by Gee, Maurice
The after-thought nearly made me stay out. But I cooled down after a while. I was back from a holiday in the South of France and knew I wasn’t going to make the grade as an international playboy. Luxury hotels strained my conscience : a humiliating discovery. And of course, mine was only a small amount of money. I re-did my sums and decided I would have to teach for at least half of each year. So I became part owner of a furniture factory. I came to Great Money Lake with my brand new enamel mug and conscience allowed me to stay. Others there were guarding private pipelines.
I took a job at a Grammar School and began to feel that I was a fairly good teacher. Women came into my life; complained of my hollow centre; left after a variety of scenes. I was happy most of the time. I changed flats; built a new den; had holidays in Greece and Yugoslavia. Letters arrived from Andrew. He and Penelope were “ideally suited”. They were parents of a boy called Jonathan. Andrew had bought a house in Takapuna and seldom went out west any more. The changes in Wadesville grieved him. Once, driving through, he noticed that my “old boyhood friend” Inverarity had opened a big new drapers shop. The news failed to move me. Charlie was like someone I had met at a party—a bad party. And Wadesville was a foreign town.
Yet it was Wadesville that brought me back to New Zealand. In August 1962 I was on holiday in Spain. In Alicante I walked in the back-streets, a few yards from my fellow tourists. The poverty there filled me with shame. Back on the boulevard, hot and tired, I sat on a shaded seat to cool off. A man came up and charged me two pesetas. I was glad of the chance to be angry. But anger, I found, needed its feet on some native ground. The frontiersman stepped out. Pay to sit in the shade! Not likely. I’d leave their bloody clip-joint country. Head for the bush. Head for home. I had a vision of Wadesville: cool, egalitarian, green. That was where I belonged—not in this Fascist tourist-trap.
I stayed another month, though not in Alicante. All the time Wadesville kept me company. I thought of it not obsessively, not with longing; automatically. A circuit had been opened, my mind sent memories through—images more often than events. Slightly mystified, I gazed at them. What was this in aid of? I lay on a beach near Malaga and remembered Cascade Park. I watched fish struggling up an almost dry weir in Murcia and thought of tommy cods and silver bellies, silver hook and pink piece of worm vanishing into still green water. I drove through olive groves and thought of Prior’s orchard. In the Alhambra I remembered the Wadesville Town Hall! But mostly it was the creek—Charlie and me in our tin canoes—pools opening out, each one like a room. I travelled from the launching place to the sea. Over an arm of mangrove swamp I saw the cliffs of the North Shore; pink castles, burning windows.
What was this about? The places I was remembering didn’t exist any more. I had no home. Or if I had, it was London; the Thames was my creek. Be reasonable, I told myself, calm down. But now I could almost taste my childhood.
As I drove north through the Basque country it was plain I was heading for Wadesville.
Several months later I strolled on Takapuna beach with my brother and his wife. Ahead, Jonathan was throwing pipi shells into the wind. Jonathan had surprised me. He was a big freckled happy child who lolloped about like a puppy. After dinner he had ambushed me in the hall and taken me to his bedroom. Two postcards I’d sent from Spain were pinned to the wall.
“Have you really seen a bullfight?” he asked.
“Where did you get these?”
“Dad threw them in the waste-paper basket. He said it was your sense of humour. Is this a real castle?”
“Oh yes.”
“With torture chambers and dungeons?”
“Yes. It’s ruined now, though.”
“Was there blood on the walls?”
“If there was any it’s gone now,” I said. “Aren’t you scared he’ll find them?”
Jonathan laughed. “He never comes in here. We saw a Maori fort last year. It was just a lot of ditches. Did this one have bullet holes?”
“No. I’ll send you some cards if you like, when I go back.”
“You’re not going back. You’ve just got here.”
I saw that Jonathan was going to make a hero of me. As we left the bedroom he said, “Dad says you’re a tough guy.”
“Not really. I’m a bit of a sissy.”
He laughed as if this were a huge joke. “You’re not like a teacher.”
On the beach Andrew said again, “You should have told us, Paul. Just walking in when we thought you were round the other side of the world. It’s too much.”
“Andrew,” Penelope said, “do stop harping on it. He’s told us he’s sorry.”
“Yes, but after fifteen years….” Andrew was affronted. My behaviour criticized him. He was also a little awed that twelve thousand miles and fifteen years could be so casually treated. It surprised me to find his voice slipping back to the aggrieved tone of his adolescence. The change in him was greater than I had expected. He was a hard, quick, determined man—unflappable, to use his wife’s term. Yet I had the uneasy sense that my coming had shifted a balance in him. He reminded me, as he talked, of our mother in disapproving vein. There was also something of Father: a wobble in purpose, an over-quickness of mind. I had given him a glimpse of—freedom?—anarchy? Self-indulgence! Only in moments of pause did he know what he thought.
As we reached the end of the beach Penelope asked me my plans. Penelope disapproved of me too. She was in love with order. But after her “flap” when I knocked at the door she had got me safely into a cage marked “Eccentric relatives—Andrew’s side”. Now, though she disapproved, she was pleased to have me. There was nothing malicious in this—I was not to be a weapon against Andrew—it simply satisfied her hunger for order to have a brother of his making weight opposite her space-wandering Dad and Theosophist Mum.
We turned and walked back towards the house. I told them I’d probably behave like a tourist for a while. I had never been to the South Island. Penelope nodded approvingly: the South Island should be collected.
“Are you going to have a look at Wadesville?” Andrew said. There was still a note of complaint in his voice: Wadesville too obeyed no rules. “The place seems to have gone crazy. I can’t find my way around it any more.”
I said I would probably take a drive out that way for old time’s sake. Penelope nodded again. “Roots,” she said in a satisfied voice. Andrew glanced at her sharply, then looked at me. “The orchard’s gone. Completely.”
“But the money’s in the bank,” I said.
“Yes.” He was angry. The equation worked in some other way for him. “Your friend Inverarity’s done well. He’s got a big shop in a block he owns. He must be making a fortune in rent.”
“Charlie was born a winner,” I said.
“He married that girl you used to take out. The one who looked like an Indian.”
“Indian? You mean Joyce Poole?”
He shrugged; he didn’t know her name. It was several minutes before I understood: American Indian. I almost shouted with laughter. That blanket of our mother’s, that was what he remembered, not Joyce Poole. I told him Charlie wasn’t my friend any longer, he’d pinched my girl. I was on the edge of describing the trick, but remembered Andrew’s feeling for John in time. Besides—did Penelope know about our brother? Asking this, I felt I’d come a long way back to concerns I’d thought myself rid of as surely as childhood warts and adolescent pimples. The tainted Prior blood. The facts about Down’s syndrome should be taught in schools, I thought, along with the facts about sex. All the same, Penelope probably had been told. Andrew had never shared my shame; he had out-stripped me there. A turn-up for the books—I was supposed to bear enlightenment’s torch. Consider him now though, frowning, looking lemonish, calling his wife’s attention to the sunset, because a girl in a skimpy bathing suit walked across their path. “The drawback of this beach is the people,” Andrew said. “The prices we pay for our properties, you’d think we could have some privacy. It’s our rates that maintain th
e place—and all the riff-raff of Auckland come and mess it up.” He gestured at the girl, who gave a squeal as she dipped her bum in the water. Then he stood still and pointed to his house, squatting among its peers. “Do you know what I paid for that place? Eleven thousand pounds. You don’t pay that sort of money to have your view cluttered up with …” (a life-saving practice, strollers kissing). “I had an offer of seventeen thousand last week. I’m thinking seriously about taking it.”
“There should be a part of the beach for the property holders,” Penelope said. “Surely that would be fair. The council could put up a wall.”
“Or lay a mine-field,” I said.
Andrew frowned and said coldly, “It’s all very well for you, Paul. You don’t have to live here. If my wife wasn’t with us I’d tell you some of the things that go on.”
I apologized. We went back to the house and had coffee. Jonathan said he hoped I’d be coming to see them again. He shook hands and went to bed. Penelope took out her knitting. I asked her if she unravelled it at night. She gave a puzzled smile, and changed it to a social one when I explained. “I’ve never seen the point of those old-fashioned stories.”
Andrew brought out his books. He began to explain my investment. I protested: I had no head for these things, I trusted him completely. Besides, my lawyer looked after my interests.
“You’ve put your money in, Paul,” he said. “Now it’s your duty to understand.”
It was midnight before he let me go.
Wadesville shone like a glossy magazine. Driving slowly from bridge to bridge through a gully walled with plate-glass and coloured tile I told myself that none of it fooled me. I’d seen too much, I’d seen the world. This was not a suburb, this was still a town. The Golden Mile was the Great North Road tarted up; two storeys in place of one, glass and tile in place of weather-board. I had the sense of rusty iron, countryside, behind the facade: orchards, vineyards, blackberry patch and cowyard. Nevertheless, I was prepared to be affectionate, in a patronizing way. I looked for people I had known. The streets were full of sunburned men in shorts and women pushing prams. I felt a little put out: someone should have welcomed me. I was important—I carried knowledge of this town’s infancy.
I drove into the factory belt to find Prior’s orchard. I knew what to expect, but the completeness of the blotting-out struck me like a blow. I felt sick. Not a tree, not a blade of grass—no den, no house, not even a fragment of rotten timber. Huge fibrolite cool-stores set on asphalt yards. A glass office with two secretaries, pretty and plain. Trucks. Gloomy vistas of cased fruit. It cheered me a little to see that the old swing-bridge was still in use. But in spite of my childhood crossings of it, and my first sight of Joyce Poole, the bridge had never lived in my imagination. The creek did that, the orchard and the den. I went on to the bridge and looked at the creek: a ditch of grey scummy water with islands of detergent froth moving on its surface. Nothing could be alive in it. A smell of decay came up, more chemical than organic. I cleared my throat and spat hurriedly.
So much, I thought, for coming home.
I went to my car and drove back to the shopping area. In a last effort to whip up my nostalgia I looked for the name Inverarity; and wondered then how I had missed it earlier. The shop stood on the corner section where the boarding-house had been. Inverarity Buildings: the name was raised in bright red concrete letters above the veranda. I wondered how Charlie had prospered to this degree. It struck me that his book-making father must have done very well. At this memory of a man I had hardly known and never liked—a sour, spiky little man accepting betting slips in a shop that smelled of cloth and camphor—my stomach fluttered at last. Nostalgia. The genuine article. I was pleased with myself. I thought it might be entertaining to see what Charlie looked like behind a counter.
Inside the shop it was cool and bright. Charlie (or perhaps Joyce) had gone in for display. One side was given to women’s wear, the other to men’s and boys’. Shelves of rolled dress and curtain materials made a multi-coloured bank across the end wall. I counted a staff of eight. Charlie came at me out of a bay I had missed, using the sidling, slightly crooked approach that seemed to state a purpose.
“Hello, Paul. What brings you back this way?”
We shook hands. I was conscious of making my grip hard, something I hadn’t done since a boy. “Just looking at the old town. It’s changed.”
We conversed like this for several minutes. Charlie ran through Wadesville’s growth, I my travels. I saw that his vice was decision. Everything he said was flat; there was about it something clipped and brutal. This marked no change, I thought, this was simply the boy become man. He had found a stance and not let it change. Like Andrew’s, his face had less bulk, but where Andrew’s had grown thinner Charlie’s seemed to have shrunk. His hair still bristled like a black shoe-brush. His eyes were cold and bright—more vivid because of the brownness of his face. I wondered if he used a sun-lamp.
There was still a contest between us; the one that had started on that summer day in the playground and run submerged through our friendship. Yes Charlie, I wanted to say, you won the farting competition all right but don’t forget I won the long-distance pissing. He looked at me with a smile that barely hid contempt.
“How’s Joyce?” I asked.
“Fit and well.” A straight counter-blow—no waste.
“Any children?”
“Two.”
“Does she still like apples?” I saw the absurdness of what I was doing. I decided to stop—declare the contest off. Hadn’t I pushed involvement out of my life? “Anyway,” I said, “I’m glad you’re doing so well.” I waved my hand at the busy staff. It was then I saw the woman watching us from the small glassed-in office in a back corner of the shop. It was like seeing a face under water. Joyce Poole. Joyce Inverarity. She was smiling slightly. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment.
“Hallo,” I said.
She came out of the office. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
“Of course I do.” I did not remember her like this. I felt a surge of joy as I saw how she had thickened—face, body, legs. The ankles that had been “aristocratic” were swollen and had no shape. They looked painful. I remembered how they had troubled her at tennis.
“You look well, Joyce.”
She gave a dry smile. “So do you.” I saw that one of her front teeth had turned grey. Thirty-five, I thought, she looks forty-five.
“What brings you back to Wadesville?”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m just having a look at the old town. Thought I’d like to see where the orchard was.” I had not meant to remind her of our afternoons there. The pink on her face deepened. Where, I thought, was her poise? She smiled, and one of her hands came up to cover the dead tooth—a movement I saw she wasn’t conscious of. I found the flaws in her self-possession moving and wanted to say something to set her at ease.
“Is your father still Postmaster?”
She shook her head. “He died last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Charlie said, “How’s Andrew?”
“He’s well. He’s on the Shore.”
“Married? By the way, you’re not, are you?”
“I’m the one that got away.” I managed a fair degree of lightness. “Andrew’s got a son. A bright little chap.” “Oh yes?”
“Top of his class at school.” I smiled at Joyce. “Charlie tells me you’ve got two children.”
“Yes.”
“Boys? Girls?”
“One of each.”
“How old are they?”
“Ralph’s thirteen.” She looked around with a trace of desperation. “This one’s eleven.” A child was walking towards us with a sullen expression on her face. She stopped at Joyce’s side. “When are you coming, Mum?” she complained.
“In a minute, dear. You wait outside.”
“I’m tired of waiting.”
What an unattractive child, I thought. Her face seemed to combine th
e worst features of her parents’: an exaggeration of Joyce’s prominent mouth, the antagonistic glitter of Charlie’s eyes. “I always have to hang around,” she said.
“Go and get me some cigarettes,” Charlie said. He found something improper in the mixture of persons. The girl looked more sullen, but held out her hand, and Charlie put money in it. She slumped away to the door.
“Celia,” Charlie called.
“What?”
“Get a box of matches too.”
Defeat I would have shrugged off; left to take up my life again round the other side of the world. Victory was too much for me. Joyce was looking at me with an expression of fright. “What a nice old-fashioned name,” I said. I smiled at her. Then, without looking at Charlie—I might have laughed aloud—I made an excuse and went out of the shop.
In the street the girl was dawdling towards a tobacconist shop. Her hair was done in pigtails so tight I thought they must be painful. They were knotted with red ribbons at the ends. Come my Celia, let us prove, While we may the sports of love…. She suddenly swung her leg like a fullback and booted an ice-cream carton on to the road. The wind from a passing bus rolled it back to the gutter. This made her grin with delight, and she skipped the rest of the way to the tobacconist shop. I went to my rented car and drove to Auckland.
My cup runneth over, I thought. I saw a future in which I would pass daily under Charlie’s nose knowing what I knew: the child was mine as surely as if she had been conceived that afternoon in the orchard.
Joyce had handed me Charlie on a platter.
Six months later I had my house on its acre of ground. My den was full of books freighted from London. Henry Bear was on the mantelpiece and Hope, joky Hope, on the wall. What I did not have was Charlie. I did not even think of him. The only Inverarity I saw was Ralph, whom I taught at Wadesville College. He was a tough rowdy boy, with a stupidity deeper but less noticeable than his cleverness. He nicknamed me Pansy because I refused to coach a football team.
