by Gee, Maurice
‘And don’t worry. I won’t hurt him. Now let’s stop talking, eh? Have you got a bed? I could do with a kip. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
May showed her to the room Alan had slept in, then relieved Evan, who worked in the pond clearing weed for the rest of the day. She woke Freda with a cup of tea; telephoned the orchard; put Freda on to Alan and went away as they talked. Just asking about David, whether he had gone, had given her a feeling of dread that made her slightly nauseous. She drank some water. Freda was in love, or putting herself in position to be in love; but David – David was obsessed. She wanted to get on the phone again and tell Alan to get out of there.
‘We’re having dinner,’ Freda said.
‘Where?’
‘Pete’s Place. I love dinners with a new man.’
‘I hope he’s going to be more than – whatever number you’re up to.’
Freda laughed. ‘May, don’t worry. I really like him. I told you, it feels right.’
‘You mean, inevitable?’
‘Yes, inevitable.’
‘Oh, good. That sets my mind at rest.’ She too would joke her way through; and try to push David to one side.
She saw Freda off at half past five; put the Closed sign on the gate; called Evan in. He showered the smell of weed off and sat in the kitchen drinking beer while she cooked.
‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me all the girl talk.’
‘She’s in love.’
‘Who with?’
‘Alan.’
‘That’s quick. Three days. That must be a record.’
‘It’s four days. He likes her too. I could see it when he came over.’
‘That’s one day. They’re both quick. Has she got him going on the old in and out thing?’
‘You’re wrong about her, Evan, she’s not that crude. Anyway, he’s a moral man’ – putting a cynical twist on the word to soften her rebuke.
‘Freda must be doing that hard.’
‘I think she’s quite intrigued by the idea of waiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up in church. That’s where he’ll take her.’
‘But is it legal? I’m not sure you can marry your brother’s wife. Hey, May, what’s David going to do? Have you thought about that?’
‘Yes, I have.’
It kept her awake that night long after Evan was asleep. She could not think of any way for Alan and Freda to be safe. When she slept, her dreams were full of shuffling undefined things leached of colour. She ran from them on dead legs but found them at her back, touching her with parts she could not see. She woke and lay not daring to move, even though Evan was beside her. She wanted to silence his fluttery snores so that she might know that nothing else was in the room. Then her fear emptied out, a rush of dead water, and she drew a free breath and rolled to face Evan and take his warmth.
Glass broke. It was like a knife, a silver blade. Sheets fell, clanking, shivering. A dog barked close by in the yard.
‘Evan, Evan, someone’s in the showroom.’ But he had come awake with the breaking glass; was running, trousers zipped; was out the door before she could move from the bed. She pulled on her dressing gown and slid her feet in sandals and ran outside. A black dog sprang at her and jagged its teeth in her dressing gown. Evan and Junior Mott wrestled in the showroom. She ran, dragging the dog. She shrugged free of the gown and ran naked to the edge of the broken glass. Her sandals slid on it. She leaned through the window as Junior Mott broke away from Evan. His eyes and teeth made a jagged flash in the dark. He squatted and came up with his axe and swept it through the standing vases. Evan sprang, collided; knocked him, arms like spokes, at the window. The axe fell in the broken pottery. Junior screamed with joy. He stepped out the window like a long-legged bird and ran away. May had jumped aside, and she crouched as Evan threw the jagged base of a vase at Junior. It struck him on the back and propelled him forward. The dog ran after him, with May’s dressing gown snagged on its teeth. She heard them crashing in the bush path, Junior still making his weka call.
She ran to the house and fetched the key, pulled on her parka from the rack behind the door. When she entered the showroom she found Evan sitting in a corner. She turned on the light and saw his bleeding mouth and bleeding feet.
‘Evan, Evan.’ She tried to make him stand up and come with her to the house.
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Evan, you’re hurt, your feet are cut.’
‘Look at what he’s done. The cunt. The cunt.’
She did not want to look. She only wanted to look at Evan. She tried to lift one of his feet but he pushed her with it, leaving a blood smear on her thigh.
‘Evan? Love?’
‘Call the police. I’m locking that bastard up.’
She ran back to the house and rang the Takaka constable and told him to bring a doctor too if he could. She half filled a bucket with warm water, found rags and bandages and antiseptic. Evan, still sitting in the corner, let her wash the blood from his feet. She had thought his soles would be shredded but a puncture wound in one heel was the most serious. Somehow he had stepped clear of the great knives of glass leaning in the window.
‘You won’t need any stitches,’ she said.
He had his eyes closed. His tongue came out and licked blood from his mouth.
‘Evan, talk to me.’
‘I’ll kill that bastard.’
‘No. Leave him to the police. There’s not much damage, Evan. Just a few plates and vases. We can make some more.’
He opened his eyes and groaned and closed them again.
‘The insurance will pay,’ she said. ‘It’ll pay for the window. Evan, let me put a bandage on.’
She smeared antiseptic cream on his cuts and was pleased to see him wince – he was coming back.
‘I thought the dog was going to bite me,’ she said. She fixed a plaster on the puncture wound. ‘The doctor will have to see it. There might be a bit of glass in there.’
Evan bowed his head and sobbed. She wiped away his tears. He said, ‘This is all I’ve got, May. I’ve got nothing if I haven’t got this.’
‘Don’t cry. Come inside now, love. I’ll help you walk.’
She wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a glass of whisky, then dressed herself and sat on the sofa with him, waiting for the constable. When he came they told him what had happened and where to find Junior Mott.
‘You might need a doctor for him. I think he’s hurt worse than me,’ Evan said.
The constable looked at the showroom. He put Junior’s axe in the boot of his car. They watched from the living room window as he drove into the settlement. His lights picked out the face of Junior’s house.
‘Let’s go to bed, Evan. We don’t need to watch.’
‘I want to see.’
A light went on in Junior’s house and then in other houses one by one. The constable opened the door and the dog rushed out. He calmed it and stroked it before going inside. ‘Be careful,’ May said softly, but he reappeared soon, propping Junior up.
‘I got him,’ Evan whispered. She could not tell whether he was pleased or upset.
‘Let’s go to bed.’
A neighbour – was it Christine? – got in the back of the car with Junior. It drove away and the lights went out. She poured Evan more whisky to help him sleep, and lay awake herself into the dawn, thinking about what he had told her. She could love him anywhere, in any conditions, but he could only love her here. It did not surprise her; it seemed natural. She felt her world shrink.
Evan slept. She watched his face: not ugly in sleep but almost beautiful. There was dry blood in his beard. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘We can still be all right.’
She got out of bed and made herself a cup of tea and drank it at the window, watching the sky lighten. She did not want to see the showroom yet. They would keep the closed sign on the gate today, keep customers out, and clean away Junior’s mess in their own time. She went out the side door, walked down the bush trac
k and found her dressing gown near the bottom. It had tears in the hem and it needed a wash – but perhaps the rubbish tin was the best place for it. She climbed back to the house, and at the door heard the telephone ringing. She hurried to it, not wanting Evan to wake.
‘Mum, is that you?’
‘Heather. What is it? Don’t tell me it’s Dad.’
‘No, he’s all right. It’s something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Something bad happened here last night.’
I don’t want it, May thought. I’ve got enough to think about.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
DAVID
He was at Uneeda Hire when it opened and he rented a pick-axe and a spade.
‘Don’t get much call for a pick-axe,’ the man said.
‘I’m cutting back a bank,’ David replied, and seemed with the lie to have damaged the shape of what he was about to do. Don’t talk to anyone, he told himself. He would get through the day clean, not let anything break in from the world outside.
He drove south to Wakefield and along a dirt road into the hills. Going from farms into forest was like going from day into night. He enjoyed the darkening. Halfway through he turned into a forestry road; then a firebreak; then into trees, where fallen branches crackled like bones under the wheels. When he stopped he felt he had come to the place allotted to him. It was an exclusion zone. No one could get in except him and Freda and the soldier.
He chose a place midway between two trees, scraped the pine needles clear, and marked out the graves with the edge of his spade. The earth turned to clay almost at once and he attacked it with the pick. In one grave he struck a root and had to hack through it where it entered and left. It was moist and pink and as whippy as a penis. He grinned as he tossed it away. This one would be the soldier’s grave.
He left them shallow. Going further down would satisfy him but they did not deserve deep graves. He would flatten the soil on top of them, spread pine needles over, drag a few branches into a heap, and they wouldn’t be found until the trees were felled, which from the look of them was ten years away. And maybe never. Never would be good, lying here and only him knowing where they were.
He backed out to the firebreak, leaving the yellow graves scooped in the ground. The soldier’s was longer than Freda’s, but even so he might have to put him on his side and bend his knees. The soldier would be first. He wanted Freda to see him dead and know what was going to happen to her. He cut a blaze on a trunk to mark his place. Then he drove to Wakefield, where he washed his hands and face at the service station and changed his sweaty T-shirt for the spare one on the seat. He took the inland road to the orchard.
Sunday would have been better, when there were no pickers in the trees, but with luck they would not be close to the house. The hardest part was now, getting the soldier out for the ten minutes he needed. Friendly, he thought, that was the way. Even if Freda was there he would be friendly. Tell them to go for a drive. Drive up the forest, why don’t you, good views there. It made him laugh.
He stopped in Ruby Bay and bought some grapes. The cottage door was closed when he drove past and it struck him that Freda might be hiding inside. It amused him – he hoped she was and had not cleared out for the day. Or she might be in the trees down the back of the orchard, lying on a blanket reading one of her dumb books, and maybe the soldier would be with her. That did not amuse him. He felt his throat thicken. What they didn’t know was that last night had been their last fuck.
The fat girl, Heather, ran after him to the house. He waited for her by the wagon and grinned at the way her breasts jogged. She saw it but came on sharp: ‘If you want to see Robert you should telephone first.’
‘It’ll take more than you to stop me seeing my old man,’ David said.
The soldier appeared, looking down from the patio. He looks like he wants to be saluted, David thought, but did not let that trouble him. What he knew about this joker was that he was dead. He felt lazy and contented and felt that he could auto-pilot through this part of things.
Fat Heather went into the house. David got the grapes from the car and walked up the steps. He liked coming level with the soldier and felt that he could keep on rising and look down on him and see him small. As they talked he almost yawned. Heather came out of the house. He ignored her hostility and gave her the grapes.
‘He’s had a pill,’ she said, ‘so you better be quick. He’s getting dopey.’
David winked at Alan. ‘He always was dopey. She wouldn’t know.’
He walked through the sitting room, pushed back the sunroom door and saw his father lying in a bed. His eyes were closed and his face only half the size it had been. The old bastard really is dying, David thought. The pity of it was that he hadn’t got it over with before fat Heather had arrived. He leaned over him and cupped the palm of his hand half an inch away from his mouth to see if he was breathing. I don’t want you dead right now, old man. He sat in the chair.
‘Hey,’ he said.
His father opened his eyes.
‘It’s me. David.’
‘What do you want?’ Slurred speech: David had to lean close to hear what came next. ‘You’ve run out of money, I suppose.’
‘Don’t you worry about me. I’m doing all right.’
‘Good.’ A whisper.
‘I didn’t know you were sick. No one bothered to tell me.’
‘Now you know.’
‘Yeah. So what have you got? Does it hurt?’
‘It’s – cancer.’ Then he went to sleep, the old bugger, just like that. A deep snore, unbelievable. David watched and grinned: I should have dug three. But went back, cancelled it; his father was another thing, he was not part of today. I’ll sort him and the fat girl out later on, David thought. He tapped his finger on his father’s jaw, then his nose, but the old man did not wake. David stood up and went out to the patio. The soldier was prowling round the wagon. He stood and watched him – red ears and freckled forehead and that girly slope in his shoulders. Easy, he thought.
‘What are you sliming round for?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why don’t you piss off, then? I don’t need a keeper.’ Like some dopey private, not a colonel. ‘Take a walk. Do some fucking manoeuvres, I don’t care. Just don’t push me.’ The words came easily, dead right. Everything ran his way today. ‘Brother,’ he grinned, and went inside.
The old man was still sleeping. His mouth was white inside but darkened in the hole going down his throat. Drop something in, he’d choke to death. Some of his pills. David mimed dropping them the way kids played eyedrops with glass marbles. He went back to the lounge, saw Alan head into the trees and turn towards the back of the orchard. He moved quickly then, feeling his steps light and the floor elastic: looked in the bedrooms, saw where Freda and the soldier had slept. Single bed. They must have spent the night stacked up. He thought of the graves in the forest, close but never touching, and wondered how they would like that.
He closed the door, went down the hall past the wash-house and opened the door into the garage. The car was gone. He bared his teeth at the emptiness and drew cool air into his lungs. So. She’d cleared out for the day in the old man’s car. Everything was the way he would have planned. He turned on the light. The sea-chest was still in the corner, where he’d hauled it for the old man back in ’83, after the garage was tacked on to the house. It looked as if it hadn’t been shifted since. Black tin with iron bands; a tongue and loop with a padlock like a woman’s brooch. The key was on a nail, waiting for him. He opened the lock, then had to pull the chest out from the wall to give the lid room to go up.
The gun was lying crosswise on the patchwork quilt that had covered his bed all the time he was growing up. It surprised him. The old man had wrapped it in a blanket in ’83 and stored it halfway down among double sheets he wasn’t going to need any more. That meant someone had used it. The ammunition too – it had been in a box but now it was in a plastic coin envelope fastened
with a bulldog clip. David was stopped short. Then he went on easily: the gun was offered to him and he did not have to dig. The patchwork quilt was right too, his finding and his recognition right. He lifted the rifle and felt its weight. He put it to his shoulder and sighted it at head height at the garage door. It was a part of him at once. It pointed out from him like a limb. Wood and steel. Straight and absolute. It confirmed him in everything he planned.
He worked the bolt and felt it slick and true. So, the old man had oiled it and cleaned it. Maybe he had been shooting rats or possums. Maybe fat Heather had – magpies or mice. David laughed. He felt the weight of the ammunition: opened the envelope, tipped half the cartridges in his palm. They looked okay. Looked almost new. He would not have to test-fire now. And there was plenty; there was too much. He wanted to see if he could do it with one shot each.
He spread the quilt on the garage floor and laid the rifle on it; knelt and admired. The black barrel, sharp foresight, worn wooden stock – it was beautiful. Older than him. Lovely trigger. His finger curled in recognition of the shape. He gave the stock a tap. ‘Gidday,’ he said. He folded the quilt across the rifle carefully, three times, then turned the ends in like Christmas paper and rolled again, feeling the package thicken up. He put the ammunition in his pocket. Closed the chest, locked it, hung the key on the wall. He remembered to push the chest back into place. One day, before they had been missing for too long, he would return the rifle and the quilt and the ammunition, and everything would be the way it was before.
He took the rifle through the house and laid it on the back seat of his wagon. A picker was singing in the trees, something about lonely roads. The tractor roared, hauling itself up a slope. He slammed the door, locking the gun inside, inside himself. Everything was slow. It was as if his heart was working at half speed, or was beating only when it had to. He felt like resting. A part of it was done.
He reached through the window and took his cigarettes. Sat on the steps to light up, but found the bag of grapes by the rail and ate one instead. Then he rose and stretched his arms and went into the house. His father was still sleeping, his upper lip flapping like a valve. David put his finger out and held it still, then let it start up again. Did that several times, then ambled to the living room and lit a cigarette. The soldier came in stoop-headed, and like that word of Freda’s – looking fraught.
