by Lloyd Jones
He told her how much and this time she laid down her knife and fork and got up to take her plate across to the sink.
‘Don’t say anything, Marie,’ said my father. ‘I only mentioned it because you should know.’
‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’
‘If we can afford to build a house out at Brighton we can afford to help out a friend with new teeth,’ he said.
My mother’s silence irritated my father more than anything she might have said.
‘The world has a strange tilt on it these days,’ he said. He stabbed angrily at a piece of potato but had not the heart for it, and threw down his fork.
‘Damn it, Marie. You’ve seen his teeth. The man can hardly eat. Jellies. Milk. It’s all he’s up to. His whole bloody mouth will fall out unless something is done about it.’
‘You didn’t hear me say no, did you?’
‘Oh no. Oh no,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to say anything.’
‘No,’ my mother said, looking right back. ‘I didn’t. And I’d like to think that’s something for you to think about.’
Several days after the argument over Mr Reardon’s teeth we found ourselves in Ormonds waiting in the usual booth for Mr Windly to turn up. My mother took out a hand mirror and checked herself over. She patted her hair. She said casually, ‘I don’t think you need to mention this visit to your father, Harry.’ She looked at her watch. It was unlike Mr Windly to be late. She was thinking to leave him a note when he came in the door, shiny-faced, and full of apologies. He undid his coat and removed his hat and scarf before dropping into the booth.
‘You look agitated, Marie,’ he said. ‘Agitated, but still beautiful.’
She smiled weakly, and waited until the waitress put down our tray and left, before leaning across to say, ‘Now Ross is buying him new teeth.’
Mr Windly raised his eyebrows. He sat back, and I was sure I caught him sneak a look down at his wristwatch.
‘No, wait. I haven’t explained it properly,’ said my mother.
‘No, no,’ said Mr Windly. ‘I just wasn’t expecting to hear about teeth.’ He drew himself into the subject and asked why Dad hadn’t just taken Mr Reardon to hospital.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know. There was some reason. His jaw’s infected. I don’t know, Dave. Talking about it now makes me wonder if I’m overreacting. Do you think I sound like a shrew?’ Mr Windly picked up his teaspoon and stirred. ‘Anyway, it’s not just the teeth. Ross has outlaid left, right and centre. Rent. Electricity. Furniture. Kitchen stuff. Food. Our savings, Dave. What are we supposed to build out at Brighton with? Ross is just dipping in to support someone I never knew before. He’s not even a relative. He just came here out of the blue.’
‘Ross has a heart at least. I’ll give him that much,’ said Mr Windly.
‘So you think it’s me. I’m the one who’s being mean.’
‘Marie.’ Mr Windly reached over and rubbed her hand.
This time my mother didn’t take her hand away. She smiled down at the table, then kind of floated up to him, and said, ‘Dave, you should try to meet someone.’
‘I have,’ he said, and my mother waggled her head happily.
‘I meant someone else. It’s not too late, you know. A man like you. You should have children of your own.’
Mr Windly glanced around. As usual there was just the three of us in Ormonds at this hour. ‘You remember the German fellow whose cigarette case I took? Well, he had a girl and two boys. There was a photo of them. The youngest was sitting in a swing. Sweet young thing. What do you reckon, Marie? Is he the winner here?’
My mother thought for a bit then answered in a slow, measured way. ‘Not necessarily. Not yet,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
Mr Reardon was recovering from the job on his teeth, and after dinner I went around to Montreal Street with my father to bring him soups that my mother had made.
Propped up with pillows, he listened to the radio Dad had given him. That’s the first thing we heard out on the porch while Dad turned the key in the door. We tiptoed up the hall, my father calling ahead of us, ‘Oi, Sonny?’ In the entrance of the door we looked in the darkened bedroom where Mr Reardon lay like a dying monk. In the corner of the room the radio purred with orchestral sound. Dad whistled. Mr Reardon opened his eyes and raised a hand to his aching jaw. Dad dissolved some aspirin in a glass of water and helped Mr Reardon into a sitting position. My father looked back over his shoulder. ‘Harry, how about tackling the dishes?’ So I went out to the poky kitchen. Out the back the upstairs tenant was pegging out some washing. Rain began to fall and she slapped her hands on her hips. She didn’t know I was at the window watching her. I finished the dishes and went out to Mr Reardon’s sitting room. The walls were pinned with sketches he’d done on his travels since he left Manapouri. These were sketches of the people he had lived among. Shearers. Men in narrow singlets smoking and playing cards. Fence posts and straining fence wire. Smokers. Sun-filled days. Years filled with wind and rain. Sun again. Shearing quarters. Frying pans layered with rancid bacon fat. Maori laughter.
My father came in. He looked at the couch he’d bought Mr Reardon, and with his eyes measured the doorway. ‘Give us a hand with it, Harry.’ Together we got the couch through the door into the bedroom. Mr Reardon’s eyelids were closed; he was back to being the dead monk, and Dad pulled the blanket up over his chest to his chin.
‘Come on, I’ll run you home, Harry.’
My father stayed there that night. He returned home the next day to collect some things, his shaver and some shirts. He spent the next four days at Mr Reardon’s. At home my mother made dinner in silence. She hardly spoke except to say it was time for bed. She asked me to take something for my father around to Mr Reardon’s. I knew where the key was kept and I let myself in. I could hear Mr Reardon in the toilet and it occurred to me that I could get in and out of there without his knowing if I was quick. I went through to the bedroom. Pinned to the wall was a sketch of my father sitting on the couch, a blanket drawn up over him, smoking a cigarette and smiling back at the artist. The room smelt of sleep. The yellow light in the wireless beep-beeped and the news announcer came on. One of Dad’s shirts hung off the back of the couch. It was like a scene from home. Only it wasn’t home.
Soon Mr Reardon was well enough to get up and look after himself and my father came home. That year Mr Reardon got a job at the Burnside abattoirs. On Sundays he came round for lunch. My mother made the lunch and set the table as if she was doing it for strangers. Dad tried to coax her out of her buttoned-up self. She said so little. Mr Reardon sat at the table grinning. Dad shrugged, and poured him a beer and Mr Reardon tossed his head back. He closed his eyes and for the time it took him to swallow it seemed he had left us for a place where he didn’t have to try so hard.
I shut up about things which would have given my mother fresh cause for concern. She didn’t know about those other times Dad met with Mr Reardon or his habit of turning up during our cricket matches. She didn’t know about our walks in the park with Mr Reardon. She couldn’t imagine what I saw one time after running ahead; I stopped to look back and was struck by the intimacy of their togetherness, the way their shoulders touched when they walked, my father with his hands in his pockets, Mr Reardon drawing a grass blade between his teeth, deep in thought. When my father glanced up it was clear that he had forgotten I was there. He looked at me for a brief moment. Then he called me over. He dug in his pocket to give me some money for an ice-cream. As I went to take the money he closed his hand.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Your mother will go off pop if she finds out you had ice-cream before dinner.’
‘I won’t tell her,’ I said, and smiling he opened his hand.
He called after me, ‘Take your time; there’s no hurry. And watch the traffic.’
I crossed Riccarton Road to the dairy and bought an orange-ripple con
e. On my way back I would have run into my mother had I not looked up in time. My father and Mr Reardon were off in another direction, sitting on a bench, and my mother had just spotted them. They didn’t know she had seen them and my mother didn’t know that I had seen her. It was an unpleasant feeling. It felt like we were all trespassing on one another. I left the park to make a wide arc so that everyone would see me coming and there would be no surprises, although my mother was gone by the time I approached my father and Mr Reardon.
The silences at home lengthened. My mother withdrew deeper into herself. It was as though she too had entered into the fabric of the secret and that she also had something to protect.
One Sunday morning she made a final effort to get through to my father. I say ‘final’ even though at the time I had no idea that it would prove to be the case.
‘I thought we could do something different today,’ she said. Since it was Sunday morning that meant passing up the regular Sunday lunch with Mr Reardon. I could see that same thought cross my father’s mind but he was determined to show a cool hand.
‘Such as?’ he asked.
‘I was thinking about the Port Hills. I haven’t been up there for donkey’s years.’ She stood by, waiting for my father to object. She said, ‘I was thinking we could take a picnic up there. Just the two of us. Harry can play at a friend’s.’
‘I can go to Michael Bevan’s,’ I said.
My father closed his eyes. He didn’t have to say anything.
‘Well, why not?’ asked my mother.
‘Marie, you know why.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Christ, Marie, what do we normally do on a Sunday?’
‘That’s my point. Just for once let’s do something different.’
My mother went and stood behind him, hoping. For a brief moment it looked like my father would relent.
‘No. I can’t,’ he said in the end. ‘You know I can’t.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s the one high point in his week.’
‘Then disappoint him,’ said my mother. She took her hands off my father’s shoulders, and waited.
‘Marie,’ he said. ‘Where’s this coming from?’ My mother took a deep breath. She looked up at the ceiling. She wiped away a tear. Hearing that, my father turned around and took hold of her. ‘Marie, what is this? What’s going on here?’ My mother closed her eyes. She swayed in his hands. ‘Eh? I can’t hear what you’re thinking, Marie.’ Then he said, ‘He’s a mate. I can’t just let him down.’
‘Let me be your mate. Just this once.’
My father didn’t know what to say to that.
‘I feel so alone,’ my mother said then.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ said my father.
‘Yes. You are here.’
‘Yes is right. My god, Marie.’ He acted like he had just been given a fright. He looked around for me then. ‘Your mother had me worried for a moment, Harry.’
‘All the same,’ said my mother. ‘I think I’ll take Harry up to the Port Hills.’
It meant that my father would have to make lunch but he knew better than to complain.
I hadn’t walked along the Port Hills for years, not since Dad was away, and my mother reminded me of our favourite places. This rock. That patch of grass. I sat in a cockpit of rock and grass, my mother beside me. The wind made it like we were flying. My mother had to keep flicking her hair from her face.
‘You can say anything. Whatever comes into your head, Harry. You’re allowed to up here,’ she said.
‘Well?’ she said a moment later.
‘Nothing much. I wasn’t thinking of anything.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ She smiled, like it was okay, and immediately I thought back to that scene of my mother staring across the field to my father and Mr Reardon.
‘You quite sure you haven’t anything to say, Harry?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
There were cyclists out on the road. Walkers. Families carrying blankets and flasks. The bus that had brought us up here passed with a new load of faces at the windows. We walked around two cars with smoking radiators. I felt my mother sneaking sidelong glances at me, waiting for me to say something. A hawk silently glided on the tops. To fill in the silence I started reciting the names of cars that passed us by. I knew them all. That one is an Austin Healey. This one a Morris. Now a Ford Zephyr. I kept on until my mother recognised one. Its blue-and-cream paint. Squarish windscreen.
‘That’s an Austin Cambridge,’ I said, and to my surprise the driver pulled over. My mother bent in the window. She turned around and I saw she was relaxed and happy. ‘Harry, look who’s here. Mr Windly’s invited us back to his house for a drink.’
The seats were firm. The leather smelt like new. I was secretly pleased we had run into Mr Windly. I felt like sitting, and it was a nice change to see my mother smiling and laughing on the road down the Cashmere side of the Port Hills. I looked out the window at the new housing. The clay still showed through the newly sown grass. We turned down a concrete drive and my mother gave a gasp at the monster house at the end of it. ‘My god,’ she said, and her reaction seemed to please Mr Windly.
The garage was under the house. This was the first time I had seen an arrangement like that, and we rose up a short flight of steps to inside the house. We bounced in there with birthday smiles, Mr Windly limping after us, holding the handrail for support. Everything smelt new. The carpets. The wallpaper gleamed. We tiptoed and whispered at the back of Mr Windly as he gave us a tour. We stopped outside the doors of two bedrooms and we peered in at the immaculate bedspreads. It didn’t look like anyone had ever disturbed them. In the kitchen Mr Windly threw open the cupboards and the fridge for my mother to inspect. The best was last. The living room opened to a vast window, the biggest I had ever seen, which looked over town and the plains beyond. It was the same view I had seen from my rock-and-grass cockpit. When I turned around Mr Windly was smiling back at me. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and he led the way to his billiard room.
‘What do you know about this game, Harry?’
‘Billiards. Nothing,’ I said.
‘Or snooker. I prefer snooker myself.’
My mother presented herself in the door and smiled with admiration. ‘This is so beautiful, Dave.’
‘Isn’t it just? Get yourself a cue, Harry.’ He said to my mother, ‘We can have that drink after if that suits you.’
‘It does.’
Mr Windly limped over to a shelf and picked up a blue chalk cube. ‘Chalk up, Harry,’ he said. ‘Most people only put it on after they miss. No one ever wants to blame themself for an error made.’ I watched him set himself and draw his cue back. ‘The idea is to hit through. Hit with confidence, I always say, or not at all.’
Mr Windly talked his way around the table. ‘In this game you have to be patient, Harry. You bide your time until the other bloke comes unstuck. Then you progress through the colours. Yellow. Green. Brown. Blue. Pink. Black.’ My mother ventured in from the door and folded her arms to watch Mr Windly pot the colours. He played his next shot and my mother laughed. Mr Windly shook his head and wondered how he could have snookered himself. ‘Look what I’ve done here, Harry. Hairbreadth from that pot of gold and I go and snooker myself.’ He walked around the table surveying the position from every available angle. The pink obstructed a clean shot at the blue. The white, pink and blue sat in a straight line, the first two balls casting a shadow. ‘What a situation. What am I to do, Harry?’ I had a feeling he knew exactly what to do and that he was just humouring me. He shook his head and tsk-tsked. ‘Normally, you ask yourself, why didn’t I see it coming? You think, if only this, that and the other had happened …’ I looked over at my mother. She had lost her smile but she was listening intently to what Mr Windly had to say. ‘There is a solution, however,’ he said, and I noticed my mother step closer to the table while Mr Windly went on with his explaining. ‘There is a practical appr
oach and there is an imaginative approach. The practical man will play it safe, minimise his losses. He doesn’t want to hit pink and give up six when he’s only looking at four.’
We watched Mr Windly settle down to the practical man’s stance. He set himself to play the safe stroke. His elbow went back with the cue then he pulled out of the shot. He dropped his trailing leg and straightened up. He asked me to pass the chalk. He said to my mother, ‘For the imaginative man the prize is obscured but not out of reach.’ My mother caught me looking at her and waved my interest off. She was blushing, though, and I was so caught up wondering about this that I almost missed Mr Windly’s amazing shot. Without fuss, without even taking time to calculate the angle, he settled and drew a bead on the white ball and hit through. The white hit the cushion and nipped back behind the pink to collect the blue and deliver it to the side pocket.
My mother applauded and Mr Windly, cool as you-know-what, took a bow. He handed me his cue to put on the rack. ‘I’m going to make your mother that drink I promised. I expect you will want to get in some practice.’
‘Be careful of the felt, Harry,’ my mother said.
‘Oh, I’m not worried about that,’ said Mr Windly. ‘He’s got a nice action on him.’
‘Don’t tell him that,’ said my mother. ‘It’ll swell his head.’
‘Some it might,’ said Mr Windly.
I spent the rest of the afternoon knocking balls into the pockets. I tried over and over to bounce the white off the cushion like I’d seen Mr Windly do but without the same luck. I peeked through the door a few times. Mum and Mr Windly were in big comfortable armchairs pushed up to the window. I didn’t want to interrupt them or to give Mr Windly the idea I was through with snooker, so I kept on knocking balls around the table until Mum came and got me. She said to Mr Windly, ‘I think you’ve introduced him to a bad habit.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ answered Mr Windly. He bowed his head and lit a cigarette.
‘I hope he won’t be smoking next.’
‘Nope,’ said Mr Windly, shaking his head as he exhaled. ‘He can ruin himself on his own.’