True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

‘Not even politics. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t, would I? That’s what they say, isn’t it?’

  Her hands trembled as she measured olive oil into the pan. It had been a mistake to tell him he didn’t understand, the worst kind of insult.

  ‘Don’t upset the children,’ she pleaded. She was suddenly dreadfully afraid.

  ‘Fuck the children.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Come to bed.’

  ‘No, Lyle, not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’ She gestured helplessly around her.

  ‘Because you can’t wait to get to him. You and him, you can’t wait to get into each other.’

  ‘No.’

  He snatched the knife off the bench. ‘Bullshit.’

  The door handle seemed to stick under her hand in a way it never had before, and then she was running towards the drive, blundering over the paving stones and across the pruned-back daisy bushes, like moths around her legs. At the gate she saw the children walking along the street together, one from her ballet class, the other from his cricket practice.

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘No.’ She turned back to Lyle as he came down the driveway. She looked at him advancing upon her. She began walking back towards him as if the shining blade were a magnet. When she had nearly reached him she put her hands in front of her face and waited.

  ‘I’m so tired, Lyle,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ellis Hannen goes to see them,’ said Rose later, when she was telling Kit about Basil. Or some of it. She had not mentioned yet that she was sending money.

  ‘Hannen. He’s a communist.’

  ‘Ellie? Kit, who told you that?’ She began to laugh, in spite of herself and the gravity she had felt all day.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Kit said, pushing away his plate.

  ‘Who?’ She was still not taking him seriously.

  He stood up abruptly, went to the window. Fog horns moaned across the bay. He leaned against the glass.

  ‘Rex Gamble.’

  ‘Rex … what does he know about Ellis Hannen?’

  ‘You shouldn’t see him.’

  ‘Who said I was …? Kit, who’s watching me?’

  ‘Who’s watching me?’ He flipped a worn business card out of his pocket. It bore the name of Buff Daniels and his security firm.

  Her hand shook as she picked up the card. She had wondered where it had got to. ‘He’s not watching you. I’ve been talking to him. I wanted to tell you but you leave psychiatrists’ cards around for me.’

  Kit straightened and threw himself into an armchair. He picked threads in its fabric as he looked at her. ‘Keep your hair on. I just meant that you should avoid Hannen when you go up to Weyville. If he’s going to see Katrina. Well, you know what she’s like, the sort of company she keeps.’

  There was an air of suppressed excitement about him, as if something was going to happen, or he could actually see her getting up and walking out the door already.

  ‘I’m not going to Weyville.’

  ‘You can’t stay here for ever.’

  ‘Why not? Why can’t I stay here?’ Rose walked over to the armchair and touched his shoulder tentatively.

  ‘I’ve got leave for a study tour. I’m going to Europe for a month. I’ve decided I should keep up in the field. I might get a portfolio in science if there’s a reshuffle.’

  ‘Is that what Gamble says?’ She left her hand where it was; maybe they could break this impasse.

  He moved restlessly, brushing her hand aside, got up as if she wasn’t there. It was a long time since she had stood beside him like this and he seemed taller, or different, as if he had grown a dimension while she wasn’t looking.

  ‘It’s what I’m saying. You can stay here while I’m gone if you like.’ He shrugged. ‘Though I thought you couldn’t bear to be on your own these days.’

  ‘I could come with you.’

  ‘Rose!’ His alarm was palpable.

  ‘Of course I could. Is it the money? We’re not short, are we? Kit, I’ve been thinking, we could sell the house in Weyville, we don’t need it any more.’

  ‘It’s in the electorate, are you crazy?’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘I know, I’ve thought of that. Of course we need a base. But it could be a smaller one than that.’

  ‘No. That’s my home, Rose. That’s what I wanted, all those years in that little box. That’s what I thought you wanted. I’m not going to sell it just because now I’ve got it, you don’t want it.’

  ‘So if I won’t, who will?’

  She was thinking, This is it, we really haven’t got much left. The truth of this hurt her more than she expected.

  Stalling, she said, ‘I’d like to go to Europe again. We’ve had such nice times when we’ve gone away. I could sell the Metro.’

  ‘Fat lot you’d get for that. It’s spent more time in the panelbeaters than it has on the road.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ She was unhappy with the latest paint job on the Metro but it hadn’t seemed appropriate to take it up with Rex Gamble.

  ‘I’m in love,’ he said, ‘don’t you understand, it’s love I’m talking about.’ And then ashamed, he looked at her, saying, but not saying, Oh for Chrissake it’s you I’m telling this to, I wish it were anyone but you.

  It was a relief to her that he had said it, and she thought that now was the time when she might tell him that this was not the end of the world, and that one day they might both recover from this, that it might take a long time, but if they were careful and treated each other as if they had shared an illness, it would be all right again. But she was not sure whether she could sustain that effort now for herself, and she felt bone-tired. Only sleeping alone for a long time would cure her weariness, she thought.

  Kit said, ‘So you see it’s impossible for you to come with me.’

  She might have agreed, only at that moment the phone rang. Kit answered it. It was Denise Taite to say that Lyle Warner had stabbed Toni to death in the driveway of their home. Toni had started to run away, and then she had turned and gone back, ‘almost as if she wanted him to’. Rose could hear Denise’s high hysterical voice crackling over the line, past the lakes and over the Desert Road, across pylons and down the Sanson straights, as her heart froze around what she was hearing.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, when he hung up. His face heaved. ‘Was it because he wanted to go off with Belinda?’

  He looked at her strangely. For an instant, she supposed that he was thinking that it might have been her, might have been one of them lying slain in the driveway. She could see the cloud of white Michaelmas daisies that flowered alongside the Warners’ drive all through the autumn, massed like the flurrying feathers of a White Orpington.

  But he shook his head; answered with a note of venom: ‘It was because of her and Morris.’

  ‘Morris? Morris Applebloom?’

  ‘Of course. Didn’t you know? Didn’t you ever know?’

  9

  The children’s ward of the Weyville Hospital was a long annexe to the main building, with a glassed-in wall like a porch running down its length. The linoleum was still that dark and institutional brown which achieved a high polish and squeaked when the nurses walked on it in their soft-soled shoes. ‘Everything will be different when the new children’s ward is built,’ the hospital board had promised for years. Only it never happened. Lately, in the wake of new recommendations to cut the health vote, a rumour was circulating that the whole ward might get closed down and the Weyville children would have to go elsewhere for treatment. The threat was enough to quieten complaints about the state of the old hospital, at least for the moment.

  There was nowhere for parents to room-in with their children, but a blind eye was turned towards those who brought in a mattress or a folding chair to sleep by a distraught child.

  Katrina slept in such a chair by Basil for nine nights in a row, although she couldn’t e
xactly describe him as distraught. If anybody had asked her, she might have said that she was, but nobody did. Basil’s cough was deep and hacking. He was not in any danger, Mungo Lord said, when he called on his rounds, but they would keep him under observation for a few days.

  The first week wasn’t so bad, or at least Basil didn’t seem worse. If anything, he was better than he had been for months. The children who could get out of bed ran wild during the day and Basil usually led the charges down the passage. The nurses looked fraught whenever Basil was in sight and during the day Katrina had been slinking out, not wanting to admit that the monster on the prowl was hers. The pit was the day he taught the other boys to look up the nurses’ skirts while they attended bed patients. Basil lay in wait by the beds; as soon as a hapless nurse bent over he and two or three others would be up the back of her legs and clutching at the tops of her panties. It wasn’t like school where the kids could be expelled, but there was talk of Basil being sent home as soon as possible.

  Katrina could not quite fathom why he was being kept there anyway. When she asked for information she was referred to Mungo Lord who always looked vague and said that it was better to be sure than sorry. ‘It’d be a good idea for you to get in touch with the cystic fibrosis organisation, help you cope a bit better.’ He glanced at his watch.

  Basil was receiving medication, though Katrina wasn’t sure what it was for; as far as she could see, that was the only treatment. ‘I don’t quite understand what’s happening,’ she said to Mungo Lord when this had gone on for seven days.

  ‘My dear Katrina,’ he said, ‘don’t worry.’

  It annoyed her that he called her Katrina, though she had not dealt in formality since she wore chiffon ball dresses. Minna said she should demand that he call her Ms Diamond, seeing that she had gone back to her maiden name. Minna had moved in with her at the house in Blake Block. It had all happened very suddenly. Life was much easier with her there and Katrina enjoyed the luxury of tidiness and routine that Minna imposed on the household. Sharna cried less and there were times when she almost liked the kid.

  She liked being treated tenderly too, and thought, oh yes, if Paul, or Wolf, or even George (not that George had seen her for more than a day in his entire life; she wondered what he’d say if she ever came across him and presented him with evidence of those twenty-four hours ha ha he’d have to believe that red hair) could see her now. But sometimes she felt she could never live up to Minna’s expectations of her. She couldn’t hear herself telling Mungo to call her Ms Diamond. But she might just call him Mungo one day and see how he liked it.

  When she didn’t move out of the doctor’s way he ran his hands through his hair in an exasperated way. ‘Look, you don’t have to bother about understanding things, you’ve got better things to do.’

  Presuming, she supposed, like looking after Basil and keeping him out of the nurses’ hair, or their pants.

  Later, she heard him say to the charge nurse, ‘I feel like wringing that woman’s neck till her eyes pop out sometimes.’ She guessed there must be some difficult mothers around and was sure he couldn’t be talking about her.

  Another day, speaking to the same nurse, who was nice as pie to him, she had noticed, and a bad-tempered bitch when she spoke to junior staff, he said, ‘She’s thick as an A-rab’s armpit, if you ask me.’

  Coincidence, Katrina told herself. He couldn’t have been talking about her.

  A day or two later Basil was listless and did not want to get out of bed. Nobody objected to him staying there.

  It was nearly midnight on the tenth evening when Katrina touched Basil’s head again, feeling a dry restless temperature beneath her hand. His breathing was uneven.

  She was so tired she couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep either. She dragged herself down the passage to the coffee and television room. The coffee dispenser had a notice on it requesting that coffee not be taken into the ward, but at this hour of the night she figured nobody would notice.

  In the passage another mother, in with her son, leaned against a wall, smoking. An older woman, she could almost have been the child’s grandmother.

  ‘Makes you think a bit, doesn’t it?’ she commented to Katrina. ‘Place like this.’ She held out her cigarette pack, and flicked open a lighter when Katrina accepted.

  ‘How long’s your kid in for?’ Katrina dragged smoke down and held it.

  ‘Just overnight. What about yours?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I never wanted this little bastard, but I don’t like seeing him in here.’

  ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Jesus. What happened?’ As if she didn’t know, but there you are, you asked questions like that in hospital corridors at night.

  ‘There was a young man from Matterhorn, who wouldn’t have been born, if his mother had known the letter was torn.’

  ‘Yeah. Tell me about it. Fucking birth control. Fucking pill.’

  ‘Fucking everything. I’ve got a drink, d’you want one?’ The woman opened a shopping bag slung over her arm, producing a bottle of Malibu. She unscrewed the top, handing it over.

  ‘Ta.’ Katrina swigged, feeling the rum and coconut slide through her, leaving a delicate trail of fire all the way to her gut.

  ‘Have some more. It’s benefit day.’

  ‘So it is. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘Easy.’ Katrina gestured towards the ward where Basil lay. After awhile she said: ‘I’ve gotta see Bas. See if he’s okay.’

  ‘All right. Come back, will you?’

  Katrina looked down at Basil. He wasn’t coughing but his temperature was high. His head was turned on the pillow, then he rolled over. She visualised his father, the turn of his head and how she had been stunned by the full frontal beauty of it the first time he turned and looked at her. Her eyes prickled. The enormity of what was going to happen to Basil filled her, threatened to topple her. He had been her biggest gamble, and it was a goof-up. She would have him for a few more years while he got more and more sick and then he would die. The room felt claustrophobic; the row of sleeping restless kids made her want to throw up.

  A light was on in the office. The senior night nurse was filling in charts.

  ‘My kid’s sick,’ she said.

  ‘He’s doing all right. His temperature’s up, but we’re keeping an eye on it, Mrs Diamond.’

  ‘Ms Diamond,’ Katrina said, too loud, feeling foolish. Her head floated gently somewhere about level with the ceiling.

  ‘Ms Diamond,’ the nurse replied, watching her.

  ‘I want you to ring Dr Lord.’ Katrina spoke carefully. I’m not drunk, she reminded herself, I’m exhausted out of my mind, and a couple of nips have gone to my head. Reassured, she spoke more boldly. ‘I want you to ring him right now and tell him to come and look at Basil.’

  ‘I’ll ring him in the morning. Why don’t you get some sleep?’ There was a note of steel behind the words.

  ‘I’ll ring him myself. I’m being messed about.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to have you removed from the hospital if you do that.’

  In the coffee room Katrina’s new friend had filled an ashtray while she was gone. She was listening to the all-night programme playing quietly on the shelf radio. When Katrina arrived she looked up, half asleep. ‘What’s up? You look crook.’

  ‘I feel crook.’

  ‘Hey, I’ve been trying to place you. Didn’t you used to teach dancing?’

  ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

  ‘Used to teach my cousin.’ She mentioned a name but Katrina couldn’t place it.

  ‘Always wanted to learn. I never did.’ The woman sounded dreamy. ‘You’d think I’d have learnt, everyone danced in those days, real dancing not hurdy gurdy stuff like they do now. But not me, number one came along when I was fifteen; they let me keep her if I kept outta sight until I was sixteen when I could get married. The father stuck arou
nd. Something to be said for him, I suppose, but I wish he’d buggered off before he left me with six. Ah well.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette and got out the bottle. ‘Here, have another one.’ This time she slopped some in styrofoam cups from the coffee dispenser. ‘Go on, it’ll help you sleep. You’ve gotta get some rest.’

  Katrina drank and the radio started playing old-time dance music.

  ‘Teach me.’ The woman stood up, holding out her arms to Katrina.

  ‘You’re crazy’, But the woman was pulling her by the hand.

  ‘C’mon, a few steps. Please.’

  ‘Okay, just a few then, I don’t feel too much like standing up.’ They stood poised together. ‘Put your hand on my shoulder, okay, and I put my hand on your waist like this, I’m being the man, see.’

  They both giggled, stumbled a little against the passage wall as Katrina manoeuvred the woman along. ‘Right, point your toe a little, foot together with mine, and one two, here we go, follow me.’

  The woman smelled comfortably of cigarettes and booze, and after a moment Katrina put her cheek against hers. ‘All right? Is that okay?’

  So it was that while Katrina and the woman whose name she never learned danced in a corridor and while Minna took care of Sharna, Mungo Lord lay sleeping and Basil died.

  The early shift had just begun. Jeffrey Campbell viewed the day to come with unease. He often found himself thinking about early retirement options; he and Lola could take a trip. In the meantime, they both needed a good holiday to tide them over. The girl would like that. He smiled fondly to himself The feminists would rap him over the knuckles if they could see into his head; only he was not planning to give them access.

  A travel brochure was spread out in front of him. The white coral of Raratongan beaches gleamed, beckoning under the station light. Perhaps she would want to go somewhere with more shopping? What he would really like was to choose exactly the right place and present her with the tickets. That way she wouldn’t be discussing it with all her customers before they made a decision. Campbell sighed. He knew his wife’s weaknesses. If possible, he would like a holiday that had not been decided by half the female population of Weyville.