by Gee, Maurice
‘Skeat, Mum. Same as you.’
‘It’s Mrs Skeat. How are … how are …?’
‘I’m very well thank you.’
‘How are you going to get home?’
‘We’ve got our car.’
‘Is she …?’
‘What, Mum?’
‘Is she the one who sells us the fish?’
‘No, Mum. She’s my wife.’
It goes that way until Harry has done her five minutes and they can leave. Jack kisses his mother on the brow. She smiles at him. Her eyes shine; and perhaps, hidden away, is knowledge and surprise. ‘I love your kisses.’
‘How can she say that? How can she dare?’ Harry says in the corridor.
‘Daring doesn’t come into it. She means it, that’s all.’ He does not mention his own rage – it was only a flash – that she should give him now, so easily, things he had sickened from wanting as a boy.
‘Where have you gone to?’ Harry asks. She’s in that state he thinks of as dry. If he touched Harry her skin would feel like sandpaper – finishing grade, there is nothing coarse about Harry.
‘Climbing mountains,’ he replies; and when she raises her eyebrows: ‘Mt. Duppa.’
‘Pull over Jack and let me drive.’
‘I’m all right.’
She switches on the radio. ‘Listen to that and keep your mind on the road.’
They’re advertising mufflers and they finish with a Woody Woodpecker laugh.
‘Find some music.’
She obeys. ‘Why Mt. Duppa?’
‘I don’t know. The view. Remember that little basin right on top?’
‘Jack, that light was red! For heaven’s sake!’
He pulls over and walks around to the passenger side. Harry slides across. Businesslike, she adjusts the seat, which makes rapid gunshots as it brings her under the wheel. He does not like the way she must sit, it puts her against the oncoming traffic. He takes the lumbar roll from behind him and fits it at the base of her spine, but would sooner fix it somehow across her breasts to protect them. If Harry dies it is his fault for thinking of his death.
He tries to imagine long happy lives for them. The difficulty comes with filling in the time. He must do it with activities and travel and occasions; and he looks for a way to make quiet and stillness count.
‘Now what?’ Harry says.
‘You’d think when they advertise mufflers they’d be quiet.’
Harry drives through an amber light, intentionally although a little late. He says nothing. There are no more lights now on the drive to Green Bay.
‘I liked her better the way she was,’ Harry says.
‘Maybe.’
‘I like her better against you than for you.’
Now he feels a flash of rage at Harry. The huge revolution in his mother’s life seems no more than tactics to her. Can’t she understand that now, at sixty, he kisses her like a son for the first time, and has her love? But his rage passes and leaves him aware of loss – Harry gone? He rejects it. She’s still there – but Harry with a new part revealed. He wants her to turn it away from him.
‘You’d better not come any more.’
‘Suits me.’ Her pointed feet stab at the pedals. ‘I just hate her doing it to you. After sixty years of bad behaviour …’
‘I know.’
They turn around houses and the harbour lies in front. He’s pleased to let his eye go speeding over the mudflats, and wants to send his mind out there too and let it rest. Naked water, naked mud: nothing lies between it and the weather and the sky.
*
Jo Bellringer’s house, like Alice’s, stands on a cliff, but it looks out on the unfashionable harbour; with the sewage farm on its southern shore; where the shellfish, healthy in themselves, poison human beings who are foolish enough to eat them. Yet the heads out there, clenched and tall, are washed by clean weather and beyond them surf crashes on the bar. Give this harbour a year or two without human use and it would emerge newborn.
He says to the woman at his side, ‘It looks good from up here but down there it stinks.’
She shifts uneasily. ‘I was just thinking how beautiful it was. Those silver currents on the blue.’
‘They look like stretch marks,’ says the clever one, next along. The clever one is the one he prefers. She’s foxy and dangerous and he’s happy to have the beauty-seer between him and her. If he felt more energetic he’d want her away and he and Miss Foxy would construct a conversation like a bridge over an abyss. If he was ten years younger too. He has not engaged in that sort of thing for a number of years. It is easy for him to forget how women see him. He is grateful suddenly for the neutrality of sixty.
‘Are you Harriet Edwards’s husband?’ the nearer one says.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Edwards,’ the foxy one says with a grin.
‘Skeat, actually.’
‘I wish she’d do more children’s books. I loved Henry Hedgehog.’
‘She likes the sort of thing she’s doing now.’
‘Henry Hedgehog’s Happy Holiday. My children adored it.’
The other snorts. ‘Morris Maggot’s Marvellous Meal.’
‘She didn’t do the story,’ Jack says.
‘Emily Eel’s Elongated Evening.’
Jack looks at her with more dislike than she has earned. Beth Simmonds wrote the story. He tries not to think about Beth. She’s the precedent that, in its inverted way, legitimizes his pursuit of Jo. Harry’s collaborators lie within his sexual purview.
But of course he doesn’t pursue Jo except in his mind, and even there he’s intermittent. Worse, he’s bored. Jack realizes he can stop. He understands how badly he wants to stop – and in that instant Jo is gone, out of his mind. He smiles with pleasure at the foxy lady; who thinks it is her wit that pleases him.
‘Abi Amoeba’s Artless Appetite.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘that one doesn’t work,’ and he walks over the lawn to the lopsided table beneath the sun umbrella, where Harry and Jo spoil Jo’s party by talking shop.
‘Shall I bring out more drinks, Jo? Otherwise your friends will all go home.’ Rest easy, he wants to say, it’s over now. He would like to tell her too that he does not mind her feeling for Harry being less than pure. Harry will not betray him and will never betray herself. But surely there is something she can do, even if it’s just to say, Stop it, that’s not on.
‘I don’t mind being waiter,’ he says.
Jo gets up – heaves up like a bullock. Has she heard something suggestive in his offer? She turns the narrow way out of her chair to cancel him and sends it toppling on its back. Jack picks it up, avoids her eye, and sits down while she lumbers to the house. Her warmth on the chair seat would have thrilled him a moment ago, now he finds it unpleasant.
‘Why does she behave as though I’m not there?’
‘It’s chemistry,’ Harry yawns; and he is angered by her laziness.
‘It’s more than that and you know it.’
‘Don’t start now, Jack,’ she says.
‘If I can see what she’s after surely you can.’
‘Oh, do be quiet. Hallo. Yes?’ She smiles with false brightness at the woman advancing over the lawn.
‘I just wanted to say … I hope I’m not interrupting?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘How much I like Henry Hedgehog. My children adored it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Especially the part where he lets the baby snail go.’
‘I didn’t write the story,’ Harry says. ‘Beth Simmonds did that.’
‘Yes, I know -’
‘It was poor old Beth’s only book.’
‘- but I meant the illustration. The look on the little snail’s face.’
‘Excuse me,’ Jack says. He crosses the lawn towards the path. The foxy woman darts at him – ‘Nellie Newt’s Naughty Night.’ He sidesteps and walks down the path to the gate. Escape from parties will become a habit. He gets i
nto the car and finds the wheel in his lap. ‘Ah, Harry,’ he sighs, and moves the seat back. Ping, ping: she shoots him. ‘Harry.’ He loves her but there’s no language for it and behaviour is impossible to find. Keeping it secret makes it nearly secret from him.
Anger is less troubling. If she had not left him on that last ‘sabbatical’ he would never have looked at Beth. And Beth would have got busy with Ronald Rat and Percy Possum and maybe would have progressed to large animals by now; instead of being nowhere, doing nothing.
Jack is angry with Beth too. He drives towards Titirangi, and turns away; plunges down Pleasant Road into Glen Eden. Too many women, he thinks; including the half one.
Where has her other half gone, and should the creature left be considered whole, affectively? It makes him laugh. He feels a huge sad lost affection for his mother.
Glen Eden has changed but is the same. There is simply more of it, closer cramped. As a Loomis and New Lynn poor relation it has never been remotely paradisal; but if one imagines earlier times, pre-European, pre-Maori …
He stops in a street of middle-aged houses and the short way Lila has travelled depresses him. The house a little bigger, a little newer, the town or suburb held between those two where she had lived all her married life. He wishes she had chosen somewhere else.
But the house, of course, belongs to Tweet. He has not seen Tweet for thirty years, although they have spoken on the phone, and the Harry-like woman who opens the door has no resemblance he can find to the teenaged girl.
‘Tweet? Myra?’
Quick and cool, she knows him. ‘It’s Myra these days, Jack. Or are you John?’
‘Jack will do. I didn’t think you’d recognize me.’
‘Of course I do, I’m good at faces. You nearly lived at our place anyway.’ She hesitates. ‘Come on in.’
She leaves the front door open and leads him into a living-room. ‘I always know it’s someone from way back when they say Tweet.’
‘Does the rest of the family still use it?’
‘Melva does.’
He apologizes for calling without warning, and wonders at the awkwardness – unwillingness to have him, perhaps? – behind her ease. Secretarial ease? He wishes he had stepped forward and hugged her at the door.
‘Is this a bad time?’
‘No. No. I’ll take you in to see Mum in a minute. The thing is Jack – it’s better if you don’t mention Rex.’
‘All right.’
‘And Melva too. Just talk about what you’re doing now.’ She gives a half bad-tempered smile. ‘It upsets her.’
‘Melva – is Melva …’
‘She drinks a lot. She’s not very well.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
Jack had not, of course, meant that. ‘How are the rest of them?’
She tells him briefly. All OK.
‘And Lila?’
‘Getting old. She’s still pretty sharp though. Be careful what you say.’
‘Yes. Tweet, I think you should know …’ He tells her that John Dobbie is writing another book; a big one this time.
‘Drat the man,’ Tweet says; and the old-fashioned slang makes him smile.
‘Would you like me to steer him away?’
‘Tell him to wait until we’re dead. Three generations.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘It’s our lives, Jack. No one’s got the right to make it public property.’
‘No -’
‘There’s too much damage. Rex would have known.’
She has stepped sideways, gone somewhere, and thinks he knows something he does not know. He leaves too long a pause and cannot ask.
‘Come on, she’s in the sunroom.’
‘Do you look after her fulltime?’
‘She doesn’t need looking after. But I stay home with her. Would you believe me if I said it’s a pleasure?’
He knows that she is married and divorced and has no children and has been a nurse and travelled all over the world – worked in Australia and England and Saudi Arabia – and trained as a midwife and was prominent in the fight to legalize home births. He cannot see her staying at home all day with an old lady.
‘Do you still deliver babies?’
‘When I can. Here’s someone to see you, Mum. Someone from Loomis.’
The old lady is peeling an apple with a pocket knife and she puts it on the plate in her lap and holds out her arms. ‘Jack.’ Takes him with damp fingers, hooks him in. A little off balance, he kisses her cheek, and stays leaning forward, supporting himself with his thighs on the arm of the chair as she holds her face against his. Her skin is papery and cool, but her fingers, holding him, are as strong as wire.
‘How are you, Lila?’ She lets him move back and he can say, ‘You’re looking well.’ She is sharp and birdlike and alive. She does not look like someone who is frightened of talking about a dead son.
‘What a lovely surprise. What a lovely thing to come and visit me. Did you bring your wife?’
‘She’s at a party over in Green Bay. I’ll bring her next time.’
‘And I’ll make some more pikelets.’ Her memory astonishes him. ‘She’s a little thing, isn’t she, like Tweet?’
‘Not as tall as Tweet.’
‘And clever too.’
‘She illustrates books. Flower pictures. I’ll bring you one.’
‘Sit down, Jack. Over here,’ Tweet says. ‘Would you like some tea? Or a glass of beer?’
‘Tea please. I’ve got to drive.’
‘Jack, now let me think, you’re sixty,’ Lila says. ‘And you were the National Archivist. Is that important?’
‘It depends on whether you think we should keep records or not.’
‘Louder Jack, she’s a wee bit deaf,’ Tweet says. ‘And not too much past.’ She leaves the sun porch to make tea.
‘I always knew you’d do well, whatever you took up. How are your children?’
He tells her, speaking loud – where they are, what they are doing – exaggerates their abilities and happiness. Lila takes her apple up and peels. The skin bounces like a spring and he pauses to see if it will break. ‘You’re very good at that.’
‘I’ve always had quick fingers. I used to make Plasticine statues when I was young. With ears and fingernails and plaited hair.’ She stops her smile and looks at him sharply. ‘I told you that.’
‘Yes. Sitting on the swing-bridge.’
‘I try to cut apples as thin as paper. I can’t chew too well nowadays.’ He is not sure that she has refused the memory but knows that something has gone dark in her. Does the swing-bridge mean Rex and Joy?
‘You told me you put them in shop windows.’
‘Yes. I made a knight in armour once and his lance was so thin I had to put a darning needle in to keep it straight. The dragon had tiny beads for eyes.’
‘I’d love to have seen it.’
‘Now look at that. Have you ever seen an apple sliced as thinly as that?’ She offers him a piece. It melts on his tongue – not enough to bring out his rash. He lets his eyes go round the room and notes flowery curtains filtering the sun; crochet work lying on a table; a day bed with fat pillows; but is looking for Rex Petley’s poetry. There had been a stack of travel books in the sitting-room; and here, down on the floor, is a shelf built like a trough to slant the spines. He has to lean out of his chair to read the titles.
Lila, slicing apple, smiles. ‘They belonged to Les.’
‘The Roaring U.P. Trail. Riders of the Purple Sage. I never thought I’d see those again.’
‘This was his favourite.’ She back-bends her arm in a young woman’s way to fish it out. ‘He really should have been Buck Duane.’
Buck Duane gets beaten to the draw. Jack has not forgiven Zane Grey that. ‘My favourite was Brazos Keene. I was in Texas once, at a conference, and we crossed the Brazos River. I couldn’t believe it. I kept on looking for a man on a horse.’
‘He wa
s reading that the day he died. He died quickly, Jack. It was like someone walking up and punching him on the jaw.’
‘KO.’
Lila nods in a satisfied way. She gives Jack the book and eats more apple. He leafs through, near the back, not looking for the gunfight but wanting to discover if the blush – was there a blush in this one? – travels up or down. It’s an interesting question and should be checked physiologically.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Oh, the love scene,’ coming on it. And he laughs.’ “What is this madness of love?” I’d forgotten what a bad writer he was.’
‘What’s wrong with that? Les and I were like that. He swept me away and there was nothing I could do.’
‘No.’
‘My parents didn’t like him. My father hated him. I was my father’s little girl and along came this man without a tie, and no collar even, and mortar splashed on his trouser cuffs. He held me by the back of my neck while he talked with them. One big hand right around the back of my neck. You should have seen how white my father went. But what could I do? I just packed my suitcase and went away with him. Imagine if I hadn’t, Jack, if I’d stayed at home.’
‘Yes.’
She appears to imagine. ‘Love is a madness. If it isn’t then it isn’t love.’ She stabs the apple to the heart and puts it on the plate. He closes the book. Now is the time to talk about Rex. Surely Rex can find an entrance here.
‘It was a great genetic mix,’ and sees from the movement of her eye that she understands (the same alertness Mrs Skeat had had when her poisoner came). It makes him turn his words aside. ‘Bricks and mortar,’ but what he means – and she hears, she’s preternatural – is the rough building of poetry. ‘And then all the fine work. Knights and dragons. And lances that don’t droop. And beads for eyes.’
Her eyes are hard and bright. They have a beady glitter, and she’s lifted as though on a welling-up of light. Jack is appalled by what he’s done. He has fiddled with a box-lid and snakes come flashing out. But all she does is send a glittery shriek out to the kitchen: ‘Tweet, what’s taking you so long?’
Tweet comes running, with a tea-cosy in her hands. She utters bird-like cries as she lifts and pats her mother into place. It is like combing a child’s hair and washing its face and getting it ready for play-school. Lila’s mad glitter is snuffed out.
