In My Father's Den

by Gee, Maurice

  “The car’s all they’ve got. A green Mini like mine.”

  He drew back suddenly; sharpened his eyes: his pulpit look. “Why did you have to get mixed up in it?”

  “I didn’t exactly—”

  “Your whole life’s a mess, Paul. Nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure. Women, drink, the stuff you call art. No discipline, no belief, no order. It’s as if our mother had never existed.”

  “Listen—”

  “Everything went overboard. You gave in to every appetite you ever had. It’s no wonder to me you’ve ended like this.”

  “I haven’t ended.” Celia had ended. “Anyhow, I didn’t come for a sermon. There’s a girl dead. Nothing changes that.”

  “She’s in merciful hands.”

  Oh my God, I thought, here it is again. The image I always had when he talked of God was of our old black dunny with wetas on the ceiling and a candle in a chipped enamel holder. I was fond of it—I could afford to laugh: such a joke, such an antique. But the glimpse I caught now was obscene. I got up from my chair and went out of my brother’s office. Like him I had a nose for poisoned air. I drove down to the beach and sat looking over the water. Soon I felt less sick and started to work up a rage. That cretin, I thought, that half-man, that self-castrated, mother-worshipping, obscurantist, priestly, wowser prick. What a mind! What an oily little mess of cogs and bearings! Press the button and out came the card. God in His infinite wisdom has called this sinner to the judgement seat. I got out of the car and spat.

  Then I walked on the beach, trying to think of Celia. But Celia was far away. Transubstantiated. Ashes.

  The motion of the sea began to soothe me. Black-backed gulls waddled out of my path. The salty, savoury smell of rotting seaweed came to my nostrils and made me think of the fish soup, and seaweed soup, Mother had fed us at the kitchen table. “Eat it up, it’s good for you.” Andrew, to please her, asked for more.

  I passed his house and glimpsed Penny busy in her kitchen. Patient Penelope, I thought, her husband was under a worse spell than Circe’s. I turned my head to the sea and went on.

  “Paul.” A thin seagull cry. I was far enough away to pretend I hadn’t heard. Conversation with Penny was like a walk in a formal garden: gravelled path, staked and labelled shrub, dwarf, common exotic. Never a weed. “Paul.” I would have enough of her in the evening. But for people like Penny I find myself experiencing a kind of rudimentary social concern; a sense that a wrong response might bring a whole card-house of verities tumbling down. I usually smile and do what’s expected of me, meanwhile building up ill-humour to be taken out on class or car or washing-machine. “Paul.” I turned, acting puzzlement; then walked back along the sand.

  “I thought I’d get a bit of sea air.”

  “Paul, if you’re going that way would you look for Jonathan?”

  I’d forgotten the boy was on holiday.

  “He went off this morning for a walk round the rocks and all he took was an orange. He’ll be starving by now. Tell him to come home for lunch.”

  I looked at my watch and Penny said quickly, “Yes, I know, it’s late.” She was not a maker of pleas or confessions, but suddenly she said, “Paul, will you talk to him? He’s acting so strangely—as though he’s—” She struggled, “—in a different world—behind a glass wall.” This was not what she wanted; she shrugged impatiently. “He just mopes off by himself. He won’t talk or eat. He just goes for walks or goes to bed.”

  Why do I always think of sex? I had Jonathan’s trouble diagnosed before Penny had properly begun. Guilt. Presbyterian dong-beater’s guilt. A dread disease. A killer. It had helped cripple the boy’s father. Now it returned—a visiting sin.

  “Has Andrew talked to him?”

  “Andrew’s useless. Besides, he doesn’t know. He only sees what it suits him to see.”

  I looked at her in surprise. It was the first critical judgement I had known her pass on Andrew. Although it pleased me I wasn’t going to be drawn. “It’s probably nothing. Probably some worry at school. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Thank you, Paul. I’d be so grateful. And don’t tell Andrew.”

  I walked along the beach again. Poor Jonathan. Poor little bugger. His father smelled of moral disgust the way other men smell of after-shave lotion. The boy must have caught a whiff every time he’d gone near. But I had thought he was tough, I’d thought he’d survive—like me? My father was different. His deepest need was of privacy—and privacy was the gift he offered us, while our mother offered love, precepts, a Path: bondage. That he was more selfish than she, and lazier, seemed unimportant to me. I kept my eyes on the damage.

  Round the first headland I found Jonathan sitting on a rock peeling an orange. He was trying to get the skin off in one piece—a sign, I thought, that he wasn’t wholly submerged. I sat down beside him. “You could fill that up with sand and leave it on the beach. Someone would think they’d found a real orange.”

  He gave me a faint smile. He obviously thought the idea cheap. “Have you seen my father?”

  “Yes. And your mother. She’s worried about your lunch.”

  “I bought a pie.” He split the orange and offered me half. There was a tension in him, unfurtive, that suggested fear and lostness rather than guilt. I wondered if I’d been wrong in my guess at his trouble.

  “What was Dad like?”

  “All right. Normal.” I waited. “Have you got some trouble with him?”

  “No.” He said nothing more for several minutes, and I said nothing. His tension had reached out to me. Absolutely still, he thought something out. Then he started eating pieces of orange.

  “Have they caught the man who killed that girl?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you think they will?”

  “Yes. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Nice. A nice girl.”

  “Why would someone want to kill her?”

  “I don’t know, Jonathan. Probably he doesn’t know himself. A fit of insanity. Something like that.”

  “You mean he was mad?”

  “He must have been. He might even have done it in a kind of blank. That happens sometimes. Or people hear a voice telling them to kill.”

  “From God?”

  “Usually. At least, that’s what they think.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “No?” It did not seem strange. “Nor do I.”

  Jonathan finished his orange. I remembered my piece and ate it. I did not think religion—loss of belief—was his trouble; or, as had seemed likely for a moment, that my connection with Celia had brought him to a realization of death.

  “How do people get mad?”

  “There’s no one way. All sorts of pressures—delusions.”

  “Voices from God?”

  “Not only that. Hundreds of ways.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “But why that girl?”

  “Chance,” I said, “chance.” It was the way he seemed to weigh even this that made me understand at last that he was bringing himself to tell me something he knew about the murder.

  “What is it, Jonathan?”

  He pulled a kind of tragic clown’s face—the sort of thing that must until then have been a game with him. It kept him, I think, from crying.

  “Can I show you something?”

  The walk along the beach was like an episode in a cheap movie—the finding of the body in the wardrobe. Thinking of it now I hear music in crescendo. Jonathan led me to the boat-shed on the front of Andrew’s section. The building hid us from Penny in the house. He took a rusty key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock on the door. Inside, on its trolley, was the old cabin cruiser Andrew had bought with the house. Jonathan squeezed along the side of it and levered himself up until he could climb into the cabin. He opened the door to the engine and felt inside. I saw him shifting things carefully. Then he came back—over the side, along the narrow gap—and handed me a news
paper parcel.

  As I unwrapped it he pressed himself against my side. He gave way to horror and grief: responsibility was mine. He wept against my shoulder. I kept my actions slow: unwrapped the paper, dropped it, handled the books as though I were in a second-hand bookshop. Leaves of Grass, with the name Henry Prior on the fly-leaf. Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. I had moved into a world where things were recognizable only physically. I put my arm round Jonathan and let him cry.

  “Your father?”

  “He’s the only one with another key.”

  “Andrew.”

  My feelings take no shape—I remember them simply as an amorphous lump in which horror, comprehension, incomprehension, all had a part. Everything else has clarity. There were grains of sand at the roots of Jonathan’s hair. His breath and his tears were warm on the side of my neck. A yellow surf-board with a black stripe running down it just off centre leaned against the wall of the shed. I remember thinking, Mondrian, and giving an almost terrified yelp at the inconsequence of the thought. I looked at the books again. Leaves of Grass had foxing on the title page. A hair that must have been Celia’s protruded like a book-mark from Song of Myself. I held it between my fingers for a moment, then dropped it to the floor of the shed.

  Jonathan moved away from me. He wiped his arm across his eyes. “What are we going to do?” he said.

  “Talk. We’ve got to talk.”

  “He must have—”

  “Not here.” I picked up the paper and wrapped it round the books. “Put them back. Exactly where you found them.”

  He obeyed almost eagerly: along the side of the boat, into the cabin; then back to my side.

  “My car’s parked at the boat-ramp. Do you think you can get there without your mother seeing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Off you go then.”

  He slipped out, looked around for a second, then crouched and ran. Andrew, I thought, you’ve really done it this time. I locked the shed. I went back along the beach, up a right-of-way, and walked through the streets to my car. Jonathan was waiting inside.

  “Can we go somewhere else?”

  I drove to Milford and parked at the beach. His story came in a rush. On Sunday afternoon his mother had taken the Rover to call on her parents. Later Andrew had borrowed a neighbour’s car to visit his factory foreman, who was sick. The neighbour, Mrs. Tillotson, was a widow, sixty-five and partly blind. She kept the green Mini as a kind of memorial to her husband. Andrew took her for drives in it now and then and borrowed it on a strict system: one charity drive earned one loan.

  On Sunday he drove away, saying he’d be gone for a couple of hours. At once Jonathan fetched a key his father thought lost and got his surf-board from the boat-shed. (Andrew had locked it up at the end of March, which for him was the end of summer.) He surfed for an hour, then waxed the board and put it away in the exact position he’d taken it from. His mother came home at four and his father at quarter-past six. Penny asked Andrew what had made him late and he said he’d gone from the foreman’s place to talk some Session business with Peter Bax.

  On Tuesday morning while Penny was shopping Jonathan decided to risk another hour with his surf-board. The waves were running—other boys were out. He went to the shed, and saw that someone had shifted the board several feet. At once he was alert. Was his father setting a trap? He poked around, looking for clues.

  “I didn’t believe at first it was him. I thought he must have been protecting you, or something.” He wept again: that time must have seemed long ago.

  I put my arm around him. “Leave it all to me now. Forget about it if you can.” (Kindly old Uncle Paul! Forget your father strangled a girl.)

  We drove around the North Shore for the rest of the afternoon. Alternately the boy wept and talked. Questions. Why? Why did he do it? What’s going to happen? I too asked myself, why? how?—and seemed on the point of understanding, but could not take the final step. It was like trying to remember a name that eludes, or picture a face known in childhood. But I had a dozen plans. I would take Jonathan with me—run. We’d leave the mess to sort itself out. Or: I’d call the police—they could pick Andrew up at the factory. None of us need ever see him again. Or: I’d get the books—burn them—steal the car….Or: I’d take Andrew into the bush, shoot him, bury the body.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll tell him he’s got to see me in the morning…. I’ll have a plan by then.”

  “What plan?”

  “I don’t know. One that’s best for you and your mother. Do you think you can get through the night?”

  “What if he finds out I know?”

  “He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt his family.”

  “But what if he finds out?”

  “He won’t. There’s no way he can…. You go to bed early. Say you don’t feel well.”

  I took him to a public lavatory where he washed his face and combed his hair. Then we went home. It was nearly five o’clock. Jonathan went straight to his room.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Penny. “It’s school trouble, like I thought. They’re a wet bunch of teachers at that place.” I improvised a tale of minor persecutions. “I’ve told him how to handle it. He’s a sensible boy. He’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t tell Andrew,” Penny said.

  We had a cup of tea and talked about the boy. His father was giving him a rough time. Penny saw her “golden mean” in danger.

  “I believe in discipline. Strictness. But he won’t allow him any freedom at all. He’s got it all laid down in do’s and don’ts. Like a sort of chart. It’s too rigid.” Order, she was seeing, had its dangers. I said nothing, but let her run on. She was, I thought, so much a nonentity she became memorable. A monster of ordinariness. How had she got through the week with a husband who’d murdered a girl? Had there been no sign—nothing strange? Terror in the dark, remorse? —signal across the gulf between his blue-sheeted bed and her pink one? And before the murder? There were years of hatred in him—building up. There must have been. She’d lived with him seventeen years. Why hadn’t she seen it? Warned somebody?

  Finally: She was there—available. Why hadn’t he strangled her?

  Andrew came home at half-past five. I found I couldn’t control myself. My bowels were suddenly loose and my eyes running. I went to the lavatory, where I made a noise like one of my father’s specials. At the other end of the house somebody closed a door.

  When I went back to the kitchen (like Jonathan, with washed face and combed hair) Andrew was drinking tea and reading the newspaper.

  “There you are, Paul. Seen this?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s not much news. Comfort House have got a new lounge suite. See.” He tried to show me a full-page ad. “It’s a bit like our new line. We’ve got them beaten on price though.”

  “You men move out of here,” Penny said.

  We went into the sitting-room. Andrew sat in a Priors chair and turned the pages of his paper. Above his head a formation of china ducks headed for the space-heater. I looked out the windows at the beach. A boy in a wet-suit was riding miniature waves.

  “There’s nothing new in the murder case. ‘Investigations continuing….’ I suppose that’s a way of saying they’re stuck.”

  “Yes.”

  “It looks as if he might get away. Well, the sooner it’s forgotten the better.” He turned a page; made an exclamation of disgust. “Look. A disgrace.” His finger was on a photograph of a newly-opened church. “It’s like a cowshed. The government shouldn’t have let Mormons into the country in the first place.”

  A few moments later Penny called us for dinner. I went to Jonathan’s bedroom. He was lying face down on the bed.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s tea time. Do you think you can manage?”

  He followed me back to the dining-room and sat down in his place.

  Penny had cooked st
eak—“Paul’s favourite meal.” But she had done it to suit Andrew: fried every drop of juice out. He ate in his usual fashion, ignoring as far as he could what was on his plate. Eating was a necessary chore. Nevertheless his mood was, for him, expansive. Nodding at me, he said, “I’m glad to see you’ve shaved those things off your face. Now if you get a barber on to your hair you’ll start to look like a civilized person again.”

  I looked at his hands. They were white, strong, hairless. Nails as pink as candy. Very deft with knife and fork, cutting uniform squares of steak. These were the hands, merciful hands, that had strangled Celia and tried to rip the hair from her head. I tried to picture the scene. An exercise in horror—purely cerebral. I had no realization of it. My concern was for the boy. He had spoken the grace evenly enough, but his first forkful of meat was still in his mouth. He couldn’t swallow.

  His mother too had noticed. In a moment she said, “Try to eat, Jonathan. Steak’s good for you.”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Again?” Andrew said. “What’s wrong with the boy?”

  “He’ll eat something. Won’t you, Jonathan?”

  “He’d better. I don’t pay good money for food just to have him turn his nose up at it.”

  “My stomach feels funny.”

  I tried to help. “Maybe it’s that pie.”

  “Pie? Jonathan?”

  “I had one for lunch.”

  “Pie?” Andrew chimed in. His indignation was moral: pies came from the underworld. Jonathan stared at him. There was a bruised look about his face. Suddenly he put his mouth down and dropped chewed meat in his hand.

  “Go to your room,” Andrew cried. His voice was too light to be patriarchal. “I’ll come and see you later.”

  The boy ran.

  “My apologies, Paul. That sort of thing doesn’t usually happen at my table.”

  We ate the rest of the meal without talking. As soon as it was over Penny went to Jonathan’s room. When she came back she said, “You’re not to touch him, Andrew. He has got an upset stomach. If he’s no better in the morning I’m getting the doctor.” Her defiance took in me: so much for my cure.