The Trouble With Fire

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘I suppose we should be grateful she’s come,’ Mamie said. ‘She hasn’t been here in years.’

  ‘She can’t keep away from a wedding,’ Patricia said, something taunting in her voice.

  Ruth put down her book. ‘I came to see Blanche,’ she said.

  Beside her, Blanche, who was still a schoolgirl at the time, looked down and smiled. She had grey eyes, and although Patricia had described her as ‘the albino’, Colin saw that she was nothing of the sort, just a girl with a very pale complexion and her straight hair tied in a braid. Later in the afternoon, he saw Ruth and Blanche walking together across a paddock. Blanche was wearing one of her father’s old hats pulled down to shade her face from the sun, so he thought that she must like the way she looked, the fairness of her complexion, when all the other girls he knew were trying to get suntans.

  When the meal was over, Patricia’s father Les, who had had little to say, signalled for Colin to follow him outside. Colin supposed that this was for the talk, the one that must take place between a father and his prospective son-in-law. Les was a heavy man with deep-set eyes and a cleft chin, his features thickened and coarsened with years of work on the farm. Once, he’d milked cows but these days he ran beef cattle. Les had pulled out a cigarette and was leaning against a verandah post. ‘So I’ve got a son at last,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Colin said, ‘it seems like it.’

  ‘She’s a pretty good girl. Taken her a while to find the right man. You better look after her.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Les looked suddenly wistful. ‘Don’t suppose you’re a fella who’d have a game of bowls now and then?’

  Colin said he hadn’t thought about it, but of course he’d be interested to learn. On the clothesline he saw a pair of cream trousers, and a cream shirt ballooning like a cloud before rain.

  Les spat on the ground. His mouth had settled back into a grim line; his voice had become hectoring. ‘Ah, never mind. I reckon you’re a city slicker. Kind of joker who’d try and milk a bull’s tit. I know the sort when I see them.’

  Colin told himself, as he drove away that afternoon, that he wasn’t marrying Patricia’s family, only her.

  On the day, his parents drove down for the service, not more than an hour’s run south. Seymour had arrived from Wellington in the morning, and he and Colin went straight to the church. The two men stood awkwardly in the plain little country chapel, feeling out of place in their dark city suits, as they waited for Patricia to arrive. Mamie bustled in, wearing a long burgundy-coloured dress. She came up and stood beside Seymour. ‘You are the bridegroom, aren’t you?’ she said.

  When Seymour said no, it was Colin, she looked at him, disappointed. ‘Oh goodness, yes, of course I remember, she’s marrying some other man, isn’t she?’ As if Colin wasn’t there. This odd turn of phrase would come back to haunt him. Mamie’s memory was already leaving her, would eventually abandon her altogether. This was no more than a lapse, but it would come to seem like a portent, with an inevitability that he should have foreseen.

  Patricia’s sisters were bridesmaids, and as the day wore on, Colin thought that neither girl was as odd as he had first thought, and he was comforted by this. He and Seymour danced with both Ruth and Blanche, and Seymour danced with Patricia several times. ‘The handsome one,’ Mamie said, in passing. He didn’t learn for years that Ruth wasn’t really his sister-in-law. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, when Patricia let it slip one night that Ruth had been fostered by the family.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She was one of the family’s dark secrets, I suppose.’

  ‘What other dark secrets have they got?’ He asked it as a joke, but she didn’t take it that way.

  ‘Oh, we know you’re perfect, Colin baby. Just a perfect man from a perfect family.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, putting up his hand as if to shield himself. Patricia had always talked in an outrageous way; it was part of her excitement. But these days he often felt slow beside her, and overly methodical. Confrontation wasn’t his style. At work, he led his team by demonstrating what he wanted done, what he expected of them. Yet, he told himself, they had a happy life. Their children were healthy and apparently well balanced, even if their parents’ lives were erratic. His wife, despite her wildness, was no longer a country girl. She had developed a taste for the theatre, and for politics; she knew how to work a room, had learned to make a soufflé. It was as if she had acquired some private knowledge about how the world worked that she wasn’t willing to share with him. She was successful in a way that other women envied. He supposed that that was why some of them were aloof in her presence. They were all in the process of liberating themselves, but it was Patricia who shone, a woman who already had it made.

  Secrets came up once more while he was still married to her. Mamie, her memory lost, had gone into a rest home in Hamilton. ‘Oh, where did I put it,’ she would say. ‘The memory thingie. If I could find it they’d let me out of here, wouldn’t they? Patricia, did I put it in a box? Is it in a cupboard?’

  ‘It’s not a thing, Mum,’ Patricia said. She and Colin had driven up one weekend to visit her. Their children were older now, the boy already a teenager, able to stay with friends while they went away. The word was that Mamie didn’t have very long to go.

  Ruth and her husband, Neil, who was a surveyor, had gone to Hamilton, too. They lived in Hawke’s Bay where Ruth was apparently content. She had a garden, she said, when pressed to speak of her life. And yes, of course, she still read books. As if none of it was really their business. Les was visiting, too, leaning heavily on a stick. Colin thought he shouldn’t be driving the car. He’d had a whisky or two by the smell of him. His mood was mean.

  ‘Well, what is it then?’ Mamie asked. ‘If it’s not a thing.’

  ‘It’s a concept, Mum. An abstract. It’s not something you can find, just like that.’

  Les said, ‘You’re better off without it.’

  Mamie looked dispirited and sighed. ‘Never mind. Perhaps tomorrow.’ Patricia shrugged and wandered off, aiming her camera at some of the other gnarled residents, until a nurse came up and said that she didn’t think that was very nice.

  Ruth hadn’t got married at the farm, and Neil was someone Les barely knew. He was a broad-shouldered man with a Dagwood haircut, wearing walk shorts and long socks.

  ‘So what did you say you did for a living?’

  ‘I’m a surveyor.’

  ‘What’s that in plain language, boy?’

  Neil reddened. ‘I measure land.’

  ‘Maps and drawings?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You needn’t come measuring up my land.’

  ‘Oh, leave it, Les,’ said Ruth. ‘Just let it go.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what to do, young lady. You want to remember who gave you a roof over your head.’

  ‘I won’t forget that, Les.’

  ‘Les. Les. I used to be Dad.’

  When they had all left Mamie’s room and were standing around in the car park, Les put his arm around Patricia’s shoulder, leaning against her. ‘Don’t want anyone sniffing round our farm, do we, girl?’

  ‘Best not, Dad,’ Patricia said.

  ‘We’ve got our little secrets, you and me, eh girl?’ He squeezed her shoulder hard, and Colin saw that for once in her life Patricia flinched.

  ‘Sure have, Dad,’ Patricia said, and patted his hand before removing it from her shoulder.

  ‘And tell that no-good sister of yours to come and see her mother some time.’ He was talking about Blanche, who had gone teaching, but didn’t stay in any job long. She liked to travel, and stayed at a school just long enough to earn the airfare to go off to some unusual destination. Mexico. India. Egypt. Patricia said she was so colourless she gave indigenous people something to notice.

  On the drive home, Patricia asked Colin to stop along the Desert Road so that she could take some more pictures. She got out of th
e car and wandered over to a bench in the picnic area where he had pulled in. The mountains reared up through mist; the air was ink blue in the shadow of the clouds above. Beyond them lay the tussock land and overhead the electricity pylons sighed and sang in the wind. Patricia shivered and pulled her coat around her. ‘God, I love this place, Colin,’ she said. ‘I love the space. I love the colour.’

  He looked towards her, thinking of her as she was when he first met her, a reckless dangerous girl who threw herself at him as if she wanted to be rescued. This hadn’t occurred to him at the time. But now that he saw her like this, wan and slightly drawn after a day with her odd disconnected family, he felt a tenderness he hadn’t experienced in years. There was something he wanted to ask her, but as she raised the camera, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It would ruin this absolute peace that lay between them.

  SEVERAL WEEKS PASSED BEFORE THERE was another party. It was wilder than any they had held before. At one point, Patricia disappeared. She had been drinking gin and tonic, but Colin saw she wasn’t pouring much tonic. Some of the children wanted to have a barbecue. He went to look for her, to see if she’d got sausages, because he couldn’t find any in the fridge. He opened the door of the bedroom, and his wife was lying on their bed among the coats, having her breasts kissed by a woman, a colleague’s wife. The woman’s hand was between Patricia’s legs.

  They jumped, startled at his entrance. Patricia pulled her dress up over her shoulders, covering her small breasts with their large dark nipples.

  ‘Just fooling about,’ they both said at once. Patricia rushed out of the room, although her gait was unsteady. Her dress was still slipping from her shoulder as she went down the stairs towards the lounge. One of the men laughed and grabbed her naked breast. She stood stock-still on the stairs and let him suckle her, laughing out loud, holding his head against her body. One of the men called out, ‘Can anyone have a go?’ Colin, standing above her on the stairs, put his hand up for silence.

  ‘I reckon we’ll leave it there for tonight.’

  When the house was clear of guests, she turned on him. ‘We were having fun,’ she said. ‘Where’s your sense of humour?’

  ‘Patricia. Pattie,’ he said, ‘were you abused when you were a child?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your secrets,’ he said. ‘Did Les do things to you?’

  She looked at him as if he was mad, or as drunk as she was, but he was completely sober.

  ‘Oh. You’ve been stewing on that? I might have known.’

  ‘So were you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what was the secret?’

  ‘I saw a body on the farm once. That was all.’

  ‘A body?’

  ‘Just some old bones really.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  She hesitated, and in that moment Colin decided that whatever she said was just some drunken lie. ‘Les thought they would have been Maori bones. He didn’t want people all over his land upsetting the cows. They were just coming into their milk.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘Okay. You asked. Make up your own story.’

  He thought she was lying. He was sure he knew the truth and she was hiding it. When they went to bed he wanted sex.

  ON MONDAY, WHEN COLIN ARRIVED home from work, the house was very quiet. The door was unlocked. He called out but nobody answered. Not even the cat came to greet him. Before going inside, he checked down the path, to see if Patricia was in her studio. A huge purple rhododendron was shedding spent flowers across the lawn. He pushed the liver-coloured branches out of his way, thinking he would have to cut the tree back. Patricia wasn’t in her studio. If she was using her dark room she put a sign up that said ‘Work in Progress’.

  In the house, the cheerful clutter of their lives had been tidied away: the kitchen table was bare, the dishes put away. He went upstairs to check that neither of the children was in their rooms. They often had sports, or stayed over at friends’ houses these days. The bedrooms had an odd deserted atmosphere. There were no clothes on the floor. The beds were made up. On an impulse he opened the door of his son’s wardrobe. It was empty. He went into his daughter’s room, and found the same thing.

  When he got to the door of his and Patricia’s room, he felt paralysed with fear. This can’t be so, he said to himself. The room was like the others.

  He went out to the landing and sat down. In his mind he replayed the events of Saturday night. Things had all gone too far. At work, his colleagues had dropped their eyes when he looked at them. In a meeting that afternoon he had snapped at someone. Nothing was resolved about the business on hand, and it occurred to him, as his afternoon tea was being wheeled in, that perhaps it was time to think about a change, a job in another department. He’d been here long enough.

  As he stayed sitting on the landing, he tried to work out what specifically had caused Patricia to react in this way. Was she ashamed of the way she had behaved? Had he forced her hand about the secrets of her past? Or perhaps she felt he had violated her, taken advantage of her when she’d been drinking. Surely not, he hadn’t forced her; he never had. He was flooded by a rising tide of anger. The children shouldn’t be drawn into this mess. She couldn’t just drive them away: they had school the next day.

  Only he knew that they hadn’t just gone for an outing. He guessed that, if he went back down the garden and opened the door to her studio, it would be as emptied as the house. That would be final. He wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.

  The phone rang. He rose stiffly to his feet. It was her.

  Her voice was calm and natural, as if she was delivering news about dinner. In fact, she said, ‘There’s steak left over from Saturday night. I took it out of the freezer.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at Seymour’s.’

  Relief flooded through him. ‘Is he back? Son of a gun. Where’s he staying?’

  ‘At his mother’s house.’

  ‘Of course, yes, I forgot.’ Seymour’s mother had died recently. At the time, Seymour was in an important meeting at the UN. Colin had been to the funeral, as a mark of respect for his friend, and had written to Seymour afterwards. ‘I know how hard it must be for you not making it back. We had great times at your mother’s place.’

  ‘He’ll have things to settle up,’ Colin said. He was thinking, at the same time, it will be all right, Seymour will calm things down. Patricia will be talking to him, and soon she’ll be home, and we’ll pick up the pieces and carry on.

  ‘He has,’ Patricia said, still in her same matter-of-fact tone. ‘We’re going to keep this house on. It’s very comfortable, and has everything we need. Silly to shift from it.’

  ‘Pattie?”

  ‘We’ve been going to tell you. But then when Sey’s mother died, it seemed best just to wait. He’s finished in the diplomatic service, by the way.’

  Sey? When had they ever called Seymour that?

  ‘We’re together,’ Patricia said, as if her patience was wearing thin. ‘You must have guessed, surely.’

  ‘I didn’t. When?’ Meaning when had it begun.

  ‘At the wedding.’

  ‘Our wedding?’ And from her silence, he knew that the answer was yes. She had gone off with some other man all right, the best friend he’d ever had.

  Later, he found the steak in the fridge, fresh eggs, a bottle of his favourite wine, newly bought bread in the bin. He tried to eat a little. This was the beginning of the worst time in his life.

  THEY WOULD MEET, OF COURSE. There were papers to be signed, the first steps towards a divorce. Later he would sell the house. At first, he thought the children would want to come back and spend weekends with him, that he should keep things as close to normal for them as he could, but soon he realised that their lives at Patricia and Seymour’s were more interesting. The suburb where they had mixed with the neighbours for all those years had become an empty wasteland to him that he didn’t
want to face alone. This didn’t mean that he wasn’t expected at school prizegivings and at the children’s birthday parties, at least until they were older and had parties that didn’t include adults. Seymour was present at these gatherings, behaving as if the situation was perfectly normal. He never commented on the end of the marriage, or treated Colin as other than a guest. The children called him Seymour, and he played fisticuffs and made jokes with them, as Colin would have done had he still been their father. Now, in their presence, he fell silent, beyond the usual standard enquiries about grades and exams. More like an uncle.

  IT WAS AFTER THE YOUNG man had fallen to his death in front of him that Colin finally made the decision to move. Each weekend that he spent in the house had become a form of torture. When he drifted off into fitful bursts of sleep, he had lurid vivid dreams of bodies. He woke with dreadful starts, often realising that the body he had just seen was not that of the boy, but of some faceless person on the farm where Patricia had grown up. He knew, now that he had a body to haunt him, that it could appear from anywhere. Surely she had lied to him that night. And yet he had begun to ask himself questions about what she might have seen. Where was the body positioned on that benighted farm? Was it a man or a woman? The recently dead or, as she had said, as she had turned away, the skeletal remains of long ago? He supposed he would never know. He visualised the tumbledown home where his wife had spent much of her childhood, and thought that they had somehow exchanged places. He wasn’t much interested in housekeeping. Since the children had stopped coming to see him, he had closed their bedrooms for good. After Roy’s death, and a long time after his visit to Eleanor, he had called Patricia and asked if she would come round and have a coffee with him. Just to talk — he needed someone to talk to. She listened in silence. ‘Someone said you’d been in a nasty accident. I’m sorry that happened to you.’

  ‘So can you come around?’

  She sighed on the other end of the line. ‘I think you need a counsellor, Colin.’