Nine

Ready?

Yes yes. Get on with it.

So when did you first meet Alice O’Leary?

After Ivy died I bached for a while but I got sick of it so I advertised. The New Zealand Farmer? The Listener? Can’t remember. Wanted. Housekeeper. Single man. Small southern holding. Usual sort of thing. I wasn’t too struck on Alice being American at first. Or that when I rang back and asked for a photo she said she couldn’t see why anyone would need a photo of a housekeeper and it was no go, so that was that. And then a day or so later she rang again and said was the position still available and she sounded so keen, well more desperate, if you know what I mean. And I liked her voice too; I’d never met an American, not even in the war, and there was a kind of swing you know, a sort of snap to it. Not ratty. I don’t mean that, but … You know pipe bands? Lots of them round here. You know the way the kilts sort of snap from side to side with the beat? Plaits do too when the girl runs or even walks fast. Ever noticed that?

(PAUSE)

Yes. Yes, I have.

Well, her voice had that. It wasn’t just the accent. Even though she was halfway bawling down the phone I could still hear the lilt and I thought that’s nice. I like that. So I said, Come on down and we’ll see and I’ll pay, and she did straight away and I met her in Dunedin with the dog truck same as you, though a different one of course. We’re talking sixty-nine now. Anyhow I took one look at her and I thought you’ll do me, and that was that.

She loved Central Otago. Right from the start she loved Central. Loved the bright air she called it. It was winter then same as now. Everything about it she loved except the wind, and who does? She said our wind is lazy. Can’t be bothered going round, goes straight through. She was a poet see.

Yes.

You know the first thing I noticed, well I suppose you usually do notice faces but this time it was the look, the lack of expression. Blank. Completely blank. Not prim or prissy or whatever. Just there; eyes, nose, mouth, nothing else. Like some sort of, I don’t know, zombie. Or traveller maybe. Not an ordinary traveller waiting for a train or just padding along, I don’t mean that, but I’d never seen a face, well more of an expression, like that. You know Mecca?

Yeah, I mean …

Suppose you got it all wrong? Suppose you were one of them and you’d got all the way to Mecca and it had taken you forever and every bean you had but that didn’t matter because it was worth it. But when you got there Mohammed wasn’t there. His tomb even. Well, not for you, that’s my point. Everyone else, all the other pilgrims, of course they’d found it, they had it forever but you’d lost it and now you knew you’d never get it. I’d say she was one of the most lost-looking ladies I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a hole punched in her when she arrived here, know what I mean?

Yes. Yes, I do.

What’s your name again?

Rob.

What was I saying?

Alice being lost.

Before that.

Mecca. Her arriving.

Yes. Her face told me right off. She was different.

Her loving the place was a help though. I taught her to ride and she caught on quick for someone her age and we’d head off up the back and all over. Day after day we’d be up and off. Anything, she said, anything to get outside. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper I’d have to say, but she could cook a roast. Chops was the other thing but no puddings. I missed them but there you are. She liked the dog work too. She had her own dog in the end. Tip. She trained him from scratch. I showed her of course but she caught on. She was over forty mind. That’s late for starting.

Forty-one.

Forty-one. How do you know?

I’ve looked it up.

Looked it up in what?

I’ve researched it.

Why?

Because I had to. I’m writing about your wife’s work. I’m trying to find out everything about her and her life to help me understand her work. There are so many … well, things don’t add up.

Such as?

Why did she stop writing?

She didn’t want to.

Why?

She didn’t say. Except it was gone. I remember that. I remember that because it was such an odd thing to say. She was always desperate to get outside like I said. When we were snowed in once she nearly went mad. When she was dying, well she wrote a bit then.

Where is it!

I burned them like she said.

(SILENCE)

Do you remember nothing about them? What they were. Poems? Prose?

Didn’t look. Burned them.

(PAUSE)

You’ve no idea at all?

I said. She told me to burn them.

Nnnnh. That’s very …

As long as she could get outside she was all right.

(LONG PAUSE)

Tell me about your marriage.

We never married. We had marital relations mind, after the first year, moved in together as man and wife. I was quite willing to marry her, wanted to in fact. I like to have things straight and I’d like to have had a child. Doris and Ivy never had any luck. I said you’re not too old and I’m certainly not, but she’d had an operation so that was that. Bad luck wasn’t it, but there you are.

An old Landfall article says she married in 1970.

Oh we told people that. But no, she wouldn’t have it.

Did she say why?

She said she’d been married once and it had been a living hell. Seen a picture of him?

Yes.

Right bastard wouldn’t you say. Eyes too close together. Pursed-up little duck’s arse of a mouth. Never have trusted those mouths.

I’ll tell you something. Once she said she had misbehaved, that was the word she used, misbehaved, and the next day when he went to the office he locked her inside and he did that for a week. And another time she ran away to her cousin and he sent the police for her and they delivered her back and he thanked them politely and took her inside and locked the door and thrashed her right there in the hall till she fell over, and then he stepped over her and went upstairs to bed.

Christ.

Yes. She described the pattern on the carpet. One of those old red and blue ones with squirls. She remembered the smell, she said. Hot dust. I believe her. I believe every word she said. She was completely straight. She hated the lie about being married, she didn’t want that either, but I drew the line at letting on about that. It’s a small place round here and things were different then.

She did get away from him once more, she told me. He went to England for some business trip and he took ill. Yes. I can’t remember what it was, I’d tell you if I did, but he was quite ill seemingly. But he was too mean to send for her and the last thing she wanted anyhow was to go over and sit by his bedside and be growled at day after day, and in the end he was away for months and it was wonderful, she said. (PAUSE) That’s what she said. Yes. Wonderful.

You remember every word.

Nothing wrong with my memory.

And you talked a lot, I gather. You must have.

Talk! You know she was the only one that talked, both of us talking sense and not just banging on. Doris and Ivy were two good women and I’ve never had dinner like it since, some of those blowouts, my word. But Alice, well Alice confided in me. Know what I mean?

Yes.

She trusted me see.

Yes.

And I trusted her.

Yes.

A lot of women just talk to women, but not Alice. We’d talk for hours, yarning away.

Did you read her books, Wil?

I have to say in all honesty, the first time round I flagged the last two away. I’ve never read a poem except Drake’s Drum and stuff at school, so that didn’t worry me, not liking hers, I mean. And I slogged on with her short stories but I’ve never seen much point in them where nothing much happens. And something did happen in her first two novels. In the Scroll one the girl gets away at the end, and The Hand of Time, well sure it’s sad them having to leave, but at least they’re doing something. You know how I’d describe them those first two? Sad. Very sad. But yes, I read them. I can’t say I enjoyed them but the people stayed in the mind.

But the last two I found tough. All those people and each one weirder than the last. A miserable pack of layabouts knocking their kids around and hating each other and whingeing and not doing anything. But I kept reading. I had to make myself, mind, especially All Fall Down. I read them. It took me a while, I don’t mind saying. Lying with Alice beside me telling me to stop because if I read them I’d find out about her and I’d hate her and she didn’t want that. Well, that made me keener if you really want to know, and I slogged on. Now I suppose I read them about twice a year, those last two. Not because of her being dead or anything but those people now, that pack of oddballs and nutcases, I know them better than most round here. If Nettie Rainer came in this room this moment I’d know her. Not from her daft clothes and her scraggle teeth, I don’t mean that. I’d know her because I know her in my head, the poor stupid cow. Not like her, maybe, but sort of give her the benefit of the doubt if you follow me.

Yes.

It’s easier to do that with books mind. Did I tell you about Alice’s voice?

Tell me.

She had the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard. I can hear it to this day. Mind you part of it was being American and the funny words but it had a sort of lilt, a snap to it.

How did she react to the frocks? I mean as a …

She didn’t go near them. I have to say that was a disappointment. I thought she’d take an interest somehow, but no.

Did she realise um … Well she must have got rid of some dresses in ten years. Had you sort of started, as it were? On hers?

She was a hoarder and I never kept things that weren’t in good shape. And in the natural course of events I would’ve passed away first being twenty years her senior, but no. Cancer. She was only in her fifties.

Yes. I’m sorry.

(PAUSE)

When she died I had her at home. I didn’t want her lying down there in Bob Gravely’s fridge. I had her home, in here as it happens. She was the only one I had home. And you know what, that very night I had to go and see the vicar. He’d been tied up all day and she didn’t want a religious service so there was a bit of sorting out to do, but he’s a decent cove … name’s gone … doesn’t matter. Anyhow he’s OK like I said and he’d promised to see me, but that meant I had to leave her almost as soon as she’d arrived home. You can imagine. But there was nothing else I could do. The vicar was going to fit me in after vestry as it was and I knew I had to get everything tied up that night and I couldn’t think what to do. About leaving her I mean. (PAUSE) Know what I did?

Tell me.

I found a couple of old white candles we’d had by us for power cuts and I put one in each of those enamel candle-holders with handles like the old days and I lit them and put one each end. Do you think that was OK?

I think that was inspired.

Good. I’ve never told anyone that. You don’t think it was daft?

No. (PAUSE) There’s something …

Yes?

You described her as lost, when she arrived in 1969. Did she tell you why she was so …?

(SILENCE)

No.

Didn’t you ask her?

No.

Not even later when you were …?

If she’d wanted me to know she would’ve told me, wouldn’t she?

But you mean you never had even the slightest idea? Didn’t you have a suspicion, a clue, the slightest glimpse of what had left her so shattered?

No.

Why not?

Because she didn’t tell me.

Oh, fuck.

Alice used to say that meant the truck won’t start.

Nothing wrong with your hearing.

Never has been.

Another thing.

Yes.

When did you take …? Oh forget it.

When did I take her frocks over?

Yes.

A few weeks after. Why’d you ask?

I don’t know.

You married?

I was.

What happened?

She died.

But you’re just a kid.

She was twenty.

Christ. What happened?

I …

Want to tell me about it?

(END OF TAPE)

 

They explored the diggings first. There was little wind and the frost had gone. Wil explained the machinery in some detail: the broken-down crushers, the remains of a sluice, an old race. The function of each half-buried, rusted hunk of metal was described in full. Robin, who was usually interested in industrial archeology but not today, did his best. He listened, he nodded, he bided his time. The grass was long and dry about their feet; elderberry trees and a few collapsed heaps of leafless climbing roses fell about nonexistent houses marked by an occasional slab of stone or the remains of a fireplace. Two tall brick chimneys weathered to pink stood some distance away beside a straggle of broken fence. It was difficult to avoid Ozy-mandias, easy to sentimentalise the lives of the men, women and children who had lived here. An existence which at best must have been rugged and at worst heartbreaking had become as picturesque as a churchyard with old-fashioned roses. Reality had gone for a burton.

‘Wil?’ said Rob as the truck slammed into action.

‘Yeah?’

‘Did your wife …?’

‘Alice, man, Alice.’

‘Alice. Did she bring any books with her when she came?’

‘One or two.’

‘I would’ve thought

‘She sent for the rest. She sent to America and they came later. Months it took. Months. You wouldn’t believe.’

‘And where are they?’

Wil looked at him. ‘I gave them to the bring-and-buy.’

A hare zigzagged across the road and dived for safety. Rob forced his voice down. ‘When was that?’

‘When she died. The vicar said the ladies couldn’t shift many of them but he was grateful for the thought.’

‘Do you know what happened to them?’

‘No idea.’

‘Weren’t there any work notebooks—any manuscripts, anything?’ He was begging again, whining for scraps. ‘Things connected with her writing, anything, any piece of paper? I’d be grateful for anything.’

Wil stopped the truck. ‘Here we are. She’s a bit stiff this one, from memory. Might have to heave her up a bit.’

Rob lifted the gate into the paddock in front of the cemetery. There were two more larks, more sky than ever and peace for miles. He tried to remember later, struggled to visualise what it was that had stunned him about the place. He could think only of silence and a light breeze on his face and the plain below. There had been a church somewhere: a small church nearby as they walked across the paddock of dry grass.

The burial ground was square and empty of visitors; there were headstones, white pebbles, overgrown mounds, the occasional crooked or broken memorial and dead or live flowers in jam jars. All the usual appurtenances of death and remembrance were present. None of which had anything to do with his reaction to the place, his sense of liberation, of soaring release. Nothing to do either with the conviction that this was the only place in the whole world where any man or woman in his or her right mind would care to dump their carcase. He had never thought of burial until Lisa died. Maureen had begged for cremation as Lisa had hated being shut in her room worse than anything in the world when she was tiny, and please oh please Rob, and what did it matter anyway.

It was not that he wished to lie here. Quite the reverse. It was just the conviction that this was a good place. He walked to the fence beyond a couple of macrocarpas. The cliffs of the escarpment fell away sharply to the dissolving plain below; the faint lift of air moved his hair, his hands lifted.

‘We’ve been climbing see,’ said Wil. ‘You probably didn’t notice but we’ve been climbing since we left home.’

‘No, no, I hadn’t.’

‘This is the foothills of the Rock and Pillar.’

‘Oh.’

Wil was swinging away to the right. ‘Alice’s over here. This way’

‘Good place, Wil,’ he said.

‘Why?’

Robin shook his head in defeat, his eyes on the headstone above the mottled gravel centred by three crimson china roses below glass.

Alice Amy Hughes
1928–1979
Beloved Third Wife of Wilfred Quentin Hughes
Not lost but gone before

Rob felt his mouth opening and closing. Third wife of widowed husband. Second runner-up to Ivy.

This was the final resting place, this the epitaph of a woman who could freeze your gut and make you see. A woman whose characters knew that the trick is to survive, to expect nothing, to endure. To shut up and get on with it. Sometimes even to laugh because the world loveth a cheerful sufferer wouldn’t you say.

Rob’s rage was dry in his mouth. He concentrated on the gravel on the grave below him. Fish, he remembered, don’t like their gravel too light. It dazzles them.

‘Why didn’t you say she was a writer? A wonderful writer. A writer that … It hasn’t even got her own name!’

‘She didn’t want it,’ said Wil.

And that I will not believe either.

 

He would like to talk to Emmeline. He would like to talk to her now.

 

Rob climbed back into the truck. Judgement was required, dispassionate critical analysis of the evidence available. Prejudging was out. It was no use leaping onto the wrong horse and cantering off into some subjective sociological liberated bloody sunset. Think man, think—‘… in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.’ Alice might have asked for nothing else. Cancer gives you time to decide. It was conceivable. But why?

They drove in silence for a few minutes, but time was short.

‘There’s something else I’d like to ask you, Wil.’

A quick hooded glance.

‘Did Alice ever tell you why she was so unhappy when she rang the first time? When she first arrived?’

‘You asked me that before.’

So you were lying. Oh shit.

‘When she wanted to get outside all the time?’

‘She always wanted to get outside. She was an outside girl like … like what’s her name?’

The worry on the face beside him, the searching hands.

‘Shara.’

‘Shara, like I said. Shara’s an outdoor girl. Likes to be outside.’

His anger for Alice was now combined with numbness. He stretched his legs, lifted his behind, thought of the grass stirring at the edge of the cliff. In the summer there would be butterflies—small New Zealand Blues teasing wildflowers of the same colour, dipping above clovers and vetch. Possibly a Small Black Mountain. A Tussock.

He tried again.

‘You never asked her?’

This glance was hostile, the voice from dog control. ‘What d’you think I am?’

‘I just wondered.’

It would be a flowering field in the summer. He would tell Emmie. Show her. Show her as he had meant to show Lisa. Yes.

‘Going to be a corker of a frost again tonight,’ said Wil. ‘A black one I shouldn’t wonder.’

 

He was right. They stood at the farm gate next morning waiting for Rob’s teed-up lift to arrive. The ground was iron beneath a black frost, the plain stamped flatter than ever below the weight of the sky, the freezing air. Their breath was solid, came in chunks. Word bites.

‘You’ll say Hi to Shara for me. And thanks.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ Wil fished in his pocket. ‘You can have this if you like. I made a copy at the time.’ The message was brief.

                                                  Long Creek,

                                                  Patearoa,

                                                  Otago.

                                                  May 17th

Miss Bowman‚

     My wife died yesterday. She asked me to let you know.

            Wilfred Q. Hughes

‘I’ve seen this before‚’ said Rob.

The eyes snapped back. ‘How?’

‘My research. I’ve seen the original. But I’d like this. I’d like this very much if that’s OK.’

‘Keep the bloody thing.’

‘Would you mind telling me …?’

‘I don’t know do I? Not till you’ve asked.’

Doug would be here in a moment, burning down the road in a Holden with roo bars. ‘Why did you write to Miss Bowman?’

‘Alice said to.’

‘Did Miss Bowman answer?’

Carved from ice the word huffed back. ‘No.’

At the sight of the car Rob lifted his bag, his voice gentle. Very gentle indeed. There was plenty of time. ‘Why did you keep a copy, Wil?’

The blue eyes glared. ‘I’ll tell you why. I kept a copy because I wanted a record. A record of every word, every single last word I’d ever said to the bitch. Got that?’ He was waving, stamping about as the Holden slowed. ‘Come on. Here he is. G’day, Doug. Get in man, get in.’

The handshake was a quick clench; the bugger was on his way. One hand slapped the side of the car. The face above was stern, the arm raised from the elbow in wooden dismissal. ‘Late already. Late. Off you go.’

Doug was not a talker and disliked the Pigroot. They went the other way.

‘We passed that Mazda at Middlemarch,’ he said and little more. He drove fast and well and the power lines looped and slid beside them and the rain started and changed from sleet to drizzle to great splattering drops as they approached the route to the airport which was signposted with small painted aircraft for extra clarity of information, or perhaps for the benefit of non-English speakers, for those dependent on visual images such as the stylised signs depicting gravid female figures with suitcases which now lined the route to the maternity wing in Capital Health, Wellington. They had been installed since Calvin’s birth after the regrettable incident of a prima gravida in a confused Laser.

The signs looked to him like pick-up points for bulbous women awaiting holiday transportation but you always see what you’re looking for.

Doug was going to pick up his wife who was due home on the two-fifteen flight from Christchurch after seeing the twins, so it had all worked out quite well and Rob needn’t give it a thought. Any time.

 

Rob sat at the airport with a pad on his briefcase making notes. Rough What-the-hell’s-going-on notes. Let’s-clear-the-head notes. Lists of questions asked, lists of discrepancies, lists labelled Do. Thoughts on Where-we-are-at which seemed pretty much nowhere. He liked lists, they comforted him. Emmeline had told him once that if she had achieved something which had not been on her list she had been known to put it on so she could cross it off. He had laughed loudly.

So what had he learned. Bugger all. Wilfred Q. Hughes had loved Alice O’Leary. Or had he. Wilfred Hughes was an honest man. Or was he. Alice O’Leary had not wanted any mention of her work, not even her birth name to be recorded. Or had she. Yet what would be the point of Wilfred mentioning her former life when she had been happy to flag it away while she lived with him for ten years and loved the place and the dogs, and, from the sound of it, the man himself and his bed to boot.

And Wil seemed interested enough in her work, he thought, busy with his fine point and his paper and his confusing evidence. Proud even. Alice, it appeared, had not given a damn about posterity. Not, presumably, from a Christian death-of-the-temporal-and-spirit-to-the-Lord ‘perspective’, but merely because it didn’t matter. She knew she could do it. Or perhaps she had not given a damn, period. An interesting woman. He had always thought so.

His visit to Central had made the waters even muddier. Not a word written while Alice had lived in Central and not a glimmer of explanation as to why not. And Wilfred’s sudden unexpected last-moment outburst against the good, the forthright, the gallant Miss Candida Bowman.

Rob leaned back, closed his eyes. He had been aware of the alternative explanation from the start, of course, conscious of the kneejerk answer. It all added up did it not, the wretched marriage, the cryptic inscriptions in the books, the ‘He is dead’ letter, followed by the lilac and the weeping woman and the bird hide and the desolation.

OK—so Alice was a lesbian given the push by Candida Bowman. A feasible explanation perhaps, but his heart sank at the analysis involved. The thought of R. Dromgoole searching for clues in such a minefield was disheartening. The baying of those entitled filled him with gloom.

And anyway he did not believe it. Alice’s usual imagery was of grief, loss, despair; her sexual metaphors were often clumsy if not faintly embarrassing in so sharp a writer; locked doors, wrong keys, impaled specimens were bathetic images for sexual passion. It did not add up.

He disliked the other quick-fix answer even more. The ‘buried in the Antipodes ergo death of the spirit’ myth had always infuriated him, but then it would, wouldn’t it. Damn and blast and bloody hell. Alice O’Leary continued to fan dance before him, teasing his mind with alternatives. The seven veils he thought, sourly turning a page of his workbook, would have been more illuminating.

She was also shaky on affirmative feminist rhetoric.

No woman has yet wet her pillow for her sister’s grief.

She was a mean woman. Even the passings of her wind were counted.

No. Not a good choice for Suffrage Year by and large in this day and age. Not one to be dialogued with at the cusp of sisterhood.

He piled his notes together and headed for the plane.

*

The man in the window-seat wore a fringed silver-studded jacket and came from Balclutha. The tip of his tongue protruded slightly as he copied recipes from his friend’s Quick Cuisine. He had only got it for two days and the photocopier at work was on the blink so he had to snatch any chance he could get. Did Robin cook?

Yes, he had been very interested in food, still was as a matter of fact, but not as much. He found that nowadays …

‘Any qualifications?’

‘No.’

‘Never get anywhere without qualifications. Got your own knives?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not an amateur then?’

‘No but I …’

‘Got to be one or the other,’ said the man licking his finger and turning to Sauces.

The old man on the aisle side was having problems with his slab of cheese. Muttering and snarling to himself he attacked the plastic-entrapped treat from various angles. Periodically he put it back on his tray and glanced casually out the window for a few moments before pouncing again with shaking hands.

‘Can I help?’

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ The tweed leaned close, stunned by expertise as Robin ripped. ‘Never get into the damn things. Never. My wife used to do them for me but she passed away last year. Thank you. Thank you.’

The landing was smooth. The old was met by the not-so-young. Explanations were made. Hands shaken. Mussolini had banished handshakes in Italy but Italian men can hug. My boy Harold dropped Robin off at the theatre which was kind, and there were seats available for Hedda Gabler.

He sat there waiting for his love. Emmeline ran on, her frock skin-tight to the waist then puffed and gathered and full to the ankles. He sat smiling, smiling fatuously as she demonstrated speed and languor, insolence and energy, frustration, boredom and delight in malignity with the assistance of one or two others. The shot at the end did not surprise him. He had been expecting it and could now go and see her. He rose to his feet still smiling and groped for his parka.

‘Honestly,’ said the voice behind him. ‘Why’d they set it then? Did you know any girl in our day who knew how to even shoot a gun? Let alone have them in the house.’

‘Hi, Cara,’ he said.

‘Robin! Didn’t you think that was awful? What’d you think?’ Cara’s mouth was working; pink lips glistened beneath a flicking tongue. She had to know.

‘I liked it. I liked it very much.’

She was blocking his way, attempting marital support from a tall man beside her as people streamed around them. ‘Alistair went to sleep, didn’t you, Al?’

‘No,’ said the man, ‘I didn’t.’

‘This is Alistair. This is Robin Dromgoole, yes, Dromgoole. He was my very first tutor. In ’92.’

Hi. Hullo. Accompanied by handshakes and Robin’s impatience. Emmeline didn’t know he was here. She might have to rush off. Where was Calvin? He hadn’t asked, he should have asked, he could have minded Calvin, would have liked to have minded Calvin except he would not have been here to do so and Emmie had been hacked off with him and his whole body was aching with longing to see her, to be there, to focus his attention on Emmeline and go home with her and Shut up, shut up for God’s sake you mindless mouthing face.

‘Excuse me,’ he said edging towards the stage.

‘There’s something. Just a tiny thing if you’ve got a moment,’ begged Cara. She must have been good-looking once. Still was in an anxious sort of way. He laid a hand on her arm.

‘What about tomorrow? I’m just on my way to …’

‘Such a tiny thing. Yes, yes, Al, you get the car. It’s American literature. It won’t take a moment but I need your advice. I really want to do American lit next year if I pass this year of course, but I’m worried about Moby Dick.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find Moby Dick too much of a problem, Cara.’ He put a hand beneath each arm and lifted her bodily out of the way like a milk crate. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said.

‘It’s the whales‚’ she cried, her waves of concern chasing him as he ran.

He knew where to go. He had picked up Calvin once or twice in the past when the backup system had failed. He ran round backstage calling her name, shouldered his way past half-dressed men and women and nicotine and heat and the scent of flowers none of which he had sent. People were sweating, kissing, mopping, removing greasepaint and unwinding all over the place. An older woman in towelling and furry slippers sat in a corner reading Death Comes to the Archbishop. He seized a man with flashing glasses and a beard. ‘Emmie,’ he said. ‘Where’s Emmeline?’

‘Around, darl. Mind my glass. Around.’

‘Emmie!’ he yelled.

She was beside him, both hands tugging at a blonde wig. ‘I can’t think why he wanted her blonde,’ she muttered.

‘Nor can I and you were marvellous. Amazing, wonderful.’

She bent over, her hair falling as she scratched. ‘They itch like stink,’ she said slowly righting herself to grab a brush. She paused in mid-sweep, her head on one side.

‘You’ve seen it? Just now? What’d you think of the production?’

She was wearing a different kimono from her one at home. Not a kimono at all, a black silk thing with dragons hung loose from her shoulders. He recognised her knickers, dismissed the production. ‘It was you, Emmie.’ He was offering her treats with open hands. ‘You’ve got to come down south with me next time. Promise.’

‘I can’t. Of course I can’t.’ She turned to the mirror above the spilt powder and the tubes and the sticks and the mess and the flowers and the cards from others. There was an artificial sunflower, orchids, a Gary Larson good luck moose joke from Murray. Murray. Mrs Elvsted was cleaning off make-up alongside, hands slapping and wiping and slapping again. She was smoking at the same time, removing the smouldering cigarette periodically with quick spiv fingers for ash removal, slipping it back into the grease-laden mouth, squinting through smoke and slapping some more. It all looked quite difficult. ‘Shit‚’ she murmured gently as ash met cold cream. There was no air. Emmeline’s brush strokes were angry tugs, not a sweep in sight. ‘How could I?’ she snapped.

‘I’ve found the most marvellous place for us to be buried.’

She put down the pink cushioned brush and looked at him.

‘We’ll take Calvin. That goes without saying. In August, right?’

‘Nutter,’ said Emmie and slipped out of dragons.

 

Cara was waiting for him after his Sylvia Plath tutorial. She had laid aside her memsahib neutrals for the day. She stood four square in front of him in a scarlet tracksuit demanding advice on a good book about the Sumerians as she couldn’t work out where they came in, nothing too complicated, one of those charts would do even, and also which did Robin think was the best Maori dictionary? She had an old one but there seemed to be better ones about now and she hoped Robin had given some thought to her enquiry about Moby Dick. It was the attitude of the book. She fingered the Save the Whales badge on her chest in explanation. What should she do? She was keen to do American lit, she liked the look of all the rest of it, but he must see her point. Could she perhaps leave that one out? Well, she’d have to wouldn’t she, but would this mean she’d be seriously disadvantaged and she was sorry if she had been a nuisance last night but she had had no idea he was in such a rush and Alistair had left the parking lights on again and frankly the whole evening had been a disaster; and as for those guns, the very thought of them made her cross all over again. Not the guns obviously, but setting it then. She knew she’d scarcely seen him since Stage One but her course adviser was so, well, you know, and Robin had always been so kind.

Robin’s mind was elsewhere. It was still humming along last night’s lines of communication, sweeping across open country, lingering and swooping and backtracking for miles.

He dragged it back. Had Cara considered New Zealand literature as an alternative?

Oh yes, of course she would do that later, but the thing was she’d read most of the ones on the list already and what she wanted was to extend her horizons. To have to study things she might otherwise never have met up with, if he saw what she meant.

Yes.

Buck-passing was in order. The best thing would be for Cara to consult the Professor in charge of the American literature course.

Fingers touched her mouth. ‘Oooh.’

Rob heaved on his pack, attempted to conceal smugness. ‘It is the only solution in the circumstances,’ he smiled. ‘Good luck.’

‘Robin,’ called Anne laden with replacement telephones. ‘There’s a phone message. Your mother-in-law wants you to go round some time.’

And when did you last see your mother-in-law. ‘Oh. Oh thanks.’

 

Maureen answered the back door, her face crumpled. She had lost her piping foot.

He took her in his arms, pressed her soft warm bulk against his, kissed her hair which was all that was available. Her face was tucked deep between his chest and arm for comfort. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find it.’

She lifted her face. ‘And that’s not all.’ One hand was moving, massaging invisible oils into the back of the other one, her eyes were wet. ‘It’s all such a worry.’

‘Let’s find the piping foot first.’

The piping foot often disappeared. He knew it well, had retrieved it from beneath the sofa, from under the scraps, from deep in the wastepaper basket and, one triumphant day, from inside the refrigerator.

‘I’ve looked everywhere,’ she moaned. ‘Everywhere.’

He followed her into the lounge. He had noticed before how stooped she had become but today was worse; her back was bent in despair. He had thought, had hoped, had been almost sure that she was ‘getting better’. She was back in her old routine she had told him recently, and yes please, she’d love to see the Van Gogh film. She had loved the book with his pictures in the library. As long as Robin didn’t think it would be too sad. And she was having people in occasionally again, though not often of course because of the time.

When she woke up in the morning was still the worst but now what she did was get straight up and get out the bike and go for a ride along the foreshore which helped, and it gave her a good early start as well. Yes. Did Robin find getting out early helped?

He agreed. He went for a run he said. He was about to say every morning but remembered this was not so.

The Bernina was pulsing once more, lengths were being transformed. She was out checking back views once more which she hadn’t had the heart for till recently. And covering a bridal coathanger in the same fabric for her favourites, though not many. ‘Some of them‚’ she said darkly, ‘wouldn’t have a clue.’

So what had happened to cause this relapse, this sodden imploding.

He found the piping foot beneath a tangle of bobbins in one of the chocolate boxes. She couldn’t understand it; she had looked there just a minute ago. Thank you. Thank you. She reached out a frantic hand for Betty and held her tight.

‘She’s got a new frock,’ he said hopelessly.

It didn’t help. He sat beside her and hugged her, hugged both of them. ‘It’s all such a worry,’ she said again.

‘Tell me.’

‘Oh Rob, oh Rob.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s Murray,’ she said.

Oh God. ‘Murray?’

‘The thing is, the thing is.’ Her head was swinging from side to side. ‘Emmie’s lent him all this money see.’

‘But why are you worried? That’s her business. Emmie told me about the money. She wants to lend some to him. It’s her money. No problem.’

The head stopped swinging. She was crying now, silently and tidily. No mess, no fuss.

‘You don’t understand. It’s not that.’

‘Then tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

They sat in silence for a minute, Betty’s rigid toes boring into his groin.

Maureen was now mopping up. She straightened, bonged her face with tissues, blew her nose hard and turned to him. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I think I can tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone else. Not to another living soul I couldn’t. Not even to Lisa. Especially Lisa. No.’

Her arms tightened around Betty at the enormity of her confession. ‘I’m scared he won’t give it back,’ she whispered. ‘Oh Rob, oh Robbie, I’m that terrified.’

Tears flowed again. ‘And it’s that awful, it’s that awful of me. How could I think such a thing, let alone say it? His own mother who loves him. Who’d die for him though I know people just say that. But you know, Rob. You know it’s true, same as Lisa.’

‘Yes.’

‘So how can I? How can I think such an awful thing? I try and try. All night I try. But … He wouldn’t mean to. I don’t mean that, not for a minute but he might forget or …’ The damp despairing pain above the rictus of Betty’s smile was too much. Rob sat holding her in silence while she begged him for an answer.

‘Oh Rob, he will, won’t he? I can’t say anything to him, how can I? What could I say? He’s that happy down there in Dunedin, well of course he is and if I said … Oh Rob, promise me he’ll pay it back later. He will, won’t he?’

My friend. My gallant old boot.

‘Of course he will,’ he cried flinging back his head to laugh. ‘Hell’s fangs, matey, if that’s all that’s worrying you.’ He clapped his hands together for the fun of it. ‘Time we went to see your Van Gogh. What about next week? We’ll go early, have tea afterwards. There’s a Satay Something next door. What d’you say?’

‘That’d be nice. But if he doesn’t, what will I do.’

‘But only if you promise to forget such a daft idea.’

Her smile was watery. Damp but present. ‘Oh Rob,’ she said.

 

Van Gogh was an unfortunate choice. Maureen sat bundled beside him in stoic silence as the bleak images flowed before them. There were no sunflowers. The rain poured down on dark huddled figures and sad streets. The camera work was excellent.

She leaned towards him, touched his arm. ‘Terrible weather,’ she whispered.

He nodded, blinking, and took her hand.

 

They walked up the concrete beside the fence which was still holding its own, still hanging on by a thread though it had seen better days and was on its last legs and he still hadn’t fixed it.

‘I’ll have a look at it in the weekend. We’ll have a look, I promise.’ She looked at him, her face a paler smudge of grey beneath her woolly hat.

‘That’d be nice, dear.’

He kissed her goodbye at the back door. Held her at arms’ length to tell her. ‘There’s something …’ he said.

‘Yes dear?’

‘I’ve been seeing a bit of Emmie lately,’ he blurted. ‘I mean …’

She stood silent for a moment, her eyes on her hands, her fingers twisting her ring.

‘Emmie’s a nice girl,’ she said. ‘I’ve always liked Emmie.’

He hugged her, held her tight.

‘There’s just one thing,’ she said. ‘Later if … you know, if you don’t …’ She paused. ‘No, not now. I’ll say it later. It’s too soon.’

‘Tell me now.’

She touched his hand. ‘No. No. Later.’