Drybread: A Novel

by Marshall, Owen

  Theo went through all the rooms of his house and noticed nothing amiss. Two windows were ajar, as he had left them, with no obvious sign of entry. He looked briefly at the phone, but had no idea how to recognise that it had been bugged. In a life as mundane as his, there had been little to fear from surveillance. Penny's whereabouts was the only secret he had which could be of interest to others.

  For a moment he saw the place as the parson may have observed it on a quick recce: the newspapers still open on the sofa, the bed clothes pulled up rather than remade, the crumbs and cheese gratings on the tiled floor by the kitchen bench, a piece of cardboard folded and wedged to keep the wardrobe door from gaping, the yellowed sellotape on the fractured edge of his computer keyboard. The soap tray in the bathroom streaked with yellow and blue residue from the precursors of the white oval that lay there. The trivial sordidness of everyday living which you notice in other people's homes, but are oblivious to in your own.

  In the spare bedroom, which had become his office, he set a simple test in case the parson came again, or for the first time. Just papers from his case, but with their juxtaposition on the desk exactly measured and recorded. If the parson was dropping in he'd surely be drawn to work documents. After his meal, when dusk was filling in the spaces between houses and drawing down the sky, Theo walked out to the gate. The car had gone. Theo wondered where such a man would go at the end of his working day, and whether he found his occupation more futile than that of other people. Boredom at first hand calls for a form of endurance: to experience it vicariously as a secret observer of the lives of others must be doubly stultifying. Theo hadn't smoked for some years, but standing there in the dusk at the end of the driveway he had a strong desire for one of those thin, dark cheroots. He imagined the texture of it between fingers and thumb, saw the end glow as an ember against the sky, felt the smoke of a deep drag thump into his lungs as if it had a body of its own. Such memory gusts had little to do with addiction: they came as indirect cats' paws of happier times.

  A motorbike came past, with a sound like a fat man's rich, bronchial cough, then two cyclists in single file and without lights. Theo could barely make them out, but knew they were both girls because the one behind called out, 'Wait up, Nadine. Nadeeeen,' ending in a sort of angry wail.

  A good handful of mail was showing in the box at Theo's gate. Even had there been sufficient light, Theo wouldn't have checked it there: he disliked people who stood at their mailboxes, sometimes in slippers and housecoats, sometimes in gardening clothes and holding a hoe, and read their mail before the passing world. And his eventual perusal when inside showed there was no reason for urgency. All could be winnowed away without leaving solid grain, or gain. The rates demand, the 134th issue of Behind the News, a credit card statement, a slip announcing that the milk delivery round was changing hands, with two apostrophes missing and one incorrectly used, a letter from a former colleague saying how much he was enjoying working in Sydney, seven multi-coloured advertising circulars and a donation envelope from the support group for those with clinical flatulence. What more did he expect? But he did, of course — he yearned for something unsolicited and undeserved, a lightning strike that would galvanise his world.

  There was no way Theo was going to start smoking again, but he hadn't sworn off a tipple. Whisky was a good friend to him in the evenings: whisky and water, the sports channel, maybe a chat to Nicholas, or Melanie. Whisky and water, and programmes well removed from the present. Maybe just whisky and water. Sometimes just whisky.

  While he was sitting with his drink on the sofa, Theo recalled the drifting cry of the girl cyclist in the dusk, and thought of his own Nadine: a woman with whom he'd had a sudden and unfortunate affair that perhaps signalled the failure of his marriage, though the essential causes lay elsewhere. Nadine was a dental assistant, and there was nothing romantic in their relationship there. On his occasional visits she would sit close to his side, but only to expedite the use of the small suction device that removed excess saliva during the pauses in the dentist's use of the drill. Theo hadn't known her name. They exchanged only a few commonplace words, and his main impressions of her appearance were the considerable bosom beneath the white smock and a round face of blameless, schoolgirl innocence, though she must have been in her late twenties. He felt no particular interest in her, and she displayed towards him no more than professional attention.

  They met in rather different circumstances at a BP service station in Papanui. Theo was checking tyre pressures, and Nadine was attaching a trailerload of firewood she'd purchased there. He noticed that the trailer was still chained to the fence, and jumped in front of her car just as she was about to drive away. 'The guy's forgotten to unchain the trailer,' he called, when her startled face appeared at the driver's window. 'I'll get him over.'

  He knew he'd seen her somewhere before, but didn't know where, and she gave no sign of having recognised him. Perhaps she was accustomed to him only when he was semi-prone and with his mouth stretched open.

  She thanked him and drove away apprehensively, with the trailer bouncing noisily over the kerb. She drove a Commodore, and Theo imagined it wasn't her choice, but her partner's car.

  Theo went to the dentist not long afterwards because a piece had broken off one of his lower left teeth. He and Nadine recognised each other immediately, and entertained the dentist with the story of a small disaster averted. 'I didn't think you looked comfortable in that car at all,' said Theo.

  'It's my husband's. By rights he should've been getting the firewood anyway, but he kept putting off ringing up, and then he was away and I needed some right then. My car hasn't got a tow-bar.'

  'Always useful, a tow-bar,' said the dentist indulgently.

  'So what do you drive?' Theo asked her.

  'I've got a Corolla.'

  'Bloody good little cars,' said Theo.

  'Just keep on keeping on,' said the dentist, who had a Saab.

  'I've been pleased with it,' said Nadine, and then all three concentrated on Theo's tooth: in a dental surgery time is money.

  It wasn't a conversation that foreshadowed intimacy, but a few days later by one of those small coincidences which litter everyday life, Theo met her again at a private gallery exhibition of lithographs. Stella was to give the speech for the opening, so was in a group closely connected with the show. She and Theo were cooling from an argument in the car on their way to the show: a disagreement concerning Theo's interest in a job in Auckland.

  Theo was relieved to move away and look at some of the work. He recognised Nadine close beside him. They were surprised by the meeting, then tried to disguise this lest it be taken as incredulity that the other had any cultural inclination. 'I do mainly screenprinting,' said Nadine, when Theo had explained why he was at the exhibition. 'I'm in a co-operative with several of the people exhibiting here.'

  'Dentistry and screenprinting, now there's a combination,' said Theo. He was close to the long table that held ranks of glasses bottom up and carafes of wine, so he filled a glass for Nadine, topped up his own. The availability of reasonable wine was one of the few benefits of attending art functions with his wife. He talked with Nadine of art and the fashion dictates that seemed to rule there.

  'Oh, my stuff doesn't sell for big bikkies,' she said. It was the first time Theo had seen her dressed up, and it was something of a transformation. Freed from her nurse's smock the top of her breasts and smooth shoulders caught the light well. Her dark hair was down, and the effect of that, together with evening make-up, was to make a different woman of her. 'Yes,' she said in answer to him, 'I've had an exhibition of my own stuff here, earlier this year, and most of the prints actually sold.'

  'How do you find the time?'

  'I only work at the clinic three and half days a week, and we haven't got any kids yet.'

  'You'd like to be a full-time artist?' asked Theo.

  'I'm not driven enough. Sometimes I go right off it for weeks at a time, and this way I don't have to
get uptight about it.'

  Theo filled their glasses again, and they went and sat on a black sofa in the small foyer of the gallery. It was the one piece of furniture there, and other people came in and out, but didn't stand about. Theo enjoyed talking with Nadine. She knew a good deal about art, but seemed to enjoy his iconoclastic comments and cheerful slanders of local academics and artists. He didn't bother to ask if her husband was with her, because her manner provided the answer. The night was warm, and from the crowded exhibition room came a hubbub like that from a colony of seabirds. Theo and Nadine noticed when it subsided and stopped their own conversation for a moment. They could hear Stella talking. 'Shouldn't we go in?' said Nadine.

  'And lose the only sofa in the place?' said Theo. 'You know, I'd rather go out — go out and have a coffee or something at the Mad Butcher's round the corner.'

  'It's the Mad Hatter's.'

  'What?'

  'The café's called the Mad Hatter's,' said Nadine. She seemed very relaxed, and her lipstick caught the light.

  'Through the looking glass and all that. Anyway, what about your wife?'

  'She'll be going on somewhere for a meal with the artist and hangers-on. You know how it is at these things. I'll just beg off. She won't mind. I'll say I'm going to have a drink with the best screenprinter in the city.'

  He did beg off. He went into the small gallery when Stella finished her speech and pushed his way towards her. The swell of conversation had begun again, and people were on the move about the room as well to view the paintings. Stella didn't mind that he preferred not to go with them for a meal, but she introduced him to the artist, a gaudy young woman with striped hair, and several others. A certain amount of conversation was required for politeness, and Theo half expected Nadine to have left the sofa when he finally got back to the foyer.

  She was still there, but had been joined by a tall, loose-jointed old man with a collarless white shirt and Shakespearian eyebrows. 'Walter's one of the co-operative,' Nadine said, 'He's a woodturner and sculptor.' Theo wasn't interested in Walter, woodturning or sculpture.

  'Nice to meet you,' he said. 'As a matter of fact Nadine and I are just off. I've been held up in there.' He remained standing until Nadine stood as well, and they said goodbye to Walter, who was still in the process of rising politely as they walked to the door. 'Enough of art speak for one night,' said Theo, and he and Nadine escaped into the coolness of the street.

  It was relaxing at the Mad Hatter's. They talked easily and with an openness that chance meetings sometimes invite. Nadine seemed to find him amusing, whereas Stella often accused him of exaggeration. Theo was able to use some of his best anecdotes on a new audience without any nagging concern that he was repeating himself. They didn't touch, they didn't kiss, when Theo walked with Nadine to her car, but there was just that pleasant charge of awareness between them. Nadine said she was interested in the world of journalism, and Theo said why didn't she come in to the paper and look around with him some time.

  She did come. She rang a week later and came in the same afternoon, which was cold, with a southerly on the way. Theo took her on a tour of the building, and she was interested in how much of the paper's production had been computerised, especially the imaging. She said it made her realise how primitive screenprinting was: how physical and tactile. So many of the old handcrafts were giving way, she said. In an annex to the cavenous printing room was a pile of cardboard cylinders. Nadine wondered if there were any spare, and Theo said he'd drop a dozen or so off at her place after work. 'I'm always looking for them to use when I'm sending prints out,' she said.

  'You're not screwing her, are you?' asked Nicholas when Nadine had gone, and Theo went back to his desk. To himself, Theo admitted that was exactly his intention, and the thought gave him a sort of eagerness he hadn't felt for a long time. Anticipation of sex, justified or otherwise, rids the world of a paunchy ennui, outlines became more sharply defined, colours more vibrant. He had a shower at work and left a little early, carrying a double armful of cylinders down to the carpark.

  Nadine lived in a white, weatherboard home in Hornby: a house almost in nurse's garb itself. With the cardboard cylinders clutched to him, Theo could barely see his way to the door, and while he was still wondering how he could manage to knock without dropping them, Nadine opened it. Theo went in without invitation, without any query regarding her husband: all the talk at the paper had carried additional communication of which they were both aware. As Nadine began to make coffee at the bench, Theo came behind her and pressed in, feeling the excitement of a new woman's body. They never had the coffee. They went into a very small, white room with a single bed and cartons of domestic surfeit along one wall, they stripped each other without lingering and without much to say, and enjoyed each other without any reserve whatsoever. Theo hadn't been so hard for a long time. 'I don't know what you're doing,' said Nadine, 'but you're really hitting the spot.' Her large, pale breasts trembled with each stroke and the eroticism of that drove him into a sort of delirium.

  He went back the next day, and the day after that, as if living in a junkie daze. Each time less was said, though the lovemaking was of almost unbearable intensity, and he left immediately afterwards. On the fourth day, Nadine burst into tears when she came to the door. She felt so guilty, she said, and her husband was coming back from his work trip in two days. 'We don't even know each other, do we,' she said. That was true in a way, but in another sense had little to do with what was happening. 'We've just got to finish it right now,' she said. 'Over, once and for all.' They did finish, and it was rather like waking up, shaken, after a feverish dream.

  Theo thought that was it, but such things rarely have a soft landing. Nadine must have felt the need for expiation, because not long after she went round to see Stella and told her everything. She'd told her husband too. 'I actually admire her guts for getting it all out like that,' Stella said, but Theo couldn't understand why you'd do that, unless you wanted to get back at someone. He said it was all his fault, that he wanted the marriage to work out, that he'd try harder, but he felt nevertheless that somehow he'd been done an injustice: that some fraternity of women had been active against him. 'Well, we'll jog along,' Stella said bitterly, 'jog along and see how things go between us.'

  He didn't change his dentist, but when he went after that, Nadine was never on duty. She must have worked the roster to avoid him, or perhaps left the job completely and spent her time screenprinting. At exhibitions and art functions afterwards, he at first expected to see her, but she was never there, and the brief affair faded until the only memory that sometimes came, unbidden, with a small jolt, was of the white room with storage cartons, and the trembling of her breasts as he worked over her. Even that seemed a long time ago.

  6

  Penny Maine-King left a message on Theo's answerphone. She said that if he wanted more for the story, she'd be home all day next Wednesday. She didn't say where home was, and she didn't ask for any confirmation of the visit. Her voice sounded quite offhand. Maybe she was calling from a public booth in Alexandra, and there was a florid man with sandals within earshot, or a sun-baked thin woman with Trade Aid bracelets, maybe a teenage girl with green tints in her hair and a silver ring in her belly button. It was tough for Penny, surely, stuck at Drybread without support, and trying from there to influence the ponderous apparatus of the law.

  Theo could have signed for one of the company cars, but didn't want to have to give any reason for going away, so on the Wednesday went south in his Audi. Also, he liked to drive a well-serviced, quiet vehicle that didn't have dockets strewn on the floor, coffee stains on the seats and ash-trays crammed with barley sugar papers and tissues. Communal things are always misused and abused — cinema foyers, public toilets, telephone kiosks, honesty boxes and company cars. No one gives a bugger about anything unless it's a personal belonging: rather there's a strange satisfaction in adding to the dilapidation of things that aren't your own.

  For Theo a dec
ent car was a necessity of life. Power in reserve; something there if you had the need, the urge even, to put your foot down. He was impatient with the heavy traffic, especially the milk tankers, which seemed to come out in flotillas at certain times of the day.

  He had an early lunch in the Saltwater Creek diner at the south end of Timaru, sitting close to a bikie with fringed black leather and a pale, poet's face. 'So what are you doing?' Theo asked Nicholas on the cellphone.

  'Anna's been asking about you,' he said.

  'Tell her I'm doing the investigative journalism I'm paid for.'

  'You're not going to screw someone, are you?' said Nicholas wistfully.

  'Chance would be a fine thing.'

  'You are, aren't you,' Nicholas said. 'People all over the world are on their way to get well fucked, and I'm at work looking up the arse of a pet shop. Jesus. We're having a union meeting this afternoon: we'll all get indignant about not being duly recognised and recompensed, determine to stick out for eight per cent and cave in for four as usual.'

  'So what are you doing now?'

  'I'm cobbling together a quick piece on student loans. Very exciting. I'm pissing myself about it. There's a guy here today from the computer place supposed to be explaining the proposed new set-up, and he's spent the time so far hanging about Angie's desk with a hard on.'

  'Would you check my emails for me?' asked Theo. 'Ring me in the next hour or so in case I get out of range if there's anything important.'

  'Okay. I can see a kid down here at the back of the pet shop. He's taking dead guinea pigs or whatever out of the bin. Jesus. You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced students shouldn't get any loans at all. Idle, ignorant little pricks. No bastard gave us any loans, did they? They just piss off overseas when they graduate anyway.'