by Pat Rosier
‘I’m so sorry Daniel, I had no idea. How does Sally … ? What does she …?’
‘Do?’ Daniel had emptied his plate. ‘She runs the house, gets deeper and deeper into her antiques; she’s buying for a store now. She’s been great though, I couldn’t have managed without her, I couldn’t get up in the mornings for a while and she got me through that and back to work.’ Now he was stirring the empty plate with his fork. ‘Funny, I always hated being an accountant and now I rather like it. Spreadsheets and figures and sums, profit and loss, balance the books, account for the cash, I can lose myself in them and forget I’m teetering on the edge of a black hole.’
‘A black ho…?’ Better not go there, she thought. ‘Do Nathan and Sarah know?’
Daniel said that Sally thought it best not to tell them with Sarah teaching in London now, not that she’d come home much, even when she was only in Napier. Tears flowed again, he seemed hardly to notice. He thought Nathan was drinking too much, and short of money — what with Averil’s three children from an earlier marriage. Isobel knew all that. Daniel went silent again, still making restless moves with his fork, Isobel wanted to grab it off him. Then he’d put it down and dabbed at his face with his table napkin again.
She said how sorry she was and asked how she could help and he said, ‘you can’t. I’ve got to get back to work, can’t be letting any cracks show there. One of Sally’s ideas was early retirement but I wouldn’t know what to do with myself all day, I’d drive her crazy.’ And he was gone.
Isobel vowed to have him around for Saturday lunch soon. Sally worked on Saturdays. But not, she told herself, so Iris would be there. And not the coming long, Easter weekend, she and Iris were going to the Wairarapa coast, hoping for weather at least settled enough for long walks. She had already decided to leave the diary at home.
~~~
Chapter 06
There were two other girls in the same room as me at the hostel but I don’t remember anything about either of them, not even their names, except that one would sometimes climb up the fire escape and knock on the window to be let in when she was late and the front door was locked. Ten o’clock from Sunday to Thursday, midnight on Friday and Saturday.
Matron had a separate flat with a door off the hallway by the stairs that went up to our rooms. No one ever went in that door except her and a mysterious man who was supposed to be her husband, some kind of diplomat who was away a lot. We had to sign out in the morning if we weren’t going to be in for dinner. Breakfast and dinner were in a dining room downstairs, with a big kitchen going off it. Lunch was put out at the weekend. Or at least white bread, orange cheese, sliced tomato and droopy wet lettuce was. Mrs Buxton the matron would be in the kitchen while we ate dinner, with a coke bottle which never got empty but the coke got lighter and lighter, while she cleared up.’Gin,’ the others said. I was shocked.
I didn’t tell anyone I’d never had a proper boyfriend. A boy had kissed me at my sister’s wedding, he was someone’s cousin and backed me up against a verandah railing and used his tongue. I thought it was disgusting and pushed him away. And that was it.
I don’t remember his name or where I met him or how the arrangement got made but there was the time I went for a ride on the bus to the beach with someone. He met me at the hostel and we walked to the bus. It was already dark. He paid for me on the bus and I didn’t know how to give him the money so I hoped he didn’t mind. I don’t remember what we talked about. We got out of the bus after about thirty minutes and walked a short way to a beach. I liked the beach in the dark, except it wasn’t very dark because there were shops around and street lights. The waves were gentle and looked mysterious, making white foam at their tops as they folded in to the shore. We walked along the beach a little way then stopped and sat down with our backs to a wall. There wasn’t anyone else around, except you could hear cars going by and the humming and clicking of the trolley buses. Then he took my hand and put it on something smooth and spongy and warm. I think I froze. I didn’t know what to do. Then we were walking back to the bus and I suppose we talked about something on the bus and he walked with me back to the hostel door and I never saw him again.
Isobel felt herself blushing. ‘You were incredibly lucky!’ Iris had said when she told her this story, early in their relationship. ‘He must have been a half-way decent chap and realised how innocent you were. You could have been just left there, at best, or even raped.’ Isobel supposed so, and didn’t say that she might have welcomed something a bit more dramatic — maybe being abandoned on the beach rather than being raped. As it was, she had been left with her usual hopeless feeling of deadening the potential in any event; that there was something about her that made it impossible for anything interesting to happen.
What else do I remember from that year? Standing on a street corner with some other people about my age – who were they? – and learning to smoke. Being at a dance and only able to think about having the wrong kind of shoes, ones with rubber soles that stuck on the floor instead of gliding, and trying to dance with someone who was very sweaty. Buying cream buns and eating them on the bus on the way back to the hostel. Watching the new guy across the room at work and hoping he would notice me and he never did. Finding out that I could learn to do work things — checking forms, doing calculations, knowing regulations — really quickly and liking that. Having bad period cramps at work sometimes and wanting to lie down on the sofa in the women’s rest room — it might even have been called a sick bay, and the men didn’t have one — but not being able to tell anyone. I could work out the words to say but even thinking of saying them to someone made tears come in my eyes and so I couldn’t do it. Somehow I found out about taking aspirin for the aches and that helped.
I hated the whole messy business of periods. It took me many tries and a lot of soggy wasted tampons to learn how to use them and they often felt uncomfortable. And I was always so worried about leaking, whatever I used. For years I probably used twice as many tampons and pads as I needed to just to make sure there was no overflow.
One day at work I was waiting at the top of the stairs for Jean, who worked two desks over from me. We were going out at lunchtime together to look at the shops for the second time that week and I realised I had a friend. I remember struggling with tears and running down the stairs ahead of her so she wouldn’t notice.
She had started sitting with me at morning and afternoon tea and then I started sitting with her as well. Sometimes she would be meeting her mother or one of her sisters at lunchtime. Once I met my mother who had come into town for something and who talked all the time about my father, who had been having headaches worse than usual. Jean said her parents really loved each other but they fought a lot – shouting and yelling, not hitting. Her father had a workshop under his house where he would go and do things for hours after a fight, sometimes all night. Jean’s mother would yell at her and her sisters and brothers – there were five of them altogether - too and they would yell back. And the children all yelled at each other and sometimes they had a good time playing in the back garden or doing something, like throwing a ball so it hit the washing on the line to see whether their mother yelled or laughed. I remember wondering what it would be like, all that noise. And I couldn’t imagine doing something that might make your mother yell. I thought it was strange. I thought that because I never heard my mother yell, not once, not ever. She would say things in a voice that made you quail and want to hide but she never yelled. She laughed sometimes, like at the pictures when we saw Genevieve, a film about an old car, and she threw her arms about and laughed, and I thought people would be noticing, and the next day my father was laughing about her laughing and showed us the bruises on his arm from her throwing hers about when she was laughing so much her arms kept hitting him.
Jean asked me to come to her place for Sunday dinner, so that was the first weekend I didn’t go home. I was astounded at what the hostel was like on Saturday night. First there was all the carry-on of ever
yone getting ready to go out, with huge fussing about clothes and makeup and hair and who they were going out with and where and how awful it was that the front door was locked at midnight.
There was one other girl who wasn’t doing anything, I forget her name. Me and this girl went to the pictures together and I was glad to have someone to go with because it would be humiliating to be seen by someone I knew at the pictures by myself on a Saturday night. After the pictures she asked me to go to a night club with her but I caught the bus back to the hostel and she never asked me to do anything else with her and a few weeks later her parents came and took her away from the hostel and there was a fuss, and eventually I figured out that she was pregnant. Mrs Buxton started checking that everyone was in their room when she locked the front door, but that didn’t last very long.
When I got to Jean’s house on Sunday it was a mess. There were clothes everywhere and shoes and sports gear all over the floor and a great pile of dishes and another one of washing. So I was surprised that Jean’s mother was really fussy about people washing their hands all the time, like before setting the table and then again before eating. All the food was piled on big plates in the middle of the table and at first Jean and her mother and one of her sisters were very polite and offered me things but after a while it was all reaching and passing and talking and eating and saying ‘hey, leave some of that for the rest of us’, and ‘gotta go, hockey practice,’ and sisters arguing about a skirt and a brother telling everyone about his soccer game the day before whether they were listening or not and a sister telling her mother that she didn’t care if she did have a late shift, she had to come and see her sing in the choir. The word maelstrom came into my mind and I asked no-one in particular what it meant and Jean’s father hooted with laughter and said it was a perfect description of what was going on. So I sat in the middle of the maelstrom and it felt like a good time was going on around me and I was sort of in it but not really part of it and that was all right.
I offered to help clear up and do the dishes but Jean said it wasn’t her turn and took me off to her room, which she shared with two sisters and it was a terrible mess too and nobody seemed to care except for whose lipstick it was or who was wearing their jumper or had left it on the floor dirty or something. I said I had better go soon because the buses back to the hostel didn’t connect very well on Sundays and Jean said, don’t worry, Dad will drive you back and she hadn’t even asked him. So we sat around and looked at magazines and said which clothes in them we liked and which film stars, then we went out the back in the dark and looked at their rabbits in a cage. Then Jean’s father came out of the shed and Jean said would he take me home and he said yes and she came too.
When he drove the car Jean’s father was kind of loose and relaxed, with an elbow out the window. I said something and he said he loved driving, he had started when he was twelve, he reckoned it took him about ten minutes to learn the first time he got behind the wheel of his father’s car. Jean said, ‘Oh Dad, do shut up,’ a couple of times but he didn’t take any notice. Then he was very interested in what it was like to live in a hostel and I tried very hard to think of things to tell him.
Isobel was startled at how much she had written. How much tonight and how much in the three months since she started. She went for days sometimes without thinking about her past or writing it, then it would be right there, in the front of her mind, demanding attention. Iris was out tonight, catching up with an old work colleague from her public service days.
‘Mind if I take these?’ she’d asked, picking up an envelope of photos as she left to pick Steve up from his hotel, ‘It’ll be good for Stevey-boy to see pictures of two aging lesbians enjoying themselves on an Easter weekend holiday….' Iris had heard via Rhonda, who’d heard rumours at Work and Income Head Office where she was a senior manager, that Steve, a manager at W & I in Auckland, had re-joined the Anglican church.
‘I thought the anglicans were quite liberal ….’
‘Well, he won’t mind then!’ and Iris kissed Isobel and was gone, then she came back, dragging Barney by the collar, telling him firmly he could not go with her.
Remembering so much about being in the hostel was a surprise. The group of them standing on the footpath, offering her a cigarette and her taking it and coughing and gradually learning to smoke it. That picture was so clear in her mind but she didn’t know who the people were. They were young, like herself, some girls, some boys, probably about five altogether. She had gone on smoking for twenty-five years. And sitting around the table at Jean’s and talking with her father in the car. They had been so real while she was writing them, so clear. Snapshots, she thought. Then, how clichéd, snapshots from the past.
The phone rang. An unknown man asked for Iris, and when would she be home and how soon could she (Isobel) get a message to her (Iris). Then Isobel was in the present, focused on the call, recognizing something in the man’s tone.
‘I’m Iris’s partner,’ she said, ‘tell me what this is about.’
Silence. ‘Partner?’
‘’Yes, partner, as in we live together, share our lives, that sort of thing.' She forced the impatience out of her voice. ‘Look,’ she went on, ‘tell me what this is about, please.’
‘This is Bevan Jones from International Engineering, Melbourne office.' His voice was even, doubtful.
‘Yes, the firm Iris’s son Chris works for. I understand he’s in Alice Springs.' Isobel knew for certain that this was bad news. ‘Go on.’
Another pause. Isobel went into what she thought of as her public service mode. ‘Perhaps you could give me your name and contact details, and the essential information. Then I can decide whether to try and contact Iris before she gets home, she’s due in about an hour.’ Her voice was strictly neutral now, brisk.
‘There’s been an accident …’
‘Yes, Go on.' Couldn’t he get straight to the point?
‘Mr , um, Chris – car accident – truck lost control and hit his –, he’s been flown to Adelaide – no, Melbourne hospital, he was nearly there.’ When had he left Alice …. ? ‘– severe injuries – no real details. We will of course do anything to help, I’m sure if his mother wants to come over …’ Isobel cut him short, asked for information about which hospital and his own contact information. She told him that she and Iris would be there as soon as they could arrange it and brushed off his offers of help. When she had replaced the receiver she looked at it for a moment, trying to decide whether to contact airlines in the hour or so before Iris would be home, deciding not.
Isobel started a list of things to do, including taking Barney to the kennels and getting the news out to their friends; someone, she knew, would organize a roster for feeding Ginger. There was no answer from Rhonda’s so she rang Rei, told her that Iris’s Chris had been in an accident, was in hospital, they’d be going over as soon as … tomorrow probably, and could she possibly ….’
‘Leave it to me,’ Rei said. ‘I can bring Barney here, you know how we adore each other, and I’ll sort out Ginger. For as long as you need. Don’t even think about them. Just remind me where you keep the outside key.’ As Isobel hung up the phone she heard Iris coming in the front door.
‘Hi honey,’ Iris was calling, ‘I’m just going to pee, then I’ll come and say hello properly. And wait till I tell you …’, her voice faded as she went down the hall. Isobel was waiting when she came out of the toilet.
‘Hey, what’s up? You look awful.’ Iris took her hand. Isobel led them both to the dining room sofa and sat them both down. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Isobel said, ‘It’s Chris. He’s had an accident, his work rang,’ and watched the colour drain from her partner’s face. ‘He’s in hospital in Melbourne, I’ve got the number. Iris lifted her head. ‘I’ll go. Will you come? Oh no, there’s your conference …’
‘I’m coming, never mind the conference.’ A New Zealand-hosted conference of senior parliamentary staff. In three days. Sixty delegates
, officials from parliaments here, Australia and the Pacific. Her baby for the past six months. All planned and organised, her only worry the Fiji delegation, given that it seemed that today the entire parliament had been taken hostage as part of a coup.
‘But you’ve put so much into organizing it…’
‘It’s only a conference, for heaven’s sake, someone else can take over, of course I’m coming with you.’
They could get to Melbourne the next day if they got the nine am flight to Auckland, so, in spite of it being nearly eleven Isobel rang her colleague Warwick, waking him, making her explanations crisply, noting his pleasure at being put in charge. She couldn’t stop herself from giving advice. ‘Look after the details,’ she said, ‘and the people coming in from the smaller countries,’ not saying, ‘and never mind about impressing the bigwigs.’ The questions he asked her were reassuringly practical – where was this record, that planning, what about this arrangement? Who was her contact in Foreign Affairs? The Fiji coup might mean they’d lose a whole delegation mightn’t it? Yes, he’d explain to the conference team at the meeting in the morning, chair it in her place … Isobel rang off, hoping he was up to it, then consigned the conference to a small corner of her mind and took advantage of the two-hour time difference to ring her sister in Melbourne. She didn’t recall ever having rung Shirley, who was barely in touch with her, either. Even the notes in her Christmas cards had got so short as to say virtually nothing. ‘Been a great year, Michael doing well in London, the girls reproducing like mad – four grandchildren now.’
Shirley was out, so Isobel told her husband Brian (number three, but who’s counting? Isobel could imagine her saying) and he promised to let his wife know they would ring when they arrived the next day. Husband number one had known about ‘my lesbian sister,’ number two, whom Isobel never met, probably didn’t. She and Iris had met Brian once when he and Shirley had stopped over on their way to Queenstown.
