The Party Line
Page 25
‘I’ve been asked to speak on behalf of Hans,’ Audrey says. ‘It used to be the belief of Fenward folk that Hans Janssen couldn’t speak English. It’s true that Josephine talked enough for the both of them. But Hans’s English is — and always was — pretty-much perfect.’
Audrey pauses, looking down at her notes.
‘Hans used to say to Josephine you can learn a lot about people if you don’t talk, just listen. Josephine would laugh and carry on anyway.’ She looks up at Hans. ‘You and Josephine. One talker, one listener. Good, good people. Both of you.’
Outside, afterwards, Hans squints into the sun. Nicola waves and walks to him. He smiles shyly when he realises it’s her.
‘I’m sorry, Hans. So sorry she’s gone.’ A hug is out of the question. It’s the first time they’ve talked directly to each other, ever, without Josephine’s trilled interference. How utterly odd this feels.
‘Thank you, Nicola. I should have spoken in the service, I know. But it was too hard.’
His English is accented but excellent.
They chat on about the farm. The Janssens sold it not long ago and moved into a retirement village in Paeroa. Josephine had died in the garden, feeding birds. She liked to sing with them, mimic them, Hans said. Then, one day, there was only birdsong.
Nicola looks over his shoulder. Audrey is mingling with people Nicola doesn’t recognise. ‘I never realised … You were close with Audrey Gilbert, all that time?’
Hans glances at Audrey, too. ‘No, not at all. Really only after Audrey came back to Fenward. After Jack died.’
Nicola bites her lip. ‘You know,’ she says, finally, ‘you do know that it wasn’t a swimming accident. Jack killed himself. He drowned himself in the river.’
‘I know that, Nicola. People guessed.’
Nicola can’t stop.
‘Hans, it was me. Me and a girl called Gabrielle Baxter … we shamed him into suicide.’
Hans’s rheumy eyes are fixed on Nicola. ‘Are you coming to the house, Nicola?’
‘I can’t. I’ve got to get back. I’m sorry …’
Other mourners are waiting to talk to Hans, express their sorrow at his loss. He puts his hand on Nicola’s shoulder.
‘I’m going to take you over to Audrey. Come on over, girl.’
Hans leads her, like a child.
Nicola Walker and Audrey Gilbert are in the tearooms, which were the tearooms when Nicola was a kid, then for a time became the café with croissants and lattes, and now they are the new vintage tearooms, with designer-wobbly Formica tables and tatty sofas and looping French lounge music. Lampshades hang low over the tables and sweet old-fashioned new-fashioned baking perfumes the air.
Audrey, these days, has very good teeth. They are straight and white and all accounted for. They make perfect lispless words and a gentle smile.
Nicola and Audrey take tea. Yes, she is still Mrs Gilbert, Audrey says, when Nicola stumbles addressing her. ‘But you should try to call me Audrey.’ Nicola nods and thinks this will never be possible.
They have slipped off the edge of something.
Stop staring at her teeth Nicola tells herself. But the thing is, the bruises and the make-up always took your eyes away from the teeth. The teeth — their absence — was an unremarkable thing back then. These days, Audrey wears her beauty naked. It’s asking to be stared at and admired.
‘It’s nice to see you, Nickie.’
Audrey’s not tumbling. She’s anchored; maybe she’ll steer them through the time-maze, with its dead ends and emergency exits. ‘Hans said to me that you wanted to talk about something?’
When Nicola opens her mouth, sound fails. The space between Audrey’s words and this moment is wide, deep as an abyss.
‘All I wanted to say, to tell you,’ begins Nicola, ‘is that Mr Gilbert’s death was my fault. Mine and Gabrielle Baxter’s.’
Nicola tells her everything. Starting with the night she and Gabrielle sneaked up to the Gilberts’ window and peered inside. She tells Audrey what she saw, how they tried to do the right thing but no one else thought the right thing was the right thing to do. How Gabrielle called Jack out at Calf Club Day, then moved away, and Nicola got a new friend called Marcia with a swimming pool, and, eventually, a little diving board at the end of it.
‘I’m sorry you saw what you saw,’ says Audrey, after a time. Her gaze is cool, neutral.
Nicola doesn’t know, suddenly, what else she needs to say. Audrey used to be strange. Now she’s a stranger. That’s all.
‘A shame. Really,’ Audrey murmurs.
They sip their tea, which is cooling faster than Nicola expects but slower than she hopes.
‘Let me see,’ says Audrey eventually. ‘The thing is, Nickie, I’m not sure I quite understand … What exactly is it you’re wanting from me, after all this time?’
Nicola shrugs, unable to answer. Joy used to spin the teapot before pouring. Nicola turns the teapot one two three and sees, finally, that teapot-spinning is all about the collection of thought.
‘You see, my husband was sick for a long time. Long before 1972. He’d tried to end it all, more than once. It was complicated. So—’ Audrey blinks at Nicola, her bewilderment creasing her brow — ‘don’t be worrying that you killed my Jack, you and your friend.’
‘We were trying to help, Gabrielle and I,’ says Nicola. ‘Help you, is what I mean. To us, it felt as though no one wanted to help you.’
‘Oh,’ says Audrey. She bites her top lip, and shakes her head. ‘Your mother, she tried to help. She came to me, one Sunday, you know … when Jack was in Hamilton visiting his mother. Or so I thought. I chased her away, as I remember it. I was very busy that day, household chores and whatnot.’
They finish their tea in silence.
If she turns right outside the tearooms, takes the quickest route back to Auckland — the one she missed this morning — she won’t have to concentrate on the road. This’ll be useful, should Joy reappear. They have much to talk about.
If she turns left instead, and heads back the way she came, any distraction might send her off-course, on to the narrow roads of her childhood memory. She pulls up at the intersection. Her indicator flickers left, then right, then left and right again.
Acknowledgements
An enormous thank you to my publisher at Penguin Random House, Harriet Allan, for her constant support. Thank you, too, Claire Baker, Jennifer Balle, Sarah Healey, Rebecca Lal, Stuart Lipshaw and Kate Stone.
The 2012 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship allowed me time to write the first draft of this book — thank you.
My gratitude to the following readers of early drafts — Angela Andrews, Airini Beautrais, Craig Cliff, Peter Cox, Allan Drew, Kate Duignan, Gigi Fenster, Paula Green, Helen Heath, Therese Lloyd, Mary Macpherson, Anna Sanderson, Abby Stewart, Anna Taylor, Steve Toussaint, and especially Damien Wilkins and Peter Whiteford.
For the bits about peat, thank you to scientists at Landcare Research.
For your support in its many guises, thank you Peter Black, Katie Hardwick-Smith, Mike Hight, Bill Manhire, Marion Macleod, Clare Moleta, Cath O’Carroll, Peter Parussini and Anne Pickersgill.
For almost everything I know about rural life, and for a childhood nothing like Nickie’s or Gabrielle’s, thanks to my parents Bill and Gorrie Scott.
And last, but really first, thanks and love to Adrian, Callum, Noah and Helena Orr.
About the Author
Sue Orr is the author of two short-story collections. Etiquette for a Dinner Party (2008) won the Lilian Ida Smith Award and From Under the Overcoat (2011) was shortlisted for the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and won the People’s Choice Award. Her fiction has been published in New Zealand and international anthologies and translated into Spanish. In 2011 she was the Sargeson Buddle Findlay Fellow.
She has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology and Massey University, and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University, Wellington. S
he lives in Auckland with her family.
Copyright
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First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2015
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Text copyright © Sue Orr 2015
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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Author photograph by Wendy Hay, North Shore Photography
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN 978-1-77553-755-7
eISBN 978-1-77553-756-4
The assistance of Creative New Zealand towards the production of this book is gratefully acknowledged by the publisher.
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Etiquette for a Dinner Party
Varied and accomplished, these stories of sustenance are entertaining, stimulating and original.
An ageing taxi driver reflects on mortality and the choices he has made in life as he indulges in a clandestine Italian feast. The friend of a dying woman delivers a sardonic commentary on the frenetic ritual of cake-baking that precedes death and grief. A young boy sets out to save his grandparents’ marriage after discovering pornography in his grandfather’s memorabilia.
This stunning debut collection observes a subtle unravelling of social etiquettes. Often hopeful, always moving, these darkly quirky stories demand the reader’s attention beyond the final page. Etiquette for a Dinner Party showcases the breadth of this writer’s talent — from the oh-so-recognisable and desperate efforts of a homesick tourist to enjoy the ‘perfect’ holiday, to the descent into madness of a lonely high-country farmer.
Available as an eBook
From Under the Overcoat
A prize-winning collection of vivid, accessible stories.
These fresh, contemporary stories can be read purely for the immense pleasure they offer. However, the stories can also be read for the way they explore elements from earlier works: from Maori myth and fairy tale to masterpieces by writers such as Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce and Anton Chekov. As the award-winning author says, those stories ‘touched me deeply and I can recall their substance without hesitation’. Using them for inspiration, she also explores their concerns of dignity, honesty, bravery, weakness and passion.
‘Sue Orr’s stories have that riveting mesmerizing quality that makes the reader race on, hoping they will never end, yet desperate to find out what happens next. Their stylishness marks a new departure in contemporary short story writing, her weaving of new and vibrant stories on to concepts that began with the great masters of old is high-wire risk taking that succeeds magnificently. I admire these stories immensely: by turn tender, sly, comic, and always deeply informed about the ways of the human heart.’ — Fiona Kidman
Available as an eBook
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