The Paua Tower Read Online Free Page A

to him. He could guess why she was crying: it had happened so often.
    ‘Is it?’
    His wife nodded.
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    And he was sorry, not because she wasn’t pregnant but because she was crying. He wanted her to stop. He couldn’t go on being happy with her weeping. The exaltation he knew minutes before had fled.
    ‘Don’t cry, it does no good, makes things worse. We’re here together, a new place, a new life. Who knows what will happen? Everything will work out. Maybe it’s here a baby will come,’ said Roland, squeezing Lal’s arm with his fingers.
    The mention of the word baby threw Lal into louder grief. It was always like that, though Roland had momentarily forgotten. He took Lal’s handkerchief from where she kept it in her sleeve, wiped her nose and dried her eyes. ‘I hate you crying — it makes me feel bad, guilty,’ he said.
    Lal made a gulping sound and the sobbing eased and stopped.
    ‘But you want it as much as I do, don’t you?’ said Lal.
    ‘Of course, very much.’ Roland had the glib responses of a catechism, for this often-repeated conversation travelled well-worn paths.
    ‘I want it for you too,’ said Lal, blowing her nose.
    ‘I know,’ said Roland, looking at a brass memorial on the wall extolling some former parishioner whose children would ‘rise up and call her blessed’. He hoped Lal didn’t see it.
    Roland, though personally indifferent about becoming a father, had expected a family as inevitable. Marriage brought babies, children, the full quiver — some God-given stamp of approval. Lal’s inability to conceive surprised and confused him. Her subsequent hysterical grief seemed selfish, annoying, frightening . The smiling, agreeable girl he had married had beenreplaced by a sad woman wearing forced cheerfulness like an ill-fitting dress. Gone was the wife who pressed her hand into his, hugged him in the kitchen, or surprised him with a kiss as he polished his shoes. In bed was the worst, for Lal had grown gluttonous , relentless in pursuit of conception. Roland felt like a machine, an animal at stud, and it sickened him, put him off; increasingly he turned away when she clutched him. He wondered how other childless couples coped, but his parishioners had never shared such confidences. Roland was a clergyman and clergymen knew how to manage such things. He didn’t.

Chapter 3
    S tella Morgan sat on the bench outside the billiard saloon, wearing her homemade print dress and crying. Not twenty minutes before she had gone into the kitchen of the Railway Tearooms, hung her cardigan on a peg, put a wraparound pinny over her clothes, collected four dozen eggs from the safe and filled up the largest saucepan ready to boil. It was what she had done every morning for the past three years: egg sandwiches were one of the most popular items on the menu.
    ‘That you, Stella?’ called Mrs Rhodes, poking her head from the storeroom-cum-office at the end of the kitchen. Mrs Rhodes, a plump, smooth-faced woman, wearing an out-of-date print frock with a dropped waist and a shapeless blue cardigan, had the appearance of a dressed-up cushion. ‘Pop in here when you have a minute.’
    ‘Coming, Mrs R,’ said Stella, wiping her wet hands on the roller towel hanging on the back of the door.
    It was the moment Mrs Rhodes had been dreading. Should have done it weeks ago of course, but Stella was such a great girl, very reliable and a corker cook: a real ace at Neenish tarts, lamingtons and Belgian biscuits.
    ‘Don’t know how to tell you this, Stell,’ said Mrs Rhodes, holding a cup of tea in one hand and an open accounts book in the other, ‘specially when I know your dad’s not in work, but …’
    ‘Have I done something wrong?’ asked Stella.
    ‘Course not,’ said Mrs Rhodes. ‘You’re one of the best. It’s, well … you know … people just aren’t coming here these days, even the Limited passengers aren’t. I thought by laying off Lois in October we might scrape by but