye, but if a girl did it—or even just behaved as though she would
like
to do it, as Irene did—people were very disapproving and sometimes even quite nasty.

She decided she should probably talk to her mother about it.

Colleen was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink, Donna and Pauline had disappeared somewhere and Sid was still at the pub.

‘Shall I do some carrots?’ Allie asked.

Colleen nodded. ‘There’s some in the cupboard.’

Allie started peeling, flicking the damp shreds of orange skin off her knife into the sink. ‘Are these out of Dad’s garden?’

‘No, you know he’s not very good with carrots.’

Sid wasn’t really very good with anything in his garden, if they were honest, but he prided himself on having one, so no one ever said anything rude when misshapen and undersized vegetables appeared on their plates, not even Donna and Pauline.

Allie scraped steadily away for a few minutes, wondering how to phrase what she wanted to ask.

‘Mum?

‘Mmm?’

‘I think I need some advice.’

Colleen stopped what she was doing and went very still. ‘What about, love?’ she said. There was a slight wobble in her voice.

‘It’s, well, it’s to do with Sonny.’

Colleen put her potato and her knife down and leaned her hands on the bench, as though bracing herself for bad news. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I really like him, Mum. And I think…’ Allie paused, then rushed on. ‘I think I’d quite like to sleep with him.’

There, she’d said it.

Exhaling loudly, Colleen exclaimed, ‘God almighty, Allison, I thought you were going to tell me you’d already done it and now you’re pregnant!’

Allie stared at her mother. ‘Mum! I only went out with him for the first time on Wednesday night!’

Colleen shoved a strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a sliver of potato peel stuck to her temple. She glanced at Allie and started to giggle.

‘What?’ Allie asked, picking the peel off and flicking it into the sink.

‘I suppose that would be a bit of a record, wouldn’t it?’
Colleen said. ‘Though it has happened, believe me.’

‘Well, not to me, it hasn’t,’ Allie replied.

‘And thank Christ for that.’ Colleen reached for her knife again. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘Well, just what you think, really. Should I or shouldn’t I?’

Colleen finished peeling her potato and dropped it into the pot. Then she said, ‘I don’t think you should.’

‘Oh.’ Allie wasn’t really surprised.

‘For two reasons,’ Colleen said. She rinsed the vegetable knife under the tap and wiped the blade on the bench cloth. ‘The first is I don’t want you getting into trouble. It can happen like that, you know. I had a girlfriend when I was about your age who only did it the once and got caught. It could ruin your life, Allie.’

Allie felt an irrational pang of hurt. ‘Like yours was, you mean?’

Colleen winced inwardly. ‘Oh, of course not, love. I wouldn’t trade you or your little madam sisters for anything, I really wouldn’t. But your father and I would probably have our own home by now, if we’d had the time to work and save up. And we’d have had you anyway, love, just not quite so soon.’

‘Would you still have married Dad?’

Colleen smiled. ‘Not if your nan had had anything to say about it.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I really don’t know. But I did, and I’m glad I did. I wouldn’t trade him, either, despite what it might look like sometimes. But it’s a huge risk, Allie, and I don’t think it’s one you should take.’