I waited until she came out from behind the curtain. She was open-faced, plump, happy. The baby had round cheeks and silvery hair.
She listened to what I was saying. She was in perfect health, I told her. And there were no problems with the beautiful child.
'The birth was so hard,' she said. She smiled at the baby. 'She took until 6 a.m. to arrive, remember?'
'Ah, 6 a.m.' Often I have forgotten. There are so many. But I did remember the birth of her child, because, just before it, I'd delivered a baby whose father was drunk. I was on call for the public patients that night. There was a scene. The drunken father insulted a nurse. Security was called. The baby came while the husband was arguing with the midwife. I congratulated the mother. The nurses did too.
Then, around 5.30 a.m., I went to her, my private patient. Her husband, some lawyer or stockbroker, hovered anxiously near. The birth was straightforward. Every time I did something for this couple, they thanked me.
I walked her out to reception. She looked at me. You don't talk about these things, but I know a few of my obstetric patients fall in love with me, just a bit. I've been there, helped them, at their finest hour. Also, in a funny sort of way, it's a bit like we've had sex back there in my consulting rooms. I don't mean sexual gratification. But the level of intimacy, the amount they reveal to me, it's significant. They think about it. A few fall in love for a while, and then they forget. You get the odd one who won't let go. But they're rare. I have Clarice, my secretary, to protect me. And a big photo of my wife Karen on my desk, just to keep things clear.
Off she went, to the gleaming SUV. She turned and smiled again. Such trust. There you go with an ant up you, I thought. My mouth twitched. But that's the thing. I have bad thoughts, funny thoughts, savage thoughts. I have power over people. But I don't hurt them. They know I will never hurt them.
I straightened my face, because Viola was looking at me. Every time I came out of my room that young woman did nothing but stare.
I got home late. I turned into the drive. The bedroom light was on upstairs. Karen would be getting ready. I drove past the cypress trees, the flowerbeds, looking up at the house. It's two-storey, handsome, the return veranda covered in flowering wisteria. The new deck furniture out there by the pool, spotlights in the garden lighting up the ferns. If you spend long enough in my game you end up with money. Karen is always planning holidays, renovating. You end up wondering what to spend your money on.
Karen is a good person. She has done a lot for worthy causes. Our names — Dr Simon Lampton and Ms Karen Rutherford — are on the Gold List of sponsors for the opera, the theatre, the children's hospital. That night we had tickets for the ballet. I don't really go for ballet. The theatre all dark and suddenly a skinny figure hurtling 'expressively' across the stage. I have private thoughts: pretty ridiculous you look. Afterwards we come out and mingle with the other Gold List patrons, dressed up and full of our own virtue. I like the warmth and light, the crowd, the uniform — suits and evening dresses. We're armoured. I always have to wait for Karen. She stays on until the last moments, networking.
In front of me, men in leotards formed a circle and clasped one another. There was thunder and lightning, then the whistle of a train. The dancers mimed sorrow and pain. Karen was leaning forward, looking at the programme. On the other side her friend elbowed her and whispered: Trish, with her designer clothes and gold jewellery, her fluttering lashes, dyed blonde hair.
I can't stand Trish.
After the performance Karen said, 'Trish will drive me home. We've got things to talk about.' A fundraiser. They would linger over coffee, planning. Trish fluttered her fingers at me. She wore layers of shiny ruffled material. Her hair was platinum, afro. Once, at a party at her house, I talked to her husband. He gestured at the guests and said, 'Most of the wealth of this country is represented here.'
'Really,' I said.
Someone switched on an outside light. The women's hands went to their faces. I saw teeth, eyes. Teeth and eyes.
***
I started driving home. But then I went a different way. I drove down to the end of Queen Street, then up to the top, slowly. I turned onto Karangahape Road. I was putting off going home to the empty house. The streets were quiet; light rain made blurred loops of the streetlights. There were small crowds outside dark doorways, bouncers letting people in. I slowed down outside the Owl Bar. Two men were arguing. The taller man, dressed in a shabby coat, flared jeans and sandals, was leaning over a short, fat man, jabbing his finger into his shoulder. Someone tooted behind me. I pulled in to the kerb. The tall man shoved and shouted. I looked at his sour, disappointed mouth, his thick helmet of black hair. His glasses hung on a plastic chain around his neck. He came near my car. I slid down in my seat. He took a comb out of his pocket and slicked back his hair. His fingers were long, mobile — piano player's hands. He buttoned up his coat, fiddled with his glasses. He held them up and looked towards my car. I didn't breathe. He took a bottle out of his bag and swigged. He peered around, looked up at the rain drifting, falling. His body was swaying. I had never seen a face so bitter, so thwarted and sad. Never back then, never since. I watched until my father had finished drinking, pulled the tattered coat tighter around himself, and walked back into the bar.
I drove home. Karen came home and got into bed beside me. I put my arms around her. I told her: 'I love you with all my heart.'
***
My mother said, 'He was mathematical, musical. Played the piano. Did the cryptic crossword in three minutes flat. He could have got scholarships, gone on to university. He wasted it all. He said it was because he had to go out to work when he was too young, and then we were married and you children were born. He kept changing jobs because he had no staying power.'
She said, 'It's no use being a genius if you just drink it all away.'
He drank and they fought. He came home and broke things. We listened through the wall. I remember the boozy raving, the pacing, the bitter rage. 'You're tone deaf,' he said. 'Your voice is dead. The only thing you love is money.' 'You're no use to anyone,' she told him. She sold his piano. He came home from work to find it gone.
He drank for three days. He followed us to my aunt's. She called the police. He shouted as he was led away. He was going to kill my aunt, kill us, then himself. My mother said, 'Just yourself will do.' She was steely, contained, determined. She looked after us well. When I graduated she told me, 'You're set for life. Your father should be pleased. But he won't be able to bear it. He'll look at you and see what he could have been.'
I thought, I look at him and see what I could have been. Instead, I was a doctor. It was a happy day, my graduation. My mother and sisters and Karen and I spent it together. It was as if we'd all made good . . .
After the ballet I woke up in the night. I'd dreamed my father was standing at the end of the bed, raising his glasses to his face. Here I was in my tasteful bedroom, between expensive sheets, my beautiful wife next to me. He was seeing what he could have been.
But the dream had turned bad. Instead of triumph, I felt fear. I dreamed that I looked at him, and saw what I am.
***
About five years ago I moved into my current consulting rooms. I share a floor with other specialists. Our practice is modern and friendly. I rush between the hospital and my private rooms. I'm often called out late at night. I sweep through the empty streets in my big car, through suburbs washed with rain. I enjoy the silence before the crisis, before my date in the corridors of pain. I'm used to seeing women in agony. They plead and scream, they swear and cry. I touch them somewhere neutral, on the shoulder, or on the foot. I control them. I take away their pain.
At the public clinic the patients are overweight, tattooed and smoky. They present with diabetes, pierced genitalia, venereal diseases. They are not armoured with nice accents and designer clothes. But I find them more restful than the hectic matrons of Remuera and Parnell, who make every consultation a social event. Sometimes, when I get
home from my private clinic, I feel as if I've been at a seven-hour cocktail party, without booze.
One day my secretary told me, 'There's a man on the phone. He says he's your father.'
My hands started shaking. I went into my room and took the call. I heard voices and music. The slurred voice said, 'Working hard?'
I tried to treat him like pain. To assess the situation from a long way off.
'It must be good,' he said. 'All those women. All that money.' The voice trailed off. He made a sound, like a sob. 'You're just like your mother . . .'
'I can't talk to you,' I said.
What do I know about him? I remember waiting outside his work to give him a birthday present. I was nine or ten. He took the present, opened it, but he didn't seem to see it. I found myself explaining what it was. He laughed a bit; he looked everywhere but at my face. I was puzzled. When I tried to talk to him he slid away from the subject. He made wild, irrelevant assertions, daring anyone to disagree. He had a high, strange laugh. When others made a joke he looked pompous and high-minded, but he laughed when nothing was funny, or when something was sad or brutal or shocking. He never answered a single question I asked.
He was musical. He was clever. Those were the only things I knew about him. I never saw a genuine expression, or heard a real voice. Can alcohol do that much damage — can it make a personality disappear? Or had he been shadowy, incomplete, wrong all along?
'He's been arrested again,' my mother said. He bounced between dry-out facilities and the courts. He hit rock bottom and stayed there. Then I learned he was working part time driving taxis. A mate was lending him his cab. Can you imagine it — that drunk, driving your wife, your daughter around? We talked about it. Karen was sorry for him. She didn't want him to be poor. She has a kind nature. But she said his drunkenness made it dangerous for people and he ought to be stopped. What could we do about it, though? I practised not thinking about it. I became very good at that.
I was sitting in my room dictating notes. The young assistant Viola came in with some files. She was tall, curvy, with straight sandy hair and an intense way of looking, her head turned sideways, her blue eyes fixed. She looked me in the eye for too long. I turned away. Each time I came out to reception she would stare like this, and when I turned away I saw her looking at me in the window's reflection. It was hard to communicate with her. It was as if she wasn't listening; she was thinking.
'Got that?' I asked.
She looked startled and blushed. Then she gave me a goofy, crazy smile and backed away.
I closed the door. What a weird woman, I thought. She wasn't like this with everyone. She liked me. It was flattering, but it worried me. She didn't seem to care about normal rules. What would Clarice think? I hadn't done anything but I felt furtive, guilty.
After work I was going to drive to the gym. Viola was standing by my car.
'All right?' I said.
'My car's broken down.'
'Have you called someone?'
'Not yet.' She gasped and laughed. There was something about her craziness, her helpless, raw ineptitude. It gave me a funny, dizzy feeling, as if everything I'd built around myself had fallen away. A long look passed between us. I saw myself pulling her into the stairwell, pushing her against the wall, my mouth against hers. She saw my expression; she blinked. Then she gave me an uncanny smile. I ran my hand through my hair. I picked up my sports bag and turned away.
She watched as I drove past, her expression fixed, dreamy, wild. I drove to the gym. I worked it off. I burned the moment away.
Then I went home to Karen and watched her making phonecalls. I thought how much I loved her. Karen is never embarrassed or shy or awkward. She always knows what to say. I never feel a fool when I'm with her, never feel ashamed. She is tough and competent. She is of the world. Not like lawless, staring Viola, asking too much, asking for trouble. Now Karen was going through my accounts, with the hard, humourless look she has when she's thinking about money.
'Want to know how much you made this month?'
I laughed. I think of Karen as golden. She leaned back on the couch and I lay on top of her, ran my hands through her yellow hair.
***
It was late on a Sunday night. Karen and I were in the bedroom upstairs. I was reading; she was watching TV with the sound turned down. The phone rang. I answered it and heard her voice, soft, urgent. 'Dr Lampton?'
I registered her ridiculous formality. Everyone called me Simon. Perhaps she thought it was some kind of disguise.
'Viola,' I said, with a flash of guilt. Then I was really angry. I went to hang up.
'I'm with a man,' she said.
'What?' I grappled with the phone.
She whispered, 'He says he's your father.'
My hands started to shake.
'I was walking home from the pub. He stopped his taxi and asked if I wanted a ride. We started talking. I told him what my job was. He asked were you Dr Lampton . . . and he said he was your father.'
'Where are you?'
'I'm in his flat. He invited me. He's drinking. He's getting . . . angry.'
'Angry?'
'Is he violent?' she asked.
I got up off the bed. Karen sat up and stared.
'Oh, Christ. Just leave.'
There was a pause. 'He won't let me,' she whispered.
Again I went to hang up. But if he injured her . . . She was asking for help. He was my father. She had me. I raged at her silently. There was a bang, cursing, in the background. I started. 'Viola? Are you there?'
'He says he hates you, hates everything.'
'Okay. Just wait. I'll help.'
'All right,' she said, being brave. I saw myself punching her. Then I pictured him punching her. I was on the verge of tears. 'Don't worry, darling,' I said.
Karen caught my arm. 'What is going on? Who's "darling"? Simon!' she shouted after me. I dressed, ran downstairs, got in my car.
On the way I rang the police. I must have made it sound serious. When I turned into the street there were patrol cars, and police on the wooden fire escape. They had Viola in the yard, and further up the stairs my father was arguing.
I said to Viola, 'Are you all right?'
My father was taken past. 'I've done nothing,' he said to his escort. 'She knows it.' He wrenched himself close to me, amazed. 'Why are you here? Did you call the cops? I could lose my job. I've got debts. You've done this. It's a trick.'
He was pulled away, shouting.
Viola said, 'I didn't want to call the police.'
I rounded on her. 'Well, they're here now. What did you think you were doing?' I watched as my father was shoved into the police car. I was calming down. I was starting to think.
She said, 'I thought it'd be all right to go to his house. He said he was going to have a party with some musicians. It wasn't like going with a stranger, because he said he was your father.'
'Everyone's a stranger. Was he drunk?'
She hesitated. 'A bit, maybe.'
I leaned down to her. I said, 'He's a drunk who drives a taxi. He has to be stopped. He's going to kill someone.'
'You want him to lose his job?'
'You think he shouldn't lose it?' I took her arm and pushed her towards the cops.
The sergeant said to me, 'You'll need to make a statement.'
'Gladly,' I said.
But in the car I said to Viola, 'How did you know my number?'
'I remembered it from work.'
'How did you call without him knowing?'
'He was pacing around the kitchen, raving about you, your mother, what bastards people were. I picked up the phone — he didn't even notice. He's crazy. I was frightened.' I glanced at her. She saw my expression and looked stunned. I felt fear come off her — fear of me. I stopped driving so fast and said, 'This is a situation. We need to get through it. He stopped you leaving. Anything else?'
'He kissed me.' She shivered.
'That's assault.' I pictured it: him kissing Viola.<
br />
'We'll get him,' I said. 'He won't be hurting anyone again.'
At the police station I had a talk with a senior sergeant. I told him everything.
'He's known to us,' the man said. He went from one room to another, came back. He told me what my father was saying. He said, 'It's a long chance, him picking up your young friend.' There was a silence. I wondered what my father had said. The sergeant looked at me steadily. I could tell he was turning over the possibility that Viola and I were connected in this, that we were in league.
'I can hardly believe it myself,' I said. Just get through this, I thought. Just see it through.
He said, 'But we can get something out of it. We can finally ban him from the cabs.'
I went into the room where Viola was sitting.
'Tell them everything,' I said. 'The drinking. The kiss. Everything.' I looked hard at her. 'Don't leave anything out.'
Afterwards I got her back in the car and drove her to our house. The thing would have to be explained to Karen.
Karen had all the lights blazing. Viola blinked. She looked extremely young, foolish and vulnerable.
Karen said, 'So this is the "darling". '
Viola's mouth turned up in a mad grin. She looked rudely around the room, as if storing up detail.
In a caustic voice I explained what had happened, adding that I had feared for Viola's safety, and that the word 'darling' had been meant to reassure. I made it plain that I was at the end of my tether, that I was upset.
Karen looked contrite, then ironic. She said sharply, 'How did she know our home number?'
'I remembered it from work,' Viola said.
Was there a simper in her answer? She looked from me to Karen. She smiled. I jumped out of my chair. Was she enjoying this — torturing us, making trouble between us?
But she couldn't have contrived it. She couldn't have known she was going to meet my father. He'd admitted that he'd been cruising around, that he'd stopped for her on a whim; also that they'd never met before. It was sheer chance — although it would be Viola he found, walking in the night alone. I thought about it. She should have refused the lift. But he was a taxi driver. She would have assumed he was after a fare. Then she trusted him because he was connected to me. And she'd been frightened. I'd heard it in her voice. My father was violent, drunk. It couldn't be her fault.
Opportunity Page 8
