Living As a Moon

by Owen Marshall

  Mrs Collingwood rang again from Barcelona during the fourth week of David’s stay. She was very pleased with the outcome of the earlier investment, she said, and wondered if he could advise her concerning a substantial forward currency purchase she was considering. ‘Give me your best assessment of the pros and cons,’ said David, and knew that he would again apply Attlee’s philosophy in his reply. As he listened to her pleasing, Oxbridge voice, he looked at the ink drawings of Provence on the study walls, some white flowers that were Madame Desmarais’ latest gift, and then his attention was caught by the Benoits’ thin cat with a lizard in the courtyard. Mrs Collingwood asked how he was enjoying the time in Arles, and David talked a little of his visit to Les Saintes Maries and of the great variety of colourful pottery in stalls along the seaside promenade there.

  ‘I’m leaving quite soon,’ he told her, and she thanked him again for his help and wished him a safe journey home. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ he said. ‘Good luck in your life and work.’

  His conscience wouldn’t let him stay longer in Attlee’s house. Five weeks or so of such freedom and comfort were fortune enough, especially as he’d had no reply from the last email sent to London. Good things must come to an end. He would tell Madame Desmarais that she would soon have the keys back: maybe she would need to go through the house before he left to ensure all was in order, the silver brushes still on the inlaid dressing table in the master bedroom, the silk wall hangings in place, the lock intact on the wine cellar.

  David arranged his flight from Paris to Auckland via Singapore for the next week, and on his way back from the travel agency called in to see Madame Desmarais. There had been drizzle when he set out from rue de la Monnaie, and heavy rain on the way to the florist shop. He shook his umbrella at the door, and noticed the wet toes of his light, leather shoes. He wasn’t used to rain in Arles. There was no one in the shop, and David went to the entrance of the small annexe that held a wooden work table, and stored flowers, greenery and boxes. Madame Desmarais was putting newly delivered flowers into deep metal trays with mesh covers to support the stalks. ‘So you have heard from his people in London,’ she said, when David told her he’d made his plans to leave in three days.

  ‘I haven’t heard from Mr Kellor. I sent an email, but didn’t get a reply.’

  ‘M Kellor is in hospital in London,’ said Madame Desmarais. ‘His son rang yesterday to say he’s very ill. He wasn’t able to talk to me.’ She no longer looked glamorous. She looked the elderly woman she was, standing in the annexe, stripping lower leaves, while the rain made a timpani of the low roof. Guilt was David’s reaction: guilt that he was in possession of Attlee’s house while the man was sick, guilt that he had no understanding of the emotional history between his benefactor and Madame Desmarais that would enable him to properly express commiseration.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘I’ll send an email. Maybe a letter would be better.’ Madame didn’t reply, and just nodded when he excused himself and went back through the shop.

  Despite his umbrella, his trousers were quite wet by the time he reached the small courtyard, where puddles accentuated the uneven paving stones, and the cascade from the mouth of the bronze bird was at one with the falling rain. His socks had begun to absorb the dampness of his shoes, and he changed his clothes before going into the small study and sending a message to Attlee, wishing him a complete recovery and thanking him for his kindness. ‘I’ll never forget my weeks here in your home and in Arles,’ he said. ‘The place is everything you described when we talked in Monaco, and it’s been a time of both peace and rejuvenation.’ Would Attlee Kellor ever read the email? Maybe his son would would open it and wonder who the hell this guy was living in the house at Arles. David then made himself a salad in the modern kitchen, and ate it there, watching the rain clouds moving away to the north.

  On the day before he left, David found a letter on the doorstep as well as a final bunch of dried lavender left by Madame Desmarais. The envelope had blue and orange hachures at its edges and was addressed to David, Associate of Mr Attlee Kellor. There was a note of thanks from Mrs Collingwood and cash of 1000 euro. Her thanks seemed rather more formal when not invested with the natural warmth of her voice, but he put the letter in his journal: one more thing explicable only in terms of his time in Arles.

  David tied the dried lavender above the kitchen window the next morning, and had a last walk through the house to ensure he left it as he had found it. Nothing of himself remained behind, although he would take so much that was intangible away. He locked the door below the stone lintel with the carved ships, and the heavy wooden door in the wall that gave access to rue de la Monnaie, and wheeled his suitcase clacking along the narrow streets to the flower shop: past restaurants he’d eaten in, façades he’d admired, past the small business selling fans and kites, and past the begging dogs — pour vivre merci. The day was bright and warm, and David hoped for that weather in Paris, where he’d be in a few hours.

  There were customers in the shop, and for a time David waited while Madame Desmarais prepared flowers for them. ‘He’s no better and no worse,’ she said, when there was the chance to talk. ‘He can’t speak to anyone, and the doctors have warned the family.’ She seemed to have regained something of her brittle glamour, but her hands had a quiver he’d not noticed before.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said David. He gave her the large keys, and a bottle of Château Haut-Bailly he wouldn’t have been able to afford if not for the money from Barcelona. He thanked her for her help, during his stay, especially the flowers left at the door on mail days. ‘I’ve had such a special time,’ he said, ‘and Mr Kellor’s so trusting, isn’t he.’ It was a presumption to use his Christian name when she, who was so much closer to him, did not.

  ‘Ah, M Kellor is a judge of character, and we’ve had our spies,’ she said. ‘Madame Benoit misses nothing, and there are reports around the town.’ So he had been observed even as he observed others. Maybe in the mornings of his absences M Benoit, or Madame Desmarais, had come into the house with another key to ensure that all was well. Maybe they had appraised his one case of very ordinary possessions, maybe read something of his journal on the study table.

  Two smartly dressed women came into the shop, and Madame hurried her words to ensure privacy. ‘We know you needed your time here,’ she said, and ‘Au revoir’, as she turned to her customers, and he took the handle of his case again. So, at the very end of their acquaintance she used her own language, and he replied with it.

  ‘Au revoir. Merci beaucoup, Madame.’

  He took a taxi to the small railway station, and waited there with other locals and tourists. The station was in the newer part of the town, and already he felt that he had left the Arles that mattered to him. He was glad to be going home to his own country, his daughter, friends with whom he had a known history, but he took with him a sense of the richness that comes sometimes from the spontaneous and passing friendship of strangers.

  PAULIE TALLIS

  ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy —’ Paulie was declaiming in Chappy’s Chippy in the main street of Te Tarehi. It was hosing down outside and nearly dark. Paulie had a captive audience of three who waited with numbered chits for their orders. Well, five as an assembly if you include the fryer man and the Samoan guy working there. The fryer was a wizened man like an overbathed jockey and had no teeth. He shook the wire baskets in the fat, and showed his gums as he laughed at Paulie. They all thought Paulie was pissed, no doubt, and when he was in full flow he gave that impression. Except that the words were always true. Oh, he’d had a few ales, but what fuelled him was the heady mix of desperation and art. He flagellated himself with the irony of quoting the bard in Chappy’s Chippy while the patrons chortled in contemptuous incomprehension and the street lights jittered and gleamed on the wet asphalt. He, Paulie Tallis, with the best part of a BA, and poems published in two literary per
iodicals. He, Paulie, who for three months had been the face of Prefit Homes on Australian television.

  Paulie’s an actor, but you won’t have heard of him. He does mainly stage work at a bottom feeders’ level. He’s thirty-seven and still spends most of his time at school, touring with a co-operative that offers Shakespearean excerpts and elementary stagecraft workshops fitted around the drama syllabus for NCEA. The troupe doesn’t get any support or endorsement from the department, despite Paulie’s solicitations. He also made approaches to established theatre groups, but they weren’t keen. Some didn’t even respond to his request to operate under their ‘auspices’, as Paulie expressed it in his letters. A lot of fuckwits who couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag, had no more understanding of commitment and integrity than a pig’s arse, Paulie said, but not in writing.

  There’s four of them in Paulie’s Bard Words troupe. They travel in two rooted vans: one a Bongo and the other a something or other. The badges were nicked at a co-ed in Dunedin. Even with two vans there’s barely room for the four of them because of all the props and stuff they carry. There’s Elsinor Castle battlements that have to go lashed to the roof rack of the Bongo wagon. Paulie is the director and administrator. Conrad is the young, disorganised one who did a drama course at some provincial polytechnic, and is always paid last, if at all. Matt is the oldest guy, nearly fifty, and not with them all the time because he’s also a beekeeper in a small way, which has priority. He’s not paid at all, happy to be fed and housed on their short tours. He’s fully amateur is Matt, and takes most of the humorous roles without needing to put a cushion under his tunic. He used to do a lot of local musicals, but started forgetting the words as well as missing the notes. Doing comic bit parts in Paulie’s troupe means he can ham his way through when he dries. Extreme caricature and visual innuendo go down well with adolescents, and Matt has some practical skills as well that are useful to keep the vans going and the scenery together.

  Justine is the only woman, but all woman, and that’s what matters. Justine is twenty-nine. She once had a part in Shortland Street, and sometimes gets to act in television ads that pay damn well. She has a degree in dramatic practice and theory. While the others scurry about to set up in school halls, common rooms and auditoriums, Justine composes herself in some ad hoc dressing room, sometimes even the Bongo van. Despite being full-breasted she has an ethereal air upon the stage. Off stage she has a ferocious talent for self-advancement before which even Paulie sometimes wilts. She gets the greatest cut of proceeds, and as well an under the table extra of thirty dollars a performance, paid by Paulie without Conrad, or Matt, being aware of it.

  Aha, you’re thinking, Paulie as director and paymaster gets to shag her, but I have to disappoint you. It’s a misapprehension common among males that a woman’s libido is necessarily commensurate with her looks. Justine feels a hundred phantom hands upon her when lightly clothed as Ophelia on the stage, but the audience as a single entity is her preferred lover. It’s not that she doesn’t have sex, it’s just not a pressing need. Useful at times of financial stringency, of course, and there’s a married, high-profile Christchurch QC who’s tapped from time to time. She’s no mug is Justine.

  It was Justine who hit the horn on the Bongo van to remind Paulie that they were waiting outside. They could see him dimly, posturing in Chappy’s Chippy. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Justine, ‘I’m freezing here, aren’t I.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Conrad.

  ‘Doesn’t he ever stop, for Christ’s sake,’ she said.

  ‘Nah,’ said Conrad. He had very limp, fair hair, and used a lot of Fudge to try to give it some height and body. Paulie said people expected their Shakespearean young men to have a good head of alert hair. Actually, Conrad didn’t mind sitting beside Justine in the van. Better if it had been daylight, then people could see them both more clearly and envy him sitting with such a babe. He usually managed to be in the same van as Justine, leaving Paulie and Matt together. The downside was that Justine always insisted on driving, so there was considerable peril attached.

  ‘If I never do another gig in a school gym it’ll be too bloody soon,’ said Justine. ‘They expected me to change behind a pile of canvas mats. Jesus. And the smell, eh.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Conrad.

  ‘No way, Jose, I told them. Those kids were feral I reckon. There could be cannibals in those big schools and nobody would have a clue even as the roll went down.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How the fuck does Paulie do it month after month?’

  ‘He loves the lines, doesn’t he. He just has to be saying the lines,’ said Conrad.

  ‘It is now high suppertime, and the night grows to waste.’ Paulie had his paper parcels and stood in the entrance of Chappy’s to give his exit lines. He held the door open with his back and gesticulated with wrapped shark and chips in one hand, and snarlers and spring rolls in the others. ‘O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.’

  ‘Dude, shut the bloody door,’ the Samoan said.

  ‘A kingdom for a stage, princes to act.’

  ‘You deaf or something?’

  ‘Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth.’

  ‘Just as you say, mate,’ said the fryer, ‘but time to piss off now, okay?’ He smiled at the three patrons still waiting to emphasise the extent of his tolerance.

  ‘You hear what we’re saying,’ said the Samoan guy. ‘You go rap somewhere else now, and close that door for us cause it’s winter.’

  You don’t argue with Samoan guys that big — even armed with a prologue from Shakespeare, you just don’t argue. Paulie let the door close behind him and headed for the van Matt was sitting in. In his light, slip-on shoes he skipped about to avoid the worst puddles. A small man waiting for his burger order came to the window of the takeaway and put his fists on the misted glass to form binoculars in an attempt to watch Paulie’s progress. Maybe the wonder of poetry had quite undone him; maybe he expected Paulie to dematerialise once he was without an audience.

  The next morning Paulie and Justine went to see the dean of humanities at the teachers’ college. Paulie had sent a letter to request a meeting. He took the battlements from the top of the Bongo, and wore a blue velvet jacket and white shirt with ruffles. He knew, though, that nobody was going to be looking at him with Justine along. She demanded to be paid for such meetings even though they created no direct income. ‘Justine Preminger, latterly on Shortland Street, is our company’s leading lady,’ said Paulie in introducing her.

  ‘And understandably,’ replied the dean with enthusiasm. He was quite young, and had his hair combed straight back in 1930s retro style. He wore a gold ring with a large, dark stone. Why did Paulie bother with a theatrical troupe and audiences at all? Ten minutes in the broom cupboard with Justine, and the dean would produce what cheque was required of him. But life is no longer ordered in such a way.

  ‘Ophelia and Cordelia are wonderfully realised in her repertoire,’ said Paulie.

  ‘Special favourites of mine,’ said the dean. ‘Shakespeare never fails, never fails. I think I can persuade my colleagues that we need two sessions. One for the pressure-cookers, and one for the degree people. You sent me a list of scenes, I know, but is it possible you could do a bit from Titus Andronicus? We may well tackle it for our own end-of-year production.’

  ‘We’re open to suggestion,’ said Paulie.

  ‘I’d quite like to see the facilities,’ said Justine. Her legs were crossed. The dean’s work brought him into contact with many young women, but Justine was a match for any of them. ‘We need a suitable changing room, and preferably a stage,’ she said. She’d told Paulie after that visit to an Anglican primary school that she couldn’t stand the bloody kids virtually under her feet when acting. ‘Do you have a specialist drama teacher on the staff?’ she asked as the dean took them to see the auditorium.

  Perform
ing at the teachers’ college was the top end of Paulie’s gigs. He called a rehearsal at Matt’s packing shed in Lincoln to cover the scene from Titus Andronicus the dean was keen on. Even though the sun shone, and Matt offered each of them a two kilogram pottle of clover honey, it wasn’t a success. Conrad was spaced out from a prolonged pot session, and Justine bitched about finding herself doing her lines among Matt’s antiquated machinery: feeling the insect husks and rat droppings underfoot, and looking up to see, in the chinky light from the tiles, Matt’s old pushbikes suspended from the rafters.

  ‘These fucking conditions are just not on for professionals,’ she told Paulie.

  ‘It’s this one time, for Christ’s sake, Justine,’ he said. Their normal selections were so habitual no rehearsals were needed, and performance was honed before their junior audiences. ‘You think you’re the only one here that deserves better? For Christ’s sake. Just because you got good tits and legs you think you act better than everyone else?’

  ‘I hear a moooooo cow,’ said Conrad idly. He sat on an apple box in the sun and from the shed door looked over the paddocks.

  ‘Friesians just there,’ said Matt.

  ‘There’s a level below which I don’t go, Paulie. Not as a professional I don’t. There’s a self-respect you have as a professional artist, you should know that.’

  ‘As a fucking artist you do what you have to do,’ said Paulie. ‘You don’t get up yourself about your occupation.’ Did he need Justine to be instructing him on the self-respect of the professional actor? Shit. He was thirty-seven, wasn’t he. He’d been in fringe theatre in Sydney and San Francisco. He’d drunk beer with Russell Crowe and David McPhail: separate occasions. Was he ecstatic to be in Matt’s packing shed with cobwebbed bikes swaying on baling twine above his head? Was he unaware of ambition unfulfilled?