The House Within

by Fiona Kidman

‘I could do with a break,’ Sam says, flexing his shoulder muscles. He had insisted on driving earlier in the day because she is tired and still excited. Although she knows this is sensible, she wants to drive for she feels high and the road is uncurling beneath her in a way she has dreamed of long ago. He had given in at their last stop, at the roadside, to take photographs along the Desert Road. The pylons marching across the moonscape land towards the mountains.

  ‘I need something to remember this place by,’ Sam said. He looked drawn round the mouth, his colour grey.

  ‘You’re going home then?’

  ‘Sooner or later I’ll go back,’ he said.

  They reach the detour round Lake Taupo, and suddenly he jams his feet against the floor as if he’s putting on the brakes, and pulls the wheel to her right, so that the car following almost runs up her tail. ‘Straight ahead,’ he cries.

  ‘Christ Sam, you’ll get us both killed!’

  He looks momentarily sheepish. ‘Well, wouldn’t that be somethin’? Sorry Bethany, I want to go round by the lake. Matt and I used to fish the lake when we were kids. Summer holidays, you know, all that stuff. I’d just like to take a look.’

  Again, there is that hint of farewell in the air.

  As they drive along, Bethany is reminded of her affection for places by water, especially lakes, where there is a fluid darkness beneath polished surfaces. The mountains are hard and bright-edged against the sky.

  ‘We could stay here the night,’ Sam says. ‘Take some time out.’ They have already stayed in the same hotel for a night, but it has hardly seemed like that, the large, impersonal rooms several floors apart, at the end of a day of triumph. ‘Do you have to get back for anything special?’

  She doesn’t know why she agrees. Perhaps it is the tiredness in his face, the kindness he has shown her over the past days and months, his uninhibited enthusiasm for her work. In a moment, before she has had time to change her mind, she sees a motel with a vacancy sign outside and pulls into reception, committing herself.

  It is a luxury unit, with an upstairs and downstairs. Two bedrooms lead onto an upper landing.

  ‘D’you want me to sleep downstairs?’

  ‘No,’ she says, uncertain now that they are alone. ‘It would be silly to sleep on the sofa when there are comfortable beds up here.’

  Downstairs the living area leads off to a thermal pool, waist-deep perhaps, with a ledge running around it. ‘That looks the ticket,’ says Sam.

  ‘My aunt used to have a pool like that,’ exclaims Bethany. ‘Peter and I used to tub in it, it was wonderful. Why don’t you have a soak? You look as if you could do with it.’

  ‘Do you feel like it?’

  ‘Later,’ she says.

  Upstairs, she lies down on one of the beds and closes her eyes. She thinks, I am fifty-six years old, alone in a motel with a man I hardly know who keeps making odd suggestions and may be manic, or homicidal. What happened when he cracked up? She had never been told; perhaps Matt never knew. I’m probably still half-drunk on champagne or I wouldn’t be here.

  She thinks she might have dozed for a while. The next thing she sees is a reflection of him in the landing, from the mirror facing the door, a towel wrapped around his middle. A man with big sloping shoulders, his waist folded over in a circlet of spare flesh.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she calls, pulling herself together. ‘There’s a courtyard outside, I’ll take it out there in a few minutes.’

  Hastily, she splashes water over her face while he moves around in the next room, dressing himself. It might not be too late to go home, to ring and discover messages on her answerphone, a forgotten appointment.

  All the same, she makes tea as she has promised, and carries it outside. There is a little sun left in a corner of the yard; she moves a table into the puddle of light. As Sam walks out she sees the cat, tucked in the warmest patch of bricks, near pots of geraniums. It is not a very big cat, a dark tabby with a patched pink and black nose, but it is surrounded by six or seven kittens, most of which are almost as big as she is, all of them suckling her voraciously. Her offspring have her pinned to the ground, one holding her down between her top paws, its body wrapped over her throat, two more over her hind legs, the rest spread along each side. Bethany motions for Sam to walk quietly, not that it looks as if these creatures will be easily disturbed.

  ‘They’re consuming their mother,’ she says, as he settles himself.

  ‘It happens,’ Sam says, looking at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. I’ve just seen how women get eaten up by their families.’

  ‘You can’t say that about a woman whose just won a big prize,’ she says lightly.

  ‘I would have said it about my own wife.’

  ‘Perhaps she liked it,’ says Bethany, watching the cat.

  ‘She did, I think. But that never seemed to be quite the point. Have you thought of travelling, Bethany?’

  ‘I have. A little.’

  ‘Very little, from what you’ve told me. You should be experiencing food around the world, eating in the top restaurants.’

  ‘You think I could improve on my skills?’

  ‘You know that’s not what I’m saying. I wondered if you’d like to make a trip.’

  She tenses again, not knowing where all of this is leading. ‘With you?’

  ‘Bethany, I’m not asking you to sleep with me.’

  ‘That makes a change.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s unappealing. Truth is, I couldn’t if I tried. I even sit down to pee these days.’ He smiles slightly at the thought.

  ‘Spare me the details,’ she says, repelled by his disclosures.

  ‘I’ve got cancer and soon I’ll die.’

  ‘Shit, Sam.’ She knows as soon as he’s said it that it’s true, the stocktaking of his past, the careful friendship, and, she doesn’t quite know how to put this to herself, his presumption and curiosity, as if he had a right to pry. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He smiles, a little wintry grin. ‘So you’d be sorry for me?’

  ‘Okay point taken.’ She is silent for a while. ‘How long?’

  ‘Six months, a year if I’m lucky. And yes, I’ve had all the goddamn treatment that’s likely to make any difference, and I live with it day by day. When it’s time to go home I will, and my son will come from Italy until it’s over.’

  ‘Sam, I’m so sorry, all the same.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ he says, watching her intently. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  Nonetheless, she rushes in to explain herself. ‘It’s just that I’m more careful of myself now, I’ve made lots of mistakes. I see what I want more clearly than I did.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘So why did you tell me?’

  ‘I want to ask you something, a great indulgence perhaps, or it could be something that would be good for both of us. You’re looking worried again. It’s okay, I really don’t want a last-ditch marriage, or what sentimentally might pass for a romance. But it’s occurred to me that I’d like a friend with whom I could see a few of the old sights for the last time. Florence, where I’ll meet up with my son for a short while — I’ve probably told you he’s an art historian — Paris, Prague, the home of an old friend, perhaps Spain if there’s time. I thought I wanted to go alone, but then I met you, and began to wonder what it might be like to travel with someone who has intelligence and wit, and whose eyes are seeing these places for the first time, who might show me what I haven’t seen for myself and am unlikely to discover, at this stage, on my own.’

  ‘I see,’ says Bethany. The cat suddenly stands and walks with determination towards the outer courtyard, dragging kittens until they scat ter. They begin to play among themselves, not seeming to notice her absence.

  ‘You have some money of your own,’ Sam says. ‘I’m not even offering to be a sugar daddy.’ He laughs, as if the notion is slightly ridiculous. ‘Rich prize
s, you might as well spend them on something for yourself.’

  It’s possible, Bethany thinks, that there will be days when he is not a good companion and she might not even like him. She understands, though, that at the end of the journey, she will have liked him well enough to miss him. She has, she believes, learned one or two things: that to be solitary is a choice, not a vice. And perhaps, in the end, that pain simply rests, that when it raises its head it is almost intolerable, but it is possible to survive until the next time. That there is joy in the spaces in between.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s a marvellous idea,’ she says at last.

  About the Author

  Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has worked as a librarian, creative writing teacher, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film, but primarily as a writer. The New Zealand Listener wrote: ‘In her craft and her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she is the best we have.’

  She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; in more recent years The Captive Wife was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction and was joint-winner of the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her short story collection The Trouble with Fire was shortlisted for both the NZ Post Book Awards and the Frank O’Connor Award.

  She was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1998 in recognition of her contribution to literature, and more recently a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. ‘We cannot talk about writing in New Zealand without acknowledging her,’ wrote New Zealand Books. ‘Kidman’s accessible prose and the way she shows (mainly) women grappling to escape from restricting social pressures has guaranteed her a permanent place in our fiction.’

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE

  A Breed of Women

  The Book of Secrets

  Wakeful Nights

  The Foreign Woman

  Palm Prints

  Ricochet Baby

  Copyright

  Vintage is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  penguinrandomhouse.co.nz

  First published 1997

  Reprinted 1997

  © Fiona Kidman 1997

  The moral rights of the Author have been asserted.

  Printed in New Zealand by Wright and Carman (NZ) Limited, Wellington

  ISBN 978 1 77553 027 5

  Cover design: Carla Sy

  Cover image: maxim ibragimov/shutterstock.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in any information retrieval system or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.