All Day at the Movies

by Fiona Kidman

  At first, Belinda and Seth rented a tiny apartment in Berhampore, and Maisie caught the train in every day so that Belinda could ‘go up the hill’, as her mother-in-law put it. She’d always wanted to go to university, but girls of her generation didn’t do that. She was making sure all her children went. Rebecca was starting a degree in psychology, Belinda must have the same opportunities, Maisie said. Besides, what a pleasure, a grandson. So unexpected, such delight.

  So Dylan came a year after Peter and, eighteen months later, Simone arrived. By then Belinda was reading French feminist literature: Simone was named in honour of de Beauvoir. Seth said any name was fine by him, so long as the babies were healthy. All the same, he did ask her if she could be more careful about taking her contraceptive pill.

  This led to one of their few quarrels. ‘I thought you liked our babies,’ she said. Afterwards, she knew it had been a childish thing to say. She was not quite twenty-two when Simone was born. Not twenty-two and three unplanned babies.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he’d snapped. ‘My mother’s tired, that’s all. I’d like to have sex with you without thinking when’s the baby due.’

  ‘I like having babies. I like having them with you. So okay, tell me that’s unhealthy.’

  ‘Of course it’s unhealthy if you want to go to university and have a baby every year and a mortgage, too.’ Don had decided that the family needed a house of their own and had come up with the deposit.

  ‘So I have to stuff chemicals down my throat? That’s not unhealthy?’

  ‘I’ll use a rubber,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you do that the first time, then? You took the chance, too.’

  They shouted for an hour or more. Seth put his arms around her. She collapsed against him.

  ‘Whatever you do is fine by me, you know that,’ he said. Belinda stopped crying. He spoke with such conviction that she was finally ready to consider the sense of what he had said. She could think of nothing she had done in her life to deserve this kindness awarded her by Seth and his mother. There were times when it was hard to live up to. Seth’s sisters and his father might be more sceptical about her virtues — she was sure that they were — but Seth was willing to accept her on whatever terms she asked. It was frightening.

  Seth kept his arms around her, holding her close. ‘I know why you want to keep having babies. It’s because we nearly lost Peter. That’s what it’s about. You need to be sure there’s always a baby. It scares me silly, too, how close we came to losing him.’ Sometimes it seemed Seth watched over Peter more closely than she did. ‘Mum’s getting a bit run-down. She’s no spring chicken any more, much as she loves the kids.’

  Now that the children were older (although Simone was really still a toddler and a fighting fit one at that), and Seth had a good job at the science research institute, they had home-help during the week. But still, more often than not, the children went to stay with Maisie and Don at the weekends so that Belinda could study. She and Seth had bought their house, up the road from where they first lived. The new place was a doer-upper, a narrow, older house that needed lots of work. There was a small courtyard, big enough for Peter and Dylan to have a swing, and a row of vegetables at the edge, which Maisie had planted for her. Don was near retirement; he often came down from the Wairarapa to tear out walls or replace gutterings, put up new fences. That Friday afternoon, while he was working on the house, Carla had rung and said they were going out for dinner and what were the chances of Belinda coming along.

  ‘Seth’s away. I can’t.’

  ‘Oh, shame. Daniel’s bringing some of his workmates. They’re rubbish, but it might be fun.’

  Belinda stood in the little hallway and thought. The children were sitting quietly, watching cartoons on television. Don put his head around the doorway to say goodbye. ‘Don,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t put the kids in the van and take them home for the night, could you?’

  She saw him hesitate. ‘I thought term had finished,’ he said.

  ‘I want to talk over a proposal for my Master’s with my supervisor. I mean, the person who’ll supervise me if I get accepted. I’ll come over on the late train so I’m there for them in the morning.’

  ‘I guess a few hours wouldn’t hurt,’ he said.

  After he’d got the children into the car, and she’d waved and called out ‘See you soon’, she dressed herself in a silky orange dress with flowing sleeves and applied two coats of mascara to her lashes. It was her eyes that people remarked on when they met her, her gorgeous eyes.

  THE RESTAURANT WAS EMPTY, except for the six of them, the staff waiting to go home. Belinda knew she had to get to a phone, but while the bill was sorted out and divided among them, it slipped her mind until it was too late.

  They all tumbled out into the moonlit night and down the long flight of steps that led to Lambton Quay. Daniel’s big Ford station wagon was parked in a side street. ‘All in, I’m your taxi,’ he cried.

  ‘You’re drunk, Danny boy,’ Letitia said. ‘You shouldn’t be driving.’

  ‘Are you in or not?’

  ‘Not. I’ll find a taxi of my own.’ With that she clattered into the night. The streets seemed deserted.

  ‘She’ll have a long walk home,’ Daniel said. ‘She lives in Brooklyn. Good luck to her.’

  ‘Well, good riddance to her. Daniel, why ever did you bring that snotty old biddy along?’ Carla said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about her.’

  ‘But really,’ Carla said. ‘It was supposed to be a fun night out, and she was criticising all of us, you could tell. Just because she’s a Pom, she thinks she’s superior.’

  ‘Now some would say that was racist. She’s got the boss’s ear at the moment,’ Daniel said. ‘C’mon, you lot, who’s first off?’

  ‘Me,’ said Belinda. Through the mist in her brain, she thought she might still be able to rescue the situation. If she could get to a phone, her own phone, it would be all right. She couldn’t ring from a phone box: she would have to put coins in the slot and it would be a dead giveaway to the person who answered that she wasn’t at home.

  ‘No, me,’ Frances said. ‘I have to take my dog for a run. He’ll pee all over the carpet.’

  ‘This isn’t in the script, Frances babe.’

  Belinda guessed that this was because Frances and Nick were meant to land up at the same place. Nick’s thigh was pushed hard against hers in the back seat of the car. Perhaps he would get out when Frances did, that must be it.

  Frances’s place, it turned out, was in Karori, the opposite direction to where Belinda was meant to be going. Daniel had sailed past the railway station, gunning the car up the hill before Belinda had time to stop him. She tried to suppress her rising panic.

  DON HAD GONE TO MEET the train at the station. ‘Looks like she must have missed it,’ he told Maisie.

  ‘Never mind, she’ll have gone home,’ Maisie said. ‘I’ll give her a call to make sure she’s all right.’

  Don had gone to sleep by then. At midnight, she woke him up. ‘She’s not answering her phone,’ she said. ‘I’ve rung three times now. Surely she’d have heard me, she’s a light sleeper.’

  ‘While the cat’s away, the mice will play,’ Don mumbled sleepily.

  ‘She wouldn’t,’ Maisie said.

  ‘She might,’ her husband said.

  AND THEN THERE WERE the four of them in the car, Daniel and Carla and Nick and Belinda, or Berlinney, as Daniel kept calling her. There had been a pause while Frances got out of the car, but Nick stayed put as Frances disappeared up her path.

  ‘Two down, four to go. Let’s go for a burn,’ Daniel cried. ‘The night’s young.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Belinda said.

  ‘Out to the coast. What do you reckon, folks?’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Belinda asked Nick.

  ‘I’m flatting at the moment. Between marriages,’ he said. ‘Well, who knows, I might never have another one. It’s not bad being fancy
-free. I was planning to kip at Dan and Carla’s tonight.’

  ‘Have you got children?’ Belinda asked.

  ‘Ssh,’ he said, and put his arm around her.

  ‘You don’t ask questions like that,’ Carla called from the front seat.

  Daniel was driving like a maniac, around the narrow winding road that led out to the coastal village at Makara. Yee-ha, he shouted over and again. ‘This is fun. Aren’t we having fun?’

  Carla said, ‘You don’t have to get home for a sitter, do you, Berlinney?’

  ‘No, but …’ Carla had forgotten about the train Belinda was supposed to catch. Or had she ever told her? Belinda couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said to anyone. Truth was a slippery substance and she couldn’t always hold onto it. She wanted to be sick. If she could be sick, she might be able to stop what was happening, get out of this car, find her way back home, even though by now they’d travelled for miles, and the sea lay before them. She was afraid to speak in case she vomited before the car stopped.

  The water lay unusually calm before them. The stars seemed as big as saucers and the moon that spread its rays over the ocean was huge. This was a rocky shore indeed, stonier than the one she grew up beside. She could see lights on above a porch, hear people singing at a party, their voices ringing out across the night. Belinda climbed out of the car and threw up, her feet crunching on the hard pebbled beach as she tried to keep her balance. She vomited and vomited until she was sure she must be empty of everything she had eaten for a week, her body heaving and wretched.

  ‘It’s okay, I’m holding you,’ Nick said. ‘Whoa, easy does it. It’s all right,’ he called out to the others, ‘I’ll look after her.’

  He was holding her dress with its pretty braid on the sleeves in a bunch behind her back so that she wouldn’t be sick on it. After she’d finished, he got his handkerchief out and wiped her face. He went to the water’s edge and rinsed it and came back and wiped her face again. It stayed sticky with salt until much later, the next day. The next day? She had an idea that it was already the next day, that they had left the restaurant some time round midnight.

  ‘We should take her home,’ Carla said.

  ‘I don’t want her spewing in my car,’ Daniel said, suddenly turned sour.

  It was the throwing up that Belinda thought must have saved her from doing worse than staying up all night. Nick’s hands were gentle yet firm as he held her upright, his saying it was okay when it wasn’t, the warmth of him in the car that was still with her, had calmed her. He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. She suddenly wanted him to hold her. ‘We’ll walk,’ he said.

  He led her along the beach by the hand, as if she were a child. In the moonlight, beyond a tidal stream that ran to the sea, stood a row of fishermen’s shacks. There was a light on in one, flickering like a candle or a lantern. Far behind them, Daniel had shifted the car away from her disaster. He and Carla sat inside it, listening to music.

  Belinda and Nick had come across a log washed up from the sea. He sat her down on it.

  ‘You know, you need to have lived real life before you start trying to write it.’

  ‘What makes you think I haven’t?’

  ‘So young, so pretty. You talked about suicide earlier tonight. In the play. What would you know about that?’

  Belinda described to him then a very bad time in her life, after the birth of her first child, when she had thought seriously about killing herself.

  ‘How would you have done it?’

  ‘I was thinking about bridges over rivers, high buildings, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I see. But you couldn’t be sure with things like that. Pills or cutting one’s wrists, I reckon. You have to get the pills first, of course, that can be tricky. Like guns, they’re pretty certain, but then guns aren’t that easy to come by either, unless you’re a farmer or a hunter or something.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I was. I’ve considered the options. I figured out I’d rather live. Are you happy now, Belinda?’

  ‘I reckon I am. I mean, I’ve got everything. I didn’t always.’

  She didn’t know how long they stayed and talked. She must have dozed off, encased inside the coat of Nick, the director. If he was cold he didn’t show it. Along the beach, she supposed Daniel and Carla were sleeping off the drink because they didn’t come looking for them. There was no point in worrying any longer about who was looking for her. At some point she thought Nick might have touched her breast but she could have imagined it. She would remember that he sank his face into the side of her neck, and kissed it. The moon faded to a faint white disc, and dawn light began to appear.

  ‘It’s five o’clock,’ Nick said. ‘Five in the morning. Do you often stay up this late, Mrs Anderson?’

  ‘You make me sound like Mrs Robinson. In the movie, you know?’

  ‘We should go home,’ he said.

  ‘It’s weird, now that I’m here in it, it feels like it shouldn’t end. The waves, the moonlight. This sacred night.’

  ‘Louis Armstrong. You like jazz?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I think so.’

  ‘You only think so?’

  ‘There’s such a lot to learn.’

  ‘This guy, Seth, he’s a lucky man.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Look at this pickle I’m in. Yes, of course we should go home. If Daniel and Carla haven’t driven off and left us.’

  ‘They’re still there. I’d have heard them leaving.’

  ‘It would make the good opening shot of a movie.’

  He laughed, deep in his barrel-shaped chest. ‘You make me feel very young again, Berlinney.’ He touched her hair.

  ‘My mouth is so dry.’

  ‘It’ll be worse when you wake up. Tomorrow. Today, whatever it is. Drink lots of water. Just brush your teeth before you leave me, baby.’

  ‘What? What did you just say? How can I?’

  ‘It’s a mondegreen. Just touch my cheek …’

  ‘… before you leave me. “Angel of the Morning”.’

  ‘You’re beautiful, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. Kind of unstructured, but beautiful.’

  BELINDA ASKED DANIEL TO DROP HER OFF at the end of the street. (This was a trick she’d learned long ago when she stole out of her aunt’s house to go to dances.) Don Anderson was at the house waiting for her, his eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness. A policeman was there taking notes. Maisie had stayed in the Wairarapa with the children, Seth had rented a car and was driving down from Auckland.

  ‘How could you?’ Don said, taking in the state of her.

  The policeman closed his notebook, his expression amused.

  When Seth arrived, some hours later, everyone else had left. She woke up and saw him standing at the bedroom door. Her mouth tasted like the inside of a sardine tin that had been left out in the sun.

  ‘Where were you?’ He looked as if he’d been crying.

  ‘I ran into Carla,’ she said. ‘I got drunk.’

  ‘Why didn’t you phone someone?’

  ‘I was too drunk. I’m sorry, Seth.’ She saw the yawning gaps in her story opening up before her. That was how it would have to stay. When she reviewed it, later on, she agreed with herself that it was so nearly true that it didn’t matter.

  ‘Carla should have rung someone.’

  ‘I know. She was drunk, too. Seth, I’ve never been drunk before. It crept up on me. These years I’ve been at uni, I could have but I never did. You believe me, don’t you?’

  And Seth did, because he had to for both their sakes. ‘Yes, of course I do, sweetheart.’ He opened his arms and wrapped them around her. She was engulfed in his tenderness. ‘I was so scared, Belinda, you’ve got no idea.’

  ‘I have,’ she said. ‘Seth, I love you.’

  ‘I know. Just don’t ever do this to me again.’

  ‘Will they ever forgive me? Your parents?’
/>   He touched her clean shining hair, fresh from the long shower she had taken before she slept, the same place where the man, Nick, had touched it in the morning light on Makara Beach. ‘Give them time. You know my mother, she’d forgive a rat for eating the cheese.’ It was meant to be a joke, but she shivered inside his arms. ‘Mum’s crazy about you,’ he said. ‘My sisters are jealous of you.’

  WHEN ALL OF THIS WAS IN THE PAST, meaning in a week or so, because life went so fast and she was so busy that there was no point in dwelling endlessly on things, Belinda felt some break in her heart, as though some linkage had slipped. Her perfect life, rescued from the disaster of her childhood by the simple serendipity of becoming pregnant to a good and kind man, had almost failed her. The rescue seemed more improbable than she’d ever acknowledged. She considered letting him make her pregnant again, or letting it happen through her own stealth, as if by giving him yet another child she would be giving him back that part of herself that had gone missing for a night. But that wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted was harder to give. All of her. She promised herself she would work on it.

  The following month a letter arrived, offering her a commission to write a play for television. The letter was from Letitia, who’d taken over Daniel’s job when his contract ran out and hadn’t been renewed. Belinda would find this out later, after she had accepted the contract and begun working at the studios on the many rewrites of the play that were asked of her. The director was a woman, because the studio had had to review their gender policies. It didn’t look good, all the men who were running the place.

  When the letter arrived, Seth said, ‘So what about your Master’s? I thought you were going to enrol.’

  Belinda told him that she needed some time out from study, and anyway the money she would earn would be handy for the mortgage, wouldn’t it, and her hours were flexible for the children, unless there was a scheduled script meeting. They wouldn’t need Maisie’s help so much. Seth couldn’t argue with that.