All the Way to Summer

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘I’m going to get Sonny,’ Natalie says. ‘You haven’t told him you’re leaving, have you?’ She hates how her words are spinning.

  Tess leans forward and kisses her cheek. ‘I’m sorry I’m not your sister,’ she says.

  Sonny is in the middle of a circle of very young actors and actresses in the kitchen. Somebody is cooking paella. ‘You can’t let her go,’ Natalie says, pulling at his sleeve. Nobody takes any notice. There is a whining tension in the air. ‘Has anyone seen Victor?’ the actress who plays the counsellor asks. Surprised, Natalie looks around the room. Victor is supposed to be in Wellington.

  ‘He won’t come here,’ the lighting man says.

  ‘For sure.’ Agreement rustles around the group.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he come here?’ Natalie asks, forgetting for a moment that she has to attract Sonny’s attention.

  There is a brief silence.

  ‘Don’t you know, you silly cow?’ the actress says. ‘They’re going to pull the plug on the series. We’re folding. Thanks for the useless scripts.’

  When she goes back to the doorway, the lights of a taxi are receding through the fog. Natalie has lost her bearings, unable to tell in which direction the city lies. Behind her, people sit on the floor, eating paella off white Wedgwood plates. Sonny comes to the door.

  ‘Come inside.’ He puts his arm over her, pinning her against the wall.

  ‘Whose house is this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are we supposed to be here?’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s as good as anywhere.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says. His breath is on her cheek, his wiry black beard brushes against her face. Behind his glasses, his sad eyes are damp.

  ‘What will you do with your suitcase?’ he asks mockingly.

  ‘I’ve ordered a taxi,’ she lies.

  ‘We can send it away,’ he says.

  ‘I think I’m coming down with this bug that everyone’s got. I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t be sick on the carpet,’ he says, releasing her.

  She picks up the suitcase from the hallway and walks outside. ‘Are you going to be okay?’ he calls.

  ‘Was it true? About you and Tess? Or did you both just make it up?’

  He follows her out, and she’s afraid of what he will do next. But he simply leans over and kisses her cheek. ‘Wait in the porch, I’ll make sure a cab comes soon.’

  Once in the car, she can’t remember what address she has given. She thinks they might end up at the hotel she had booked, but the taxi pulls up at Sasha’s.

  There goes Natalie Soames, people would say, and Al would wish that he was there beside her. Somewhere, years and years later. Like Marius Goring thinking about Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes. When the crowd around her dispersed, he would catch up with her. ‘Why, how are you?’ she would say. As if she had just remembered who he was. ‘How are you?’ he would say longingly, although it was clear that she was wonderful.

  This is what she imagined after she got his letter some days later:

  My dear,

  I was sitting on the roof fixing a sheet of iron that a storm had dislodged, when I heard a yell. It was Dulcie. She ran outside before I could climb down to see what the matter was. In her hand she waved a letter. I knew at once that it was one of yours. How could I do this to myself? To you? I’d left the letter in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Dulcie had decided to have it cleaned. As I scrambled over the roof, Dulcie shouted extracts, so that the neighbours could hear, and pulled the ladder down. ‘Sort that out,’ she yelled, ‘get your fancy woman to get you down.’ I was glad that you had left Mountwood. She got in the car then, revving the engine, and roared off. ‘Don’t leave me,’ I heard myself yelling. Joan from next door, you know the one I mean, came over, grinning ear to ear, and put the ladder back so I could climb down. ‘She’s gone to her sister’s,’ she said. ‘She’ll be back.’

  I made a cup of tea and walked out with it to the garden. I saw that the grapevine needed pruning and wondered how I had missed that. I resolved to fix it next year. So it occurred to me that I would stay here, that I couldn’t walk away from this crisis, or the next one.

  I sent you a telegram, dear, care of Television, Marvellous Eight but the post office returned it. Joan had come over with some casserole for my evening meal. She picked up the phone, because I was feeding the cat at that moment, and they read the telegram back to her, with your name on it. There’s no such thing as Section Eight, she said, what’s this all about? Marvellous Eight, I said foolishly, the post office got it wrong. ‘They’ve never heard of it,’ she said, with that triumph that only neighbours like Joan can muster. I knew she would tell Dulcie.

  I hope you weren’t too upset when I didn’t turn up. Perhaps we can meet some other time.

  Yours,

  Alec.

  P.S. I think my banana palm, the one by the west fence, might fruit next year. I’ll send you a case (such optimism), I’m sure they’ll be sweet and nutty, just like you. Alec.

  Alec. Not Al.

  Sweet. Nutty. Nothing there about love.

  Natalie and Monty are at a Christmas party in Wellington. They have prospered and are growing past middle age. They have had a splendid year. Their lives haven’t always been splendid since they began to live with one another again in the spring of that year, in that far-off time, but they have been better than they expected and improving still as the years have passed.

  Natalie didn’t go back to Monty straight away, and by the time she had begun to consider the possibility he had almost gone off the idea. She sees their lives as tough and grainy then, black and white, like television before colour.

  ‘Why did you go back to him?’ her daughter asked once. It is not that her daughter does not care for her father, indeed, they are very close. Rather, she remembers their separation and considers herself damaged by it. Out of such pain and disruption, there has to be a reason, she figures. Why did her mother know her own mind so little? Had she gone back because she was, at heart, simply conventional?

  ‘No,’ Natalie had answered at once, somewhat stung. ‘It was because I had a second chance to choose. You don’t at the beginning when you’re young. Or not when I was young. You got swept away by forces beyond your control. But I chose to come back. Actually,’ she added, ‘that was quite unconventional.’

  Sensing scepticism in her daughter’s expression, she said, with a flash of anger: ‘It was no easier than leaving, what I did.’ But that was where they left it. Love was too complicated to explain to one’s children, she decided. Choices, she suspects, are as hard-won as ever.

  In the wake of Marvellous Eight’s collapse, there was little work in the industry for Natalie. Victor didn’t return her calls. At first she took a regular job in an office and wrote plays for the stage at night. Later, she found a producer, and the reviews were generally favourable. After a while, she was asked to work for television again.

  Victor and Sonny are dead, the industry has changed; Natalie works for independent film companies nowadays, and has as much work as she can handle. The party they are attending is given by a film producer. It is held in the reception area of the studio at ground level, and someone has opened the folding doors so that the room is revealed to the street. Staff and guests sit squeezed up on steps around a staircase amongst life-sized puppets of politicians. At the end of the year, everyone looks tired and drawn, few are glamorous; survivors work hard these days. Most wear stretch Levis and Reeboks, as does Natalie. It is years since she thought of that day of abandonment and loss in Auckland.

  Beside her, a young woman asks a question about her work. They fall into conversation. The woman stands out in the crowd, intense and beautiful, with a pale complexion and straight red hair falling to her waist. She wears a short leather skirt, green stockings and yellow shoes that curve up at the toes. The conversation is passing her by, she has come with a cameraman, and people a
round her are talking shop. She is, she says, a violinist in the Symphony Orchestra.

  For a moment, when the violinist tells her this, Natalie is lost for words. Over the years, she has gone to the orchestra many times, watching the musicians as they played, without thinking of Tess. Now, suddenly, she sees Tess’s hands clasped on the other side of the table from her. This young woman’s hands are just like hers.

  Before Natalie can think of anything more to say, there is a diversion in the street. Waiting at the intersection for the lights to change are eight Santa Clauses rollicking around in costume. They are red and loud and call out ho ho ho to bystanders. The lights change, and they charge on down the street towards the party. A production secretary rushes out, calling with the offer of a drink.

  Chaos and merriment erupt, someone starts to sing ‘Jingle Bells’, and everyone joins in.

  The Santa Clauses cannot stay, they call out again, waving and running down the street.

  Monty turns to Natalie, alight with the fun of it. ‘How about that? A clutch of Clauses.’

  ‘Oh, well done.’ The production secretary has overheard, and already people are calling it out, storing it away in their memories, a clutch of Clauses running down the street on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Marvellous eight,’ laughs Natalie, who has been counting. ‘Oh, marvellous eight.’

  Monty looks at her, puzzled and suddenly guarded.

  ‘There were eight of them, she says, faltering. ‘A marvellous eight.’ Only she wishes she hadn’t said this, it is something tucked down there in memory where it should have stayed hidden.

  Quickly, she turns to introduce the violinist to Monty. He doesn’t mind the film crowd these days. His hair is turning white, and he looks like the kind of solid, dependable person in whom people can confide.

  The violinist has gone. Across the street, Natalie sees her skipping between the cars, her bright hair like a flag. Then her eye is caught by another snatch of red, another Santa Claus running to catch up with the others; he is having trouble with his beard and stops to adjust it. Nobody else except Monty notices him.

  ‘See,’ Monty says, ‘there were nine of them.’

  Natalie smiles, her heart lifting.

  Long ago, she had recognised and been grateful for the way that day had ended, how she had been saved from herself. She can see now that there is always an extra factor, the unknown, the wild card. A letter, an accident, a meeting with a stranger, some quirk of fate that will change the symmetry, deliver people from their expectations.

  Monty shakes his head, not wanting to remember that time. But he has seen the evidence, the ninth Santa Claus, the other dimension. It is impossible for her to explain that she has seen it too, and that it was, all of it, all right.

  4

  As it was

  All the Way to Summer

  On the drive home from the hospital, Annie Pile stared straight through the windscreen, her baby asleep in her arms. She held him as if he were a snake in a basket. The beaten-up light truck rattled and banged over the potholes. All around us, the landscape was steeped in deep-yellow sunlight, shining between the leaves of trees, trickling through the dry kikuyu grass at the edge of the road, nearly blinding Annie’s husband, who was driving the truck.

  ‘I had chloroform when I had my operation,’ I said. I was wedged between Annie and the passenger door. My parents had hitched me a ride home from the hospital. I’d had pneumonia and then, when I got over that, the doctor said, well, she might as well have her tonsils out and have it over and done with. The hospital was a long way off — more than twenty miles — and, because my parents didn’t have a car, they hadn’t visited me during the three weeks I was in hospital. My mother had started out to walk one day, but the heat got to her. I was seven, going on eight, at the time.

  Nobody in the truck responded, although Annie Pile’s husband passed his hand over his straight chunk of hair, as if this in some way signalled acknowledgement.

  ‘I read fourteen books while I was in hospital,’ I said. ‘My teacher at the hospital said I’ll probably go up a class when I get back to school.’

  ‘Make her be quiet, Kurt,’ Annie said to her husband. Her hair, as plain as his but fairer, was caught in a pin above her ear, like fencing wire over corn silk. Her mottled cheeks had a raw, chapped appearance; it looked as if someone had made thumb prints on the skin beneath her eyes.

  ‘My wife is so tired,’ the man said, with a slight foreign inflection in his voice. ‘From having the baby.’

  I thought about stroking the baby’s finger, to see whether that might make the baby happier, but then I decided it wouldn’t work. Instead, I looked at the lush and surprising landscape as we came to the town. In the hedgerows, banana passionfruit hung in ripe canary-yellow clusters. I leaned my head against the cab window, my brown pigtail pressed against the glass. When I shifted, I could feel the imprint of my hair on my cheek, as if my face had been tied to a mooring rope.

  We arrived at the gate of the small farm where I lived, and my parents were standing side by side, waiting to welcome me home. My mother was dressed in a pair of dungarees buttoned over a cotton blouse. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet and thin, but so energetic that she seemed to occupy more space. My father was wearing a jacket and tie. His English brogues had a reddish tint in their polished surfaces. He was a tall, lean man, with hollows in his olive cheeks, eyebrows like inverted tyre tracks and a hawkish nose. He had a suitcase beside him, as if he had just arrived home from a journey of his own.

  My mother put her arms around me when I got down from the truck, examining me closely, touching my hair and cheek. ‘Mattie. Darling,’ she murmured. My father inclined his head towards me, his shoulders stiff.

  Kurt climbed down from the truck cab and shook hands with my father. ‘A holiday,’ he said. ‘Nice for some.’

  ‘A few days in Auckland.’

  ‘Oh, well. What did you get up to?’

  My father was clearly going to say, Mind your own damn business, but remembered just in time that he owed Kurt. ‘I saw a couple of musicals.’ He drew on a cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth.

  ‘Gilbert and Sullivan? I heard there was some on.’ Kurt’s lip curled.

  My father released a perfect smoke ring into the still air. ‘Cox and Box. At least there’s a good laugh or two in it, not all your Beethoven and high falutin’ stuff. My cobber and I had a good laugh all right.’

  ‘Very good. Good for you. We’ll be off then.’

  ‘Better have a look at this young ’un of yours. A boy, well, there’s something to smile about.’

  Annie continued to stare straight ahead of her as if she couldn’t see any of them. Her husband looked at her as at a mystery so large and unfathomable that he was afraid of being caught in it. No, worse than that, that he was inside it but couldn’t yet understand what had trapped him. He was older than Annie Pile, but in that moment he looked like a fledgling sparrow, young and vulnerable. My mother approached the truck.

  ‘What have you called the baby, Annie?’

  ‘Jonathan.’

  ‘A sound name. He can shorten it if he likes. Names are important.’ She leaned into the truck to peer at the baby, putting out her hand to move the blanket aside a little. Annie snatched the cover back, so that the baby was hidden from view. My mother flushed and straightened. ‘Thank you so very much for bringing Mattie home. I hope she was no bother to you, Annie.’

  ‘She needs to hold her tongue more,’ Annie said.

  ‘I expect she was excited about coming home.’ When Annie didn’t reply, my mother said, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  As the truck drove away, clouds of red dust billowing behind it, my father glanced down to check that his shoes were not getting dirty. ‘Unfriendly sort of a coot. Pile, my Aunty Fanny. He’s a Jerry, you know, his name’s Pilsener. You know how they change their names, those fellows.’

  My mother said, ‘Their baby’s not rig
ht. You can tell.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ said my father. ‘Well, too bad about that, eh.’

  ‘We’re fortunate,’ my mother said, and taking my bag in one hand, she took mine with the other, leading me up the path to our two-roomed cottage with the low ceilings. After a moment’s hesitation, my father followed her, drew abreast of her.

  My mother said contentedly, ‘You’re home.’ She could have been talking to either of us, but I knew her words were directed towards me. For the moment, we were together again, my mother and father and me.

  We have different ways to describe things now. We would say that that baby had Down syndrome. We would say that the parents would find joy in their son regardless. But that was then. Our family was momentarily counting their blessings on a bright day beneath a Delft-blue sky, the gorse pods snapping in the heat. My mother, as you see her in this picture, is so pleased that I am home, and if she is puzzled by my father’s absences, she puts it down to the war, that restlessness men get, and lets the matter lie.

  We moved north after the war. My father had served in the army as a signaller. He was an Englishman, who couldn’t make sense of my mother’s relatives, or they didn’t understand him — you could take your pick. He dressed differently and spoke ‘posh’, as my relatives used to say.

  ‘I can’t stand it here,’ he said when he came back, meaning the house where my mother and I lived with my grandparents. ‘We need a bit of an adventure.’

  ‘I don’t want an adventure,’ my mother said. ‘I’ve got money saved for a house of our own. Why don’t you just settle down and get a job like everyone else?’

  My father didn’t want that. He’d heard about this place up north. Some of his cobbers in the army had talked about it. And they couldn’t see themselves settling down in the suburbs.