by Pat Rosier
So, on the Friday she went home, to a pile of messages from their friends, some left when Ginger was being fed, some posted. She cried at the warmth and concern they expressed. Then she went to Rei’s and was grateful to be given dinner. Her exhaustion, which she hadn’t noticed until Rei offered her matchsticks to keep her eyes open, gave her an excuse to ask her friend to not tell anyone she was back for a day or two. Of course she would pass on the news of Chris and Iris, Rei said, and how about she keep Barney until Sunday evening?
‘Bless you dear friend,’ Isobel said as she hugged her goodbye, insisting she was fine for the short drive home, but giving in when Rei insisted on driving them all, including Barney, in Isobel’s car, and walking back home with the dog.
Now he’ll be thoroughly confused Isobel thought, watching her friend and her dog head off down the road, Barney looking back at her, and went in to ring Iris. And sleep. For ten hours. On her second night home, Isobel got out the diary for the first time since the phone call from Bevan Jones.
Bob.
She stared at the word, at the top of the diary page for 20th April 1999. Today it was Friday the 27th of May in the year 2000. She was nearly a third of the way through the diary and through her life. How did she meet Bob? Wasn’t he a friend of Jean’s boyfriend, the one who became her husband? No, that was someone else. Bob was one of the crowd, the loose crowd of people from work along with friends of theirs, people who joined them in the pub on Fridays after work .
The first time I met him I thought he was self-assured, rather good looking. I said something about a book or a film, he said something back that agreed with me and I liked him. I started going to the pub and parties more often, hoping he’d be there. I must have been living in the flat with Jean by then. I’d left the hostel for a bed-sit at the back of a house owned by two elderly sisters who didn’t like there to be a radio on and asked a lot of questions. Jean had a big row with one of her sisters and her mother and bossed me into a flat with her. Her father moved my stuff as well as hers. It was a grotty flat and expensive buying cleaning materials and absolutely everything. I kept meaning to start saving.
I met Pete about then, too, he must have known some of the crowd. He was at university studying psychology. He was short, shorter than me, and from London, and I liked the way he talked. We became friends, I really, really liked having a friend who was a man. I met some more university students through him and wondered about enrolling for a couple of units myself, I could get time off work, but it seemed like something other people did. Like traveling overseas. Lots of people my age were going overseas to ‘do their OE’ everyone said. That’s what I was going to save up for. But it never seemed real, it never seemed as though I would go, I didn’t know how to go about it and I never did manage to save.
I could have figured out the nuts and bolts, thought Isobel. I learnt how to do new things all the time at work and loved it, how to assess this and that, who to talk to at head office, how to run meetings, make things happen. She read over what she had just written and stopped at, ‘it seemed like something other people did’. Everything had been like that, everything that wasn’t mundane like paying the rent, buying food, going home at weekends once a month, secretly smoking, hanging out at pubs and parties trying to believe she wasn’t bored. She had learnt to eat in cheap restaurants and even go to plays, but had never been able to see anything as big as going to university or going overseas as something she could think of doing herself.
I enjoyed going out with Bob. He took me to a big nightclub, where there was a live jazz band playing. I loved it. He’d take me home to the flat and stay awhile and we’d kiss and cuddle. I liked kissing with him. And when he was leaving we would sort out the next time we would see each other. He wasn’t keen on phoning and didn’t like me to ring his work. I was surprised — and grateful — that he liked me, he was such a success in the crowd, laughing and joking with everyone. He said I was ‘different’ in a way that I knew meant it was a good kind of different, but he never said any more about that and I never asked.
He never asked to go with me on the weekends I went home, either, and I didn’t ask him to come or talk about him to my parents. I didn’t want to, I told myself. It was nothing to do with my life with them and they would ask embarrassing questions or not be interested, and I thought both of those would be awful.
My sister and brother were both married and away by then. My brother got married in Dunedin where Sally came from, and only Mum and Dad went. It was a big deal, them going to Dunedin on the train, the boat and another train, and then the same way back again. Dad would say they spent more time traveling than they did in Dunedin. I remember my sister’s wedding, though. She didn’t want me to be her bridesmaid and I didn’t want to be it either but somehow I was. The wedding was small, only families, and I don’t even remember what happened afterwards. There certainly wasn’t anything as grand as a reception. I think there might have been some food and a cuppa somewhere, probably a local hall. I decided then that if I ever got married I would do it at a registry office and tell my parents afterwards.
I don’t remember the first time Bob and I had sex so it must have been all right. I had nearly done it once before at a party but the man was too drunk I think, the details have vanished. Anyway, then we were doing it quite a lot. It was nice. I liked being held. Bob wasn’t into saying I love you or anything, but he was proud of his ability to make it good for the woman, not just himself. He had a lot more sexual experience than I did, he’d started when he was still at school and said he had never had any trouble ‘getting it’.
I had quite a few friends. People seemed to like me. It was good to have friends. And acquaintances, people you never saw by arrangement but who said hello and chatted when you saw them somewhere. A bunch of us – not Bob, and not Jean, but about six people, I can’t remember their names, I think they were students with Pete, would go around to Pete and his brother’s flat on Sundays for eight o’clock and lie on the floor listening to The Goon Show on the radio and laughing hysterically so we missed some of it. That was fun. I don’t think I got all the jokes but I laughed anyway and no one noticed. I’d go home and tell Jean about it and she wouldn’t think it was funny. She was being very serious, getting ready to get married, with a lot of fuss and carry-on. Both her sisters, even the one she had rowed with, were going to be her bridesmaids and she started to apologise once for not having me as well but I was relieved.
I did things with one lot of friends at a time. That was all right. In fact it made me feel good that I had two lots of friends, as well as Bob. When I went out with Bob it was usually only the two of us, he never came to any work social things, I can’t remember if he did at first and stopped but I think he must have otherwise I would never have met him. And he did know Pete so both of them must have been there sometimes. I only talked about the work friends at home with my parents, and then not much.
I got pregnant. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell anyone until I eventually told Bob, on the phone and he hated talking on the phone but I was desperate to tell him and blurted it out. Then he disappeared for two weeks. Well, not disappeared exactly, I knew he was going away for his work, but he’d never done that before and I thought he would give me an address or phone number or something but he didn’t. Pete was nice when I told him because I had to tell someone. I went around there a lot and he never said anything about what I should do but talked about all sorts of things just like he always did. I had to wait that two weeks for Bob to come back and it was two more days before he came round. Jean was out. As soon as he came in he said, ‘We’d better get married then. Find us a flat, somewhere near my work, not around here.' Then we went on mostly like before for a while.
I found a flat, at the back of this old couple’s house. It was all right. Two bedrooms, back garden. They – the couple, I’ve forgotten their names – had the front garden. There was a side gate directly into our place.
So when I went hom
e, I told my mother I was pregnant and getting married. She said, ‘Well, we’d better meet him then.’ I don’t remember anything at all about taking Bob to meet my parents. He and Mum got on, which I suppose was a relief. He didn’t have anything in common with my father, they never seemed to have anything much to say to each other. I think the flat was furnished, at least partly. I left work. I left before being pregnant showed; I couldn’t bear for anyone to notice and I didn’t know when we were going to get married, Bob never mentioned it again after the first time. I was like two people, one at work who was competent and clever and could do things and even tell other people what to do, and one away from work who went along with whatever was expected. I didn’t even ask questions then. I never asked Bob when we were getting married or said what I thought we should do, I just waited for him to say something, then I did it.
My father retired and my parents bought a place quite near our flat, about twenty minutes’ walk away. It was the first house they had owned, they always lived in houses that went with my father’s job before that, state houses. I don’t remember exactly when I realised that growing up in a state house was something you didn’t talk about, unless you figured that the person you were talking to had lived in one too, and then you commiserated with each other.
I was healthy when I was pregnant and never got morning sickness or anything. I smoked, though. Being pregnant was horrible. People talked to my stomach. It was all big and bulky and uncomfortable. I was a bit interested in the idea of a new life but knew I wouldn’t know what to do about it. I got some books from the library and read them all and could have passed a test but always knew having a real baby would be nothing like anything in books.
Bob never came to the doctor’s or anything. When I was about six months gone the doctor took ages and ages listening to my stomach then went and got one of the other doctors. She listened too, then they nodded to each other and told me it was twins, there were two heartbeats. I could tell I was supposed to be pleased but I wasn’t. I felt like I was suffocating. When I got home I rang my mother and told her and she got all practical of course and talked about two cots and what my father could make and coming around to help and I couldn’t breathe properly. I remember telling Bob when he came home from work, late and a bit drunk because it was Friday and he punched one hand into the other palm and said, ‘Hot damn!’ and went out again to celebrate. I could see him thinking about asking me to come, but as soon as he started talking I shook my head and so he went off. I remember I cried a little bit because I couldn’t think how I could manage one baby, never mind two, and I remember thinking about the money I had actually saved in the end, not much but a few hundred dollars, and could I run away. But I’d be taking the babies with me in my stomach. So I got practical and made lists and decided I would ring Plunket the next day and see if there was any help for twins.
I wasn’t seeing any of my friends from before, not even Jean. Very occasionally Pete would turn up and have a cup of tea. He was chuffed about the idea of being an honorary uncle but he had also finished at university and was applying for jobs overseas. We didn’t have our own phone, just the owners’ one in the hall. We had to go around and knock on the front door and disturb them to use it, so I didn’t give the number to anyone to ring me and we were way out on the cheap part of the North Shore and didn’t have a car. No one from work lived around there, thank goodness. So we saw my parents, who were very helpful in a practical way, my father was making wooden cribs and all sorts and my mother was knitting and sewing. I did some knitting too. It was soothing, especially if I had a pattern with a complicated stitch I had to concentrate on.
The only bit I remember about the letter from my sister in Melbourne is that she said how could I do that to my parents. Get pregnant and not be married that is. I didn’t know I had done anything to them. When we moved into the flat I went into a jewelers and bought a cheap wedding ring and everyone kind of assumed we had got married so I let them think that. I didn’t know when or even if we were going to get married and I worried about that a bit but didn’t do anything about it.
I hadn’t noticed before we moved into the flat together that Bob didn’t like to talk about things. And I made it easy for him. My brother would have been surprised at how few questions I asked. He and Sally and their toddler came to visit once or twice. I could tell Bob didn’t think much of them and we never went to visit them. I never suggested it. It would have taken three buses to get to their place.
His family. It was months before he told his mother about me. She scared me, wanting to confide all kinds of things about her life and her ‘marital relations’ as she called them. And she told me all the time how good she was with babies, and how they always loved her and how sad she was when Bob stopped being a baby and how she had badly wanted more children but Bob’s father, Robert, stopped having those relations with her when Bob was born and started being a boy scout leader and Bob had to be a cub and then a scout and he looked so cute in his uniform – Bob that is – and all these boys came around all the time with bikes for fixing and advice and things but Bob and his father didn’t have much to do with each other. Robert called him ‘your boy’ and didn’t bother with him except when he was at scouts. Robert told me to call him ‘Poppa’ so I didn’t call him anything.
When we went there to visit we would catch two buses and Robert would bring us home. I remember their house being cold and Sunday lunch was cold meat and lumpy potatoes and Bob would help his mother with the dishes and Robert and I would talk about the news and the weather. Then we would all walk around the garden, Bob’s mother whispering things to me, and have a cup of tea and Robert would drive us home. What I remember is bleakness, terrible bleakness. Worse even than in my family when I was little. At least my parents liked each other.
She wanted me to call her Mum. I didn’t call her anything either until she started referring to herself as Nana to the babies so I called her that when I had to. At least she didn’t get all excited about twins. One baby, two babies, she’d just be superb however many there were. She gave me some woollen baby singlets that she said must be hand washed. That wouldn’t be a problem, I washed everything by hand in the bath, there was no washing machine in the flat and Bob said I had plenty of time.
I got bigger and bigger. I waddled. When we had sex Bob would do it from behind, which I didn’t like much, I had to kind of scrunch up so he could get his penis in. I don’t think I even knew about anal sex then, I’d have got a real fright if he’d tried that. Towards the end of being pregnant I would do it for him with my hand, and sometimes my mouth. I didn’t like doing it with my mouth but I never said so. All the stuff. I remember I thought one time that at least I couldn’t get pregnant that way and then got the giggles because of course I couldn’t. He would touch me with his hand but it didn’t really work I don’t know why, I just was never in the mood or something. I pretended it had worked so he would stop.
Isobel stopped writing and tried to shake the tingling out of her hand. How would you explain repetitive strain injury from writing with a pen these days, she wondered. She hadn’t noticed when the tears started; the last two pages had drops on them. Then she was crying, sobbing, shaking with it. Ginger jumped onto the desk. She stroked automatically, noticing that her fur was cold and slightly damp from outside. ‘Where have you been Ginger, what have you been up to?’ She felt better with the cat rubbing against her, pushing its nose into her neck and purring. ‘Oh, Ginger, that was so awful and it got worse. I’m writing things I didn’t even know I remembered. Do cats remember? I don’t suppose so.' She went on murmuring into the cat’s fur until it wriggled away from her onto the desk and started to curl up on the open page. ‘No, puss, I have to put that away.’ She eased the diary out from under the cat, put it, with the pen in her briefcase, closed it — click! — and went to bed wondering how well — or badly — Warwick had managed her conference and how much her absence had been noticed. Monday, she thought, Monday back at work
is soon enough to be thinking of that.
In the event her colleagues, including Warwick, were gratifyingly pleased to see her. Reports from the conference were positive, but there wasn’t time for post-mortems, a government minister, famous for his imperiousness was demanding …… Isobel was glad to be back.
‘Very sharp, very sharp indeed, picking up that inconsistency in the Minister’s strategy.’ Isobel and her boss, Don, were walking to the lift. ‘And tactful, bringing it out in a question, not making him look foolish. You could do well in politics, have you ever …?’ Isobel flushed at his look, and shook her head. ‘Only for the briefest of moments,’ she said. ‘I like working behind the scenes.' She liked being appreciated, especially when she knew herself that she had indeed been sharp, that she had picked up something the Minister, and his advisors, and her boss, had all missed. She enjoyed the feeling of being in her stride, on top of her work, doing a better-than-good job.
Later, at home, she read what she had written the night before, and then began writing again.
I stopped trying to make sense of things, stopped asking questions, stopped being anyone at all to myself. I was a pregnancy, a wife – and not a very good one either – a being with no self, vague, going through motions, doing what was easiest and least demanding of me with my mother, with Bob and with his mother. And there wasn’t anybody much else. This was when I started taking whodunits out of the library, five or six at a time, reading them constantly, numbingly, every moment I could. I dealt with the guilt of being lazy by knitting while I read. I even knitted a jumper for Bob, dark blue, with two columns of cable stitch down the front and the back. I had to stop reading every time I got to the row where you put three stitches on an extra small needle and took them behind another three stitches to make the cable. He wore it a lot and always told people I had knitted it, like he wanted to show them that I could do wifey things, and was really disappointed when — after the twins were born — I washed it in the washing machine and it shrunk and matted up so he couldn’t wear it. I don’t think I did that on purpose.
