The Paua Tower by Coral Atkinson Page B

railings by two boys and his chair removed.The crowd cheered. There was a great deal of shouting, pushing and general chaos.
    ‘It’s a bloody circus,’ said Gilchrist, looking around, his face bright with excitement.
    Vic climbed on the fence with the megaphone they’d borrowed from the groundsman at the high school.
    ‘I represent the Matauranga Unemployed Workers’ Association and the Anti-Eviction League. We’re here protesting against an eviction. We’re here to protect an innocent widow and her children from losing their home to the bosses. The unemployed have had enough. We’re here to act. Now, leave the furniture, lads, and get into the house.’ Handing the megaphone to Gilchrist, Vic said, ‘Rally the troops out here, Joe; I’ll get inside.’
    Vic elbowed his way up the path, shouting as he went: ‘Inside, lads, inside!’
    Reaching Mrs Thurlow he stopped. ‘This is no place for a woman, and it’ll get worse. Here, Pratt, see if you can get your sister outside.’
    ‘I’m staying,’ said Mrs Thurlow.
    ‘It’s not safe.’ Vic put his hand on her arm.
    ‘I’m not leaving my home,’ she said angrily, pulling his fingers off her cardigan and pushing them aside.
    ‘Okay, but let your brother get the kiddies out,’ said Vic, anxious for the woman’s safety but impressed by her pluck.
    The bailiff’s men had put a kitchen table across the hall. Men behind and in front were trying to dislodge it.
    ‘Up and over,’ shouted Vic, climbing over a man’s back onto the table. The group from Punawai followed.
    ‘Right!’ shouted Vic from the top of the table, now rocking in the mêlée. ‘We want the bailiff’s people out of here!’
    ‘Pleasure,’ said Miller, seizing a man carrying a jam pan.
    ‘No fisticuffs, mind,’ shouted Vic. ‘Just pull back the furniture and let the bosses’ lackeys go.’
    He jumped off the table and three terrified-looking men were pushed and dragged by their clothes out into the crowd on the veranda.
    ‘Now,’ shouted Vic from the table again, ‘everyone sit down where you are. Sit on any piece of furniture you can find and don’t move.’
    Outside, over the din, Vic could hear Gilchrist’s voice. Words and fragments came to him: ‘bosses’, ‘ordinary people’, ‘rights fought for in the Great War’, ‘turning women and children into the streets’ … Joe was doing a good job, Vic was sure of it.
    The villa had a large room with a bay window at the front and another smaller room looking out onto the veranda on the opposite side of the hall. Ena Thurlow rented the two rooms and shared the kitchen at the end of the corridor with another family. Vic stepped over the feet of those perched on a hat stand in the hall and went into the larger of the two rooms. A group of men were sitting around a improvised table made of four butter boxes put together in two stacks and a piece of wood nailed on the top. Miller and Legatt were perched on a dresser, swinging their legs as if they were resting on a wall. Vic glanced down at the floor. The covering was made of clean potato sacks carefully sewn together to make a big rug.
    ‘Okay!’ said Vic, perching on the arm of a sofa that already had several others sitting on it.
    ‘Remember, sit tight and if anyone asks you say, “We’re having a party, guests of Pratt’s sister.” Isn’t that right, Mrs Thurlow?’
    Mrs Thurlow, who was squatting on a leather pouf, still holding the pot plant, but no longer with her children, nodded. She was the only woman in the room.
    Looking at her in her washed-out beige dress, darned stockings and broken shoes made Vic suddenly nervous. He knew she depended on him to save her and her children from eviction, yet he’d no idea whether the plan would work. Sitting on the furniture had seemed such a bright idea when they’d talked about it lastnight, but now, here in the house, with so many men he hardly knew, and the police liable to arrive at any minute, Vic felt anxious