The Cruel Peak

by Gil Hogg

  Gladys had worked with his mother as a housemaid at the Royal Hotel and retired to an old prefabricated cabin in the town. She was a kindly spinster who cared for him, but could hardly keep up with a half-grown man who wanted to read books all the time. They occasionally had tea and biscuits, or soup and a sandwich here - all that Gladys’s purse and his part-time earnings would run to. She died a few years ago, and as he had found when he walked down Copthorne Street, her cabin had been demolished as part of a development of apartments. He never went to her funeral. He was in London, and although they exchanged Christmas cards, there was probably nobody to tell him that she had died. She was one of those unnoticed, anonymous people whom nobody seemed to know. Who would have gone to her funeral?

  His was a casual neglect. Gladys was a tiny, shadowy, benevolent figure on the outskirts of his life who gave him shelter when he needed it, and had now disappeared without trace. Perhaps the warm spot she had in his memory was all that was left of her amongst the living on this planet. If he focused his mind on Gladys, he had no doubt of her importance in his life. The trouble was that he rarely thought of her after he left the ‘home’ she made for him. Her cramped back room with its narrow bed and a vent looking out on a brick wall at 7 Copthorne Street was the first place he called home. The decrepit house on Tamaki Downs was never more than an uncomfortable shack which he and his mother shared like asylum seekers, and to which he never returned after her death.

  He had only part of his attention on the chipped advertising board which obstructed the entrance of the Lunch Rooms, promising All-Day Breakfast and Cream Teas when he became aware of somebody. He looked up to see a woman with a long neck in a shapeless summer dress observing him. Her cheeks were grey and rough and her dry, straight hair straggled around her shoulders, but in her features there was something familiar. He had an instant of embarrassment in trying to place her.

  “Tom Stavely. It’s absolutely you!”

  “Julie Burrell!”

  They embraced, and he thought, ‘Do I look as old as her?’

  “You’re here for the wedding, Tom. How wonderful!”

  “The event of the year!”

  “Oh my God, yes. We need it. Everybody’s going. I’m so pleased you made it. It’s bit like old times with you here.”

  “Not quite.”

  “No, not quite. We’ll just have to pretend. Those days will never come back. Buy me a coffee for Auld Lang Syne.”

  They talked for a moment about Petra and Darren. Then Julie led him into the depths of the Lunch Rooms. There were three rooms stretching deep into the building, ill-lit, with stained paper on the walls, crammed with varnished kitchen chairs and bare tables. The place was exactly as he remembered it in the past, and no doubt it was still tolerably full at lunch times, despite the advertised breakfast and afternoon tea. Julie tucked herself into a chair in the furthest corner.

  “Will a waitress find us?” he asked.

  “I don’t mind if she doesn’t. I expect there’s only one girl at this time of day.”

  Julie settled down to talk, and now her expression was radiant. “I often think of you, Tom, and the good times we had.”

  “I know. I was very sorry to hear about Barney. Was that five years ago? I wanted to get to the funeral but I couldn’t get away.”

  “I know. You wrote me a nice letter. It was very sudden. He was mowing the lawn at our place in Taupo. Brain haemorrhage. He was fifty.”

  “Mowing the lawn?”

  ‘This is how they die,’ he would say to Alison, ‘Mowing the lawn or cutting the hedge.’ She’d probably reply, ‘Alcoholism, you mean?’

  “He never looked after himself. Over-eating and over- drinking,” Julie said. Now that Barney was gone, she could say things she wouldn’t have said when he was alive.

  “You fed him,” he reminded her gently.

  “No, Tom, look at me. I ate with him.” She brushed her hands down her thin chest, sounding disappointed.

  He remembered Barney, another university friend who was a high street solicitor in Timaru, with affection. He had met few people who were as widely read in fiction as Barney. Although excessive in everything that he did, work and pleasure, Barney was a sensitive man, one who always had new insights to offer on the human condition. Tom always thought Barney’s excesses - which were well known - showed that he didn’t care about consequences, didn’t seem to care about life. And yet he revelled in life in print.

  “And what about you, Julie?”

  “I’m a merry widow - well, I have a feller.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It’s OK. The kids like him. You have to settle for what you have.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “I doubt it. Jack Simmons. Owns the bookshop down the street.”

  “I think Barney would liked to have owned a bookshop.”

  “You’re right. It might have saved him. But Barney couldn’t take a step into the unknown, like you, Tom. Sure, he became a steward of the Jockey Club, and the local coroner. These are things he got by running hard on the spot. He couldn’t move forward. Barney was even frightened to go on a decent vacation. He always said he had commitments to clients, and we couldn’t afford it - which was nonsense. But as a wife, I bought it. You realise these things too late. Do you know, we never travelled further than Norfolk Island in our whole marriage?”

  “You had the place at Taupo. I know that’s closer, but…”

  “An investment, Tom, not a pleasure-dome.”

  He was thinking that William Shakespeare probably didn’t travel all that far in mileage terms, but it would make an unsympathetic comment; it was an appropriate thought for Barney who lived in the books he read, and travelled far in them.

  “I have the money now, and I’m going to see the world before I die. I was in the USA last year and Jack and I are going to Europe this year. But, about you Tom, those good times we had…”

  “A few of years of madness.”

  He was unable to recall what Julie had been like in bed; undressing her in his mind, as she was now, he found her not repulsive, but asexual. Clasping her would be like embracing a tall bundle of kindling wood.

  “I liked you the best of all of them.” Her eyes were bright and swimming. “You liked me, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did.” He spoke affectionately, but the true answer was, ‘Not especially.’

  “I know you had a lot of women,” she said playfully.

  “Reputation tends to outstrip reality. And I wasn’t alone. I’m sure Stuart had more. Barney had his share. And what about the women? Robyn got around, and a certain Julie Burrell.”

  “And it was all under the blanket, as it were. Everybody was doing it, but nobody was doing it! It wasn’t like wife-swapping or three in a bed. Just good, old-fashioned screwing.”

  “We were modest in our sins.”

  “Do you remember the day Barney came home from the office unexpectedly and we were in bed? I ran out to meet him in the hall…”

  “Yeah.” He had a dim memory of choking in a closet.

  “You had to get dressed in the dark. I told Barney I had a ‘flu headache, and he got busy looking for papers he had mislaid in the study. I came back into the bedroom and let you sneak out.”

  Her words unlocked his memory. It was that feeling of being trapped; going out the back door and finding that the only way to get to the front of the house and down the street was along a side path, past the room where Barney was. He had thought of hiding in the garden shed, but instead went over the back wall into the neighbour’s garden, explaining to the incredulous woman there that he was looking for a tennis ball.

  “Did you ever realise what a bad name we were getting, Tom?”

  “Not at the time. I thought we were just having fun.”

  “What about the time Robyn threw up on the Prestons’ hall rug?” Julie laughed.

  “Was that a big deal? I don’t think I was there.”

  “You were i
n bed with somebody else. Robyn was with that Maurice Hewitt. He was a wild man. I couldn’t believe that he became our curate. But you know all about it because of Alison.”

  “You recall it as though you enjoyed.”

  “I did. Everything changed when you went away with Alison. Back to dull old marriage.”

  The tardy waitress appeared and stood mutely in front of the table.

  “I haven’t got time for coffee now, Tom. I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  They stood up. She pressed her dry lips to his, and pushed her skinny body very close.

  7

  He arrived ahead of time at the Fontanella, which, according to Robyn, was a fashionable luncheon place; it was in an old farmhouse just out of Springvale town. On looking around the restaurant, he thought ‘fashionable’ was somewhat excessive. He was lunching with Petra. Robyn also said the Fontanella would be no surprise to Petra, who had been there many times before, thus taking the polish off the venture. He obtained - after negotiation with the head waiter - a table at the front, beside the windows, overlooking a sunny cottage flower garden. He sat down, refused a drink and watched as cars pulled into the parking lot and other diners began to arrive.

  He had been trying to get some time alone with Petra, but Darren or Robyn was present at every attempt he made at the Downs, and Petra professed to be very busy; this meeting was his resort. He wanted to see her privately; it seemed appropriate that a father should commune with his daughter before her wedding, and he thought she might be appreciative, if not actually grateful. His absences over the years had disempowered him; it wasn’t practicable for him to say, ‘Sit down here for a moment, girl; I want to talk to you.’

  Petra, ten minutes late, swept in, kissing him quickly on the cheek before he could get up. “Oh Daddy, I’m so terribly sorry. I stayed at the Campbells’ last night. We had a party and I didn’t get up until late, late, late.”

  “Where’s Darren, at work?”

  “Oh no, he’s off now until after the honeymoon. He’s going to pick me up later.”

  She sat on the opposite chair. The chair on his left was closer to him. Darren was going to loom up, even here. “Like a drink?”

  Petra patted her forehead. “I better have a spritzer, after last night.”

  “Lots of parties at the moment?” he asked, ordering two spritzers from the waiter.

  “Always, I hope!” she laughed.

  “How’s the baby?” He wanted to encourage some intimacy and this was a natural subject.

  She blushed slightly. “Mother told you?”

  “No, you did.”

  “Oh, I see, you’re pretty smart. Yes. The baby. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be… nice.”

  “You’ll have to look after yourself, if you’re going to have a baby.”

  Her face went blank. “Stop drinking and smoking, you mean? That’s what Mother says. After the honeymoon!”

  He hadn’t seen his daughter in years and he was trying to proscribe her habits; she was looking at him as though he was a stranger - which he was, virtually.

  “I don’t mean… I mean… will you manage all right with the baby? You seem to be having such a lot of fun.”

  “The baby will be fun, Daddy, and we’ll have a Karitane nurse.”

  “Right. Certainly, a nurse.”

  Petra looked at her watch, and pushed away the menu. “I’ll just have a sandwich. Darren will be here soon.”

  “I was hoping we would have a chance to talk…”

  “Hi Bob,” Petra said to the waiter. Apparently she knew everybody.

  The waiter hung over the table. Tom ordered two shrimp sandwiches on brown, ignoring the waiter’s reproachful look, and let the vision of a leisurely tete-a-tete lunch with oysters, crayfish and perhaps a chilled bottle of chardonnay slip away. Bloody cheek, asking Darren to come! Didn’t she realise her father wanted to talk to her?…Yes, she probably did. She didn’t want to talk to her father. That was more like it. Then again, was there anything to talk about?

  “There’s a cover charge,” the waiter said, squinting at the measly order.

  “I can afford it.”

  He tried to engage with Petra now that the waiter had gone, but she was looking around at the other diners, waving to people she knew. This place with its ridiculous name was certainly the local watering hole.

  “You’ve got the honeymoon all sorted?”

  “Oh, yes, we’re going to Sydney for a week at the Regent Hotel, and then Uncle Stu has bought us a cruise on the Barrier Reef.”

  “Lovely present. You’ve been to the Reef before?”

  “Oh, sure, but we’re doing it in luxury this time.”

  “Uh-huh. You didn’t think of going somewhere different?”

  “What do you mean, Daddy, different?”

  “Oh, say Tasmania. It’s a beautiful place.”

  She sniggered. “Style, Daddy, style. Monday is washing day in Tasmania.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “We’ve both been and the flight is a yawn. The family have a place at Santa Barbara, but no.”

  He’d be saying to Alison, ‘You can’t imagine how incurious this girl is. A world to choose from, and she just wants to lie in a Sydney hotel and get laid, and then lie in a luxury cruiser and get laid.’ Alison would chuckle and remind him that it was a honeymoon, not an adventure holiday; he wouldn’t tell her about the treatment he was getting at this lunch. Soon that big goon would be swaying over them, drooling, and Petra would disappear.

  The sandwiches came. Petra nibbled hers and pushed it away. “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Sure.” He could have said, ‘Too much booze last night?’ but he was uneasy about making personal jokes, or being really candid. He scrabbled around in his mind for a conversational line. This was his own daughter and he didn’t know what to say to her! He settled for, “How are you getting along with Robyn and Stu?” Something distantly fatherly.

  “Great. Always have.”

  That was that! He pushed away his sandwich in desperation.

  “Is everything all right here?” the waiter asked, peering at the nibbled food and half finished drinks.

  “Great, Bob, thanks,” Petra replied.

  He plunged into feminine territory. “Is the wedding dress ready for its big day?” This was surely a subject where Petra could close her eyes, dream, and elaborate.

  “Oh, yeah,” Petra said warmly, “It’s… great.”

  “Tell me about it,” he asked, immediately galled by his asinine request, and wondering if his waning patience showed, but Petra’s attention was on the other side of the room. She fluttered her hand at Darren who was cutting between the tables toward them.

  “Hi, Darren.” He rose, determined to be affable and unfussy, and offered his hand.

  Darren lunged past him and hugged Petra. Tom withdrew his hand and sat down. But Petra was already on her feet, tucking her bag under her arm. Petra and Darren gave him tittering grins as they retreated a step.

  “Sorry, Daddy. We’ve got to go now. Lovely to see you, and thanks… Bye,” Petra trailed the last words over her shoulder.

  The waiter - it was Bob again - approached and proffered a bill. “You wanna go with them?”

  “No. I’m in no hurry, Bob. Bring me a double vodka tonic, and tell me about your wedding dress.”

  “Whassat?”

  He drank the vodka tonic without enjoyment, and leaving the car he had borrowed from Stuart in the park at the restaurant, he walked into Springvale town. He was hungry and had a vague idea that he might buy a pie at Pete’s All- Night Cafeteria in Seddon Street, where the local lads used to gather in the early hours of Friday or Saturday morning after a night of drinking. Then it was usually pie and chips or fish and chips, and in season raw Bluff oysters. He hadn’t eaten a pie in years, and Pete’s stirred his thoughts in an appetising way. He took a shortcut down a side street, and before him on the corner was St George’s Church, and the church hall, almost subm
erged in blowing trees.

  The desire for the pie faded momentarily, and on impulse he unlatched the gate in the picket fence and went into the garden. The colour of the trees, the lawn and flowerbeds was less vivid and more worn than he remembered, but otherwise it could have been the day twenty-five years ago when they met Maurice Hewitt here. He had asked to see the bride and groom before the knot was tied. Robyn had wanted Maurice to marry them because he was a friend. No doubt the meeting was an act of priestly duty on Maurice’s part, a formality, but Tom hadn’t forgotten a moment of it.

  Maurice suggested that they meet in the churchyard after the Sunday service, and Tom felt obligated to present himself for the service. He sat in a pew polished like glass by many bodies. The church was about half full, mostly of older people, and the service was a social occasion in the town to be followed by gatherings for lunch.

  He found it hard to follow the Bible reading. His thoughts moved to an assessment of the preacher’s histrionic gifts. Maurice was dark and soulful, with a deep burry voice and gleaming eyes. His cheeks were pale and hollow. The gist of his sermon was Christ’s kindness, but intentionally or not, there was something eerie in his manner, questioning the veracity of the kindness. He might have made a good Hamlet.

  Afterwards, Tom eluded the crowd, many of whom he knew in one way or another, or at least recognised. Behind the church was a separate hall set amongst flower and rock gardens. He entered the garden and saw Robyn picking her way along the uneven path by a high, board fence. She paused to consider her footing, and at that moment somebody reached over from the other side of the fence and removed her wide-brimmed, white straw hat from her head. When Tom stepped close to the fence, he could hear the giggles of a number of boys. He wasn’t tall enough to see over the top. Robyn clasped her hands over the fence, and demanded her hat back. Quickly, each of her hands was capped by other small hands. Robyn was a slight woman then. Her hands were held fast.