As the Earth Turns Silver (14 page)

‘These smell nice, Mum. What are they?'

Katherine looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. Edie held the flowers in her outstretched hand.

For a moment Katherine didn't know what to say. She gazed at her daughter's palm, at the delicate petals now wrinkled and edged with brown.

‘They . . . they're called jasmine,' she said.

‘Where did you get them from?'

Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to another, carried on peeling, tried to sound casual. ‘Haven't you seen them before? They grow over fences, well, anywhere.'

‘Is that where you go at night?'

Katherine dropped the paring knife, just missed her foot.
Damn!
‘Edie, can you pick it up?'

Edie picked up the knife and ran it under the tap. She handed it to her mother and waited.

‘I . . . I like to get some fresh air. Sometimes I need time to myself . . .' Katherine chopped the potato in half, into quarters, dropped the pieces – too quickly – into the pot on the range. Boiling water splashed up and caught the back of her hand.
Hell's bells.
She ran her hand under cold running water.

‘Are you all right, Mum?'

Katherine turned and gazed at her daughter. She had looked so like Edie at the same age, yet how different their lives were. Katherine had had to look after all her younger brothers and sisters. With her parents out or working, she'd be left to care for the ‘babies'.

Robbie would be thirteen in January and even Edie was older than she'd been.

She blushed. Her mother was not . . .

But it was never more than a couple of hours, was it? She had to remember to take her watch. She had to make sure she was away for no more than an hour – no, that wasn't enough, not by the time she walked there and back – one and a half, two: surely the children would be all right for an hour and a half? Wouldn't they?

‘Mum? Are you all right?'

‘Yes, I'm fine . . . You have to be careful with boiling water. Best to slip the vegetables in very gently . . .' She turned off the tap and dried her hands, carried on peeling potatoes.

‘Mum?'

‘Yes?'

‘You didn't used to.'

‘Didn't used to what?' She chopped and carried the potatoes on the wooden board to the pot.
Carefully now. Don't do it again.

‘You didn't used to go out at night.'

Katherine stared at the boiling, thickening water. She could feel Edie staring. She did not look up.

*

Robbie would pretend he was asleep when his mother came into his room. He wanted to throw his arms around her, to beg her to stay.

He listened to her footsteps descend the staircase, heard the back door open and click shut, his ears so finely tuned he could imagine her footsteps, the gate opening and closing, the sound of her breathing, the way it drifted further and still further away in the night air.

One night, before the moon rose, he put his coat on over his nightgown, pulled on his shoes and crept out behind her, following her down Adelaide Road. Once she stopped and turned, looked back as if she knew someone was there. She looked for one long moment, past the telegraph pole, past wood and wool, skin and bone, now joined as one creature; she looked into thin air, then turned and continued walking.

He followed, careful to make no sound, turning into the College grounds, watching her walk up into the town belt. He followed a little way in but couldn't see, worried that she'd hear the crackle of branches or broken bottles, worried that he'd trip and call out as he fell. And then in the distance he saw the lighted lamp, her silhouette, a man reach out towards her.

*

Edie heard Robbie slip out at night. She watched him from the darkness of their mother's upstairs window, the bed still made from the morning, too neat, too cold. Empty. She looked over the street, watched the flicker of movement as he walked down Adelaide Road, then disappeared.

She lay in bed unable to sleep, listening.

Once, when she heard him climb back up the stairs, she went out to him. ‘Where have you been?' she asked. ‘Where's Mum?'

He looked at her and said nothing. He went into his room and closed the door.

When Yung opened the shop, the stink repelled him. Someone had urinated over the door during the night. A drunk making his way from the Tramways, he thought, as he washed it down with a solution of carbolic acid and hot water.

It kept happening. Yung spoke to Mrs Paterson, Mr Mackenzie, Mr Wilson, Mr Krupp. No one else had a problem.

One morning it was faeces smeared in arcs over the front window. Afterwards Yung washed with soap and hot water, smelling his hands, then washing them again and again until his skin felt tight and pale and papery. Mei-lin offered him oil to rub in.

When they woke each morning, as they descended the stairs, each of them felt a certain dread. Even the relief of finding nothing never set them fully at ease.

Yung wanted to see Katherine every night, could tell by the way she held him and held him before they parted that she wanted this too. But she would not meet him more than two, perhaps three nights a week. The children, she said.

He sighed. She had changed his mindset. His vocabulary. He stopped himself now when he went to say
gweilo
; stopped himself mid-sentence and said,
sai yan
, westerner, instead.

There on the shop floor, surrounded by apples and pears and bananas, he'd spoken in his halting English and Katherine had listened. She'd spoken slowly, simply, choosing her words carefully, and he'd listened. He'd listened intensely, as if to music or a teacher who spoke an unfamiliar dialect. There were words he didn't understand, words she didn't understand. They would try to explain, their hands moving in the air like figures in a puppet show, their voices raised as if their lack of comprehension were the fault of a special kind of deafness. Yet over the years he had become more fluent.

And now, now that they met at night, now that they touched, everything had changed. She would come into the shop on her way back from work and they'd speak a little coolly, look at each other and try not to look, aware of other customers, even passersby on the footpath outside. He would hand her a paper bag of apples or a wrapped cabbage, and sometimes his hand would brush hers.

And all he could think of was the bed he made for her under the destroyed tree, the intense warmth as he came down on her. As he entered.

‘How long have you been working for me, Katherine? I've never seen you looking so good.

‘Do you remember what you were like? A lost puppy. You were! And now look at you. Mr Newman was saying to me the other day, “That Katherine McKechnie, she's lost ten years off that pretty face of hers.” He says I've done you a world of good.'

Mrs Newman laughed. She put her pen down and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘So who is he, Katherine?

‘Come on, Katherine, I know that look – you're like a blushing bride. I swear if I didn't know better, you'd break into song as you typed my letters. You're in love, Katherine. Who is he?

‘No, I haven't heard any rumours. You've obviously been careful, but you used to be so punctual. No, I'm not concerned if now and then you're five or ten minutes late. Though love can be injurious to one's health if one doesn't get enough sleep . . .

‘I'm not going to tell anyone, Katherine, not even Mr Newman. I understand the life of a widow with children is hardly conducive to romantic entanglements. What man wants a used chalice, as they say, let alone another man's children?

‘Is he married? No?

‘Oh.

‘Well, you certainly are full of surprises.'

Mrs Newman picked up her pen, wrote a few words. Crossed them out.

‘You should be careful . . .

‘Katherine. I have nothing against the Chinese. They're a hardworking race, they keep pretty much to themselves, and they don't deserve the vilification granted them in the newspapers. But—

‘Katherine, listen. What does your fellow Briton see, the one who struggles to put bread and dripping on the table? The Chinamen undercut us with prices that would put a decent working man in the poorhouse. They take work away from impoverished laundrywomen. They suck the country dry and then return to the Flowery Land with everything that is rightfully ours. That's what people say, and you know it.

‘Katherine, don't look at me like that, I'm only trying to open your eyes. At least you should be careful of your reputation.

‘Yes, I realise you're being careful. Otherwise I'm sure I would have heard about this a long time ago . . .

‘But Katherine, make sure you're doubly careful. You may be a widow, but your husband was a respected member of the community . . .'

Mrs Newman burst into donkey-like laughter. She convulsed, ending in a loud snort. ‘Oh, Katherine you are a party! Of course I know women aren't just appendages of their husbands! But, seriously Katherine, you must realise that it's only the lowest class of women who consort with Chinamen. Those who have nothing to lose.

‘All right, so there might be a few respectable women who marry Chinamen. Ladies who play the piano at church and fall in love while working for the Lord among the heathen. These are the kind of women who answer the call of God to the darkest heart of Africa or China and die in childbirth or of some unspeakable tropical disease.

‘Katherine, listen to me. Did you know that if you marry an alien, you lose your British citizenship? No, I didn't think so. A woman gets married and she might as well be an infant or a lunatic or an idiot. I wish I was joking. You marry a Chinaman and you lose the right to vote, you won't get the old-age pension, Katherine, you lose everything. And if you're thinking of living in sin, God forbid, you must have heard of the cases that have gone through the court? Doesn't
Truth
love to report such cases? Low-class women living with Chinamen. I've heard it said that they're better treated by the John than their drunken husbands, but Katherine, the police have picked up women from Haining Street and charged them with vagrancy and being without means of support. They've taken British children away from their mothers – despite the mothers protesting that the children are well cared for – because the house was frequented by Chinamen!

‘He doesn't live in Haining Street? Katherine, it's a matter of appearances. He's a Chinaman. That makes him worse than a Jew and maybe a little better than a dog. Maybe. Do you think they'd pick up a woman who was living with a white man, even a drunkard, and charge her with vagrancy? Do you think they'd take away her children?

‘Katherine, I'm telling you this for your own good. Everything you do or don't do has its consequences. Just make sure you are prepared for them.'

What was it? He wanted to know why she held back. Why she did not respond to his kisses.

She did not know what to say. She could hear Mrs Newman's words but could not tell him. ‘The children know I come out at night,' she said.

For a moment there was silence. Then he drew her to him, kissed her hair. ‘Come,' he said, taking her by the hand, leading her out from the cover of trees, back through the College grounds, down to the city.

It was a clear night. A full moon. She was afraid with such bright moonlight even at ghost hour, as he called it, when the living slept and only the dead walked the streets. What if someone saw them?

But he was wearing a hat, he said. If someone came, he would look down or away. She could do the talking. No one would see he was Chinese.

She asked where they were going. She was anxious about leaving the children for too long. And what about the police? Didn't they patrol the streets at night? What if a constable stopped them? But he put his finger to her lips and led her down the promenade – the path through gardens and trees – between Cambridge and Kent Terraces. They walked through stillness, through shadow and moonlit brightness, the statue of Queen Victoria looming ever closer before them. Katherine stopped and placed her hand on the granite pedestal, looked up at the great bronze figure. She looked old, hard, and yet she'd loved her Albert.

‘Come,' he said again, and they walked past the Zealandia Hotel, past the City Destructor chimneys, to the silent boats, the empty baths, the sweep of the harbour along Oriental Parade.

He laughed at the name; told her this was his street, not Adelaide Road, not Haining Street, not Frederick or Taranaki or Tory. He told her to look at the moon and street lights reflected in black water. Had she ever seen it like this at night? The most beautiful street in Wellington. This Chinese street where no Chinese lived.

He came from behind and held her in his arms, told her to look again at earth and sky and water. Could she see how the world turned silver? People died, he told her, because they were afraid. They did not go out at night on dangerous water. They did not see the earth as it turned overnight to silver.

She gazed at the ripples of light on blackness. But people died in dangerous water. She turned to face him, told him it didn't even have to be dangerous. Her husband fell drunk into the harbour one night. They pulled him out in the morning.

He was silent for a while. Then he told her there were two ways to die. One was . . . he looked at her, uncertain how to express it in English.

‘Inevitable?' she said. ‘It comes to everyone?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes'. The corners of his mouth lifted. But then he looked at her intently. The other way, he said, this inside death, was not . . . inevitable. People took it in their hands, they held it and would not let go. Some people did this and did not know. Some people knew what they were doing.

He kissed her eyelid. Told her they were born for dangerous water.

She looked up at him. Shivered.

‘You're cold,' he said. He put his coat over her shoulders, and they turned and walked back along the harbour, past the bereft boats, back towards the city and home.