by Maurice Gee
Up the gravel path. Irene standing at the door. No sign of Royce. And more tea offered, although I’m up to my gills in it.
‘Would you rather have a glass of beer, Noel? Or some sherry?’
I chose sherry: small glass.
‘How was Tup?’
‘OK. Good.’
‘You know he’s dying?’
‘Is it close?’
‘Oh yes. What did he give you?’
I showed her and she smiled and held it like a lorgnette and looked at me with a huge eye.
‘I saw The Harmonious Blacksmith,’ I said. ‘You can’t do it without music any more.’
‘Oh yes, I can. But he likes turning the pages. Lotte wouldn’t let him. He gave me her music stool. And wanted me to take her piano too. But actually, mine’s better.’
‘What will Phil get?’
‘The house. The property. Phil’s his “son”, after all. And Phil needs property. It’s how he measures things.’
‘Tup told me he’s been chasing you.’
‘That’s right. I’m property. High-quality goods. But he’s given up.’
‘Tup,’ I said, still bold, ‘warned me off. He reckons I’m a beetle. You’re a lace-wing.’
Irene laughed. ‘Dear old Tup. I don’t know what we are, Noel. But I think I’m tougher than that. Anyway, you’re not after me. Not any more.’
I thought that last statement ambiguous. It made me cold. I swallowed my sherry and asked for more, and agreed that I wasn’t after her; but said, since it was an occasion for honesty, I’d loved her once.
‘I know. I loved you too. But never in a way that would have been any good to you.’
We regarded each other with half-amused grins. We were pleased and a little sad, having a past, although I found it shifting in my grasp and not standing still to be seen. She put it well behind us by saying, ‘Someone told me you’ve got a girl.’
‘I take one out.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Rhona Clews. I don’t think you know her.’
‘Yes, I do. She works in Bowers and Appleton. She’s pretty.’
For a moment I could not picture Rhona’s face. Then I filled her in, with relief, and agreed she was pretty; and in a kind of fervour to compensate, an eagerness to give Rhona weight, added qualities, until Irene cried, ‘All those things? She sounds terrifying.’
All what things? I could not, and can’t, remember them. Perhaps I said she was clever and energetic and generous and happy and kind. The truth is, with Irene in my mind, I can’t even now give Rhona weight. And while she’s weightless, featureless, I slip in and out of that state too. Sometimes when I assemble the actors in my life and run to join them in the photograph, she and I are blanked out: white holes, diagrammatic heads. At other times I see us all too clearly. And then Irene is dark, malevolent. Which is a lie. She never wished me anything but happiness with Rhona. The darkness and the malice come from me. Why I’m so disposed is all too plain, though the object of my feelings won’t come clear.
Enough, enough. I’m not satanic. I’m not victim or murderer. I’m Noel Papps and I won’t look beyond the evidence. Or make any statement that’s larger than the fact.
Irene said, ‘I liked your lecture. I haven’t missed one and it’s the best I’ve ever heard.’
‘It wasn’t helped by this,’ I said, tapping my nose.
“Oh, Noel…’
‘I’ll have a pimple on my nose on my wedding day.’
‘You will not. I forbid it. No more pimples.’ She flicked her fingernail on my sherry glass and made a note that purified my blood. I’ve not had any more pimples, not on my nose – that’s a fact. She said, ‘You probably eat too many cakes. It’s your father’s fault.’ But I’ve kept on eating cakes.
Irene and I chatted for an hour. We were light, amusing. We set a tone; and, over the years, accomplished with it intimacies many married couples never achieve. She played for me and I watched her fingers. That always made a large part of my delight in Irene. Then she said, ‘Come and say hello to Royce.’ She stood above me and served this on me, a mandamus, and it was my duty to obey. Something, her manner implied, must be got out of the way before we could move on with our present ease.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘how’s Royce? He’s grown up now.’ I followed her, noticing the slant of her head, and the spikiness of her step. We went past the staircase, past a row of Lomaxes framed, trod lino worn to the boards, and came to the sitting-room on the north side of the house. Bare, a giant box, with Royce in a corner as though all that space frightened him. A bowl of fruit stood on a wooden table. He was shading in, with care, an apple flank and was troubled by its fatness for he rubbed it out as we approached.
Irene said, ‘Royce, here’s Noel. Noel Papps.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He stood up, and was no taller than my five foot six. He was, though, better-looking than I’d thought. Although the weight in his body slid to his hips and plumped his behind and made his thighs strain against his trousers, in his face he had the Lomax slant and that gave him a look of suffering.
He had evasive eyes. It didn’t surprise me. He had a bitten mouth. What did surprise me was the impression of stillness he made. It was as if he had a hard still core and externals, limbs, behind, were a burden, an embarrassment, no more. That led me to expect some weight and stillness in his work – but I saw, when Irene opened his folder out, fussy pencil drawings, water colours that looked as if they’d been through the wash. He tried to make trees bend and duck-ponds ripple but achieved only a kind of agitation and emptiness. His work gave me a sense of my own worth. And the boy, the whole of him, put me in a sound position vis-à-vis Irene.
‘You were just a little chap when I saw you last,’ said Doctor Papps.
‘I don’t remember you,’ Royce said. ‘Irene says I should, but…’ He shrugged apologetically and avoided my eye.
I asked if he had left school and he said yes he had, and Irene said he’d left two years ago, he hadn’t been happy there, they ran the place like a military barracks, a little Sparta. ‘Rugby and cadets and the cane, that’s as far as their education goes,’ and I guessed that Royce had had a very bad time.
I looked at his work and murmured that I liked it very much. Irene knew I was lying. She frowned, which made her look middle-aged. ‘This is just practice. Royce is getting ready. But he mustn’t run before he can walk. We go out sketching, don’t we Royce? There are some lovely hills in Jessop. Beautiful shapes. And the waterfront is lovely too. Show him your boats.’
‘I don’t think Mr Papps…’
‘I’d like to see. Perhaps you’d let me buy one.’
‘I don’t sell.’ He’d gone a girlish pink. ‘I’m not good enough yet.’
‘Have you thought of an art school?’
‘I’m not…I’m not…’ He seemed to have a blockage in his throat.
‘He’s not interested in that sort of thing. Royce wants to see under the surface, don’t you, Royce?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. He did not seem to know what she was talking about.
‘He wants to lift the skin and see large shapes. That’s it, dear?’
‘Yes, I suppose.’ He blinked. But confused as he was, angry too, angry with her, he still gave me the sense of being unmoved in his core.
Irene stroked his shoulder. ‘All right, Royce. I knew you’d want to say hello to Noel. We’ll leave the boats for another day.’
I offered my hand and he shifted his pencil from right to left and met my grip with moderate firmness. ‘Good luck,’ I said, ‘keep at it.’ An expression of rage crossed his face. I knew I’d trodden on his private ground. But I wasn’t about to be alarmed by a boy. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll let me buy something.’ And I went out, pleased with myself; and especially pleased to have found Irene capable of silliness. Royce, with his apples and trees, and his constricting unhappiness, was lifting no skins. Irene was deluded. I saw her as mother to the boy, inventing abilities he d
id not have. The scene through the window was a dream.
But she restored it to reality. ‘Noel, before you go, I’ve got something for you.’ She left me on the front door mat and ran along the hall, where she opened a cupboard, and came back with my hat. ‘There,’ she said, and put it on my head. ‘Now you won’t catch cold.’
‘Irene,’ I stammered. It was a moment of pure transmutation. I spun once over in the air, my body light as a paper-bag, and came down into a world of altered states; and found Irene smiling, glittering at me, both her eyes, all her teeth.
‘Not a word, Noel. Not a single word. Now go away. And come and see me soon.’
‘Yes,’ I said. And went through the sunny spring late afternoon, with my winter hat straight on my head; and a sense of large shapes stirring under a skin.
I saw Royce in a corner of his room. I heard Irene strike up on her piano.
Steady, steady, steady, Dr Papps.
23
Phil did not cry at Tup’s funeral. If anything, he was cheerful. ‘Not a bad old bugger. He didn’t bloody sit there, he had a crack at things. Too bloody right.’ It wasn’t far from the epitaph I’d have composed. I’d have been more flowery and gone for a bugle note, but the meaning would have been the same: Tup was a battler, a yea-sayer. He was a taker-in not a leaver-out.
Jessop had a new crematorium and Tup was its first customer. We agreed it was appropriate – the scientific end – and I thought of the oxidizing flame and Tup initiating me into mysteries. They had become a part of my everyday life but would never be mundane; and that I owed to my lessons in wonder, to Natural Philosophy, to hypothesis, and the supposition always of the thing beyond the thing. Tup, I thought, ending the occasion with sentiment, knew if there was any Big Thing now.
Phil drove me back to the Institute and I showed him my lab and explained my work. I’d spent most of my first three months on analyses of soil samples sent in by government pedologists doing surveys in North Island districts and on the Coast. The Lomax had contracted for the work and taken me on to carry it out. But I was getting ready for other things. I was staking out a territory for myself, soil analyses were just a beginning. Already I’d set up an experiment to combat bush sickness in sheep, using controlled groups of hoggets and different licks and drenches; and this was soon to show the non-effectiveness of limonite ore and establish the value of soil, in our case Jessop soil, as a supplement in the diet of stock. I meant to look at tobacco soils too and the poor growth of seedlings – and it was my work that showed the harm high pH values cause and determined proper levels for potassic manuring.
But I had only a glimmering yet of my real work over twenty years: the reclamation of pakihi lands, the identification of the deficiencies in the Plowden Hills soil. I can just see a corner of the Hills from my sundeck. You can’t tell they’re covered with apple orchards. The Coxes and the Galas and the Golden and Red Delicious are harvested now and the pickers are working on the Granny Smiths. Perhaps someone else would have done my work – no perhaps about it, someone would – but it was me, and why shouldn’t I claim that they wouldn’t be picking anything there if I hadn’t come to the Lomax when I did? Kate wouldn’t be munching that Gala or having stewed apple with her muesli. They should rename those hills the Noel Papps Hills. I’d sooner have that than be Sir Noel.
I took Phil about and introduced him and the morning ended with me watching him at work. Getting his foot in the door, knowing people, sniffing out possibilities, that was Phil’s work. The Lomax was new ground and he explored it with – let me think…He was Ramsay filling in a gap in Mendelyeev’s list. At the end of it was money, pelf, of course. Phil needed to see that silver shine; but he was not too fond of easy pickings. He was not afraid of hard work, of moving sideways, moving back, of ducking and diving and making a sudden charge to his goal. The Americans have a term: broken field runner. Phil was a broken field runner of genius.
What was he after at the Lomax? He didn’t know. He simply saw men working at their jobs, working hard, he sniffed endeavour, and knew it was worth his while to understand. I took him round the chemistry labs and into mycology. (Strange that so many mycologists are women. Is it those curled-in heads, embryonic shapes, and growth in warmth and darkness, that attracts them? Someone should look into this.) Beautiful Pearl Winwood threw him out of his stride, but he recovered, tossed a grin at her, flicked a wink, recovered himself. We went to entomology and found Fred Gooch drawing blowflies. Blowflies were the insects he loved best – ‘of infinite variety’ he said – and his book on them, illustrated by himself, would make him an international reputation. I have one of Fred’s blowflies on my lavatory wall. For my money he’s a better painter than Royce Lomax.
I told Fred we’d come from Tup Ogier’s funeral, and recalled how Tup and I had watched the mantis eating the blue bottle.
‘Ah,’ Fred cried, ‘Calliphora vicina, one of my beauties. That’s a meal fit for a king.’ He rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into a cage and flies crusted it, with a deafening buzz, and made blue armour-plating on his skin. They know me,’ Fred said, ‘I’m their boss. They come when I call. Did you know,’ he turned to Phil, ‘a gravid female can bomb you from the air with hungry maggots? Cover your roast beef, my boy, when one of my little Amazons is about.’ Fred winked at me. He enjoyed playing mad scientist for a layman. When he withdrew his arm a fly escaped. He opened a window for it. ‘Go forth and multiply.’
I refused to put my arm in Fred’s cage, though he swore the sensation was more pleasing than a woman’s touch, but Phil, grinning, tried it, pushing his arm through the rubber valve and wincing only slightly as the flies bit. Fred washed him with soap and wiped him with an antiseptic cloth. He approved of Phil and told him about the borer house he was setting up on the Lomax research farm at Stallards. Phil got his reward: a tour of that bit of property. After the war, ’47, when the Trustees sold the farm and increased the acreage of the experimental orchard, you can guess who set the deal up. You might say Phil made the initial move by putting his arm in Fred Gooch’s cage that day.
On we went and looked in to meet the Director, Manifold. He and Phil found interests in common. A pair of shooters: come May, they’d sit together in a mai-mai on the inlet, drinking turn about from Phil’s leather flask and blasting away, and you might say…Well, Manifold was a nice old fellow, he was a lovely innocent, and burbling on to friends isn’t a crime, I’ve done it myself. When the Institute shifted premises…If Kate was taping this I’d say, ‘Switch off that machine.’ All I’ll put down here is that Phil did very nicely. And no one was hurt.
We had a look in the greenhouses and crossed the road to visit the museum, where Phil was bored. Things under glass didn’t interest him. He yawned and looked at his watch. I did not want to let him go. I enjoyed too much the sense of my importance; and experienced, for the first time, the Lomax as an extension of myself. In later years, when I moved from practical science to administration, I came to know the risks and injuries – a thinning out, less of the self left to hold on to – but did not suspect them on that day. I told Phil that after lunch I was going up the river to collect some bush litter samples. Would he like to come? We’d look at the arboretum on the way. I hooked him with that. The arboretum was property.
I’m no specialist in indirection. I had no greater ambition than to bind Phil to me for a day and increase myself in my own mind. In stratagems, invention, he left me far behind. When he arrived back at the Lomax Rhona was in the back seat of his car. He had set us spinning on a wheel and gave it another push that day. Whether he took something on the side I never found out, and never will, for Rhona has moved beyond recall. Beyond, I mean, the reach of imagination. I can’t move around her, see inside. I can with Phil, but anything I discover could be right. He shifts too quickly for me, Phil Dockery.
Rhona smiled wanly. She was off work that week, nursing her mother. (An alcoholic, I discovered later; a great collapsing ruin of a woman I’d thought part
-senile, part-dropsical.) I’ll make a guess and say Phil observed how confident I was as Dr Papps and took the chance to show me at my best. The day was full of opportunity. It was a hinge turning on past and future – his and Rhona’s, Rhona’s and mine.
I put my buckets and spade and trowel in the boot. I sat beside Rhona on the back seat and, dizzy with anger, fierce in my desire to be free of my ineptitudes, took her hand; which she allowed. Phil scooted his car along the river road, past the old Le Grice farm, where gorse had claimed the hills and thistle the flats, and through the gorge towards the Jessop city water reserve. Dust bloomed behind us like a lily. Rhona answered my questions yes and no. She was passive, inert. Rhona, in fact, was doomed. I had intimations of it that day. There are people doomed from birth – to subjection, to failure in the self, a kind of cognitive failure to find oneself as object. All our healthy stratagems work to this end; but Rhona Clews, Rhona Papps, was born without that skill, or had it stolen, I don’t know. I know that my apprehending of her state struck me like a pick-axe in my chest, but lasted only the blinking of an eye, in which time I gripped so hard bones grated in her hand and Rhona cried out. Phil grinned in the mirror. ‘Easy, boy.’
I was no boy. I was a man of thirty-two. Phil was the boy. He’s been a boy all his life; just as, all her life, Rhona was at others’ disposition. Some states there’s no escaping from.
We drove past the Lomax arboretum and I pointed out the damage done by fire. Several of the plots were destroyed and others eaten into and I told Phil that the Trustees had almost decided to sell the land and shift the more valuable trees and shrubs to a plot in town. Manifold had told me in confidence, and I passed it on to make myself important. Phil gave me a look I can still see but can’t define. Contempt was part of it, pity too; and he was grateful, he was pleased with me. Later on, years later, I accused him of starting the arboretum fire of ’34. He shook his head. ‘You really think I’m a crook, don’t you, Noel?’ (He didn’t mind being taken for a rogue.) I don’t know what to think any more. I know he bought the land and ran grazing stock on it for years and sold it to the Country Club when they shifted into the valley in the fifties. He was on the committee of the Country Club. And I do remember him saying on that day – the day Rhona agreed to marry me – you could make a nine-hole golf course on that land and build a club-house up on the knoll. But this is gossip. No one’s going to nail Phil Dockery now.
