Ellie & the Shadow Man

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘I am.’ She did not want to talk, just work, learn what to do. At tea break Jim Barchard transferred her to the packing shed.

  ‘Sore shoulders, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ll ease up.’

  No one was going to treat her gently. Dorrie Barchard was short-tempered, teaching her to pack; and the other woman, Sheila – Sheel – a local, was smug about her own speed and contemptuous of townies.

  ‘It’s a piece of cake after the woolshed,’ Ellie said.

  She picked all next morning, then graded and packed. Dorrie Barchard was grumpy but fair and told her she was learning quick. Sheel offered shallow friendship, which Ellie accepted, so they got on. She was happier in the trees with Jim and Mike and Boggsie and Janice and Fiona. You did not have to talk; you related to your tree, the weight of your bag, the slant of your ladder, and grinned now and then at a face framed in leaves in the parallel row. She ate half a dozen apples a day. It was like eating the sun, eating something alive that didn’t object. Holding an apple before biting it, she understood why painters did still life – for the shape, the colour, the connection, for the taste. A jar or bowl might taste in a similar way, even though empty and cool.

  ‘You’re a dreamy sort of sheila,’ Mike said.

  ‘I pick more than you,’ she snapped.

  ‘Got a temper too.’

  It was true she picked more. By her second week she was faster than any of them, and just as quick as Sheel in the shed. Dorrie Barchard started smiling at her.

  ‘We got ourselves a cracker,’ Jim said.

  On one of her trips into Motueka she bought some pencils and a sketch pad. It seemed that when she liked a place she found the need to draw. She sat in the grass by the pine row and drew the orchard leaning down the slope and flattening out, the hills like arms, the sea like a plate, the two coasts and two mountain ranges – all parallel and neat, with too much likeness. She had not let things be themselves. Even the trees, frothing in the hollow, were foam in a bath. She turned the page and started again. It did not work. She could not get her mind, her feelings, her pencil point in tune. She had drawn better at the Woburn Hostels ten years ago when it had only been for fun.

  Ellie went back to the kitchen, where Boggsie and Mike were drinking beer.

  ‘Saw you up there,’ Boggsie said. ‘A bit of an artist, eh?’

  He tried to take her pad, but she jerked it away. She did not like Boggsie, who had a handsome upper face, domed forehead and strong nose, but was soft and self-pleased in his mouth. If she was stuck on likenesses, it was curled and wet, like a slug.

  ‘Why don’t you draw me? I’ll pose.’ He rolled his shoulders, swelled his biceps, gave a yellow-toothed smile.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. His name was Helsby not Boggs. The nickname had come from the speed with which he’d dug a longdrop once. ‘The Bogdigger’ changed to ‘Boggsie’, which he kept as a compliment to himself – so Mike said.

  Ellie liked Mike. She wished he would fix his broken teeth.

  ‘They don’t hurt,’ he said.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘A friend of mine’s starting a commune over in Golden Bay. I was helping him build an A-frame and he got me with a lump of four by two, fair in the mouth. He’s accident prone.’

  ‘You sound like the one who’s accident prone.’

  He had grown up in Christchurch and was twenty-six, not the boy she’d thought him at first sight.

  ‘I’ve got half a BA,’ he said. ‘All the dropouts come apple picking.’

  ‘How long have you been doing it?’

  ‘Started at school. Seventeen. I came up with a mate of mine who was on probation. You can do that if you call at the cop shop first. There’s lots of guys here on probation, and a hell of a lot of others who don’t want the cops knowing where they are. That year the taxi driver got murdered, the orchards just about emptied out overnight.’

  He was trying to impress her and she liked him less.

  ‘Come to the pictures in Mot,’ he invited.

  ‘Get your teeth fixed first. Is Boggsie on probation?’

  ‘That’d be telling. Hey, I like your drawings. I never knew sheilas could draw.’

  ‘I might do one of you one day.’

  ‘I promise not to smile.’

  He sat outside on warm nights and strummed his guitar while Fiona sang. His own husky voice, a little frail, joined in, but he was happier with accompaniment, coming second. Boggsie had a better voice but wanted dirty songs and grew sulky when no one would sing with him.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ Fiona said. ‘He comes out to the dunny when I’m there. He tries to pretend he doesn’t know.’

  ‘Tell Jim. He’ll fire him,’ Ellie said.

  ‘I don’t want to get anyone fired.’

  Boggsie had a small truck with a rounded aluminium roof over the tray. He called it a housetruck and claimed he lived in it between jobs, but all it contained was a dirty mattress and some apple boxes full of gear. He persuaded Ellie and the two girls to go to Motueka with him for the Saturday night dance. None of them would sit in the cab with him, which he took, after a moment, as a compliment. He had later in the night on his mind.

  Janice and Fiona were Christchurch girls earning money in the university holidays. Ellie was amused by their knowingness and innocence – a dangerous combination, she thought. Their jokes about Boggsie’s stained mattress could not conceal their curiosity. She thought he would get the plain one, Janice, before long and wondered if it was her place to interfere.

  She wanted to leave the dance after only an hour. Every picker in the district seemed to have come and she felt wedged in, unable to free her arms, pressed on by fleshy hands and palpating air.

  She danced with a man who tried to talk her outside for a drink, then with one, half drunk, who rubbed his loins on her, and spent the next two dances avoiding them. It was better when the band played music she could twist to. She gyrated in a corner with a tall tattooed self-absorbed boy, not minding him – you could, if you liked, twist with a post – then, hot, sweaty, felt hemmed in again. It was time to go.

  She wondered if she could hitch a ride to Ruby Bay and walk the rest of the way to the orchard, and was working her way to the side of the hall where she’d last seen Boggsie when Mike went by with Fiona. She kept on going, annoyed by the jealousy she felt. Mike might not be much but he belonged to her – if she wanted him. Which she did not. So …

  ‘Boggsie, I’m going. Tell the others, eh?’ She did not wait for him to protest.

  The air was warm outside the hall but less oppressive. She walked as far as the main street and saw it stretch away left and right, with empty footpaths and closed shops. Cars were turning down towards the dancehall, where the music lolled out the door like a fat tongue. She was glad to be alone, and going through a change from talk and noise and company. There was nothing to change into, that was the trouble, and no way of seeing ahead; although walking by herself for a while made a choice. Men whistled and invited her, driving by. It might be dangerous hitching. But she wanted to go slowly past the inlet, where the moon would be turning the water silver. Or would it be yellow? She wanted to see.

  Ellie walked past the Rothmans clock on to the causeway. The sea was hidden behind the Kina peninsula, and the water in the inlet moved on the rising tide. It was patterned with silver, and the moon was yellow. The orchards on the curving shore were bleached and cold. She listened to their hissing in a breeze she could not feel. The slide of water into the causeway pipes was like a snake. A fish jumped somewhere and a dinghy bumped softly on its mooring post.

  Ellie walked as far as Tasman, where she sat on the porch of the darkened store. Now she would have welcomed a ride. After picking all day, another hour of walking was more than she wanted. So, let this car be Mike, she thought. The driver ignored her thumb.

  She walked again and had almost reached the bluffs above Ruby Bay when she heard the unmuffled roar of hi
s Holden changing down. He leaned across and opened the door: ‘Jump in.’

  Ellie climbed up beside him. ‘I thought you were in Nelson,’ she said.

  ‘There’s nothing there. Why’d you walk out?’

  ‘It got too crowded. Too much noise.’

  ‘I just found out from Boggsie you’d shot through. He’s not pleased.’

  ‘Too bad about Boggsie. Have you got a beer?’

  ‘There’s some bottles on the back seat. We’ll stop down here, eh? Could you use a swim?’

  ‘Sure.’ It was what she’d like even more than a beer – silver water, deep and cool.

  He drove across the grass and stopped by the trees where she’d swum on her first day after getting off the bus. She climbed out and patted the Holden. It was a drifter’s car, a hippy car, with its rusty panels and burst upholstery. He opened two bottles of beer on a torn edge of the mudguard and gave her one.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  She drank half the bottle, thirsty after her walk, then stood it upright in the roots of a tree.

  ‘I’m going in.’

  She stepped down to the sand, took off her clothes and ran the few yards to the water, feeling her body gleam in the moonlight. It would arouse Mike, she supposed, which was a pity, but the water would settle him down. She was not doing anything tonight or any night – and she knew that her choice in walking out of the dance and being alone had meant, No Mike, no anyone, until it was more than pleasure or affection, until it fixed something in place. She waded in up to her waist and turned and saw him loping, dark groined, down the sand. She hoped her fondness would be enough for him; he would see swimming naked as a come-on. She sank in the water to her chin and saw him dive, felt him slide along her thigh. He had turned underwater and aimed at her – so she had better make it plain.

  ‘Jeez,’ he cried, springing up, ‘it’s frigid.’

  ‘Mike, let’s get it straight, eh. There’s no sex.’

  ‘Hey, did I say that?’

  ‘No, but I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that’s what this was.’

  ‘So it ain’t?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m off it for a while. Shall we swim?’

  She took half a dozen strokes. He was grinning at her. ‘I wonder what for a while means.’

  ‘I bet you do.’

  They swam out, she faster than him. He stroked awkwardly with his head angled high, which brought her close to pity; and pity could lead to sex, so she turned back and lay in the shallow water, letting small waves run along her back. Mike lay beside her.

  ‘The biggest double bed in the world.’

  Ellie splashed him. ‘You’d better lay off, Mike. I’m getting my beer.’

  She ran up the sand, dried herself with her shirt and pulled it on, pulled on her jeans. She sat on the low bank under the trees and finished the bottle. Mike prowled back and forth in the water. She supposed he had an erection and was letting it go down. Other men might use it to persuade.

  ‘Come on out, Mike. I don’t mind.’

  He walked up the sand and she saw she had been half right.

  ‘Put your clothes on,’ Ellie said. ‘I wasn’t trying to lead you on.’

  He dressed by the car, then sat beside her on the beach with his guitar.

  ‘I’m a sort of an emotional guy, but it doesn’t only show in speech,’ he said.

  Ellie laughed. He could have turned nasty instead of trying to joke.

  ‘It’s a compliment in a way. Play me something,’ she said.

  ‘I only strum.’

  ‘OK, strum.’

  ‘What I’ve been doing is writing a song for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘I’ve only got three lines. Want to hear?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to.’

  He played a dozen soft chords, then sang in his reedy voice:

  ‘Ellie, you have bloomed tonight

  Amidst green seedlings

  In the rainbow shadows of my dreams …’

  He played three more chords and smiled at her. ‘It needs a tune.’

  ‘I think it’s nice. It’s –’ She felt soft towards him and could not find a word. ‘I like green seedlings.’

  ‘The trouble is, I can’t get any more.’

  ‘It’ll come. Are you sure it was for me?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  Now that he had given up he was close to getting her. Ellie did not want him to know. She would lose the new certainty she’d found. She took her watch out of her jeans and strapped it on.

  ‘Twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Do you change into someone different now? What’s Ellie short for?’

  ‘Elinor.’ She spelled it.

  ‘She’s in a poem somewhere. Tennyson?’

  She supposed his half degree was in literature. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘There’s one more beer. Want to share?’

  They sat on the bank, passing the bottle back and forth.

  ‘I guess your name got you in some strife?’ Ellie said.

  ‘Yeah. Michael Rowe.’

  ‘Halleluja, I’ll bet. You can’t blame your parents. It probably wasn’t around when you were born.’

  She told him about travelling in Europe but seemed to be boasting after a while.

  ‘I don’t want to go there. I’m happy here,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to shift around like this all your life?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve got my car. Got lots of friends. Otherwise I’ll end up like my my parents, stuck in the same house all my life.’

  ‘Do they know where you are?’

  ‘I go back in the winter sometimes. I’ve got three sisters. I stay with them. Babysit. You don’t stay long.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ellie said, ‘I know.’

  They watched the sea and saw the tide turn. She felt his thigh warm against her hip and wished that liking could be enough.

  ‘Here’s another line,’ he said, taking his guitar:

  ‘Water turns on the sand,

  Turning you to me …

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘No good. You can’t go from seedlings to the sea. It doesn’t follow.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t follow. Ba-ad.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m getting tired.’

  They drove up the hill to the orchard and stopped beside the pickers’ hut.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’ She almost added, ‘Thanks for the swim,’ but thought he might take it as a rebuff. Sorry meant what it said.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can have the bathroom first.’

  She showered and went to bed, and was sleeping when Janice and Fiona came in. She woke enough to hear Janice crying, and was pleased when Fiona took her to the bathroom. Mike and Boggsie talked in the kitchen, drinking beer, laughing inanely, and she banged on the wall: ‘Shut up in there. I’m trying to sleep.’

  ‘Bitch,’ Boggsie yelled, but Mike calmed him down.

  Janice and Fiona got into bed, Janice sniffing and making little moans.

  ‘Be quiet, Janice,’ Fiona said.

  ‘Yeah, be quiet,’ Ellie said.

  She turned her face away from the moon and slept again.

  Sunday. Ellie wanted books. The only ones in the hut were tattered westerns and spy stories.

  ‘Go and see Audrey. She’ll lend you some,’ Jim said.

  ‘Which one’s she?’

  ‘The big one. Stirling Moss.’

  ‘Is she Webster or Anerdi?’ Ellie said.

  ‘Webster. Anerdi is Fan, the little one.’

  ‘In the dresses?’

  ‘Yeah. She reads. Ask her.’

  Ellie walked beyond the pine trees into a paddock where Jim ran a dozen sheep. She had seen the two women walking down to collect their mail and speeding by in their Mini, leaving clouds of dust that turned the roadside blackberry bushes white. The big one, Webster, grinned as she drove, changing up and down as though on a racetrack. Y
et she was slow when she walked, stiff-hipped and beetle backed. She wore tweed skirts and cardigans that merged with the trees. The other one, the little one with the white hair and pink cheeks, dressed in colours, loosely: shawls and scarves, wide-sleeved blouses, long skirts. Everything floated and seemed to shimmer. Ellie thought of her as the butterfly woman.

  She had walked in the paddocks several times, and seen their hillside of brown sheep and their witchy villa – probably the farmhouse before the orchards came – with a covered walkway to a long low shed facing the sun. They had half an acre of lawns and fruit trees, and a fenced vegetable garden with a black and tan goat tethered to a spike that the beetle-backed one shifted and hammered into the ground. Ellie thought at first they might be loopy. Then it seemed they might be simply private. All the same, Jim had said they would lend her books.

  The small woman was sitting in a deckchair on the lawn, listening to music from the house. The other was busy in the shed. Ellie saw her moving back and forth at some job. She waited a moment to be seen, then climbed the fence and walked across the lawn, keeping clear of the goat. The woman in the chair was lying back with her eyes closed. The upper part of her face was shaded green by a tennis sun visor. She opened her eyes, put her finger to her lips and motioned Ellie to sit on the grass.

  The music was not the sort Ellie was used to. The orchestra was pumping and the violin being clever – but it began to interest her, as though through her eyes. If you closed them you started seeing gullies and hills – mostly hills – and rich shifting colours, gold and brown. She was, though, too uncertain, with the woman there, to stay with her eyes closed for long. The goat was nibbling as though obsessed. A tui was feeding at a jar of yellow water in a peach tree. The woman moved her hands minutely to the music. The other, in the shed, was weaving on a frame. She smiled at Ellie and went on with her work.