Owen Marshall Selected Stories

by Vincent O'Sullivan

  ‘I knew you’d like it, being winter and that. And there’ll be enough for you tomorrow.’

  Zip lit a cigarette as he stood by the bench and waited to help with the dishes. He pulled the smoke in, and his eyelids dropped for a moment as the smoke hit deep in his lungs. In a long sigh he breathed out. The smoke drifted, the colour of the condensation on the window, and Zip had the teatowel folded over his arm like a waiter, and stood before the plastic drip tray as he waited for the dishes. ‘I’ll put the rest of the casserole in something else,’ said Mumsie, ‘and then the dish can be soaked. There’s always some bubbles out and bakes on the rim.’

  ‘Let it soak then, Mumsie,’ said Zip.

  ‘Don’t let me miss the start of the news. Maybe they’ve found the boatshed murderer.’ Mumsie liked everyone to be brought to justice. Zip dried the forks carefully, pressing a fold of towel between the prongs. He tapped the ash from his cigarette into Chamaecereus silvestrii on the sill.

  ‘It’s just as well we’re not in the boatshed belt,’ he said.

  ‘But it could be anyone, Zip.’

  ‘Except Mr Beresford, Mumsie. I’d say he must be in the clear.’

  ‘No, I meant it could be any woman. It said on the talkback that these things are increasing all the time.’

  Zip spread the teatowel over the stove top, and shuffled the cork mats into symmetry so that the images of the kittens and the wool were inline. He stood by Mumsie as she wiped the table, and then he sat there and put down a plastic ashtray. Mumsie told him not to pick at the contact because it was already tatty, so Zip rotated his cigarette packet instead, standing it alternately on end and side, over and over again. His fingers were nimble, and the packet only whispered on the table as it turned. ‘We’ll go through to the good room soon,’ said Mumsie, ‘seeing the clothes are already in front of the heater there.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Zip. He sighed, and the smoke came like dust from deep in his lungs, and drifted in the yellow light. ‘Another day, another dollar,’ he said.

  ‘Just another day, you said.’

  ‘That’s right. Another day,’ said Zip. He tapped with his finger on the cigarette above the ashtray; a column of ash fell neatly and lay like a caterpillar.

  ‘How many of those have you had today?’ asked Mumsie.

  ‘Five or six.’

  ‘Mumsie’s going to have to hide them, or you’ll be up to a packet a day again.’

  ‘You’re a tough lady all right,’ said Zip.

  ‘Well, Mr Beresford was a heavy smoker, Mrs Rose said, and he wouldn’t be told, just kept on. Mrs Rose said in the shop she wouldn’t be surprised if that was it.’

  ‘But you don’t know it was smoking Beresford died of.’

  ‘It can’t have helped,’ Mumsie said. Zip continued to turn the packet with his free hand, head over heels it went, again and again. Mumsie said that she’d heard that a lot of drugs had been found in the fire station, but it was all being hushed up. Mumsie enjoyed her delusion of occasionally sharing privileged information. ‘It’ll all be swept under the carpet because they know each other, all those people, you see if they don’t.’

  ‘They’d bloody well come down on you or me though, Mumsie, that’s for sure,’ said Zip.

  Mumsie was talking about the food specials at Four Square when the phone rang. She was comparing for Zip the large coffee with the giant and the standard. Standard meant small, but nothing in supermarkets is labelled small. Zip remained still, apart from turning the cigarette packet. He paid no attention to the phone: he had no hope of it. He was unlucky enough to know his own life. But Mumsie was quite excited. She wondered who that could be, she said, and she tidied her hair as she went into the passage. Zip didn’t alter just because Mumsie had gone. He stayed quietly at the table as if relaxed, turning the cigarette packet. He did work his mouth, pulling his lips back first on one side then the other, as a horse does on the bit. Zip looked at the table, and the worn lino by the bench, and Mumsie’s cactus plants which could survive her benign forgetfulness, and at the windows decked with tears, and his eyes jiggled.

  Mumsie was happy when she bustled back in. She felt things were going on. There were decisions to be made and she was involved, and someone had taken the trouble to phone her. ‘It’s Irene and Malcolm,’ she said. Zip let out a dusty breath. The tears of condensation left black trails on the windows, and a small rainbow bubble winked as Mumsie shifted the detergent flask. ‘They’re going to stay for a few days next week,’ said Mumsie. ‘Malcolm’s got some management course again.’

  ‘No,’ said Zip.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I don’t want them here. I don’t want them here next week, or next year, or ever. I don’t want other people in my house, Mumsie. Got it? I don’t want Malcolm and his moustache telling me how well he’s doing, and your sister making you look like Ma Kettle all the time.’ Zip didn’t raise his voice, but there was in it a tone of finality.

  ‘But they’re family,’ said Mumsie. She turned the water on and off in the sink for no reason.

  ‘They’re not coming. You’re going to tell them that they can’t come, or I’m going to. You’ll do it nicer than me.’

  ‘How often do we have people?’ said Mumsie. ‘We never see anyone.’

  ‘I don’t want to see anyone, and I don’t want anyone to see me. People are never worth the effort, Mumsie, but you never seem to learn that.’

  ‘I get sick of no one coming. I get sick of always being by ourselves,’ said Mumsie.

  Zip spread the corners of his mouth in one grimace of exasperation, and then his face was flat again. ‘You’re stupid,’ he said. ‘What are you?’

  ‘Maybe I am,’ said Mumsie, ‘but I’ve got a life too. I’m not too stupid to have my own sister to stay, am I.’

  ‘You’re a stupid, old bitch, Mumsie, and I’m as bad. In a way I’m worse, because I’m just bright enough to see how stupid we both are, and how we’re buggered up here like two rats in a dunghill. We’ve got to keep on living our same life over and over again.’

  ‘Oh, don’t start talking like that, and getting all funny.’ The windows were black eyes shining with tears, and the custard light of the room grew brighter in contrast with deep winter outside. The table legs cast stalks of shadow across the floor, and high on the cupboard edges the fly dirt clustered like pepper spots. ‘Anyway I’ve told them they can come, and so they can,’ said Mumsie. She pretended that by being emphatic she had made an end of it, but her face was flushed and her head nodded without her being aware.

  Zip eased from the seat, and took a grip of Mumsie’s soft neck. He braced his body against hers and he pushed her head back twice on to the wall. Mumsie’s jowls spread upwards because of the pressure of Zip’s hand, and trembled with the impact of the wall. Their faces were close, but their eyes didn’t meet. The sound of Mumsie’s head striking the wall echoed in the kitchen; the mounting for the can opener dug in behind her ear. Mumsie began to weep quietly without any retaliation. ‘Now I tell you again they’re not coming,’ said Zip. He sat back at the table, and began to turn the cigarette packet top over bottom. Mumsie put her hand to the back of her head for comfort, and her fingers came back with a little blood.

  ‘I swept out the storeroom today, Mumsie,’ Zip said. ‘I swept out the bloody storeroom when I went to that place twenty years ago, and today I swept it out again. I was doing it when the buyers came and they all went past me and into Ibbetson’s office. Ibbetson didn’t say anything to me, and neither did any of the buyers. I’m the monkey on a stick.’

  ‘I thought you liked my sister,’ said Mumsie. She dabbed at the blood with a paper towel, but Zip didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I’d like to screw her, Mumsie, you know that, but she wouldn’t let me, and there’s nothing else I want to have to do with her apart from screwing her. She’s up herself, your sister.’

  ‘You’re just saying it.’

  ‘I’m just saying it and it
’s the truth. We make a good pair, you and me, Mumsie. We don’t take the world by storm. Two stupid people, and if we stopped breathing right now it wouldn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘It would to me,’ said Mumsie.

  ‘We’re dead, Mumsie,’ said Zip.

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Mumsie watched Zip, but he didn’t reply. He seemed very relaxed. He looked back at the watching windows and his eyes jittered. Mumsie didn’t like silences: talk was reassuring evidence of life moving on for Mumsie.

  ‘You’re that proud,’ said Mumsie. ‘You’re so proud, and that’s the matter with you. You’ll choke on your pride in the end.’

  ‘You might be right there, Mumsie,’ said Zip. ‘Most of us could gag on our own pride.’

  ‘You hurt my head then, you know. It’s bleeding.’

  ‘You’re all right. Don’t start whining. I’ll have to hit Ibbetson’s head one day, Mumsie, and then there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk about things like that.’

  ‘It’s going to happen. Some day it’s bound to happen, and there’ll be merry hell to pay.’

  ‘Why can’t you just be happy, Zip?’

  ‘I’m not quite stupid enough, more’s the pity. I can watch myself and I don’t bloody want to.’

  ‘Let’s go into the good room,’ said Mumsie. ‘We’ll push the clothes out of the way and sit in there in the warm.’

  ‘Sure, but first Mumsie we’ll have a cuddle in the bedroom. I quite feel like it, so you get your pants off in there and we’ll have a cuddle.’

  ‘It’s cold in there,’ said Mumsie.

  ‘You get your pants off, Mumsie,’ said Zip. ‘You know what your murderer did to the boatshed girls — shaved their hair all off, so you want to watch out.’

  ‘It’s awful. I meant to watch it on the news to see if they’ve found him.’

  ‘You can’t trust anyone but your family, Mumsie. You’ve got to realise that.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Mumsie kept on talking so that Zip would forget to tell her again to go into the bedroom and take her pants off. She told him that after Mr Beresford died the blood came to the surface of his body, so Mrs Rose said, and his face turned black and his stomach too. ‘Maybe it was the tarbrush coming out,’ said Zip. She told him about Mrs Jardine claiming the family care allowance, even though their combined income was over the limit. She told him again that the doorknob had come off in her hand, and about the niece or cousin of Debbie Simpson’s who had a growth in her ear and they might have to operate because it was pressing on her brain and making her smell things that weren’t really there. ‘What a world,’ said Zip. He ran his thumb and forefinger up and down the bridge of his nose, and his eyes jittered, and their focus point was a little beyond anything in the kitchen. He lit another cigarette, and Mumsie didn’t say anything about that, but went on talking about who did Mrs Jardine think she was, just because they both worked and she could afford plenty of clothes.

  The light was banana yellow and the windows like glasses of stout, beaded with condensation. Mumsie had a magnetic ladybird on the door of the fridge, and the one remaining leg oscillated as the motor came on. Zip had no question on his face, and his hands lay unused on the table before him. ‘Mumsie’s going to tell you now that I made some caramel kisses today as a treat,’ said Mumsie.

  ‘You’re a queen,’ said Zip. ‘You’re a beaut.’

  ‘And we’ll have another cup of tea, and take it through to the good room with the caramel kisses.’ Mumsie brought the tin out and opened the lid to display the two layers of kisses. ‘They’ve come out nice and moist,’ she said.

  ‘They look fine, Mumsie,’ said Zip. ‘You know I like a lot of filling in them.’

  ‘I made them after I’d been to the shop,’ said Mumsie. ‘It’ll be warmer in the good room, and the clothes should be dry.’

  When the tea was made, Mumsie put it on a tray. She was pleased to be going at last to the good room. She paused at the door. The blood was smudged dry behind her ear. ‘Bring in the caramel kisses for me,’ she said.

  ‘Sure thing, Mumsie,’ said Zip. He heard Mumsie complaining about there being no knob on the good room door.

  ‘This bloody door, Zip,’ said Mumsie. Zip cast his head back quickly and made a laughing face, but without any noise.

  ‘All right, Mumsie,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and do it now,’ but he stayed sitting there, his hands on the table, his face still once more, and only his eyes jit jittering as bugs do sometimes in warm evening air.

  Trumpeters

  The Trumpeters were a family of very tall, very quiet farmers, who had looked down on other people over many generations — not in a patronising manner, but as if in commiseration at the mutual necessity of striking some sort of compromise with life. The Trumpeters were old inhabitants; not wealthy, but with the livelihood of their property beneath their large feet.

  Their farm was in Trumpeters’ Road; an indication of the family’s ties with the district. An unsealed road amongst the downs, white with dust like white pollen in the summer, and a yellow pollen sign at the corner with Trumpeters’ Road marked in black. It was limestone country, karst country, with sink holes and ruled limestone outcrops which were weathered grey, or showed pale yellow as a more recent skin. The larger caves had faint, attenuated, Maori drawings, written over with the bolder egotism of Killjoy was here, Wanker, and Pink Floyd.

  Neil Trumpeter was my age. My father had taught us both in the two room primary school. Trumpeters were not scholars, but each generation did its time patiently there, and then at the High School: purgatories completely foreign to their natures, but borne as some sort of social exaction before they had earned the right to return to their land. Old Man Trumpeter admitted that there was a need for boys to mix with others for a while. He made it sound a part of his creed of stockmanship. It was difficult however for a Trumpeter to mix — always head and shoulders above anybody else.Trumpeters were born distinct by both build and temperament. Old Man Trumpeter came to the parents’ interviews and sat on a primary chair. My father would try not to smile, and the folds of Trumpeter’s best trousers would envelop the little chair. Old Man Trumpeter’s hands were like dragons’ feet, and he laid them neatly at a distance on his knees. He never began a conversation, and in reply he spoke slowly, almost as if he were watching one word out of sight before releasing the next. His country sentences had gaps for wind and clouds to gather in, for crops to be observed, for memories to well up powerfully behind the eyes. Old Man Trumpeter advanced on to language as he would an untried bridge — with caution and reserve. ‘That’s about the size of it,’ was his persistent idiom of concurrence.

  When I was at school with Neil, his grandfather was still alive. I saw him once sitting bowed in the passenger side of the truck cab, his head framed like a Borgia engraving, and once waiting in the sun at the road gate for the rural delivery man. Age had shrunk him to almost human proportions, and his head sat directly on his shoulders, the neck retracted or the shoulders risen. The grandfather lived to be ninety-eight, but Old Man Trumpeter didn’t live anything like as long, and died only a few years after his father, leaving Neil and Mrs Trumpeter alone on the property.

  Neil was rather progressive for a Trumpeter. He enjoyed sport at High School and did well in the long jump and high jump. He was liked well enough — there was an absence of malice in the Trumpeter character — and his height and reserve gave him an individuality that pleased his peers. He was called Dawk, not because of anything unusual about his genitalia, but because all Trumpeters were called Dawk at the school. The nickname, once coined, was passed on in a serviceable continuity. Neil failed his exams with equanimity and a sense of tradition, and returned to the property in Trumpeters’ Road.

  Neil and his mother were apparently quite happy to work their land together after Old Man Trumpeter died, but if it had been otherwise they would have seen it as no one’s concern but their own. When Neil was in his late
twenties Mrs Trumpeter died suddenly, in a hot summer, my father said, and only a few days after she and Neil had been stung by bees when they knocked a hive over with the tractor and trailer. The doctor said that it wasn’t the stings that had anything to do with her dying, that it was haemorrhage of the brain, but anyway she’d barely lost the swelling from the stings when she died, and Neil told the beekeeper he wouldn’t have hives on his property any more.

  With his mother gone, Neil must have become very aware of his bachelorhood, whether for reasons of personal comfort, or the sharper realisation that he was the last Trumpeter, I can’t say, but in his deliberate way he began to look for a wife. He was seen standing amidst race-goers, sports supporters, revellers, even committees. A decent, single man of property looking for a wife. He married Tessa Hall within a year. She was a librarian, and quite new to town. She wasn’t at all what you’d expect of a librarian, for Tessa was glowing, chatty, impulsive. She sang parts in the local repertory, and entered the Floral Princess competition — and won. Other men envied Trumpeter his wife’s looks, and other women endorsed Tessa’s wisdom in annexing security. She wasn’t tall, but then the height of Trumpeter women had never affected the inexorable gene that persisted through the male line.

  I imagine that the routine and isolation of farm life were something of a shock for Tessa Trumpeter. People were the world as far as she was concerned, and the chaffinch flocks above the crops, easterly drizzle caressing the downs, thick flight of grass grub in the night, dark lucerne in the evening light: what could she make of it? And they were drought years, which while not really threatening a debt free and established farm like Trumpeters’, nevertheless meant that there wasn’t money for shopping trips to Auckland, or major renovations of the farmhouse. I did hear someone say that the marriage was in trouble early on, but you hear that about most marriages at some time, maybe with truth.

  Neil sold out after about five years of marriage. He and Tessa moved to town, and Neil bought motels on the main road — the Shangri-la Lodge Motels. Neil joined Lions, and had his photo in the paper several times with a salmon on opening day. Tessa did most of the work at the motel, and the bustle of people, new and familiar, suited her. They were a popular couple. I saw them occasionally on the modest social round of a country town: once or twice at their own place, with Neil standing above his barbecue guests with an expectant smile, even when it was over. Who can say concerning the happiness of others; the greater part of our life is wasted in pretence of one sort or another.