'If Una doesn't want me to see her Roy's headstone, I'm not going to bring her here to see yours — why should I? I didn't even know he was a Catholic — she tells me so little. Should I mind? I want to tell her my things — I need to spill over at somebody. But never mind. We've got a nice apartment — you'd hate it, but I like being so central, just a short walk to Courtenay Place. And the kids are doing well, but you'll know that. Stuart's in love again and Sophie's happy with her engineer — or at least I think so. Maybe nobody tells me the truth any more. No grandchildren yet. Oh dear.' I didn't usually cry at David's headstone — or hadn't for years. Una was supposed to be the depressive one, not me. I certainly wasn't crying because I was missing grandchildren, although it might have sounded like that. I laughed and sniffed, ransacking my handbag for a tissue to wipe my eyes, and corrected this wrong impression for the man who was lying beside me, six feet under. 'I don't want grandchildren — or not in a rush — I just want to be able to believe the people I care about. It used to be easier, or else I was just thick. I'm starting to question everything I hear. I was even suspicious of Una's pathetic boyfriend. I guess that's what it's like, being alive. You're right — I'm lucky to be alive.'
Una was waving from the car, using the cloth I'd given her as a flag. Then she climbed in and drooped in the driver's seat, watching my careful progress through the tombstones, so that by the time I arrived the ignition was already switched on and the engine idling impatiently.
'Okay?' Una asked but it was hardly a question. 'Let's get out of this place. You can't help thinking, can you? We're next.'
We travelled as far as Karori where the narrow road met the bus route, without exchanging more than a few words. Then Una said, with another sideways look, 'I think you've been crying.' She sounded impressed as if I'd performed appropriately and convincingly whereas she had acted like a badly schooled film extra. No tears, only a sombre face. 'How many years ago was it? You did tell me.'
'Nineteen eighty. Muldoon days.'
'Was he interested in politics then?'
'Not specially, but Muldoon was on the news that day, I remember — we'd been watching it and then . . . What about Roy? Had he been ill?'
'We were never as close as you two were, from what you've told me. He sounds like some kind of saint, your hubby. That's what widows do, though, isn't it? Goes like this: sanctify the dear departed or they won't spit on you in hell. I'm not saying you do. Or me of course. But people do say that.'
I felt anger welling. I didn't believe for a moment that Una didn't classify me with all those other fawning widows. A question surged in my gorge and before I could help myself forced itself out between my clenched teeth. 'So what would Roy have thought about your great-grandchild, do you suppose?'
'My . . . ?'
'Sheree's baby.'
The car slewed to the side of the road and parked sharply and clumsily. I threw Una a startled look; when she didn't speak but only stared at the steering wheel, I wondered if I was expected to get out and take a bus.
'Is that what she's been saying?'
'Well — yes. She said Tyler was your grandson and he's the father. Isn't it true?'
'Okay — well now you know. She did promise not to say.'
'You can't have expected to keep it from me. She's only a kid and we live in the same flat. Anyway why, for goodness' sake? Don't you want to have a great-grandchild?'
'She's not going to keep it so there's really not a lot of point, is there? Not a lot to celebrate.' She had kept her head half turned away, watching the passing cars and now a group of Marsden schoolgirls jostling and calling to one another, tossing a chocolate bar like a netball. She turned back and looked into my face. 'There was no reason to tell you: it's not your problem. I know she's a cow to live with but she'll leave in a few months and we can get on with our lives.'
'I suppose —' I began then stopped. I was puzzled.
'Suppose what?'
'I suppose it's pretty good of you, having her, under the circumstances. You didn't have to.'
'Yeah.' Una was pleased at this. 'I don't know why I did, actually. A weak moment — I have those, believe it or not. It was my daughter's idea, as a matter of fact, she got me to promise. She can be quite bossy, my Jane, even long distance.'
'Where is she?'
'America. Phoenix.' She reached for the ignition and the car was in motion again. 'She won't come home. She's got better things to do with her life — worthy things. Improving herself, and everybody else that comes into her orbit. Deluded, but worthy. What am I saying? It's a lot of crap actually, but she believes different.'
'Are you sure she wants Sheree to give the baby away?'
Una shrugged.
'Couldn't she decide to bring up the baby herself? I know I'd want to if it was me. And she says Tyler was murdered. Can that be true?'
We were at the traffic lights; the car jerked forward and narrowly avoided bumping into a stationary Toyota in front.
Una said, 'If you don't want me to have an accident, I suggest you stop talking about this. Now. All right?'
Fourteen-year-old Tyler had to press his hands deep in his jeans pockets to stop them shaking. He said it was the coke that made them shake but Sheree guessed it was the business with the gun in Colombia. The boss guy had lent him a gun, an eight to start with, but then he'd been given his own tool, a heavy thing he had to hold up with both hands and use his middle finger for the trigger. Aim for the back of the head, he'd been told, so that's how he did it, with his eyes half shut. When the man went down Tyler had pissed himself with surprise, he told Sheree. Four hundred dollars for using his finger. And you get it for free! He was pleased with himself until he started to have the dreams — dreams that the man he killed came back and pulled his ears. 'Why would he pull your ears?' Sheree had wanted to know.
'I hate anyone touching my ears, I've never told anyone that. He must be a real ghost to know that about me.'
'It's a dream, Ty. You're in Sydney now.'
'But he can send people to get me. That's what the dead man's pulling my ears to tell me. Mum says you pay for being a bad spirit. I'm bad, eh? You're sleeping with someone who's going to be dead!'
'I'm not sleeping. You won't let me sleep.'
I turned on the kitchen light to reveal Sheree with a teaspoon plunged in the peanut butter jar. 'What are you doing in the dark?'
'Eating peanut butter.' Her speech was thick with it.
'I can see that.'
'It helps me sleep.'
'I'm going to make some hot milk. Do you want some? With Milo?'
'Might as well. Ta. What have you got to keep you from sleeping? Oh that's right, old people don't need to sleep, do they?'
'Who says I'm old?'
'Fifty-nine you said.'
'And you remembered.'
'Why wouldn't I? It's old people forget. Old people are lucky.' She screwed the lid on the peanut butter jar and reached past me to replace it in the cupboard. This looked like an improvement on her earlier habits.
I shut the microwave door on two mugs of milk and pressed Quickstart several times. 'That's a stupid thing to say.' Only someone as young as Sheree could say that so carelessly. 'When you get to my age you'll know how stupid that is. Memory's a precious thing.'
'Hah! Depends what you got in your head, eh?'
I narrowed my eyes. 'Something you want to forget?'
'Mind your own.'
Two mugs of milk juddered chocolate froth as we bumped elbows on our way to claim the burgundy armchair. I reached it first and Sheree had to make do with the cane sofa. She was wearing a grey men's singlet that hugged her distorted belly button and drooped low on one side. I noticed that her big toes jutted out prominently and the nails needed clipping. I resisted the impulse to tell her so and reach for the sideboard drawer where scissors lay in wait. Sheree was not my child and didn't want to be treated as such. Or maybe she did and that was why she was still in the main room. She sat, head bowed,
slurping at the yellow mug, wriggling her bare toes and looking everywhere but at me.
'You want to talk about something?'
I asked.
'Like what?'
'The baby?'
Sheree answered by placing her long-toed feet on the carpet and pulling herself up from the cane seat. The baby was growing heavier. 'See you in the morning.'
'Right.' I squashed my chin and squinted to examine my dressing gown collar for spilled Milo. And then I was on my own again.
I remembered why I'd been having trouble sleeping.
There had been a peculiar message for Una on the answerphone but it wasn't from Garth this time, it was from someone who called himself Roy and claimed to be — 'Your ex. Remember?' But the husband, Roy, was dead — wasn't he? — and buried in the Catholic section of Makara cemetery.
It wasn't that I believed it was a ghost speaking.
On the contrary, I believed he was a real person, with that complaining, gravelly voice, but I was horridly embarrassed by this blatant evidence of Una's mendacity.
If I drew Una's attention to the call she'd be angry — she'd flip out and the anger would, perversely, be directed at me, I felt sure of that. Oh shit. And before I could think any further I'd plopped my finger down and wiped the message — it had seemed the easiest thing to do. I could have left it there for Una to pick up and deal with in her own way, but too late, I'd done it, and now the message was lodged in my brain like a headache. What was it Sheree had said? 'Depends what you've got in your head.' I wanted to abolish this memory, for the time being anyway. Damn Una for lying. But that was no reason for me to be dishonest or at least keep the truth away from her. This Roy had wanted something of his wife, something she had taken with her when she 'bloody walked out'. It could have been important. I would have to confess at some stage. We'd eaten dinner together last night barely speaking — a casserole made from some of Garth's gruesome meat, some sort of stewing steak. I couldn't face it — the image of those bloody parcels replayed on a flickering screen deep in my stomach — I thought I might become completely vegetarian. Sheree hadn't been able to finish hers either — Una wasn't much of a cook. I'd filled myself up on muesli.
Tomorrow, of course, tomorrow I would confront Una and ask her what the hell she meant by spinning these stories that were patently untrue. Was she sick, for God's sake? Perhaps that was it. She was truly sick and believed she had been telling the truth. It wasn't as if she could expect to keep this Roy hidden forever.
I found I had picked up the telephone book from the sideboard and was looking for Una's surname in — where? — Wadestown, hadn't she said? And there it was. R for Roy in — Wilton — well, close enough.
The next day I was on my way to meet Roy at a coffee shop near the railway station. The telephone number I'd cheekily dialled was out of date — Una's ex was now living up the coast in Paekakariki — but the new owner of his Wilton home had taken over the phone number and was happy to pass on Roy's details. The gravel voice had quoted no new number when he left his tetchy telephone message, so presumably Una knew these details already. I sat on the trolley bus as it looped around Stewart Dawson's corner, wondering at myself. I could hardly believe I'd been so nosy and so devious as to accept the man's invitation to meet. Sneakily. Or had it been my own idea? I caught the puzzled expression of a woman sitting opposite me and wondered if my face was betraying the judgemental 'look' Una had accused me of wearing. I wasn't being judgemental, I was simply — well, one had to make moral judgements — what was wrong with that? You couldn't just swing through life thoughtlessly, like a bus, letting people climb on and off at will, indiscriminately. People were supposed to tell the truth surely, for practical reasons: it saved muddle and confusion. It wasn't just an invention of the Presbyterian Church.
I rang the bell before the bus reached the cenotaph and prepared to climb off at the same stop where, as an adolescent, I had leapt from the school tram and transferred to a bus. At fifty-nine I didn't leap. There was nothing wrong with my bones as far as I knew but I seemed incapable of bouncing as I used to. The coffee shop Roy mentioned was past the cenotaph, past the corner of Molesworth Street, several gusts of wind away from the bus stop. I clutched my jacket close so that it wouldn't billow and unsteady me.
Because I'd visited my schooldays so recently in my mind I was nearly put out when the next stretch of the Quay offered unfamiliar buildings, although it also offered new steps leading down to a twenty-first-century coffee shop well protected from the wind. The tables were all unoccupied at that time of day — when the gainfully employed were mostly otherwise engrossed, as Una would be behind her cosmetics counter — so I was free to choose where to plant myself with my latte. The entrance was a wall of glass so I was seated as advantageously as any theatre patron while I watched for him to appear. I wasn't exactly apprehensive, more curious. Una had said so little about her 'deceased' husband that I had no precise idea what he did for a living — something white collar that involved money — or even how he was supposed to have died. Did he know about his death, I wondered. There was always a chance that he was as much of a liar as Una, but I couldn't help looking forward to learning some new angles on the woman who shared my home and mortgage. He would be wanting to learn stuff from me too so I'd have to be careful. Una was my friend, after all, for what it was worth, and you don't betray a friend.
This couldn't be him — not this shuffling old man with a windbreaker and an Alsatian dog that he was having trouble tying to a post. He was lurching inside, limping and mopping his nose on the back of his hand. No. He bought soup and took it in a wobbly grip to the farthest table — perhaps he had seen the look on my face. Was I really as haughty as Una implied? I was so busy thinking about this that I nearly missed the entrance of a second man who had come down the steps quickly and quietly and raised one hand at waist level, signalling doubtfully.
'Yes.' I lifted my own hand, dislodging my cup so that froth spilled into the saucer.
He was a whey-faced businessman who looked as if he shaved his head of all but crisp white stubble. He was wearing the kind of tie I would have expected Una's husband to wear, smart and nondescript at the same time. It wasn't that Una was smart or nondescript but she cared about appearance in the way people do who have little imagination. She did the same sort of thing to her own face every morning so that it was hard to criticise the matt effect but personally I thought her blurred features when she got out of bed first thing looked more friendly. She could certainly have improved on Roy's face. Once he'd been a good-looking man but today he was haggard and sporting a large blackhead beside one eye. The manicured haircut might have been done for my benefit. Una had no doubt told him he had a well-shaped head.
We armed ourselves with coffee and after the first fumbles of conversation I accidentally mentioned Sheree's name. He didn't react. Fourteen-year-old Tyler must have belonged to another part of Una's life. 'She was married before, of course, wasn't she? Una?'
'Oh God, yes. That terrible business.'
'What do you mean?'
'She must talk about it. To you. Aren't you an old friend? You said you were an old friend.'
'We were at school, that's all. So what terrible business?'
He was looking embarrassed. 'I can't believe you don't know. Although now I come to think of it she took her time before letting me know who she was.'
'Who she was? Did she say she was somebody different?'
This made him raise his voice in a laugh so that the old man put a hand to his ear, wondering if it was worth eavesdropping. Roy lowered his head and also his voice.
'He was inside when we met — her old man. Lachlan. In Paremoremo. They were already divorced. He came out a few years after but I never met the man and I don't want to. There was a lot of publicity at the time. She kept her own name when she married that bastard and she'd changed Jane's after he went inside so she wasn't really hiding anything. I insisted she take my name when we married, just in cas
e there were people who knew the background. Hardly something . . .'
'So what did he do?'
'You'll have to ask Una. It's not something I talk about.'
'But — Paremoremo?'
'Exactly. It was pretty heavy. The court case sent her mother round the bend — she was already an alkie — and Jane ran off as soon as she was old enough. One of those religious cults got hold of her in America. I always felt a bit guilty that I didn't put my foot down and stop the girl going but we were planning the wedding then. We were happy — mad to think of it now. Didn't last more than a few months, our happy marriage!' He gave a dry snort and drained his coffee cup. 'But we pushed on — as you do.'
'So you don't want her back?'
'What?'
'You said you wanted something back.'
'Oh yes. My share folio. The certificates are no use to her and I've got my own access. But I'm fond of the leather case I kept them in — bought it in Tehran on my first OE. I don't see why she should have that as well as all the money I've handed over. Actually I talked to her about it earlier today, I phoned her at work — I promised not to phone her at home, but she changed her cellphone, didn't she? I've got the number now — so you don't have to pass on any messages. I didn't say we'd spoken.'
There was a dragging silence. The old man had limped past our table and was untying his excited dog.
I noticed it was my turn to speak. I cleared my throat but Roy was doing the same, preparing to say more.
I waited for it.
'There was something you wanted to ask me?' he said.
'Well — yes.' Then I stopped. 'Do you want another coffee?'
'Not really.'
I turned my cup in its saucer and pulled a warning grimace. 'She told me you were dead!'
'Oh really?' He didn't sound very surprised.
'We even went to the cemetery to visit your grave.
Playing Friends Page 8