by Gee, Maurice
‘Close the door. I’ll do this,’ she said.
He closed it and went back to his bed. Their voices came, hers bossy, his perhaps distressed – Alan could not tell, could hear no words. He would ask about a night nurse tomorrow, surely it was time for that. And a new day nurse too. Freda had to leave. I might have to stay down here, Alan thought. He heard a glassy clunk as Heather put the bottle on the floor. Voices again as she arranged him. In a moment she came out and took the bottle to the toilet. She brought it back empty and stopped by Alan’s bed.
‘What are you in there for?’
‘Freda’s using my room.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s nervous about David. I didn’t want her down in the cottage alone.’
‘This place is turning into a boarding house,’ Heather said. She went to the sunroom door and stopped. ‘I’m going in with him. I suppose you’ll think that’s wrong?’
‘In with him?’
‘In his bed. He likes it. You needn’t look like that. Nothing happens. He just likes a woman in his bed.’
‘All right,’ Alan said.
She closed the door, the light went out, he heard the bed creak as she got in. The moment when it had seemed ugly was gone and he saw how pure it was – the woman giving her company to the old man. It would complicate itself, start him off in several directions, make him shiver, but for the moment he let himself be pleased. She put her body in beside Robert Macpherson’s, and put herself in beside his self, and warmed him in two ways, and no one had the right to question or complain. She was strange and frightening, of another order, denser in her flesh, thicker in her bone, and emptied out of common perceptions. Perhaps she loved Robert Macpherson in a new way. Almost certainly she was a neuter.
He listened to the silence in their room, and the hissing and sighing, the agitation, in the orchard, and pictured the house like a boat on a sea, anchored, unmoving, while all around shiftings took place and pressures went on. Formless out there. A pattern inside, a grid like the ribs of a boat: different compacts, different needs. He felt the placements, points of consciousness in the house: Heather and Robert Macpherson in the sunroom, close together, Alan Macpherson in the lounge, and Freda in the bedroom, in his bed. Lying awake? He was sure of it. Saw himself move silently through the house and down the hall. He opened the door. Her eyes gleamed from the corner. She put the sheet aside, made room for him, held out her arms. He wanted her. She was a gift. He knew, even, that he would delight her; counted her happiness in the sum. But would not go. Tonight or any night. Would not go. His compact was with himself and God. He was on the point of throwing his blanket aside, putting his feet on the floor, putting out his hands for direction – but was unmoving. He would not go. The knowledge of it was like a stone.
If she came to him what would he do? If she came barefooted through the house, with naked arms? ‘No,’ he said, and heard the word, flat and ugly, slapping on the walls. I’ve got to stop this, he thought, I’ve got to go to sleep. Tried to convince himself that he was mistaken, that he had misread her messages and signs; they were friendliness, they were relaxation and ease with a man she felt safe with, her brother-in-law. Perhaps it was the practicalities of her trade, her care of his father – washing him, oiling him, which he had watched fascinated through the half open door – perhaps that; or sitting at lunch with her at the kitchen table, asking for the bread, the salt, sharing a teaspoon, and watching her sponge a spot of honey from her blouse, and hearing her soft, disgusted, ‘Shit!’ Two days in the house with her had moved it away from the mundane; and the very ordinariness of their exchanges had set up a tremor in the part of his mind signalling woman. So that, by this third night he had known … known what? That she would do? No, much more. Known that Freda had an identity, and that it might, if he took care and time, connect with his own.
That was at the centre of things. Lust was not the centre.
What had she known, or apprehended?
‘You’re so different from him,’ she had said.
‘How?’
‘I thought, being a soldier, there’d be all this macho stuff, you know? But you’re a cream puff.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Oh, I think you’re tough inside. I think what you say you’ll do you’ll do.’
There was nothing in that, and yet wasn’t she saying, Say you’ll come to me? There had been a boldness in her when she spoke, but insufficient time in her glance. It made her seem uncertain, and made him uncertain now. Had she drawn back? Had she made no invitation at all?
He was not sure that he even liked her. He was used to women with more charm. They used certain gestures, certain words, ritualised, that told him precisely how far things had progressed; and they had a delicacy that Freda lacked. It gave an exactness to things. He knew what they were saying and what they asked, and he could be sure that his reply was understood. Freda was like someone from the kitchen. She would blurt out what she wanted in the end. Had she felt their difference, is that what she meant …
‘Oh I’m definitely not officer class.’
‘Is that what you think I like?’
‘Yes, I think you do. You like things formal.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Tell me then what sort of woman you like.’
He could not. She would be too different from Freda. But if he took another step …
This can’t happen in three days, he thought.
What was the thing that told him he might love her? It was not the way she looked – the sharp prettiness, the rounded breasts and hips, too large it seemed for her light frame – or her voice that had a shifting timbre, up and down, in close connection somehow with her eyes. Not all that. Her sexiness, that he almost smelt, an emanation? No. He would, in time, prefer that toned down. He had become aware of – what? – a kind of morality in her, and things she would allow herself and things she would refuse?
But not that either, for a code was necessary, a code was heart and lungs – even though he would proceed differently himself.
It was a small thing she had done as they sat at the table in the cottage, with dinner finished and the wine bottle almost empty. He had reached out and poured the last of it into her glass, which she had smiled at and allowed. She put her fingers in her hair and took her earrings off.
‘These things weigh me down,’ she said, and laid them on the table.
With that she had invited him to love her. He said, yes, Freda, although not to her.
That would seem to mean that he might enter her bed. But he would not do that. Freda was his brother’s wife. He pictured her again in his room, in the narrow bed, lying awake, waiting for him, although his own signal had been clear: he would not come. His neat unfolding of the sofa had made it plain. On this humid night she would sleep with only a sheet. Would she sleep naked? ‘I’ll use the sofa,’ he had said. ‘Of course,’ she had replied, eyes and voice meek, and possibly amused. And here he lay, popping the springs, like a boy with a hard-on for a girl he could not have.
Think of something ugly, he ordered, but nothing came; he could think only of what she might allow. How had she managed to tell him that giving pleasure was the thing she most enjoyed, that her sense of right and wrong would not interfere? She had said, in so many words, that she was no longer David’s wife. Said: ‘I’m not married to him any more.’ Repeated the lifting of her lip away from her teeth. ‘That cancelled it.’ He saw again where the tooth had chipped, like a chip from a plate.
‘When was that?’
‘The day I walked out. I went straight around to my lawyer and filed for a divorce. So I’m free. I don’t have to wait until some fancy court says so, it’s me that says.’
He did not agree. It was too easy. Time must pass. And the thing must be formalised and sealed. He would slide otherwise, lose his feet, and lose his sense of himself, he saw it plain – and saw, for a moment, Freda and Alan Macpherson, ugly and amorphous, locked together
. He thought, I can love her but I can’t love her yet. I’ve got to keep her from hurting herself. And at last he was able to lie still on the sofa bed and let his mind carry him somewhere else. Not into sleep: to his talk with David; to the place this man, his brother, had taken in his life. It was in the jungle, in Sarawak, that he had first known the unseen one who might kill. Then again in Vietnam. But not, in either of those times, in a closely personal way, even though bullets might come from the trees, or grenades explode and shells burst. The enemy had no darkness about him but would break out in noise when he came and bring a tearing sudden or agonising death. And that would be personal enough. A man’s death belonged to him alone. But only when Phoebe came had he known the rest of it, fear of a different kind. And now, with David, was he taken back to face it again? Something was in the man, more than slaps and bluster and rage.
It was as if he touched me, Alan thought. It was as if he put his hand on me. The place itched now, although he could not say where it was; it moved about, sliding on him, sliding in his mind. Yet maybe David was only bloody-minded, and insult had moved him to this point, where he might be cunning and sudden at the same time. That was the feeling he gave – that he would move into place with care and explode from it. Ground skills. But who would he attack? Were snarls and punches all he had in mind? And what had alerted him, in the kitchen, sharpened him inside while blunting him in his words and the way he moved?
Then there was the car, the Silverado with dusty panels and bull bars shaped like a grin. One headlight was crossed with masking tape: St Andrew’s cross. It had followed him not just home from Nelson but into it as well, part of the way. So David had set up some sort of game – more than a game – and invented rules, and had played out some of it already. I should be able to beat him at this, Alan thought. I’ve got to do an appreciation. But he did not know the enemy and that was a huge limiting factor. Who was David? What was he after? Alan had no way of measuring. Instinct told him Freda was in danger. But that might result from his own guilt – although he had nothing yet to be guilty about. His father and Heather were a more likely target. He felt that he was somehow chosen too, an enemy. David had reached out and folded him in – and had already folded himself in. Dangerous, Alan thought. He’s dangerous.
Freda thought so too. She knew it from experience. But he thought it likely that David had moved on since that time and Freda would not know the true danger. Measuring courses, plotting options, Alan decided that he must get her out of the house not just tomorrow but permanently. Make her vanish. She had told him that she might go to Auckland or to Oz – telling him that if he wanted her he had to be quick. She had perhaps too much impatience; she needed more stillness, and a sense of proper movement, proper time. Don’t think about her, he told himself. Just get her out. Think about her later. And stay around tomorrow. Watch David with Dad. It occurred to him too that he must try with his brother, help him somehow. He had not tried yet.
The Silverado followed him as he moved towards sleep. It mounted hills, appeared at far corners, entering each straight as he left. And sometimes it was close behind and day had turned to night. It glared from its crossed eye and towered, square, at the back of him. He slept, woke, dozed, woke, on the lumpy bed. There was threat in each fragment of dream. In the dawn he lay awake and went over everything again – Freda and himself, Freda and David, his father, Heather, May too, who must be told what was happening. He must get Freda out of the house today; and he must face David and find out what he was after.
Heather passed through the room back to her own bedroom. He heard her in the kitchen making her breakfast, making tea. Then he heard Freda, and the two of them talking – practicalities, no friendliness. Freda brought him a cup of tea. She wore short pyjamas, nothing else.
‘Thanks,’ he said. She looked her age – puffy round the eyes, dry-skinned, dry-haired – and he felt a movement in him of regret and tenderness for the life she had known: no quietness and no ease, and no love that had lasted. He would love her, he knew, but was not sure that she would love him.
‘How did you sleep?’
‘Off and on. How about you?’
‘Lousy. This bed’s got lumps.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He had expected ‘Poor you’ or ‘You should have got in with me.’
He smiled at her. ‘It’s not your fault.’
She went off to shower and he drank his tea, thinking how he would arrange the day. Design for battle, he thought. What we need is a political war: no one gets hurt.
He took his turn in the shower and sat down to breakfast opposite Freda. It’s like being married, he thought, except that we haven’t got anything to look back on. He wondered if she was thinking the same.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘what do we do?’
‘Today, you mean?’
‘What did you think I meant?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I had a lousy night too, Alan.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. But I just want to talk about now. I want you to go up to Auckland. I’ll give you my key. You can use my place. When I come we can work out all the rest of it.’
‘The commanding officer speaks.’
‘Freda, don’t. He’s coming today. That’s what we’ve got to worry about.’
‘Don’t you think we’re over-reacting? All he can do is slap me around some more.’
‘You told me you’d never let that happen again.’
‘No, I won’t. I’ll kill him first. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being melodramatic. Bad nights do that to me. I’m not going to Auckland, though. I’ll just go away for the day.’
‘Where to?’
‘I thought I might visit May. Then when he’s gone I’ll come back.’
‘Freda, he’ll come here all the time, with Dad sick. He wants his share of this place. You can’t stay any longer.’
‘I might stay with May.’
‘He’ll go there. He’ll find you there. You don’t see the danger, you know him too well. I met him for the first time yesterday and I could see it.’
She seemed to lose heart. She lost her sharpness too, and sighed. ‘Auckland. All right. Not today though. Tomorrow.’
‘I’ll find a place for you until your divorce.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then we’ll see.’
‘Poor Alan.’
He did not know what that meant but saw that she did not mean to hurt him.
‘You can take my car to May’s place.’
‘He might see it’s missing. I’ll get the bus.’
‘Take Dad’s then. Why not? It’s sitting in the garage.’
‘I’d have to ask Heather.’
‘Ask her then. She can hardly say no.’
He cleared the table, rinsed the muesli bowls, while she went to talk to Heather in the shed.
‘That’s okay, it needs a run. As long as I put some petrol in, she says.’ Freda grinned. ‘I think she’s coming over to read the gauge.’
‘You should get going now.’
‘I asked her if she had any message for her mother and she said, “What sort of message?” She really is something, that girl.’
‘He’s unpredictable. He could get here any time.’
‘Don’t be so anxious, Alan. Don’t be so stern.’
‘We’ll have to get everything of yours into the cottage. And make sure it’s locked.’
‘All this to save me a black eye.’
‘It’s more than that. You know it’s more.’ He felt himself redden at the meaning she might take. ‘I’ll have to talk to Dad too. Make sure he doesn’t blurt anything out.’
‘Robert’s not a blurter. I’d trust him with a secret. You’ll have to get Heather down if he gets bad. You know about the pills?’
‘I know.’
She took her pyjamas and sheet and toothbrush to the cottage while he warmed up the car.
‘God, what’s this?’ Freda said, coming into the garage.
‘It’s an ol
d Rover.’
‘It looks like a tank. I bet it gobbles up the gas.’
‘You’ll have to fill up in Motueka. Get them to check the tyres and oil. The radiator’s all right, I’ve looked at that, but I’ve put a bottle of water in the boot for the hill, just in case.’
‘Do you always worry like this?’
‘Have you got enough money?’
Freda laughed. Again she surprised him as she’d done the night before, on the patio, by rising on her toes and kissing his cheek. She got in the car and backed out of the garage.
‘I’ll phone from May’s before I start back, see if he’s gone.’
‘Get May to phone. Goodbye.’ Look after her, he thought. Take care of her.
The old black car trundled away. He closed the garage doors and went into the house. At nine o’clock he phoned a travel agency in Motueka and booked Freda a ticket on an early flight to Auckland. Later he sat with his father, who had his best times in the morning. David should see him now if he wanted to get some sense.
‘You know David’s coming?’
‘That girl told me. What’s he want?’
‘Just to see you. He didn’t know you were sick until yesterday.’
‘He’ll be coming to see what he can get.’
‘If you say so. We don’t want him knowing Freda’s here.’
‘Why not? She’s his wife.’
‘There’ll be a fight. He beats her up. It’s best if he doesn’t know.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a man wanting his wife back.’ He made a sound Alan thought might be a laugh. ‘He’ll drag her out of here by her hair.’
‘He might try.’
‘Do you reckon you might stop him? You fancy her yourself? She’s a nice little bundle of goods but you better watch out for her tongue.’
‘Listen, Dad –’
‘Where is she, anyway? Was that her taking my car?’
‘Heather said she could. Heather’s not going to say anything so there’s no reason why you should. It’ll only make trouble.’
