Drybread: A Novel

by Marshall, Owen

  'You've come a long way,' said Erskine, 'and I appreciate that. I would've come to New Zealand myself if Penny was willing to meet me, but we won't go over that again. The whole thing for me is wanting Ben back again. I don't hate Penny, and I hope she doesn't hate me, but I need my son and I think he needs me. I've never said Penny can't see him. It's what the court back home decided, that he live with me, and she have visiting rights.' He paused and took several regular breaths to ensure he was fully in control of his emotions, that he wasn't too partisan. 'I thought that was okay by both of us, and then wham, Penny took off.' He tipped his head back a little as he recalled it. 'I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to things,' he said.

  'I think she was overwhelmed by a sense of the inequality in your situations,' said Zack. 'In a country not her own, not working, no financial security, her marriage disintegrating, her friends mainly yours . . . she must have felt powerless. So she went away with the child: the only really important thing she had left.'

  'It's no long-term answer, though, is it?' said Erskine.

  He was right. Even Penny had come to recognise that. Theo was surprised by the reasonableness of his manner and his views. He barely mentioned Penny's defiance of the Family Court order, her secrecy, her willingness to discredit him. He was obviously a man used to meetings and negotiation, to finding ground of agreement, yet his real concern for Ben was equally apparent. He must have wondered about Theo's connection with Penny, but it wasn't until almost half an hour of discussion had gone by, and coffee had been brought up, that he asked Theo to talk with him alone.

  They left the two American lawyers in their chairs by the low, glass table, and went into Erskine's bedroom. A laptop computer was set up on the bed with the screensaver swirling and some papers alongside, but all else was tidy. Erskine and Theo stood at the window, looking out over the bustling street, the promenade, the long sweep of the glamorous beach and the Mediterranean beyond. Aircraft vapour trails formed and gradually dissipated in the blue, slightly hazy sky. It was all a long way from Drybread with its empty hills and sharp horizons, its gold tailings in the gully scabbed with broom and gorse, the old sod house with a church pew at the back door.

  'I don't want to sound rude,' Erskine said, 'but I'm not sure where you fit into all this. I know you've written those newspaper articles. I've read them and I could say a hell of a lot from my point of view, but she wanted you here as well as her lawyer so you must be close?'

  'She's afraid she's going to be squeezed out of Ben's life.'

  'Well, Jesus, I know the feeling.' Erskine looked appraisingly at him, then, tall and solid, watched the people beneath the hotel window. Theo thought perhaps he was going to ask directly if Penny and he were lovers. Maybe he was going to say something that would be appropriate for such a situation in a television drama, like, are you getting laid by my wife? But maybe Theo was imposing his own priority, and Penny's husband was worried that he was after money in some way.

  'You see her? They're okay?' Erskine said.

  'Not really. Penny's beside herself with worry a good deal of the time.'

  'She should've come herself. We're still a family,' Erskine said. 'She must really trust you. It's almost like a death, you know, when your child's taken away from you.' His voice was steady, but one hand gave a brief flutter at his side.

  'Did you think of that when your private detective or whatever tried to grab Ben back?' said Theo. He remembered the boy falling, the blood from his nose, and the parson and the young woman in the car refusing to face what had happened. 'Do you blame Penny for not coming or saying where she is?'

  'I don't know anything about any snatch. Nothing at all. Ben wasn't hurt, or upset?' Erskine's concern was evident: he came a step closer to Theo as if to be certain of gauging his answer.

  'Not too badly,' said Theo.

  'You're sure of that? And Penny's okay?'

  'They've coped pretty well from what little I've seen. You've got someone there looking for them, though, haven't you?'

  'Of course I have, but I wouldn't do anything to hurt either of them. You think I'm not just as worried? I'll ring the guy and see what the hell's going on. He's supposed to find them, that's all. I'm entitled to know where my son is. Your police seem useless.'

  Erskine wasn't someone who aroused immediate dislike. Theo could understand his situation rather more than he wished. 'You need to ease up,' he told him. 'Both of you need to ease up and get things sorted out. It's too important to leave to lawyers.'

  'Does she talk to you much about her father, or mother, about when she was a kid?' Erskine said. That came out of the blue.

  'Hardly anything at all. Her mother's in care and I think her father's dead.'

  'Dead, but not gone,' said Erskine. He still wore his wedding ring, and Theo, quite close beside him at the window, was aware of the fragrance of aftershave. He also noticed that Erskine had no lobes to his ears. The laptop screensaver showed characters from the Simpsons surfing — waves tumbling, boards bobbing, comic mouths open — but no noise at all. Maybe California was determined to have some presence on the Côte d'Azur, however marginal.

  'I'm not with you,' Theo said.

  'Penny's got a whole bunch of issues from when she was a kid on the farm. Some of it pretty screwed up stuff, which makes things difficult for her at times.' Erskine seemed relieved Theo wasn't familiar with her childhood, as if that were evidence enough that he wasn't Penny's confidant, hadn't been given the intimacy of mind which would follow nakedness together. 'I suppose I seem the bastard in all of this, but all I want is to be a part of Ben's life, and for him to be happy. I think Penny knows that. I'm not saying we all have to live together, for Christ's sake. You know? The marriage is gone, I guess, but we need some way to carry on as parents. Maybe you can help explain to Penny.'

  'I don't think she wants to leave New Zealand again,' Theo said. 'Not permanently anyway.'

  'Okay, sure, but I need to know where they are, and be able to have time with Ben. We can get the lawyers to sort out all the Family Court stuff, as long as Penny stops messing around. She'll have to come back to the Californian court for a while to get any change anyway. You know that: you know how the Hague Convention works.'

  'She needs money too, a fair settlement, if she's to have a life for them both until she can go back to work.'

  'There's no problem there, Theo, as long as she — as long as I'm able to be part of my son's life. That's what it's all about for me. There's no one to punish here. It's all gotten somehow out of hand. Zack tells me you're divorced, so you understand that a marriage is too complex and personal for the law. The law gives no redress for the things that matter. And it's not just mothers who love their kids, you know. If you can get Penny to talk to me tonight, I reckon the legal eagles will have something your courts will be happy with by the end of tomorrow. Okay?'

  Theo said he would do what he could, despite having no telephone link, and they shook hands. Erskine asked how Ben was looking and stood in a slight stoop of concentration to listen. As Theo talked about the boy, a faint, quite unselfconscious smile appeared on Erskine's face, as if the image of his son were coming up more clearly before him. 'I hear your country is an ideal place to bring up kids,' he said.

  Erskine's laptop was the easiest and quickest way to get in touch with Penny, but Theo thought it better, even after what Erskine had said, that he leave no record of her email address, so he sought out an internet café from which he could send Penny his hotel phone number. It would be late at night over there, but he knew she was expecting something from him and would go into Alexandra when she could.

  Two or three blocks from Erskine's hotel, chance presented one of those glimpses of the life of others that seems to cry out for relevance. A blue Renault backed up to get enough space to swing forward and drive away from the kerb, and in backing nudged the bumper of the campervan behind. The van barely moved, but as if a switch was activated, the blind on the window close to Theo went up
with a flurry, and revealed a naked couple lying on their blankets. Both were on their backs, the man with his head on her stomach, and her thighs on each side of his face, as if he had been carrying her on his shoulders and just fallen back onto the bed. The woman was olive-skinned. Her short hair was cast back from her face and her full breasts angled away on each side of her lover's head. The man was pale, round faced, the greying hair at the centre of his chest like the smudge from a cigar in a white ceramic ashtray. Theo and the couple looked at each other steadily for a second, the surprise and candour too complete for any reaction, then he stepped on again down the street with fully clothed and fully closed people as usual about him. It was a long time since he had been party to such relaxed nakedness, and the close, personal satisfaction of two ordinary people emphasised his exclusion.

  A Scottish backpacker with a dirty collar sat at the computer next to him in the email café, his legs over his pack for security and taking some of Theo's space. He wanted help with access to hotmail, and Theo felt resentment rather than sympathy: convinced that nothing in the young guy's life was of any significance at all in comparison with his own priorities. Theo didn't give a bugger for his ferrety girlfriend in Aberdeen, if he had one, or his dying ex-merchant-navy father in a Glasgow tenement. He was at once close enough for Theo to see the ginger glint of his eyelashes, and so far away that he signified nothing at all. What Theo thought about was Penny and the boy, waiting on the other side of the world to find out what was going to happen to them. And the couple in the van.

  Penny rang late that night, and Theo was glad Zack had his own room. 'What time is it?' she said, and apologised when he told her. As they talked about the morning's meeting with her husband, Theo was surprised by the emotion in his voice, and sensed warmth in hers. Maybe it was just relief that at last there was a good chance she could be released from limbo, and have some sort of life. She wanted to talk with Theo before contacting Erskine, and that reliance on his opinion was gratifying too. He asked her if she wanted him to wake Zack, but she said all the legal stuff could wait until she spoke to her husband. She was ringing from a public phone booth in Alexandra. The call was costing an arm and a leg she said, and laughed when Theo told her to add it to her expenses claim. 'It's so sunny here,' she said, and then she was interrupted by Ben wanting to talk.

  'I got new shoes,' he said clearly, then lost interest. He didn't use Theo's name, no doubt had no idea to whom he was talking, no idea how important the day was in his life, but Theo could picture him clearly, and his mother too, in the open sunlight of the Central Otago town. Blonde Penny, who moved with a sort of grace that mastered desperate agitation, and dark-haired Ben, always looking up at the world.

  'Okay then, I'd better ring Erskine,' she said. 'Anyway, I think you're right. We can't go on in this sort of standoff.'

  'No.'

  'I'm looking forward to you coming back,' she said.

  'So am I.'

  Theo didn't go back to bed for while. He wanted to be awake during the time Penny would be talking to her husband. Theo had the mean-spirited, but very satisfying, thought that she wouldn't be telling Erskine she was looking forward to him coming back. He thought also of what Erskine had said about Penny's problems, and wondered if he had created, or exaggerated, them to lessen any responsibility he felt for the failure of their marriage. The marriage is gone, I guess, he'd said to Theo at the window of his bedroom that morning. There was a halfhidden bewilderment in his tone that found an echo in Theo: marriages are there, and then they're gone, although the people remain. You paddle one side of the canoe for a straight line, then you find you have to paddle both sides to get ahead. You have to find within yourself a fellow conversationalist.

  The traffic noise was surprisingly loud so early in the day, and Theo lay in the warm darkness of the hotel room for some time before falling asleep. He dreamt not of Penny and Erskine, or of himself and Stella, but of the middle-aged lovers in the campervan, both on their backs and entwined. There was about them the indolent ease of mutual satisfaction. More even — the accomplishment of having for a moment wrested happiness from the tight fist of everyday life.

  In the morning Theo talked to Zack about Penny's call, and her willingness to co-operate with Erskine as long as Ben was able to live mainly with her. As they came away from the thin French breakfast, the desk clerk gave them a message from Erskine, asking them to come to his hotel again at ten. 'Their talk must have gone okay then,' said Zack. 'Rather odd, don't you think. You and I come all this way and it's effectively settled by the Maine-Kings with a late night phone call.'

  'Being hidden and having the boy with her were what gave her security I suppose. Will Ben have to become a ward of the court, or something, for a while?'

  'I don't imagine so,' said Zack. 'As long as the parents have an amicable agreement our Family Court will want to assist a settlement. It just has to be done with the Californian court in mind, so that the judge there doesn't feel his jurisdiction has been disrespected. That particular judge is very sensitive as to his dignity and that of the law. It's really all about that central provision of the convention that children should be returned to their country of origin for disputes to be resolved. Penny Maine-King will almost certainly have to go back there and eat humble pie.'

  At Erskine's hotel the four of them sat again in the dark, comfortable chairs around the see-through tabletop, and with a view of the promenade and the shifting blue glitter on the sea as if from broken glass. It had all been decided, really: the two lawyers remained to work through the legalities of the application for a stay of the warrant, a rehearing and a separate financial settlement confidential to the Maine-Kings, while Erskine and Theo left the hotel and dodged through the traffic to the beachfront.

  Even the road noise was different in Nice, with a high-pitched component from the scooter traffic so typical of France and Italy. They sat on seats above a fresh water sluice point for swimmers on the long, postcard beach, and Erskine flinched in the glare of the sun. 'Damn,' he said. 'I've left my sunglasses in the room. I've inherited a reduced tolerance to direct sunlight.' He faced away from the sun, yet still frequently put his hand above his eyes as they talked.

  'You'll have to be careful when you come to New Zealand then,' Theo said. 'It's supposed to be at its most dangerous there.'

  'I hear it's a beautiful country,' he said. The mantra of the foreigner to Kiwis abroad.

  'When do you think you'll come out?'

  'As soon as the legal stuff 's sorted, and as soon as Penny's comfortable with it. It breaks me up, you know, not to be able to see Ben.'

  'You need to rein in that private detective guy then,' said Theo.

  'I'll get that done today too.'

  Why should Theo dislike such a reasonable man, who said things Theo imagined he would say in the same circumstances? He had come to Nice prepared to face a nasty bastard, and found someone trying to do the best he could in painful and bewildering circumstances. There weren't many swimmers in April, but the bright day brought out a variety of people to sit on the sand. Close below were a middle-aged couple with their arms companionably about each other, and a backpacker with 'Argentina' on the back of his jacket. He had the good looks of youth, and sorted carefully through his limited possessions, almost as if he were taking inventory. A grubby bandage swathed his left hand. The isolation of proximity seems more evident when you travel. The compatible couple, the young guy, and Erskine and Theo: all with their paths in life and their own imperatives, randomly sitting quite close in Nice, with absolutely no connection.

  'Penny never talked much about her own country,' said Erskine. 'I had no idea she wanted to go home, yet from what she said last night I think you're right — a place in New Zealand as well as California might be the way to go.'

  'When things are tough you think of home,' said Theo.

  'They tell me it's a good place to bring up kids,' said Erskine again. 'The space, the education system and all.'

&nb
sp; 'But you said she was unhappy growing up.'

  'I'd better not say anything more about that — I never really got a handle on it all. Another thing she told me last night was that I wasn't to gossip to you.' It was perhaps an admonition, but Theo rather liked it. He took it as a sign that she cared what he thought about her, what people might tell him. 'She's a very private person,' her husband said. 'There's a bunch of stuff there she holds in and hasn't come to terms with.'

  They took refuge in discussing Erskine's work — his firm made special fibre items, mainly strapping. The sort of stuff used for seatbelts, alpine gear, haulage restraints. His father began the business in California and there was a factory in Nice as well. He asked a bit about Theo's journalism, and then both felt they'd done all they needed to part on terms that wouldn't cause awkwardness if they met again. 'Maybe I'll see you in New Zealand, Theo,' he said. He squinted past the couple and the backpacker on the beach, put out his hand. 'You tell Penny,' he said, 'I sure as hell want everything to work out.'

  Theo watched Erskine walk away, fully the large, successful American he was, but not arrogant, not loud. The couple on the beach strolled away soon after, and Theo followed on the promenade above. The backpacker remained, with no one close, but paid no heed to that. He reminded Theo of his own visit years before. Maybe he was deciding if he could afford the cheapest plat de jour in a backstreet café, or must join the French teenagers at McDonald's. Maybe he would become a notable politician in his own country, or a criminal of equal distinction. In either case the small piece of his life on the beach in Nice would be some part of that progress.