Crime Story

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘I’ll think about you.’

  ‘Kisses.’

  ‘Kisses.’

  He put down the phone, smiling widely, feeling warm. Darlene was his luck. Darlene was his lucky find. He hadn’t thought he could be continuous again, with anyone. He had thought, with women, it would be what he could get and moving on. And hotel girls. Gwen had left him soured and unready. Then Darlene, in the shop, selling shoes, had smiled and knelt and measured his foot and laced the new shoes tightly and made him walk and clapped her hands and said, ‘They really suit you, you look great,’ and he was sweet and ready again, no other words; he was sweet and ready for Darlene. A New Lynn lady, out his way, who pleased him and laughed at him and thought he was ‘a phenomena’. Darlene up front, even when she played the little girl. Darlene in delight, with money and clothes and swimming pool, hardly believing her luck. And wanting to be wanted, and not needing to be told that he loved her all the time. Ease, that was Darlene, and knowing where you were, and no pretence. She left him free. Love wasn’t in it; fun and pleasure and liking, that was what they had, and better than the ‘communion’ Gwen had gone on about. He had never known what she meant by it. You had to make your hard-on seem like something pure.

  Gwen again. He shook his head to get her out, and thought of Darlene in the pool, dog-paddling like a six-year-old, neck stretched, head high, and that bit of fear that he liked in her eyes. He thought of her getting ready to dive, with her hands like a child praying. He slapped her butt, said, ‘Go’, and she obeyed, but popped up like a cork and he had to go in and pull her out. The river stone was there still, on the bottom, white as a pearl – a paperweight, stuff it, from Gwen – but Darlene would get it before long.

  He stood at his window and looked over the harbour, which glimmered close in and then was dark across to the eastern beaches and the string of lights along the bottom of the hills. I could build over there. Eastbourne needs a good hotel. You’d see it standing up against the hills. Ten storeys, that would be enough, with the windows glittering with light. It would hang there like a painting on a wall. He was warm still with the pleasure of the day, and he thought that Darlene knew a thing or two – hotel girls. No way, he said. I’ll be faithful. Anyway, he had had Cora Dunwoodie already today.

  Howie laughed and went to bed and slept without dreaming.

  The next day he was busy again – consultants, journalists, Tony and Lonnie – but had had enough by five o’clock. He went to the hotel and swam in the pool, then had a drink or two in the bar. At seven o’clock he went to the restaurant – beat the crowd. He would come at six if he wanted to and say to the waiters, ‘Where’s my tea?’ It had been six and tea, the Henderson way, until he married Gwen, who tried her poncy shift to eight o’clock and ‘dinner time’. She hadn’t got real till the babies came.

  ‘The wine list, sir?’

  ‘Bring me a beer.’

  The steak was good, the pudding good. He enjoyed himself. Back in his room he switched on the TV set, then switched it off. Smart-arse blondes wisecracking: too damn pushy. He read the Post and there was Cora Dunwoodie getting stick – but she would survive. He came out of it sensibly. The way he came out bored him tonight. He found the name Lupercal flea-jumping down a column, and Neil Hopkins, happy and big, white knight in those days, ’86, showing his back-slanted teeth. They should print a photo of him the way he was today, with half the weight gone from his face and his eyeballs yellow. Gordon wasn’t mentioned. Gordon would be heard another time. They’d better not do him until I get Kitchener pulled down, Howie thought.

  He telephoned Darlene and talked with her for half an hour, then sent her to bed – but wasn’t going to end up there himself at nine o’clock. He would go and see Athol. He would get Damon’s shift to Auckland sorted out; it was time. I’ll buy a trampoline, he thought. He saw the boy turning in the air while the gulf sparkled behind.

  The taxi dropped him at the gate and he looked first at Gwen’s house, nervously. She sat at darkened windows, looking out – and said that she was happy. Just thinking, she said. It had seemed to leave him nowhere in the house to go.

  A light shone in an upstairs window. Not her bedroom, one of the spares. He wondered if Olivia had shifted across and if that meant Damon would be ready for his move. Darlene would be good for Damon, she would make him laugh. He needed to get that frozen look off his face. He needed, by God, to climb and wrestle, and piss up the wall and fart with his mates, not just do his fancy tricks on his bit of rubber. Sport was rugby and boxing not bouncing in the air. I’ll teach him to play tennis, Howie thought, even though the game was full of pansies, in their whites.

  He went up Athol’s path, went in without knocking, and stood in the hall where Ulla had broken her neck. The carpet was soft enough but she had fallen wrong, with the burglar’s foot in her back. He opened the door again and found the angle she had left it at: no give either way, as rigid as the end of a wall. He felt his spine shrink as though it felt a terror of its own.

  ‘Jesus, Dad, don’t you ever knock?’ Athol stood in the kitchen door, with a carving knife in his hand.

  Howie laughed. ‘Are you going to stick me with that?’

  ‘I would have. By God. If it had been … ’

  ‘Your little burglar? Hold the thing pointing up, don’t hold it like a girl.’ He looked like Bette Davis in a movie. ‘Any news? The police told you anything yet?’

  ‘No.’ Athol went past him and closed the door. He walked into the kitchen and laid the knife on the bench. ‘They’ve got a lot of men on it. They’re up here all the time. Bloody Mum.’

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘He was in her place before he came here. They think he saw Ulla hide the key from the bathroom window. She wasn’t going to tell them but I made her. You should have heard the cops getting into her.’

  ‘Is it going to catch him? Did she lose anything?’

  ‘Her wedding ring.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her wedding ring, that’s all. He squeezed the toothpaste tube, she says. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Leave fingerprints?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They found some here though?’

  ‘They can’t match them. He hasn’t got a record. Loners always get away, that’s what I’ve heard.’

  ‘You tell them about my reward?’ Wedding ring, he thought. It robbed him and made him want to cry.

  ‘They don’t want it yet. They’ll let you know. Do you want a drink? Come into the lounge.’

  Howie sat down with a whisky. ‘He wouldn’t get more than a couple of dollars for that ring.’ It had cost him five pounds, and was worn thin with their years as man and wife. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what about Ulla? I like Ulla. How is she?’

  ‘People with broken necks don’t get better.’

  ‘Yes they do.’

  ‘People with their spinal column cut right through. That’s what she’s got. Complete lesion. Mum tells me, she’s been talking to the doctors and reading it up.’

  ‘So she’s on her back for the rest of her life, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes. Most of them don’t live more than ten years, about.’

  ‘Have you talked to her? Does she know?’

  ‘She knows. According to Mum. I don’t go and see her any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She doesn’t want me. We were finished, Dad. We were finished before this happened. I’m not going to pretend now, just because … ’

  ‘Okay. Sure. Where does she go? What happens to her?’

  Athol shrugged. It was a tired movement, although his face was smooth and his eyes were bright. He was tired only of Ulla, not of his life.

  ‘To Auckland. There’s a spinal unit where they do rehabilitation. For what it’s worth. But I don’t know whether she’ll agree to go.’

  ‘Where to after that?’

  ‘Here. I’ll fix it up. I’ll pay.’ He gave a grin. ‘She’s my wife. We’l
l hire a full-time nurse. You can get special beds and all that stuff. I’ll live somewhere else.’

  ‘What about the kids?’

  ‘Olivia’s next door already. Damon, well … ’

  ‘He can come to me. We talked about that.’

  ‘It’s up to him.’

  His carelessness in giving things up made Howie draw back. Yet there was a stillness under it, as though Athol had found some other place to go. Maybe he had found another woman.

  ‘It’ll be hard to divorce her when she’s paralysed. No one’s going to like you for that.’

  Athol smiled. ‘I don’t want a divorce. Damon’s in his room if you want to see him.’

  ‘Does he see Ulla?’

  ‘If you’re going to say her name, Dad, say it right.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘A couple of times. He and Olivia go after school. Mum goes at night. She’s there now.’

  Doing what? Talking to Ulla’s head? Stroking with her live hand on the dead one. He felt a flash of revulsion. Gwen would always be where there were feelings to be felt. He could not see her hand without its wedding ring.

  He went upstairs, knocked, opened the door. Damon was watching television on a little set on a shelf at the end of his bed.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure.’ Damon lowered the sound but kept the picture on. It showed Americans on a beach, laughing, while, as far as Howie could make out, someone was drowning in the sea behind their backs.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Baywatch.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘They’d better get that bloke out of there.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘How are you, Damon. Can I sit down?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He sat on the bed. The boy shifted so he could see the screen.

  ‘Have you thought any more about coming up to Auckland to stay with me?’

  Damon looked at him and looked away. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Made any decision?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’d have a good time. There’s plenty of room in the house. You’d have your own room. Your own TV. There’s sets everywhere.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘A snooker table. I’ll teach you to play snooker. Do you watch Pot Black?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I made an eighty-seven break once. Then I missed on a red. I didn’t have my custom-built cue.’

  The boy smiled politely and leaned to see the figures on the beach.

  ‘There’s a swimming pool. Tennis court. We can go for rides in my launch.’

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘You finish here. Get the year done. Then come on up. Darlene makes a pretty mean pavlova. You like pavlova?’

  ‘Who’s Darlene?’

  ‘She’s my wife. Your – well, she’s not your grandmother, I suppose, but I reckon you’ll like her. She’s easy come, no fancy stuff.’

  ‘What about … ?’ Howie thought ‘my mother?’ He didn’t have an answer to that. ‘ … my trampoline? I have to practise.’ It had been, but he’d changed it, ‘my mother?’ Howie felt his throat grow thick with pity for the boy.

  ‘What’s the best make?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You find out the best make. Doesn’t matter how much. There’ll be one sitting on the lawn when you arrive.’

  He went downstairs and said to Athol, ‘Yeah, he’ll come. When the year’s finished at school. He can stay as long as he likes. He can go to school in Auckland, that’s easy. Any school.’ As long as it’s not King’s bloody College, he thought. He had no time for poncy schools.

  Athol had papers spread on the coffee table. ‘Let him decide.’ He looked up and seemed to remember sounds that he should make. ‘I know you think I’m letting my responsibilities go. But I’ve never been able … I love my kids but I’m no good for them.’

  What are you good for? Howie wanted to ask. Good at football once, a Colts rep on the wing, good with girls, easy with people. Howie had loved him as a boy, exulted in him. Then somehow Athol had soured and turned away and lost his easiness and speed. He was like a spinning top that slowed and got the wobbles and ended up lying on its side. He lost his hair and grew a beaky nose and seemed to be calculating all the time, in his job, in his daily life. Landlord was the proper job for him – screwing bits of rent from run-down houses. He had lasted just long enough to get his Swedish blonde. And that was a disaster too – that was maybe the cause of it all.

  ‘Go and see Olivia. Say hallo to her,’ Athol said.

  ‘What, next door?’

  ‘Mum’s not home.’

  ‘I’m not scared of her.’ He did not want to go. Olivia was like Ulla, she had no ease with him. And he did not want to go into Gwen’s house, it would make him angry. ‘Buying more places?’ he said, nodding at the papers on the table.

  ‘Improvements. Nothing much. Plumbing’s the worst.’

  ‘I thought you’d know your way around the regulations by now.’

  A spot of colour rose in Athol’s cheeks. ‘I’m not into that. I keep my houses decently. There’s not a dripping tap I don’t know about. And get fixed up. Ask my tenants if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘You do your thing, Dad, and I’ll do mine.’

  ‘Sure, okay. It looks like Gilbert Fox is down the tubes.’

  ‘Fox is getting what he deserves. She’ll be in bed soon if you don’t go.’

  ‘You and your mother,’ Howie said.

  He went through the hedge and tried Gwen’s door, and called, ‘Olivia’, not to frighten her.

  Silence, then a voice. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me, your grandfather.’

  She came down the stairs and opened the door. ‘We keep it locked. Grandma said … ’

  ‘Sure, that’s sensible.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘How’s it going? Do you like it here?’ She smelled of dog. ‘Gwen treating you right?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Just for a minute.’ He did not know what to say to her. ‘Who does the cooking?’

  ‘We take turns.’

  ‘And she does lentils, eh?’

  Olivia smiled briefly. ‘And chick peas. And brown beans. I like them though,’ she said loyally.

  The dog appeared at the top of the stairs and yapped at him, then waddled away.

  ‘I’m surprised she lets you have that thing in the house.’

  ‘He’s in my room. He stays outside in the daytime.’

  ‘Sure,’ Howie said. He could hear Gwen saying, ‘Let’s compromise.’

  ‘Shall we go in the lounge? Shall I make a cup of tea?’

  I’m your grandfather, he wanted to say. Give me a hug, stop doing the Swede. ‘I can only stay a minute. I just looked in to say hallo.’

  ‘Well … ’

  ‘Okay, we’ll go in the lounge.’

  He followed her there and sat opposite. She would be good looking when some of her fat had melted off. Beautiful maybe, but not pretty. He was easier with pretty; it was fun. This one would be Swedish and cool when she learned how. At this age, though, she was a mess: fat and awkward, and off-centre in her dressing gown. There was toothpaste in the corner of her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry if I stopped you going to bed.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘It’s not really late.’

  ‘No.’

  Shit, Howie thought, where do we go? ‘Tell me how Ulla is. Did you go today?’

  ‘Yes, I went.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Olivia turned her face away. ‘She lies in bed with a thing screwed on her head.’

  ‘Does she talk to you?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Why?’

  Olivia turned back. She had controlled the tears in her eyes. ‘She can’t talk.’

  ‘Because of her neck?’

  ‘And
her face. Where it’s cut. And her broken cheekbone.’

  ‘She knows you though? And Damon?’

  ‘We hold her hand.’

  Pretending that it’s a part of her. He wondered if Ulla could see what she could not feel.

  ‘They don’t think she’ll ever walk again.’ Her tongue found the toothpaste and licked it away.

  ‘We’ll help her. We’ll all help,’ Howie said.

  Olivia shrugged. ‘I want them to catch the man and hang him.’

  ‘They’ll catch him.’ He was shocked. He wondered if anyone had understood her pain, and he reached out and touched her hand. ‘Have you got everything? Everything you want?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

  ‘Plenty of clothes? Money to spend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would you like an allowance from me?’

  ‘Dad gives me money.’

  ‘From your grandpa though? So we can be a family.’ Tears were in his own eyes, and like her he turned his face.

  ‘Dad’s not part of any family. Nor is Grandma.’

  ‘Well, you and me and Damon … ’

  ‘And Mum’s not part of anything now.’ She got up and filled the kettle and plugged it in. ‘Do you take milk and sugar in your tea?’

  Gwen came before the water boiled. He heard her feet patter on the boards – quick-stepper Gwen. Olivia called, ‘It’s open, Grandma.’

  She leaned in, stepped in, looking sharp. ‘Howie, where’d you come from?’

  ‘I thought I’d say hallo to Olivia.’

  ‘I’ve got the kettle on,’ Olivia said. ‘I’ll go to bed now if it’s all right. Goodnight, Grandpa.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and watched her go up the stairs. Nice legs, he thought, she’ll be all right.

  ‘I don’t want tea, Howie, and I don’t suppose you do,’ Gwen said.

  ‘I’m not into tea. I’ll have a whisky.’

  ‘I don’t keep whisky any more.’

  ‘Okay, so I’ll go. Goodnight.’

  Gwen laughed. ‘Relax. Sit down. I’ve got some sherry.’

  ‘You know how I feel about that.’

  ‘It’s all there is. Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes. Pour the stuff.’ He watched her, and felt no break between them, just time pulled thin; and now they stood on angles, touching but apart.

  ‘That girl’s not happy,’ he said.