The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature

by Jane Stafford

  No. One in about two hundred looks okay, but they’re the ones who don’t like blowing up in front of the visitors. When they get on their own they go it hammer and tongs to make up for lost time.

  Had an uncle and aunt who reckoned they never had rows, said Jack.

  They’re either liars or they’ve got no guts, said Sam with certainty. Couples bitching at each other is human nature and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except remember the times when things are going smooth and forget about the rows. Money’s the cause of most of it. Either there’s too much or not enough. I reckon if you found a couple who had no moneytrouble you’d be pretty close to a happy marriage. But I’ve never come across it.

  If you ever want to take on a woman you’ve got to decide whether it’s going to be worth it if she can’t take the knocks and starts bitching at you. It’s no good trying them out first because they can keep it up longer than you can. You’ll run into married blokes who say they’re pleased enough with life. But me, I’d sooner go to bed with a wet dog and cook me own tucker. The price of the smell of a roast dinner is too high for me.

  Jack looked across at Sam and wondered what had happened to make him so bitter about women. He refrained from pursuing the subject and a few minutes later the old happy Sam was telling him how Uncle Wally’s draught horses bolted through the road gate with the chain-harrows and galloped along the main street of Papakura with a whole swarm of wasps stinging hell out of them.

  (1961)

  Jean Watson, from Stand in the Rain

  1

  Once Auckland seemed a long way from Wellington and a year seemed a long time.

  It’s long ago now since the innocence of first loving and the hesitance of first knowing.

  The situation appears, in retrospect, to have started when Paul and I went there for Easter. We rode up from Wellington on Paul’s motorbike that I’d paid half the deposit for. Abungus heard we were in town and came straight round to get us to stay at their place.

  I say appears to have started because you can never be sure. Before we are born, I suppose, it is all decided.

  There was that torn-apart Sunday when Dell, supported by Jack and his trailer, came and took everything of hers from the house and left saying she would never come back.

  I don’t know what caused the quarrel between her and Abungus. In those days I was very unobservant about people and their relationships with one another, especially marriage relationships. I didn’t know or think much.

  We’d been at her parents’ place on Saturday night and when Abungus said, ‘We’ll push off now,’ Dell wouldn’t budge. We thought it was just that she’d got a ride home, until we saw and felt how angry she was.

  She said good morning to Paul and me, ignored Abungus, and directed Jack to start carrying her furniture out to the open trailer hitched on the back of his car. Paul and I went out on the verandah.

  I looked sideways at Paul and caught him laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody no good,’ he said.

  ‘Meaning what? I can’t see any good in it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, being a woman. With her out of the road him and me can do things, go all over the place. We get on all right, us two. We clicked, just like that.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what about the baby?’

  ‘It’ll give her something to do.’

  ‘People who love each other shouldn’t split up. I think your whole attitude’s horrible.’

  ‘What a lot of crap you talk. A bloke like him’ll be better off without a wife round his neck.’ He looked at me. ‘But how the hell would you know? You’re a woman. You like to see a man tied down.’

  Probably if Paul hadn’t annoyed me so much by saying those things I wouldn’t have put my foot in it by speaking to Dell. She was in the kitchen taking plates out of the cupboard. I’d always been a bit in awe of Dell, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the dignified righteous way her skirt would swish and rustle when she walked about a room. Maybe the way her blonde hair was always done up and the light would shine on it.

  ‘Don’t go, please, Dell. He really does love you.’

  ‘Like hell he does.’

  ‘You can see. He was awfully worried when you wouldn’t come back with us last night.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘He married you, didn’t he? That shows he loves you.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘It must have taken a bit of courage to get married, being the sort of man he is, so he must.’

  ‘What’s wrong with me that it takes courage to marry me, that’s what I’d like to know?’ Dell said.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was ….’

  She had emptied all the drawers and cupboards. ‘These boxes are ready, Jack,’ she said, turning her back on me.

  ‘A fine mate you turned out to be,’ Abungus said to Jack outside.

  ‘Not my fault,’ he said.

  There are always other people to help a relationship break up, unwittingly most of the time. If none of us had been there it mightn’t have happened.

  The sound of the departing car died away leaving a tense speechless feeling in the air.

  Abungus, sitting on the kitchen sofa, picked up the guitar and started to play goodbye songs.

  If you must go, I’ll let you go and God bless you ….

  In the naive dramatisation of his broken-up feeling, in the tone of his voice, well, that’s when, in his grief, I recognised something of myself.

  All the rest of that day, sitting at the kitchen table while I made cups of tea, Paul and Abungus made great plans to be free and happy without women: they would go possum-trapping, deer-stalking in the South Island, or maybe even get a whitebait trench down on the West Coast, or do a ringbolt on a ship somewhere. And I was quiet and blamed myself for not going off with Dell. Perhaps if she hadn’t seemed so right I would have, perhaps if she’d cried ….

  During the late afternoon Abungus said, ‘We’ll go and get the old woman and the gear back.’

  We were surprised after all his talk.

  ‘If she’ll come,’ said Paul doubtfully.

  Paul and I should never have gone no matter how much he persuaded us. But we did go. Nothing can alter the ‘what-really-happened’ of these experiences, however much I may make subtle alterations to my memories to put me in a more favourable light when telling friends. Sometimes I forget the actuality and remember only those little revisions of my own.

  We waited for him outside in the Model A. It was coming on dark and the lights were shining through Jack’s wall-sized windows. We could see the angry shadows on the curtains. Well after dark when the street lights had been put on he came out to the truck.

  ‘I’ll get you to sign this,’ he said, showing us a piece of paper torn from an exercise book. ‘It’s a note saying she promises never to do me for maintenance. I’ve got to have it signed by witnesses.’

  I don’t know whether he believed it would ever be taken seriously but we signed it anyway.

  ‘No go?’ said Paul.

  ‘No. At least I know where I stand now.’

  ‘Can’t you arrange to think it over for a while?’ I said.

  ‘That’s no good to me. Either she loves a man or she don’t. I told her to get on the back of the truck and come home right now or she needn’t bother.’

  ‘You couldn’t expect her to come back if you say that sort of thing.’ I was annoyed with him. ‘You’ve only made it worse. Why didn’t you speak nicely to her?’

  ‘I’m not crawling to any woman.’

  ‘Saying truthfully that you want her back isn’t crawling. You do want her, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought I did.’

  ‘You’ll get along better on your own,’ Paul said.

  ‘A stupid thing to say.’ I was angry with Paul too.

  ‘Too late now,’ Paul said.

  ‘I know what! We’ll take Sarah back to Wellington and t
hen we’ll go on to the South Island,’ said Abungus. There was an atmosphere of hysterical elation about him.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ Paul was pleased.

  ‘We’ll load the gear and go tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘What’s wrong with tonight?’ said Paul.

  ‘Dell may have cooled down by tomorrow or in a few days,’ I said. ‘She might go back and wonder where he was. It might be better to wait a day or so.’

  ‘Well, if she does we won’t be there. That’s for sure,’ said Abungus.

  ‘We’ll have to get the stub axle fixed, though,’ Paul said.

  ‘There’ll be someone open or someone we can knock up.’

  The stub axle had been broken for days. I don’t know whether they’d patched it up to go on with or what, I’m not even sure what a stub axle is, only that it is something important in a car.

  Loading up the gear at the house didn’t take long. Paul had only what was in his pockets, except for the motorbike and Abungus said not to worry he’d write and ask one of his mates to pick it up. I had only a small pack and Abungus chose to take just his rifles, guitar, ammo, and a plastic chess set with the hollow men filled with plasticine.

  ‘We’ll play chess in those coffee bars like you see people do,’ he said.

  In case Dell did come back he wrote a note to put on the kitchen table: ‘Please don’t follow me or try to find me.’

  A pathetic touch of the dramatic; people in books left that sort of note. Not that I mean he was acting, just following what he believed to be the standard pattern of behaviour.

  A cold dark night and the stub axle broken, puffs of air from the motor warmed our feet and we had a blanket, we didn’t belong anywhere, we weren’t real people, not like those living behind curtains in the lighted windows we were passing. But we were going somewhere so that was all right, it didn’t matter.

  It was lucky that we found someone working late in a garage in Papakura and he fixed the stub axle, only a temporary job but safer than it was.

  ‘My wife’s mother’s just died and we’ve got to be in Wellington for the funeral tomorrow.’

  Then when we got going the lights started to pack up and we had to keep stopping so Abungus could adjust the wires in the motor.

  ‘We’ll get a complete overhaul in Putaruru,’ Abungus said. ‘There’s a relation of mine living there. Cousin Johnny’s the best mechanic for miles, fix anything. We’ll stay there the night.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know us.’

  ‘What’s that matter? My friends are his friends and his friends are my friends.’

  ‘It’s pretty late. They might be in bed.’

  ‘They won’t mind. I’m always welcome, so are any friends of mine.’

  I was studying stage one psychology at Vic. that year, so I could be a psychologist in years to come. The year before I got halfway through stage one English at Auckland University to help with my writing, but the man I was in love with left me and I had to hitch-hike all round the country to get over it.

  I was in Wellington working at the tobacco factory in Petone when the new year term started at Vic. so I borrowed ten pounds off a friend for fees and books and enrolled to do psychology. Then I met Paul and he talked about us going to find gold in South America and making a lot of money. I couldn’t think which would be best in the long run, but now that Paul was going off with Abungus, well I would just keep on at University.

  It was one or two in the morning when we arrived at Cousin Johnny’s. They were asleep so we crept in to the kitchen and lay in a row on the floor under a blanket, whispering and laughing and dozing off and on till daybreak when Sandra, getting up to cook Cousin Johnny’s breakfast, found us and gave us a cup of tea.

  When the children got up we flaked in their beds till lunchtime, and afterwards Abungus and Paul took the Model A down to Cousin Johnny’s shop. I stayed talking to Sandra.

  It was well after six before they returned with Cousin Johnny, some of his mates and several dozen of beer.

  ‘Is the truck fixed?’ I asked Abungus.

  ‘Good as new. Came home in it. Been working on it flat out the whole afternoon,’ said Cousin Johnny.

  ‘You don’t say.’ Sandra sounded suspicious.

  ‘Well, there’s a few bits and pieces to finish off tomorrow,’ Abungus said. ‘Nothing to worry about, though.’

  ‘They’ve been stuck in the pub all afternoon,’ Sandra said to me.

  ‘I like that. A bloody joker works hard ….’

  ‘Works hard leaning on the bar so it won’t fall over.’ Sandra nearly always spoke with a half-smile so that you never knew if she was really cross or not.

  ‘Have a beer, Mrs Johnny,’ said Dick, one of the mates, in a let’s-forget-it tone of voice.

  Very few drinking men that I’ve met rely on bottle-openers. They flick the top off with a bread knife or with the edge of the top of another full bottle. So bottle tops flew round the room and Sandra brought out glasses.

  ‘Don’t bother about those,’ said Dick. ‘We can drink out of the bottle. Save you washing up.’

  ‘Think I’m lazy or something?’ said Sandra.

  The evening meal was secondary to the beer and the jokes. ‘We’ll eat when we’re hungry,’ said Cousin Johnny.

  Apparently Abungus and Cousin Johnny had always been very close. Seeing each other was always an occasion for a party. Cousin Johnny was good on the squeeze box and Abungus had his guitar so we all sang.

  I watched Abungus a lot that night, and kept recognising bits of myself in him. I wondered, with a sudden longing that I was only partly aware of, how Dell could bring herself to leave a man who loved her enough to suffer over her so poignantly and who could play the guitar like a Maori. The loose ends of the guitar strings dangled carelessly round the tuning keys.

  Abungus’s hair was a curly tangle and much too long. He sang rude words to popular songs, swore and told jokes, while Paul hovered possessively round his chair. Cousin Johnny and the others listened and let him do all the entertaining. I couldn’t help feeling a little angry because it seemed callous to laugh at him clowning so desperately.

  But I was young then. And I don’t know what else I could have expected them to do.

  It wasn’t much of a party. Cousin Johnny and Sandra went to bed early and the mates went home. Abungus flaked out and half slipped off his chair in the middle of some slow maudlin song. Paul and I carefully took the chair away and lowered him to the floor. He swore at us in his sleep.

  ‘He’s had it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Paul vindictively.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I do so.’

  ‘Y’don’t. Women don’t know what a man goes through. I understand how he feels. I’ve been through it myself.’

  ‘There’s no need to go crook at me about it.’

  ‘You don’t know. You can’t help it. Just go back to your tea parties and arty talk and forget about us two.’

  ‘I know what’s biting you, anyway. Silly with the booze, that’s your trouble.’

  I was hurt at the way Paul spoke to me. I couldn’t think what had made him turn against me like that. We kept on arguing for what seemed hours and then Abungus woke up saying, ‘Where’s Sarah?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Come on, Sarah, Paul, we’re going to Wellington.’

  He started wandering round the room, his boots clumping heavily. ‘Let’s get the gear loaded up.’ He stopped near the door, supporting himself against the wall. ‘Sarah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bring the chessmen and the guitar.’

  ‘Why not wait till morning?’

  ‘Yes, better wait till the morning,’ Paul said. ‘Your Cousin Johnny’ll be offended if we just frig off without saying goodbye.’

  ‘Besides, the truck isn’t fixed yet.’

  ‘No. We’ll go now.’

  �
�Why?’

  ‘I want to get out of this place. I don’t want to be sitting here like a joey if she comes back.’

  I think we both realised then that it was all in his sleep.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t muck about.’

  We hurried after him, stumbling over the wheel ruts in the dark, to where the Model A was parked.

  ‘We’ll have to stop him, Paul.’

  But we climbed in as he got the truck started and just sat there as it moved slowly down the slope over the bumps. ‘We’re going to Wellington.’

  ‘What say we stop at Cousin Johnny’s?’ I said loudly.

  ‘That’s an idea. Good old Cousin Johnny.’

  ‘Hey, we’ve just passed his place. You’ll have to turn round.’

  ‘We’ll back up.’

  He managed to get the truck into reverse and backed slowly up the hill, then stopped with a bump.

  ‘We’ll just bunk down on the floor till morning.’

  And so we were safe on the kitchen floor again. Abungus went straight into a deep sleep. Paul and I settled ourselves one on each side of him in case he should wander off again. It was nearly Sandra’s getting-up time and I didn’t get any proper sleep till she and Cousin Johnny did get up and carried Abungus and Paul through to their bed. I got in the other end and flaked straight away.

  Abungus didn’t remember anything when he woke up.

  ‘You walked in your sleep last night,’ I told him.

  ‘Come off it.’

  ‘You did so. Didn’t he, Paul? You thought you were still in Auckland and you wanted to go to Wellington.’

  ‘Did I say anything?’

  ‘Nothing much. But you drove the truck down to the gate and then all the way back.’

  ‘You having me on?’

  ‘No. Don’t you remember any of it?’

  ‘A bloody joker must be going loopey,’ he said.

  Later Sandra and I talked him into writing a letter to Dell. As soon as the truck was fixed we would be on our way again.

  I went in with them to Cousin Johnny’s shop as we were to leave straight from there.

  The afternoon sun was pale and there was a subdued frostiness in the air. I sat on a concrete wall outside while they worked on the truck.