Carnival Sky

by Owen Marshall

  Belize went out with them. Sheff was left sitting on the wooden form below the lockers and using paper towels in an attempt to dry his trousers so that he could put them on again. In the far corner of the washroom was a collection of mops and brooms, a Zip water-heater with a broken glass calibrator, a hand-written scroll that congratulated someone on seven years’ service, three cartons that had contained granulated vitamin-enhanced breakfast food.

  His mother was ensuring a skinny kid with reflux left for home safely, Georgie was on the Dunedin bus with Mrs Abercrombie, his father was dead and buried, and he was sitting half-naked and stinking in a supermarket washroom regarding a corner of cleaning detritus. Jesus Christ. He almost laughed. Almost.

  When Belize returned she had the proprietor with her. Mr Fellows, a pleasant, softly spoken man with small, crooked teeth who had known Warwick quite well. He apologised to Sheff and offered to pay any dry-cleaning costs involved, but his greater concern was to explain to Belize why he hadn’t attended the funeral. He’d wanted to be there, but one of the refrigeration units had packed up. He told Sheff he was welcome to use the shower, but Sheff preferred to clean up at home, and began gingerly drawing on his trousers. The wet cling and smell of them was too much, however. Mr Fellows found a large green apron, and Sheff was able to wrap it about himself so completely that his lack of trousers was hardly noticeable. The owner came with them back through the supermarket, which had resumed its humdrum routines. ‘In confidence,’ he said, ‘in confidence, I don’t know how much longer we can keep Bobby with us. There’s something quite badly wrong there. I think I’ll have to restrict him to the back of the shop anyway.’ He seemed eager to talk about the difficulties that he faced in running the supermarket, and Belize was not disinclined to listen, but Sheff just wanted to be home.

  Once there he had a long shower, and felt better in fresh clothes. ‘I know that Bobby’s mother,’ said Belize at lunch. ‘She once told me he’s been sick since a baby, and no one can find the cause. Sometimes he sleeps for fourteen or sixteen hours on the trot, and she worries if he’s ever going to wake.’ Sheff could do little regarding Bobby’s life of affliction, but having freed himself of the contents of Bobby’s gut, he did start to feel sympathy for him. Sheff could shower, change and carry on regardless, while Bobby knew that something was wrong inside.

  ‘And I had a text from Georgie on the bus,’ said Belize.

  ‘All okay?’

  ‘She says she’s missing us already,’ said his mother. ‘And Anne Gemmell rang. She’s coming round to see me later. She couldn’t get to the funeral.’

  ‘I might leave you to it, then,’ said Sheff, ‘as long as you’re happy with that. I might give Jessica a ring and see if she’d like a coffee.’

  ‘Of course. Anne had a hip replacement last year, and she says she feels twenty years younger.’

  Sheff decided to walk to Jessica’s home. He did it at a stroll, to avoid working up a sweat. Once again he noticed the friendliness of the strangers he met on the way. Locals glanced as they approached, in expectation of recognition, but still usually gave a smile, or greeting, despite not knowing him.

  Expensive homes had been built on the high ground in recent years, many highlighting the veined rock outcrops on which they stood, and some in a faux Mediterranean style. Outside money, Warwick had told him. Jessica’s house was free of any pretension. They chose not to sit outside, or even in the sunroom: they went into the living room where it was cooler, and relaxed in the big chairs. Emma was at a friend’s house for the afternoon. While walking over, Sheff had told himself not to be a sad-sack and go on about his own problems, but to be good company and take an interest in Jessica’s life. He had little patience with people who were always emotionally needy. Bobby wouldn’t be mentioned. Jessica, though, immediately referred to one of his misfortunes. ‘How’s your chin?’ and she leant forward to scrutinise it.

  ‘Coming right now, although people really notice anything on your face.’ The cut had reduced to a small, dark scab and the bruising was completely gone, yet still whenever he met someone, their eyes would flick to it and then away again.

  ‘It’s not infected. That’s the good thing,’ said Jessica. ‘It’ll soon be right and you’ll be just as good-looking as before.’

  ‘I was hoping for improvement.’

  ‘There’ll hardly be a scar even,’ she said, and then, ‘So Georgie’s away?’

  ‘She’ll be at the Dunedin airport by now.’

  Jessica leant back and relaxed, her head on the soft fabric back of the chair, as if to show there was no need to talk unless he felt like it. Sometimes he, Georgie and Belize had sat together for an hour or more with no conversation, yet in communion, and Sheff found even more comfort in Jessica’s presence. ‘Maybe I should stay here,’ he said after a time. Jessica didn’t stir.

  ‘Here as in the town, or here, here?’ she said after a pause.

  ‘I could get used to here, here.’

  ‘We’ve been through this.’

  ‘You used to like guys. I might be worth a shot.’

  She did turn and look at him then, and with just a glint of impatience. ‘My girlfriend doesn’t live with me, so it’s not very likely I’d have you move in, is it?’

  ‘Why not? I mean, why doesn’t your partner move in? I wasn’t sure you even had one.’

  ‘Why should you? If you must know, we thought it would make things too difficult for Emma, especially when she still sees a good deal of her father, and I don’t want anyone saying things to her about two mums at home, or anything like that. She’s got enough to deal with as it is, and she’s so good about it.’

  ‘She’s a lucky kid.’

  ‘I would’ve stayed in the marriage longer for her if I could. Children get punished for things they’ve no control over.’ They were quiet for a while, knowing they had drifted into personal revelation, and that care, even delicacy, was required despite their closeness.

  There was a part of Sheff that could view the rest of him with detachment: that saw clearly that it was logical for him to be unhappy, and unsure in regard of the future. Charlotte’s death, the separation from Lucy, his father’s fate and the part he and Georgie played in it, all within a few years, were explanation enough, yet cataloguing the reasons for malaise provided him with little relief and no remedy. ‘Lucy and I lost a baby girl,’ he said. ‘That’s what finished us.’

  ‘Yes, Georgie told me,’ she said. ‘You could’ve had other children?’

  ‘No reason why not, but it didn’t happen, and somehow I don’t think either of us wanted it. Charlotte took something with her that was essential for Lucy and me as a couple. Nothing worked after that. Other people might react in quite different ways I suppose. We had counselling, the works, but it only made me angry – no reason, or excuse, for that, except that you act differently when you’re lost and in pain.’

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to lose a child.’

  ‘Oddly enough, drinking doesn’t help me much at all. I thought the typical response to such a beating would be to become a fall-down drunk, but nothing so dramatic. What happened just made so much that had once seemed important completely worthless. And instead of feeling more sympathy for other people’s problems, I couldn’t give a bugger. Unhappiness is such a selfish thing. I get angry so easily now – there seem to be so many more stupid people you have to deal with. So many futile, everyday tasks.’

  ‘The baby, your marriage and now your father. Jesus,’ said Jessica, ‘who wouldn’t be angry? Anyway you haven’t been angry with me.’

  She smiled. He felt better even for the little he’d confided, but didn’t want to say any more, even to Jessica. ‘I should be angry with you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wanting to shag you since I first saw you again, and you won’t let me. I’m entitled to be angry with you for being so bloody attractive, yet unobliging.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d make anyone a very good partner for a w
hile yet.’

  They sat in silence for a time, but without awkwardness. Sheff lightly touched the scab on his chin. ‘Don’t pick it,’ Jessica said. ‘You’d see more of Georgie if you stayed here a while. I’m sure she’ll try to get down as much as possible.’ A few weeks ago Sheff would have thought that having time with Georgie was of little significance, but his opinion had changed. Jessica’s company was of even greater importance.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind me hanging around for a while?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope. Both of us could do with a bit of support.’

  ‘What about your girlfriend?’

  ‘She knows about you,’ said Jessica. ‘Maybe you could meet her sometime. It’s okay there.’

  Sheff was surprised how little curiosity he felt about Jessica’s lover. He imagined that to meet her would only emphasise her greater importance in Jessica’s life, and there could be no effective competition. It wasn’t jealousy, just the preference to be unaware of another person more significant to Jessica than himself. Emma was example enough.

  ‘Do you know someone called Pamela Rudge?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s in the office at Emma’s school. A bit full of herself, but very friendly and obliging. She wanted to nominate me for the school board, but I didn’t have the time. She plays bridge too.’

  ‘She’s the one who got stuck into me about seeing you, and not just once. She turned up at the funeral – said if I didn’t stay away from you I’d end up in a concrete overcoat.’

  ‘You’re making this up. I don’t believe you’ve even met her.’

  ‘Have too, she was wearing a yellow dress. And she’s harangued me before, at the café and once on the bridge. I told you about it. She gave me a spray for being keen on you, and warned me off. She’s obviously taken it on herself to be your sexual guardian.’

  ‘Some story. And if it’s a ploy to find out who my partner is, then it won’t work. All in good time.’

  ‘I could do a piece on lesbianism in the provinces. Interviews with the two of you, and Pamela as a contrast.’ He almost felt sorry for Pamela Rudge – so protective of Jessica, who was so little aware of her. Maybe even as he and Jessica were together, Pamela was sitting in a car not far from the house, torturing herself with speculation as to their activity. ‘“Les Sex in Alex”, I could call the piece,’ he told Jessica. ‘Editors like a smart-arse, ambiguous title.’

  ‘Like hell you will,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough unofficial publicity about my life as it is. A professional woman bringing up her child on her own. That’s all people need to know.’

  ‘This Rudge woman, though,’ said Sheff. ‘I may have to take out a non-molestation order. I’m tired of getting knocked about one way and another.’

  ‘A persecution complex. That’s what it is.’

  ‘I’ve got the scars to prove it. This secret admirer of yours is no figment of the imagination.’

  ‘You told me a skateboarder crashed into you.’

  ‘Okay, but a small-town butch lesbian skateboarding assassin is something to conjure with, isn’t it? Wow.’

  ‘God, Sheff, you know nothing about it. You men have these fantasies. Pamela’s always seemed to me a rather ordinary sort of person. Maybe she’s gay, but we’ve never talked about it. She did offer to be my partner at the club.’

  Sheff had almost forgotten the pleasure of relaxation with a woman. Within a few days he might well be gone, but the time felt special nevertheless. Something of value was there, important to them in the present, and maybe not lost when they were apart. Just to like someone had become important to him, to feel affinity and a sense of understanding.

  ‘I still want to do the pieces on being a vet,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you all the copy you want, and you shout me a decent meal out on the proceeds.’

  ‘Done.’ There would be bugger-all left over, but he didn’t mention that. ‘Did I tell you I saw Albie Waltenberg?’

  ‘No, but he said at bridge that he was keen to get in touch. He’s been all over the world, but he says his health’s shot now.’

  ‘He’s become a bloody fanatic,’ and Sheff told her of the visit, with sufficient exaggeration to provide entertainment, following her into the kitchen when she went to make coffee, resisting the temptation to come close behind her when she stood at the bench.

  Later Jessica asked him if he wanted to be dropped off when she went to collect Emma, but Sheff knew he’d taken enough of her day. He would go home and talk to his mother as she made a meal for them. ‘Let her fuss over you a bit,’ Georgie had said before leaving. ‘That’ll take her mind off Dad, and give her the reassurance of routine.’ Sheff didn’t see his mother as the fussing kind, but accepted Georgie’s counsel.

  On his way home he passed the small park where he’d been struck with the cricket ball. He went across the grass and sat at the wooden picnic table again. All was as it had been when last he was there, except that no kids gathered behind the hedge to hassle him, no duck implored him. Even the breeze was of the same strength and from the same direction, so that the plume tops of the shimmering poplar trees nodded to the east, and a hawk drifted with fixed wings to the same compass point. Everything was the same, but not the same.

  And closer to home, when he’d left the park, was the street that led to the pipe man’s house, with the twisted bike still leaning there perhaps by the small concrete wall with lavender spilling over it, and inside the house old Gavin with the walrus moustache and unrecognisable bum, and the son manically up or down with the affliction of bipolar disorder. Even the great blue dome of the sky, and the pulsating gold sun within it, couldn’t heal everything.

  As he crossed a quiet intersection he glanced to his left, and saw at the limit of recognition a street name, white on blue – Venice Avenue. A station in his rites of passage that even twenty-seven years afterwards was as sharp as yesterday and as meaningful as all between. Natalie Gorringe had lived in Venice Avenue, Number 33, and on a wet November Saturday they had had sex on her narrow bed, with algebra and calculus books on the small table alongside. Natalie was talented in maths and science, but more important she was lovely, and for a few weeks willing to be Sheff’s girlfriend in her giddy seventh form year. Maybe it was because he was allowed his father’s car, maybe it was his long hair, or the jokes he told, maybe she liked him, maybe it was merely boredom. It didn’t matter why. It mattered only that because it was raining her parents decided to stay longer in Dunedin instead of returning to play bowls, and Sheff went to her house and, after mucking around, she said they could do it if he wanted to.

  It was the first full, easy fuck he ever had, quite different from the back-seat contesting that was the sum of his previous experience. Natalie had taken off her clothes with studied intent, folded them and put them on the floor by the head of the bed. She was smooth all over except for the hair on her head and at her crotch. It was a darker shade down there and springy. As he lay on her, his face was almost touching the net curtains of the window, and he could see quite clearly the garden and street outside Number 33. He had to remind himself that although he could see out, people on the street wouldn’t be able to see in: view Natalie and him naked and trembling slightly – with excitement, not cold. ‘Give it to me,’ she had said urgently. And he had. There were long, shallow puddles on the drive and the raindrops puckered the surfaces. The grass of lawn and the flowers were slick and glistening beneath anointment. Grey clouds rolled inexorably in the sky, cars hissed on the wet street. All was perfect.

  At seventeen to be so sure of her own need and so confident in control of its delivery. ‘Give it to me,’ she’d said with eager resolution, an invitation he thought then would never be surpassed. Lovely, generous Natalie Gorringe, who grew even more lovely and generous so that she was soon stolen from Sheff by an ex-head boy, and finally by a married solicitor who threw away his career and family to go with her to Melbourne. Everyone said what a desp
icable prick he was, but Sheff knew he’d made the right choice nevertheless. Principles of morality have no weight when in the balance with a woman of beauty who could say ‘Give it to me,’ in the way Natalie had, and look you in the face while saying it. That first loving was such an amelioration of rainy days that no matter how many had come afterwards, or what parades were ruined, they were tinged with a recollection of triumph. Yet had it always been so starry, or had he glossed it with joy and gratitude?

  Mrs Gemmell had been and gone by the time Sheff returned home, and his mother said that Mr Fellows from the supermarket had rung to apologise for Bobby once more. The boy was very upset. Sheff and his mother sat at the kitchen table: just two people, whereas recently there had been a foursome that would never gather again. Belize had made a couscous salad with olives and pomegranate seeds, and the meat was shaved ham. ‘Georgie rang, too,’ she said. ‘She’s just home and sends love. They flew through a thunderstorm north of Kaikoura. She thinks I should go and stay with Cass for a while.’

  ‘It’s whatever you find best,’ he said.

  ‘I have this feeling that if I leave the house too soon after your father, I mightn’t be able to come back to it. Some time to get used to being here alone would be good, don’t you think?’

  ‘Makes sense, Mum.’

  ‘If you could just help with the tidy-up for a few more days, then I feel I’ll be fine, but only if that’s okay?’ Belize was quite calm, but there was something different about her that Sheff couldn’t place, and then he realised that her long, white hair was brushed loose about her face for the first time since he’d come home.

  ‘Sure. Georgie said when everything’s settled you might go overseas?’

  ‘Maybe. Warwick and I loved Portugal, and always said we’d go back.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to travel around by yourself, though,’ said Sheff.

  ‘No, no,’ said Belize. ‘I’m too old for that.’ With her fork she was picking the bright pomegranate seeds from her plate and biting them with pleasure. ‘I’ve friends who are keen to travel. Cass and Norman would come, but maybe it’s better not to be family.’ There was a small flock of finches in the garden, and she paused, watching them until they whirled together over the fence.