by Cowley, Joy
‘Don’t you believe it.’ I close my eyes. ‘Excuse me. I’ve had planes and airports for some thirty hours.’
That doesn’t stop them. Their voices blend in a verbal soup and I wonder at the texture, the slowness and flatness of the vowels. Perhaps I do have an accent, after all. Ah, here they are, at the bottom of my pocket-book, my bifocals with the photo-chromatic lenses.
Napier surprises me with its freshness, an art deco city in bright colours that leap out at me like a Warner Brothers cartoon. Has it all been painted? I seem to recall a black-and-white town crumbling at the edges but perhaps my fogged mind is mixing childhood memory with the old newspaper clippings of the great Napier 1931 earthquake. At school, we thought the pictures of smashed buildings and bodies gave us the edge over other New Zealand towns and put us on a world map with San Francisco and towns in Japan, Alaska, Peru. The teacher’s dissertation on earthquakes left blanks which our fertile minds quickly filled. We saw the tectonic plates of the Pacific rim as great blue-and-white dishes sliding over each other in soapy water, cracking, breaking, causing tidal waves in the sink. For whatever reason, Napier had been chosen, not for tragedy as we saw it, but for fame. When Sister Marcella took us into the church to light a candle and pray for the souls of the victims, one of them being her father someone discovered, we felt a fine importance as we knelt in our gym tunics in front of the calm statue of Mary.
‘You’ll see a lot of changes,’ Beatrice says. ‘The town and the foreshore. It’s really quite attractive.’
‘I was thinking of the earthquake. Do you remember how possessive we felt about that? How mad we got with that Wellington girl who told us Wellington would never have a fatal earthquake because the Archbishop had placed it under the protection of Mary?’
She frowns in concentration. ‘No,’ she says, ‘no, I don’t remember that. Dad loved Napier. I think he would have moved into town if Mum had been more social. That’s the restaurant up ahead. Lovely views. We thought your tongue would be hanging out for some real New Zealand seafood and real New Zealand wine.’
I stop myself from telling her that we can get both in New York and I feel the lion rampant of irritation slowly subside until it’s on four paws again. Why do I let her get to me like this?
I am not hungry but I pick over some grilled blue cod and a glass of an excellent chardonnay. The views are truly lovely, white sand, blue sea, gulls drifting like scraps of paper and the sweep of the Napier foreshore like some Dufy painting of the French Riviera. Although I guess that if Dufy had been here he would not have painted it in the same way. The thick sweeps of his brush would have picked up the loneliness of it, the empty sky, empty sea, empty beach and over it all the harsh vacant light. Every time I come back I am struck by the loneliness of this country and the impermanence of the people who huddle on a land that belongs only to itself. It might be something to do with the lack of human history, only a thousand years, and the geographic isolation. Whatever, this earth does not wear the same veneer of human spirit that we touch in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and this salt-laden air is quite empty of ghosts.
‘What do you think, Aunt Delia?’ says Francis.
‘Sorry –’
‘Do you think Mother should expand? I reckon she should find a waterfront location in Auckland, something with this kind of ambience. The patrons would drive any distance for food of her quality. You don’t get it these days. Low-fat is the excuse for low-taste. Nouvelle cuisine is the excuse for skimpy portions and cost-cutting.’ He takes empty mussel shells from a bowl and places them on his plate. ‘Kiwiana Wellington, Kiwiana Auckland and then, maybe, Kiwiana Christchurch.’
‘Not at fifty-five,’ laughs Bea. ‘I dream of retiring, not expanding. For one thing, I’d like to spend more time with my grandchildren. Why don’t you and Chloe come back? You could do it. We’d go into partnership. Is your cod all right, Diddy?’
‘Oh yeah, it’s great. It’s just that I ate on the plane.’
‘That was hours ago. The food here is good. Very fresh. I know you eat out a lot over there and I wouldn’t have.’
‘Why did you call your restaurant Kiwiana?’
‘Because it’s traditional kiwi food,’ says Bea. ‘I thought a long time on this. There was nothing wrong with the old kiwi dishes. It was just that we did such terrible things to. Sloppy cooking. If you come to Kiwiana and order steak and kidney pudding, you won’t get grey meat and gravy in a soggy crust. Rump steak and ox kidney, sautéed with thyme, shallots, garlic, parsley, a little nutmeg and black pepper, the flavour deepened with sherry, steamed inside a soft suet pudding. And tripe. Remember the unspeakable tripe? You’ll have to try it cooked in tomato juice with red peppers, corn, chilli, cumin, coriander –’
‘It’s a good name. What made you think of it?’ I put down my fork. ‘Kiwiana.’
‘I didn’t make it up.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Oh Diddy! You’re so out of touch and I forget. We should phone each other more. With the cheap rates now there’s no reason why we shouldn’t talk at least once a week. Then you wouldn’t.’ She wipes her mouth with her napkin. ‘Kiwiana is what we call all that old stuff, you know, the things you identify with New Zealand, like gumboots and Vegemite and –’
‘Which is Australian,’ says Francis.
‘And the Edmonds Cookery Book and Aunt Daisy’s handy hints and pavlova.’
‘Pavlova also being Australian,’ says Chloe.
‘Hey!’ I hold up my hands. ‘Not the old pavlova argument.’
‘Australia invented it,’ says Chloe. ‘To commemorate the Australian tour of the ballerina Pavlova in nineteen twenty something.’
‘It was in a New Zealand cookbook two years before,’ says Bea. ‘That’s been proved.’
I shake my head. ‘And it was in French cookbooks a hundred years before that. Meringue gâteau. Only the name was changed.’
‘So?’ says Bea.
‘It was an egg white dessert invented by the French,’ I tell her.
‘Kiwiana is New Zealand trivia,’ says Francis. ‘Wait until you see Mother’s restaurant. It’s decorated with all this amazing stuff which is symbolic of domestic New Zealand. Railway posters. Yates Seeds packets, that kid’s toy Buzzy Bee, black woollen bush singlets, paua shell –’
‘Black woollen bush singlets? Good God, Bea, you actually make an icon of bush singlets in a restaurant?’
Francis points his solid jaw at me. ‘It’s a down-under thing, Aunt Delia. Like the Aussies and their swagger hats with the hanging corks.’
‘I understand.’ I fold my napkin, or I should say, serviette. ‘The wine and fish were excellent, Bea. Thank you. Are we proceeding to the motel?’
She leans across the table. ‘Let me tell you what I’ve got planned. You’ll have time to freshen up and then I thought we’d drop by the funeral parlour before they take Dad to the church for the Rosary at 7 o’clock. Tomorrow, the funeral’s at 2.00. I think I told you the wake’s going to be at Molly Gleave’s house. The next day we’re going out to the farm. Donna and Erueti thought you might like that. They’ve got horses, if we want.’
‘Horses? You’re kidding!’
‘On Monday we drive down to Wellington. We eat at the Kiwiana and you’ll see my new house at Eastbourne. You should look through some family stuff. Photos. Silverware. Anything you want to take back with you. Tuesday morning we take off in the car for a slow three-day drive to Auckland. I’ll show you the itinerary, a night at the hot springs at Taupo, a trip to Coromandel. There’ll be time to look around Auckland and all your old haunts from your Art School days. If there’s anything else you want to see.’
‘Bea –’
‘When you want time on your own, you can feel free to wander off. Relaxation, that’s the main. Where’s that waiter with the bill?’
‘Bea, I’m flying back to the States Tuesday.’
There is a stillness at the table. Do I imagine that everyone in the re
staurant has stopped talking? Yes I do, but I am not exaggerating the quality of Bea’s stare. She says, ‘Tuesday?’
‘Yes.’
‘This coming Tuesday?’
‘I’m sorry. I know I said a week but some really important things have come up and I had to change – Bea?’ I push my chair back. ‘It’s almost a week if I include travelling time.’
She brushes some crumbs from the tablecloth and for a while doesn’t say anything. Then she shrugs. ‘Well, that’s the way it is, I suppose. Francis, dear, see if you can find that waiter.’
I come out of the shower, one towel around me, another twisted over my hair, and see that she has left my suitcase in the doorway. She is still upset. I pick up the case and look at her filling an electric kettle at the sink. The strong side light flattens the colour of her dress and hair and simplifies her to a Toulouse Lautrec poster. I put the suitcase on my bed, unlock it and call, ‘Bea, I just worked out what’s missing?’
‘Missing?’ She is at the door, carrying the electric kettle.
‘Two and a half hours together and not one word about your love life.’
‘Oh.’ She lifts the lid of the kettle, looks inside, puts it back. ‘I didn’t know I was that bad.’
‘I’m not saying bad. I’m saying unusual.’
‘Well, I have to be careful with Frank and Chloe.’ She comes in, trailing the cord and plug, and stands beside the bed. ‘That boy is so. I don’t know where he gets it from. Judgemental. Not from Barry or me. Did I tell you I heard Barry’s got diabetes? That’s a shame. Poor old Sol’s in bad shape too, had a triple bypass in June. I sometimes think Frank and Chloe can’t forgive God for the way babies are made. I just don’t dare mention. Not that there’s anyone to mention, not for months now.’
‘What about the chef? The guy who put liqueur in your navel. What’s his name again?’
‘Rawson.’ She laughs. ‘Oh, Diddy! That’s ancient history. No, there’s just no one and it’s such a nuisance. No one ever told me I’d think as much about love in middle age as I did when I was young. Why don’t they tell you that? What I want is someone nice and steady like your fellow Lal. I thought he might have come with you this time. Does he smoke? Some people won’t go on those long smokefree flights. It drives them mad.’
‘Bea, he’s not my fellow Lal and no, you don’t want someone like him. But you have reminded me that I do need to call him. Is that okay? I’ve got a card.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course, I was just going to make a cup of tea, anyway.’
Lal’s voice lifts with pleasure when he hears mine and I am overcome with the desire to be back in the apartment. It is now after 10 pm Friday in New York but I’m not leaning down the phone towards a Friday. It is Sunday I want, our Sunday, the one day in the week that’s free of everything except ritual. Nine o’clock he gets up and goes out, unshaven, for the paper. I make the coffee. We sit by the windows, he in the leather chair, I spread out on the couch with one of his mother’s cushions, red chain-stitch and little mirrors, at my back, to drink coffee and divide up the Sunday Times like so much fresh bread between us. In summer we sit without clothes, although Lal sometimes wears a pair of old brocade scuffs, and the sun, filtered of smog by the stained glass, falls across our skin in long scarfs of jewelled colour. About 11.30 am we dress and go down to 2nd Avenue for a long brunch with a glass of wine. Afternoons we walk and then take in a matinee performance, theatre perhaps, or something at the Lincoln Centre or maybe it’s a Guggenheim exhibition or a showing at the Metropolitan. Sunday night we eat ice-cream. We know every flavour of every brand and when we find a new one, our triumph is tantamount to winning the Kentucky Grand Derby. One ritualistic scoop of ice-cream in a plain glass dish. Sacred time.
Lal tells me that all is well at the office and I remind him that he would not recognise a catastrophe if it bit him on the butt. He assures me he would. He says they have the Brewster’s Tiffany lighting and the marble tiles exactly the right colour and if I check my e-mail, he and Aaron have sent a video clip with a complete update on both. Then he says would I mind if his mother uses my room for a visit and will I please give his regards to my sister Beatrice and her family.
When Beatrice taps on my door I am in my robe, setting up my computer and looking for a power outlet. She is carrying a cup of tea. ‘Everything all right in New York?’ she asks. ‘I thought you’d like a cuppa before we go to the funeral parlour. They’ll be screwing down the lid about five o’clock.’
‘Thanks, Bea, but I’ll give it a miss. The funeral parlour. My last sighting of him wasn’t wonderful, but he was alive and he was our Dad.’
‘They’re expecting us,’ she says, setting the tea down next to the computer. ‘I made an appointment.’
‘You go.’
‘I’ve already been. With Frank and Chloe. There’s nothing to worry about, Diddy. He looks lovely, really lovely, and his grey suit.’ She looks at the computer. ‘Are you going to do some work?’
‘No. I’m going to sleep. But first, I’m checking my e-mail. Lal, by the way, said to give you his regards.’
‘That’s nice. Oh well, suppose I’d better ring the undertaker. Funeral director. Why did they change that? Undertaker was a perfectly good word. Although, when you think about it, it’s funny. Under. Taker. What does it mean, exactly?’
‘Hang on Bea,’ I sit down in front of the computer. ‘You might like see this video clip of Lal and Aaron in the office. Wait a minute! My office! Oh my God, look at the mess, will you? Bea, believe it or not, that’s my personal office. Underneath those light fittings and marble tiles there is a desk and the phone I talk to you on. Look at those two. You know what they’re doing? Sending me up. That’ll be Aaron’s idea. He was born making jokes.’ I don’t have sound but the picture is eloquent, Lal and Aaron straight-faced, playing poker with squares of marble, every bit of my floor and my desk covered with stuff. ‘They know I have this thing about clutter. It makes me crazy. Lal will be standing by the phone, waiting for my scream.’
‘He looks nice,’ said Bea. ‘You didn’t tell me he was Jewish.’
I close down the computer. ‘He isn’t.’
‘Why is he wearing one of those, you know?’
‘Yarmulka? That’s Aaron.’ I pick up the tea and sip it. It’s cold.
‘The other one is Lal,’ she says.
‘That’s right.’
She is still for a moment, then she walks out of the room. She is so quiet I know that she is standing somewhere near the door, not moving. I get out of the chair. ‘He and I are both new citizens. He was born in Singapore. His mother is Tamil.’ Then I wonder why I feel I have to tell her this. I go to the door and see her like a statue on the other side. ‘I thought you’d like to see my office.’
‘You didn’t know we were going to see your office,’ she says.
I recover. ‘I meant the larger office. Bea, I know a computer screen is an odd way for you to meet him but you were just saying –’
‘I’m fifty-five,’ she says. ‘You are fifty-eight. Why do I get the feeling that I’m a little kid with a big sister who has always shut me out of her life?’ Tears fill the shelves of her lower lids. She blinks and the drops run down her red cheeks.
‘Oh Bea.’ I put my arm around her. ‘It’s just the distance. We’re so busy, you and I. The years go by and I’m not good at writing. I’m really sorry about the trip to Auckland but we still have lots of time for catching up.’
She wipes her face. ‘You need to get some sleep.’
‘I think you need a nap too. You were with Dad all that time. You had the arrangements, the motel, Francis and Chloe, my itinerary.’
‘I’m all right.’
Her face has closed and I am lost. It’s a stupid thing, I know, but it comes way back from childhood. While she was whining and demanding, I could manage a space between us but every now and then she would haul off and shrivel up into this pathetic little silence that would make me feel just awful.
/>
‘Bea, we both need sleep, but first there’s something I want to tell you. I couldn’t talk about it over the phone.’
‘Oh?’
‘Can we sit down?’ I pull out a chair for her. ‘You know these days I’m not a practising Catholic. Not a practising anything. Well, the day Dad died, something happened that kind of bowled me.’
Her face is getting soft again.
‘I can’t explain it. I don’t know how to explain it. Last Tuesday at sixteen minutes past four in the afternoon, I knew that Dad had gone.’
‘That was before I phoned you?’
‘Three-quarters of an hour before you called me.’
She inhales and holds her breath for some seconds, then she exhales noisily and says, ‘I was in the hospital cafeteria having breakfast.’
‘There’s more, Bea. It wasn’t as simple as just knowing. Dad was there. In my office.’
She frowns. ‘What do you mean, he was there?’
‘Well, this is the bit that’s got my head around back to front. I was sitting at my desk reading a price list, fabrics for drapes and loose covers. Suddenly, the entire room was filled with his presence.’
‘How do you know it was him?’
‘Bea, it was Dad. His energy, his life. It wasn’t an apparition but there was something else. Dad’s smell. The way he smelled when we were young, his skin, his hair, the smell of his flannel shirts, the sheep smell, smoke from his cigarettes. My office was full of it.’
Bea says, ‘It’d be someone outside your door smoking. Or outside your window.’
‘Forty-third floor? His stinky old Park Drive tobacco? For a while I tried to rationalise the whole experience. Why a smell from forty years ago? If it was Dad’s soul or spirit, wouldn’t he be dragging hospital smells? Then I had this crazy thought that maybe he would have brought a smell that I would recognise. Just to say goodbye and let me know he was okay.’
Bea looks at her hands and doesn’t say anything.
‘I wanted to tell you. I wanted to find out what you thought about it.’
