‘I’ve just been down to the gallery to see the curator about my exhibition there. Forty-two pieces and only three with a red sticker. She said my work doesn’t appeal to the man in the street, and she said it unkindly. You’re a man in the street, well on the doorstep anyway, and you can tell me what you think.’ Sally tilts her chin and gives a laugh free of bitterness.
‘At the gallery?’
‘No, here, here! There’s plenty of my work in the studio here. You give me your man in the street views and I’ll give you a cup of coffee, or maybe the old bricks you want.’
‘I’m no expert on art,’ he says.
‘That’s the point — Graeme isn’t it? That’s the point, Graeme. The man in the street, the curator said.’
‘I do have an interest in ancient pottery and sculpture as part of my studies,’ says Graeme. He’s trying to suppress a slight affront at being assumed a representative of the proletariat.
‘So much the better: history provides perspective. Excellent. I’ll just put these peas and fish fingers in the freezer before we go through.’
She does so, then opens the back door and leads Graeme to what he’d assumed to be a garage, but which has become her studio. The afternoon sun has escaped the cloud and slants through the small window, but Sally snaps on the lights as well. Graeme’s first impression is of a bizarre produce show, or harvest festival. Dry pumpkin and marrow like ornamented shells on a trestle table, a scatter of incising tools, coloured leather and foil leaf, beads, lacquers, paints, brushes and bubble wrap. ‘Don’t say a word,’ she says. ‘Don’t say a word till you’ve had a look round.’
Sally may not want Graeme to say a word, but she can’t repress her own enthusiasm. ‘Gourds,’ she says. ‘I tell people that my art is always gourd.’ She laughs in his ear, bending to see what he’s taken up from the table to examine. ‘The calabash gourd was the first plant species ever domesticated. Long before pottery, gourds were used as containers and for display. Creek Indians in the US used gourds for centuries as purple martin birdhouses as well as storing corn. They knew purple martins fed on insects that damaged their crops.’ Her hand is halfway towards the gourd he has picked up, as a mother’s instinctive movement when another picks up her child. ‘Bicolour pear,’ she says. How light and balanced it feels in the hand, how glowing the red and yellow geometric patterns Sally Army has given it.
‘They’re lovely,’ says Graeme. He feels slightly uneasy in the glare of Sally’s almost obsessive enthusiasm. For a stranger to reveal so much emotion is almost an exposure.
Sally is delighted to have someone she can instruct, assuming everyone was bound to love a gourd. ‘People think of pumpkins and Halloween jack-o’-lanterns,’ she says, ‘but there’s a whole culture tied up with gourds. Musical instruments even — marimbas, maracas and gourd banjos. In some places they were a currency.’
‘The decoration is so intricate, so colourful.’
‘The galleries tell me they won’t sell at the price, though, that I shouldn’t spend so much time on each one. People don’t understand about the curing, polishing, the special paints and gold foil and everything. There’s cheap ones brought in from overseas. Stuff done for the tourist trade with machine scrolling.’
‘Where do you get yours?’ Graeme asks.
‘I grow them on my son’s farm at Ashburn. He and his wife think I’m potty, but they humour me.’
‘They’re not actually pumpkins, are they?’
‘No, but all the same family. Pumpkins are the world’s largest fruit. Did you know that?’
‘Really.’
‘In 2002 in New Hampshire there was one officially weighed in at 1337 pounds.’
Graeme shakes his head, not in disbelief at giant pumpkins, but to convince himself that he’s here, in a backyard garage with a tall, mannish and ageing woman who spends her life creating wonder on vegetable shells. ‘I’d better be on my way,’ he says.
‘But as the man in the street, what’s your opinion?’ asks Sally.
‘I think they’re beautiful.’
‘I knew it. I knew the man in the street would appreciate them. If only men in the street went into galleries. Which one would you like to buy?’
Sally asks with innocent confidence, and Graeme hasn’t the heart to refuse, perhaps not the inclination either, although he hasn’t had time to consider. He hasn’t a lot of money with him, he explains, but he likes the small one with the colourful, geometric pattern and slender neck. ‘Long handle dipper,’ says Sally. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We’ll pick up the supermarket receipt in the kitchen and that’ll be the price for you. You’ll find it’s even got a faint fragrance of its own. It’s in the drying of it, and the soil type, just like wine.’
She would gladly relate the full history of each piece, but Graeme says he really must get going. His wife has a meeting after tea. Sally wraps the gourd in bubble paper, leads him back to the kitchen table and takes the receipt from among the remaining groceries in the bag. It’s $61.32, and Sally rounds it down. She comes out to see him leave, shading her eyes in the low sun with a large hand. ‘If you want the bricks as well, just get in touch,’ she says. ‘And tell all the other men in the street where to find true art. My stuff will be worth a fortune in time.’ She waves to him as he leaves.
At tea he tells his wife the bricks are no good, but that he bought a gourd at the place in Powys Street. ‘A what?’ she says. ‘You bought a what?’
‘An ornamental gourd. A work of art.’ Rather than describe it, he fetches it from the hall table and puts it beside her fettuccine. She picks it up with her free hand, and gives it the sudden fierce and brief attention that is typical of her.
‘I like it,’ she says. ‘It’s wonderfully light and smooth. The patterns are in keeping with the thing’s shape and the colours are optimistic. How much was it?’
‘Thirty dollars,’ he says.
‘Good one. I like it a lot.’
She has no curiosity concerning Sally Army, because she is preoccupied with the meeting that night to organise the conference on fluoridation. She asks his advice as to the best composition for a planning committee, and they discuss the value of co-ordinators for the various jobs. Graeme gives his opinion that effective planning is like scaffolding, essential for success, but forgotten afterwards. He warns her not to expect any gratitude. ‘Would you like to come tonight?’ she asks him, but he doesn’t fall for that.
When his wife leaves for the meeting, Graeme takes the gourd into his study and places it by a lump of kauri gum he discovered in the Hokianga bush. The pressing cloud finally breathes a drifting drizzle into the twilight, and the neighbour’s spaniel yaps at phantoms. Cicero sits silently with his back to his master. Graeme tells himself he will soon work on his academic paper concerning the fluctuation of precious metal content in coinage as a general economic indicator in late Republican times. Already the day’s activities have been leached of feeling and are pale, receding ciphers. He is mildly alarmed to feel no vital involvement with anything that’s happened. The gourd still pleases him, but its provenance is already insecure. Is there a Sally Army of such resolute and admirable artistic commitment to the place of gourds in the world, or has he made a mundane purchase at the Trade Aid store, and all the rest surreal?
Cicero goes to his bowl and regards it without making any noise, or even looking at his master. Their moods may well be similar, but that’s no consolation to either of them. Graeme cuts the last of the Doggie Woggie Giant Roll for Cicero, and sits at the table to read the fine print on the dog food wrapper. ‘You’re a spoilt boy, aren’t you,’ says Graeme. ‘You’re a lucky rascal, that’s what you are.’
Cicero doesn’t bother to reply.
SLEEPING IN THE AFTERNOON
When I was at varsity I used to sleep sometimes in the afternoon: especially late in the year, around exam time when I should have been swotting. The heat would do it, and the futile, rote revision. Sleep was a temporary escape, like alcohol, or gambling
. My room in the flat faced north and the sun blazed in while I sat in shorts, and tried to tabulate amino acid indicators, or the evolutionary pattern of change in the shell markings of brachiopods. I would wake in the early evening, over heated, full of despair and self-loathing. During sleep at other times I often had dreams, but I don’t remember one dream during those lost afternoons. They were pits of oblivion. The shrunken remains of a burst balloon hung from the light cord. It was there when I came to the flat, and also when I left after two years.
After varsity I never slept in the afternoons, except maybe after sickness, or a long-haul flight. I was busy with things that mattered to me: wife, family, career. I have no patience with people who are both idle and unsuccessful. The thing is to gain some control over life, limited and transient as that may be. So it was most unusual last Thursday when I went quietly up the stairs to the master bedroom, took off my tan shoes and lay down on the cream duvet of the large bed.
Emma was downstairs with our new neighbour and her fouryear-old son. Normally I would have been at the office, but I was working on a corporate mission statement that I hoped to email in. I had spent some neighbourly time with Summer Neil and her son, Jack. I wondered if Summer had decided on a traditional name for her son because of the liberty her own parents had taken. She was attractive in that slightly washed out way of some thin, blonde women. I found her pleasant to talk to, but later, when I was outside with little Jack looking for the cat that had more sense than to be found, her disembodied voice had a slightly querulous tone. When Jack and I went in again, Emma and Summer were in one of those apparently trivial, relaxed conversations that women use to decide if there’s any basis for friendship. My wife never finds the need to change her initial assessment of character in any significant way. By the time Summer and Jack returned to their house across the hedge, Emma would know what intimacy, if any, the relationship would have. My own first impressions are less secure and less accurate.
I’m not sure why I made the unaccustomed decision to lie down: maybe because the bedroom faced north and was warm on a cold day, maybe stooping to little neighbour Jack, in the way I had to my own children twenty-five years before, had tweaked some unaccustomed muscle; maybe it was just that I knew no contribution of mine was needed in the conversation downstairs. I lay still and relaxed in mortuary position and regarded a smoke alarm on the ceiling. For a brief time I ran through the main points of the corporate mission statement, but then just enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face and hands. No demons came.
Jack’s cry came through the thickened atmosphere of half sleep, and then the clearer cries of his mother and Emma. I went downstairs to find them in the bathroom. Jack had gone outside again by himself in search of the tabby, and tripped on the raised concrete drain, cutting his eyebrow, which bled freely. His howls were not so much because of the pain, but the horror of the blood running into his eye. When that was stopped, and his eye bathed, he became manfully stoic. He stood in the bathroom, pale-faced, solemn, and with a large wad of bandage taped above his eye.
‘I think it needs a stitch or two,’ said Emma.
‘Why don’t I run him in to Dr Posswillow?’ I said. A man is expected to show initiative in such times of crisis. ‘You ring him and say we’re on our way.’
So within an hour of sitting quietly in front of my computer, I was driving into town to seek medical help for a four-year-old boy and his mother. Two people I had never met before, who until a day or so ago had lived in a different city in a different province. ‘How is he now?’ I asked.
‘I think he’ll be fine. Good to check, though, about a stitch in case of scarring. It’s so good of you to help, and I only came over to introduce myself.’
‘You’re welcome to use my cellphone to get in touch with your husband.’
‘That’s kind,’ Summer said. ‘If you don’t mind I’ll do it after we’ve seen the doctor, so he knows how it’s panned out.’
My wife had told me several days before that she’d heard that Summer’s husband was a solicitor, but I was about to ask as a conversation filler when a police car drew alongside and motioned me over. It was that long straight by the industrial estate, and I pulled into the forecourt of a small business that made irrigation equipment. The officer had noticed Summer’s son on her knee rather than in a car seat. Yes, we told him, we were well aware of the law, but had been overwhelmed by circumstances. ‘Okay then,’ he said, ‘but straight home after the doctor, right?’ The extravagant patch above Jack’s eye was indisputable evidence of our story. ‘Perhaps your husband could come in with your own car and the seat for the child.’
Usually a policemen is just a policeman, but this guy was young, and even I could see that he was handsome — the sharp features and thick, black hair of an Italian gangster. ‘Wow,’ said Summer as we drove on, but more as a release of anxiety, I think.
‘Is that the doctor?’ asked Jack.
‘No, sweetheart,’ said his mother, ‘but we’ll be there in a minute.’
And we were. Sitting in the worn, communal reception room with a pile of women’s magazines, a red plastic tub of small toys and a rack of free pamphlets on tinea, flatulence, lactation problems and Alzheimer’s disease. We were to be fitted in before the two bowed and silent old women already there, the receptionist said. ‘I must thank Emma for ringing ahead,’ said Summer. ‘And I’m taking your time up when I’m sure you’re busy.’ I didn’t tell her that I’d been lying on the bed when Jack took his fall. I noticed her hands trembling a little, and the tendons clearly visible beneath the pale skin.
‘We’re happy to help,’ I said.
Summer and Jack were only a few minutes in Dr Posswillow’s surgery. No serious damage and two small stitches. Dr Posswillow came out with them briefly, and told me that he’d been called to our golf club earlier that day. Brian Annders had collapsed and died on the ninth tee that overlooks the brook. ‘Out like a light,’ said Dr Posswillow. ‘Massive cardiac failure from all descriptions. Massive.’ I was sorry to hear it. Brian was a pleasant guy: a builder who had made an excellent job of tiling our garage to match the house roof. His brother represented New Zealand in skeet shooting.
‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ said Summer.
‘He was a good guy. Did some renovation work for us.’
‘You just never know, do you,’ said Summer. She had no handbag with her and was embarrassed about her temporary inability to pay. I told her that it was okay, she could fix me up later, and I rang Emma to tell her about Brian Annders’ death, say we were on our way and that Jack was fine. He was grinning, in fact, because Dr Posswillow had given him a lolly. The death of a builder was nothing to him.
By some coincidence we were passing the irrigation machinery factory again when the car began playing up. The gangster policeman was nowhere in sight when needed, but I managed to stutter on to a garage in Hulme Street. I was annoyed. You don’t spend $43,000 on a car to have trouble with it. It would be the electrics. Modern cars are reliable, but they’ve got so many bells and whistles now, that when something does go wrong it’s the electrics.
The mechanic was a thin oldster with a good deal of hair in his ears. Obviously he lacked the wow factor of the cop. He lifted the bonnet with the authority of a fat lady opening a box of chocolates.
‘Alternator,’ he said, after some poking about and an attempted start-up.
‘I thought it would be electrical,’ I said.
‘Alternator,’ the oldster repeated, as if to deny it at all connected with the electrics, or to indicate my guess not specific enough to score agreement.
‘Emma,’ I told her on the phone, ‘wouldn’t you know it. There’s something wrong with the car’s electrics. We’re here in the industrial estate, at a garage, but the guy reckons he can do the job in half an hour, so we’ll hang on. Anyway, Jack’s fine, and we shouldn’t be long.’
‘Ask Summer if there’s anything at the house that I need to go over for.’
&nb
sp; ‘Emma wants to know if there’s anything she can do,’ I told Summer. ‘You’ve nothing turned on, cooking, anything like that?’
‘No, but thanks,’ she said.
‘No, everything’s okay she says,’ I told my wife.
At the side of the garage was a bench seat with a view of the workshop and the equipment hire business next door. Jack played among some worn tyres along the wall, and his mother and I sat and waited. ‘If you want to ring your husband now,’ I said.
‘It’s okay, thanks,’ she said. She had a habit of scratching her elbows through the fabric. She was naturally blonde, I decided, because I could see the downy hair on the back of her neck. I asked if she’d rather wait inside because of the cold, but she said she was fine, that Jack needed something to keep him occupied.
‘It’s Murphy’s law,’ I said. ‘The one time it’s something of an emergency and the electrics give out.’
‘But better now than when we were on the way to the doctor.’
‘That’s true.’
‘I could ring my husband, but we’d be back before he could get here from work,’ she said. We watched a couple in the hire yard struggling to lift a rotary hoe into their off-roader. The woman seemed to have the heavier end. ‘Actually, I need to get home before he does,’ said Summer. ‘Things haven’t been so good for us lately. That’s one of the reasons we came here from Hamilton. New place, new start, new resolves. You know how it goes.’ For the first time that I was aware of she held my gaze, and smiled: a tight smile that caused fine wrinkles at her eyes. ‘Jack, be careful, sweetheart. Don’t climb up on those tyres,’ she said.
Her face was pink and white because of the cold, and the tendons moved beneath the skin of her right hand as she scratched her left arm. Better not to say anything in reply, in case she didn’t want to pursue her marriage as a topic. She did, though. ‘Paul had so much pressure at work,’ she said. ‘People think lawyers have it easy — money by the minute and long lunch hours in suits with corporate clients.’
Living As a Moon Page 5