Sophie rubbed her sleeping shoulder till she woke. ‘Oh,’ said the babysitter. ‘I must’ve dropped off.’
‘Lou,’ said Sophie handing over the money. ‘Would you, and Evan, if he’d like, would you babysit here—for a whole weekend?’ Lou’s eyes were remarkable. They were not large and her round face made them appear smaller. When she smiled they were invisible. But they were so bright, of such a deep fierce blue, outlined with such thick black twigs of mascara they appeared to glitter at the beholder. Her mind was busy, the tip of her tongue visible.
‘How much?’
‘I’d have to work it out.’ Hardly a bean, hardly a bean in the house till the next allotment. ‘I’m going to get a job but I haven’t anything yet,’ said Sophie, ‘so it couldn’t be for a few weeks.’
Lou’s raisin eyes were sharp. ‘Mum’s veins are on the blink again. You could shampoo and hand up the pins on Fridays for me till it’s even, if you like.’
Sophie felt like hugging her. All you have to do is grip, nudge, shove the world. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Wonderful.’
Lou’s tiny white hand pressed one side of her lilac-blue head. The fingers ended in pointed scalp-scratchers. She looked at Sophie thoughtfully. Why didn’t she dump the kids with her neighbour, Nancy, as per usual.
All the Road wives were Lou and Evan’s clients. The relationships were relaxed. Lou was formal only with Mrs Pickett. Not because she was the Captain’s wife and awareness of hierarchy was endemic in the road. There was something about Mrs Pickett. A presence.
Lou yawned in Sophie’s face and departed, clutching her fee and her squares in a white pillowcase to keep them clean.
Sophie stood in the draughty hall. Dirty weekends and bits on the side were not the words she needed.
Celia had lent her Tropic of Capricorn recently, which she found interesting. Did all men, well, go on about women all the time like that. She asked William. Did he?
He looked at her above the Advertiser. ‘When there’s a new intake of Wrens I sometimes look at their legs. Just a quick glance.’ He folded the paper. ‘The last lot were a disaster.’
Sophie sat on the pseudo-oak chest.
‘You look like a nun,’ said Edward at the open door. ‘A nun listening.’ He clamped her wrist, pulled her upright.
An arrival’s anchor chain rattled. A nearby cruise ship was leaving with a wail of despair. The binoculars on the window sill remained untouched. Pacific Star’s pilot would have to do without Edward’s surveillance. His mind was reeling with astonishment as they fell to the floor. What the hell was he doing. Commodores don’t, can’t, don’t. Not with wives. Not naval wives, junior or senior. Not wives. He was ambitious. Keen. The top job was within his grasp. Wives were not on.
He pulled himself back from her, leaned on one elbow, studied her smile, eyes, breasts.
He heard his voice. ‘I love you.’
‘I know.’
‘And you have good nipples.’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘No.’
He pleasured her. Gave her startling unexpected treats. They loved each other. They gave their all.
They lay spent and gasping on the haircord. ‘Ssh,’ said Sophie.
His eyes were closed. ‘What?’
She was kneeling, her ear to the floor.
He opened his eyes. She had a beautiful bum. He put out one hand.
‘No, no, listen!’
He rolled over. Listened. Nothing.
‘What the …?’
She leaped to her feet, grabbed his jacket, fumbled with the locked French doors and ran down the verandah steps. ‘Ches, Ches. I’m coming. I’m coming.’
He followed her, his hands fumbling with shirt buttons, his eyes flicking at the darkened houses alongside. She was invisible but still calling. A door slammed open in the decking below, a shape shot across the dark lawn followed by Sophie still calling. A sudden dog yapping. A light next door. God in heaven. He backed indoors.
Sophie ran up the steps with the distracted cat yowling in her arms, murmuring, loving, caressing the thing all over his pinstripe. Her face was pink with joy. ‘Isn’t it wonderful! I’ll go and feed him.’
Edward turned off the overhead light. The Ogilvies’ light had been a signal, clear as the yellow-blue-yellow of Flag D for Danger. It also increased his excitement, his amazement at this woman who rolled around fucking him silly and fed cats.
This woman was different, this woman was worth it, he could live with this woman. Gratitude, wonder, plus the whiff of gunpowder from next door seemed to be producing some sort of frenzy. He loved this woman for Christ’s sake.
She came back after some time, naked except for his double-breasted cat-haired pinstripe. He moved his head above the tented shirt, startled by the instant return of longing. The jacket ended neatly at the junction of her infinite legs.
He almost stumbled towards her. ‘Not a nun in sight.’
She smiled, unbuttoned the jacket, welcomed him. ‘He’s all right now,’ she said.
‘What?’
She moved against him. ‘Chester.’
‘Oh good,’ he gasped. ‘Good.’
‘He’s been lost since Sunday.’ She nibbled his ear.
‘Jesus,’ he moaned.
‘I know. But he’s all right now.’
FIVE
‘Tea!’ bellowed Kit from the door. Sophie burrowed deeper. She wished to dream. Three hours was not enough. She was unwell.
Kit bounced, his arms wide for the kiss he was almost too old for (William). The tea spilt. She closed her eyes.
‘Mum.’ He was now dancing beside the bed. ‘Come on—and what’s Chester doing here?’
Dear God. She blundered down the hall, pursued by Chester dancing on his hind legs, shadow-boxing the air for food. The telephone rang for some time. She handed it to Kit. ‘She’ll be asleep. Tell her we’ve found him and he’s all right. Come on, Chester.’ He zig-zagged between her bare feet, his meows tearing her brain.
Sophie was abstracted, almost vacant at the kitchen bench. Images of last night filled her mind, left her with her mouth open and the Vegemite knife poised above half-spread brown. Rebecca and Kit made no comment. A vertical mother is operational. All children know this, as do their fathers. Sandwiches were snatched, hugs returned. Time was precious. The best bit is before the bell goes.
Edward stood at the back door, half-hidden behind a raft of bronze chrysanthemums. The peppery smell filled the space, overpowered the soap powder. He shoved them at her laughing, one hand knocking the tiny card envelope. He had no time either. He was due at Whenuapai at oh nine double oh for a wash-up of the joint exercises. He stood for a second, one palm flat against the side of her face. ‘Soon,’ he said and was gone.
Sophie sat on the red painted stool, the inside of her head a Wall of Death with motorbikes. He would have had to have been in Devonport at sparrow fart (William), buy the flowers, a risky process in itself in a sleepy hollow, then stop in her drive, knock on her open door, risk observation from all quarters to deliver these long-lasting sculpted heads. This token of regard. Her fingers snatched at the card’s envelope. She tore it open, a famished carnivore getting to the heart of the message. It was brief but adequate. Enough in all conscience. ‘Sweetest love,’ it said.
She shoved it between her breasts, the miscast heroine of a busty romantic epic. The pasteboard was sharp. She could feel it as she heaved the whites into the washing machine and immersed the flowers up to their necks in cool cool water. They filled the bucket. They were abundant. They needed stripping, their stalks must be cut.
Liz strolled down the hall. ‘Hullo,’ said Sophie, her hands moving with the precision of a sapper’s on her unexploded bomb. She waited for the inevitable question, felt it homing between her shoulders. ‘Who are they from?’ said Liz.
Sophie turned to her friend. ‘William.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘It’s one of our anniversaries. You know those we
ird ones.’
‘No.’
‘Tin and paper and stuff.’
‘And this is?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Liz flicked the topic away with one hand. ‘Have you seen Celia lately?’
‘Yes. Haven’t you?’
‘No,’ said Liz, scrutinising the whites now slapping about in the Bendix.
Sophie’s reeling head cocked to one side, a pre-strike thrush with problems. ‘That’s her now.’
Liz disappeared, graceful in retreat to the whirlygig clothesline and the box of feijoas rotting by the back door.
Sophie’s fingers touched pasteboard. ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Liz has just left.’
Celia marched ahead of her and reached for her cat mug. ‘She’s a fast mover that one. How were the Featherstons?’
Chester caressed her legs, twined and recaressed, patted a paw against a knee.
‘He’s Mary’s.’ Grand Central Station was now clashing with the Wall of Death. ‘That’s her now.’
Mary dashed past them to snatch Chester in her arms; to moan with relief, to bury her head in his neck, to adore. ‘Where was he? Where, where?’
Sophie’s voice was cautious. ‘Under the house.’
‘But he must’ve been there on Sunday. How did you hear him and not us?’
‘I was lying on the floor in the sitting room.’
Celia centred her mug. Her finger traced the line of the uplifted leg. Her eyes were down. ‘I’m so glad he’s safe,’ she murmured.
‘Come and tell Arnie,’ said Mary.
They dumped Chester on the way, waved at Evan and Lou, exchanged good mornings with the wife of a Sikh bus driver who was pegging her husband’s wide white trousers on the line.
So that’s how they work, is it. Six foot at the top, then tapering. She must tell Edward. Everything was to be shared, rejoiced in, taken to lay before the object of her desire like a bower bird’s loot. Sophie sniffed the bright air.
‘I’ve got a job,’ she said, one hand on the galleon gate’s latch.
‘What?’
‘I’m going to hand up the pins for Lou on Fridays. While her Mum’s on the blink.’
‘God, you’re a nutter.’
Arnie’s front door was open. They walked down the dark hall to the kitchen.
‘Arnie,’ called Mary. ‘We’ve found Chester.’
The voice from the bathroom was faint. ‘Don’t come. I’m not well.’
A door slammed. They moved into the fernery, stared at each other and back to the door.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Mary.
‘Go away! Go away.’
The sounds were not reassuring. A lavatory flushed, taps ran, there was lurching, bumping, then total silence. Mary’s face was white.
‘I’m a nurse,’ lied Sophie and opened the bathroom door.
Arnie stood with his head hanging, his body slumped against the handbasin, his arms bent with the effort of supporting his body. His face was grey, sweating.
‘Go away,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not well.’
‘I’m a nurse,’ said Sophie again. Nurses, like cops and Salvation Army, are allowed. Sophie shut the door on Mary’s face. Arnie’s striped winceyette pyjamas lay around his feet, his withered hams were stained with brown. The lavatory was not good, nor the floor.
‘I had an accident,’ he gasped.
‘It’s all right,’ said Sophie and got on with it. The silence was broken by his shame, his apologies, his broken gasps.
‘Sssh. Sssh, Mr McNally.’
His gasp turned to a hiccoughing sob. ‘Arnie,’ he said.
‘That’s better,’ said Nurse Nurse as she dried the shaking legs. ‘Where do I find pyjamas?’
Sophie and Mary sat either side of his bed. Mary looked slightly green. The perfect balance of her small high-cheekboned face seemed to have slipped, become flawed.
‘Who’s your doctor, Arnie?’ said Sophie, adjusting the chenille bed cover with a professional tug of one hand.
His eyes were closed. ‘I haven’t seen one since they killed Win.’
‘There’s nothing in the house except the heel of a loaf and some milk,’ said Mary.
Sophie bent forward. ‘Come and stay a few days with me and the children, Arnie.’
The block-like head moved.
‘Just till you’re better. I’ll get you on your feet in no time,’ said the pro.
Arnie’s eyes opened. He passed his hand across them, pressed briefly and stared again. ‘No, Mrs …’
‘Sophie.’
‘Sophie,’ he murmured tasting it, ‘Sophie.’
‘What are you doing, Soph,’ said Mary as she slammed the gate.
‘You heard.’
‘Is this some Christian kick? The man’s not an idiot.’
‘There’s no one else.’
‘So who are you to sweep in like Madam la Fat?’
‘He can’t look after himself at the moment. When he can …’
‘He probably wants to die anyway.’
‘Like that? Starving in his own shit?’
Mary was silent.
‘I’ll get him organised with Dr Pleasance. Get Meals on Wheels started again.’ Sophie’s finger touched a small galleon. ‘But you’ll have to look after him if he’s not a hundred per cent by Queen’s birthday.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m going up north.’
‘Who with?’
Sophie studied her sister. Mary had ditched a good job and was thus suspect, irresponsible and untrustworthy (William). Sophie had not bothered to argue. She knew Mary. Had always known her. She touched the length of hair beneath the pepper tree.
‘With Edward Sand.’
‘Huh?’
‘The Commodore.’
‘Oh my Gaad.’
‘Shut up, you smug little twit.’
Mary’s mouth dropped. ‘Come and see Bertha. Quickly.’
She dragged her along the road, ran up the stairs. ‘Bertha,’ she called. ‘Bertha, we’ve found Chester.’
Bertha lifted her arms and slammed them on her knees, a typecast Italian momma unexpectedly encased in denim. ‘Where is my boy?’ She was moving with speedy grace (once a hoofer always a hoofer) to the outside staircase.
‘No, no, later.’ Mary dropped to the floor, reassembled her limbs. ‘Wait till you hear about Soph.’
‘Sophie,’ snapped her sister.
‘Sophie, Soph, what does it matter?’
‘It matters to me and I’m it.’
‘What’s got into you?’ Mary paused. ‘Don’t answer that.’
Rage clenched her insides. ‘How dare you!’ yelled Sophie. ‘Take something good and true …’
‘Good and true.’
‘What do you know? What do you know about anything? Nothing. Not a thing. I don’t bitch about Ben.’
‘Soph-ee,’ said Mary moving towards her.
‘Bugger off.’
Bertha stepped between them. She loved both young women with unflagging warmth. They were her best thing. She looked at Sophie’s radiant face. This was not the face of anger. Presumably the man lived nearby who was causing this incandescence, shining the hair, transforming the child into some other being. And so vulnerable. So hopelessly bloody vulnerable. Bertha hugged her. ‘What’s going on, Sophie?’
A tanker gave a sick-cow bellow. No one glanced at it. Sophie’s eyes were on Bertha as fan dancer. ‘Did you love more than one man, Bertha?’
‘Good heavens yes.’
‘Did Bryan mind?’ Bryan Boniface had been Bertha’s tea planter husband. Mary swore he was an apocryphal figure, not worthy of Bertha’s robust past.
‘I can’t really remember,’ said Bertha, picking her way briskly through the overstuffed room to the kitchen and real coffee with hot milk for comfort.
Sophie moved to the sunporch. The mangy lawn below had not greened up after summer. Mary licked her lips.
Bertha’s voice called from the kitchen. ‘But th
en we didn’t have any children,’ she said.
‘You know Ben and I’d be happy to mind the kids,’ said Mary, one sandal caressing Chester’s belly.
‘You don’t like Edward.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Everything.’
Mary’s mouth tightened. What was going on. Soph of all people.
‘So how’ll you get the money to pay Lou? Queen’s birthday’s the week after next.’
Sophie’s smile embraced Calliope Road, shone on the windows of A Cut Ahead, gleamed from Evan’s sluiced pavement. ‘Lou’s going to give her time on tick. I’ll make it up later.’
Arnie McNally lay thinking. The high-ceilinged room was still and sunless. There was little furniture: a wire-wove double bed, a chipped and varnished chest of drawers, a bedside table on which Sophie’s bowl of bread and milk lay untouched. Bread and milk. Sweet Jesus. It was seventy years or more since Effie, the next one up, had shovelled it into his hungry little gob and he’d begged for more and there was never enough with nine kids and a stinking getty out the back. The white cotton curtains stirred, the chenille tufts lay in rows beneath his hands. There were no photographs or pictures in the room. He had shoved them behind the Patient’s Effects suitcase, shut the door on them. The room was empty except for a half-dead old bugger who used to be Arnie McNally from Tyneside. He’d got away though, hadn’t he. Got away from the cold and the bleak streets and the hunger. And now look at him. Arnie laughed. A sound between a creak and a groan filled the empty room.
He put out a hand. ‘Win,’ he said. ‘Win.’
He went with Sophie the next day. He trusted her. She made no fuss and nor did he, as long as she promised to take him down once a week to water the ferns.
‘But Mary’ll do it, Arnie. She’s practically next door.’
‘No.’
‘Just as you like.’
A sensible woman. And sonsy with it.
The cardboard suitcase was installed in a small room beside the bathroom. There were no more accidents. Arnie slept, drank soup, talked to Kit as he became stronger. They yarned on the verandah. He wouldn’t touch William’s binoculars. He reviewed the harbour daily with his own ancient pair. Spare, rudimentary, uncluttered as a Victorian naturalist’s microscope, they hung from a cracked leather strap around his neck.
All the Nice Girls Page 8