Playing Friends

by Marilyn Duckworth

Well, I was visiting my husband's grave but she . . .'

  'I guess that is taking it a bit far, even for Una.'

  'A bit far — yes. Makara cemetery.' Now we could laugh together.

  'You didn't exactly need to see me to clear that up. She has trouble with reality sometimes, you must have noticed. But otherwise you get on okay, do you? She doesn't tip glasses of wine into your trousers?'

  I felt my jaw drop and raised questioning eyebrows.

  'It's just something she likes to do to people who annoy her. The last party we went to together she yanked me by the belt and emptied a bottle of good chardonnay. Talk about brass monkeys! The woman I was talking to went, "Whoops, I hope he's wearing his Huggies!" That reminds me — I have to be somewhere. My lady friend will be ropeable.' He stood up, reaching for his satchel. 'It was nice meeting you. I don't want Una to be on her own — no, I really don't, no matter what awful things she might say about me. Oh, that's right, I'm dead, aren't I? The grieving widow stuff? I'd keep clear of that if I were you. Let her enjoy it. Did we meet or is it a secret? Up to you of course.'

  I sat on after he'd left, bounding up the steps as if he couldn't wait to get away from me. As I watched him go I was wondering if he was one of those people who go to a gym regularly or has a personal trainer. He could probably afford it, by the look of his suit. I took a deep breath and went to order another coffee and a giant blueberry muffin. For some reason I couldn't quite analyse, I was feeling let down, almost as if I'd been expecting him to stay — actually the last thing I wanted — and he'd abandoned me. He'd certainly left rather suddenly. I was glad when the place began to fill up with a huddle of Asian students who chattered in their own tongue. Anyway, I noted — fiercely studying the plastic menu — I had found out something new that I wouldn't have otherwise known. Una clearly hadn't planned to tell me about the jailbird husband, the father of her daughter Jane, and grandfather of Sheree's Tyler. I shook my head over this disbelievingly but it made a kind of sense. And I didn't have to tell Una any of this — that I knew her Roy was alive and well, and had a lady friend. Who had him on the end of a rope and all she had to do was tug. That was it, I decided — that was why I felt empty. Una's ex had made me notice how old I was, how incapable of holding a man's attention as I would have done only a few years ago, surely. He could have at least joined me in a second cup of coffee.

  Not that I'd have welcomed Roy's attention — God forbid: he was a boring old businessman with a blackhead and a self-satisfied smile. Kevin hadn't asked me again to the champagne bar after I'd turned him down that once. But no, it wasn't an actual man I was lacking, it was that aspect of myself that had appealed to one. A facet of my identity was being stripped from me, along with the bounce I used to manage alighting from a bus. For comfort I ran my fingers through my hair — at least I still had my thick bouncy curls. I knew there were women who had never bounced, who had never had men making passes at them, but it was something I'd been used to, from as far back as schooldays and especially when I was married. For the first time in my life I was without a lover. I didn't need one, or want one. I really didn't. But the fact remained that Una had Garth — funny old Garth with his faded moustache — and Beryl had her 'friend' Greg and I, Clarice, was the only one who was completely alone. So alone that I'd sneakily arranged to meet Una's 'dead' ex in a coffee shop. What a thing to do. And now I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be in possession of the knowledge that he'd shared with me.

  Una was probably a battered wife at the very least and deserving of sympathy. She'd be good at disguising and concealing bruises that blossomed like rotten fruit, but she'd told me so little.

  'We could be good together,' she'd said at the outset, implying just the two of us — and then there was Sheree. Her youth made Sheree nearly as difficult to understand as the Asian students, but lately I'd had the feeling that there was someone there, inside the plump girl with her thin screws of hair and her appetite for sugar and rap songs, someone I might get to know. She had more reason than me to feel alone. I was occupied at the clinic for part of each working week and did a lot of talking with elderly clients and staff, whereas Sheree apparently had no one to talk to apart from other lonely oddballs who roamed Cuba Street, her chosen territory. No wonder she seemed surgically attached to her Walkman. So could Sheree be believed? Could anyone? One of the students at the next table appeared to be playing some kind of game on her cellphone, following her quick fingers with darting brown eyes. At fifty-nine I felt the rules of life had changed so that I didn't know how to play it, any more than I could play a cellphone. Life might feel like a game sometimes but it wasn't about partners now, it was about friends and that made it harder. I didn't know how to play friends, I was too serious. They laughed at me at work for taking things literally. And Una was too elusive. Una was too bloody tricky altogether: she didn't play fair.

  Beryl

  Beryl tried to banish the pregnant teenager from her mind, and failed. When she let her library book drop and reached to turn off the lamp the girl's belly swelled to fill a virtual screen in front of her eyes. She heard the flat monotonous sing-song tones complaining that — 'I just want it out'. Beryl had been young too, but not as young as Sheree when she lay in this same room that last time it happened and felt down tremulously for the familiar telltale stickiness between her legs. Donald was at work. When she held her hand above the sheet she knew it would shout brown red, the rough colour of despair. A dark muffled pain in the small of her back but not the pain of childbirth, something less rewarding yet in its own way lingering, unforgettable.

  For young Sheree despair was a different colour altogether. She didn't know yet that 'getting rid' could hurt so much, and she would never believe an old woman could know something she did not. Beryl might have been a mother of five and a grandmother by now, knitting for smooth-limbed babies whose skin smelled milky and sweet. Instead what was she? Just old. Did Sheree have no idea what she was giving away? What a waste. At least she hadn't chosen abortion. Beryl felt strongly about abortion. When she had found herself accidentally caught up in an abortion rights march in the seventies, soon after Donald had left her, she had extricated herself, had run away into a shop doorway and shaken it off her like a dog who'd rolled in something oily and nasty. She watched that Friday night trail of marchers, women mostly, swim past her, heads held high, exchanging greetings and grinning happily — some of them — bending their knees and swinging their arms as if it were a sporting event. As she frowned from the shop doorway one woman had frowned back, fiercely, rather like that baboon at the zoo last week. There had been a notice on the cage not to stare for too long because it upset the animals; she didn't see it right away because her eyes were so bad.

  She hadn't seen Garth at the zoo recently and wondered if his redundancy had already come into force. Una would know because apparently she and Garth had something going between them — Clarice had told her about it. Her face had twitched curiously as she passed on this news so that Beryl was unsure what she really felt about it, whether the faintly amused pout expressed disgust or pleasure. It could have been either. It had been with Clarice's encouragement that Beryl slipped him the apartment phone number so she must have been a little bit pleased. Beryl had been pushed to visit the zoo last week because again she'd lost Greg and again she had imagined she glimpsed him slipping between the yellow entrance pillars past the advertisement for Zoodoo. She had forgotten to pay but no one stopped her and she remembered only when she found herself outside the baboon enclosure, staring because Greg must have somehow passed through the wire netting, an advantage of being invisible. One of the animals, with a long smoky cape, was raising his eyebrows and baring his canines — was that Greg's doing? — and then he started to grind his teeth and scream, slapping long hands and feet on the ground so that she backed away and ran clumsily in case one of the keepers should appear and remind her that she hadn't purchased a ticket.

  She'd felt an idiot, well she was an idiot, but
she had slowed to a more respectable walk and taken deep slow breaths to bring her blood pressure down. Pulling her shoulder bag higher she had sauntered over to join a group of visitors on the balcony above the giraffe enclosure. Thinking of this she remembered reading somewhere that giraffes gave birth standing up, feet first. For a human that would be a breech birth, not a good thing, she knew that much. Which brought her back to Sheree and her gravid belly. Beryl wouldn't have minded standing up so long as she'd delivered a baby and not a giraffe — or would she? What did she know about giving birth really? Nothing. She sat up in bed and reached for the light switch.

  Greg was sitting in his duffel coat at the foot of her bed, smiling expectantly.

  'Oh, there you are,' she said. 'So what business did you have with the baboons? That was you making them angry, wasn't it?'

  'It was you, you silly woman. Didn't you read the notice? Too much eye contact.'

  'I suppose you think I'm a silly old woman wanting Sheree's baby. But she doesn't want it. She wants to give it away. She could give it to me!'

  'She'll have made other arrangements, you know that.'

  Beryl fished with her toes under the bed, trawling for her slippers. She was trying to remember whether there was any tonic left in the fridge. 'I don't know anything.'

  'And you're far too old.'

  'Am I? Sometimes I don't feel old enough, I'm still learning how to be alive.'

  'You're old enough to buy gin.'

  'Well, that's true. Will you come with me while I get it? I miss you when you stay away for such a long chunk of time. It isn't just my eyes, is it?' Outside the bedroom window the musical chorus of blackbird and thrush was obliterated by a series of eerie howls and soaring calls from the zoo home of the gibbons. Beryl's night was nearly over and she couldn't remember if she'd had any shut-eye at all, but when you're sixty-four sleep doesn't matter the same. It used to be the most important thing. Her mother had told her there was something wrong with her, all the sleep she needed, but that was when she was young, when they'd find her snoozing on the bedroom floor as if she didn't know where the bed was. Why had she done that — sagged into slumber? Was it wrong? Of course it was wrong — it was weakness. Worse than wrong.

  Narcolepsy didn't exist when Beryl started babysitting at sixteen and there was no point in acknowledging it now, owning up to weakness. Giving it the name she came across in Time magazine in the seventies wouldn't change what had happened. The wee girl had run out to meet the family car when it turned into the drive and where was the babysitter? There was no excuse for the 'tragic accident' Beryl woke up to that ghastly day, pretending she had never been asleep. And the face of the child's mother! Nightmare stuff. Beryl woke up to it over and again, even some mornings in 2002, sloshing in her head like a greasy toxin. Narcolepsy was a syndrome, not a sin, but for Beryl it weighed the same so she kept it a secret, from herself as well the others. Maybe God had decided she was guilty and taken her babies away to protect them, so it wouldn't happen again. But she'd be on guard in the future, armed to the teeth, the best mother in the history of the world; God wasn't listening. Beryl had thought about this often, of course, but you can learn not to think when it matters enough.

  I don't get it.' Sheree was puzzled. 'Why? I mean he's awful, that Garth. And she's past it, she must be.'

  We were walking together on Riddiford Street.

  'Why must she be? You don't have any idea, do you?'

  'Yes I do. I'm used to old people.'

  'Why's that?'

  'I don't have to tell you my life.'

  'No, you don't,' I agreed. 'But I am interested.'

  'Why? You can't possibly be interested. Nosy, more like.'

  'You don't seem to have anyone apart from Una. There must be a mother somewhere in your life.'

  'If you say so.'

  'Someone found you under a gooseberry bush, is that what you're saying?'

  Sheree snorted. 'All right, if you must know Mum got run over by a taxi when I was a little kid. She was drunk, wasn't she. That's when I went to my grandma and then she got too old and sick and I stayed with her sister, my Aunty Lyn. That's what I mean — I know all about mad old people.'

  'We're not old — I don't suppose your grandma was old either — and we're certainly not mad.'

  'You want a bet?'

  We were walking to the supermarket because Una had taken her car and was spending the weekend with Garth at his flat that was on a main road two streets away from the zoo. She had explained that she had to do this since I'd been so unwelcoming and also because the ribbed glass doors to her bedroom were not soundproofed, which could be embarrassing. They might want to make noises. Perhaps I ought not to have repeated this last bit of information but I did need to share it with somebody and the young were known to be less narrow-minded.

  Sheree walked with her left hand on her back as if her tummy needed support and, glancing at her sideways, I wondered if it had been a good idea to ask for her company. It was quite a step to the supermarket.

  'Are you okay?'

  ''Course.'

  'You can listen to your music if you want.'

  'I know I can. Who's going to stop me?' She pressed her lips together and wriggled them comically under her nose. 'Isn't this where your Beryl hangs out? This street?'

  'No — she's right up the end, near the zoo. And she's not mine.'

  'Isn't she your friend?'

  'Oh well . . .'

  'My friends are all in Sydney. That's why I don't have anyone to hang out with here. I'll go back when I've dropped the tadpole.'

  'Is that why you came over? To drop — to have the baby? What was wrong with Sydney? I thought you said you had friends.'

  'Nothing wrong.' She shook her head, scowling. 'I got scared. They aren't that kind of friends — you wouldn't understand.'

  'And your aunty?'

  'Hah! She's no use. She hates my guts anyway. Una doesn't ask questions.'

  'Or answer them.'

  'What?'

  We had drawn level with the mall entrance and I put out a steering hand. I was remembering another occasion when Sheree had followed us to this supermarket and made a ridiculous scene, screaming as if she were a naughty child who couldn't get her own way. She'd improved since then anyway. Without really trying we must have been having a good effect on the girl.

  Beryl

  In a kitchen down the road Beryl talked to Greg Preston about the baby, Sheree's baby, just as she had talked to him about those other babies who turned back before their journey was over and never arrived to fill her impatient arms. She talked to him today and he was sympathetic: she knew he would be because he had understood so well on other occasions. He might answer back and tease her, but in important things he understood. The accident when she was babysitting was different — she couldn't put that in words even for Greg, she wasn't sure why that was. Hearing those words spill out of her mouth . . . No. Some sort of celestial jury might be listening, ready to judge her. But she could safely share Sheree's baby with Greg. When he was around . . .

  Sometimes these days while she was talking to Greg she was aware that he faded — he didn't quite leave but was no longer fully visible until she gave him her complete attention and concentrated hard, bringing him back into the living room, the bedroom. She remembered telling him — not entirely seriously — that the other week she had imagined she saw him on television and he was incredibly aged, thinner and with fluffy white hair, pretending to be someone quite other than himself, an older English gentleman. She had laughed because it was so idiotic but so perfect that Greg couldn't, wouldn't age, as she had to. Perhaps it had been a mistake to joke about it and let even a chink of the actor role meet the light of day. But surely Greg knew he was not an actor playing a part — she had never looked up something so silly as those details in the Listener programme pages — but a character conceived and born with distinctive television DNA as surely as babies are conceived and born of other human beings. He cou
ldn't turn back as the babies in her own womb had done.

  'Breastfeeding remains the best option,' Greg said rather surprisingly.

  'Where did you get that from? Some magazine?' She must throw out that awful withered pile on the washhouse shelf. 'Anyway they have ever such cute bottles in the supermarket, not too big and not too small. And funny-shaped dummies that fit the roof of the mouth perfectly. I don't think they cost much.'

  'Isn't it time you filled up that silly wheelie bag again? The fridge is looking pretty empty and the tomatoes are mush.'

  'You're absolutely right. I have to feed myself as well, don't I? Don't want to turn into an Old Mother Hubbard.' She put out a hand and pulled the shabby bag on wheels from behind the door. 'Promise me you'll still be here when I get back.'

  'Promise you won't buy a dummy,' Greg said, making her laugh.

  Clarice and Sheree were two streets away by the time she reached the mall. She left the supermarket entrance feeling unusually happy with fresh fruit and cauliflower and a shrink-wrapped, bright yellow rubber pacifier.

  The annual meeting of the building's body corporate was to be held in Marge's living room. We'd argued about whether we should both attend.

  'They don't want me sticking my oar in,' Una pleaded, her upper lip lumpy with distaste. 'You know how Kevin feels about me — he snubbed me, remember, twice. Marge doesn't like me, and the bloody dog can't stand the way I smell.'

  'The dog. Exactly. I don't fancy that soppy little creature panting all over me.'

  'She wants one of us to go. And we do need to know what's going on with the windows.' Clumsy scaffolding had recently appeared outside the living room, shading some of our view to the east. 'You know you've got your eye on Kevin.'

  'I haven't! He's not interested in me.'

  'Or there's that old chap in the bedsit. Perhaps you'd prefer him.'

  'Now you're being unpleasant.'