All the Nice Girls

by Barbara Anderson

  *

  The little church smelled of warm brick, polish and something indefinable but less pleasant. ‘Mice,’ said Rebecca.

  The four of them stood in a row in the front, hypnotised by wood and brass handles. The undertaker was pleased to have the show on the road, but careful not to rush things.

  Mr Farrell stood waiting, his face grave above his freshly ironed surplice. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ he said.

  Kit clung to his mother’s hand and sobbed. Mr Farrell kept it brief. The undertaker moved forward with his trolley. Rebecca panicked, burying her head against William’s dark suit in sudden despair as LSBA Butterworth swung into ‘Cock of the North’. They marched out, William’s numb mind tingling with indecent versions of the non-existent words. People came up to them. You have to go up to someone. Friends from the road, Nancy and John Ogilvie, Evan in his blazer. ‘I’m Cora and he’s Bob,’ said a bright-eyed woman with a crocheted rose on her hat. ‘We were neighbours. We did what we could. Didn’t we, Bob?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bob shoved William a hand. ‘You took him in, then?’ he said.

  ‘My wife,’ said William, surrounded by desolate children and strange people.

  ‘Ah, your wife was it?’ He paused. ‘And you got off all right, I hear.’

  Liz was wearing the green jacket. She hugged Sophie. ‘She’s gone,’ she said.

  Sophie, bereft and bewildered, unlifted by the lively tune, glanced around. ‘Who?’

  Liz was smiling. Eight bells and all’s well. She was beautiful once more. ‘Celia. She’s left Harold. He told me himself.’

  Sophie turned quickly to her large and generous aunt. ‘Come home, Bertha. I’m going to the, you know, but William and the children and Mary and Ben’ll be there. Please, Bertha.’

  ‘You can’t go to the crème de la crème all by yourself … Hullo, Kit.’

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No.’

  Liz was fussing with the strap of her shoulder bag. ‘Edward’s in Wellington this week, so Paul tells me.’

  Wellington. Her lover was in Wellington. She must have got the week wrong.

  ‘Poor old boy,’ said Liz, her eyes on Caesar and his bars. ‘I must dash.’

  The mourners dispersed. Sophie followed the hearse.

  Edward had made contact by the time the square cardboard box was delivered.

  ‘Do you want to come?’ Sophie asked William.

  ‘You can’t do it by yourself,’ he said.

  How do you imagine the leftover tags of life are knitted up when you are not present. How are the allotments juggled, the children kept safe? ‘Scattering ashes,’ said Sophie, ‘is easy on your own.’

  ‘Unlike adultery.’

  She blinked in surprise. He would never have thought of it before, let alone said it. But then he had not needed to. William was evolving, undergoing protective coloration and imitative display. He was acquiring survival skills.

  ‘We’ll all come,’ he said.

  The four of them walked down the road together and rounded the side of the house. Sophie carried the box in a patchwork bag. The blackbird, presumably in full voice by now, was silent, sulking high in the pittosporum.

  Sophie pulled back the green curtain. ‘Neat, eh,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Yeah.’ The ashes held no qualms. They bickered over their disposal, were reprimanded, took turns shaking the box and brushed their hands against their legs. ‘Good old Arnie,’ said Kit.

  They ran back across the ragged unmown grass, zig-zagged across the compost trench laughing and disappeared out of sight.

  William glanced around him. ‘What about the lawns?’

  ‘That’s the estate’s business. Like the house.’

  ‘Who gets it?’

  ‘The Communist Party.’ Sophie smiled her slow enchanted smile. ‘He’d gone off the Labour Party.’

  A commie. William’s shoulders sagged. A bloody commie. He might’ve known. He should’ve guessed.

  They stopped at the gate. Sophie broke off three granny bonnet seed heads and tied them in her handkerchief. Her hand rested on the yellow galleon. ‘I liked him,’ she said.

  William couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her bent head, her calm.

  ‘We can’t go on with this,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘We’re not going to.’

  ELEVEN

  Life went on, what else could it do, where else could they go? Sophie and William circled around each other with restraint, were gentle with the children and gave them treats. They took them to the zoo.

  ‘You’re going as a family, are you?’ said Nancy over the fence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

  ‘You’re lucky.’ Nancy’s head was down, her fingers busy with a drooping passionfruit tendril. ‘Michael won’t do anything with us now, not as a family. Not even picnics.’ She rubbed her forehead, begged for an answer. ‘Do you think it would help if we all took up scuba diving?’

  The lions raised patrician heads and yawned. These were proud captives; they would not crack under pressure. The female’s hauteur, her crossed paws, reminded Sophie of the photograph on Admiral Tower’s desk.

  A small padded child of indeterminate sex clutched a weeping green lollipop. ‘Can those cats get out of there?’

  ‘No,’ said an older minder taking the disengaged hand.

  He/she sucked long and hard. They moved on, escorted by goose-stepping mynah birds past the Children’s Zoo where Rebecca and Kit were stroking some small hand-held animal.

  William leaned on the iron balustrade above the lions and turned to his wife. ‘You realise I won’t make Commander till he goes. Quite apart from the other business.’

  Sophie’s eyes were on an enormous abandoned thigh bone below. The ball joint gleamed bluish white, shiny and clear as a baby’s sclerotic; the shaft was mangled and bloody. ‘What?’ she said vaguely.

  William kicked the base of the wall, lifted his head and snapped at her.

  ‘What sort of a two oh six would you give your lover’s husband?’

  Her glance was placatory. ‘Two oh six?’

  He wanted to throw something, to kick a lion. Married to a naval officer for fourteen years and she still didn’t know. William’s bullet was wearing thin. ‘Recommendation for promotion for God’s sake. My brass hat.’

  ‘Oh.’

  A shackled elephant clanked past escorted by a keeper. The trunk curled backwards, unfurled like a ponga frond and tapped its mooching attendant twice on the shoulder; a comradely gesture, generous as a heartfelt handshake. The moustached face smiled, put out a hand to the wrinkled monolith beside him.

  Sophie turned back to the lions. ‘Edward,’ she said, ‘is an honourable man.’

  William slammed his clenched fist on the railing. His eyes swam with pain and rage. ‘Jesus wept!’

  The caged tiger was no help. Back and forth, back and forth, it rolled across the cage on oiled joints, its tail swishing, cracking from side to side as it swung around to pound once more.

  The baboons were light relief.

  William left Arnie’s bed each morning and dug. He broke the sods, turned them over and limed them well. He refused to accept that there might be little point, that they might no longer be living in the house as a family when his implanted beans came away. His wife was unfaithful, his near certainty of a brass hat was gone, his wife, his kids … He dug like a maniac. Drenched with sweat he leaned on his spade and watched the sky. There was a front coming up. Heaped black-grey cumulo-nimbus were creaming up from the south; mountains of dark clouds piled above streaks of grey. The silver disc of sun had disappeared. A line of defeated-looking herring gulls huddled head-on to the wind; three black-backs hung motionless above his ship. William reached for his jersey and stopped in mid-pull as he noticed the jack flapping in the stiff breeze. He marched to the house, kicked off his boots and made for the telephone.

&nb
sp; A voice quacked at the other end.

  ‘First Lieutenant here. Get that jack close up immediately. It’s flapping around like a whore’s drawers.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the voice.

  William went back to watch. A figure ran forward from the gangway. The jack was close up.

  He dug on.

  He was glad to get back on board. He had worked something else out. It was up to Them to make a move. Time was on his side, time and the children and passive resistance might save him yet. William was competitive and trained to win but he was not stupid and he loved his wife. He would wait. He could wait. He would. Each day would help. He walked down the hill to his ship each morning, did his day’s work and strode home again. He was polite but distant. Emotion and trauma had almost destroyed him. He would disengage, reassemble and wait.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ said Edward. ‘We have to meet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Someone had put a red ring around the twenty-ninth. The twenty-ninth? Sophie shook her head. It meant nothing. ‘We can leave letters in Bertha’s box. I asked her before she went down.’

  Eyes on the cave weta for August, Sophie thought of her mother. Frustration, whatever the cause, is an ache in the groin, an itch beside the bone.

  ‘What happened in Wellington?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll tell you when we meet. Soon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was jubilant. He loved plans of action, decisions pleased him, and it had been a long time. Rose Featherston’s ex-husband now farmed north of Auckland. Captain and Mrs Featherston planned to stay in the house and keep an eye on things while he took a much-needed holiday down south. ‘“Much needed”, that’s what they said. I’ll go up for the weekend and do the feeding out. There’s a boy during the week but Lionel and Lettie are beyond messing around with bales of hay. So you come up.’

  ‘But they’ll be there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How can we talk? Anything?’

  ‘There’s a cottage. I’ll work something out. I have to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She rang her mother. Of course she was all right. What a fuss. And a toll call. Sophie saw the creased forehead, the anxious hands distancing themselves from wanton expenditure. ‘Here’s your father.’

  ‘Hullo, Dad. How’s Mum?’

  ‘All right.’

  Sophie sat on the edge of the bath watching the hand tug the cheek, the sweep of the snow-plough blade. He didn’t like electric. They didn’t do such a good job, not on a heavy beard.

  ‘William?’

  ‘Nnh?’

  ‘Will you mind Rebecca and Kit on Saturday?’

  His head ducked, a brief involuntary warding off. ‘Why?’

  She finished her inspection of her dressing-gown cord. ‘I must see Edward.’

  The clown face gaped from the mirror. ‘I mind your kids while you …’ He turned, slammed his hands at her. The razor clattered in the basin. ‘What d’y’think I am?’

  She stood up. The bath must have been wet. ‘I have to talk to him.’

  ‘Talk!’

  ‘Work things out. You said we couldn’t go on like this.’

  ‘Mum,’ screamed Kit. ‘Come on, Mum.’

  He picked up his watch. ‘Christ!’

  He refused. He flatly refused. He would not talk about it. He would not mind his wife’s children while she met her lover. Passive resistance. He would not do it.

  ‘I am going to meet Edward,’ said Sophie.

  ‘And I’m going to the navy’s away match at Helensville.’

  ‘Nancy,’ said Sophie, ‘will mind the children.’ She smoothed the dishcloth into position on the bench, gave it a quick tweak and watched the bridge. ‘I’ve already asked her.’

  The three of them went with John Ogilvie who was going alone. Sophie made them a ham and egg pie with plenty of parsley; checked their jerseys, parkas, woolly hats. An extra thermos.

  She waved them goodbye. Watched them as they walked down the drive. Kit turned at the gate. ‘Bye, Mum!’

  William came striding back with a pineapple in his hand.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Take the bloody thing.’ He shoved it at her. ‘We don’t want it.’

  She put it in the car.

  It was a good game. The navy backs handled better than he had expected and the forwards won plenty of ball and worked well in the loose. One of the locks forced his way through Helensville for an equaliser. ‘Do it again!’ screamed Kit, his face radiant, his damp nose gleaming with joy. Rebecca was jumping about. William hugged them to him. They must come with him always. His gut tightened as he inspected the thought. This is what fathers with access did. They took their kids to places: zoos, museums, football matches, places designed for access. They took their children to places for the day and then they took them home to their mothers. He had seen lonely men with children, bending over tables. They hadn’t quite heard, what was that again? At school was it?

  Nothing. Nothing. And yes, they wanted tomato sauce with their chips.

  ‘Christ, it’s cold,’ said John Ogilvie stamping his feet, his nose purple above the trim beard.

  William handed him his flask. The swig tasted tinny but John did not complain. ‘Hits the spot,’ he said. He could have drawn a map: heart, lungs, feet restored by firewater. He stamped more cheerfully on the frosty ground.

  Why was she not singing? Joyful anticipation was absent as Sophie drove past the sad uneven trees of the Gasworks straight. This was as it should be. You do not sing songs in memorial avenues, especially torch songs. But there was little joy in Belmont and less in Takapuna. Two small wobbly boys on bikes with footie boots slung around their necks hurtled from a side street. Her foot slammed the brake. William’s pineapple rolled from the front seat and bounced against her left foot. A car screeched to a stop behind her. The small boys’ legs pumped harder. Rumps in the air they rode on laughing into the headwind.

  The car behind roared past, an enraged face shouted, two fingers flashed at the careful lady driver. Sophie restowed the pineapple in the shelf beneath the dashboard and drove on.

  It was understandable was it not, her lack of expectant delight. This lovers’ meeting was not a journey’s end. This meeting was a conference, a symposium, a combined exercise in damage control. A sitrep. An analysis of the situation resulting in a plan guaranteed to achieve the desired objective. The object of her desire. Her insides clenched. That was more like it. She was going to meet her lover.

  ‘Glorious things of Thee are spo-ken, Zion, city of our God,’ she yelled. She stopped at a pedestrian crossing, smiled at a crab-like old woman to indicate permission for her to exercise her legal right and cross the thing. She was rewarded by grateful joy. You never knew for certain if the buggers were going to stop. Not till they smiled.

  Sophie put her foot down and sped up Forest Hill. There was now a raspberry whip house next to the chocolate mocha. She must tell Edward. He will have seen it. It will already have been noticed and we are past such exchanges by many a long chalk.

  She saw Mary, aged twelve, stomping around in Erin’s battered cream satin wedding shoes, broomstick arms caressing the top of the upright, stretching outwards in mock passion. ‘And he’ll be big and strong, / the man I lerve.’

  Shut up you fool. And anyway William’s bigger. Oh God.

  She drove fast, glanced at the dead fish and cocktail glass motel. Remembered the white sling and drove faster.

  ‘It couldn’t be better,’ Edward had told her. ‘You won’t have to drive past the main house, just turn left up the track by the cattle stop. The cottage is behind the macrocarpa windbreak. I’ll be waiting.’

  The gate was open at the bottom of the track, a farm truck parked alongside the old house. Edward stood smiling with outstretched arms, offering her his house, himself, his secret world.

  The disused cottage was circa 1910: two tiny bedrooms, a living room and lean-to kitchen with a
rusty coal range. There was no sign of an ablutions block. The place smelled of age and damp and decay. Bits were falling off; the doorstep was rotten, ancient water stains flowed down walls.

  Edward held her to him. ‘Any port in a storm, Soph.’

  She kissed him. ‘Sophie, and don’t talk like William.’

  ‘Sophie.’

  ‘We have to talk,’ she said afterwards. He kissed her breast, licked the nipple. ‘You always want to talk. You’re such a talker, Soph.’

  ‘What did you tell Captain and Mrs Featherston?’

  He licked the other one. ‘I’ve forgotten.’

  She took his face between her hands, studied it, searched for answers.

  He rolled over, looked at his watch. ‘My God!’ He sprang up from William’s car rug and pulled on his trousers. ‘I haven’t fed Clarice. The poor girl’ll be starving. Come on. And bring your parka.’

  He picked up the pig bucket and swung it overarm, demonstrating centrifugal force as effectively as the Wall of Death. ‘From top to bottom, from bottom to top, see them ride the Wall of Death.’ Not an ounce of leavings was lost. Ed Sand the farmer’s son had come to play. They walked in single file around the horizontal sheep tracks to the pigsty. Snuffling, snorting through her ringed snout, Clarice gave a squeal of delight and charged the cold porridge, the apple cores, the peelings and bacon scraps mushed with bran.

  They leaned side by side watching her, proprietorial and proud. Sophie scratched the pig’s back. Edward snatched her hand back.