Telling Stories

by Geoff Palmer

  It is basically a box, your typical Kiwi house-box, except that the rooms are somewhat larger and there are a lot more of them. Aluminium windows, ersatz tiles on the roof, stained weatherboard exterior and half a native rainforest panelling the kitchen. The front door opens into a short, wide hallway that leads to three steps, down which unfamiliar visitors frequently plummet. On the left is a huge lounge through which one must pass in order to enter any of the innumerable bedrooms, studies, dens and dunnies, and on the right are the dining room, kitchen, laundry, more bathrooms, spa pool and eventually the double garage. The whole rear of the house, including bedrooms, opens onto the patio, barbecue pit and pool. There are enough en suites for an ensemble and some plumbers' merchant retired on the profits from the sale of all the bathroom fittings. I suspect if all the toilets in the house were flushed simultaneously the water table would drop six feet.

  If you believe in gewgaws, possessions and conspicuous consumption my brother is 'doing all right'.

  The house is located on the outskirts of Donnington, where whole suburbs are reserved almost exclusively for senior bank clerks, insurance agents, government lackeys or anyone else with an Established Career. New residents sign agreements to keep lawns to a regulation height, ban old cars, keep house colours sober and not build anything as common as a tin shed for the garden tools. Mind-numbing, self-constructed concentration camps of the dull and unimaginative, where personal taste is a community ethic, where the only coloured face is from a sun-bed, where your life is your neighbours', appearance is everything and property values are God.

  Valhalla comes from Betti, who claims Scandinavian descent because she was born in Dannevirke. To identify with her distant forebears she bleaches her hair, says 'yar' instead of 'yeah' and, like that distant fatherland, is physically spectacular but spiritually dull. My brother and his wife epitomise all that twentieth-first century Western society aspires to; they have money, position, looks and possessions and can't understand why they're as miserable as hell. In consequence, they spend a great deal of time inflicting who they are and what they own on others in the peculiarly common belief that, though they might be unhappy in themselves, at least the envy they inspire in others makes them unhappy too.

  The money, I should add, comes largely from Betti's fourth generation farming-stock father who conveniently pegged out when she was a teenager, leaving her and her sister the New Zealand equivalent of landed gentry heiresses. My brother met her at one of his innumerable PR parties and wowed then wooed her with his marketeering bullshit.

  'She's got big tits and money,' I remember him telling me at the time.

  'A perfect match,' I observed, 'since you are one and have none.'

  The party is apropos of nothing in particular — the invitation even says so — but that didn't prevent them having proper ones printed. None of your quick word-processing jobs whacked out on the office photocopier for those two. These are the real McCoy — glossy red card with gold lettering — and Betti hand-delivered them. Or, at the very least, she hand-delivered Spalding's.

  Typically, he didn't notice her enter the office and breeze past the polite enquiries of the new receptionist. The rest of the office did. She was wearing a sort of Jill of the Jungle one-piece leather thing that threatened to expose both burn and boobs at any second and that was obviously either a very expensive designer label or just an old piece of chamois used for cleaning the car. Even Fletcher the Lecher was momentarily speechless, though Spalding only looked up when she leaned across his desk, blew on the top of his labouring head and dropped the invitation right where he was working.

  'Hi, Steven.' She has one of those little-girl, sing-song voices that second-rate movies and third-rate novels commonly associate with the dizzy blonde. In many ways Betti is a guileless parody of herself.

  'Oh ... er ... hello,' Spalding said, coming almost face to face with the recalcitrant cleavage. 'What are you doing here?'

  She tapped the invitation in its matching red envelope. 'Saturday. Hope you can make it. Sorry it's late. Bloody printers, eh?' When you're built like Betti the ability to string more than five syllables into a sentence is not one of life's prerequisites.

  'Er ... thanks,' he replied, becoming aware that his desk was suddenly and unusually the focus of attention for the entire office. Torn Coutts was peering conspicuously from his curtained window and even doddery old Cotton woke briefly from his slumbers.

  She straightened. 'Must dash. Heaps to do. You wanna lift out? I'll be in town. Stay the weekend, yar?' She breezed out again like a starlet, knowing all eyes were on her. 'See you Saturday,' she waved from the counter. And that was all the choice he had in the matter.

  Of course he could have RSVP'd to the contrary, but it rather seemed that Betti had already made up her mind. A drudge he might be, but a faithful drudge nonetheless. Having given his assent in even such a roundabout fashion he felt bound to attend. Besides, to decline was to open oneself to Betti's guileless interrogation of any excuse he might present. She would want to know the hows, whos, whys and wherefores of any clash on his social calendar; that her parties might be anathema to his system was beyond her ken.

  Besides, there were other forces at work. In the penile minds of his male colleagues that one short visit had given him, at least temporarily, new status.

  'Steven, you old dog!'

  'Who was that?'

  'What a body!'

  'Hey, hey, Sat-ur-day!'

  Fortunately, he had the sense to say she was 'just a friend' and not mention the family connection. Not that that would have made much difference. The male libido hinges on lies, lust, boasts and misinformation. Silence is considered modesty and a solo male is simply either queer or ravishing half the female population on the quiet. If a man really is screwing everything that moves, he assumes that you're doing the same, and if he isn't, he's still half-convinced that every other male is. It's a no-lose situation.

  'Staying the weekend ...!'

  'You sly devil!'

  'We'll have to change his nickname from "Spud" to "Stud".'

  'It's always the quiet ones.'

  You see, more mythology. Don't talk about it constantly like the rest of them and they assume you're too knackered from doing it. In this atmosphere of jovial lechery one starts to wonder about the thinness of our civilised veneer. Supposedly mature, intelligent decision-makers suddenly become clenched-arm, leering schoolboys at the sight of a pretty woman and the talk dissolves into tales of sexual conquest — real, exaggerated, but mostly imaginary.

  'I bet she's a goer. Blondes always are.'

  'Tell me about it!'

  'I used to go out with this blonde once ...'

  The married men are the worst — and by married I include those who are 'in relationships'. There is a definite correlation between the age at which a man married/moved in and his ultimate level of maturity. The latter is attained with the age of the former. Thus Fletcher, married at seventeen because he couldn't keep his hands off the missus (i.e. she was pregnant), sits at his desk by the window twitching like a middle-aged sparrow at every movement around him lest it warrants a 'Whoa!' or a spasm of his right arm.

  'Looks like a bird I saw in a video the other night.'

  'She into videos, Steven?'

  'I know where I'd like to zoom in.'

  No woman is exempt from this kind of talk. I’ve heard it about friends, strangers, colleagues, colleagues' wives (when the colleague himself wasn't present), cousins, nieces, even sisters. They are all, according to populist belief, begging for it and just doing it wherever, whenever and with whomever they can find. Every woman on the planet — except their own partners of course, because, naturally, they all married virgins.

  'Now there's someone who's begging for it ...'

  Marie, the new receptionist of two weeks' standing and latest subject of office fantasy, happened past on her way to the filing cabinets.

  'Yeah, you can always tell.'

  'Look ... e
r... do you mind. I've got to get some urgent work done for Tom ...'

  Spalding's comment briefly stumped the coterie gathered round his desk. Hadn't Betti's arrival resulted in this informal invitation to join their exclusive club? Shouldn't he be adding his own tales of prowess and sexual conquest? All they needed were a few more titbits about the buxom Betti, the sort of scraps one might throw to dogs. Instead, the invitation was being declined. The silence was brief but pointed, then someone murmured 'Whoa!' as Marie bent over to file some claim forms and they began to move off.

  Fletcher headed for his window seat and gestured broadly at Marie's inclined form. Someone called, 'Do it for the boys!' and as he passed he brushed her skirt and briefly stroked her bum. She was like lightning. She straightened, spun round and caught him hard across the face, sending him reeling in one direction while his glasses went spinning away in the other. For most of the afternoon he carried the glowing outline of her handprint on the left side of his face while the air seethed with the foment of revolution from his followers.

  'You should make her pay for those glasses.'

  'Bitch.'

  'I always thought she was a lesbian.'

  Tuesday, March 31

  There was something in the air at work this morning, I could feel it as soon as I walked in. For a start, Tom Coutts was there when I arrived and that only happens when there's a crisis or we're getting a visit from head office. At first I thought it might be about those supplementary benefits I rushed through yesterday and had a bit of a panic before I found they'd gone through all right. Then June Perry turned up. She's the front counter supervisor and I remembered I'd seen her in Tom's office when I left last night.

  Everyone else picked up on it when they arrived too. It's so unusual to see Tom Coutts in before about ten o'clock.

  'He must've shit the bed,' said Fletcher.

  A bit later Tom came over and called Fletcher into his office. They were in there for about ten minutes and it was then I realised what was going on. When Fletcher came out he wasn't so jovial and Tom beckoned the rest of us in and shut the door. We could see Fletcher through the window. He'd glance at us occasionally with a worried look.

  'I'm concerned about an incident that is supposed to have occurred here yesterday afternoon,' Tom began in his best section manager's voice, 'between one of the new reception staff and one of my staff.' Everyone knew what he was talking about and people shuffled uncomfortably.

  'This incident apparently happened about 3.30 by the filing cabinets. The young lady concerned claims that she was molested while going about her business. The ...' — he paused for emphasis and got some smirks for his effort — '... gentleman concerned says he was just walking past when she backed into him while opening a drawer. And there we have it. One reckons it was deliberate while the other says it was an accident — a pleasant accident, but an accident nonetheless — and one in which both parties would normally mumble their apologies and continue on with their lives. In this case. however, the young lady took exception to what occurred and gave the gentleman a good thump.' More smirks.

  'Now, I don't know who to believe and that's why I've called you in here to see if anyone actually witnessed what happened. Before I go any further, I should say that sexual harassment is regarded seriously by the department and strong disciplinary measures will be taken against any offenders.'

  'Does that include the boot?' asked Jonesy.

  'That does indeed include "the boot", Mr Jones,' he said. 'Obviously, anything like that would leave a nasty taste in everyone's mouth and, to some extent, we'd all be tarred with the same brush. I wouldn't like to see that happen, but naturally I'll take whatever action the circumstances demand.'

  There was a long silence as he scrutinised each of us in turn.

  'So, did anyone see what happened yesterday? Steven?'

  I don't know why he picked on me like that. I'd seen the whole thing and there was no way she'd stepped into his path.

  Tom Coutts stared at me, waiting for a response. I could feel the others staring too. It wasn't an accident but I couldn't just say so straight out, not like that, not in front of everyone. I mean, I didn't want to get Fletcher the sack or anything. In the end I just shook my head.

  Tom seemed to relax a little and started looking from one to the other.

  'Yeah, I saw ... it was an accident ... well, a bit of both ... sort of ... not deliberate really.' That was Tim. Tom didn't say anything and just let him go on.

  'Well, she was doing the filing and stuff and bent over like, and you know what Fletcher's like, always pratting around and trying to show off what a dude he is and stuff. Well, he was doing this thing behind her like, like he was going to touch her up or something — he was just showing off, eh, like he's always doing — and she pulled the drawer right open and bumped into him. It wasn't deliberate, eh? He was just fooling around, showing off to the boys. I mean, he shouldn't have done nothing, but if she hadn't pulled the drawer open it wouldn't have happened ...'

  'So you're suggesting it was an accident?'

  'Er ... yeah.'

  'Now if Fletcher was fooling around he must have had an audience. Which means some of you others saw it too.' Philips and Jonesy nodded reluctantly, the other half of the Gang of Four.

  Jonesy spoke. 'It was just a bit of fun. He shouldn't have done it, but he didn't mean anything by it. He didn't touch her deliberately or anything. Then she bumped into him and hit him for just being there. It was sort of funny really, only now she's made it out to be more than it was. I mean, I guess he deserved to get his glasses broken for fooling around and stuff, but you can't sack him for just being there.'

  Philips nodded vigorously. Tom said, 'Well that seems pretty clear cut to me. Thank you, gentlemen. Send the accident victim in on your way out will you lads? And next time there's a bit of crumpet about, be a little more discreet, please.'

  'What if they're begging for it?' Jonesy said as we were filing out.

  'You'll just have to make 'em beg a bit harder.'

  Afterwards, I started to feel bad about the whole thing. Philips was pretty clever the way he wangled it to get Fletcher off the hook, but the fact remained that the new girl had just been doing her job when this old creep stuck a hand up her skirt. It was all right for Fletcher — he was reprimanded for pratting about and that was it — but what about her? I saw June Perry in Tom's office later. He was strutting around like a peacock, laying down the law. I could imagine what he was saying. 'You want to make sure your staff get their facts right before you come round here making accusations ...' From the look on her face when she left I could tell that had been about the strength of it. The rest of the guys spent the rest of the day going round sniggering, slapping shoulders and giving each other high fives as though they'd won some great moral victory. And it all came down to me.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realised that Tom had set the whole thing up. If he was really concerned about the truth he'd have asked us in one by one, surely? But no one was going to speak out about what really happened in front of everyone else, especially after that little lecture about disciplinary action. And he didn't even ask us until he'd given us the two versions to choose from. I know he's pretty matey with some of the guys, Fletcher especially — they're always down the pub together — but he's also in it for the career and I'm pretty sure he'd sell us all down the river if there was a chance of a promotion in it. That bit about us all being tarred with the same brush probably meant he was worried about that sort of thing appearing on his record. I mean, what sort of manager hires sexual harassers?

  And picking me out like that, challenging me to tell the truth in front of everyone. Fletcher knew we'd all seen it and Tom would think that I was the weak link since I'm not all pally with the rest of them. Jesus, and I fell for it! I let him walk all over me.

  My suspicions were confirmed when at lunchtime Tom came out of the office and said to Fletcher, 'Well, I reckon you owe us all a drink,' and the
five of them left leering and laughing. They invited me too, but I knew it was only out of politeness.

  I couldn't really concentrate for the rest of the day. When I went down to afternoon tea I couldn't even get into my new book and just kept mulling over how I'd been set up and what I should have done and said. I kept looking at the page but the words just wouldn't focus. After a bit someone took a seat across the table and a bit further down from me and I idly glanced up to see who it was. I got a shock. it was the new girl, Marie. She looked distracted and a bit drawn and just sat with her head cupped in the fingers of one hand staring out the window behind my back.

  I continued staring at my book without focusing on it properly but kept glancing up at her. I couldn't imagine how I hadn't noticed her properly before, how attractive she was. She sat quite still, lost in thought, staring off into space and occasionally sipping her tea. Her profile reminded me of a delicate porcelain doll, smooth, pure and faultless.

  I wasn't the only one to notice her. Some guy carrying a tray down the aisle behind her deliberately hit her shoulder with it and began apologising profusely. It was quite deliberate I could tell, the canteen was practically deserted and the aisle was miles wide. He was one of those smoothies with slicked back hair, a practised smile and an exaggerated, cat-walk gait that said he was his own biggest fan. She barely glanced at him and when he concluded his spiel by balancing the tray on one hand and proffering the other with, 'And by the way, my name's Dave', she looked him full in the face and said simply, 'Just fuck off.'

  I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing. Dave nearly overbalanced his tray and made a quick grab for it before backing away with a flustered look. I noticed his swagger had disappeared too.

  Sitting there I realised we had something in common. She's very attractive and I'm ... well. When you're outside the norm in any direction you become a focus of attention. Okay, I don't have to put up with guys brushing past me and trying to chat me up and I bet she doesn't have to put up with little kids giggling and saying 'Look at that man, Mummy!', but the rest must be pretty much the same. The sideways glances, the half-heard whispers, the way you feel all eyes on you when you get on a bus or walk into a room. It's like living every day in a freak show. Sometimes I get home and just sigh with contentment at being able to hide away from the world and relax, where I don't have to clench my teeth, look straight ahead and pretend to myself that I haven't noticed being noticed.