Prowlers

by Maurice Gee

  ‘Another drink, Phil?’

  We both had another. And because we were in the past I asked my question. I don’t think you meant to be cruel, Kate. Perhaps you meant to be kind. But it’s been there, hurting in my chest, since you planted it. I asked him about Rhona’s abortion.

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘I know she was just a diversion. One among, how many?’

  ‘Who told you she had an abortion?’

  ‘I was married to her.’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘Doris did. Her mother.’

  Phil frowned, then blew his nose. ‘This thing’s bloody sopping. Got a spare one?’

  I had a handkerchief, almost clean, in my pocket. He blew again and put both away. I don’t think he was fixing up a lie. It’s just that the past isn’t easy for him. He has to grunt and strain at it and shift memories like concrete blocks.

  ‘Maybe she had one. I don’t know. Something must have happened.’

  I asked him what he meant and he said she’d told him once – he thought they were at the beach but wasn’t sure, they might have been out in his boat – Rhona had told him she was pregnant. ‘It’s fifty years. Leave it alone, eh?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Can’t remember…Nothing. Yeah, nothing.’

  What did nothing mean?

  ‘I kept on swimming. Or sailing the boat. Then I drove her home. Jesus, Noel, I don’t remember. I mean, fifty years. It might have been another girl – you’re not going to take a swing at me?’

  I wasn’t. I should have been disgusted, furious, but I felt only a grim affection for him; and then, piercing it, love for Rhona.

  ‘I guess she tried to do it by herself.’

  ‘I would’ve paid. I’d have arranged it. If she’d asked.’

  ‘Forget it, Phil. Have another drink.’ He had kept on sailing his boat and Rhona had waited for a word, and then given up and started to die. I tried to discover what she had felt but could get nowhere. She stood at the end of a tunnel. No way through.

  ‘Nice girl, Rhona,’ Phil said.

  ‘Shut up, Phil.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘Can you tell me the names of your wives?’

  ‘What’s your game, Noel?’

  ‘Quizz time. For another glass of Scotch, the names of your three wives, in any order.’

  ‘I dunno why I waste my time with you.’

  They were, for your information, Kate, Barbara, Sylvia, Isobel – or Barbie, Silly, Izz. All three divorced him and had their married lives, and children too, with other men. At parties he approached them with a kind of waltzing step and gave them that mock punch on the jaw. ‘Are you havin’ any fun?’ Selective memories. Fiction maybe. That song could be from a more recent time. All I know is he sang it once. And had three wives, pretty girls. And hundreds of others, Rhona amongst them.

  We saw you coming, Kate. You rode Shane’s motorbike over the bridge, with the sidecar full of groceries. I went inside and put the kettle on.

  You weren’t pleased – she wasn’t pleased to find us drinking whisky and scowled in answer to Phil’s flashy grin. Shane, the cowboy, vaulting the rail, got the sharp edge of her tongue. She wouldn’t drink her tea with us but sat alone in the kitchen. We three snickered at each other. There’s nothing like female disapproval to make a man feel good.

  Phil offered Shane work out at Long Tom’s. He wanted a paint job done on the out-buildings. His manager had some bloke lined up, but was getting a back-hander, Phil said. He was awake to that sort of trick. If Shane could get out there next week he could have the job.

  ‘I’m not a painter,’ Shane said. ‘I just slap it on.’

  ‘You’re doing not a bad job here,’ Phil said. ‘I’ll pay you hourly rate. Twelve bucks.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Shane said, ‘and travelling time.’ He put his dark glasses on and tried to look like a Mafia boss.

  Phil laughed. There’s no doubt he approves of Shane. He likes his cheek.

  ‘Cash,’ Shane went on. ‘I don’t want to lose my benefit.’

  ‘Jesus, you young blokes,’ Phil said. ‘That’s my bloody taxes keeping you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Shane said.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘When I was your age – OK, laugh – when I was twenty-three I owned my house, my car, and my own business. How much money you got in the bank?’

  ‘Bank?’ Shane looked at me. ‘You tell him Noel, I don’t know what all these big words mean.’

  ‘If I told you what I’m worth,’ Phil said, ‘you wouldn’t act so smart.’ He was getting angry. But ah Kate, I agree with you, young Shane’s no fool. He’s got Phil Dockery sorted out.

  ‘Do you want to know what I’m worth?’ he said.

  ‘Ninety bucks a week. Of my money.’

  Shane stood up. He seemed to be four feet through his chest and his legs as thick as my sundeck poles and – doesn’t he wear any underpants? – that thing in there was the size of a Dutch salami, I’ll swear. He put his head back, swelled his throat. He thumped his chest and sent a spray of sweat out of the hair. I haven’t heard a better Tarzan yell. Kitty’s boys used to do them, they were good at them; but Shane’s yell skewered me from ear to ear, it rattled the top of my head like the lid of a pot and almost knocked me out of my chair. People in houses by the river ran into their back yards and looked at the sky. Kate came running from the kitchen.

  Phil flung his hand over his ear and turned away. The colour drained from his face and the pouch of fat under his chin seemed emptied out. I’d never seen it loose, collapsed, before. I won’t say that was Shane’s doing, he made me notice witherings in Phil, that is all.

  He dropped the full rich sack of himself in his chair, making it bend, making it squeak. ‘That’s what I’m worth, eh. Shane Worth.’ Alongside that Phil had nothing. (I had nothing either.)

  But Phil’s resilient, he comes back. He raised his glass. ‘Touché, young feller.’ I’d never thought to hear him use that word. He winked at Kate. ‘Lucky girl.’

  ‘You bloody men. Playing bloody games. I’m taking that.’ She snatched the whisky bottle from the table and flounced away. We all laughed.

  ‘You want that job or not?’ Phil said.

  ‘I’ve got to get finished here. Week after next.’

  ‘Righto. When you want it. Phone me a taxi will you, Noel.’

  ‘I’ll take you in my sidecar if you like,’ Shane said.

  ‘OK, you’re on.’

  I watched them ride over the bridge, Phil with Kate’s blue helmet on his head. Shane was riding fast. The bike was airborne going off the bridge. Phil enjoyed that. He had his fists clenched over his head.

  That’s not the end of it. Oh no. I was feeling left out. Shane, whether he’d meant to or not, had challenged me and I hadn’t made my answer yet. There’s no answer, of course, except in detachment, and I see the way to victory there; but did not see it then and was betrayed by my stupidity.

  I wonder if I seized the challenge to escape the hurting in my chest. I don’t remember it stopping but it certainly wasn’t there as I made my stiff-legged climb over the rail and set myself down carefully on Shane’s painting scaffold. The plank is no more than a foot wide. Perhaps I was drunk. It looked as wide as a footpath and with the wall on one side and the safety rail Shane had carpentered on the other it made a corridor along the outside of the house. I didn’t look down but shuffled along, humming to myself a song of Phil’s, ‘Gentleman Jack, the ladies man, he can make love like no man can.’ I passed my bedroom windows and glimpsed my ghostly self and saw the white emptiness beyond, with a coloured hill low down; and that made me pause. The plank ended and I had to step sideways to another. It curled up at the end and made a sickening two-inch drop when I put my weight on. A chattering came from the other end, a monkey sound; and I was like a monkey as I shuffled by the living-room windows. I grinned at myself without conviction. But still
, I was getting there, the end only six feet away. Shane’s can of paint and green-haired brush stood in my way. I decided to do some painting. That would show him. He had nearly finished the wall and I imagined his surprise when he came back and found it done.

  ‘Gentleman Jack,’ I hummed, and stepped over the can, nimbly stepped, and squatted on the plank and seized the brush and dipped it in, admiring, almost tasting, the paint: its creaminess, its thickness, its liquid/solid fall. I played a while, lost in sensation, then lightened the brush of its rich load, and went three paces on the plank – and you might say the mirror cracked across and the curse was on me.

  I shiver still. After two days it hollows out my chest, hollows my skull. That emptiness. That fall to the river. The wall reeled away. The sky tipped one way and the other and Jessop rocked back and forth like a swing. I dropped the brush and it bounded like a hare down the slope, three jumps, hit the river, and bled its green blood on the pool. Ducks went speed-boating away. I get all this by unconscious recall. I don’t remember seeing it. I remember two hands locked on the rail – my hands. They came and went, still there, always there, as, I suppose, I opened and closed my eyes. They were a principle, a law. If I say they were my fundament you mustn’t think I’m making a joke.

  Heights don’t frighten me, they terrify. I climbed a tree in our garden once and made the mistake of looking down, and there I was, not ten feet from the ground, with my arms and legs wrapped round the trunk and my head buried in my shoulder, and I was never letting go. My father stood on a ladder and talked to me. He talked for half an hour, gently coaxing, and prised me loose and carried me, locked on him, to the ground. I was eight.

  Now eighty-three. Shane spoke to me, prised my fingers loose. He’d delivered Phil to his club and riding back had looked up from the bridge and seen me on the scaffold. I did not know he was at my side until he bent his head in front of me.

  ‘Come on, Sir Lancelot. Let go.’

  Kate had the living-room window open and called at him to lift me in. He freed my hands and held me by the elbows. My fingers dug into his forearms. ‘Jesus,’ he said. He wore Band-aids on the cuts all weekend. (One of them’s going septic and Kate says I don’t clean my fingernails. I resent that. I’m very clean.)

  ‘Close the window. Help me at the rail.’

  But when we got there – shuffle, whimper, sob – he didn’t need help. Without letting me go he stepped over backwards. Then he lifted me by the elbows. I felt myself rise into the air and seemed to hear my shoulders creak. They must have come close to dislocating. Sore today, some sort of bruising in the joint. He put me down and Kate held me up.

  ‘Silly old fool.’

  ‘Nice one, Sir Noel. Bloody good try.’

  ‘Your brush,’ was all I could manage. ‘In the river.’

  Kate put me to bed. On my bed. She offered no homoeopathic pills but threw my mohair rug on me and did not bother to uncover my face. I must have looked like a corpse lying there.

  I don’t blame you, Kate. You’ve got a lot to put up with here.

  Yes, I have. Men who think they’re boys. And old men with dirty little minds. Leave Shane alone. He’s got a chance. And leave me alone if you don’t mind. I’m tired of all your sniping.

  You need me, I need you. For a while. Let’s leave it at that. Now why don’t you write some more about Kitty? And don’t try to steal my language, Noel. Words like ‘wanker’ just don’t suit you.

  K.

  28

  At least they show I’m alive. I can still accept new things. Isn’t that so, Kate? Or K. You know who he was, don’t you? Of course, you’re an educated girl. Sorry, woman. I hope you never find yourself in his condition.

  I was in Prague once, just poking in my nose, a bit of aimless curiosity about alien ways. I left sooner than I had intended. There’s nothing political in that, nothing altruistic. I began to feel strange forces work on me, a kind of thumb pressure on my brain, and twinges of alarm made me look up or step ahead or stand stock still. I kept on stopping at the hotel desk to see my passport. New Zealand Citizen. It began to seem a fragile description. The ink grew more watery by the hour and my face began to lose weight and not belong to me. So I followed my instincts of alarm and got out of Prague, went to Munich; where I found that Dachau was close by. How had I been ignorant of that? I couldn’t go. I stayed in town and looked at the Glockenspiel instead. I can’t face up to Man, that’s why I play monkey.

  Does this sort of digression interest you? It stops me from sniping.

  I’d rather stay in the present than visit the past. New things, Kate. As long as they come skating over the surface I enjoy them. Let me say what happened on Sunday night.

  She’s joined a club called the World Record Club and records keep arriving in the post. She carries them down the path like dinner plates; greedy face, ready for a meal. I enjoy them too although the diet’s rich and strange. We’ve had Sibelius. More than once. She’s got a taste for big noise, for thunder and crashing seas. We’ve had Beethoven. And Telemann. And Vivaldi. And Bach. Likes a bit of orderliness too. We’ve had some flute virtuoso whose name I forget. And various quartets, wind and string. We’ve had Mozart of course, but Kate’s put him away. She went to see a film about his life the other week and he didn’t come up to her mark ‘as a person’. We’ve had the Kings Singers. And the Cambridge Buskers. And Stravinsky, who caused some damage in my head. All this makes me think of Irene. Irene and I listen together. Does that annoy you, Kate? What I want to know is, how do you afford these records on your benefit?

  That night she put on something strange: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. I think I’ve got it right. Choral stuff – I mean ‘stuff’ in no critical way. I enjoyed it. Lots there to keep me awake, or wake me up. Irene liked some of it too. But Shane could only take a couple of turns of the record. ‘Jesus,’ he said. He’s free with the name. He fetched his Walkman radio from the bedroom and sat on the sofa and switched it on, translated himself out of our world. I gave a look at Kate. ‘Dire Straits,’ she sneered. ‘For ten-year-olds.’ We went back to our adult sounds.

  We were on side two – tavern songs – when Shane rejoined us. Something in the music caught his attention. He picked the sleeve from Kate’s knee and looked at the illustration. Then he snorted. ‘Fuck Orff, more like it.’ That was no sharp hit, but Kate was hit.

  I won’t record the insults they exchanged. Well, one each, their beginners: ‘Dumb sod!’ ‘Snotty bitch!’ After that it got very wild, and how their faces swelled and throats grew corded. Kate went blotchy, Shane turned purple. Most of my rage these days is infantile, and so was theirs, but it had an adult component: love/sex/possession. I mean by that, hunger to possess. Things marvellous and terrible have been happening here while all the while I monkey through my days.

  So much for skating on the surface. So much for the fun I meant to have. It wasn’t any small thing, Kate, I know. Don’t be angry with me, I’ve been engaged in manoeuvres and sometimes I can’t tell where they’ll lead.

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her against the wall. Her throat was bared as if for the knife. He raised his fist to strike her in the face. Age and horror had me nailed in my chair. I thought I was about to see a murder.

  It’s difficult to put things in their sequence. In fact, two things happened at once. Kate had no intention of being murdered, even struck. She kneed him in the crotch in the manner she’s been taught on TV; and he became aware – beat her by the fraction of a second – of what he was doing. Ask him, Kate. I know you think he cried out because your knee crushed his tender parts. It wasn’t that; or wasn’t that to start with. Shane saw himself about to murder you – and he stopped. He managed it. Don’t think that’s easy, Kate. My God, how easy to go on. I’ll borrow a terminology I disapprove of: Shane is close to being damned, and yet is struggling to save himself. He’ll need our help.

  You got him, though. I don’t blame you. Right on target. And as he went doubled up to
the door and opened it, you followed – she followed him, raining punches on his back; and when he was halfway out she put her foot on his backside, gave a heave, shot him out, and slammed the door. She came back for me.

  ‘No, Kate,’ I said. The singers had changed their mood to something softer. That didn’t save me, although she seemed to lose heart as she stood me up. She didn’t punch. She marched me down the hall by my arm – I’m lucky, I suppose, it wasn’t my ear – and pushed me into my room and closed the door. My heart was going thump-thump, whack-whack. The rhythm was wrong, the speed was wrong. I thought I would die. I thought I was the casualty, Kate. You too need to control yourself.

  I went to bed. Like a child I didn’t clean my teeth. I lay in the dark listening for the world outside my door, but no sound came, and when I woke – when my wretched bladder woke me up – the house was dark. I crept up the hall to their bedroom door. No sound in there. Anything might be happening in that silence. Someone might be dead. They both might be lying with throats cut. I opened the door an inch or two and listened for the sound of creeping blood. Kate turned heavily. Water slurped. Have I mentioned that they’ve bought a waterbed on time payment? She mumbled words in her sleep – not nice words. She was all right.

  I hoped Shane was all right too, wherever he was.

  He was sleeping in the garage, in my car. Whenever he got cold he ran the heater and he’s lucky he didn’t kill himself with fumes.

  Kate was washing the breakfast dishes when he came in. She did not turn round and after looking at her for a moment he stepped close and put his arms around her. I thought she’d turn and hit him again. It could have gone that way. She was hard and straight. It must have been like hugging a tanalized post. Then she relaxed, she leaned back and let him kiss her on the jaw.

  ‘Get some breakfast. Put on some toast,’ she said.