Survivor (4 page)

‘Don’t forget our
arrangement tomorrow,’ he said, and rubbed his crotch in a suggestive manner.
She had walked on quickly without stopping.

As she saw it, she had two choices. One
was just to not turn up, but there was always the danger he might come to the house
and alert her parents to what had been going on. The only other choice was to meet
him and show him what she was made of. The latter appealed to her much more, and she
knew it would make her feel better about herself.

But now, as she spotted him up ahead
sitting on the grass smoking a cigarette, her stomach lurched with fear. He looked
round as she got nearer, but he didn’t even smile or stand up to greet
her.

‘I’m not stopping,’
she said as she got within earshot. ‘I just came to tell you I don’t
want to see you any more.’

‘Is that so?’ he replied
with a lazy sneer. ‘You could’ve said that yesterday and saved me the
effort of walking up here, but I guess this is the usual Sheila’s trick to get
me to say something soppy. No chance of that, love, you’ve picked the wrong
man.’

She went right up to him and looked down
at him. ‘I certainly did pick the wrong man,’ she retorted.
‘You’ve treated me shamefully, and I never want to see you
again.’

He jumped up then. ‘I gave you
what you wanted, didn’t I?’

‘Do you really think any girl just
wants that?’ She was incredulous at his arrogance.

‘You were desperate for it,’
he said. ‘All that fluttering your eyelashes at me and the come-on looks.
Sheilas like you are ten a penny. They lure you into screwing them, and then they
want you to marry them.’

‘
Marry
you!’ she
said indignantly. ‘You fancy yourself,
don’t you? I wouldn’t marry you if I was paid
a million pounds to do it. You’re uncouth, arrogant and plain nasty. I
can’t imagine what made me think there was anything to like about you. But
I’ve said my piece, and I’m going home now.’

‘Not so fast,’ he said,
grabbing her arm. ‘No two-bit whore insults me and gets away with
it.’

‘You didn’t mind insulting
me with your animal behaviour,’ she shot back, and tried to get out of his
grip.

He dug his fingers harder into her arm
so it hurt. ‘You think you are so high and mighty,’ he snarled at her,
putting his face right up to hers. ‘What’ve you got to be so snooty
about? They say your old man is a war hero, but he’s a bloody Frog, and they
give the French medals just for wiping their own arse. As for your ma, well, from
what I’ve heard, she jumped on the first single man who turned up here and was
up the spout at her wedding.’

Suddenly Mariette realized she’d
been very stupid to come up here where there was no one to run to for help if Sam
turned really nasty.

‘Let me go,’ she
pleaded.

‘I’ll let you go
alright,’ he said. ‘But only after you’ve sucked me
off.’

Mariette didn’t know what he meant
by that until he began to unbutton his fly, pulled out his penis and started pushing
her down towards it.

‘On your knees,’ he
commanded her. ‘And do it good.’

Just the thought of such a thing made
her gag, and she had no intention of doing anything so utterly disgusting. But she
was aware that he was a great deal stronger than her, and she knew the only way she
could get the better of him was through guile.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself
to grin up at him. ‘I suppose I could … for old times’
sake,’ she said as she
reached out
to grasp his penis. It was still flaccid, and it felt sweaty and nasty, but the
moment her hand went around it and she bent her knees as if to kneel down,
thankfully, he let go of her arm.

Under her grasp his penis rose up as
thick as a baby’s arm. She looked up and saw he had his head back and his eyes
closed. It was the moment.

In one swift movement she brought her
knee up and thumped him right in his testicles, then turned and fled as fast as she
could.

She glanced back to see him doubled up
with pain. He sank to his knees on the grass, holding himself and making a bellowing
sound.

It was shock that made her cry. Her
mother and Mog had always warned her not to trust strangers or allow people to take
liberties with her. But such warnings had never meant much before because, until she
met Sam, everyone she met had been good and decent.

Yet she did remember a few years back,
when times were really hard because of the Depression, how anxious her mother had
been when gaunt-looking men with ragged clothes came to the door asking for
food.

‘Don’t open the door to
anyone when I’m not here,’ her mother had warned her. ‘Hard times
make people desperate.’

Mariette had found it odd that, after
warning her against such men, both her mother and Mog would give the men food and
drink, and often bathed and treated the blisters on their feet.

‘They can’t help the way
they look, they are hungry and exhausted,’ Mog explained to her. ‘There
are men like them all over the world now, travelling about in the hope of finding
work. You’ve been sheltered from the harsh reality of what the Depression
means for most people. Luckily, we’ve
managed with the vegetables we grow, the cow and
chickens, and your father catching fish for us. Otherwise, we might be starving
too.’

Mariette did start to notice things
after that. No one could afford to have a new dress or a hat made, and so her mother
and Mog weren’t earning any money. She became aware that they both ate like
birds so that she and her brothers could have more food. At night they would only
light one lamp, old dresses were taken apart and made into something else, and both
she and her brothers were expected to go down to the shore every day to pick up
driftwood for the fire.

Her father spoke out in disgust about
the relief camps that were supposed to help men feed their families. But in order to
qualify for the pitifully small amount of relief money, they had to go to labour
camps miles away from their homes. There they built roads with only a pick and
shovel, cleared undergrowth, dug ditches or carried out hard, soul-destroying and
often pointless work. They lived in tents with dirt floors, and the food they
received was barely fit to give a dog.

She also learned that many children in
the cities were dressed in rags, without shoes, and that babies were dying because
there was no milk for them.

Tens of thousands had lost their jobs,
shops and factories had closed down, and farmers were facing ruin. For many people
the soup kitchen was the only thing that kept them from dying of starvation.

Her family clustered around the wireless
at night to hear ‘Uncle Scrim’, just as people all over New Zealand did,
but along with the shared laughter they heard reports of hunger marches in England
and even riots in Wellington and other cities in New Zealand.

Thankfully, things had begun to improve
in the last year. Men were leaving the relief camps and going home, factories
were opening again, and the banks were
becoming more lenient with the farmers. There was even free milk for all
schoolchildren. Yet the only work Mariette could find was helping her mother and Mog
with their dressmaking and millinery. She wanted something of her own choosing, but
there just wasn’t anything else in Russell.

She dried her eyes as she reached the
small group of shacks at the bottom of the hill, because she knew all the Maoris who
lived in them and certainly didn’t want anyone seeing her in tears. As she
passed the Komekes’ house, Anahera, the younger sister of her friend Matui,
waved to her. She was only fifteen, and heavily pregnant. Mog had commented recently
how another mouth to feed in that family was the last thing they needed.

The sight of Anahera’s swollen
belly brought Mariette up sharply. What if she herself was pregnant?

She didn’t know why she
hadn’t considered the possibility before – after all, she’d had the
whole baby thing explained properly to her at the age of twelve. So she didn’t
have the excuse of ignorance as, perhaps, Anahera had.

Fear clutched at her heart and made her
feel nauseous. It was bad enough that she’d allowed herself to be used by Sam,
without the thought of carrying his baby too.

Her parents and Mog were generally
lenient, understanding people. Mariette couldn’t count the number of times
they had stood by people who had shocked their more narrow-minded neighbours. They
never sat in judgement on anyone, and they were the first to offer help to anyone in
need.

But she couldn’t hope for
understanding about her becoming pregnant by a rough man she didn’t even
love.

Mog knew something was wrong the moment
Mariette came in. Her eyes, so much like Belle’s, had a fearful glint in them;
she looked edgy, as if she was
expecting to be caught out about something. When Mog asked what was wrong, Mariette
said she was afraid of being late getting home to finish the wedding dress.

Mog’s active sixth sense told her
there was a great deal more to it than that, but she didn’t ask anything else.
She’d learned years ago with Belle that to push for an explanation usually
resulted in her clamming up permanently. Mariette was much the same.

They were now sitting either side of the
workroom table, with Janet Appleby’s satin wedding dress spread out between
them. Sewing pearls to the hem was an intricate task which required patience and
excellent eyesight, but it was the kind of job they both enjoyed and, usually, when
they worked together they chatted and laughed.

But today Mariette looked haunted;
she’d barely said a word since she sat down at the table, put on her thimble
and began sewing. Normally she would have said where she’d walked to and who
she’d seen, often making Mog laugh with sarcastic comments about the clothes
that passed as ‘Sunday best’ on some of their neighbours. Women in
Russell were not very fashion-conscious – many of them wore dresses that only fitted
where they touched.

As Mariette had been such a tomboy when
she was younger, Mog was both surprised and delighted when she took to sewing. She
was now almost as adept as Mog, and far better than her mother. Mog often remarked
that her tiny, neat stitches looked like the work of a fairy.

She looked over her glasses and watched
Mariette as she rethreaded her needle. She had a true amalgamation of her
parents’ best features, with Belle’s eyes and Etienne’s sharp
cheekbones. But the strawberry-blonde hair, which was a common result from one dark
and one blonde
parent, gave her a
distinctive look that was all her own. She also had an enviable complexion, as clear
and flawless as a porcelain doll.

‘You’re very quiet,’
Mog said casually. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘No,’ Mariette retorted, a
bit too sharply. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to be quiet.’

After another twenty minutes of silence,
Mog felt compelled to probe. ‘If there’s something bothering you, do
tell me. I might be able to help,’ she said.

Mariette looked up from her sewing, and
Mog saw a flicker of something – maybe the need to confide? – in her face.

‘Nothing’s bothering
me,’ she said. ‘Well, apart from wishing I had a job.’

Mog was fairly certain that wasn’t
the truth. ‘What about your mum’s idea, nursing?’

‘Hmm,’ Mariette responded.
‘I don’t think I’m really cut out for that. All those bedpans,
vomit and blood. But it would be good to go to Auckland.’

‘You want to run away from someone
here?’

Mog knew she’d hit the nail right
on the head by the way Mariette’s eyes widened – even though she gave a
humourless laugh, as if such a thing was impossible.

‘Of course not. But there
aren’t any opportunities for me here, are there?’

‘You never know what’s round
the corner,’ Mog said evenly. ‘Summer’s coming, and the people who
come here for sailing and fishing are from all walks of life.’

‘Is that all everyone thinks I
want? To find a husband?’

‘It’s what most girls
want,’ Mog said.

‘Well, I don’t want to spend
my life cooking, cleaning and washing clothes,’ Mariette snapped. ‘And
that’s what marriage is about, isn’t it? Janet Appleby might be stupid
enough
to think that getting married is
just about a lovely dress and a big party, but not me.’

Mog shook her head in disapproval.
‘You are far too young to be so cynical,’ she said. ‘And very
wrong too. Marriage is about sharing a life with a man you love, nurturing your
children, supporting one another. I didn’t get married until I was almost
middle-aged, and we only had a few years together before Garth was taken by the
Spanish flu, but they were the best years of my life. Look at your parents, Mari –
they are still as much in love as they were when they got married. I think your
mother would tell you marriage is about a great deal more than washing clothes,
cooking and cleaning.’

‘But they had to get married,
didn’t they?’ Mariette asked. ‘Mum was pregnant on her wedding
day.’

Mog was shocked to hear such a thing
coming from Mariette’s lips, and wondered who had told her. But she
wasn’t going to deny it, not even if most people saw it as a disgrace.

‘The reason they married was
because they couldn’t bear to live apart,’ she said reprovingly.
‘And, in my opinion, that is the only reason to get married.’

‘But you’d all be furious if
I got pregnant and I wasn’t married.’

It was Mariette’s tone, rather
than her actual words, that made Mog suspicious. She had spent much of her early
life listening to conversations between other women and had learned to detect hidden
undercurrents, to hear the faint inflections in remarks that revealed what the
speaker meant, but couldn’t actually put into words. Belle claimed she was
impossible to fool.

‘Are you pregnant, Mari?’
she asked gently. ‘Is that what all this is about? Going out today to meet
someone, the long silences since you got back? You’re worried?’