by Fiona Kidman
In the morning, as she prepares to leave Sasha’s, solid, thick rain falls outside. Sasha eyes Natalie’s suitcase.
‘You can’t carry that thing around all day,’ she says. The suitcase, covered with shiny burnt orange vinyl, stands hiphigh. It contains a new nightdress with a matching brunchcoat, made of white cotton sprinkled with small blue flowers; the only dinner dress Natalie owns, and no, it is not black, but an odd shade of purple, currently fashionable, which Natalie secretly fears makes her complexion sallow; a change of day clothes; four pairs of shoes to cover every weather change and possible outing; a large bag of cosmetics, and some extra copies of the Marvellous Eight scripts.
‘Anyone can see you coming. What will people think?’ says Sasha.
Natalie can’t see why this concerns Sasha so much. What people think hasn’t noticeably bothered her, although they have stayed up more than half the night talking edgily about adultery. Sasha laughs a lot, and they both drink too much, and Natalie remembers a moment somewhere towards morning when they looked at each other in consternation and fell silent. She is too tired, too fraught to think what all this means now.
The huge suitcase, salvaged from one of her father’s overseas trips, is clearly a mistake. With all her planning, how could she have overlooked something so obvious? All day, while she is in the studio, this foolish, ugly thing will stand in the Green Room, broadcasting her intentions. She has turned down the offer of an expense account hotel. The truth is, she had no idea how to tell them that she wanted a room with a double bed.
There is nothing Natalie can do about the suitcase. Sasha, on her way to her new job in a Parnell boutique, kisses her goodbye, looking worried.
‘Are you sure you can look after yourself?’
Natalie shrugs, impatient to be on her own. The taxi she orders doesn’t come. When she rings the company, they tell her it has already been and nobody came out when they tooted. She says it must have gone to a wrong number. The despatcher is not in a mood to argue. It won’t be sent back unless she agrees to wait outside. While she waits thunder erupts and she is afraid of being struck by lightning. Rain trickles under the collar of her red plastic mac. When she arrives at the studio she is half an hour late, her hair is plastered to the sides of her face, her shoes squelching. In the Green Room, she kneels to wrestle with the catches of the suitcase. Under the vinyl, the case is made of cardboard. Water has soaked through a split and collapsed a corner. Sonny Emmanuel stands behind her while she hauls out one of the spare pairs of shoes. ‘You’re late,’ he says. ‘I can see your tits.’
The studio is like a barn with brick interior walls. Light filters through a skylight in the immense high ceiling. The shadow of the boom is reflected upwards by the studio lights.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Sonny shouts. ‘Where’s my leading lady?’
‘She’s in the loo, she’s got the trots.’ The production secretary looks racked.
‘Well, get her out of the bloody loo, tell her I’ve got a shoot to do. Go and wipe her arse for her, do something, just get her in here.’
By ten o’clock the leading lady still hasn’t appeared. ‘We’ll do a walk-through. Okay, okay, everybody. Natalie, you be the counsellor, all right?’
‘I’ve never done anything like this,’ Natalie protests.
‘So you can learn.’
‘But I’m the writer, not an actress.’ She hears her voice rising, tries to bring it down.
‘What are you?’ Sonny’s eyes are wide, a vein on his forehead stands out like an angry little insect. ‘Are you the fucking union? Is that what you are? I mean, if you’re the union why don’t you just sod off? Who needs writers here anyway? I mean, do you know how much per minute it takes to make your crapulous unfunny little soap opera?’
‘I’ll do it, Sonny, I’ll do it.’ I mustn’t cry, she thinks, I can’t put mascara on again before lunch.
‘Okay, good girl, of course you will. Right, stand by everybody, from the top of the scene.’ Sonny is full of sudden false bonhomie.
Natalie takes up her position at the desk, and leans forward, chin resting on her knuckles.
‘Great,’ says Sonny, ‘you look like a counsellor, so help me, even the clothes are right. Very comforting, very bloody pious.’
‘They’re not,’ Natalie starts to say, looking down at the buttoned-up green blouse, the black jerkin, which she had chosen with such care.
‘Shut up,’ says Sonny, ‘just talk to Mick.’ Mick is an elfish gay, playing the transvestite counsellor.
Natalie picks up the script and begins to read.
NATALIE: So tell me, what do you think you could bring to your role as a counsellor?
MICK: My soul.
NATALIE: So what’s so special about your soul?
MICK: I can see where others can’t.
NATALIE: Tell me what you can see in me. Right now, look at me, hold my gaze, what do you see?
SONNY: Jesus, Nat, this isn’t funny. It’s supposed to be funny. I thought it was funny when I read it. How could I be so wrong about anything?
MICK: (continuing) I see a warm beautiful woman, just like myself.
NATALIE: This is real narcissism, and homophobic as well.
SONNY: You wrote it.
NATALIE: Victor told me to write it. Sonny, I can’t do this.
(The actress Natalie is replacing appears on the set, looking washed out.)
SONNY: Nobody asked you to be Glenda Jackson, ah shit, if you’ll pardon the phrase, we have an actress aboard, welcome darling, for God’s sake don’t cry Natalie, I told Victor you’d cry if he let you come on the set.
Nearly a year has passed since Natalie and Stuart last saw each other. When she first left Mountwood, she expected him daily. Her dreams were radiant and carnal. He did meet her once in Wellington, before she left Monty. The reunion hadn’t gone well. Looking back, she blamed herself for being too eager. He had gone back to the rules that had been laid down at the beginning. Her declarations had alarmed him anew. When he returned to Mountwood he had written: ‘I can’t leave Dulcie now, you must see how it is for her.’ There were the children to think of. He must think of his, even if she did not consider hers (she only just forgave him this). Dulcie had begun menopause. Menopause, Natalie discovered, could last for ten or twelve years.
Yet still he wrote to her, as if she was a listening post in the wilderness. Much later, she would think how unfair that was, as if the unguarded word was somehow less damaging, less compromising than their actions. In fact they were worse; they could be revisited, relived, time and again, in secret places. She opened a security-box at a bank to keep his letters safe. Eventually, the words convinced her that her life was a lie. I have left Monty for good, she wrote to him. Don’t think it was on your account, it is what I must do for myself.
This was not the exact truth. Monty had told her one day that if she didn’t snap out of herself, he couldn’t take any more, and so she had packed, not expecting to leave, but it reached a point where neither would back down and say it was a bad idea. He had wanted her to come back straight away, and then he didn’t, and then he turned difficult about property and custody, and she was sure she had done the right thing all along. Natalie told herself she had left him. It was what she told Stuart.
For two weeks she raced to the post office drop where she picked up his letters, but nothing came.
Finally she rang the newspaper office. Stuart had left. ‘Where will I contact Mr Carter?’ she asked, trying to make her voice sound impersonal. As he had been promising, she discovered that the magazine was now his full-time occupation.
She risked more; she rang him at home. Dulcie answered, Natalie hung up. Carefully, she worked out Dulcie’s likely movements, the times she went to the supermarket, the classes she might be taking this year, the times the women’s squash courts were available. It was like living in Mountwood again, without being there. The fourth time she caught him, by which time nearly a month had passed.
‘I can’t leave now,’ Stuart said. ‘Dulcie and I have put everything into the magazine.’
‘You could get something here,’ she said, ‘you could go part-time here, and do the magazine as well.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You mean, she holds the purse strings.’
‘Darling, you don’t understand. You’ve got all your life ahead to do the things you want.’
After a while she said, ‘Did you ever love me?’
‘I do love you.’ His voice was weary.
Again, with hindsight, she thinks he might have let it go then. He was responsible too. Was it through vanity, that he held on to her? She had read too many novels, she thinks, she was too full of words (though she is no less full of them now); she wanted to believe in romance.
They have arranged to meet during the lunch break by the staircase at Smith and Caughey’s at a quarter past noon. Natalie takes the suitcase, deciding on an impulse that he can take it to the hotel during the afternoon, and relieve her of its presence in the studio.
Outside, the rain has stopped. Natalie is early, wanting to be there first, to see Stuart look anxiously for her, his face light up when he catches sight of her.
The perfume counters in the shop are loaded with sample bottles. As she waits, she hesitates, unsure which one to try. Now that she is a writer Natalie worries about perfume; she has read the unkind things Virginia Woolf said about Katherine Mansfield’s scent. From now on, she has vowed to wear only the best, or none at all. A saleswoman offers her a square of blotting paper to spray with samples. She squirts five of the little squares with different perfumes and files them in her handbag. Then, deciding that Nina Ricci can’t be wrong, she blasts a tester across her wrists. She resists looking at the store clock until ten past one.
By the time she gets back to the studio the actress who plays the transvestite’s grandmother has fallen ill too, and the first actress has had a relapse. A woman whom Natalie hasn’t seen before is seated opposite the counsellor’s chair, and Sonny paces up and down.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I’m only observing.’
‘Oh yes, I remember, you’re just the writer. You smell like piss.’
‘It’s Nina Ricci.’
‘It’s probably not her fault. Now, will you sit down? That’s Tess, say hullo to her.’
‘Hullo,’ Natalie says, like an obedient child.
‘Are you all right?’ asks the woman. Natalie notices her fingers, long and almost stringy, with skin so fine it appears transparent. Tess is small and neat, her cheekbones high, her cap of dark hair fanned with grey above her right ear. A caramel-coloured woollen dress crocheted in a shell pattern skims her hips, ending at least four inches above her knees. Her age could be twenty-five or thirty-five.
‘Yes. Thank you.’ She likes Tess’s voice. ‘Sonny’s getting up my nose.’
‘He gets up everybody’s nose when he’s working with them. Haven’t you worked with him before?’
‘Not in the studio.’
‘Are you an actress?’ Natalie asks.
‘No, I play the violin in the Symphony Orchestra.’
Natalie is bewildered. ‘I don’t get this. How come you know him so well?’
‘Stop talking about me, it’s making me embarrassed,’ says Sonny.
‘He filmed the orchestra, we were playing Bartok.’
‘The violins were stunning,’ Sonny says. ‘Now let’s get this show on the road.’
‘But why are we doing this, it’s pointless?’
‘Do you want to run this outfit, Natalie? Do you think you’re a director now, as well?’
‘He’s planning his shots,’ says Tess, as if she has a lifetime’s experience in television. ‘It’ll help him make up time tomorrow.’
‘My nerves are shot now,’ says Natalie, with what she perceives as her own grim attempt at humour.
‘So are his,’ says Tess softly.
Sonny walks over, studying them both. His gaze rests on Natalie. To her surprise, he reaches out and touches her cheek gently. ‘There, there,’ he says. ‘Read the script, you two, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Tess picks up the script, Sonny returns to the control room, and on his cue they begin to read.
TESS: (playing MRS OATES, the grandmother) I’ve been watching my children for signs of improvement.
NATALIE: (playing THE COUNSELLOR) And how old are the children?
TESS: Forty-nine and forty-three. (Puts the script down.) Natalie, that’s rich, I like it. My mother’s still waiting for me to improve. Are you saying she’ll never stop?
NATALIE: Probably not, mine’s in total despair, especially now I’ve left my husband. Should we stick to the script?
TESS: Yes, probably. It’s your turn.
NATALIE: Right, um, what strategies have you developed for coping with your family, Mrs Oates?
TESS: I make every day a new day, power of positive thinking, that’s what it’s all about … (Laughs loudly.) (Note in the script that Mrs Oates knits steadily throughout the interview, drawing wool out of a plastic detergent container covered with braided wool.)
NATALIE: Nice, but what do your daughters think?
TESS: Oh, who cares what they think?
(Mrs Oates makes a cat’s cradle out of the wool which Tess simulates very neatly with the plaited woollen belt of her dress.)
NATALIE: But Mrs Oates …
(The two women, Natalie and Tess, have started to laugh.)
TESS: This is a bit of a farce, isn’t it? Perhaps if you simply called me Tess, it would seem more natural. We can pretend that’s her name anyway.
NATALIE: Her name’s Willa in the script.
TESS: Is she a lesbian?
NATALIE: No, it’s the grandson that’s gay.
TESS: Well wasn’t the writer … I mean, did you name her after Cather?
NATALIE: No, I haven’t even read her, have you?
SONNY: (interrupts) Girls.
TESS: (reproving) Women, Sonny, (to NATALIE) Yes, I have.
NATALIE: And are you?
TESS: What?
NATALIE: Um … like Willa?
(A look of surprise flickers across Tess’s finely wrought face. She hesitates, undecided as to whether to confide in Natalie, and aware that Sonny is listening. She switches off her microphone, and, reaching over, switches off Natalie’s too.)
TESS: Of course not, I’m with Sonny.
NATALIE: You mean, with Sonny? You’re the girlfriend?
TESS: Girlfriend, mistress, I suppose it’s got a name. (She laughs briefly, a sound more suited to the woodwind section, her large eyes luminous.) I’d even call it love.
NATALIE: You don’t look like … um, well, you’re a musician.
TESS: So. Make sense of it. You’re the writer.
NATALIE: Stuff the arts, I could do with a sister.
TESS: You mean you’re short of friends right now?
NATALIE: I’ve got Sasha. Oh God, I can’t go back to Sasha’s tonight.
TESS: He didn’t come, did he?
NATALIE: How did you know? Was it the suitcase?
TESS: What suitcase?
NATALIE: Never mind. Am I that obvious?
(Sonny picks up a megaphone and shouts at them.)
SONNY: We might as well all go home if you two don’t read. Tess, will you turn that mike on?
(Tess switches it on.)
TESS: Soon. (She turns it off again.) You’ll get better, you’ll get over today. Well, I don’t know what happened but it looks pretty bad. Things usually get better though, don’t you think?
NATALIE: How can you say that? You’ve got Sonny. (wonderingly) Are you happy?
(Tess’s face turns in the direction of where Sonny stands with his headphones on, looks suddenly wistful.)
TESS: Oh, it was perfect all right.
NATALIE: Was?
TESS: It’s our last day, I’m off to England tomorrow. Probably for good. (She leans forward in
her chair.) I’ve got a career, he wants a wife. It came as a shock, I can tell you, after four years of seeing him.
NATALIE: He’s got a wife.
TESS: Exactly. (She hesitates.) He wants to leave her and marry me.
NATALIE: I thought he was going to live in a kibbutz. No, don’t tell me, he’s going to the kibbutz because you won’t marry him.
TESS: Something like that.
(Natalie stands, violently knocking the script aside.)
NATALIE: You’re so lucky, you’re so goddam lucky.
TESS: Why? Because he wants a wife? Is that what you want people to see? Here comes Natalie, somebody’s second wife?
NATALIE: (sitting down and picking up the script) Why don’t you be the counsellor? I’ll be Mrs Oates.
(They switch on their microphones.)
TESS: (glancing towards Sonny, making sure that he can hear) You can have him, have Sonny if that’s what you want. If you want somebody’s husband.
That night they all go to a house in Herne Bay. It is an odd fussy place with pleated curtains at the windows, Dresden china figurines standing on flimsy mahogany furniture, and salmon pink carpets that roll fleshily through the rooms. Nobody seems to know who owns it. Afterwards, Natalie’s memory of certain events will be hazy, but she does remember that Tess left the house sometime during the evening, without warning.
Several actresses arrive, including both of those who had been sick earlier in the day, plus some cameramen and other members of the crew, carrying wine and cartons of beer. A party begins and Natalie gets drunk. Outside, the rain starts again, and somebody says that Mount Ngauruhoe is erupting in the south.
