When Zack and Theo left from the Nice airport four hours later, the beach lay like a bright scimitar far below, pale outcrops on the Alpes-Maritimes caught the low sun. Erskine and Oliver were at the strapping factory perhaps, concentrating once again on making money.
21
At the end of her fifth form year she went to a school dance in Alexandra. She wore the first full-length dress of her life, apart from the bridesmaid's one she had worn at her cousin Sandra's wedding in Dunedin earlier in the same year. She hardly knew Sandra, and couldn't work out why she'd been asked. Her mother said weddings were all about family, and bridesmaids were better to be younger than the bride. The ball dress was blue and had the bra cups sewn into the bodice. A shimmer of blue from her bust to the floor, and her shoulders quite bare. Her mother said blue suited her eyes and hair, but Penny thought that her arms were too brown for the white of her exposed shoulders.
Like a good many of her classmates she didn't go with a special boy, but she danced with Shane Taylor several times, who everybody said was going to be head boy next year, and she twice told Dylan Churcher that she'd rather not thanks. Dylan had a pudding face and still smelled considerably of himself, while Shane knew something of toiletries, perhaps because his father was a doctor. Shane's clean hair lapped over his collar a little, and she would have liked to touch it. He had a habit of raising his eyebrows and pulling a face when people said something that was supposed to be funny. His Adam's apple stuck out in his smooth neck, but even that was somehow attractive.
She went in on a special bus that came all the way through from Ranfurly, bringing some seniors she didn't know, and it left again at eleven thirty, dropping people singly, or in small groups, all the way back. Her father was waiting for her at the turn-off to Drybread. She recognised the Holden even in the dark. 'Don't be a stranger round school,' said Shane. Suave — was he ever.
'See ya, Penny. Grow those tits,' called Dylan, as she went down the steps. A creep — as ever.
She didn't talk much about the dance on the drive home, and her father didn't seem that interested. 'I suppose there was a good turnout?' he said. He didn't repeat the question after her silence. After a whole hall full of young, tight-skinned people he seemed old, even in the dimness of the car. His hands on the wheel were old, his hair had no gloss and the slope of his shoulders was old. In two months she would give him a photo frame for his fortyninth birthday: eleven different indigenous woods represented.
Her mother was in bed, and they talked in the bedroom briefly while her father locked up. Her mother was always interested in the suppers at any formal occasion. Whether there were hot savouries as well as club sandwiches, and furthermore were they home-made, or bought; whether there were chocolate éclairs with real whipped cream, or just lemon and pineapple cheesecakes; whether the punch was alcoholic maybe. Was there a white cloth on the trestle tables, or just taped paper? And she asked if the blue dress had become sweat stained. Her mother was three years older than her father: it seemed a lot more. Both of them were older than the parents of her friends.
Her father came through to her room when she was putting on her pyjamas. 'Everything okay then?' he said. She put her hands between her legs to stop him going there. She stood close to the bed, facing it, but he put arms around her and pressed himself to her side. 'You know how much I care about you,' he said. He was always a loud breather, even when at rest.
When she had sessions with the therapist years later in Sacramento, that was one of the things she talked about: the heavy insistent breathing. She continued to hear it for years after leaving home. She would hear it during a pause at a dinner party, hear it emanating from the poor reception of a television set, or as a background to the change in the weather as she drove. Most of all she heard it when she slept.
'Don't,' she said. 'Don't do it, or I'll call out to Mum.'
She could never bear to call him Dad in those moments of greatest and most unnatural intimacy. 'I will. I'll yell.'
'Don't be silly. It's just play. You know I love you.'
'Mum,' she said loudly.
'What is it?'
Her father moved away, leaving her with what he intended as a paternal pat on the shoulder.
'Should I sponge the sweat stains?'
Her father left the room.
'Good idea,' her mother said sleepily. It was an undramatic, but final, victory.
Frottage with my father, she joked to the counsellor. She had the terminology by then to discuss sexual relationships and practices. The counsellor laughed on professional grounds — laughter is a healthy, cathartic response — but both were aware there was little humour in it. Even the account of Penny's final undramatic assumption of the power of refusal didn't assuage the damage much, or mitigate the enduring contradiction between natural love and natural hate — for the same person.
For some reason she told the counsellor that as her father had stood clasping her, she'd seen a bird flapping soundlessly at the darkened window, palest light through the splayed feathers of the wings, but there'd been no bird. The curtains had been drawn in her bedroom, the blue dress empty and spread on the bed. There'd been no bird, and she had no idea why she'd created it. Did she crave symbolism for the occasion? She never talked about it again, and the counsellor showed no curiosity concerning it, yet on the rare, unpleasant occasions the scene returned, at the window, outlined against a luminous sky, was a bird with wings outstretched.
All seen in the intense, coruscating glare of past emotion.
22
Theo didn't see Penny during the first week back. Anna and the editor seemed to regard Nice as something of a junket, despite Erskine Maine-King paying for the trip, and the value of the exclusive article Theo would be able to write when Zack Heywood had made his submission to the Family Court. There was a good deal for Theo to catch up on, Anna said. Her strongly developed team ethic made her suspicious of too much individual play. Theo couldn't drive down to Drybread, and Penny still didn't feel secure enough to leave the place until she knew the court's response. She left a message on his answerphone saying she hoped to see him soon and thanking him for making the trip to France.
Before going south, Theo called Zack, who said Penny had been in touch, but it was way too soon to expect anything from the court. 'Come on, Zack,' Theo said, 'you must be getting some insider vibes.' Theo imagined Zack's easy smile as he sat with a freshly laundered, quality shirt in his well-ordered office, the light catching the blue peppermint jar perhaps and the metal burnish of the frame that held the photograph of his family. Zack was accustomed to dealing with importunate people.
'Well, I think we made a good case for a rehearing, and it doesn't do the court any good to have an outstanding order either. This new willingness of the Maine-Kings to compromise and work together is positive stuff, but a judge will make the decision, and then of course there's the response of the Californian court. Whatever happens here, that original decision can only be addressed at source. We're dealing with a lot of variables in all this you know. Maybe it would be better if you didn't write much in the meantime — the judiciary's very sensitive about media pressure. Is that possible?'
'I can talk to the editor.'
'Are you planning to see Mrs Maine-King soon?' asked Zack.
'Probably.'
'If the warrant's withdrawn, Penny and the boy can have a more normal life. And her husband wants to come out almost immediately if that happens. It'll strengthen their case if both parents are in the country and willing to appear before the court.'
'Sure.'
'I've told her most of this,' said Zack.
'Is Penny okay for money now?'
'A financial settlement is going through. I don't really think I can be more specific than that, Theo.'
'No, that's fine,' Theo said.
'You look after yourself now,' the lawyer said. 'You've made a considerable contribution. Erskine Maine-King told me he had no complaints about you being in Nice, and th
at could've been tricky considering the stuff you wrote here in New Zealand.' Did Zack really feel there was no more ambiguity than that in the meeting, or was he exercising professional discretion? There could be fireworks there if things go wrong, he might say to his wife. Someone's going to be hurt pretty badly, he might say.
Theo thought about the Nice visit as he drove to Drybread, and about why Penny and Erskine, who seemed so competent as individuals, should have failed as a couple. If she were asked, maybe Penny would say marriage restricted her growth as a person, or her opportunity to have a career. She might say she wasn't valued sufficiently, or that her husband demanded an open relationship, which was contrary to her beliefs. She might say she had left too many friends and memories behind in New Zealand, or that she had a vision of the risen Lord while doing pilates in a mirrored former ballet training studio above a whiteware showroom in downtown Sacramento. She might say that only when she had a son did she understand the meaning of love. She might talk about her father.
Penny's bach in the gully slumped under a strong sun, even though it was May. The pale yellow-grey sod of the original walls by the front door was warm to the touch, and she had both doors open to air the place. She and Ben had been waiting, and for a brief time she and Theo stood there talking, with brightness at two ends of the short hall through the house. It made the bach seem like one of those false fronts of a movie set, lacking the dimension of depth. Penny was in a mood new to Theo: less guarded, infused with relief. She thanked him again. Relaxation suited her, gave her an added attractiveness. For the first time he had a true sense of the fearsome pressure she had been under, and the willpower and stubbornness she had needed to withstand it. He hoped she hadn't assumed too much, and reminded her that the court hadn't made any ruling, but she was convinced the agreement with Erskine was the key. 'Everywhere the law recognises the good of the child is the main thing,' she said.
'Come in to the cake,' said the little boy beside them, impatient with adult talk. He took hold of the pocket of Theo's trousers and pulled him into the main room. On the small wooden table was a rectangle of chocolate cake, still sitting on its supermarket wrapper. 'Cake,' Ben said, looking up for Theo's affirmation of the treat.
'Great,' he said. 'I like cake.'
'We can eat it.' He still held on with a small hand.
Theo noticed how much he had tanned since he first saw him through the window, asleep. He was an attractive kid, endearing even, but Theo felt a slight uneasiness, as if he were in some way an imposter. Maybe it was just the feelings he had for Penny, his recent conviction of Erskine's love for the boy.
'I told him he had to wait until you came,' said Penny. 'I knew you wouldn't have had anything to eat.' She had three filled rolls on a plate as well.
'Until Theo,' said Ben loudly.
'And now he's here,' said Penny. She and Ben had a brief contest of wills over the sequence in which the food was to be eaten, but she was firm, and Ben sat up at the table, his head not much above it, and ate half a roll while eyeing the cake as if he feared it might disappear.
Penny said they should be able to move from the place soon. 'Erskine accepts that the marriage is over and that Ben's first home should be with me. I've phoned him twice since you've come back. We've sorted a lot of things. Sorted stuff that I should have talked with him about instead of just taking off. It seems so obvious now, and so impossible then. But then you see things differently after a few months like I've had here. I feel at last I'm climbing out of the pit.'
Drybread was the sort of place in which it was difficult to maintain self-deceit. There was a basic, stripped quality to the landscape and existence that made evident lessons which were elsewhere able to be evaded because of the press of people with varied, plausible opinions, and the deliberately false and noisy march of trivial entertainment, received values and distraction. People complained that they couldn't hear themselves think, and were intent on maintaining just that protection.
Theo was determined to reflect Penny's optimism and not bring her down. 'So hopefully I'll have one last exclusive article for the paper, with a happy ending to it all,' he said. 'I had a talk with the editor about not printing any more until the court's made a decision, and he agreed. Zack thought it would be advisable not to be seen to be putting any pressure on.'
'A scoop,' said Penny. 'Christ, you'll have a genuine scoop, and your editor and everyone will be chuffed. Doesn't everyone love a happy ending, next to heartbreak and tragedy of course. And I hope this isn't just any old story for you, is it?'
'A story of immense personal significance,' said Theo. He meant it, but used a tone which disguised sincerity.
'You must have to disengage from stories, though, in your job, I mean. You spend time working to get close to people and what's going on, and then it's over and you move on.'
'You do, but you take something with you. If you're half a journalist you learn as you go.'
'And you must meet some real weirdos,' said Penny.
Ben, permitted at last, was concentrating on his cake, so Theo told Penny of a story he did while on his London fellowship.
There was a one-armed man living in King's Cross who claimed to be a descendant of Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. He had a three-rung, wooden library ladder and would mount it outside hotels and tube stations, read from Lord Chesterfield's published letters and seek donations with a green, fabric-covered hatbox. He was adamant in protestation, but had no evidence of aristocratic origins whatsoever. And no proof, either, of having lost his arm in the service of Queen and country.
He was happy to harangue Theo, and delighted with any publicity, but refused to give an address, or be interviewed at his home. After three attempts as sleuth, Theo tracked him to a forgotten orange portaloo behind a builder's yard, and saw him creep in at nightfall, as a border collie would to its kennel. He must have hung his one neat, grey suit above him, the useless left sleeve folded with a large stainless steel safety pin, and then slept curled on the floor. Theo had said nothing of that discovery in the published story. The guy could be dismissed as mad, Theo told Penny, but maybe it was profitable delusion. The conviction of noble lineage sustained him when he had nothing else on which to base esteem: it even gave some sort of living, and a role to distinguish him. 'I am of this blue blood,' he'd say at every pause in his readings, swaying on the ladder stool and as testimony holding high with his one arm the book of the Earl of Chesterfield's letters.
'It's sad and funny at the same time,' said Penny.
'The best stories always are,' said Theo. 'My friend Nick reckons people love to read about what they fear most for themselves happening to someone else.'
Theo, Ben and Penny took their pieces of cake to the back door, all three sitting on the Randall and Elizabeth Nottage church pew. The day was very still, and the faint smell of sheep and warm ground was in the air just as it had been on Theo's first visit several months before, though the oppressive heat of summer was gone. It was almost as if they had never left the gully, and yet all the subsequent developments had happened nevertheless. Back then Penny had seemed to him selfishly absorbed in her own problems, but he had come to realise something of the isolation, the sense of disintegration, she had fought against. Let nothing go wrong, Theo thought: just let nothing go wrong for her.
They had some of Penny's beer, and Ben drank water with a little juice added. Penny said that undiluted juice rotted kids' teeth: good teeth were obviously something of a priority for her. They talked about Nice, for Penny had been there several times with Erskine to visit the business, and knew the hotel in which he always stayed. 'I like the antique shops close to that big monument by the sea,' Penny said, and Theo felt a throb of identification with her recollection. He thought of the Argentinean backpacker by himself on the sand, making an inventory of his limited possessions. 'I like the way it's both a very modern city and an ancient one at the same time,' she said. 'The old doesn't inhibit the new, and today's Nice hasn't ob
literated the past.' Theo thought of the dingy railway station, and the people he had seen years ago from the train dossing down under the bridge ends. He had an image of the South African showing him his knife and the bloodstains, and being his best friend for one night of their lives. 'Erskine just spent his time at the factory whenever we were there,' she said. 'Nothing about the city, or its history, interests him at all.' Theo attempted to visualise Erskine seated with them on the pew at Drybread with the sod wall behind them and a view of the stubborn plum tree and the longdrop dunny, but the incongruity was too great.
In the middle of the afternoon Penny took Ben into the one bedroom, hoping he'd sleep. For a while he talked to himself, but didn't come out, and then he was quiet. Penny sat on the pew with Theo, and he began again with something Zack had said about the American judge, but she stopped him. 'We're always talking about me and the awful crap that's happened,' she said. 'I realise that. Always on about me and Ben and custody as if there's nothing else in the world. You get like that when you're in trouble. That's something I found out years ago. You get into a sort of spiral of selfish preoccupation and misery. I bet you've had a gutsful of listening to my problems.'
'Doesn't trouble make you more sympathetic to others, though?' Theo asked.
'Did you find that? Did you find the failure of your marriage made you more sympathetic — or more bitter? When you're in the shit your emotions contract, it seems to me.'
'Maybe at the time,' Theo said, 'but later, yes, I think you can understand better what people go through. Not everything of course, but understand better. You have a sense of people hurting when they're talking about quite harmless things. You know? Maybe they're on about something that sounds stupid, or trivial, but there's a certain suppressed agony in their voice which you recognise, a hollowness which mocks what they say.'
This was going to be the time they talked about his marriage, his feelings, he thought. Penny had shown little curiosity before. Theo, she might say, we've been through a lot of the same testing experience, and can understand what it's like for each other. But Penny didn't have that in mind. 'Sometime we should get into all the serious stuff,' she said, 'but not today. I hope we'll still see each other when things are sorted?'
Drybread: A Novel Page 15