by Gee, Maurice
‘We had jokes about the Y-dub,’ Barry said. ‘Sorry, Ellie, but you know boys. One of my cobbers reckoned he went panty-raiding there.’
‘Well, they did go missing from the line,’ Ellie said.
‘You know, it makes me mad,’ Angela said, ‘the way people sling off about the 1950s, as though we were deprived or something. As though life didn’t start until the 1960s.’
‘The fifties were a great time,’ Barry said.
‘Because that’s when we were young,’ Angela said.
‘There were all sorts of extras,’ Hollis said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Guilt and prohibitions and ignorance. It certainly made life interesting.’
‘And fear of pregnancy,’ Ellie said.
‘Oh yes, no pill.’ Angela snapped her jaws shut. The subject had gone far enough. ‘Ellie, what’s the thing you remember best about Willowbank?’
‘That’s easy. Mrs Nimmo.’
‘Her? But I hated her.’
‘She was a great teacher. She started me off on all sorts of things.’
‘You knew she was a communist?’
‘Not after 1956.’
‘What happened then?’ Barry said.
Angela ignored him. ‘She was a socialist at least. She tried indoctrinating us.’
‘It didn’t bother me. My mother was Labour. And I still am. Sorry, Barry, no vote.’ She grinned at him, then returned to Angela. ‘Mrs Nimmo proved that Willowbank wasn’t the whole world. Every time she opened her mouth she blew the place away. Didn’t you feel it?’
‘No, not really. I thought she was play-acting. Setting herself up as a character. You can still see her, you know, shuffling round Wellington. She wears an old overcoat and walks with a stick. She’s got a dog almost as old as her. I stopped and said hello one day, and do you know what she said? “Go away, whoever you are. I’ve had enough of girls.”’
Ellie smiled and ate her salad, confident that Mrs Nimmo had not forgotten her. She had probably finished herself with Angela and Barry by confessing to Labour. But it had been more a declaration: a challenge in defence of Mrs Nimmo. She was not going to have her favourite teacher spoiled.
Barry ordered more wine, then asked Ellie if she still played tennis. ‘We’ve got a court. You can come on over.’
‘That year was my last,’ Ellie said. ‘I took up tramping.’
‘One of my daughters is going to be good at tennis,’ Angela said. ‘One of your boys too, Hollis. It runs in the family.’
‘Don’t I get any credit?’ Barry said.
‘The tennis genes are ours. Yours are all political,’ Angela said.
Ellie turned to Hollis. ‘How many children have you got?’
‘Two boys.’
‘Do you still live out in the Hutt?’
‘No, I shifted from there. I’m in Auckland.’
She wondered why he said ‘I’ not ‘we’. ‘And you’re a lawyer?’
‘Yes.’ He seemed evasive.
‘What sort?’
‘Tax mainly. Financial law. Property law.’
‘Ah’ – which let him go. She could not connect him with the surly randy boy in the pink Morris Minor. Only his widow’s peak was the same: it still had the appearance of digging into him. His eyes were less glittery, less fixed on himself. Life had taught him something – inevitably. You might get your teeth straightened – somewhere along the line he’d done that – but you could not get away from a crippled leg. Could get away from a pregnant girlfriend, though. She wondered how well he remembered Dolores, and if it was that near-escape that had turned him away from – that fifties word – delinquency. He had been, hadn’t he, a near delinquent? But he’d had his family to fall back on – fall into softly when his damage was done.
She put her hand over her glass as Barry tried to pour more wine. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got some books Neil needs.’
‘Is Neil your …?’ Angela said.
‘The man I live with. It’s my job to keep him supplied with facts. I’d better make a note of this wine. He needs things like that.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a writer.’
‘Do we know him?’
‘Neil Higgs.’
‘Oh, but I’ve read one of his novels. About the minister who loses his faith. Is he religious?’
‘Neil? Not a bit. His grandfather was, but then he became an evolutionist –’
‘Like in the book.’
‘– so Neil’s mother had no religion. She stayed a puritan though. My God, it was ruinous …’ Stop, this is none of their business, she thought. She recognised too, with some confusion, that she was trying to make herself interesting to Hollis. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to get home. I’ve enjoyed my lunch. I think my salad was twelve dollars.’
‘No, no, my shout,’ Barry said.
‘Yes, I invited you,’ Angela said.
Ellie decided not to argue. She would have had to dig for coins in the bottom of her pack. Her clean exit would be spoiled. ‘All right. Thank you very much.’
‘Ellie,’ Hollis said, ‘I’ve got to go too. Can I walk a little way?’
‘I’m going up to Tinakori Road.’
‘I’ve got a meeting on The Terrace.’
He had his stick, was making quick goodbyes to Angela and Barry. She waited at the door and watched him limp towards her: a thin man, thin faced, dark haired, in a lawyer’s suit – National Party suit – with his bone-handled stick held like a baton as he angled his way past the backs of chairs, as far removed from Hollis Prime, pale and bitter faced, as it was possible to be. She could not fill in the years of his life that had worked the change, except by seeing family there, comfort, the soft fall, the spending of money, the retreat from responsibility; but supposed, all the same, that he had worked hard to get his degree and his position, whatever it was, get his lawyer’s manners and lawyer’s suit.
‘I like your stick. Do you have to use it all the time?’
He banged its rubber tip on the pavement. ‘This is my favourite. I’ve got a couple of dozen. It’s a hobby. As for using it – it’s mainly a prop.’
They walked down Lambton Quay.
‘How are your parents?’ Ellie said.
‘Oh, fine. Dad’s retired. He’s got a little place in the Sounds and he lives there most of the year. Catching fish. Mum – she went to England. It’s her spiritual home, she says. She lives in Cheltenham. Ellie, do you mind me asking if you ever heard from Dolores again?’
‘No,’ Ellie said. ‘I wrote a card and I got no answer. Did you try?’
They stopped at the Bowen Street corner. He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘I thought you might have. You were happy just to leave it the way it was?’
‘I, ah, I couldn’t see what else I could do.’
‘Did the people in Sydney who handled things for you tell you how it went?’
She saw his pupils dilate. ‘There was no one in Sydney handling things.’
‘You just gave her the address? And the money?’
‘My father did. He did it all.’
‘And no inquiries about her health? You didn’t want to know if she’d died or something?’
‘She wouldn’t die, Ellie. Look, I understand the way you feel and I’m not making excuses for myself – but I do think about it. I think about it all the time.’
‘Good on you.’
‘Yes, all right. But I’d just like to know that she – I don’t know, managed all right.’
‘Didn’t go on the streets, eh? Married some nice man? I thought you lawyers could track people down.’
He stepped back a little. The handle of his stick rang on a shop window. ‘All right. I understand. I’m sorry I’ve troubled you, Ellie.’
‘Do you know what having abortions was like back then? It was no picnic, even in Sydney. Didn’t you even want to know she got through it all right?’
‘That’s why I’m ask
ing you now.’
‘Twenty years too late.’
It would have been easy to tell him that Dolores had no intention of going through with it, that he had a child somewhere in Sydney – just to see his eyes dilate again, to slap him into some sort of knowledge. She was on the point of it, but bit the words back.
‘Dolores was a Catholic,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You know what they think about abortion?’
‘Ellie, you can’t say anything I haven’t thought a thousand times myself. I wouldn’t have troubled you except I thought you might know something. But you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t. I’d give up on it, Hollis. There’s no point now.’ She grew sorry for him: such a sideways-bent, worried-looking man. ‘I imagine Dolores got on with her life.’
‘I suppose she did.’
‘So, I’m crossing here. Be seeing you.’
‘Yes. Goodbye.’
She crossed on the lights to the memorial, then walked up Bowen Street alongside the Beehive. Hollis was ahead of her, on the other side, making a dipping stick-assisted progress. She wondered if it hurt, each step, or if it was more like carrying a weight, lumping something dead along. She felt a rush of sympathy that made her eyes sting, and was sorry she had been so hard with him. She wanted him to look across so she could raise her hand – not in apology, for they had behaved badly, the Primes, like barons in a castle, but in solidarity, acknowledging that, separately, they had lived their way through a length of time. It must be hard work with his added burden. And hard, too, asking about Dolores, remembering what Ellie had shouted the last time they had met.
At the last moment he looked at her and made a formal nod, then turned into The Terrace before she could respond. That’s that, she thought; but wondered at his talent for getting into her mind. After twenty years he might not have been away, yet she found no continuity between his former and his present selves. She wanted to fill in the years – wife, children, job, home, failure (there was failure, his behaviour made it plain), success. Disease – his foot. In a way he belonged to her, as surely as her past belonged, and she needed more substance in him before letting him go.
She walked through the cemetery, then climbed again on winding paths above the rose garden. The roof of her house – Neil’s house – glared between the tops of trees. I have to change that colour, she thought. The basement door opened and Neil came out, arching his back and stretching his arms. He put his hands on his hips and swivelled left and right – his idea of exercising. Sitting hunched nine hours a day was giving him curvature of the spine. He would be a little bent old man. Ellie felt a rush of tenderness for him. She wanted to lay him on the mat and knead his muscles, play her knuckles on his vertebrae and make them click. Yet she wondered if she would stay with him. There was no need. Although she could not see it clearly, there might be a need to go. They gave each other company, not love. They were only half full of each other. Yet she wanted more, and would not give up hope of releasing the love she’d sensed in him, trapped in him, in their first few meetings. She knew it was there. And her own was trapped. They just needed to stand differently, adjust their angle, and they might see into each other.
She felt like a girl outside a window with her mirrored face hiding the room inside.
The Dark Before the Light was shortlisted for the Wattie Award but failed to win a prize.
‘I need to be a woman or a Maori,’ Neil said.
Ellie could not tell how deep his disappointment went. His new novel was going well and all his moods came easy. He had Ellie search the files of farming magazines for information about trace elements, swamp drainage, pakihi land, top-dressing. The old man in his novel was a soil scientist.
‘Neil, you don’t know anything about that.’
‘I will by the time I finish. I like to make things hard for myself.’
She asked to read the manuscript as he went along but he refused. ‘When it’s finished you can read it. You’ll be first. I want to dedicate it to you.’
The only thing that made him take time off was the Springbok tour. They watched the occupation of the ground in Hamilton. ‘We won,’ Neil cried when the game was called off.
Then the assaults on the protesters began: ‘Jesus, look at those fucking rugby morons. I should be there.’
Later in the week he and Ellie joined the demonstration in Molesworth Street. The cheering and the surging elated Ellie. She locked arms with Neil and strode unafraid at the police. Everything was plain, the smell of the crowd an elixir, thought the incessant slogan, the orchestrated chant. Movement stopped. They faced drawn-up ranks of police and she saw them as a different species, beetle shelled.
‘You should be ashamed,’ she cried. She wanted to put her face up close, look into these young men and say the word that would turn them round.
Feet clattered and a huge breath blew out. The crowd contracted, lurched a dozen yards. She had the impression of a bite taken out, of some black creature displacing the people at her shoulder. Her arm was torn from Neil’s. A squad had charged from the side. Now a second came from in front. People fell around her. She was hurled back through them as though tumbling down rapids in a creek. A baton raked her side, another jabbed her thighs, and she made a whoof of terror at its penetrating head. A rush of protesters carried her down Molesworth Street. They were fragile, stunned, their unity gone. Ellie put her hands out and ran among the fugitives up Hill Street. She stopped outside the General Assembly Library and looked into the skirmishes on Molesworth Street. Neil had been torn away like paper.
‘Get out of here,’ someone yelled.
She went further up the hill, then drifted back. She wanted to go round the edges, pull him out of the battle, get him home. She stood under trees leaning over the footpath, wiped her mouth, tasted blood. She had no memory of hurting her face but felt her ribs stinging from the baton blow. The young policeman’s face returned – such shining intentional eyes. She was appalled that she had been nothing to him.
‘Get home, lady,’ a man said.
‘My husband’s in there.’
‘They’re not arresting. It’s best if everyone just goes home.’
She made her way up Hill Street to Tinakori Road, then went back. She could not leave him. Police outnumbered protesters, who walked among the uniformed men insubstantially. Further down, at Lambton Quay, the march was reforming. Amplified voices brayed, competing with each other. Ellie searched for Neil as darkness fell. She turned and went back to Tinakori Road, where people sat weeping on the kerb. Ellie started to run. Neil might be hurt somewhere. She had to be by the phone. John too – John might be home from his friend’s place. She had to stop him coming out into this blood and danger.
‘Ellie.’ Neil was walking up Bowen Street. ‘I couldn’t find you.’
They held each other close, turning in a circle. ‘Did you get hurt? Your mouth is bleeding.’
‘It’s nothing. I don’t remember … Neil, your head.’
‘Is it cut? I can’t feel blood.’
‘There’s a huge bruise. Let me look at your eyes. You’ve got concussion.’
‘No, I’m all right. Ellie, did you see? They can’t do that. They can’t just go charging into people. Jesus, we’re a police state. That fucking Muldoon.’
‘Neil –’
‘I’m going to every one of them now. Every bloody match. They can’t get away with this. Ellie …’
He turned and vomited into the gutter. Ellie held him. ‘I’m getting you home and into bed. Then I’m calling the doctor.’
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth. ‘I need some water.’
‘Come on home.’
He retched again, dribbling yellow slime from his mouth. ‘If you think this is bad, remember what those fucking Boers are doing to the blacks. There would have been bullets flying in Molesworth Street.’
She helped him home and made him lie on the bed. She wet a flannel and washed
his face, then felt the bruise behind his ear with her fingertips.
‘I’m phoning the doctor.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘What if you’ve got concussion, Neil?’
‘I haven’t. Anyway, no fascist thug is putting me in bed. Ellie, did you feel the groundswell in that crowd? I’ve never been in touch with that sort of thing. We’ve got to keep this protest going even if we lose.’
‘So you can feel?’
‘Shit, Ellie, no. Because it’s right and the tour is wrong. And something’s going rotten in New Zealand. Even if you didn’t find that out tonight, I did. I’m going up to Palmerston North on Saturday.’
‘No you’re not. You’re going to the British High Commissioner’s for lunch.’
Neil blinked. ‘Ah, yeah, that.’
‘Remember how important you said it was?’ She heard the sneer in her voice and did not like it but could not stop. ‘Career-wise?’
‘Shut up, Ellie.’
‘That’s some choice you’ve got to make, between yourself and you.’
‘Ellie –’
‘It’s going to be interesting to watch.’
‘Ellie, please –’
She snatched the flannel and held it to his mouth while he retched again. Later, contrite, she propped him up on pillows and brought him soup and toast; and when he woke in the night and placed his hand on her, she pushed him on his back and straddled him. His eyes grew huge, the way a woman’s might, she supposed. ‘Sshh,’ she whispered, ‘lie still, you’ve had a busy day.’
‘Ellie …’
‘No words.’
Oh, she thought, when they had finished, that was good. We were together; he was there. She wanted to keep him inside her but felt him loosen, so slid off.
Neil sighed. ‘I thought it was only bad girls who got on top.’
‘You thought a lot of things that were wrong.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
Their breathing slowed. Their warm sides seemed to melt into each other, crushing their clasped hands between. She began to doze.
‘Ellie?’
‘Mm?’
‘We’ll go to that lunch on Saturday. What I’ll do, I’ll just go to the tests. Is that all right?’
