Then I made a tremendous effort. I tore some pages out of the back of an exercise book and taught Wilma the diagram system, four chords and a simple practice routine. I explained it all very carefully and she seemed to dig. She had good hands. While I was doing this my mother looked in and smiled at us both.
I said, ‘Practise that, Wilma.’ And then, Lord save us, I fell asleep. Wilma woke me up about half an hour later and said she would have to go. I told her I had been playing the piano all night in a dance band.
‘Wilma, I’m awfully sorry about this. I really am. Now, have you got your chords? Next week, Wilma, I’ll be as fresh as a daisy.’
‘That’s all right, Mr Wood,’ she said. She looked a bit cheesed off.
‘I really am awfully sorry about dozing off, Wilma,’ I said. ‘You better not tell your folks about me dozing off like that. Crumbs, they’ll think I’m a great teacher if you tell them that.’
And then Wilma did something I shall never ever forget. She crossed herself and made that age-old pretence of cutting her throat with a finger. I was so relieved that I made the first big blue of the day. I reached over and tried to kiss her but she ducked underneath my arm and walked out the door. I followed her down the hall and said, or rather croaked, ‘Wilma,’ but she didn’t answer me so all I could do was let her out.
I felt ghastly. I was twenty-three years old and she was thirteen. Jail-bait and I was hooked. Nothing desperate had happened but she only had to blow it up a little to get me in real hot water. There was only one thing to do. I went back to the sideboard and poured myself a massive slug. Mum was still teaching in the front studio and I could have cut my throat.
Then the bell rang and I went down the long hall and opened the front door. There were two girls there. One was my blonde girl-friend who had been chasing me for eighteen months and the other was Wilma. I had no intention of marrying Dulcie because her family was downright common and she could swear like a bullock driver. I put on a big act. ‘Come on in, girls. Dulcie, Wilma, come on in.’
Dulcie said, ‘My God, do you have to wear an overcoat inside the house?’ Neither of them had stepped inside yet. Maybe my breath was like a barbed wire fence.
Wilma said, ‘Can I have my guitar please?’
‘Shucks, Wilma, fancy forgetting your guitar. Come on, we’ll get it now.’
So, keeping as steady as I could, I set off along the long hall. I went into the room where the grand piano was and there was the guitar propped against the keyboard. The case was on the floor beside the chair I had fallen asleep on.
Wilma walked so softly that I didn’t even know she was behind me. It wasn’t until I turned around with the guitar and stooped down to put it back in its case that I saw her black stockinged legs about two feet in front of my glazed eyes.
The lid of the case was open towards me which meant I was doing everything back to front. I put the guitar down on the floor while I turned the case around. Wilma crouched down and her gym frock rode up. Now I could see five or more inches of bare leg above the black stockings and tightest little pair of pants you ever saw in your life. They were like a snow-white handkerchief pulled into her crutch.
‘Jesus,’ I said huskily. ‘You got nice legs, Wilma.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wilma primly.
I reached out and ran my hand up the inside of her left leg. She stood up quickly. I shut up the case and fastened the clips, just numb fumbling. She took the handle of the guitar case and picked it up and I lurched upright.
My blonde twenty-year-old girl-friend, Dulcie, was standing in the doorway. She said, ‘I get the picture.’
Wilma couldn’t get past Dulcie and she said, ‘Can I leave, please? I’m late for tea.’ It was quite dark outside now.
Dulcie was so mad she didn’t budge. Wilma did the nicest thing since she crossed her heart and cut her throat. She squeezed past Dulcie, belting her to one side with the guitar case. Dulcie took a smack at her but she missed by nearly as much as I had done when I tried to kiss her.
‘I’m going to put you up for carnal knowledge,’ said Dulcie viciously. ‘You dirty, lecherous, rotten bastard.’
The front door slammed. Wilma had found her way out.
‘In your pyjamas and overcoat,’ Dulcie said. ‘You’re nothing but a ratbag.’
Deep inside me I felt I was doomed, but the Scotch reasserted itself to give me enough bravado to say, ‘What’s wrong with this overcoat? You liked it well enough when you had your bare bum on it beside my car the other night.’
I fished out my packet of cigarettes and there was only one left. I went over to the heater to light it. I had one eye on Dulcie in case she belted me over the skull. Just as I had my smoke going nicely she made a threatening twitch in my direction but I stood up fast and she knew how well I could fight, so she spun around and walked away. As she went down the hall she called out, ‘Ratbag.’
Poor old Mum came out of the front studio without knowing all the trouble there had been. Dulcie must have looked pretty grim but at least she had the good grace to say (or snarl), ‘Good night, Mrs Wood.’
I didn’t have to play for a dance that night so I went and got a new pack of smokes and headed for the sideboard.
I said I was off my tucker, which was nothing but the truth, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. Instead of undressing I just slumped down on the side of the bed and chain smoked.
Mum came into my bedroom and kissed me good night and said, ‘Well you had your first little pupil today.’ It would be an insult to the reader’s intelligence to describe what went through my mind when she said that.
‘Of course she’ll tell,’ I brooded and muttered. ‘A kid like that. She won’t be able to help it. I’ll just have to deny everything. The police’ll be here tomorrow. Even tonight. This’ll kill Mum.’
My mind went over the same track so often I thought I was going nuts. When the front doorbell did ring, although my heart missed a couple of beats, it was a relief.
There was the outline of a big guy in the front porch.
‘Mr Wood?’
‘Too late to hush it up now,’ the Scotch in me said, and I attempted a friendly smile.
‘I’m Wilma’s father.’
‘C’mon in.’ I opened the door wide and stood back. He came in. He was big sure enough; tall, broad and he had bushy eyebrows.
‘You know what Wilma tells me?’ he said. No smile.
I shook my head. It nearly fell off.
‘She left her guitar behind after her lesson.’
‘Holy smoke,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look.’
Sure enough the guitar was lying on the floor by the grand.
When I took it back to him, he said, ‘Can you imagine a girl being so dumb she didn’t know the difference between an empty case and a full one?’
I frowned, tucked my chin in on my Adam’s apple and made a clicking noise with my tongue. ‘Beats me.’
After we had said good night I did what those heroines in the old movies used to do. As soon as I had closed the door I put my back against it and leaned there with my eyes closed.
It was my big day for doing crazy things. Later on, in the dark, my bedroom, pyjamas, on my marrowbones, I offered up thanks to the mysterious Creator who, on reflection, by imbuing me with passion (and all of us, for that matter) and making us what we are, was the true culprit of the episode.
(1974)
Bill Manhire, ‘How to Take Off Your Clothes at the Picnic’
It is hardly sensuous, but having
Eaten all the cold meat and tomatoes
You forget to remove your trousers
And instead skip stones across the river
With some other man’s wife
Until, finally, the movement
Of a small wind, no larger
Than the reach of a finger
& thumb, makes it
Impossible, carefully lifting off
Every item of clothing.
Then you may s
hare an apple and watch
From your side of the river
Shoes & socks coming down
To rest on the other.
(1977)
Against the Softness of Woman
Rachel McAlpine, ‘Burning the Liberty Bodice’
OK
take off your clothes
stretch and see
how your body seems
just right
almost as if
it were made for you
your nails spring like leaves
and every goose bump sprouts
your trunk bends to the wind’s
drunken massage
and your scalp goes sky high
tossing like tussock
now you notice your thighs
softly bumping together
and how one lip lies
delicious on the other
in a lifelong kiss
stop
this is risky
better put on your clothes
(1979)
Lauris Edmond, ‘Latter Day Lysistrata’
It is late in the day of the world
and the evening paper tells of developed
ways of dying; five years ago we would not
have believed it. Now I sit on the grass
in fading afternoon light crumpling pages
and guessing at limits of shock, the point
of repudiation; my woman’s mind, taught
to sustain, to support, staggers at this
vast reversal. I can think only of
the little plump finches that come
trustingly into the garden, moving
to mysterious rhythms of seeds and
seasons; I have no way to conceive
the dark maelstrom where men may spin
in savage currents of power—is it
power?—and turn to stone, to steel,
no longer able to hear such small throats’
hopeful chirping nor see these tiny
domestic posturings, the pert shivering
of feathers. They know only the fire
in the mind that carries them down
and down in a wild and wrathful wind.
I do not know how else
the dream of any man on earth can be
‘destroy all life, leaving
buildings whole ….’
Let us weep for these men, for
ourselves, let us cry out as they bend
over their illustrious equations; let us
tell them the cruel truth of bodies,
skin’s velvet bloom, the scarlet of
bleeding. Let us show them the vulnerable
earth, the transparent light that slips
through slender birches falling over
small birds that sense in the minuscule
threads of their veins the pulses of
every creature—let these men breathe
the green fragrance of the leaves, here
in this gentle darkness let them convince me,
here explain their preposterous imaginings.
(1980)
Hilaire Kirkland, ‘Aubade’
No white and coppermolten sky
could scorch my limbs
like the dry furnace of your body,
this hour before morning.
I need no false dawn for vision—
my blinded flesh shouting
sways up and burns with yours,
and knows its slow familiar aching.
But wake and see poor girl.
Only sun warms your pillow
you are sheet-knotted and solitary
—and dawn came long ago.
(1981)
Jan Kemp, ‘Against the Softness of Woman’
Vagrant woman, pawn your piscean flood,
don’t wave your flower, keep your blood
dry as the gaze behind your eye;
let the resilient bitch rise
in the belly of your skies
& front it without your
usual vacillation:
you were born to fit him
to be his lay, his lie,
his way to run his way;
when he
has pared down his spare image,
don’t try to catch him
you’ll catch yourself—
don’t let the quick spring flow,
hide it behind; cut your
lip-service, your idolatry;
he has bared himself translucent
as the rings of honesty;
don’t be the dry pip between his petals,
he will spit you out.
When you are sunk tight on the pain,
let his singularity teach you;
soften your gall, it wanes thin
held in the light: transparency
holds no mystery. Become like him—
wear your other heart on your other sleeve,
keep this one boned down fine.
(1976)
Fleur Adcock, ‘Against Coupling’
I write in praise of the solitary act:
of not feeling a trespassing tongue
forced into one’s mouth, one’s breath
smothered, nipples crushed against the
ribcage, and that metallic tingling
in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve:
unpleasure. Just to avoid those eyes would help—
such eyes as a young girl draws life from,
listening to the vegetal
rustle within her, as his gaze
stirs polypal fronds in the obscure
sea-bed of her body, and her own eyes blur.
There is much to be said for abandoning
this no longer novel exercise—
for not ‘participating in
a total experience’—when
one feels like the lady in Leeds who
had seen The Sound of Music eighty-six times;
or more, perhaps, like the school drama mistress
producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream
for the seventh year running, with
yet another cast from 5B.
Pyramus and Thisbe are dead, but
the hole in the wall can still be troublesome.
I advise you, then, to embrace it without
encumbrance. No need to set the scene,
dress up (or undress), make speeches.
Five minutes of solitude are
enough—in the bath, or to fill
that gap between the Sunday papers and lunch.
(1971)
Fearful Ecologies
Ian Wedde, ‘Pathway to the Sea’
to A.R. Ammons
I started late summer-before-last
digging for a
field-tile drain
at the bottom of the garden
where below
topsoil that leached away
as fast as I mulched &
fed it was
a puggy clay
slick turning rainwater
frost dew snow sparrow-
piss & other seepage & drainage down
under an old shed
in the lower adjoining
section: here the water
bogged foundations & floorboards
till the whole crazy
edifice began to
settle sideways &
slide on greased clay
downward
taking a foul drain with it:
visions of ‘faecal matter’
bubbling up from clogged
overflow traps bothered
me & some
others too: it was time
to act! especially since
in addition to ordure getting
spread around &
putting its soft mouths in
deep cloacal
kisses to our
livers any obvious
breakdown in the system for
disposal of th
is shit
(our shit) would
bring the council inspectors round
like flies
aptly, & that would mean
they’d get to look at
other aspects of how
we choose to
live which might strike them as
unorthodox or even
illegal: for example there’s
lots being done round here
with demolition
timber, & that’s illegal, you gotta
use new timber,
citizen, the old stuff
which was once forests of kauri &
totara & rimu took oh
hundreds of years to get to
where it was when it was
milled, the houses it knit
together stood & with-
stood ‘better’ than the forests
I suppose: the timber
served, anyway, it
did that for whoever watched
the process through, &
now that the houses’re out
of phase much as the forests once
were, though like the
forests the fibre of the brittle
timber can still spring
& ring … anyhow,
now it’s time
to go, it has to be stamped down, splintered
by a dozer’s tracks & what’s
left of fibre knot
& resin has a match
put to
it: it goes ‘up
in smoke’—but round
here we hoard the stuff &
use it, it easily bends
nails, it splits & you
belt your thumb often enough
to know all about that
but the structures
stay put! & the inspectors
would say ‘Down
with them’—well down with
them!… I like the way you
have to compromise with brittle
demolition timber: what gets
built has bent the
builder as well as his
nails & nerves: he’s
learnt something about
service, the toughness of the
medium may have taught him
that ease is no grateful
index to dispensability
or availability: like
who wants a companion for
life or whatever span
you fancy (they’re all ‘for life’) who can’t
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 94