Extract: A Respectable Veneer
Author:
Rachel Doré
Publisher:
Mower (Upstart Press)
ISBN:
9781990003592
Date published:
09 March 2023
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$35.00
Extracted from A Respentable Veneer by Rachel Doré (Mower, $35.00)
Chapter one
Ruby woke when the rattle of the train changed pitch. Perhaps they’d crossed a bridge. Soon, the clacking rhythm steadied. She closed her eyes again. It was too late; sleep had been dropped somewhere back up the line. Her hip was cramped. The arm she had around her sleeping daughter was numb. Flexing her legs, she was sharply reminded of the blister on her heel. Stupid of her to wear good shoes for the dash to the station. There had been just enough time to step out of her evening gown, have a quick wash and get into day clothes; no time for decisions.
The journey from Auckland seemed interminable. As Edie stirred and opened her eyes, Ruby straightened. Standing up to stretch was out of the question without drawing attention to herself. She leaned back.
From the carriage window the two of them watched the scenery change. Bushland and steep hillsides of blackened stumps were left behind. The train chuffed past slopes bristling with young pine. Paddocks of farm animals and haysheds were scenes straight out of a children’s book; a woman wearing an army greatcoat over her apron trudged behind a line of cows; a boy carried a bucket to a gate; drifts of smoke from a chimney veiled a line of dark trees in the background. Edie waved at an old man who lifted his arm as the train passed his paint-bare house.
Then there were timber mills, work sheds, the odd homestead with an orchard. More swards of green.
‘A palomino!’ cried Edie. ‘Mum, did you see?’
Ruby pressed her shoulders against the back of the seat. Edie had been pointing out horses ever since farmland came into view. It was just as well she’d slept some of the way. Now, Ruby wanted to settle back into the cradling rhythm and the blank calm that soothed her.
‘A mansion!’ Edie’s squeal rent Ruby’s hope of peace. ‘A real mansion!
Oh, Mum — you missed it.’
She hadn’t missed the grand old place. It was glimpsed over trees, with verandahs garlanded with some sort of climber, the foliage thinning in the grip of autumn. Half a picture, half-seen, half-imagined. Gone in a flash.
‘You should’ve looked,’ said Edie. ‘It was enormous. It prob’ly had seventy rooms at least!’
‘Shush!’ Ruby glanced at the bemused faces of fellow passengers and yanked Edie’s herringbone coat. ‘Sit down and be quiet!’
Before long, Edie was standing at the window again. She returned the salute of a gaggle of children standing by the tracks. The train rumbled past a cluster of modest houses, timber-framed stock yards and tin sheds. More paddocks; more animals. Ruby closed her eyes.
‘Glaxo?’ said Edie. ‘What’s Glaxo? That building…’
‘That’s where baby milk comes from, I suppose.’ Ruby twisted her neck to see, but it was behind them already.
Edie frowned and leaned back on her seat, pensive for a moment. Then she was back at the window.
A few old houses nestled next to sheds near the railway line. There were gravel driveways; big storage tanks: Atlantic, Caltex. They had reached the town outskirts. Swarms of men on bicycles left work yards, and cars of various vintages streamed onto the road. Men with homes to go to. Most likely they’d go to the pub first, to get a jug of beer in before six o’ clock closing time.
‘Look at that!’ Edie said. ‘Two steamrollers and trucks full of dirt. What are they doing?’
Ruby clenched her teeth. The train rattled on.
‘Ooh, they’re wrecking that place there–’ Edie had her finger on the glass. ‘What were they doing that for?’
‘For goodness’ sake! Be quiet and get your fingers off the window,’ said Ruby. ‘You’ll get yourself all dirty!’
‘Mum! Shops!’ Edie squealed. ‘Look!’
Ruby grabbed her daughter before she crossed the carriage to get another view through the opposite window. In truth, Ruby was just as interested to see the place, but she couldn’t allow Edie to show her up like that, behaving like an unruly rapscallion.
‘Sit down and behave!’ She pulled Edie’s coat again.
Edie plopped herself back on the seat with a sour frown.
Wide, flat roads on each side of the train line were banked with business premises of every kind. Edwardian buildings sat alongside more modern ones; old wooden shops and others with ornate plaster frontages pressed shoulder to shoulder under verandahs, and hotels as substantial as any to be found in Auckland.
The train slowed and chuffed through the town square with its rotunda, fountain and flower gardens. So it was true: the railway line really did run through the centre of the town. Carriage windows were shut against clouds of soot as the train slowed with a screech and rattle.
Passengers began to shift in their seats as the train neared the station. Men straightened their ties and donned their hats. Young women took out their compacts to see whether their makeup needed repairing and primped their hair. As the train groaned to a stop, people pulled bags and suitcases down from overhead luggage racks.
‘Are we here?’ asked Edie.
‘This is it,’ said Ruby. ‘Palmerston North.’
‘I’m glad.’ Edie cupped her hand to whisper. ‘I need to wee.’
Ruby groaned. ‘Why didn’t you go when I took you back on the train, before?’ As much as she loved her daughter, there were times… ‘Come on, then!’
She refused to allow herself to limp as she pushed through people on the busy platform to get Edie into the ladies’ restroom. As soon as a door swung open, Ruby bundled herself and Edie into the cubicle.
When they had finished, Ruby thrust Edie ahead of her and elbowed her way through the women and girls clustered in front of the mirrors. At the sinks, she dampened her hanky to give Edie’s face a fierce polish.
‘That’s better,’ Ruby lifted Edie’s chin with her thumb and turned the flawless face this way and that looking for a smut she might have missed. ‘Come along, chicken.’
The station platform was clouded with smut and steam. Someone bumped into Ruby’s shoulder, and instinctively, she snatched Edie’s wrist.
‘Don’t pull, Mum!’ Edie rubbed her eye with a knuckle. ‘Hurry up,’ Ruby said, ‘I want to get past this lot. Keep close!’
She hauled Edie through the jostling scrum that spilled out of the station to the roadside. People were already strung along the kerb, waiting for traffic to pass. A fellow struggling with a large suitcase was narrowly missed by a car as he made his way across.
The afternoon had chilled. The sooner they got to the hotel the better. Peering across the road between the parked and passing vehicles, she spotted the side street she needed.
A youth with a guitar strapped to his back lugged a duffle bag, dodged cars and bicycles to reach a woman who was watching him with her hand over her mouth. A short tide of people followed in his wake, some of them making for one of the hotels on the other side of the road. Young men made a show of sauntering into the traffic that did not stop; others escorted girlfriends, crossing zigzag fashion to avoid getting hit. Older men left gossiping wives to fend for themselves, eager for a quick beer before the pubs closed. Horns tooted. Louts shouted.
Ruby hunched her shoulders inside her coat and tightened her grip on Edie’s hand, ready to make a dash. Edie laughed as a gust of wind lifted someone’s hat, spinning it into the path of an old spoke-wheeled Ford and a klaxon horn sounded; a sleek sedan swerved; a woman on a bicycle wobbled dangerously close to a truck carrying a large pig in a wooden crate.
‘Quick!’ Ruby pulled Edie as they crossed. A slice of air whipped at her coat as a car passed behind them.
‘Did you see that truck with the pig on the back?’ said Edie when they reached the other side.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘The Railway Hotel,’ said Edie. ‘Is that where we’re going?’ ‘No. Come on.’
Miles back, just before the last time she’d dozed off, Ruby had asked a fellow passenger if there were any affordable private hotels near the railway station. The woman couldn’t recall the name of the place, and the directions were vague. ‘There are any number of places – but if you want cheap, look for the next street along, past The Masonic and past The Railway Hotel. Down David Street, it is. You’ll see it.’
Now, in the ebbing light, Edie dragged her feet as they passed the warm noise of the corner hotel and down the side street. A white cat shot out from a hedge, making Ruby jump.
‘A white cat could be good luck,’ said Edie.
‘I bloody well hope so!’ As far as Ruby was concerned, luck had always been a pretty slim straw to clutch at. ‘But never bank on luck,’ she added grimly.
The smell of food cooking wafted across the street. ‘I’m bloody starving,’ Edie groaned.
Ruby swatted at her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Stop swearing! I keep telling you – I won’t have you talking like a guttersnipe!’
‘I’m cold and I’m starving,’ Edie whined. ‘It’s been hours and hours since I had that pie.’
‘Oh, do stop grizzling!’ said Ruby, pausing to ease the pain in her foot. ‘You’re not a baby. You know, if you carry on behaving like one at ten years of age, people will say you’re a half-wit! Now, come along, we’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’ said Edie.
Answering was more trouble than it was worth.
‘D’you know you’ve got a ladder?’ Edie said. ‘And there’s blood.’
Ruby stopped and twisted around to peer at her ruined stocking and the state of her heel. ‘Damn. I must look a sight. I suppose my hair’s a mess, too.’ Strands of untamed, tawny hair tickled her face, and she tried to smooth them behind her ear.
‘Look, you could wear this.’ Edie opened her fist, and a furl of green- and rose-coloured material unfolded itself.
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Out of my pocket. I didn’t pinch it, honestly. I found it on the ground when you went to get the pie. It was just lying there. Someone nearly trod on it.’
‘That was back in Taumarunui.’ Ruby held the scarf up by two corners. ‘It’s silk.’
The wind snatched at it. The square of colour seemed to want to lift and escape from her fingers.
‘I looked around, but there wasn’t anybody looking for it,’ said Edie. ‘You should’ve handed it in.’
‘You said I had to stay by the ticket office and not go anywhere, and not talk to anybody.’ Edie shrugged. ‘And the man was busy. Anyhow, it’s finders keepers.’
Ruby clicked her tongue. Starting a new life meant teaching her daughter the finer points of right and wrong – lessons she’d hardly needed in the warren of Freemans Bay’s back streets. Right now, there were more important priorities. And the scarf was lovely.
‘Go on, put it over your hair,’ said Edie. ‘You’ll look like a film star in a magazine.’
Ruby knotted the scarf under her chin and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. ‘Don’t talk rubbish.’
‘There! Just like in a magazine!’ Edie slipped her fingers into her mother’s gloved hand.
Ruby’s reply was the return of a gentle reassuring squeeze with her thumb on the narrow hand.
‘Come on, chicken,’ she said.