Blue Smoke (2 page)

But before they could take more than two steps, and to the accompaniment of a painfully high-pitched creaking and groaning sound, the surface of the street thrust violently up to meet them. They fell to the ground instantly, the noise both deafening and disorienting them.

Tamar tried to rise, leaning first on one elbow and then the other, but felt as if a huge but invisible weight were relentlessly pinning her down. She lifted her head, astounded to see that every part of the street was rocking — buildings, telegraph poles, staggering people, cars, and the ground itself, rising and rolling like a heavy ocean swell. A crevasse opened in the middle of the street and Tamar grimaced as a woman fell to her knees, then tumbled shrieking into it.

To her left Keely screamed,
‘Mam
! Behind you!’

The facade of the shop behind Tamar was bulging ominously outwards, the plate-glass window bowing surreally and almost gracefully before it shattered with a resounding report, propelling millions of shards of sparkling glass out into the street. Tamar managed to duck her face in time, but felt a myriad of burning stings as tiny fragments of glass struck the back of her head and hands.

Dimly she heard Keely shouting again, then something massive slammed down on top of her.

‘Mam!
Mam
! Can you hear me?’

Tamar drew in a ragged breath to reply but winced in pain, choking on the thick dust that seemed to be filling her mouth. She
couldn’t see at all and Keely’s voice sounded miles away. Something was crushing her, and her ribs and legs ached; she couldn’t move, and could barely breathe.

Had she been buried alive? Was she about to die without even the chance to say goodbye to anyone? The thought of expiring right here on a Napier street under a ton of bricks hurled her into a panic, and her hands scrabbled wildly but ineffectually at the rubble entombing her.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered thickly. ‘No, not
yet
!’

Then she took as deep a breath as her searing ribs would allow, told herself sternly not to be so melodramatic and concentrated on trying to get up. It was then that she realised she wasn’t lying on her front at all, as she had first thought, but on her side with her right cheek jammed against the rough and hot tarseal. This explained why her face and mouth hurt so much. She couldn’t feel the touch of air on her anywhere, and if someone didn’t come and move whatever was squashing her soon, she could be in real trouble.

The ground jolted and dropped nauseatingly again, and Tamar’s heart lurched as she envisioned even more bricks and rubble crashing down on top of her. But none did, and the movement subsided to a series of trembles. She didn’t know it then, but after two and a half minutes of catastrophic upheaval, the worst of the earth quake had passed.

She heard muffled yelling, and felt movement against her left hand as someone dug at the rubble. Then suddenly air trickled across her skin, and fingers were touching her own.

‘Mam? Can you hear me? Mam?’

Tamar responded by squeezing Keely’s hand weakly, and heard her call out to someone, ‘She’s alive; she’s holding my hand! Help me!’

She felt more rubble being dug away, and faint light began
to filter into her temporary tomb. After a minute her head was uncovered and she squinted through scratchy, teary eyes at the daylight. And at Keely who crouched several feet away, her hat and shoes gone and covered with thick, white dust from head to toe.

‘Oh, Mam,’ Keely sobbed, tears cutting shiny tracks down her dirty face. ‘Oh my God, Mam, I thought you’d been killed!’

Tamar shook her head mutely. Not this time.

‘Are you hurt? Does anything hurt?’

‘My leg and my chest,’ Tamar wheezed.

Keely panicked momentarily and clutched the arm of the man squatting next to her. ‘Oh, God, she’s having a heart attack! Get a doctor!’

Tamar coughed painfully and cleared her throat raggedly. ‘I’m not, it’s my ribs. And I think my leg might be broken.’ Then she added crossly, ‘For God’s sake, Keely, you’re a nurse, stop dithering and have a look.’

‘I can’t see, there’s too much rubbish on you!’

‘Well, get it off then!’

Keely decided then that her mother certainly didn’t sound at death’s door, and struggled to pull herself together. A long time had passed since she had nursed, but she didn’t think she could have forgotten much. She grasped Tamar’s wrist, pressed two fingers against the fat vein at the base of the thumb, and counted; her mother’s pulse was fast but strong, a good sign.

She said to the man at her side, ‘Could you please help me get her out? I don’t think I can do it by myself.’

The man, whose own hat had disappeared and who had several bleeding scratches on his grimy face, nodded and began to dig. He was soon joined by several others, who looked shocked but determined to help.

‘Hold on, Mam, we’ll have you out in a minute,’ Keely soothed as she heaved bricks and pieces of wood off Tamar’s prostrate body.

‘We should take her down to the beach,’ one of the helpers suggested, ‘that’s where everyone else is heading. In case there’s another one.’

Keely stopped digging and watched closely as two men lifted a heavy wooden beam off her mother’s legs. Tamar flinched but managed not to cry out.

‘No,’ Keely said slowly after a moment. ‘No, I think we’ll be going up to the hospital.’

Tamar’s right leg was bent between knee and ankle at a very unnatural angle. The white of bone protruding through torn and bleeding flesh elicited a muffled groan of horror from one of the helpers.

‘Right!’ Keely declared authoritatively as she stood and brushed dust and dirt off her knees. ‘Find a flat board, a door would be ideal, and we’ll get her onto it. We have to move her now. If we …’

She was cut off in mid-order by another ominous rumbling. They all froze as if playing some sort of children’s game, legs straddled against the movement of the earth and eyes wide with fear. Then, mercifully, the tremor subsided.

‘Aftershock,’ someone said nervously.

Keely squatted down again and spoke quietly. ‘Mam, your leg is broken, quite badly. We need to get you to the hospital. It needs setting. Can you hang on until then?’

Tamar nodded, although she wasn’t so sure she could hang on. She was starting to feel rather faint, her chest felt constricted and the pain there was worsening, and there was a loud and disconcerting ringing in her ears.

She would be all right with Keely, she knew that, but Tamar wanted Kepa to be here as well. He would know what to do, he always did. And she needed him very much.

Keely sat holding her mother’s limp hand, waiting patiently for her to regain consciousness after the operation to set her leg.

Most of the buildings at Napier’s public hospital had been destroyed in the earth quake; sailors from the navy warship HMS
Veronica
, currently berthed at Port Ahuriri, were still digging through the ruins, including the nurses’ home, for survivors. Instead, an emergency hospital had been set up at the Greenmeadows race-course on the outskirts of town.

It was here that Keely waited. Tamar had been moved from the makeshift operating theatre beneath the main grand stand to one of several large, hastily erected tents on the track itself. Every hour that passed brought more supplies and medical equipment from the ruined public hospital, piling up where it was unloaded. Wounded people lay everywhere, reminding Keely horrifyingly of the nursing work she and Erin had done over seas during the war. But she knew she could help here, and she would, as soon as her mother’s condition had stabilised.

The surgeon had confirmed that the fracture was nasty, that several of Tamar’s ribs had indeed been broken, and that he’d had to suture quite a number of small but deep lacerations on her head and hands caused by flying glass. But he felt that her prognosis would be satisfactory, providing that none of the post-surgery complications that could often beset the elderly developed. Keely hoped that her mother had been sound asleep when he’d said this — she would be very annoyed to hear herself described as ‘elderly’.

She looked up as someone entered the tent.

‘Christ, she looks terrible!’ exclaimed Owen from the doorway. He was still in his work clothes and had clearly come straight in from Kenmore. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He was shocked both at the sight of Tamar, and at the dishevelled state of his wife.

Keely stood and let herself be enfolded in his tanned arms.
‘Her ribs are broken and she has a compound tib and fib. But the surgeon says she’ll be all right.’ She buried her face in his chest. ‘Oh God, Owen, it was absolutely terrifying!’

Owen nodded, his chin resting on the top of her dusty head. ‘I know, darling. It was pretty frightening out at the station too.’

Keely jerked back and looked up at his kind face. ‘The children?’

‘They’re fine. The school wobbled a bit apparently, but nothing collapsed. They’re at home with Mrs Heath. We telephoned the post office here in town as soon as it happened but we couldn’t get through.’

‘No, they say the lines are all down. I tried to ring you too, as soon as we got Mam here. Is there much damage at home?’

‘Not really, not to the house itself, except for one of the chimneys. We must have been too far away. A few things were broken, though, the mirror in the hall and some bits and pieces, and that big dresser in the kitchen fell over. And the river seems to have gone right down, so the generator isn’t working.’

Keely asked, ‘How did you know to come here, to the race-course?’

‘Everyone looking for anyone’s being directed here.’

‘Did Joseph come in with you?’

Owen nodded. ‘He was worried sick until one of the doctors told us you were both still in one piece. He and Erin are talking to the superintendent bloke — we heard quite a few of the nurses were killed at the hospital and Erin’s offering to help.’

‘I will be too, as soon as Mam comes around.’

Owen glanced down at his mother-in-law lying motionless on the narrow cot, her leg enclosed within a heavy metal brace and bandages covering the cuts on her head and hands. A huge bruise dappled the right side of her face and her top lip was split and swollen. Worst of all she appeared somehow
reduced
, not at all like her usual self. She had never been a big woman, but now she
looked like a child, which Owen found very disturbing.

‘She’s pretty grey around the gills,’ he noted hesitantly. ‘Are you sure she’s going to be all right?’

Keely nodded. ‘Half of it’s dust.’ She waved in the general direction of the grand stand. ‘They didn’t have time to clean her properly. There are four operating teams going at the moment and they’re flat out.’

Joseph and Erin appeared then; Erin rushed straight to Keely and embraced her.

‘Oh Keely, are you all right? We’ve been worried
sick
!’

‘I’m fine, and Mam will be too. We got a hell of a fright, though. I thought she’d been killed! It took four of us to dig her out.’

‘My God, were you indoors when the earth quake hit?’

‘Outside the draper’s on Emerson Street. The front of the building collapsed right on top of her.’

Erin stared at her cousin, appalled at how close they had come to tragedy.

Tamar stirred then and started to say something, but the dryness of her throat stifled her voice.

Erin bent down. ‘Aunty Tam? It’s Erin. How are you feeling?’

‘Ill,’ Tamar croaked.

‘It’s the anaesthetic,’ Erin said over her shoulder. ‘Get a bowl, someone.’

Owen rushed off but was too late; Tamar vomited weakly over the side of her cot and onto the canvas floor while Erin held her hair out of the way.

Joseph, his brown face pale with concern and his dark hair flopping over his temples, asked uneasily, ‘Is that normal? Being sick?’

‘Yes, it won’t last long.’

‘Shouldn’t we get a nurse?’

‘We are nurses, Joseph,’ Keely said mildly, excusing her half-
brother’s unintentional slight because he was so distraught. ‘She’s doing as well as can be expected. She should be properly awake soon.’

Tamar subsided painfully onto her back and lifted a shaking hand to sweep her hair off her face. ‘I’m properly awake now. And my leg hurts.’

Joseph bent over her. ‘Don’t worry, Mam, Papa will be here soon.’

A light flared in Tamar’s puffy red eyes. ‘Is he coming? How do you know that?’

‘I don’t,’ Joseph said, ‘but I know my father, and so do you. He’ll be here as soon as he can be.’

The mention of Kepa had cheered Tamar visibly, and Erin smiled. ‘Right, well, I’ll organise something to relieve the pain. I’ve been assigned to the dressing station at Nelson Park, but I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can, Aunty Tam, I promise.’

Tamar closed her eyes. The idea of sleep was very enticing — she couldn’t recall the last time she had felt so utterly exhausted, ill and sore.

The others watched her for a moment, then moved outside as another patient was brought in on a stretcher.

Erin asked Keely, ‘Will she be staying here, do you know?’

‘I’m not sure. The public hospital certainly won’t be taking patients.’

Erin pushed her dark hair, escaping from its customary neat bun, behind her ears and off her sweaty face. On a normal day the high summer heat would be bearable, but today, on top of everything else, it was almost intolerable. ‘I was talking to the superintendent just before, and he said the field hospital from Trentham army base has already left Wellington. They should be here on the train tomorrow morning and they’ll bring more tents and equipment. Apparently they can do about two hundred and fifty non-ambulatories,’ she added, slipping into military medical
jargon without even realising it. ‘So I expect she’ll probably stay on here, for a day or two at least.’

‘I’d like to take her home,’ Keely said.

‘Yes, so would I, but we don’t have any electricity at Kenmore at the moment, and don’t forget she can’t be moved until her leg’s been plastered.’

Keely nodded, then frowned as Erin suddenly giggled. It was a high-pitched, slightly hysterical giggle, and very uncharacteristic of her cousin.