by Gee, Maurice
She dragged it to the tide-line, rowed along the shallows, then coasted with dripping oars, listening to the crackle and hiss of water taking the swamp. It was heaven, she supposed, for the crabs down in their crab-holes. What beautifully punctuated lives they must lead. And the little fish darting in tepid water over the sandflats, a new world opening with each tide. Nonsense, she told herself, they don’t have consciousness. I can enjoy it but they can’t – then laughed at her need to be superior to a fish. She swept with an oar and turned the dinghy, headed across the shallows and felt the channel tug like wind on a car. The hull turned cold under her feet. She kept clear of the causeway bridge where the tide sliced through and soon was in shallow water again. She shipped the oars and let the dinghy glide. Jumped out as the keel touched; grabbed her sandals. One-handed, she heaved the dinghy to where it would lie safe.
Up the bank, across the road, along a sandy alley to the one proper gate in all the row. ‘Gidday, Daphne. How’s it going?’
The woman on the lawn looked up from her weeding. ‘You should have said you were coming. I’d have put the kettle on.’
‘I’ve had a cup already,’ May lied. ‘Great day for weeding. You’ve got it looking like a bowling green.’
Daphne was frowning at May’s bare feet. She wiped her knife on the grass, one side then the other, then stood up and dusted her knees. ‘I’ll call George. He’s on the roof.’
It’s just as well I’m not after him, she’d have me with that knife, May thought. ‘I saw him from my place. Okay if I go up and have a look?’ She laid her sandals on the grass. George peered down from the roof.
‘May, I thought I heard your voice.’
‘Saw you painting. Thought I’d take a look.’
‘Come on up.’
‘Don’t be silly, George, she can’t climb ladders.’
‘You watch me,’ May said. She was sorry for the woman but was prepared to humour her only so far. George offered his hand. She ignored it and walked beside the gutter. ‘Good colour.’
‘Red’s best for roofs.’
‘Blood red.’ Which was careless of her. Daphne watched with her face upturned. Her hair made yellow petals but her face was pinched and birdy, unflowerlike. In a moment she pushed her knife into the lawn and went inside.
‘How is she?’
‘Better now. She’s got some tranquillisers. I’ve promised her …’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘Can you?’
‘I’ll think of something. I’ve got to think of something.’
They whispered but their voices seemed to curl down through the windows like smoke. May climbed beside the new paint to the chimney and looked across the inlet at her own house set in the bush, with its windows shining. The showroom stood at the other end of the plateau, and there was Evan in the door, seeing people off. His bald head made a point of light. She waved but he did not see her. Why should I care about anyone but Evan and me?, she thought.
‘She should have stayed in Khandallah. I told her I’d keep the house for her.’
‘Your voice will go down the chimney.’
George moved away and squatted with his brush between his knees. Paint, fat and slow, dripped on the iron. She saw the scar of Daphne’s scissor-stab inside his shirt.
‘I would have gone to visit her. It would have worked with me here and her there.’
‘She’d have been an abandoned wife.’
‘Yeah, I know. I lived like in a prison there, May.’
‘She’s in one here. She should get proper treatment, George. She can’t be left like this for too much longer.’
‘I’m not putting my wife in a loony bin.’
‘This is a loony bin. For her.’
It was a pity that she liked this man. There was so much about him not to like. She wanted to go home to Evan and her work and pull them closed behind her like a door. And yet she would feel, after a time, thinned by that rather than completed. It would only be homecoming for a while. And there was her superstition, too, that if she stayed too happy, too enclosed, she would endanger what she had.
‘We weren’t meant to be happy, her and me,’ George said. ‘All my life I’ve never been able to relax. And she’s wanted what she couldn’t have. I don’t think she ever knew what it was. So she settled for – God knows. A husband with his shirts properly ironed. All I want to do is walk on the beach and go out fishing. And she wants croquet and church. And me in the garden with my cuffs buttoned up. That’s happiness. How do you and Evan manage it?’
Oh don’t put us in danger, May wanted to cry. ‘We have our ups and downs,’ she said. But would not give an example, although he waited, looking up at her. Paint slid like blood down a gully in the iron and dripped into the gutter.
‘Did you get rid of the poison?’
‘Yeah, threw it out. But she’s all right now. Tranquillised. Shit, after forty years, a tranquillised wife.’
May climbed down the ladder. When she looked back from the road he was painting again; and Daphne was kneeling on a cushion, slicing off dandelions at the root. Tranquillised, yes, but still committing little acts of murder. George must know that it could not last.
She followed the road towards the beach. On her left the inlet water kept up its increase. She let herself be governed by the tide, which gave her ten minutes for George and Daphne and ten for Junior Mott, then an easy row before the water rushed out. Why was it that once she and Evan had got together other people, all those she had not connected with, all those who had turned their backs or looked darkly on her, should step forward and make demands? Had Evan somehow made her available to them? And had she locked him away – for he kept himself more private than he once had? No pub now, confessional, women weeping on him. Women, he had told her, had often come to cry – and, though he did not say it, take what they could get of him after that. She had not cried, she had laughed. Was that the reason she had him now? Laughter was good for starting, and to go on with, and things could be rounded later on, and darkened a little, which was natural. She and Evan looked at each other nakedly. And so Junior Mott could be spared a glance, out of charity, even though he answered with looks from under his brow, especially for Evan, with whom he had been close.
She turned in at his gate, stepped around a torn clay bag and a maggoty dog bone. Oh Junior, she thought, why do you work so hard at being squalid? An ashpile in the yard showed where he did his raku firings. Cracked mugs, cracked plates poked out of the mound. It was like an archeological site, except that no scrap of beauty or interest lay there. The dog, a labrador white in its snout with age, slumped half out of the shed doorway. It raised its head, gave a woof, collapsed. May put her hand on the doorpost and leaned in. Junior was at his wheel, turning something ugly. Oh no, don’t judge, give him a chance, she thought. But it would be ugly, although he would say ‘useful’. May doubted even that. It would come out bent, lopsided, and he would coat it with a muddy glaze and take it to the market in Nelson or Takaka and it would sit on his stall – some mug or jug or bowl – and never sell until it was marked down; and who would use it after getting it home and taking a closer look at it? He dipped his hands, worked away, pedalling evenly. Old ways were best, he said, otherwise a piece of work had no integrity. He knew she was in the door but would not look until he had ‘found the shape’. Found it, lost it, spoiled it – although she did not doubt an ideal shape existed in his head; glimpsed once, perhaps, but not to be recovered. And why would he not know that care and thought and technique were a part of it? And good materials? And equipment? And why couldn’t he see colour? Face it, May, why couldn’t he see shape?
He stopped pedalling and the wheel came to a halt – and there it was, a drinking mug that, with its handle on, would look like a goblin chamber pot. He wiped his hands.
‘Yeah, May? What is it?’
Did you drop a turd in my dinghy?, she wanted to say. He was the only one in Woods Inlet with sufficie
nt hatred for that. Enough muddy brown in his perceptions. She wondered if he was colour blind. With those eyes he could be. They seemed to curve on the surface and follow the bones of his face. Eyes like wrap-around glasses. God, he’s spooky, she thought. And a widow’s peak that wanted to grow down the ridge of his nose. It’s like a pick-axe. He’s got a pick-axe in his brain.
‘Evan asked me to call.’
‘Yeah?’
‘We’re doing a first firing and there’s a bit of space if you’ve got anything you’d like to put in.’
‘I wouldn’t put my stuff in with yours.’
‘Is that what you want me to tell him?’
‘Tell him what you like.’
‘All right.’
‘This is to drink out of.’ He indicated the mug on the wheel. ‘Your stuff is for money.’
‘No integrity, Junior, is that what you mean?’
‘Sure, May, you can laugh, but I got hands’ – he showed them – ‘and I got an eye and I can see. All you got is a bank account.’
She almost laughed at the arrogance of it, but sadness held her quiet. Hands, an eye, were what he did not have.
‘I can make things,’ Junior said. ‘You can only count up your money.’
It got past her pity and stung her. She enjoyed reading Inlet Arts’ statements from the bank – but it all, every dollar, came from work; and the plates and jugs and tiles that she and Evan turned out were beautiful and useful, they were pleasing, and they had messages, the nectarine, the spiny fish, and Farewell Spit, if people cared to read – and her paintings too, if they could see; yet this ugly man … She hung on to the doorpost until the anger that would make her fly at him had passed; until she could say, evenly, ‘Tell me, Junior. Tell me how you see.’
‘You wouldn’t understand, May.’
‘Because I’ve been wondering, are you colour-blind?’
He kicked his bucket aside, splashing water on the dirt floor, and half rose and came crouching at her, pick-axe man with ropy muscles in his arms and fingers like chicken bones. The labrador had risen too and was snarling at her.
‘Out, bitch, out. Get off my section,’ Junior said.
‘Yes, I’ll go.’ She was more frightened of the dog than him. He was bits of dry stick wired together and could not be dangerous when the sun was shining. Darkness was needed for him to act. She backed away and turned and walked, quick but in no panic, and stopped at his gate and said, ‘Are you the one who shat in my dinghy?’
‘I’ll do worse that that, bitch. I’ll shit all over you and your wanker boyfriend.’
‘Oh Junior, poor Junior,’ she said, and went away. But his hatred had splashed on her like dirty water. It was in her mouth, she tasted it. She walked fast on the road and reached the dinghy, where she cleared her throat and spat him out. She rowed across the inlet and became cold and ruthless: thought of ways Junior might be hunted out of their lives. In the shallows he came down to size, which was a pity because it allowed him a place: the sad man, the crippled man, Evan’s lost friend. She would not tell Evan about today’s encounter. She would say that Junior had no pots and he could stack that corner of the kiln. And Evan – she could hear him: ‘So he’s still like that, eh? I wish he’d let me give him some glaze with a bit of colour.’
They had been ‘best mates’. Junior had let Evan use his wheel, and Evan had loved it – had felt shapes pumping down his arms like arterial blood. Nothing would do for him then but making pots. So it had begun: Inlet Arts. And here they were, eight years later. And down there, back there, with his lumpy clay and lopsided mugs, was Junior Mott.
May pulled the dinghy into the rushes. She took a handful of muddy sand and scrubbed the seat a sixth or seventh time. She splashed it with water, then tied the boat to its waratah. Cars sped by on the causeway but up the hill she sensed the easy busyness of the workshop, and beyond it the humming, silent humming, of the bush. My place, she thought, he can’t get in. And nor can George and Daphne. No one can.
She climbed up to the road. A big boxy four-wheel drive went by. It pulled up and reversed. A man let down the window and looked out.
‘May,’ he said.
She stopped and tried to understand his unnatural smile. Oh damn him. Oh bugger him, she complained.
DAVID
His first thought when he woke was, She can’t do that to me. The course of his day was set by it. He would wash and shave and eat and walk about the flat – bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, sitting room – and drive out and park on Rocks Road, where he would smoke, looking at the sea; then drink at the pub all afternoon, and come home and heat up a dinner and look at the box and go to bed; and all the time he would be thinking, She can’t do that. So everything was set by her, whatever he did. All day her voice was the only one he would hear: ‘We’re finished, Dave. Don’t you ever come near me again.’
He pulled on his dressing gown and tied the cord with a knot. He walked to the kitchen and put the kettle on. ‘She can’t,’ he said, hearing the water tremble into life. He stood on the mat in front of the sink and drank his tea. It was too pale, he hadn’t let it draw. That too she had caused. She stood in the way and put his timing off. Parts no longer fitted into place. So there had to be a pulling round to make things mesh. There had to be a levering and a correction.
Force, he thought. Force must be applied.
He saw himself turning her inside through a door. Get in there and stay in there and don’t come out till I say. That was the proper way to do it. Take hold of her and feel her bones. Look at me when I’m talking to you, he would say. He hooked his thumbs to fit her collar bones and saw her pupils grow large and her blue reduce. You’re my wife. Do what I say or by Jesus, Freda, I promise you …
She was small. She was half his size. At the beach he sat her on his shoulders like a child, and in bed he fitted down around her like a box and she was enclosed. He felt her sharp bones digging into him and understood how easily she would break. But the sharpness of her, in laughter and in words. The quickness that left him a quarter turn too slow, and she was moving into a new place and would be gone if he did not wrench himself round. She thought that she was smarter than him, and higher up some social bloody scale, but all it was, she knew a few more words and could get them out, and if he could just hook his fingers in and hold her still …
His tea had gone lukewarm and he poured it down the sink. He shaved and showered and breakfasted and backed out his car, a Chev Silverado he’d liked to call his ‘wagon’, a name that did not seem to fit any more. He drove about evenly in the morning traffic, with logging trucks, school buses, back and front, and felt that he was going somewhere. But then came the country and he had to turn back. Hills climbed up and went down and dirt roads branched off and there was no destination.
She can’t do this.
He filled his tank at the petrol station before the saddle, then headed back to town. He drove by the sewage ponds and through Atawhai, where the telegraph poles grew out of the sea. They seemed unnatural and made him pity himself. He was as much out of place as that. How did he get back to his proper place? He took the by-pass and drove along Rocks Road but turned off when he realised where he was heading. Stopped at Tahuna and bought a packet of smokes, then doubled back up the hill and parked at the lookout, where he smoked half the pack as the morning passed. He was smoking too much, and would drink too much in the afternoon – but too much in relation to what? There seemed to be nothing left to measure against. Nothing of himself in the past, nothing in the future.
He got out of the car and stood in the lookout, where the telescope pointed at the weeds. The half-million-dollar houses stood on the cliff edge, angled away from each other, and Tasman Bay stretched uncoloured to the park, and the Arthur Range stood in the sky. He saw the bluffs beyond Ruby Bay, and the plateau where his father’s orchard grew, and Takaka Hill, with May in behind it making pots, making money; and at his feet half of Tahuna beach, waves thick with swimmers; and Tahuna on the fla
t: golf course, airport, camping ground – and none of it had any connection with him. He was cut off. The people on the beach down there were as small as insects yet he was the one who felt small.
I have to make something happen. I have to get back in.
He could only start his life up by getting Freda again. It came down to a move as simple as that. He was not molesting her the way that fucking order said, he was just getting back what was his. He would take her by the shoulders and walk her to his car. Or he would go inside and sit in the kitchen and wait for her. Hi Freddie, I’ve come back, I live here now, get me a drink. And then they would climb in the wagon and drive over the hill to see old May. He needed to score off May and show her that Freda was his wife before it would start to move properly again.
He left the lookout and walked a short way into the weeds, trying to open up Stoke, but her house was out of sight around the hill. It seemed to him that she was hiding from him and he said, ‘No chance, Freddie. You can’t hide.’ He flicked his cigarette away and went back to the car. They’d tear that bit of paper up, that non-molestation order. Or she’d tear, he’d make her, while he watched. They’d take the bits over the hill and drop them like confetti on May’s floor. Stay out of our lives.
He drove down the hill and went left and then right through Tahuna. He drove past the high school in the seaward half of Stoke and up a street by the packhouse. The smell of apples wrapped him round as he got out of the car. He breathed it in deeply, a winey smell. Freda wasn’t bossing him any more. All it had needed was a decision. You couldn’t break a marriage up with a bit of paper.