All the Nice Girls

by Barbara Anderson

  Arnie transferred the safety belt to his left hand and laid his right on her knee.

  ‘Go away!’

  Her neighbour Nancy Ogilvie gave an exaggerated leap from the path of the car as they turned into the drive. She waved a book in greeting. ‘What a bit of luck I waited,’ she said. ‘I’ve finished your Madame Bovary.’

  Arnie disappeared.

  Sophie wiped her nose. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘We-ell. Everyone in the group really hated her.’ Fresh-faced and lissome as an advertisement for female deodorants, Nancy tucked a curl behind one ear. ‘And we were all so sorry for that poor little Berthe, I mean. And she never went near the kitchen.’

  ‘I must reread it.’

  ‘Why don’t you join the book group? You do have to read them. That’s one thing about it.’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘No thanks. You’ve done her now.’

  Nancy’s hair stirred in the breeze from the harbour. She had heard rumours. Had denied them hotly. ‘Soph!’ she had laughed. She put out a hand to her friend. ‘Soph, you do know I’m always there, don’t you. If you want me.’

  Sophie looked at her. Sweet as a hand-picked Cox’s, Nancy smiled back. She is a good woman, she is kind, she is generous. She is a friend. I could kick her.

  ‘Thank you. But you always have been, haven’t you?’ She paused. ‘Can Michael babysit tomorrow night?’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ said Nancy and left through the gap in the fence.

  Arnie was waiting for her in the hall. He held out his keys—two long-shanked old things, stylised symbols of security for locks that could be jemmied in minutes. They were attached to a tattered label marked ‘House’.

  She shook her head. ‘No. No.’

  He put his arms around her, rocked slightly but stood his ground. She was inches taller. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, lass.’

  ‘It bloody is not,’ she pulled away, defiant, dangerous, her hair hiding half her face. ‘But it will be, you see.’

  Arnie said nothing. The boy. What about the boy.

  Rebecca, as always, had changed the telephone calendar. July was a porcupine fish.

  ‘How’s Arnie?’ said Celia.

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘I thought he looked a bit po-faced yesterday.’

  Like the porcupine fish. ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Good, good. The thing is, Sophie. I’ve taken a nasty turn.’

  Sophie’s feet moved. Celia’s nasty turns occurred seldom but their shock waves were wide.

  ‘I’ve decided it’s time the naval wives did something. So we’re all going to dress up and sing songs and do the tea next month at the Eventide Rest Home in Takapuna.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sophie. ‘Are we?’

  ‘Yes. Matelots. Harold’s getting the rig.’ She laughed, a strange throaty sound. ‘Harold,’ said Celia, ‘can deny me nothing.’

  And Kate Calder can organise it.

  ‘It’s my swan song,’ said Celia cheerfully, ‘so it’d better be good.’

  Swan song? Sophie did not ask.

  It was good. Celia insisted it was good. Like many lazy people she was a good organiser, an efficient delegator who kept her finger on the pulse of other people’s efforts. Fat wives and thin wives and callow wives and old Singapore hands poured or squeezed themselves into a variety of bell-bottomed trousers and prepared to sing their hearts out at the residents of the Eventide in Taka. They had been drilled, they had rehearsed, they had grizzled and laughed till they wept. Liz was absent.

  ‘To think she’s missing all this fun,’ said Nancy. ‘And she must’ve said she wouldn’t. Imagine.’

  Nancy played the piano, Celia conducted, the audience sat and waited. Paper hats had been provided.

  The majority of the audience were old women. One or two smiled, one or two whimpered, one wept silent tears down her mauve front. A few old men sat at the back. An ex-bowler in a blazer covered with badges and mementos of past triumphs slept with his head down.

  This is where I am going to work thought Sophie loving them all, their smiles, their stubborn unbreakable gallantry, their rage. As soon as I’ve paid off Lou, I’ll be there. A member of the staff sat at the back knitting something pink. I’ll ask her later. Where is the Matron, I’ll say, I wish to work here.

  ‘They only come for the tea,’ muttered Tricia, the wife of the electrical engineer in William’s ship. She was a flat-faced woman much given to busyness. She reminded Sophie of Erin, though no one could call Sophie’s father a shit. No one.

  The room was large, the television—a source of new pleasure or more bewilderment donated recently by Rotary—sat on a dais by the window. There were many small tables, each one topped by a narrow vase of pink or yellow artificial roses. The young Queen, tiaraed, sashed and smiling, gazed at them from the far wall.

  The chairs had been rearranged on the red and purple swirls of the carpet. ‘I want the telly,’ yelled a man in a red baseball cap labelled ‘Uncle Sam Goddam’ in gold. ‘Where’s the telly?’

  ‘Sssh,’ said Celia, waving a friendly hand. ‘Wait till you hear us.’

  ‘Where on earth did he get that thing,’ said Tricia.

  ‘I suppose someone sent it from the States.’

  ‘What’s it got written on it?’

  ‘Uncle Sam Goddam,’ said Sophie exercising her long sight.

  ‘It shouldn’t be given house room. Not in a place like this. You’d think the Matron …’

  Celia’s hand lifted. ‘Ladies?’

  They worked up gradually. They sang ‘Clementine’. ‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine,’ they begged the phlegmatic, the gammy knees, the sea of faces before them.

  ‘Bring back, bring back‚ oh bring back my bonny to me,’ they sang, swaying from side to side as they pleaded. Several of the faces before them perked up. This was better than usual. Of course it was. Celia had organised it. Her hair shone beneath the fierce overhead light, her hands insisted on excellence. The naval wives tried hard, loving themselves and their captive audience. Sophie glanced at the transfigured face of the wife of the Captain of William’s ship beside her. The woman was glowing with animation. ‘Cockles and mussels alive alive Ohhhh,’ she breathed, leaning back slightly as Celia’s hands sprang wide for a clean cutoff. She turned to Sophie in excitement. ‘Isn’t this fun,’ she cried.

  The wife of William’s Captain was not well known. She lived in Kohimarama and was rarely seen on the North Shore. When duty called she appeared, was pleasant and friendly and departed as soon as possible. It was the first time Sophie had seen her rooted to the spot, not transitory—not eyeing the door marked Exit for escape to the balmy joys of Kohi. ‘I’ve some amazing photos,’ she whispered to Sophie, ‘I’ll show them to you and Tricia later. Of the cruise.’

  Celia’s hands were lifted in supplication once more. They burst into their finale, their set piece, their triumph. Their favourite song of all.

  All the nice girls love a sailor

  All the nice girls love a tar;

  Because there’s something about a sailor

  Well you know what sailors are;

  Bright and breezy

  Free and easy

  He’s the ladies’ pride and joy

  Falls in love with Kate and Jane,

  Then he’s off to sea again.

  Twenty large and small, willowy and short-arsed wives, volunteers to a woman, hand-picked by Celia from those not gainfully employed or possessed of mewling infants or tone deaf or stroppy, sprang to attention and saluted the audience.

  ‘Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!’ they roared.

  They were a success, an enormous success. Tears of happiness were shed, hands were grasped. ‘You were lovely, dear, lovely.’ ‘It took me back, oh my darling girl, it took me back.’ ‘Never, never, never,’ sobbed a lady as she clutched Sophie’s hand and the nails dug deep. She would not let go. ‘Never,’ gasped the lady in the paper hat. ‘Ne
ver.’

  The tea and buns were an anticlimax.

  Tricia was cutting cake. She had a good eye; each slice was identical. ‘Whoever brought cream sponge?’ she muttered. ‘They can’t cope with jam, let alone cream. Not in a sponge.’

  They can, they can. And who are They, and why can’t his cap curse for him, here of all places. Here and everywhere for always why not.

  ‘I’ve got some amazing photos to show you, Sophie,’ continued Tricia, manoeuvring between tea drinkers. ‘Amazing.’ She paused, her eyes on her guests. ‘Look at them, just look at them. They bring bags‚ they’re that greedy. That’s all they come for, you know. We’re all busting ourselves for weeks on end and look at it.’

  Celia appeared, her face distracted. ‘Sophie, come with me.’ She led Sophie out onto more swirling carpet and into an empty office. ‘Matron’s had to slip down the corridor.’ Celia nodded at the telephone. ‘Now don’t panic, it’s not the children. It’s Arnie. He’s in hospital.’

  Arnie lay in a small ward, empty except for a barrel-chested man with a plastered leg reading the business page. He nodded at Sophie.

  ‘Asleep,’ he said.

  Arnie’s eyes opened. His smile welcomed her. ‘I had a wee turn,’ he said. ‘Better now.’

  She held his hand, noted the ridges and the valleys, the synclines and anticlines of the ancient form. She sat straighter. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  He hadn’t felt too good. ‘Didn’t want to give you or the boy— or Rebecca,’ he added politely, ‘a fright if you, you know, came in and found me, so I rang the ambulance. I said you were at Eventide. They asked, see.’ His hands moved. ‘You’d better get home, lass. They’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Yes. How do you feel now?’

  ‘Capital.’

  ‘Oh, Arnie.’

  He could have got himself dead. He knew he could have got dead. There was always something.

  He closed his eyes.

  Sophie kissed his cheek, waved to the rugby injury and left.

  Sophie cancelled Michael for babysitting. She and Edward made love in the double bed. It was good.

  ‘What time do they wake up?’ he murmured when they woke next morning.

  ‘Not before five. Six.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better go.’

  They lay hand in hand staring at the ceiling. ‘You’d be proud of me. Slipping along the fence line in the dark like some bloody marine. If I had a black balaclava I’d be a pro.’

  ‘I’ll knit you one.’

  ‘And combat fatigues?’

  ‘OK.’

  He kissed her. ‘Darling Soph.’

  ‘When does Arnie come out of hospital?’ he said afterwards.

  ‘Not long. It was very slight, a mini-stroke. He doesn’t have to go over the other side to Auckland Public.’

  His palms slammed the bed either side of his body. ‘Oh, good. Good.’

  She rolled on to her stomach to tell him, ‘And my parents are coming to stay.’

  ‘Great.’

  He leaned nearer. He could scarcely hear her. ‘And then William comes home,’ she said.

  EIGHT

  ‘Mary, you can’t.’

  ‘Who says?’

  Who says. Who says. ‘I do,’ said Sophie. ‘She adores you. You can’t just shove off.’

  Mary leaned her hands either side of the sink, her eyes on the crawl of rush-hour traffic over the bridge. ‘Ants,’ she said. ‘Streams of good little worker ants all going home to Mum. Christian socialism, that’s ants. All for one and one for all.’

  ‘Will you listen to me!’

  ‘I am.’

  Can/Can’t. Did/Didn’t. The impossible endless jockeying, the jousting of siblings.

  ‘You knew they were coming this week.’

  ‘Yup.’ The casual defection was deliberate then. Sophie was hotting up. Mary watched her. Memories of former skirmishes surfaced. Every sign was known. Pink for danger.

  ‘Why do you have to go now? Ben’s just got back.’

  ‘He wants to buy a bit of dirt. He wants to …’ Mary’s hand waved, her voice dropped to a husky baritone, ‘get down, man.’

  Palms upwards, fingers rigid, Sophie gave it to her. ‘If you’re not back by the end of the week you’re a selfish shit.’

  Erin shook her behind free from clinging Terylene. ‘You mean she’s not here?’

  She leaned against the car, wiped her forehead with a sunburnt arm. She had taken over again at Hamilton. He was hopeless in traffic.

  ‘Where then, where is she?’

  ‘In the Coromandel. She’ll be back on Thursday.’

  ‘Thursday!’

  Sophie knew long before her father had told her she was not the daughter her mother had had in mind. Keith Driscoll had dried up Erin’s tolerance for the indecisive, had left her bleached as a bone for dreamers.

  She needed a quick competent helpmeet and confidant, a sure ally in the battle against ineptitude. She needed in fact Mary, and had rewarded her accordingly. It was quite understandable.

  Fruit, chutneys and jams from the boot were received with thanks. Erin, breathing heavily, mounted the kitchen steps to restow. Their labels must be visible. How else could Sophie avoid confusion between apple, pear ginger or green tomato; between quince conserve or jelly? She said nothing more about Mary’s defection but, ignoring Sophie’s protests, flung herself into her holiday tasks. Ironing and ‘altering’, mending and gardening engulfed her days. She played Strip Jack Naked with the children, suspected them of cheating and accused them accordingly. Asked them archaic riddles about chickens and roads, about blushing lobsters and Queen Mary’s bottom which bored or puzzled them.

  ‘But why did he blush, Nana?’ said Kit. ‘Because bottoms are rude, dummy,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Oh that.’

  ‘Sa-ad movies,’ yelled Rebecca, leaping to turn it up, ‘always make me cry.’

  ‘Turn it down,’ moaned Erin.

  The withered flower head of the tuberose puzzled her. How on earth had Sophie managed to get a tuberose to flower? ‘It was here when we came.’

  ‘That explains it.’ Erin did not like chokos. Or the banana passionfruit. ‘Tasteless, completely tasteless.’ William’s onions were worse. They smelled. And repeated, she said darkly.

  She watched the children and ached with love.

  Keith Driscoll lay in the front room on the four-man sofa William and Sophie had found in the Mart. He placed his behind up the Commodore’s end, a piece of newspaper under his feet on the other, arranged his pile of books beside him and settled in for a long haul. Once an hour he heaved himself up, drifted to the verandah and lit his pipe. He was not allowed to smoke indoors. He read six hours or more a day, his sandy curls just visible from the doorway, a faithful searcher after truth. He extended his range on holidays. He read histories, especially those of the Spanish conquest of South America; biographies, particularly contemporary accounts of plant collectors or religious fanatics; and detective stories, but only by women. He was a happy undeserving man. His faults, thought Sophie, were of omission not commission. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Her former faith in the Risen Lord had puzzled him. He was sceptical of answers but interested in extremes. ‘Some day, Sophie,’ he had said years ago, ‘we’ll have a good talk about it.’ They never had.

  He lay at ease all week, his banana shirt open-necked beneath his cardigan, and read. ‘I don’t know how you can read all day, Dad,’ said Sophie from the doorway. Keith lifted his head politely, dragging himself away from The Hookers of Kew and the discovery of the delicious little Rhododendron mirale at 17,000 feet.

  ‘Oh, but I change books, dear. I don’t read the same book all day.’ He shook his head as though she had offered him praise which he could not in all conscience accept. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ he said lying back once more.

  ‘Soph has always been so vague,’ laughed Erin at the kitchen table with Celia whom she admired because she was fun like Mary and got throug
h her morning chores so early.

  Celia was not interested in Sophie’s vagueness. Not this morning. Previously she might have discussed it, swapped examples, followed it through. Her fingers could not keep away from Punch and Judy. They were on their heads again. ‘You New Zealand women are all so competent,’ she said, accepting a second mug of coffee.

  Erin agreed, her strong weatherbeaten face smiling. She did not realise that Celia would not care to be thought competent. That competence is for the lesser birds, the low-flying millions streaming and wheeling in programmed flight across the world. Eagles fly high, birds of paradise need space to display. They do not flock. They do not wheel and turn on command. They are free from the compulsions of the herd.

  ‘I’ve popped in to pay my respects,’ said Nancy Ogilvie.

  ‘Oh,’ said Erin, her face doubtful. Wasn’t that when you were dead?

  Nancy was worried. Her husband John was the Officer of the Guard.

  ‘Guard?’ said Erin.

  ‘The Guard of Honour. For the visit of the friendly Asians on Friday.’

  Erin refrained from sniffing. ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘And he’s left-handed too,’ worried Nancy. (Sword drill is more difficult for the left-handed; William.)

  John Ogilvie was an old salt. Like his wife, his image seemed born to sell. Fish fingers perhaps, or Navy Cut tobacco. His beard was trimmed, his cap angle rakish, as he rolled around impersonating himself. His sea-going days were past. Like the fish fingers.