WELLINGTON BLUE

Carla banged on the doorjamb even though, of course, the door was open.


'Bartie!'


Bartie was behind the counter with Annie on his knee. Annie's tiny thigh was quivering.


'Girls girls! Give the girls something to drink Kil.'


Kil snapped open a beer.


I laced one arm around Kil, at least I tried to, but of course it was a hand laced around his neck. His hand went instantly up my skirt. I looked down at him and wondered what to do next. Sit down? Lift him up?


Meanwhile Carla had dispatched Annie simply by ignoring her and going straight over and kissing Bartie who was now looking into her eyes as if he had found God.


I was taken by the sight until I felt Kil move to take my hand in both of his.


'These are for you'.


He put a pair of earrings into my hand. He must have had them in his pocket. They were blue glass and far too hippyish for my taste at the time.


'Sit down,' he said.


He slipped a tiny hook into each of my ears.


'Good.' he said, 'Good'. And then: 'You guys should go home. Carla doesn't really like old Bart, she's just pissed.'


I decided he was right and collected my friend like I was scooping up a pile of laundry and took us both home. I felt the horrible sobriety you feel before the hangover that you know is going to kick in; ill, remorseful, dirty, self-betraying etc. etc. I took the earrings off as soon as I got back to the flat and hardly looked at them again, ever. I knew I had them but I never wore them, it may have been the blue that warned me off.


They were a clear dark blue, a blue I have always thought of as Wellington blue, a blue that went with the southerly, a bitter critical wind that attacks the 'V' above the neckline worst even if your knees a bare as well. It attacks the heart so to speak. A stripping wind that left me as raw as gossip, especially me, one of the McKays, me with the brilliant brothers, the conquering father.


It was the youngest of the brilliant bros who said, 'You've got to cut lose Tash, you've got to get away from us'.


So I came north where the blues were aqua and flaccid and the mud-coloured sea was welcoming and the town was a whore, not me.


Everything should and could have turned out fine. I had a job and a place to stay with my friend Carla. Our landlord Bartie ran an Adult Shop next door with a dwarf called Kilpatrick on security.


'Kilpatrick like the All Black,' I said, having never met a dwarf before. The dwarf stared ahead saying nothing.


'That's Kirkpatrick you plonker,' said Bartie.


I liked the way he insulted me. I had always liked that sort of thing. It meant I could insult him back which was my way of playing.


'Glad to see you've put that brain cell to some use,' I said. 'Now, what will you do with the other one?'


In answer Bartie put me in a soft half-Nelson and kneed me out the door. I liked that even more and it made the dwarf laugh.


I was always careful to pretend I didn't notice the dwarf was a dwarf. When I passed on my way home, if he was there, I would say, 'Gidday,' and pretend he had answered me, and ask, ' How're things with you?'


He would offer me one of his Benson and Hedges and I would accept whether I felt like one or not. His eyes would race up and down my front just like a normal guy only of course his eyes were closer to what he was looking at.


At first his attitude annoyed me. I found myself angry that he thought he was good enough for me, but I often felt that about men, only to decide later, after a few drinks, that they were good enough after all.


On hot nights, because there were no backyards and a lot to see, most of the street would be out on the front doorsteps or hanging around the Lost Bird Café. I went with Carla and our flatmate Malcolm across the road to climb over the fence of the Girls Grammar School and swim in their pool. Then we'd barefoot it back across the road with our towels around us and one of us would order something at the café while the other two went upstairs and waited.


One night Kilpatrick said he'd bring our order up for us. He had a deep voice just like a grown man, not a bad voice either. When he spoke more than about six words he would redden up like a fireball.


Malcolm said, 'Here's your boyfriend,' when Kilpatrick brought the stuff up. The Lost Bird made long-slice toasted sandwiches from good whole grain bread. They made real espresso coffee which wasn't common in those days.


I said, 'Fuck off,' really seriously to Malcolm. I didn't want him encouraging Kilpatrick even though I couldn't help encouraging him myself. I couldn't help encouraging anyone, it was my way; I just talked to people and that seemed to be all that was needed. I'd even slept with Malcolm who had felt encouraged enough to ask.


Kilpatrick drank a bit. When he drank he caught up on all the talking he hadn't had the courage for normally. He'd stand in the doorway of the Adult Shop with one hand against the doorjamb and complain about Bartie and the girls, Trixie and Annie, who worked the street outside. He sold them their drugs or just collected money from them, I wasn't sure which. I thought he would make a good drug seller because of his silence and the way no one would think a dwarf would be like that. We guessed he went with both the girls or tried to, because he would call out to them when he was drunk. Things like: 'What's wrong with my money you cunt?' It was a bit of a show for café customers from Te Atatu South who came in to town on Fridays and Saturdays especially to see this sort of thing.


Trix was a good-looking young junkie who had plenty of customers and was kept busy all night. Annie was a wasted unlucky woman who would talk about her lack of business as if it was nothing to do with her, just something like the weather or the traffic. We knew she slept with Bartie because he would say things conversationally to us like: 'Not a bad wee root Annie, not a bad wee root at all.'


One day, with Kilpatrick standing right there, Bartie said to me. 'He fancies you. Don't you Kil? He's got an eye for you. He's made you some earrings. You should try him. He's not bad according to Trix. You should talk to her about it. Trix!' He started calling Trixie from the other side of the road. ' Trix!'


Carla and I raced up the stairs laughing our heads off, but later, as usual, when we had had something to drink, it seemed like an interesting idea. Carla was the same as me; neither of us could stick to the rules. Having broken them all, it was like a vase you couldn't break twice, there was no point in going back, you might as well go on as before.


'You could have the dwarf and I could have Bartie,' Carla said, laughing hard because she thought Bartie was disgusting. 'Bartie,' she said making farting sounds with her lips 'Bbbbartie'.
One night we got home so drunk we rolled out of our cab in our flash clothes right onto the footpath outside the shop. Upstairs we got a second wind and thought, 'Right, lets do it'. We had been dumped by two flashy guys at Rolfie's and had taken it badly. One was a guy Carla was quite keen on. I didn't care much one way or the other about my guy, but no one likes to be dumped. The guys had gone off with a couple of girls who looked sweet and were definitely almost sober. Carla and I were beginning to feel what we were: No longer the youngest or the prettiest but nearly always the loudest and the drunkest. We wanted to be with men who adored us, who were blown away by us, so, as women have done through the ages, we lowered our sights.


I was embarrassed not to be wearing the earrings when I saw Kil again but he never said anything. He just nodded when I said 'Gidday' the same as before.


Carla, Malcolm and I shifted to a flat above Ponsonby Road. Obviously, we saw less of the nightlife on the street after that. From a distance we could see how evil it looked: Junkie prostitutes getting screwed by fat shop owners, disabled drug pushers. We had been visitors from another place, still with our passports out: White skin, a good education, parents who were shockable and capable of bailing us out.


Carla was friendly with Alice from the Café. Sometimes Bartie would be in there chewing the fat with Alice's husband Raymond. Kil and Trixie had finally got serious. They were very sweet together apparently. I wondered how many earrings she got.


Years later, maybe two or three years later, we saw in the paper: 'Dwarf and Girlfriend Convicted of Murder'. Just like a book, Kil had stabbed Trixie's boyfriend, who had apparently been around all along though no one had mentioned him. How had Kil done it we wondered? How angry would he have to be to overpower a grown man? What would a dwarf look like enraged and murderous? Had he had it in him all along?

There seems to be a time in life when the bits of your past you were embarrassed about come back into fashion in your own mind and you become prouder of them and want to demonstrate what an interesting time you once had, even though you are now (say) an office manager for a small software company and living in Avondale.


I try and interest my daughters in what I've done and where I've been. I try and make it sound like an adventurer's tour of a lost world not the bad end of a party when no one has the cab fare home. I don't tell them about the bludgers or the way blood sisters can fall out over salesmen and con-artists in a town too small for fresh starts. I don't talk about it because I don't understand why I lost what I lost, I don't remember who barred me from going home, or why, driving south, I feel too chilled to go past Hunterville.


I stick with stories of the north: The Queen Street riot, the vintage car that broke down only at night, the boyfriend who swam the harbour.


So far I've never taken out the blue earrings and said ' These were made for me by a murdering dwarf'.

I like to think that Kil saw my true goodness when he sent me home with my blue glass earrings instead of claiming what was on offer. Maybe he was some one who could anticipate regret and saw it there, lying in wait for both of us

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