by Alan Duff
She felt eyes on her and looked up to a man staring close to hatred at her. She asked Simon if he knew him and was informed he was just a horse groomer and not worth bothering about. Though clearly Simon was bothered.
Polly said, I’m not, but stared the man down. Just a worker who wants someone he perceives as even lesser to look down on. (Mistake, Mister. No one looks down on me. Not when I was a Heke growing up in that hellhole. And most certainly not when I learned Charlie Bennett’s superior form of assertiveness. That’s why I proudly bear his surname. Charlie taught his step-children about never allowing anyone to look down on us. Got us off this poor-us minority Maoris nonsense. He’d say, so it’s harder for you — so what? Someone’s got to have the harder route. Someone has to be a minority.
A woman came up and introduced herself as a good friend of Simon’s. Do you mind if I join you? Sure, Polly would be delighted. The woman winked and said, Rather than sit listening to my husband hold court, talking about who else but himself. It was an interesting introduction and soon they were chatting easily.
The polo game began. Polly heard three, four conversations at once around her, in between taking in the rather unexciting polo match.
But the horses transfixed her.
Polly had never seen them this close. Their impossible extension of nostrils, big enough to give birth from, snorting out violent expulsions of air. Their rolling eyes, the stark whiteness of eyeball. Veins were stucco-ed along each huge handsome head, flesh and skin a thin layer over sculpted skull. Smooth coats were sheened with vitality and sweat. The thundering weight was carried by big slabs of hind-quarter muscle, yet lower legs were so light. Chests were fully swollen, muscle strips pulsed and flexed, shadow lines of slender leg-bone that surely must break under this suffering, of being turned — yanked more like it — this way that way, stopped on a dime, galloped furiously.
Yet, throughout, each animal held its own proud countenance, there was something about them, the leaping, flying, side-to-side mane. The twisting, rein-wrenched necks of straining sinew, the beauty of galloping glide, unicorns for a brief time, riding the skies, not torn-up turf, before an audience of six or seven dozen. Hooves like curved blades sliced the earth, sending grassy clumps flying. Tails shortened in plaited bob made them like self-invited animal members to human aristocracy.
Polly’s companion explained there were eight horses, four to a side. The match was divided into six time periods of seven minutes apiece called chukkas. Each player, she said, had five spare horses, plus his starting mount, to change at every chukka break.
Players’ tops soaked dark with sweat, which poured down their faces, and up closer you could see the big veins in their hands, mapped on powerful forearms (the better to hold you with, my dear Polls).
There was half an encirclement of horse floats (like wagons in a self-protective circle in old Wild West days, Polly figuring the Indians were the Maoris). Tethered horses waited their turn to be used next to a sea of four-wheel drive vehicles, Range Rovers and more than a Merc or two, with BMWs edging every other make out. Smoke was wisping from several barbecues, tended by apron-wearing women smartly turned out, even when cooking meat over raw flame. Standards. (They keep the standards up, which ensures order. From order you can build, make anything you desire, you can, Polly Heke.)
The old surname, Heke, a deliberate reference to a past she never ever wanted to know, a name long discarded, disavowed, but could hardly forget. Though she was long over Jake and what kind of man he was, she knew he had changed for the better. Too many sources said he had for it not to be true. But as a reference he helped maintain her resolves never to know any of that life. Never to have any of that godforsaken outlook.
Here the contrast to her past was like another planet. The men were smartly dressed, not over the top, but turned out in chequered shirts, tweed jackets, smart trousers and moleskins, a sort of loose uniform. She could easily adjust to the more formal social mores. Easily. (I’ll adjust to whatever it takes.)
Simon wasn’t so formal, though he might have rejected that aspect of his upbringing since every age becomes a dinosaur. Like living together out of wedlock was an issue to his parents’ generation but not worth even mentioning to this. Like seeing him as her new friend, her current lover, Polly disliked it being said he was her new man — he isn’t a car you own, he’s a person you’re interacting with, deciding if you’ll take the relationship further or not. (I think I will.)
Her new friend, out on that paddock pounded to beaten dirt, under a hard-surfaced cloth hat, tight-fitting riding pants, high leather boots, sweat-sodden shirt on a sweaty steed, chasing after a white ball, wheeling his horse this way and that, one hand holding a readied mallet to strike the ball, ultimately, into a goal. Simon’s side was ahead.
Not only had she not seen horses this close before but she’d not seen this class so close either (tribe, Polls, it’s just another tribe, only better dressed, of higher behavioural standards). By their accents they definitely had boarding-school backgrounds. The women — wives and girlfriends and sure to be the odd sneaky mistress or two, younger up and comers — to Polly’s eyes gave off varying degrees of sex, even if some didn’t know it. (Men cry, die and buy for it, gals. I’m sure most of you know that.) Though Polly didn’t see her sexual power as a trade. She just knew what it reduced men to. (Have my own share of going weak at the knees for it.)
The children, like the well-groomed horses, were so nicely dressed, with clean shiny hair, such good teeth. Polly had made a discovery a couple of years ago from a girlfriend at work, that the middle-class sent their children to orthodontists who, for quite a large sum, ensured they become adults with perfect teeth. When Polly was told this, she felt cheated. Even though her own teeth were perfect. What if they hadn’t been? What happens to those whose parents deny, or can’t afford orthodontal treatment? Lower self-esteem? And from that weaker base, do they make life decisions that might be materially different simply for one’s teeth not being properly cared for?
A man stood up not far from her. Polly knew the face, she was taken by surprise. Trambert. Gordon, that’s right. Distinguished, mid-fifties, the country gentleman. (Whose property my sister took her own life on.)
So this was Gordon Trambert up close; my mother used to talk about you as if you had the perfect life and we had the opposite. And now I’m nearer to you socially, you may even get to speak my name — in praise, of course.
Polly resolved she’d introduce herself the next time she saw him. Then she caught the withering eyes of a woman, who did not look away when Polly returned her stare with a small smile and unblinking eyes (whatever it takes).
The woman blinked first, but not before her rouged lips pulled back in a flicker of sneer and tore off her veneer of superficial beauty. Stripped herself of her own class. Whatever it takes, lady.
Simon had just scored a goal. Polly wanted to get to her feet to cheer, but it seemed they didn’t do that sort of thing. Now wondering if she’d been impulsive, just blown away by first impressions, in wanting to be one of this lot, if on her own terms. Forgetting that there might be a cultural and, yes, racial gap too wide to cross. Or maybe they’re not being inhibited, it’s self-control. (Civilised, Polly deary. It’s called being civilised.) It’s why brown folk keep getting into trouble and keep failing at everything, if they even make the effort in the first place. They’re too spontaneous, cuzzies. Too immediate. You want instant gratification. Hungry, fill your stomach immediately. Get money, spend it. Goals and ambitions, who needs them? Sad, you cry. Happy, you roll about laughing. Angry, you lash out. Drink to get written off. Drunk, you beat people up. Get killed in fights, car crashes, die early from abusing your body. You never get it that it could be so much better, so much fun and challenge, if you could know self-control.
But I’m a Kiwi, we’re meant to be egalitarian. My behaviour shouldn’t be monitored by what others think. So she pumped the air and cheered freely. Well done, Simon! Way to go!
And maybe the woman (bitch) below did give another withering stare, except Polly wouldn’t know, she was too happy enjoying the moment. (I’m telling you, world, you’re Polly’s oyster.)
She couldn’t wait for the drinks and barbecue, to express, impress and quietly impose herself. (A bit of my way, a bit of yours.) Whatever it takes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIFE’S SUCH A DRAG
HE WAS DREAMING about drowning. Not himself, but this group of kids who were happily swimming in a flat sea with low rolling surf and next a huge wave was racing towards them and they didn’t see it.
He was screaming for them to get the hell out of the water, but the monstrous wave was drowning out his voice and then it got them. They were gone. They were just flailing limbs and crying heads in an unbelievably powerful onslaught of water, then it crashed at the foot of a high cliff he was standing on and sent furious foaming water up as if trying to claim him as well.
A child’s arm flung up and landed at his feet. He kicked it away but its fingers grabbed desperately for his bare feet. And it could speak. It begged him to please save at least his arm so he’d not be completely gone before his time.
Alistair said, What do you mean before your time? Your time is your time, pal. If your number’s been called, then it’s called. He was only assertive in his dreams and more with kids. Alistair in the dream kicked away at the grasping fingers, aghast that they were cold. Go away. Piss off. Even though he felt kind of bad talking like that to a poor little drowned kid’s only remaining arm. But what the hell?
The arm slipped back over the cliff. He watched it plummet to the now roiling sea. It became a full human being again on its way down. With a face pleading Alistair he must save it. Look at me, now I am back together again! Am I not worth saving? I’m just a child. Weren’t you once a child? Weren’t you drowning once? Didn’t someone save you?
With that Alistair woke. Damn dream. The kid said someone had saved him, Alistair Trambert — since when? Who saved me? (I’m still waiting.) So why was he so disturbed by the dream? What time was it anyway? Stuff the kid, it was only a dumb dream.
The time was on his watch, if he could be bothered to pull his arm out from under the blankets and look. But he couldn’t be stuffed. Too tired. Didn’t know why. Been like this for some time now, maybe a year or more. Maybe two, even three years. Like I’ve been living in this haze. Walking in a mist that weighed me down every leaden step. No reason to feel like this, not really. Life hasn’t been that bad. (Oh, yes it has.) Feeling a wave of self-pity come over him, that other, shrill voice in his head: yes, life has been hard for you! A different kind of hard to what others might know. But pain was pain. My pain has every right to be like everyone else’s pain.
So he reached out for Kayla. (Kayla? Need you, hon.) But she was an empty cold space on a sheet he knew was dirty. Curtains were closed but light enough to see the room was more than a mess — he could hear his mother describing in disgust — an indescribable hovel. Alistair, how could you live like this? Because I do, mother. I am living like this. I am, therefore I am — messy. Hahahaha. (Where the hell are you, Kayla? I need you, man. Your loving, what it does for me. Me.)
But after many minutes of going back to that still-troubling dream (you poor little sod, I would’ve saved you if it was real. I want you to know that, kid. To know I would have saved your life if you were real and not a weird talking arm changed back to a full human being. Alistair would have saved you) and no sound of Kayla and no cooking smell to say she was making him breakfast — more like lunch if a man’s sleeping habits were the call — he was prompted to make the effort to lift his arm out and see what the time was.
Three minutes past noon. So, he’d been sleeping — how long’ve I been sleeping? — twelve hours. Around about that. And sober, too. Only because they’d run out of money and people to (use) borrow from. How have I got like this, fallen this far? (Don’t worry, Father, who instilled in me all financial responsibility and honour. Your turn is coming. You’re going down in a screaming, public heap of financial scandal. Your luck and lies will run out eventually, unless your inherited land runs out first. Then you’ll find out what it’s like down here. On Struggle Street, they call it.)
Asking himself if struggle meant no fault of your own. Or was struggle unto itself demanding, or implying only that someone else fix it?
Not the first time Alistair Trambert had asked himself that question. Nor the first time he’d said to himself: Right, that’s enough. Going to do something about it — about me. Now. Well, soon. (Like later. Another day, when I’m feeling better about myself. Shortly. In the nearer future a little further off from immediate or tomorrow. Certainly not today.)
The hell are you, Kayla? (Wanna bury myself in you, my refuge place. When I’m not taking refuge in long hours of sleep, my what’s-the-use life.)
Kayla! Calling out for her. Getting angry she was not there for him. Feeling like a kind of betrayal, her immediate absence. Hurt welled up and mixed with self-pity. That self-pity. But fighting against going there. Not there, man. Don’t go there, Al. It’s too dark. You get lost in there.
Kayla? You in the bathroom, sweetheart? Calling her what his father called his mother. But Alistair knew his had a different tone, his was always loaded, with irritation or selfish want. So the sweetheart wasn’t life, a father’s son, repeating itself. It was just a young man struggling to come to terms with himself and life calling out (and on) to a woman that he needed her, without saying as such.
Sometimes, in hearing himself call out to Kayla in that whining tone, he’d get a picture of his father in his mind, disapproving strongly, shaking head and clicking his tongue how he used to, looking (staring) at a son as if to say, Where did I get you? What did I do to deserve you? His whole remembering life, Alistair saw his father like this. At everything he did: playing cricket — Not good enough, no ticker, he used to say; rugby — Pitiful, scared of tackling means scared of taking on the world; though academically Alistair did stand out. But good enough for Daddy? Not a chance. Charlotte’s exam marks were always better.
(You were never like that with Charlotte, oh no, not Charlie. Good girl Charlie, wonderful girl, Charlotte. Isn’t she brilliant, sweetheart? Isn’t she beautiful, darling? Aren’t we blessed to have one of our two children so gifted, so special, so effin’ perfect?)
Wasn’t my sister a conceited bitch as a result? Though you two adoring parents called it self-confidence. But then you would. She was always your favourite. Now she was Doctor Charlotte Trambert. (And you, Alistair? What title do you have? What are you? Are there letters to denote unemployed?) Didn’t my father see the damage his ignoring me was doing? (Me, Dad. Your son? ME, Dad! Look over here. I say? Look this way, it’s me, Alistair Seymour, of your surname. I’m a Trambert, too. We can’t all be born perfect. Someone had to get dealt the hand that was not so good. You didn’t exactly play your own good inherited hand well yourself — Dad. So who are you to judge?)
The dream kept returning. Something kept him standing on the top of that cliff, watching an innocent child drown (calling my name), calling out his name: Alistar! Alistar! And me correcting him: It’s not ar, it’s air. Alist-air. (So get it right.)
Then a penny dropped: was the child myself and was it me calling out my own name, even if incorrectly as so many have done all my life? Am I the one drowning?
Kayla! (Kays, I need you, hon. I don’t wanna face these thoughts in my head. Don’t wanna get into that self-analysis, too much of a drag. I’ll get my shit together, man. Just not right now.) Kayla! Kayla! (You never said anything about going out of the house today. The hell’ve you got to?) Oh, please don’t let it be you’ve walked out on me.
What if she’d got someone else? What if she got sick of living like this and just up and took off with a man who’d got a job, got prospects? A man who was a man, not this wimpy shadow, this hollow-chested skinny sixty-five- kilogram weakling who couldn’t be bothered getting a job. (I don’t ha
ve to. No law to say I have to work, be like normal people. I’m not normal. So why should I play by their rules?)
KAYLA! (Kill myself if she has found someone else.) No, that would be impossible. She loves me.
Down the passageway, he searched through the living room to where it became the kitchen, a small wall a stride in width said the two areas were different. The living room was swamped by the two oversized second-hand — no, make that third-hand — sofas, sitting fatly out of place there, only thing in common with the surroundings was they’d had a whole lot of lazy butts sitting on them, a whole lot of idle fingers scratching and digging at the armrests worn through their material. Butts and fingers of people I never knew existed before; before I took myself out of what I thought was the stifling middle-class — upper-middle-class, old boy, there’s quite a difference you know — home and found this. (This? Is this found, or is it lost?)
Kaylaaahhh! Kays … ? You home, hon?
He turned to the unlikely last room, Sharns’s bedroom. Kayla? Now what?
Been a lot of things the last few years of this wretched young adulthood, as in every definition of laziness and what it reduced you to doing, the loss of dignity, pride. But I was never a sneak, never an invader of someone’s privacy, let alone my own flatmate’s bedroom. (It’s okay, Sharneeta, I’m just trying to find Kayla. If your room was a lion’s den I’d probably go in as long I could find Kayla. I need absolute assurance she’s not anywhere in this house, don’t ask me why I need it.)