Replacement Girl

by Ann Beaglehole

  ‘So tell me more,’ he said as he took her arm the last time we visited her, ‘about what your Emperor Franz Joseph got up to in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.’

  ‘My dear Douglas, with pleasure, with great pleasure,’ my grandmother said.

  Douglas and I were still in bed. It was where we got on best, but you couldn’t spend your life in bed. Douglas was starting on the cryptic crossword. It was amazing how much pleasure a grown man could get out of filling in those silly little squares. I finished drinking my tea and started to worry seriously about his mother coming.

  ‘I should get up and clean the house,’ I said, not moving.

  ‘She won’t care what the house looks like.’ Douglas wrote in a word. ‘Though she’ll like my new picture.’ He looked appreciatively at the pale Woollaston watercolour on the maroon papered wall.

  ‘Should I cook something Hungarian or do you think she would prefer something like a roast?’

  Douglas did not answer; concentrating on the puzzle again. He thought I should be able to read his mind – I should just know what he wanted without him needing to tell me. I should just know: that natives are good in the garden, not exotics; that playful trivia makes the best dinner party conversation, not in-depth analysis or no-holds-barred argument about a contentious topic; that talking about yourself, especially your feelings, is tedious.

  ‘Should I cook something Hungarian or do you think she would prefer a roast?’ I repeated.

  ‘Daphne likes lobster,’ Douglas said.

  ‘But I don’t.’

  ‘She won’t care what you cook…’ Douglas said.

  ‘Or would a soufflé be better?’

  ‘…and neither do I.’

  ‘And I must clean the stove and the…’

  ‘Stop talking, you’re upsetting my concentration.’

  ‘Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.’ I tried to kiss his shoulder and tickle his tummy.

  ‘Just calm down. Don’t get so het up about everything.’

  ‘But the stove hasn’t been cleaned since we moved in.’ My voice inadvertently rose to a shriek.

  ‘See what I mean?’ Why are you always so excited about everything?’

  ‘I like getting excited. Why don’t you get excited? Doesn’t anything excite you?’

  Douglas didn’t reply.

  ‘Doesn’t anything excite you?’

  ‘Yes, chemistry,’ he said.

  ‘Apart from chemistry?’

  Douglas folded away the crossword. His eyes were shut.

  ‘Apart from chemistry?’ I repeated. I imagined him turning my question over coldly and dispassionately.

  ‘It’s so tiring being with you,’ he mumbled.

  I was infuriated by his words, which reminded me of William.

  ‘And being with you,’ I shouted, ‘is like being half dead.’

  Douglas turned rigid next to me in the bed. For the first time since I had known him, his face had a quick angry flush on it.

  As soon as the words were out, I wanted to take them back. I moved to cover his head with kisses, but it was too late. He leaped out of bed and was already turning on the tap.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ I mouthed to his back in the shower box.

  ‘I wouldn’t exchange Douglas for ten Jews,’ my mother said on the phone to Vera Farkas.

  After Douglas fixed her silver bracelet with the little clock in it, which Imre gave her when she was a young child and which had never worked properly, his value rose to fifty Jews.

  Daphne asked my parents to supper. Douglas and I were also summoned.

  My mother undertook research into the meaning of supper as preparation for the invitation.

  ‘Don’t expect anything too elaborate – I mean in the way of food,’ I said to her in my most sensible voice.

  ‘One does not go out for a meal just for the food,’ my mother said. But she took notice of my warning and my parents ate two pieces of wiener schnitzel each, accompanied by generous helpings of potato salad and pickled cucumber, before setting out for Daphne’s place.

  Daphne was in the kitchen, beating together eggs and sugar for a sponge cake, when we arrived.

  ‘I’m not one of those women with any sort of talent in the kitchen,’ she said, frowning at the mixture she put into the oven.

  My mother hardly heard her for she was looking with curiosity at the pyjama-like garment, bright pink with yellow flowers, that Daphne was wearing. I had forgotten to warn her about the clothes Daphne considered appropriate for entertaining.

  When everybody was sitting down with drinks in hand (my parents with orange juice, the rest of us wine) Daphne said, ‘I hear you have wonderful wild horses in your country.’

  Her remark was perhaps only a little more daunting for my parents as an introduction to a conversation than the usual ‘How do you like New Zealand?’ Nevertheless, they tried to respond in a way that conversation might be encouraged.

  ‘Wild horses?’ said my father.

  ‘Wild horses?’ said my mother.

  ‘What shall we drink to?’ said Daphne after a pause.

  ‘To the children, of course,’ said my father.

  After a period of time during which we sipped our drinks in silence, Daphne decided the oxtail stew needed stirring and vanished into the kitchen. Luckily, the haricot beans, carrots and new potatoes also needed her attention, and it was a while before she returned to tell us supper was served.

  My mother watched with a forced smile as Daphne heaped up first her plate then my father’s with meat and vegetables.

  ‘More wine?’ said Daphne.

  ‘Your husband, he used to go to many countries, working to make the lives of people better?’ said my mother, starting to eat.

  ‘No,’ said Daphne, ‘anthropologists do no good whatsoever.’

  ‘And now your son is a professor who works to make the lives of people better.’ My mother had failed to grasp Daphne’s earlier remark.

  ‘Douglas will do what he ought to do,’ said Daphne. She was looking in my direction as she said this. Why? What was she expecting of me, or of Douglas?

  Douglas tapped his pipe on the table with a steady rhythm as Daphne said, ‘His main drawback as a husband is likely to be that he thinks more about the way the universe functions than about the human beings he lives with.’

  ‘It is such a comfort when people do what they ought to do,’ said my mother. She looked determined to eat up every bit of her oxtail stew.

  Douglas scowled at the stew and gave the impression he was about to leave the table, when his mother went to the kitchen to attend to the sponge cake.

  When she was gone, my parents took the opportunity to look around the room. I used the time to pat Douglas’s thigh under the table to help him cope. Daphne was soon back, carrying a sunken sponge on a fancy plate.

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a light hand with cakes,’ she said in my direction.

  My father admired a picture of a man in British Army uniform above the mantelpiece.

  ‘Isn’t he splendid?’ said Daphne. ‘Especially his Habsburg

  lip.’

  ‘Habsburg lip?’ said my father, his mouth full of sponge cake. He gave the picture a puzzled look.

  My mother was not equal to responding to ‘Habsburg lip’ and the conversation floundered again. She was looking surreptitiously at her watch to see if they were at all justified in slipping away.

  Then Daphne said, ‘Not a day passes, you know, when I don’t miss him – my husband. He was too young to die.’

  ‘Ah, so,’ said my mother, leaning forward in her chair.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said my father, leaning forward even further in his chair.

  I offered to make tea and three heads nodded vigorously. When I returned with the cups, my mother was telling Daphne about my father’s gallstones. ‘He must get rid of them.’

  ‘Yes, but,’ from my father.

  ‘My doctor says…’ said Daphne.

  After Dougla
s and I had washed the dishes, we checked on them before going to the spare room.

  ‘On the walk to Siberia, sometimes the guards kicked us; sometimes they beat us. If somebody fell, they shot him,’ my father was saying. Daphne listened intently. My mother filled up the cups with more tea.

  On the spare bed, after Douglas had helped me take off my pants, he spread my legs. He caressed me with his fingers, his tongue…

  ‘I’m going fruit picking for a while.’ My voice comes out as though it were a public announcement.

  The newly acquired honours degree from Victoria University lies on the dining room table, tossed there with the graduation programme and the congratulations cards. My parents and grandmother are in the kitchen doing the dishes.

  ‘I need a break. It will be a good long holiday as well as time on the orchard.’

  ‘What about the Masters degree?’ my mother asks.

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘She should be going for a doctorate,’ my father says.

  ‘No,’ says my grandmother. ‘The man she marries is more important than all the diplomas in the world.’

  William. William. Why couldn’t it have worked out? What had he meant about being on different wavelengths?

  I close my eyes to shut out their voices.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’ I practise saying the words. William’s room stinks of beer and cigarettes. The sheets smell too – of sex maybe. But I mustn’t think about that.

  William is on the phone in the hall. ‘Carol, her name is,’ I hear him saying to the person on the other end. ‘She’s, you know …insatiable.’ He repeats the word with a loud snigger.

  ‘The contract is signed and sealed. We’re off next week,’ he says when he comes into the room, waving a sheet of paper. ‘Great country, near Brisbane. I’ll be making my fortune.’ He laughs.

  I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a father. I run the words through in my mind again.

  ‘You take care, Eva. Take care of yourself,’ he is saying.

  You’re going to be a father, William.

  The words won’t come out. I hug him as I leave. He hugs me back and holds me tight for a moment, brushing my hair from my forehead with his lips.

  ‘It’s lovely that you came to say goodbye to me,’ William says. As though from a vast distance, I hear my mother talking. How she would love to have been educated. It wasn’t enough for her just to get married, she wanted so much to have a profession. But Jewish students in 1940 couldn’t study at the university; there were restrictions, quotas, obstacles. She was lucky even to get a job after leaving school. When she applied to be a clerk, the woman who ran the office asked about her religion. The regulations were that Jews couldn’t work in offices. Still, she gave my mother the job. She was prepared to defy the authorities, the first of several people who took risks to help. Without such people Kati and my grandmother wouldn’t have survived.

  My mother moves towards me and tries to put her arms around my shoulders.

  ‘Eva, I am so proud you have a degree, but this is just the beginning. You have to do more.’ She peers into my face, into my eyes, to find out what I’m thinking, to decipher what I’m feeling.

  I move away from her. I try not to look at her, or at my father or grandmother. My eyes are focused past them, out of the window. Fragments of a poem I once read go round and round in my head:

  There is a place the loss must go

  There is a place the gain must go.

  The leftover love.

  Yes. There is a place the loss must go. Yes.

  WELLINGTON 1971

  The phone rang.

  ‘It’s your mother,’ Douglas said.

  My mother rang up almost every day to check that we were all right. Occasionally she decided not to get in touch because it was really up to me to phone her sometimes. But if a few days passed and I still hadn’t rung, she couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘Hello stranger. What is wrong?’ Her voice came out breathless with anxiety.

  She listened intently: reading my silence, decoding my cough, deciphering my brainwaves. What was I concealing?

  ‘I think we should discuss the situation. Please stop reading,’ I said when I put the phone down.

  Silence. Douglas continued to read, to smoke.

  ‘Did you hear me? I want to talk to you. Listen to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  Douglas closed his book. He walked to the other side of the room, away from me. He mumbled something from over there, not looking in my direction.

  ‘Pardon, I can’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’m not interested in talking,’ he said a little more clearly.

  ‘Why not?’ I had to raise my voice because he was so far away. I craned my neck to face him in the furthest corner of the room.

  ‘I don’t see any point in it.’

  ‘Pardon, I can’t hear you. Come back over here.’

  ‘It doesn’t interest me.’ He lit his pipe. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘But I want to tell you what’s wrong in order to make things better.’ My eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I’m not interested in hearing about your problems.’ He puffed energetically on his pipe. Smoke shrouded his face. He was smoking away his feelings. What did he want from me? What was I doing wrong?

  ‘Eva,’ he had said yesterday as I was lying in his arms on our new double bed with the firm no-roll-together mattress. ‘You’re very different from the other girls I’ve known.’ The words reminded me of William. ‘You show how you feel, you’re honest. I like your openness, but sometimes, when you go too far, it makes me feel uncomfortable.’

  Was that the problem now? Had I gone too far? What was too far? The failed relationship with William ought to have taught me something about myself, even if I wasn’t quite sure what it was or how to put it into practice. I know what Douglas can’t stand. It’s me showing my feelings. I’m expected to be cheerful all the time, to be a tower of strength for him; never to admit to finding anything wrong, hurtful or difficult. I’m never allowed to criticise; I’m supposed to be delighted with everything Douglas does, for he finds it a major crime if I complain about anything.

  When I said I wanted to talk just now, there was such a dull look in his eyes. I would dearly have loved to make him happy. What did I have to do to make him happy? I wanted to try hard to do it, whatever it was, even gardening. I would help him with the back yard where, he said, he planned to create a dell of loveliness. But in return, a little support and understanding from Douglas when I got fed up wouldn’t go amiss, would it?

  ‘I want you to listen to me. Please don’t stand so far away.’

  Silence from him. Douglas continued to smoke. He shuffled papers into his briefcase.

  ‘I’m going down to the lab to do some work,’ he said. He must be out of tobacco, for he sucked fiercely on the pipe but no smoke came out.

  As he went out the door, he announced, ‘I don’t like you when you carry on like this.’

  ‘We haven’t begun to talk. Please don’t leave now,’ I said. But he was already in the hall. I ran after him and grabbed his arm. ‘Please explain what’s wrong. What do you want of me?’

  ‘I don’t want to listen to you. That’s all. There’s nothing to explain.’ There was now a wretched, bewildered look in his eyes. He freed himself from my hold and went out the front door. I heard the car start up.

  After Douglas drove away, I decided to clean the whole house, starting with the kitchen. I hurled the dirty pans into the sink. So, that was all! Nothing to explain. Nothing to talk about. Why wouldn’t he show what he felt? Why wouldn’t he argue and fight with me? Perhaps he couldn’t, perhaps he didn’t know how. I had to be patient. But it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do. I scrubbed the bench, the walls, the floor. I heaved the furniture around. Yanking the cord of the vacuum cleaner, I attacked the carpets, the couch, the armchairs.

  When I had finished the cleaning, I hunted f
or the pipes Douglas kept in the house. I found six. I dug a deep hole and buried three beside the cabbages. The other three, along with several packages of Balkan Sobranie, his favourite tobacco, I hurled down the back garden in the area designated as Douglas’s future dell of loveliness. I was just washing the dirt from my hands when the phone rang. It was my mother again. Her nervousness trickled through the instrument.

  ‘Darling, I forgot to ask before how Douglas is.’

  ‘Fine, he is at work right now.’ I struggled to assume a bright, chirpy tone.

  ‘At work on a Sunday! Poor man.’ She didn’t sound convinced by my hearty voice.

  ‘Tell me, Eva, tell me honestly. I’m your mother after all. Are you and Douglas happy?’

  ‘Of course we are,’ I burst out. ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘I know he is not an easy man, your husband. So quiet, so polite. So hard to know what he thinks. Does he talk to you as a loving husband should?’

  To stop her, I told her the news.

  ‘We’re going to have a baby. So give up worrying about me and start thinking about being a grandmother.’

  About three weeks before our baby was due, Douglas went to a conference in Melbourne. He would be away about five days, he said. The morning after he left I woke from a dreamless sleep, and in my mind was a dreadful certainty. He wasn’t coming back. Hands clammy, heart beating fast, I felt I was going to faint and had to go back to bed. Unable to move, I lay there until about lunchtime, when my mother rang. She told me that it was twenty-seven years ago today that Imre was taken away. After I put the phone down, I tried to read my book but couldn’t get beyond the first paragraph.

  I continued to lie in bed, watching the dimming light as day turned to evening. With clinical detachment, I noticed that my clammy hands and fast heartbeat had been replaced by a sick feeling, which I identified as fear. At this stage I still couldn’t think about why Douglas was leaving when he was about to become a father. I just knew he was. That night I could hardly sleep, but I was afraid to take pills because of the baby. Huddled in Douglas’s armchair, wearing his bathrobe, all I wanted was for my racing thoughts to stop.