'Bugger off,' said Anna.
Michael tossed up his hands in mock horror and acquiescence, and wandered away across the reception room.
'I'm glad it's you taking over,' Anna said. 'You've got those gut instincts a journo needs.'
'Thanks.'
'Do you think I've made a silly move?'
'No, I admire you for having a go. You'll make a bloody good mag editor. You can build a team around you, and not everybody's got that sort of personality.' Theo meant what he said, and wished he'd shown his regard more before then. Anna was a Girl Guide a lot of the time, but she was professional and a good colleague.
'I know it's not working out with Penny Maine-King,' she said. 'Sorry about that.'
'Yeah, well, that's about par for the course for me, isn't it.'
Why should he be surprised that Anna knew? Everyone would. There was a process of osmosis by which your personal life became the mundane gossip of the workplace.
'I know it's trite to say it, Theo, but you'll find the right person. I hope it's Penny, but if not, things will work out in time.'
'You think I should pump it up?' said Theo to deflect concern.
'That's something you'll have to watch — making fun of him.' She laughed though, for she was no longer duty bound to be scrupulously loyal to the editor, and the freedom of it, and the relaxation and wine of the night, flushed her normally pale face just a little, and in an odd, asexual expression of intimacy she leaned her warm forehead on Theo's for a moment, then straightened.
'Yeah, I know. I've got to become a good boy, and let Nick have all the renegade fun,' said Theo.
'You'll do okay,' she said. 'You'll do just fine.'
Theo spent the next few work days arranging the chief reporter's office in the way he wanted, and drawing up a strategic plan which involved a professional development session with each of the reporting staff and the reallocation of rounds. Also he devised a role for Nicholas as deputy which was no longer nominal and took into consideration both his abilities and his idiosyncrasies. All of that kept the surface of his mind busy during working hours, and helped him to sleep at night.
It wasn't at all what he'd hoped for, however, and often he found himself suddenly wound down, quite still, staring at some object as if it had assumed the power of fetish — the outside tap and hose fitting perhaps, a donation envelope to combat dyslexia, the caps lock button on his keyboard, a small, pale stone embedded in the tread of a colleague's sneaker. He'd reached for too much: he'd allowed his prescription for happiness to outgrow what he deserved. He'd forgotten life's natural drive towards disappointment.
Penny rang to say they were returning to America very soon, and she wanted to talk to him before then. Maybe they could meet at the same place by the Bridge of Remembrance? But Theo didn't want to meet there, so they arranged to see each other at ten thirty the next morning at the coffee shop in the art gallery. There were so many other things he'd hoped to say to her: instead their conversation had retreated to appointment times. Her voice still had power to move him, although he knew every conversation was now part of the calculated retreat they were making from each other.
He was there before her, and sat looking through the ceiling to floor glass at the old university buildings on the opposite corner. He had marched from there in gown and hood to his graduation, years ago. Beverley Limm was in front of him and kept complaining that the pinned weight of the pink and grey academic hood was pulling up the top of her dress. The night of his graduation his mother and father had taken him to a hotel for a self-conscious family celebration, and Theo, rather than being grateful, had hurried through it so he could join his friends at a party in Spreydon, where he spiked his right foot on a hedgehog while running barefoot and drunk through a garden overgrown with twitch and rank asparagus.
Theo and Penny could see each other for some time before she joined him; both were aware of this, but choosing not to make acknowledgement until they were together. Theo watched her cross the road from the bluestone buildings of the Arts Centre and come into the gallery. She looked even less like Drybread Penny than at their last meeting. She wore a winter skirt and boots, a jacket with panels of coloured leather. Her pale hair was up and her lipstick on. She was almost beautiful, he realised with a jolt. She was almost beautiful, but she wasn't Drybread Penny, and that made the failure of his hopes the greater. She was Californian Penny, with the stability of Erskine's money and resources behind her again, and free to move about the city.
'I wanted to make a better effort to thank you,' she said after she sat down. 'I guess we were pretty wound up last time. I felt I didn't say the things I wanted to, and don't know if I can now. It all seems completely bloody selfish to you, I suppose.'
'I got caught on the hop. I thought something was happening that was good for us both, but there you go.'
'It wasn't natural down there at Drybread, though, Theo. I couldn't think how things might end. I'd taken off from Erskine in a panic, and finished up in a place that had some bloody awful memories. You were just about the one good thing for me — you and Ben.'
'I know it didn't go well that last time in the bach,' said Theo, 'but I thought that didn't matter. It had to do with Ben being there and stuff like that — you being under all that pressure.'
'It wouldn't be any different anywhere else. I can't think of you in the way you do me,' said Penny.
'Do men and women ever think of each other in the same way?'
'But I don't think of men in the way other women do either.'
'It wasn't the right time, I realise that now,' said Theo, 'but then we never seemed to have enough time together.'
'No, it's not that. Sex doesn't work for me the way it does for other people. I don't want to go on about it. My father fucked up that part of my life for me, you see. That's it really. He fucked me more completely than either of us could possibly realise at the time. It's ugly to say, ugly then and ugly still. It's no good when you hate the people you love, Theo. I'm not going to unload all my hang-ups on you, but I wanted you to know, even if you can never understand, that's all.' Penny's face had a slight agitation of pain as she forced herself to speak, but she continued to look directly at Theo.
'Christ, I'm sorry. What a bastard he must have been.'
'I owe it to you to talk about it I suppose, but I just can't. I've tried professionally, and even that didn't help.
Stuff like that isn't fixed by sympathy or counselling or medication. Not for me, anyway. Nobody wants to know those things — even when you've experienced it you don't want to know. It's like some tumour, or excrescence, which you're ashamed of even though it's invisible. There's just part of your emotional response that doesn't work properly afterwards.'
'You know for me it isn't just about shagging. We've never even done it properly, for Christ's sake. There's more than that, and that's what I hoped for.' Love was the word Theo should have used, but he couldn't get it out. A word too much vaunted by puffery, and heavily taxed in everyday conversation. He'd never used it to Penny when there were hopes of the thing itself between them, and it wouldn't serve once love was unattainable.
'It's all in the bundle, though,' Penny said. 'What it comes down to for me, is Ben. I won't jeopardise his growing up for anything, and Erskine realises that too, now. He's the real thing left between us, and that's the most important tie I've got. The love you have for a child is completely untainted by whatever else has gone wrong.'
'Not much of a marriage,' said Theo, but he had no wish to argue against the rights of a little kid.
'But that's what I'm saying. I can't have much of a marriage, and that was decided years ago by my father.'
'Christ, what a mess.'
'So don't be too angry, okay?' She put out her hand tentatively, so that just the fingertip rested briefly on his wrist.
Where did you take a conversation after that? They didn't talk at all for a while, but fiddled with their coffee cups, and watched the people outside. A
nd talk continued at tables around them, some laughter as well. Was there any reason however to think that Penny's and Theo's concerns were of more significance than those of others present? The suited man by himself may have just been made redundant, though he kept his hand steady; the thin woman behind may have been told she would never conceive a child, the student with shiny hair and small hands could be in possession of a letter offering her a place at Cambridge, and so the prospect of a marvellous career.
'I want you to have something,' said Penny. She took some sheets of paper from her bag, folded like an essay assignment, and put them in front of him. 'Zack drew them up for me. All you have to do is sign, and the bach in Central is yours. For all the help, and the newspaper articles especially. Well no, for the personal support especially. I want to forget that time, but not you.' Theo told her she didn't have to give him anything, didn't have to feel guilty. 'It's not that,' she said. 'I won't be going back there. It's not worth that much anyway. It's never been a good place for me, but I hope it'll be different for you. You like it there, I know. You like those places unpopular with most other people.' She put two identical and old-fashioned keys on the table. 'Maybe you can have a spell from your work there sometimes,' she said. 'Do some of the walks too.'
'I don't know. You don't owe me anything at all. What about Ben and Erskine?' Would he ever want to go to the place now she was leaving it?
'Erskine doesn't give a stuff. He's not interested in anything here. I think you'd get something from Drybread, and anyway it'll just go back and back if no one ever goes there. Even a place like that needs some basic care.'
'What's going to happen about your mother?' The lizards and frogs of the enclosed garden would be staring still, and old Mrs Bell equally static. On the broad paths and through the wide doors of the Malahide Home, the Zimmer frames and wheelchairs would be quietly circulating, the population migrating to the dining hall, then back to their beds and familiar chairs.
'We've talked a bit about that. Probably we'll bring her over to the States later. She'll never know the difference, and I'll be able to look after her more.'
'And you'll never be back, I suppose.'
'Who knows? But there's no reason we can't keep in touch if you want to. Erskine wouldn't see anything odd in that. If you want to we can be friends. I don't have any hang-ups about friends the way I do about lovers. Jesus, I'm almost normal in so many ways.' She laughed briefly to mitigate her tone of voice.
Theo wondered how he could ever have expected any other outcome. Drybread had been apart from the forces of the world and the logic which prevailed elsewhere. Despite the disappointment, and the anger that arose from disappointment and his powerlessness, he had never admired her more. 'Fuck,' he said softly.
'I wouldn't have got through it without you. I would've gone under. I know that now,' she said. Making a v of her thumb and forefinger, she pushed at one side of her heavy hair. 'I feel something's been tamed within me somehow because of all this.'
'Tamed?'
'Well, not tamed. I mean realising that you can do one impulsive thing, justifiable or not, and everything else starts to unravel. You know? You make one sudden shift and the world tilts. I don't want anything to tilt for Ben, and I don't think Erskine does either.'
Theo had no argument against her that wasn't entirely selfish, so he didn't try. He had for a moment the unfamiliar feeling that he was going to cry, but he drew his breath with deliberate regularity, and focused on the people in the foyer of the gallery not far away. 'I want the best for you and Ben despite what's happened,' he said.
'I know you do,' Penny said.
'It was absolutely bloody serious for me.'
'I know that too.'
They went out together, and parted without kissing at the lights on the busy corner. To suffer is part of growing up, but you become fully adult only when you have caused suffering in others. Theo watched her walk away: tall, blonde, small bosomed, in her skirt and boots, and the jacket with the bright leather panels of green, yellow and blue. There was nothing to show she was fucked up, and nothing to show of her resolution despite that.
31
Theo didn't see Penny again before she returned to the States with Erskine and Ben, and he wrote no more articles about her. It wasn't pique, just the feeling that for him the story had ended, and subsequent events were better told by others. Over a month later, however, he received an email from Penny in which she said the Californian court had withdrawn the custody orders because of formal reconciliation. Ben was settled and happy. She didn't say the same about herself and Erskine, but then she wouldn't, not to Theo, even if it were so. Drybread she did mention, hoping that he would go up there soon, in winter. 'It's even quieter in winter,' she wrote. 'I hope you have some good times, summer and winter. The bach is a bit of a dump, but the country around is fantastic. I like to think it'll be a happier place for you than me. One of the things I'll never forget is the calls of the parries flying up and down the gully.'
He did decide to go down in winter and asked Melanie to go with him, perhaps unconsciously seeking some shield from the memories that would be there. Dansey's Pass often had heavy snow at that time of the year, so Theo took the route through Oamaru and then up the Pigroot from Palmerston. It was a still, cold Sunday, with frost on the paddocks when they left Christchurch very early, and, hours later when they were heading for Ranfurly, still white in the strips protected by gorse hedges, shelter belts and inclines. There was snow on the tops of the Kakanuis and light skeins of mist draped in the steeper valleys. Melanie wasn't familiar with the landscape. 'Wait until we reach the Maniototo,' said Theo.
There the sky occupied more view than the land: an arc of cold blue, and the air not moving. There was hardly a car, and only occasional smoke ladders above the isolated farmhouses. The sun glinted on the ice of stock ponds close to the road, and the snow was splendid on the Dunstan Range and even heavier on the Hawkduns. Theo remembered Penny telling him that the Hawkduns lay across the prevailing weather. The horizon they made with the sky was as sharp edged as the fencepost shadows close at hand. 'You don't get the long view like this in Europe,' Theo said. 'The horizon fades out in a haze.'
'There's hardly any trees,' said Melanie.
'This was originally all tussock country, some of it up to the knees of men on horseback.' Theo imagined the sight it must have been: to break through into Central Otago and the Mackenzie Country, and find a sea of tussock stretching out swell after swell.
In the gully close to Drybread, the snow was on the ridge above the three old cottages, but not on the road itself. Theo parked by the great hedge, and they walked up to the sod house.
The long-shanked keys he'd been given by Penny were brown with a fine rust, but turned without difficulty. He still thought of it as Penny's house; perhaps he always would. Although he knew she was gone, there was just a moment when he went into the main room that he half expected to see her and Ben at the table, or the old sofa — her fair hair, and her son's dark hair and perfection of skin. How cold and still it was without them: the place quite different, inanimate, without the languid heat of summer and the presence of Penny and her boy.
Theo lit the open fire, and for a minute or so the smoke eddied out into the room because the chimney was cold and damp, but then the convection began and the flames leapt up. Melanie inspected the thickness of the original walls, then went into the single bedroom. 'It's tiny, isn't it,' she said, meaning the whole place. Beside the bed was a small, wooden locker with scratches, cigarette scorch marks and a candle stub in a crockery holder. The soft, buttoned mattress with a fading pattern of stripes sagged on the bed wire, and on the porous composite of the unpainted ceiling, water stains were outstretched like giant butterflies in brown outline. Theo remembered Ben sleeping there, and Penny's expensive travelling cases against the wall on the marmalade lino.
So that Melanie wouldn't ask anything of him, wouldn't see his face, he went back into the main room, and when
she came through he mentioned the black, wood-burning oven, and they talked about the difficulties of cooking on it. He took her to the back door and pointed out the long-drop on the slope, emphasising with apparent zest how primitive it all was. And as he talked he noticed the leaves and beetle cases windswept and compacted into the corners of the church pew on which he'd sat on his summer visits while he talked with Penny, and Ben played beside them. How can things be the same and so different at the one time? How can someone be the essential focus of a place, and yet that place remain intact when they've gone? How can you reconcile urgent and intense hope with the flat outcomes of reality?
Melanie and Theo didn't light the range, but sat by the open fire and ate the picnic lunch she'd brought.
The room grew warm quickly, and the noise of the fire was cheerful. The leather arms of the sofa were worn to the soft grey beneath the tanned outer skin, but the squabs were comfortable and Melanie and Theo sat close together there.
'How long was Penny here?' asked Melanie.
'Must have been over five months,' Theo said.
'Jesus. All that time without phone and power, no neighbours, and with a kid.'
'And cellphones don't work here,' he said.
'That reminds me. You didn't ring Robin and get stuck into him about me, did you? He reckoned it was Barry Mellhop on the other side, but that wouldn't be right.'
'Me?' said Theo. 'What was it all about?' And he had only a hazy recollection of being the culprit.
'Doesn't matter,' said Melanie. 'It must have been awful at times for Penny. But she's a strong person, isn't she. All of the stuff she's had going on, and yet look how she's left the place. It's pretty primitive, okay, but she hasn't left it grotty. I mean she's cleaned up, and not just shot through.'
It was a typical woman's observation. Theo hadn't thought of it, but Melanie was right. All that Penny had suffered there, and yet at the end she'd burnt rubbish, carted stuff away and left the bach in shabby and stark order. Maybe even then she'd decided to give it to Theo.
Drybread: A Novel Page 21