All Day at the Movies

by Fiona Kidman

  Jessie was sitting on the edge of the bed, her shoulders hunched over. ‘Just tell me what happened, Belinda,’ she said, her voice thick with suppressed tears. ‘You’re the oldest. What happened to Mum?’

  ‘She was in the hospital. I was only allowed to go once,’ Belinda said. ‘Dad took us on the bus to Newtown.’

  Belinda wanted to tell Jessie about the dark tunnels of the corridors, the floors that squeaked, and the wards where the beds seemed jammed together. It had been hard to find where her mother lay. The way Grant had frowned up at the signs, reading them as he went. ‘Why is there a Clean Linen Bay,’ he asked Belinda, ‘when there isn’t any water?’ That was Grant for you, he took things so literally. Where they lived was called Island Bay, and there was Houghton Bay along the road, and Lyall Bay beyond that, and here was Grant finding another one in the hospital corridor, as though their mother might be lying on a curling wave washing her into shore.

  Belinda had imagined that her mother would be lying in a bed just like hers at home, but when they found their way to the right cubicle, it was an iron-framed bed, covered with a starched white sheet. Her body so shrunken it hardly made a dent beneath, her lank hair sticking to the pillow. And her mother could no longer speak her name, her mouth struggling to form words but no sound coming out.

  ‘Did she ask for me?’

  Belinda shook her head. It was impossible to explain.

  Jessie turned out the light, even though Belinda hadn’t undressed, and Belinda sensed that she had lain down with her back to her. In the dark, she thought she heard Jessie sob, though she couldn’t be sure. Jessie never cried.

  ‘Were they your best friends, Jessie? The people in the boat?’

  Jessie made a muffled noise.

  Belinda said, ‘Jessie, can you stay with us?’

  There was a silence in the dark room. ‘Shut up and go to sleep,’ Jessie said.

  ON THE WAY TO THE BUS STOP, Charm stopped at a lamppost, as if to do up her shoelace under the light. As she straightened up, she ran her hand up Jock’s leg, until she touched his crotch. ‘I think you’ve been missing something, Jock.’

  ‘Not here, not in the street,’ he said, his voice thick.

  ‘I can’t see Agnes caring for all those children. Can you, Jock?’

  A WIND CAME OFF THE SEA the morning of the funeral. Summer hadn’t hit the city yet. Jock had ordered taxis for them. He didn’t believe in owning cars, not when he could ride a bike to and from work. He told his son to count his pennies under the pillow at nights, so that he would always know how much pocket money he had, and how much of it to save.

  First there was a service at St Hilda’s on the Parade. ‘Anglican,’ Aunt Agnes said. ‘If we must.’

  ‘What was I to do?’ Jock said. ‘She never took to being Presbyterian.’

  ‘I suppose I can’t hold it against her. I mean, how long is it since you were inside a church, brother? I can tell you, the children will be going to Sunday school when I get my hands on them. And none of this fancy stuff.’

  Not that it was fancy at all. The vicar hadn’t known Irene. Grant and Janice didn’t know what to do, whether to sit or stand, and Belinda wasn’t too sure either, although she could follow the service. Charm was sniffling into a handkerchief. She was dressed in a black woollen coat and a green felt hat with a crimson feather like a streak of blood running down its side. When the children looked about to bawl, she grabbed their hands and stood in a proprietary way as if they were really hers. The vicar delivered some short, crisp comments about the love of mothers for their children and how they were sometimes required to answer to God’s higher calling. The twenty-third psalm was delivered, a prayer said. The vicar called on Jock to say a few words if he wished. He shook his head.

  Jessie moved towards the front of the church. Jock went to grab her arm, but Jessie pulled away from him. She looked around the small group of Brighton Street neighbours who made up the congregation. Instead of speaking, she walked out.

  Walking out, that’s what she does. Belinda heard the words buzzing in her head. When they got outside, Jessie was nowhere to be seen. Charm had let go of the children. Janice, the baby of the family, came over and put her head against Belinda’s waist. She was a tubby little creature, her face tear-stained and frightened. Someone had put a pink bow in her wiry curls; the Fair Isle cardigan that Irene had knitted was buttoned up over her chest. The sleeves were getting short. Belinda put her arm around her. I am eleven, she thought. I need to look after the children. The idea terrified her. No wonder Jessie had run off. Grant stumped along behind them, his face screwed up as tight as a bag of walnuts so that you could hardly see his eyes. His hair was combed into a cow-lick.

  When they got to the graveside, among the narrow paths of the Karori cemetery, Jessie was there already, her face still set in its rigid expression. Her mother’s favourite child. Belinda knew this in her heart. But now, Jessie had been joined by an elderly couple, the man bent over almost double, supporting himself on a walking stick. They were helped by a younger man. Belinda didn’t recognise them, but the woman was holding Jessie’s hand and weeping.

  The family trooped in silence towards the grave, a shaft of space cut out of the earth, the neighbours acting as pallbearers for Irene’s pine coffin. It was lowered down and down and down, into the clay soil, the wreath Jessie had ordered, without consulting anyone, of sweet peas and late poppies slipping out of sight. Her mother disappearing for good, not just her clothes and books and poems that she read out loud to Belinda, but all of her. The flames of the fire Charm had made in the garden leapt in front of her again, but this time she couldn’t see her mother’s face at all. It was gone. There was just a hole in the ground with a pile of damp earth beside it. A weak sun appeared. The children were instructed to walk around the open grave and throw clods of earth down onto the coffin, to be part of this erasing of her mother. Jessie hesitated before moving to join them. Janice and Grant began to wail, Grant in spite of himself and his determination to act like a big boy. ‘My hands are dirty,’ he said, trying to brush the earth from his clothes. Aunt Agnes grabbed him firmly by the arm. Jock took a handkerchief out of his pocket and passed it over to him.

  And then, a surprising thing happened. As the grave digger began to rain down more spadefuls of earth onto the coffin, Jessie took Belinda by the hand. It was just for a moment and when Belinda raised her eyes she couldn’t decide whether Jessie was offering comfort or needed it herself. She looked back to where Jessie had stood with the old people, and they had gone. Jessie offered no explanation as to their presence.

  The wake was held in the sitting room in Brighton Street. Charm and Aunt Agnes had arranged for some sausage rolls and sandwiches to be brought in. Charm had ordered beer to be delivered as well, plus a couple more bottles of sherry, although Aunt Agnes said it was not a habit she wanted to be getting into but she supposed they had a duty to the neighbours who had helped out. While they were all nibbling and sipping in the front room, a young man appeared at the door. His mother was wondering if they wouldn’t mind if he picked up her big pot as she was making dinner for the family. Charm and Agnes exchanged frozen looks. The young man was wearing a black waistcoat over a white shirt, as if out of respect for visiting a house bereaved. But the shirt was open at the throat, revealing a gold chain quivering among curly black hair. His complexion was olive, and muscles bulged beneath the soft fabric of his garment.

  ‘Antonio!’ Jessie exclaimed.

  He looked at her, his face intent. ‘Jessie Sandle,’ he said, ‘Jessie, all grown-up.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Jock said.

  ‘We haven’t had time to clean the pot,’ Agnes said, all politeness. ‘Do you mind if one of the children drops it over, perhaps in an hour?’

  ‘I’ll bring it back in a few minutes,’ said Jessie.

  When the door was closed, she glared at Agnes and Charm and said, ‘You didn’t have the guts to tell them you hadn’t eaten their pasta, d
id you? God, you’re a bunch of plebeians.’

  Agnes said, ‘I think she means she’s cleverer than the rest of us. She’ll learn.’

  ‘I told you, Jock, that girl needs a few good slaps,’ Charm said. ‘Eyeties. Catholics. I’ll bet they need a big pot.’

  ‘There’s ten of them, or thereabouts,’ Agnes said.

  ‘That’s Catholics for you,’ Charm said, only she pronounced it ‘Cartholics’, as if it were some kind of joke. ‘They’re putting Jack Kennedy away today, too. There’s another one.’

  Jessie could be heard tearing up newspaper, and running taps, disposing of the food, cleaning the pot.

  ‘We’re lucky we’re not at war with Russia,’ Agnes said darkly. ‘Goodness knows what would have happened next time if someone hadn’t shot him dead. Some things are meant for the best.’

  The neighbours were beginning to drift away, unsettled by the appearance of the Italian boy and this loose talk. Some of them worked for the boy’s family, setting out on the fishing boats with them in the early hours of each morning.

  Charm began brushing her coat, which lay over the back of one of the chairs. ‘I got dirt on it at the cemetery. It should be dry now.’

  ‘Clay,’ said Agnes. ‘It sticks like the devil.’

  Jock roused himself, as if he had been sleepwalking all day. ‘They made clay corpses in the auld country,’ he said.

  ‘Jock,’ Agnes said, in a warning older sister’s voice.

  ‘It’s true, I saw it once when I was a lad. It was what witches did.’ The room had fallen silent. Jock’s voice was slurring with the beer. ‘It was done to get revenge on those who did you harm. You made a figure of the man or woman you didnae like out of clay, and placed it in a stream where the water would run over it. The water wore it away as though it were the flesh of the person you wished gone.’

  ‘Witchcraft,’ Agnes said. ‘People went to court for things like that.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Jock, ‘if they found out. Otherwise they’d like as not get sick and waste away.’

  ‘Like Irene,’ said Charm.

  Jock looked at Charm with heavy eyes. ‘You’ve got me wrong, I wouldnae do that to the lass.’

  Belinda sat very still, in case anyone in the room noticed she was still there. The kitchen had fallen quiet. There was the soft click of the front door being closed as Jessie let herself out.

  IN THE MORNING JESSIE TOOK the children on an outing. There was a soft indefinable expression in her eyes. She had come in very late the night before. Belinda half woke when she heard her sister come in, but she was too sleepy to see what time it was. Jessie had been humming under her breath.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ Agnes said, surprised. She was ashen-faced with exhaustion. The children’s shrill voices in the sitting room next door all but drowned out their conversation. The two younger children had always been noisy, the sort who people hushed in public. They were beginning to return to their everyday selves.

  ‘You had a lot to do last night,’ Jessie said, ‘clearing up and all.’

  ‘No thanks to someone I could spit on from here,’ Charm said. She was smoking a cigarette, her hand clasped around a tea cup. She looked at ease, almost as if the kitchen belonged to her.

  ‘Well …’ Jessie began.

  ‘What’s the use of a well if you don’t have water?’ Charm said, cutting past her.

  ‘Well,’ continued Jessie, as though she hadn’t heard Charm, ‘I thought if I took the children out for the day it would give you a break. We could go to the zoo.’

  Agnes heaved a sigh of relief. ‘We thought about sending them back to school today, but their father reckoned that wouldn’t look right. Mind you, he headed off first thing, but then someone has to provide. I’ll give you money for the tickets.’

  ‘I have some,’ Jessie said. ‘It’s all right. I’ll look after them.’

  That was how the day passed, walking from cage to cage, feeding the ducks, gazing at the elephant. They bought lunch from the kiosk, sandwiches and meat pies, and sat on a wooden seat watching the monkey enclosure. Baby animals wound themselves around their mothers’ backs and necks, absurd little grins on their faces as the parent creatures swung through the branches.

  ‘Kids, I’m leaving tomorrow,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m going away.’

  Belinda’s heart clenched itself into a fist in her chest. She should have known. She didn’t ask where Jessie was going.

  WHEN BELINDA TRIED TO TELL her father, Jock Pawson, about the way their stepmother treated them, he simply shrugged. They’d been talking rubbish at school, kids always said their stepmothers were monsters. They had food on the table and clean clothes, didn’t they?

  Jock led a different kind of life with Charm from the one he’d had with Irene. The house was as neat as a pin, as Charm often pointed out, and dinner was on the table every night at six. As soon as Jock arrived home she opened a flagon of sherry. We deserve some treats at the end of a day’s toil, she would say. Jock sat there, his tie askew over his paunch, looking as if heaven had hit him in the face. There would be a period of animation as Charm warbled and sometimes whistled, then a slide into melancholy between her and Jock, and it would be time for bed for everyone in the house.

  Belinda tried showing her father the rope burns on Grant’s wrists where Charm had tied him to a chair because of the wet sheets, and bruises on Janice’s arms where she’d been smacked for not doing her homework. ‘You kids knock around with the wrong sort,’ he said. ‘You want to get decent friends, bring them over.’

  There wasn’t much to show for hair pulling, or getting your nose twisted, but there was all of that, too. Janice got head lice and Charm shaved her head and put kerosene on it. When Janice screamed and tried to get away, Charm lit a match and threatened to hold it on Janice’s chemical-smelling head. None of them got school lunches if they answered her back. You couldn’t always tell when you were answering back anyway. Just the way you said please and thank you was enough to set her off some days. Please. Pleased with yourself, are you? Whack. Thank you. Thank you for what? Calling you a liar? I’ll get the belt to you. Janice’s face was a mask these days. Grant started setting the clock and getting up every hour through the night so his sheets would be dry. There were big circles under his eyes. Belinda often thought about Jessie and the way she just left; most days she hated her.

  On a summer day when the holidays seemed interminable, because at least when there was school there was somewhere to go, the three of them sat on the sea wall, staring out at the ocean. Sometimes Antonio came along the beach and he always seemed to have toffees in his pocket. He’d come over and offer to share them. Don’t tell Charm, Belinda would warn the children.

  Charm went to town that day and left Belinda in charge. Belinda was thirteen by then, and trying to hide from Charm that she had her periods, but she knew that her stepmother had guessed. You can take that insolent look off your face. You might think you’re grown-up but you’re not. You can put your donkey saddles in a bucket in the wash house, but don’t think I’ll be cleaning up behind you. She had said it that morning and Belinda wanted to vanish through a hole in the floor. Her stomach was hurting right now.

  ‘I wish she was dead,’ Grant said. ‘We could just sneak up and kill her when nobody was looking.’

  Janice drummed her heels on the wall. ‘We could all hold her down and smash her head in,’ she said.

  ‘Well, we can’t,’ Belinda said. But, remembering what she had wished only that morning, she said, ‘We could make her disappear.’

  She explained about the clay corpse, how if they made an effigy of Charm they could take her to the beach and let her wash away, and soon she would die. It was like a lucky charm. They all giggled at that. Lucky charm, lucky charm, they chanted.

  Irene’s rose bush was in flower, with a burst of unlikely blooms on a plant given up for dead. Belinda thought it was called ‘Peace’, and the showy creamy flowers flushed with pink made her want to laug
h, as if things were suddenly on their side.

  They dug with furious haste, filling the laundry bucket as fast as they could and taking it to the beach each time it was full. Belinda organised them into a chain, so that one was always digging, taking it in turns to run to the beach and tip the clay at the water’s edge. When she thought they had enough, they all went to the beach and began shaping their corpse. Hurry, Belinda told the children, she’ll be back soon. Besides, soon the tide would turn. If they were to dispose of Charm today they needed to be quick.

  ‘It’s like plasticine,’ Janice said, as they kneaded the sticky stuff into shape on the wet sand.

  Belinda had a sudden thought. ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘I’m going back to the house.’

  Grant and Janice jumped up and down. Hurry, it was their turn to shout. But Belinda knew what she was after, it had to be right.

  She reappeared in a few minutes, carrying a brown paper bag. ‘Just wait and see,’ she said. ‘It’ll be perfect.’

  A loose shape was the best they could achieve, just a head that kept floating away because Belinda said they needed to make sure the water got to Charm’s brain first, then a mound of clay for her body, two wriggly lines where her arms were supposed to go, and then a wave would come before they could put feet on her legs and they ran away, splashing and shouting with laughter. Happiness, the three of them together, bent over with mirth, the first time they could remember since their mother got sick.

  And then Belinda produced her master stroke from the paper bag, some buttons from one of Jock’s old overcoats, to plant in a row on the corpse’s chest. (Belinda had saved the special leather one.) Finally she placed Charm’s green hat with the red feather on its head. The three of them danced, holding hands, shrieking into a rising breeze. A wave came and flicked the hat away almost as soon as they had put it on, dragging the clay beneath it out to sea. As they stood back, the waves rushed in and overtook the whole effigy and Charm seemed to dissolve before their eyes.