Scornful Moon

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Losing her nice house, I suppose. And not being Mrs Tinling any more. And maybe Lady Tinling at some future date.’ Eric laughed. ‘We all know how hungry she was for that. But as well …’

  I waited.

  ‘Getting pregnant. And maybe just enjoying herself. Because she really did, with bells on, Sam. She was pretty sore down there, I could tell by the way she walked.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Eric.’

  ‘You want the truth, don’t you? Maybe she thought sore was punishment for liking it. So she said she’d say I’d raped her if I didn’t get out. I told her she should bolt. Head for another town. Get another man. Then I rode my bike back home.’

  ‘Are you saying you’d have married her if she’d left James?’

  ‘God, no. Married? With Vi? When I had May? But it was amazing, Sam. You don’t get that sort of thing, that surprise and greed … Now you look as if you’ll slit my throat. May knows about it. She was glad about Charlie when she knew she couldn’t have children herself.’

  ‘And James and Violet carried on pretending.’

  ‘She should have left. I’d have helped with that.’

  ‘The way Charlie’s going to be pretending with Frank Siers.’

  He threw his cigarette butt down the garden, then looked over his shoulder at the house. May was at the sitting room window, watching us. He turned away, put his hands on his knees, winced with pain. He said, after another while: ‘Frank Siers, eh? He’d better not spoil Charlie’s painting, that’s all I say.’

  I drove him to the hospital for an X-ray. A bone was broken in his hand. He looked pleased with himself, and was pleased with his arm in a sling when, some hours later, I delivered him to May.

  Rose and I walked down the hill. A squall of rain arrived as we reached our gate. We ran inside and locked the door.

  Now I can put an end to it — an end of sorts. I’m looking for a good man in my story, but can find only Freddie Barr, whom I once despised. There’s one good woman I am sure of: Rose, my wife. About the rest, I’m not competent to say. Not really competent for judging at all.

  Oliver Joll labours through his first year in prison. Moody and Taylor Barr stay in London, together or alone I do not know. James lives in his Lower Hutt house with his man Ferrabee. I’ve nothing more to say about them.

  May works on as secretary of her women’s group but Rose is growing tired and helps her less. Charlie has become Mrs Siers. She paints busily in his — in their — studio. I don’t like what she’s doing now any more than I liked the paintings James had Ferrabee burn — or the one in Rose’s sewing room. Eric reserves his decision.

  I’m getting to the end, wrapping up. Eric is left. What is there to say about him?

  Last night I walked up Glenmore Street to visit Roy Kember. He has fallen even deeper into depression, and perhaps senility, it’s hard to tell. I sat with him for half an hour but he recognised me only in starts, and spoke my name without liking or dislike, without any feeling at all.

  I left him and walked down to Tinakori Road. I was passing the Western Park Hotel when I saw Eric’s car pull up outside Mrs Maxey’s house. He got out, unsecretive, and knocked his rat-tat, rat-tat-tat on her door. After she had let him in I crossed the road and looked to see if they went upstairs. No light went on up there. Instead I heard the piano playing. Eric sang, distantly, in his baritone: ‘I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die …’

  I don’t know what is going on; or what goes on anywhere.

  The moon came up — Shelley’s ‘crystal paramour’, Milton’s ‘spotty globe’. There are thousands of descriptions to pick from. It joined with the streetlights, swallowing the stars. I could not see Eric’s doubles and variables.

  I’ll close my notebook and lock it with its fellows in my bottom drawer.

  Nothing ends except my telling.

  About the author

  Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers, for both adults and children. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Wattie Award (twice), the Montana Award, and the New Zealand Fiction Award (four times). He has also won the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the United Kingdom.

  Maurice Gee’s novels include the three books in the Plumb trilogy, Going West (winner of the Wattie award), Prowlers, Live Bodies (winner of the Montana Award) and Ellie and the Shadow Man. He has also written a number of children’s novels, the most recent being The Fat Man, Orchard Street and Hostel Girl.