The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘What do you know about Shakespeare?’ John said, in the same cool way he had been addressing Nellie since challenged, years before.

  ‘It is a wise father that knows his own child,’ Fred said. ‘Merchant of Venice Act 2, Scene 2.’

  ‘War, is it, Father? You only think you know me.’ John looked worried all the same. ‘I thought it was Mother who was the actress in this house.’

  ‘And you think I’m a nincompoop.’

  ‘Oh, leave it be, Fred,’ Nellie said, throwing up her hands. ‘What difference does it make if the boy wants to be a know-it-all?’

  ‘Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long,’ John said. ‘Same scene.’

  Nobody said anything. After a while, John got up and left the room. A house full of exits and entrances, or so it seemed. It wasn’t murder that was about to be uncovered, but, on another evening not long after this, a woman knocked at the door. She held a child of perhaps six or seven years of age by the hand.

  She was a Maori woman, dressed in a white high-necked blouse, and a long dark skirt beneath a heavy coat missing buttons. Her hair showered her shoulders in a thick black mass, a small headscarf holding it back from her face. The little boy was fairer than his mother. The woman spoke in a quiet voice when Nellie opened the door. ‘Mrs Batten, perhaps you won’t remember me. I’ve come to see Mr Batten, if you don’t mind.’

  This time the actress in Nellie was to the fore.

  ‘But of course I remember you,’ she said, smiling and addressing the woman by name. ‘I remember when my sister came up from the south and we went sightseeing in Rotorua. We met you at the hot pools. You were cooking lunch, I think.’ The woman shifted uneasily. ‘So tell me, have you moved to Auckland?’

  ‘No,’ the woman said, casting her eyes downwards. ‘If I could just see Mr Batten for a minute.’

  ‘Fred. My husband. Oh, do come in, I’m sure he’d love to see you.’

  But Fred was already at the door. ‘Nell,’ he said, in an urgent voice, ‘I’ll take care of this.’ The child was gazing at his face.

  The woman said, ‘Mr Batten. I’m sorry. Times aren’t so good for me.’

  ‘I’m sure the little one must be a great penny diver,’ Nellie said. She was referring to the Maori children who dived off a bridge into a thermal river, when tourists threw them money, filling their cheeks until they bulged. ‘Fred, I’ve invited our guests in.’

  But Fred was knotting a scarf around his neck, grabbing his hat, as he pushed the woman away from the door and closed it behind them. Jean heard them talking on the pathway outside, then the gate clicked shut, as all three of them made their way down the street. This time, Fred wasn’t away long. When he came back he sank wearily onto the tattered green chair that had seen so many homes since Nellie had bought it, elegant and new, in Rotorua.

  ‘Nell, Nell,’ he said.

  ‘Nell, nothing. You didn’t tell me there was a child.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s mine.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you just. Well, it looks like yours.’

  ‘I don’t know. Believe me. I didn’t know.’

  ‘I saw you with her. On one of your walks. I might have known you’d slept with her. You fornicated with her, Fred. We can agree on that, can’t we? We left Rotorua because of the women. There was the patient who spread her legs for you when you’d finished filling her teeth, in the dental chair. And now there’s this one. I’m sorry, I get them mixed up, there are so many. It’s a disease, Fred, that’s what you have, an illness that means you can’t keep your trousers buttoned up. Whoops, another one who’s willing.’

  Fred raised a hand to strike her. ‘Stop it, stop your wicked, dirty mouth.’

  Jean put her hands over her ears and began to scream.

  ‘Nellie, listen, I had no idea the woman had a child. I have no idea whose it is.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Nellie lifted a wicker chair over her head, and smashed it on the floor so that one of the legs broke. ‘And how many have you left behind in France, Fred? Eh? Tell me that.’

  Fred put his hands over his face, tears leaking between his fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice broken.

  ‘Well, you can get out. You can leave, Fred.’

  He appeared to pull himself together. Jean had crouched down in a corner of the room. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m off. You’re mad, Ellen. Has anyone ever told you that?’

  Nellie picked up a dirty dish from the table, where they had been eating not half an hour before, flinging it at him so that it hit the wall above his head and shattered, gravy trickling down. This was followed immediately by the cruet set, the pepper pot breaking a window, splinters of glass flying into the room. Jean put her arms around her head.

  Fred was standing, gripping his wife’s wrist. ‘For the child’s sake, stop. For Jeannie, our little Mit. Don’t do it any more.’

  Nell let her hands go limp. ‘Just go, Fred.’

  ‘So that’s it, Ellen? You want a divorce.’

  Nellie looked at him in astonishment, stopped in her tracks for the moment. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fred. Of course I don’t want a divorce. I just want you to go away.’

  Before the night was over, Fred was packing a suitcase. First his trousers, folded neatly on the bottom, then the white coats he wore to his practice, his belts and ties and cufflinks, and lastly his shirts. Jean had crawled along the floor, as if standing up might invite some further wrath from her mother. Now she threw herself at the suitcase, dragging out his shirts. ‘Don’t go. Dad, please don’t leave us.’

  He knelt down beside her and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault. Don’t be sad. I’ll see you very soon. I’ll see you often.’

  ‘You can take your sons with you,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t want them back here.’ Harold wasn’t living with them, so she really meant John.

  ‘Don’t blame them for this,’ Fred said. ‘They haven’t done anything.’

  ‘I looked after them in the war. The war you didn’t need to go to. I had to deal with those big boys on my own and all the trouble they caused. It’s your turn now, Fred.’ While he was packing, she went to John’s room and began filling another suitcase with his clothes.

  John arrived home shortly after this, and seemed to take in what was happening at a glance, as if it were not altogether a surprise. Or that was until he found his mother in his room, going about her work, clearing his wardrobe.

  ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he said, and all of a sudden he wasn’t adult at all, his face puckering as if he were about to cry.

  ‘I don’t care what you asked for,’ Nellie said. ‘You haven’t had a good word for me in a long time, and I tell you I won’t take it any more.’

  ‘But I don’t even get on with Father,’ John said.

  ‘Well, you’d better start, because that’s who you’ve got now.’ She was bent on one knee on the suitcase, pulling it together with a leather strap.

  ‘Where will we go tonight?’

  ‘Tonight? That’s not for me to worry about. Just pick up your books and get going.’

  Seeing Jean sobbing in the corner of the front room, John came over and knelt beside her. ‘Jean, it won’t be for long. They’ll get back together, you’ll see.’ When her convulsive sobs didn’t stop he put both arms around her. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rough on you. We’ve had good times, you and me. We’ll stick together.’ Jean’s breath caught in her throat as she tried to stifle her crying. She put her head on his shoulder. ‘You’re just a little kid still. There are some things I can’t explain to you right now. Perhaps you’ll understand some day. You’ll always be my little sister. Here, take my hankie. All right? All right now, you hold on tight to that, and I’ll see you soon.’ He stood awkwardly beside her.

  ‘What if Harold comes back?’ she whispered.

  He paused, ruffling her hair, an unhappy expression crossing his face.

  ‘He’
ll be my problem, I guess. Anyway, our mother won’t let him come back.’

  By then it was nearly eleven o’clock. Fred pointed out that they wouldn’t get into a hotel now, the doors would be all shut. Nellie reminded him that he had his surgery rooms: why didn’t he and John just go there and sleep on the floor.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEN IT CAME DOWN TO IT, it was Nellie who left Fred. The night after their quarrel, Fred used his key to return. He was carrying the suitcase he had packed the night before. ‘This is where I live, and I pay the rent,’ he told Nellie. ‘You might as well get used to it. John will be back later this evening.’

  Nellie had been weeping all through the night and looked at him now with haggard eyes. ‘Ellen, stop this. I’m not shifting anywhere.’

  She straightened herself up. ‘I might have known,’ she said. ‘You want it all, don’t you? The women and us. I’m not going to stand for it.’ But she must have known this would happen because, even as she had wept, she had packed bags for herself and Jean. ‘We’re the ones who’re leaving.’

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Don’t expect me to pay two rents. And don’t think I’ll leave our daughter living on the streets.’

  Nellie held the big bag that had stayed in the back of her wardrobe since Fred came home. ‘She won’t,’ she said. ‘I can promise you that. My daughter.’

  ‘Mother,’ Jean said, but Nellie had her by the arm and was marching her out the door. That night they slept in their new accommodation — one room, a tiny kitchen and a shared bathroom, above a shop in Parnell. Nellie paid over a month’s rent in advance. ‘We’ve made out on our own before,’ she said breezily to Jean, as if recovered from the trauma of the night. ‘The war was a good training ground. Life’s one long battle, it seems, but we’re prepared, you and I.’

  In the little room that night, Jean lay awake in the double bed, Nellie’s body rising and falling beside her as she slept, exhausted beyond reason. She reached out and touched her mother’s arm, but she didn’t respond. In the kitchenette, gas hissed in the pipes. Through the wall a woman’s voice rose in an odd shriek. A man’s voice spoke and there was laughter, and then the woman made yipping noises as if she were happy and ended with another shriek. Out on the street men sang, swore, much as they had done on the nights when Nellie blockaded the doors while Fred was away. Only then there had been John. Jean thought that they might not be safe in this room. She vowed to herself that she would stay awake every night and keep watch over her mother.

  As time wore on, and nothing changed, a terrible dullness, like pain, descended on her. If Nellie noticed she didn’t say anything about it, for they had both sunk into listless bouts of silence. One day, Nellie said, as if coming out of a reverie, ‘I did love him, you know.’ She wasn’t expecting an answer, and Jean had none to offer. She felt hollowed out, as if there was no flesh behind her sleepless eyes. Her mouth was dry and seemed to prickle. In the night, as she lay watching her mother’s solid, unmoving sleep, she thought there were ants crawling across her skin, but when she shone her torch under the blankets there was nothing there.

  Nellie wasn’t really prepared for battle. The bag of money emptied quickly. Jean hadn’t been to school since they left Fred. The second month was nearly at an end, when Fred appeared at the door one day and demanded to be let in. On seeing Jean, he said to Nellie, ‘She needs to be out of this. I’m taking her away.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’ Nellie’s voice was thick, the flat dirty, with dishes piled up around the sink, the floor not swept. There was a stain of egg yolk on her blouse.

  ‘You’re coming with me, young lady,’ Fred said.

  ‘I can’t leave Mother,’ Jean said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You will,’ he said, and before long he and Jean were heading for a tram, then down Queen Street to the ferry terminal. Jean had an image of her mother’s face, the beauty washed out of it, not seeming to resist her being taken away. Exits and entrances, like one of John’s school plays. Before long Jean and Fred had boarded a ferry that would take them across the harbour and dispatch them at Birkenhead. ‘You need some sea air,’ he told Jean. ‘This is where people come for their holidays.’

  ‘I don’t want a holiday.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ He had said little to her as they crossed the water, his big jaw set at a resolute angle. They boarded a bus that drove them on past little shacks and baches painted in different bright colours, and out into countryside that gave way to an expanse of strawberry fields. They were filled with long rows of planted mounds, and even from the bus window, Jean could see the blush of reddening fruit. The house where Fred took his daughter belonged to a strawberry grower and his wife, a comfortable place with heavy armchairs covered with fawn moquette and a piano in the front room, a kauri dining table that seated eight, feather pillows on the beds. In the garden there was an apple tree, and cape gooseberries. A track led to a still, green inlet of the sea. Fred told the couple that his daughter was an invalid who needed fresh milk and red meat, and kindness. The man was a wiry fellow with quick eyes and a slight hunch from bending, impatient to get back to his work. His wife, Belle, into whose care Fred was placing Jean, commented on how pale and thin the child looked, while at the same time admiring the cut of her blue linen dress, her hand reaching out to finger the crocheted white collar, an action Jean disliked. She stepped away.

  Belle seemed an unlikely name for her new guardian. She was a tall, thin woman, her greying fair hair blunt cut beneath her ears, her dress plain and dark. But she had expressive, large-knuckled hands that gestured as she talked, spreading palm up, the pads of her fingertips like odd bleached little moons, clicking finger and thumb when she wanted to make a point. Later, Jean understood that her hands were roughened from her work in the fields. Belle and her husband had children of their own. Fred said that when Jean was well again, it would be advisable for her to go to the school with them. In the meantime, if it were no trouble to them, she could read books all day long, or just sit in the sun.

  When her father left, Jean’s sense of abandonment all but swallowed her up. What could her parents be thinking, leaving her alone among strangers? What demons had brought them to this? She reminded herself that she was British. The strawberry growers’ children arrived home from school, a girl younger than her, and a boy about the same age. They looked at her with little curiosity. The girl said, ‘The last girl who came had some marbles. What have you got?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jean.

  ‘Didn’t they give you sweets to bring?’ the boy said.

  ‘I came in a hurry,’ Jean said. ‘My parents had to leave on a sudden trip to London. The ship’s leaving tonight.’

  ‘So, you’ll be here for a while by the sound of it,’ said the boy.

  ‘Probably not. Soon I’ll go to my aunt’s place. No, I don’t think I’ll be here for long at all.’

  ‘Liar,’ he said, and laughed.

  He and his sister left her alone after that, perhaps instructed by their mother to let her be. They seldom included her in their conversation even when they gathered for meals around the long table, as if they were used to children like her, though their parents made occasional desultory attempts to talk to her. Belle sometimes sat back with a worried frown, watching her. Jean averted her eyes, happy to maintain the cloak of invisibility she believed she had acquired.

  The children left each morning, and when they had gone Jean came out from her room and walked in the garden, and usually down the track to the sea, while Belle pegged out lines of washing, the socks and shorts and towels, with the underwear pinned discreetly behind the crisp white sheets, waxed her kitchen floor, and peeled the potatoes for the evening meal. Once or twice she invited Jean to help with some small task, but Jean brushed this aside, too, as if she hadn’t heard correctly. Belle merely shrugged and resumed what she was doing. Jean sensed an expectation that she would ‘come out of herself’ sooner or later, but she had no intention of doing any such thing. At the e
dge of the sea, she skipped stones on the green water, watching the gulls wheeling in flight, the wading birds busy when the tide was low. The sea, on windless days, was covered with the reflected shadows of clouds. She thought how easy it would be to walk out onto them, as if the water might somehow be solid beneath them, but another self, a person who was old enough to know better, told her not to do this. Some mornings she saw a flying boat pass over her, always on the same route, and wondered if it was the one she had seen with her mother and brothers. On one of these excursions she resolved to write to John and ask him how his plans for fame were coming along. In spite of herself, she began to sleep all night. A morning arrived when she woke up and the cloud seemed to have shifted. She brushed herself to get rid of the ants, but they had disappeared of their own accord.

  As if she saw the change in her, Belle said casually, ‘Well, you must be ready to go to school now.’

  ‘Why ever should I do that?’ Jean said. ‘It’s nearly the end of the year.’

  ‘That’s not the point. You need to get into a routine again.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of going to school.’ Jean stood as tall as she could, and stared at Belle with defiance.

  ‘Your father thought it for the best.’

  ‘That’s what my father said to you. He didn’t say it to me.’

  ‘Jean, little girls don’t talk like that.’

  ‘I’m your guest. You shouldn’t speak to me like that.’

  Belle’s mouth dropped open, soundless for a moment. She looked as if she were going to say something and decided against it.

  The day was unusually grey, a damp drizzly morning that sent Jean hurrying inside in the afternoon. For a while she lay on her bed and read. Her reflection in the oval mirror on her dressing table stared back at her. Her dark hair was long and thick and curly, her teeth white and even. She sat up and looked at herself more closely. Her chest had grown. Breasts. What grown women had. When she smiled at herself, she liked what she saw. This smile reminded her of her mother. I am like my mother, she said to herself. Not like my father. Next time Belle called her a child and invoked Fred, she would tell her what she truly thought of her.