He gave up momentarily, banked his fires. He carried the old guy’s suitcase to the car, shook his hand and went back to work. He didn’t want it too vertical, this sculpture. The strength was in the spread.
If Arnie was pleased to see her he didn’t say so. ‘Stop at my house, would you, lass?’ he said.
The house was dry but airless. Arnie, pretending not to puff, tapped his way up the hall with a staff labelled Milford Track in pokerwork which Bertha had unearthed from behind some major baskets.
‘Look at that,’ he gasped.
More showing forths. The fernery was no more. Not a pot, not a failing or expiring fern in sight. The white slatted boards were bare. ‘Where are they?’ said Sophie.
‘I’ll show you. I want you to help.’
She gave him her hand going down the steps. His grip was a manacle biting her wrist. ‘This way, this way.’ Past the pittosporum, on past the ragged grass where the sparrows had given up waiting for crumbs, on beyond the clay sods and stones of the defunct vegetable garden, they zig-zagged their way to the tangled mass at the bottom which hid the view, a rampant jungle of banana passionfruit vines, datura, withered choko and Old Man’s Beard. Arnie held back the green hanging curtain with Bertha’s stick and stood gasping. The pots of withered ferns were lined neatly inside a beer crate.
‘Empty them.’ His eyes were half closed. ‘Please empty them. No puff. Got no puff. Ashes.’
Mary had told her about the ashes. ‘On the ground?’
‘Aye.’ He handed her the trowel he had brought from the fernery. ‘No puff,’ he said once more.
She levered the plants out, shook out the loose stones for drainage and laid the dead ferns in a row.
‘They were rootbound, Arnie, that’s what killed them.’
His voice was fierce. ‘She said it was the ashes.’
‘Mary?’ Sophie laughed. ‘Don’t worry about Mary. She doesn’t know anything.’
She scattered the remaining contents of the pots at their feet. They stood half hidden by greenery, silent and at ease.
A blackbird practising for the mating season cranked up a few notes on the lawn behind them.
‘Do you want to say …?’ The phrase ‘a few words’ got stuck somewhere. ‘Do you want to say anything?’ said Sophie.
‘No.’ A long pause. ‘You can if you like.’
Nothing came. The army of good words had deserted, shoved off and left her undefended. ‘How about “Go forth into the world in peace? Be of good cheer …” that one,’ she said at last.
‘The Commissioning Prayer? God no.’
She took his arm as they crossed the rough broken ground, guided him past a trench of rotted compost. ‘If it was the navy,’ she said, ‘we’d have a lively tune now.’
He was pleased, his smile so wide it revealed a blackened molar. ‘To march off to? Yes, that’s one thing they do get right.’
The French doors rattled as the squall hit the harbour. ‘If I was real Geordie you couldn’t understand a word I said. Not a word,’ he said smugly.
She inspected the base of the iron. It needed a rub of something. ‘Tell me about it.’ Her hands were quicker than the rest of her, he had noticed that before. He was glad to be back. Mary and that daft lag Ben had been kind and they hadn’t fussed when he had gone home day after day escorted by Chester picking his way on bun feet. But what a set-up. What a crew.
‘No, I won’t tell you. You wouldn’t understand.’ He watched the iron steaming over bright trousers. Win aged fourteen had gone in daily to wash and iron for a lady who had remained unglimpsed for ten whole years. A lady with a rich husband and babies and nannies and staff and the lowest of them all was Winnie. A lady with flat-irons and goffer irons and ruffle irons to be heated on the range and run back with before they cooled and the resident housekeeper threatened her with instant expulsion.
‘When were you and Win married?’
He didn’t mind that one.
‘1920. June 1920.’
‘You were a sailor, weren’t you?’
‘I joined as a seaman boy.’
‘When?’
‘And I was kicked out after the strike in ’31. “Services No Longer Required.” They called it a mutiny! The Invergordon Mutiny, that’s what they said after.’ His hands tight with rage, his heart thud-thudding, Arnie glared at her. ‘Mutiny!’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Read it yourself! It’s all there—not what happened. What they say.’ He was furious with her. ‘Read the bloody thing!’
‘I will.’
It was no use. How could she ever understand? It had been a strike like the miners. What did the bastards expect. Three bob a day instead of four for an able seaman and worse for older married men with children and some families near sinking as it was and every penny precious. No man would stand for it. None. ‘Twenty-five per cent cut! I’d have been working a year, more, over a year for nothing.’ He spat it out. ‘How’d you like that!’
She opened her mouth. He was on his feet, his face distorted with the impotent rage of frailty.
‘Don’t say it,’ he snapped. ‘You’d never understand with your fancy iron and your fine house and your …’ He stopped, appalled, put his hand on hers. ‘Not you, not you,’ he panted. ‘Them.’
She shook her head, smiled. ‘Stop talking. You’ll make yourself ill.’
Rage had saved him in ’31 when he was left outside the dockyard gates with a rail warrant and thirteen bob to last a lifetime. And luck. He had got a job as a deckhand on a tramp. Over forty years old. No questions asked or answered. Had saved every penny and Win was lucky as well. The unseen lady had allowed her back to her cubbyhole.
They had survived, arrived here almost destitute with all their savings gone as well as the money for the baby who never came and so what after a while, though never like that for Win. Things were beginning to pick up in ’33. He joined the Labour Party the week they arrived. Had worked on steering committees, got their men in ’35. They had made a new life. Services No Longer Required.
Sophie noticed his slight grudging smile. Arnie had worked something out. He could stay here, pay board and stay. The husband was in the navy. The navy owed him a life. RN, RNZN, what did it matter. They owed him. And he was tired, tired rotten. Age had caught up with him, dampened the fire in the belly but left it smouldering. His smile widened. Perhaps that was what was causing his heart to flap like a wounded seabird. And the hiccoughs.
Encouraged by the smile, she tried again. ‘And the upholstery?’
‘We didn’t have a skerrick when we arrived. Bought stuff from the mart. All its innards sticking out, stuffing, horsehair.’ His eyes were bright. ‘You know that Old Man’s Beard down the back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Reminds me of our first sofa, the fluff does. Stuffing hanging out all over the place. A pound. That’s what we paid for it. A pound. More than that to get it home and Win said, “Right, I’m going to upholstery classes to learn how,” and I went along too, why not?’ He shook his head. ‘Filthy, it was, filthy, you never saw such muck but it came up fine. The teacher came from Glasgow. Gave me a job after in his own business. Then later Win and me had a bit of a shed down the village. Tin it was. Tin. Tin and ply. We had it for years. Win did the books, she was quick with figures. Had a feel for them.’ He was running out of puff. ‘It wasn’t all synthetics then,’ he gasped. ‘I can tell you.’
She folded a pillow case. Quick, neat and sonsy. ‘Stop talking,’ she said again.
‘It’s healing very well,’ said the young medical officer. He placed a large brown hand on Rebecca’s shoulder and pressed slightly.
Sophie awarded her daughter a blue budgerigar for courage.
Rebecca liked Bluey, except for the ugly warty-looking bit above his beak.
‘Why does he have that, Mum?’
‘Because he’s a budgerigar.’
Rebecca would have arranged things differently.
Celia, le
gs up and head back, was pleased to see Sophie on Friday but displeased by her technique. ‘Harder, Sophie, rub harder. Not your nails, woman. Your fingers. And something’s leaking.’
Sophie restowed the towel, tightened the plastic wrapper. The mock bow-tie was centre front, the buttons of the pretend tuxedo straight. ‘Aah, that’s better. In KL they massage your head into your shoulders. Heaven.’
Lou clicked past for bulk shampoo which she diluted more than specified behind a bead curtain out the back. ‘Have a good Queen’s birthday, Mrs Pickett?’ Celia’s face was expressionless, laid out like a shield below the wet hair streaming down the chute behind her. Her unblinking eyes stared upwards at a large piece of beige canvas painted with purple and green bacilli which hid a damp mark on the ceiling. Evan had perpetrated the thing and put it in place. Celia preferred the mark. It had the deeply indented Terra Incognita coastline reminiscent of old maps with cartouches and puffing cherubs; an interesting stain with room for the imagination.
‘Yes, thank you, Lou. Bliss. My husband had to go to Waiouru unexpectedly.’
Sophie’s hands stopped rubbing for a second. Paul Kelson had been in Waiouru at Queen’s birthday. A busy effective operator reeking of complicity, she rubbed on. ‘Some visiting fireman from somewhere,’ continued her friend. ‘I lay like a log; egg on the knee, cat on the bed, book in the night. Bliss. What about you?’
‘Oh, Evan and me babysat for Sophie, didn’t we?’
A gleam, a gleam of malice in the palisaded eye? Sophie rinsed, wet hair streamed. ‘Yes, I had a lovely break up north,’ she said.
‘All God’s chillun got breaks,’ murmured Celia, upended but gracious beneath the purple and green camouflage of A Cut Ahead. She kicked her legs.
She knew. She had challenged Harold on his return and he had told her, as always. As always she had been filled with contempt. As always he was abject and contrite. He told her about Edward and Sophie, which compounded her scorn for him with concern for Sophie.
The first time had left her reeling. They had been married how long? A year, two years, no more. They had come home to Hampshire while he did his long Communications course. It had been good to be back. Celia enjoyed life in New Zealand but as Mother said, there was no place like home. Father’s assistance and Mother’s background knowledge found them a nice little place in the village. There were snowdrops. It was heaven. Harold insisted on cleaning the dolphin knocker he had brought back from Malta. The cleaning woman left streaks and he couldn’t stand sloppy bright-work. Even their neighbour was pleasant. A divorced woman with problems including Ariadne, a ten-year-old bedwetter, and Tim, a bleached distraught thirteen-year-old who kept running away from Downpark. Celia was fond of their mother, Halcyon. She was a nice little thing.
The bitter grief of first betrayal had faded eventually.
This defection, Celia decided, was different. This time she would leave. Celia lay with her feet up working out how to leave the bastard. She would go. She would take her money and run. She would leave the ageing roué still performing his ritual ball games to an increasingly uninterested circle of females and run while there was still time—before he packed up on her and duty held her back. Leave him on the beam end of his naval pay, shorn of first-class skiing holidays and bespoke suits, strapped for cash for his new Snipe. Leave him unadorned and ill-equipped, his charm creaking at the après après ski. And the après pool. Why had she not left him years ago? Celia moved beneath the plastic red bow-tie and the tuxedo, astonished at her own … at her own what? Her tolerance? Forbearance? Or possibly (she was an honest woman) her lassitude, her shameful idle lassitude. Originally, after her first raging despair, it had been for the girls’ sake she had procrastinated, had pretended the fireside game of Happy Families was being played with a full pack. But Blanche and Rowena had never been close to their father. Close. What a word. And they loved England. ‘Why can’t we live here, Mum?’ Well they would, all three of them. Celia, who hadn’t run for years, felt her legs twitch. She wished to be upright and on the move. She wished to be gone. She wished to see Liz who was beneath contempt.
Sophie wrapped Celia’s hair in a towel. Drips of water ran down the client’s neck. Everything takes practice, even wrapping heads. Celia touched Sophie’s damp hand briefly. Her nails were pink. ‘Be careful, darling,’ she said.
Hair still warm from the dryer, Celia walked up the Kelsons’ path. ‘Yoo hoo,’ she called. Caesar bounded down the hall to greet her, rolled on his back, swept his plumed tail from side to side in a wide arc of welcome for his good friend, Celia. Celia straightened to meet her hostess. ‘Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘May I come in? Thank you.’
She walked past the wary face into the drawing room, inspected an invitation on the mantelpiece, put it down again. It was not interesting. She turned to the woman and smiled.
Liz attempted a return. She heard her voice, high, unfamiliar. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘Coffee? No, I don’t think I want any coffee, thank you. Not here.’
They stared at each other. Their eyes held. Blue snake, brown rabbit.
‘Why are you here?’ said the voice. Celia leaned against the mantelpiece to tell her. ‘Your husband is a fine man,’ she said.
Liz’s nose moved. ‘Aren’t they all?’
‘No, not all. Most, but not all.’ Celia buried her nose in a vase of half-dead roses, sniffed hard and lifted her head to smile once again. ‘Like the wives.’ She sat, slid her legs sideways, adjusted a pleat. Liz stood.
Celia told her what she thought of her. In words graphic, blunt and mainly monosyllabic she made her meaning clear. Liz grasped the door jamb. She was in need of support. ‘Don’t tell him. Oh, dear God. Please, please don’t tell him,’ she whispered.
Celia looked at the stricken face before her. Looked at it with calm interest. ‘Tell Paul?’ she said. ‘Why on earth should I tell Paul? That’s your job.’
She turned and left. Escorted by the still ecstatic Caesar she strolled down the path between Paul Kelson’s roses. A few ragged blooms remained, a full-blown Iceberg, an imploded Peace. He was going to prune them next month. Celia lifted her head to the scudding clouds and thought about Sophie.
‘Yes, I see what you mean, you can’t trust the woman. But what are we going to do?’ The voice was tense. She could see the slight frown, the tightening around the mouth. ‘No babysitter, that old man …’
‘Arnie.’
‘How are we going to meet? I’m not joking, Sophie.’
Sweet Jesu, nor am I. ‘I’ll think of something.’
It was unexpectedly difficult. Where could they go? The Esplanade would be suicidal, the Mon Desir not much better. There was no bush, no tangled hideaway of passion vines and withered chokos, no deep track into indigenous rain forest or exotic podocarp. The North Shore does not welcome homeless lovers. Not in winter.
They fell back on Nancy Ogilvie’s son Michael and the Holden at the beach. ‘I’m too old for this,’ said Edward digging a lost spanner from beneath his spine. Sophie lay on top of him.
‘Don’t you find it exciting?’ she murmured.
‘Yes, but painful.’ There was no moon.
Sophie had an idea. Driving home after leaving Edward in Devonport as a precautionary measure, she had an idea so spellbindingly simple, so precise and tidy, that she pulled into the kerb and sat grinning at the pepper-pot tower of Bertha’s house.
She would ask Arnie tomorrow.
*
Kit got in first. ‘Arnie,’ he said, pouring tea from the two-man pot. ‘Would you come and be my Old Person at school?’
Crumpled and unshaven in his tartan dressing-gown, Arnie peered at him.
‘Why?’
‘We’re doing old people. It’s a project. It’s meant to be Grans and that but we’re allowed anyone if we haven’t got a real one.’
‘What do I have to do?’
‘Just be there.’
‘And be old?’
‘
Yes.’
‘But I’m only seventy-three.’
Kit was silent.
Arnie watched the sudden shyness, the downcast eyes.
‘And I don’t like being old. I’m no good at it.’
‘You get a cup of tea after.’
‘Oh, all right. All right.’
‘Gee thanks, Arnie. Mum’ll run you down, eh Mum.’ He put a hand on Arnie’s shoulder. ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ he said kindly.
‘Arnie?’ said Sophie as they drove home up the hill.
Being old had exhausted him. He sat clutching the safety belt in his hand, too tired to fight with the thing.
‘Aye?’
Her eyes were straight ahead as they should be. ‘Would you let me borrow the key to your house sometimes?’
The band of his old man’s hat was sweat stained, his face hidden.
‘Why?’
‘I …’ God in heaven, what am I doing. You know what you’re doing. Do it.
‘I want to meet someone there. At night.’
‘What d’y’ mean?’
‘Oh Arnie, what do you think I mean?’
The mouth was working, chewing on something distasteful. ‘Your fancy man.’
‘Arnie!’
‘You don’t like the word then?’ Every line of the face tugged downwards. The fist on the safety belt was clenched.
‘No. I don’t.’
‘There’s other words much worse. But you’d like a nice one, is it? Try paramour. You want to take your paramour and lay on my bed?’
Insane images. Bears, beds, a golden head. Her hand signal was precise as she pulled into the curb. He had shrunk. Shrunk to a tough old nut enclosing a kernel of outrage. ‘There’s right and there’s wrong,’ said Arnie.
‘You’re just the same as all the rest of them!’
He was not giving an inch. ‘Hh.’
Her eyes snapped back at him.
‘Who makes the rules? Who says? Who? I’ve only met one man in my whole life who ever left room for doubt, for differences. The essential differences. Who realised that we’re all hopeless. Incomplete. That we don’t know. And that’s the man I’m going to sleep with and I wouldn’t go inside your house if you paid me and I never will again and it was stupid of me to suggest it and …’ Tears, dumb infuriating tears, swam in her eyes. Her sniff was long and disgusting. She turned on the ignition, a small sound in the sparking silence. Beside them Evan was writing the specials on the window of Choice Meats with white paint. Mid loin and leg were both down.
All the Nice Girls Page 12