Prowlers

by Maurice Gee

  Irene toured me round her head. ‘Secretiveness, Noel. Very strong. Language. Not so good. Adhesiveness. Oh, I’m adhesive all right. This is Gall’s system. Just one of many. Lot of nonsense.’

  Suddenly she leaned at me and put her fingers on the base of my skull. I felt her strong key-pressing touch. It was personal and impersonal. ‘Yes, I thought so. Amativeness. What a bump. You naughty boy.’

  She laughed at me with bell-notes on that, my last visit, the only time we touched in friendliness.

  Royce said, ‘I know what you think about us, Noel. I know what the whole of Jessop thinks. But it’s not true. We should have done it. We talked about it sometimes and we did it in our heads. But we kept on stepping back and putting it off, and in the end putting off was all we ever needed. Not doing it was a kind of act.’

  I said I was sorry and he told me not to be. He and Irene lived all those years as man and wife, that’s what they were, except in bed. They had a different sex life to take the place of that.

  ‘I hate her,’ Royce said. ‘That’s why – this.’ He touched the black shape in the painting. ‘But I love her too. She’s the only thing I love. I could wring her neck.’

  He smiled at me, a smile that made him boyish – nothing haunted. He’s not a man to feel sorry for.

  ‘People said my father took her to bed. That’s not true either.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  Royce stood up. ‘Well Noel, that’s what happened. Or didn’t happen. I’ve always wanted you to know.’

  I thanked him. We went back to the studio and talked for a while about oil paints and acrylics and how long they last. Then Kate and I came home. I’ve hung the painting in the dining-room, which we seldom use.

  There are no revelations. There’s a filling in of gaps. Nothing surprises.

  51

  I don’t mind sharing my house with spiders and silverfish. Or dust mites either. How many dust mites die in a vacuum cleaner attack?

  Meanderings, apropos of nothing. Unless it’s the fantail that came in this morning and pecked spiders from the rafters in my living room. The trouble is – no trouble – I’m fonder of birds than arachnida. I’d like to share my house with a fantail or two.

  I’ve nothing to put down but that sort of thing. It seems to mean my story’s done. A fantail in the house foretells a death (Maori belief?) but I put no credence on that sort of thing. Perhaps it was just telling me I’ve said all I have to say. But I’m used to my daily scribble and can’t give it up. I have a habit.

  I sit in the sun. Irene sat in the sun on her side veranda. She sat like Mrs Le Grice, in a rocking chair, wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a silk rose in the band. Now and then she took it off and turned up her face, drinking sunlight in the Swedish fashion. ‘I come to think more and more that worship of the sun is the only proper worship.’

  ‘God?’ I asked.

  ‘De trop.’ That’s the sort of thing Ruth might have said.

  ‘Haven’t you done some useful work? Haven’t we been happy some of the time?’ Yes, that’s true. Are you telling me lives can be measured in that way? Ah, Ruth. (I spoke aloud – Kate, through the glass, looks up from her desk. A sound of longing, Kate, and love, that’s all.)

  I am dizzy with you, Ruth Verryt. You recede from me. I try to peer at you and try to touch – and yes, I touch. Are you still alive in your room, out there? I think you are. Statistics are on your side for another year. But statistics are the last thing we need. I’d have felt the drawing down of your blind.

  Move away. Yes, you can go. Let Irene back. Irene is easier somehow. Her bright eyes and sick body. How do we come to be housed in this makeshift thing? Low comedy.

  I’m a chimp, Sir Chimp, dressed in baggy pants, sitting on top of a boxful of secrets and lifting the lid and letting them out. I turn back-somersaults and scratch my armpits. That’s one thing. There are plenty of others. I’m Noel Papps and I forget that my body is old. I spring up and run a hand through my hair – this dream of youth. I dash somewhere.

  As well as that, I wait for the comet – the apparition. (Aren’t words wonderful, they won’t be still.) It’s coming and I’ll be one who sees it twice. This time I’ll observe with knowledge; and, more importantly, interest – (which is the increase on capital).

  You might say I’m waiting here dressed in the vestments of my faith, but wearing pink socks and a polka dot bow-tie.

  A way to stop this is to give it a name. Put a lid on it. Make it an object. What shall it be? ‘Papps’ ‘Papps on Papps.’ Pappery, Puffery, Lifting the Lid. I could fill a notebook with names.

  ‘Plus Kate.’ That’s a good one. She came out to see what was bothering me. Nothing, I said. And talked about spiders, fantails, dust mites, tea-tree jacks – that’s Piet Verryt! Side-stepped to a ‘subject’; entertained her. Maxwell, I said, saw the atom as a world of order and perfection. It was perfect in number and measure and weight. Then along came Rutherford with his joke: ‘Some fool in a laboratory might blow up the Universe unawares.’ And Oppenheimer said, ‘We have known sin.’

  One could write the history of science in the language of religious myth.

  Kate sniffed at religion but tried a spot of moral philosophy. ‘Is and ought.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘a lot of good minds have been exercised there. It’s a rocky road from is to ought.’ And on I went, pleased to find her listening to me. She makes herself absent too frequently. It strikes me she’s in a kind of love: possessive and infatuated both. Kitty as a shape to be made, Kitty smoothed and patted and rounded off. Her eyes are glazed and most of the time she doesn’t hear a quarter of what I say. ‘Mm?’ she murmurs at the end of it.

  She runs in from the garden and writes things down on little squares of paper and drops them in the tray by her typewriter. When she’s gone I sneak across and read. ‘Tommyrot!’ ‘Stonkered.’ ‘Don’t be a sooky-bub.’ She’s writing down things Kitty used to say. ‘Bless my soul.’ ‘Everything’s hunky-dory.’ Is this sort of thing worth remembering?

  Another afternoon. Lovely day. Listens to me waffle, pats my head, goes away to get on with her work. But doesn’t sit down. Rips a sheet of paper across; makes her mind up with a physical act. Back she comes, purpose in her eye. ‘Noel, I’ve got a problem.’

  Now I know what her ‘is and ought’ was all about.

  52

  ‘When I was in the seventh form,’ Kate said, ‘we had to interview someone old. The school lent us tape-recorders and we recorded them. Then we had to write it up. It was a chapter in oral history. I did grandma. She was on a visit. Kitty Hughes.’ She’s uncertain who the lady is. ‘She said some things – well, I’ll let you hear. She asked me to destroy the tape and I said I had. But I’ve still got it.’

  ‘Told a lie?’

  ‘Yes, told a lie. I used to feel sick about that but I felt if I didn’t keep it it would be – wiping out a part of her, sort of. And now it seems she told Irene Lomax. So it’s not so bad.’

  ‘The rainy night?’

  ‘The night grandpa died. I’ve got to know whether to use it.’

  I felt that this was going to be a thing I’d rather not know. But I have a compulsion to know – and that sort of thing especially. And Kate had judged me tough enough and Kate wanted to share. Now and then together I cannot withstand.

  She ran the tape halfway and pushed a button. Her young voice said scratchily: ‘You told me grandpa – Des – raised you up. What did you mean?’

  I have the tape and I’m playing it to write this down.

  Kitty said (her voice, when she first spoke, it stopped my breathing, almost stopped my heart), she said, ‘He raised me from the middle class to the working class. Now I’ve slipped back.’

  ‘Is that the sort of thing you used to say in parliament?’

  ‘Worse. I gave them beans.’

  ‘I thought we didn’t have any classes in New Zealand.’

  ‘Is that what they’re teaching you at school? We�
�ve got haves and have-nots. That’s our classes. Top dogs and fancy pants and make-believe Englishmen and tax accountants. And the workers on the other side, who do all the hard slog and get nothing.’

  ‘Is this the sort of thing grandpa said?’

  ‘I say it. He raised me up, I’ve told you that. But I didn’t need anyone to tell me what to think and what to say.’

  ‘Did you go into politics to carry on his work? When he died?’

  ‘His work?’ A slapping sound. Kitty must have slapped the arm of her chair. ‘Where did you get that from? It was my work. Des had nothing to do with it. Do you think I’m nothing? Do you think I couldn’t do it without a man to show me how? Des could never have got where I got. He just thought about things, moaned about them. I did them. He was in the way, I didn’t need him. Not any more. He was stopping me. Everything I said I’d do he laughed at. He sat in front of that bloody stove and sneered. And coughed all that stuff up from his chest, and opened the stove door and spat inside. I can take a lot, but that phlegm sizzling…’

  ‘Grandma?’ Kate said.

  ‘Don’t touch me, girl.’

  ‘Shall I turn it off?’

  ‘Leave it on. Let people hear. There are still people in Jessop who think I went into parliament for him and did it all as a memorial. Des was good once. My God, he was on fire. In that hospital when I met him first he brought me alive. Red hair, it used to burn your hands when you touched it. But after a while he was no good. He was no good for anything but slinging off and spitting phlegm. I didn’t need him. He was tied around my neck. I used to dream about pulling a sack out of the river and opening it and inside, instead of kittens, it was Des. And he’d open his eyes…That’s why I went down the hill when he went up. I knew it would kill him, the wet and the cold, but I didn’t care. I’d had enough of Des Hughes. I’d had enough of him. Leave me! Don’t touch! He went up. I saw him. I saw his hair flash in the street lamp. So I got my coat and I went down. I searched all the streets at the Port. I took my time. And then I went up the hill past home. He was sitting on a seat in the rain. I knew as soon as I touched him he was going to die. I took him home and put him in bed and I got in and held him and tried to make him warm.’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘You needn’t think I’m sorry. I’m not. We both knew it might end with him or me. That was part of it all along.’

  Silence. I thought she was finished, Kitty done. Then she said: ‘I only wish…I wish I didn’t see him like that. With his hair gone flat and in his eyes. And the water running on his face…’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘Yes, I’m finished. Switch it off.’

  The machine went click.

  I knew that if I spoke my voice would give way and I would cry. As I’ve said, there’s just a filling in of gaps. No surprises. What moved me was Kitty’s voice, big and old and lost. I waved my hand at Kate for her to take the recorder away. When she came back I was able to speak.

  ‘I would have guessed something like that if I’d thought. When she made you switch it off did she say any more?’

  ‘Not very much. I asked her if it was true.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said, “They’re ghosts, not people. They’re not real.” ’

  Kitty asked Kate to destroy the tape and Kate said she had done it already. She showed Kitty her transcript with Des’s death cut out. Now she wants to use it and wants my approval.

  ‘It happened, Noel. They weren’t ghosts. And she told Irene Lomax.’

  It seems to me Kate is pleased with Kitty. I see a kind of glee in her that grandma killed grandpa. There’s something colder too, some bit of ideological approval. I’m damned if I’ll tell her to go ahead. She’ll have to work it out for herself.

  ‘She put him in a hot bath or got in bed with him. Which is the lie?’ Takes it calmly now that Kitty told lies. Can tolerate inconsistencies.

  ‘Maybe she did both. Or only wished. You work it out.’

  I want no part of it. I’ve got my Kitty. She can make hers.

  Everything we did was circumstantial. What if it hadn’t been raining that night? What if I’d knocked at the door that other night instead of sneaking round to look in the window? If the inlet had been sandflat all the way Rhona would have managed to get to Jessop. But still I would have been on my way to Wellington. This is futile but it fascinates me.

  And now I hate it, now it seems a hard judgement on me that I find myself running this course.

  I’ve had enough. If there’s anything to be known Rhona knows, Kitty knows, Irene knows. If not, well…That’s three black dots too many for good sense.

  I’ll make a retreat – where to? The Second Law of Thermodynamics, a thing to be sure of. I’m ready to surrender my bit of heat and help the Universe run along or down. Down doesn’t scare me. Entropy may lead anywhere.

  My life has narrowed to a point. I’m no longer a menstruum. Kate, the view from my sundeck, the little bit of springtime that is left, it’s enough for me. This strikes me as a healthy state to be in. Imagine such good health at eighty-four.

  I’ll finish scribbling here but keep on somewhere else. My book is done.

  November 28, 1985.

  53

  I win. Phil is dead.

  54

  Phil Dockery, 1902–86. Of a heart attack while out fishing in his boat.

  The news report didn’t say enough. The obituary is a pack of lies. It’s full of dates and the names of companies. There’s nothing about his belief that what you take from others increases you. In societies where those things were done Phil would have been eater of brain and eye of rival chief. An obituary should mention that sort of thing.

  He went out fishing in the afternoon. His manager, George Peacock, winched down the boat and saw him off. When he wasn’t back by nightfall Peacock called the police. They found Phil dead in his boat at the back of Bucket Island (I’ll give it the name Phil preferred). Cause of death is believed to have been a heart attack.

  Kate holds my hand. She thinks I’m upset. I’m not upset, I’m interested. I’m put out to some degree. What was it Phil said about Tup? ‘He didn’t have a bad life, the old bugger.’ So there’s nothing in Phil’s death to upset me. But he knows too. I’m the only one who doesn’t know.

  Now we’ve got the story. Now I can fill in the gap. Yes indeed, Phil Dockery died of a heart attack. Extraordinary that he should finish in that way. I’m pleased to know this thing about you, Phil. You must believe, I don’t put it down to increase myself but as a kind of salute to you.

  It has been yet another of those Jessop days: the blue that is not colour but light, that green that is not leaf and blade but energy. I sat out in my chair, close to the rail, and was listening to the children and the dog in the river – ‘Fonzie, Fonzie,’ they cry, and will be too old for it next summer – when Kate showed George Peacock in: someone else with a problem. He’s a big man with an insignificant head, chalky face, grey hair like dust mice on his scalp.

  I sat him down and heard him confess that he was worried and wanted my advice on what to do. I was, he told me, Mr Dockery’s best friend and he had information that perhaps…well, I could advise him whether or not he should tell the police.

  ‘Is this about Phil’s death?’

  ‘In a way. In a way it is. You might say, yes.’

  Here’s the story: Phil decided to go fishing on that afternoon and Peacock drove him to the boatshed in the jeep. While he winched the boat down Phil climbed the sandhill to look at the beach.

  ‘He came running back. Jesus, he was fit, Sir Noel. For a man of his age. He yelled at me to give him his gun.’

  ‘The air pistol?’

  Peacock said yes.

  ‘Why did he keep that in the boat?’

  ‘When the fish didn’t bite he used to take pot shots at the seagulls.’

  ‘They’re protected,’ Kate said.

  ‘I told him that. And the oyster-catchers. He used to go f
or oyster-catchers too. And the terns.’

  I remembered you, Phil, with your shanghai in your belt, going up the river after ducks; or on the mudflats by the reclamation, shooting at empty bottles hour after hour; all alone.

  ‘Get on with it. The beach.’

  ‘He took the gun and ran back up the dunes. I went after him. I thought there might be shags on the reef. But it was the commune people from next door. They were baptizing someone in the sea.’

  Phil ran down the sandhill to the beach and ran towards the reef, where men and women in white shirts were standing waist-deep in the sea. He yelled at them to get off his beach. ‘It was Shane he was yelling at,’ Peacock said. ‘That big feller who used to work for us.’

  They took no notice. When he was close enough, some thirty yards, Phil started shooting. Peacock saw the slugs hit the sea. Shane came out and walked along the sand.

  My God, I thought, it’s a Western shoot-out. Kate, she told me later, thought that too. Phil yelled at him, ‘You get those people off my beach.’

  ‘It’s not your beach, Mr Dockery,’ Shane replied.

  ‘You cheeky bugger. You young prick.’ Peacock could not describe Phil’s face, but I saw it blood-suffused, with madness and pain in the eyes. ‘Take another step and I’ll shoot your balls off.’

  ‘Give it to me, Mr Dockery,’ Shane said.

  He came closer, and Phil, aiming over his forearm, shot at him.

  ‘Where was he aiming?’

  ‘Where he said. But he only hit him in the leg.’ Peacock touched his thigh.

  ‘Was he hurt?’ Kate mottled up.

  ‘It went in all right. Kind of ran along under the skin. I saw the lump where the pellet was.’

  ‘He’ll need a doctor.’