Huia Short Stories 9

by Anahera Gildea

  ‘No. Just no. I’d rather you were in your room for another two years than you got a loan.’

  ‘Alright, no need to get so worked up.’

  Rose frowned at her. ‘That’s not necessary, Frank. Dad’s just trying to look out for you.’

  Mihaere was at the bench filling the jug and muttering to himself. It was absurd that, in the last week, Frank had seen him more riled than ever before in her whole life. Mihaere was the easy-going one, the relaxed, chilled-out guy who was always brushing off difficulty as though it were sand.

  Rose covered for him. ‘We took out a loan once. It was for some new appliances and a car. It wasn’t that much. But we struggled to pay it off.’ Rose’s confession was short and light on detail, but Frank understood the pain the memory seemed to cause. ‘We thought we might lose this house. This house that Mihaere and his father built together. We promised each other that we’d never take out a loan again. For anything.’

  Frank disagreed with their decision. That was aeons ago. Loans were normal now. Everyone got them to get ahead in life. Mihaere brought tea over for each of them.

  ‘I don’t want you taking out a loan.’ He said it again with more ease, but the subject wasn’t up for discussion.

  Te Ahi Kā

  Anahera Gildea

  She watches Ruhi die in bits, perched in front of him, listening. ‘I could cut new eye and nose holes out, eh, so I could see and breathe.’ She laughs and he wheezes. His legs are bandied like a cowboy and his wrinkled knees are visible through the holes in the crocheted blanket. His mouth chews over and over, though there is nothing in there and fewer teeth than usual. ‘Then I could sew up my mouth and draw a big smile on it and just nod as if I’m listening and quietly, quietly go to sleep, warmed by the heat of my own breath – tīhei mauri ora. ’Cept then I wouldn’t be able to smoke.’ It is a factual statement, not a joke.

  There is a wooden aspect to Daphne’s movements brought about by age. Her square and bevelled edges are methodical, and her body thick, though she is still a beauty in the arc of her arms and conservative nape of her neck. Tidy plaits neatly, neatly pinched into knots at the bottom. Contained beauty; beauty in a container opened by my eyes only, he always said, addressing her back at the table as she worked, flicking the crochet hook in and out, in and out, faster than he could keep up with. She had always done this. Quietly gathering up colour from around her feet and weaving and winding it in.

  His cold half-open eyes sever the landscape near the ground, across driveways, chopping along garages and houses and lopping people off at their feet. The room is dim, as though a blue filter has been put over the lens, but the old coal range is still putting out the heat, with enough wood chopped and stacked to keep it going through the night. Daphne looks around the room at the sleeping bodies of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their parents are still up drinking. It had been agreed not to take him to the marae – the floor there so constantly swept that the dust particles can barely settle, floating down in the long sunlight. And cold. It’s never warm in there. Much better at home. The straw mats they lay down for manuhiri look inviting and romantic but are always catching her stockings and putting runs in them. The ancestors are all here anyway – their photos crowding the walls and keeping vigil, along with the plastic flowers and cigarette boxes. The flowers are her touch, to soften the ordered lines of little boxes along the top of the china cabinet. These are only a portion of his collection – the most exquisite ones that he’d acquired when he was overseas at war. The maroon and white box from a Turkish soldier was his favourite, and was placed in the centre of his ‘front line’.

  Tomorrow he will be carried to the urupā by their sons. The sons they made and grew in this house. The same sons who are outside laughing and shouting their grievances to the paddock. She can hear their raised voices clearly. They are on and on about Nellie not coming. About her big life and bigger husband they’ve never met. Shocking, they all agree, shameful. It’s better than their fighting though, and that will come later. Daphne heard the phone call Nellie made. We just won’t be able to … just can’t … can’t get time off … it’s not like home here … this is London not Te Horo … was home last year … Wiremu had taken the call. He didn’t even question her, but his silence was enough to make her stumble. It was unfortunate for her that he had answered the phone, though Daphne supposed she could have asked to speak to anyone. Wiremu had become deeply involved in politics, and would not hesitate to let everyone know how Māori he and his family all were. His son was even teaching the reo at high school now. It was good to be proud. Peter and Hemi just kept out of these conversations, preferring to talk about their work at the council. Nellie hadn’t lived here since she was in her twenties, so neither of them was that surprised when Wiremu reported that she’d said she’d send money. After that even Davis, the least likely, was swearing about her with his brothers.

  He is sitting beside her and they are smoking a cigarette together, taking a drag and passing it back and forth. It is night and the lack of curtains allows eerie light to pass over their bare legs. The house is the same but younger and under-furnished. The wooden floors add to the spartan effect and send military lines running from the window to the door. The hearth fire is an amazing luxury, and they drape themselves over each other in front of it. ‘I will make so many blankets,’ she promises him. He strokes her back and passes her the cigarette as he gets up and walks to the window. The cold air as he opens it causes her skin to tighten, and she protests a little. He ignores her and opens his arms wide, a thin sheen of sweat visible in the moonlight from where her leg, her arm, her cheek has been.

  In the morning she wakes tousled and bleary, and disentangles her limbs from his, getting out of the bed without waking him. She pees noisily in the bathroom and returns to the bedside to pull on her clothes, including a hat to keep her hair down and insulate herself against the cold. The back door rattles in the wind and the cold silver handle comes out in her hand as she pulls it. She smiles and sets it down on the floor, pulling the door closed behind her. The three-minute walk to the beach is quiet. Some of the seagulls are out but most still huddle under an old shed beside the dunes. The waves crawl up and down the sand towards her feet, trying to seduce her in. And so she unpeels. All her layers unfurl again onto the cold sand. A bare finger of sun sneaks up over the hill behind her and points the way to the island. And then she is naked and walking in, and walking in, still walking, still walking, then dog paddling and finally under, fluffy hair melting onto her head and sliding past her ears. She pins her arms to her sides and keeps going, eyes open, until the sand and stones are close to her face, rushing past, and she moves in with the tide, emerging and sucking in her first breath ever – tīhei mauri ora.

  She steps outside, using the front door to avoid the carousing out the back. The road is so familiar. At the corner, just past the railway crossing, is Irene’s old house, and on the opposite side is Pansy’s. They are empty and there is no wind. She walks down the long drive to the gate; past the tree where a man had hung himself once, and down the infernal road. She reaches Pansy’s and steps over the verandah and into the musty lounge with the seventies decor. The squeeze down the hall and past the wooden scented rooms draws her attention to the workers in the field out the back. The cup of tea at the kitchen table is still hot and she sips looking out the window.

  Rows and rows of crops are being harvested, along with too much laughing and gossiping. Every week two of the home guard take a load of pumpkin and kūmara and Daphne’s blankets on the train to the soldiers at Paekākāriki. The food is for the war effort but the blankets they sell. It gets cold here in winter, and the boys like to have hand-made things that remind them of their wives and mothers. Daphne and Pansy leave their gossip till they are at the copper, scooting Boy out of the way as they stoke up the fire. As things go through the mangle they talk about their men and the new houses they’ll get them to build when they get back. That is gone now,
and the kitchen is just a wooden room, singular with shelves and a sink along one side wall, and her on the other.

  When she gets back to the house the party has moved inside. Davis and Pete are fighting, but there is no need to pacify. Davis’ progress through the normal stages is helped along by his brother; both are soaked in beer-lust and beer-rage, then beer-remorse and beer-promises, and finally beer-sleep. From the stronghold of her red chair, Daphne contemplates the room and waits. The white drawers with the slot up the side for papers provide a large, ugly and impractical resting place for Pete. It began as an old painter’s storage unit and became a desk that she scraped the candle wax off after late, late nights waiting up for the boys to come home. Appropriate now that Pete’s face was adjusting uncomfortably on the same wax. Next to his head is his daughter’s teddy bear, wearing a small baby singlet. Its twisted smother-loved body, face down, without the ability to lift its head for even a second.

  Davis has slumped in the La-Z-boy. He is holding a small ceramic cat, shiny and lacquered. Its tabby fur is puffed out at the collar of its tuxedo and again around the cuffs of its paws. A small pink tongue protrudes forward from the grey face to the grey fist in a friendly and flirtatious lick. It had come wrapped for her as a gift, and in a box underneath it was a ring. Square and pink shell, maybe oyster shell, an engagement ring from a street market in Egypt. Not expensive but so beautiful. It goes with her other sad rings in the top drawer of her dresser. The kids have not seen it for years, but will undoubtedly dig it up soon enough. Since they arrived she has heard all their quiet conversations and jibes about the trucks they will have to get in to shift all the old blankets. She smiles again at their joke; she has sold most of her blankets or traded them with others. The last ones are for them to take home.

  Wiremu and Hemi are still talking, comparing jobs. Better than a series of memos in an office where the most productive thing you do all day is wash your coffee cup so the cleaner doesn’t have to, Wiremu says: that’s the only place you receive any thanks as well. They are loud but no one else stirs much – they are used to it. Daphne has never been used to it. She gets up and walks over to the old broom cupboard. Sometimes she used to get in there when the noise was too much. She would stand lined up beside the brooms with her back to the door and her face close to the wall. Close enough to hear her own breathing, regular enough, slow enough to be comforting and loud enough to block out the noises outside the cupboard. Only a ruler-width line of light coming in.

  Five children line up in shorts and t-shirts with all varieties of scruffy and asymmetrical hair. Four boys and a girl, with enough features alike for people to know they are brothers and sisters. Their mother in 1950s apron and slippers looking at them as they wiggle and wriggle. Holding the teaspoon and the glass bottle filled with black syrup. Her face is smiling and her make-up in place but her hair is not yet done. It’s still morning. She’s not quite ready. She doesn’t look tired but she is. Her gently applied concealer hides the blueing semi-circles under her eyes. Each child comes up and takes their spoon of blackstrap molasses – screwing up their face at the first hit – collects a brown paper lunch bag and says bye as they race out the door. The youngest two wait for each other and go together.

  She turns and watches them run down the drive laughing and yelling, the sun shining on them and their faces animated. She puts these images into her mind like stills from a movie, and closes the door. She puts down the sticky spoon and caps the bottle. Through the lounge and up the stairs in the almost silence, her slippers scuffing on the carpet the only sound. In the bathroom she takes a brush and begins her hair. She changes her slippers for small-heeled house shoes and removes her apron. The walk to the beach is no longer quiet. Seagulls call to each other and circle ready over any moving object. The old shed has gone and there are buildings all along the beach front now. The waves do not recognise her, and this time she does not undress. There is no sunlight to point the way but still she goes in, and in, until again the sand and stones are close to her face, though this time they are not rushing past.

  Daphne stood with Ruhi when he went to the commemorations. His great-grandfather had put his signature on the treaty, and Ruhi was invited to the replay. It was as though for that one day he was a celebrity. The army were all there encouraging the old man to recount stories from fifty years ago, and he told them what he could remember. Nellie had come home for that. It had been on TV and everything. It was her first time back in twenty years. Neither the boys nor Ruhi recognised her immediately. Only Daphne saw her straight away. Nellie walked through the airport as a foreigner, comparing it to Sydney except with a funny accent and strange money. She laughed after each of her sentences. ‘A young man on the flight with me was from Israel and off on his big OE after finishing his compulsory military training. I was just bold enough to ask him if he had ever shot at anyone. He had, and I’d had to look at him again. Here I was sitting next to someone who had shot at someone – who had to do that to save their own life.’ She pulled out the last cigarette and offered the box to her father. It was one he didn’t have. Nellie ooh-ed and ah-ed over the city and the houses and all the shops on the way home. She talked about flying and the feeling it gave her of being free – of being someone else.

  The eels on the line are swinging out the back and Boy barks as someone comes up the drive. His bandied legs and wrinkled knees visible beneath his shorts. He doesn’t greet her but takes the offered tea. She laughs and he wheezes out a laugh too. They are attached to me like fishing lines, he says, looking at their children. Their hooks are embedded in the flesh and ribs of my back. Daphne takes his hand and walks him to the beach. They step into the old rowboat, the water coming in small waves frothing up the sides. He is rowing, looking at her for reassurance, his back strong and young again, shoulders broad and constant, waiting to see if she turns around, if she looks behind her to the beach. She doesn’t. She stares at him, watching to see if his resolve, his strength falters. It doesn’t. In this way they leave. They don’t look back. Her eyes fixed on him and beyond him, her hands holding onto the wooden seat, her feet together in the centre slightly too tense. Their bags already stowed at either end, weighing them down evenly.

  Stepping outside the Boxing

  Olivia Giles

  On a Tuesday in July, I returned home from work to find the house empty of everything except my clothes, my Formula 1 magazines and my toothbrush. Propped up on the mantelpiece where our children’s photos used to sit was a letter from my wife Anna, informing me of her intention to divorce me.

  Scrawled at the bottom, seemingly an after thought, was a postscript stating she would be keeping my children and the cat, but we could negotiate the budgie.

  I sat on the floor in the centre of my empty lounge room, stunned. Sixteen years of my life had just been flushed down the toilet, and I couldn’t even order a pizza and crack open a beer, because she had taken the phone and the fridge.

  The next day I bought a bright purple jelly phone and a beer fridge that it and I could sit on.

  Over the next month my only contact with my wife consisted of threatening letters from her lawyer: formerly my lawyer, who had figured out my wife would get more in the divorce settlement and switched horses mid-stream. I also got one tearful inebriated phone-call from Anna at two in the morning.

  She’d berated me with a tirade of my failures as a husband and a father. Her prime motivators for divorce were: I was never home; I neglected the children; I failed her sexually; I was interested in other women and I never listened to what she had to say and didn’t take her seriously.

  As a list it was a fairly heavy one, but I did have justifications which screamed inside my head.

  Of course I was not at home enough. I was working long hard hours so she could have everything she could possibly desire, since every second sentence out of her mouth began with the words ‘I want …!’

  Our kids weren’t kids any more, and frankly they didn’t want to hang out with
me. That boat sailed a long time ago. Lillian was fourteen and obsessed with her hair, her cellphone and vampires. George, or G as he was called now, was fifteen and preferred to be alone: a lot. My wife thought there was something wrong with this; I (being a man and knowing why he liked to be alone a lot) did not.

  I didn’t understand her allegation of failing her sexually. I was only allowed near her body for the two days of the month she wasn’t suffering from some form of pre-, present or post-menstrual tension. I only managed to get that much sex because I’d learnt to tap dance dexterously through the minefield of self-image dilemmas that ruled her life and consequently mine. There were bits of her I didn’t touch or look at for extended periods of time or under any circumstances mention by name.

  How could I fulfil her sexually when she had more issues than the Woman’s Weekly?

  I didn’t care that she’d put on weight since the kids were born or that she felt the need to put so much crap on her face it could no longer move. I may have been pissed off when she cut all of her gorgeous red hair off and permed the living hell out of the inch or two remaining, but it didn’t really make any difference to me.

  I just wanted her, and when we were making love the size of her arse, her stretch-marks, her cellulite and whatever other imaginary imperfection she dreamed up didn’t matter. I couldn’t see them anyway.

  The truth is she was still as beautiful to me as she had been the first moment I laid eyes on her at a rugby club social. She had been wearing spaghetti jeans and a purple halter top. We were fifteen, all gangly elbows and knobby knees. When I saw her across a crowded room, bang, zap and kapow!

  It was the big one – love.

  She was and would always be so beautiful to me my heart literally throbbed when I looked at her. This was a sentiment that had never actually managed to verbally escape my insides.