Drowned Sprat and Other Stories

by Stephanie Johnson

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I let her … I —’ She gulps, stops.

  ‘You let her what?’

  ‘Touch me. You know, she — when she’d finished making me up, she said it was time to play with the old red button and I thought she meant she was going to open … but she meant …’

  Tears are close to the surface, perhaps. I push the box of tissues closer to her.

  ‘It was so intense — I’ve never experienced anything like it. She had me against the wall, she had her hand … her hands … and I … I must have blacked out.’

  ‘Fainted?’

  ‘The next thing I remember was opening my eyes to the sunlight streaming through the open door and Robert standing there with an expression of horror on his face and me realising I was spread-eagled on the floor with my knickers around my ankles. He helped me up — he thought I’d had a stroke or something, a heart attack. I asked him where she’d gone, and he said “Who do you mean, there’s nobody else here.” He’d fallen deeply asleep for over an hour before he’d got out of the car and come looking for me. The door was standing open and there I was. He said I must have taken a turn and passed out while I was sitting on the loo. He put his arm around me and we went outside.’

  Coral is quiet, breathing evenly, her eyes fixed on her glass of water, though she doesn’t move to pick it up.

  ‘And drove off?’

  ‘Yes. But before that, on the way to our car, I saw her again. She was sitting in the front seat of the Cortina. I could only just make her out through the streaming cracks in the windscreen, but she leaned in close to the side window to give me the thumbs up and a lascivious wink as we passed by. I clung to Robert, pointed — “There she is” — and he peered in that direction, but he couldn’t see her.’

  ‘Why not, do you think?’

  ‘Because his eyes are hopeless. Worse than mine.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the end of the story, was it?’ I prompt gently, because of course I’ve heard the story before, from other women travellers. ‘What happened when you looked in the mirror?’

  ‘The mirror?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t you flick down the little mirror on the passenger side when you got into the car? Because you let your husband drive then, your knees were so weak?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s right. And I checked my nails, too. And it had all gone, all the make-up. Though I have, since then, you know, gone out and bought some eyeliner and mascara and nail polish — oh!’ And now that she’s got to the end of her story, Coral allows herself to weep. Two giant tears streak her face in perfect simultaneity.

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ I promise her.

  In the afternoon I contact the tohunga and the priest. Tomorrow we’ll drive to the viaduct again, light some more candles, say some more prayers. It might not work, of course — it hasn’t worked so far. This particular ghost is one with a mission she’s not giving up on easily. Perhaps I should suggest she move to Wellington, find a public toilet near the Beehive: she’d find some likely customers there.

  Striker Lolls

  As soon as they’re alone, as soon as Phil takes him out to see the boat, she puts her hand on Glennis’s arm and says, ‘What do you think of him? What do you think of Mal?’

  The arm under Kirsty’s hand is hard, speckled like warm sand. Glennis lifts her hands from the white foam, startled, then replaces them. Below the surface her fingers connect with a fork. It passes, steaming, in front of Kirsty and drops into the draining tray.

  ‘He’s …’ Glennis turns to Kirsty. Her gaze drops to the teatowel Kirsty has just picked up. Kirsty wonders if Glennis wants her to help. There’s no ‘thank you’, or anything. Now Glennis’s eyes are resting on the mosquito bite inflaming Kirsty’s right thumb. Kirsty licks a finger and rubs at it, as if it is a smudge.

  ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ Kirsty says, hoping she sounds less urgent. It seems important, suddenly, what Glennis thinks of her husband.

  ‘We should light a coil,’ says Glennis, laying a wet, pink finger on the bite. ‘They must like you.’

  Kirsty nods and dries a plate. Outside, the men shift an oar inside the aluminium dinghy. It booms faintly, lower than their voices. Or Mal’s voice. To Kirsty it sounds like Mal’s voice, solo, too soft for her to hear what he’s saying.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it today, eh,’ Kirsty says to Glennis. ‘It was amazing. Looking through the bread rack and there you were.’

  ‘I was surprised you recognised me,’ says Glennis.

  ‘You’ve got the same haircut.’ Kirsty fights down the urge to touch Glennis’s hair. It’s rich, gleaming, healthy. It reminds Kirsty of the ceilings in one of the rooms in one of the many flats they’ve lived in in Auckland, a varnished kauri ceiling. It looks impenetrable. She lifts a hand, then lowers it. Mal used to tell her not to touch people all the time. They don’t like it, he used to say. You’ve got to judge people better.

  Glennis laughs in a short, embarrassed sort of way, before attacking the barbecue grill. Kirsty has never seen anyone wash a barbecue grill before. Everything in Glennis’s bach is lovely and clean.

  ‘I’m sure I haven’t,’ Glennis says, shaking her head. ‘Not the same haircut as when I was fourteen.’

  ‘Sixteen,’ corrects Kirsty. ‘We were sixteen, the last time we saw each other. Remember? On Queen Street one Friday night, outside Mainstreet, when Mainstreet was still there.’

  Glennis colours. Seeing the pink blush in her cheeks, Kirsty wonders at it. It’s as if Glennis is ashamed of something, but Kirsty remembers Glennis as always so perfect, clever and together. She was cool.

  ‘Where do the cups go?’

  ‘Up there.’

  In the ranchsliders the women’s reflections work in the reflected kitchen. The round peaks of Glennis’s shoulders gleam as she reaches from bench to sink. Across their middles, at sink level, the real world intrudes as pale waves curling on the beach. The moon is rising above the island in the bay. It sits in the fruit bowl on top of the fridge in the glass of the doors. Glennis sighs and wrings out the cloth.

  ‘The kids were so excited, eh?’ Kirsty is worried by the sigh. But perhaps it was satisfaction at seeing the job almost done. ‘When I put them to bed? They just couldn’t believe it. To be staying at a bach like this with the sea right there and everything. You’re so lucky.’

  ‘My parents bought the bach when I was eight, twenty-six years ago,’ Glennis says stiffly. She seems embarrassed again.

  ‘Oh no — look, I didn’t mean to make you feel — I just meant that this is so wonderful! You know, to have met up with you again —’ Glennis is looking at her arm. Kirsty’s hand is on it once more. ‘Sorry.’

  The bach door bangs and the men come in. They stand just inside. Mal grins.

  ‘Well,’ Kirsty says to him, ‘did you have a nice chat?’ Mal looks the happiest he’s looked for ages. ‘Mal loves boats,’ Kirsty tells Glennis.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ says Phil.

  ‘I’ve nearly finished here,’ says Glennis, in a warning kind of voice.

  She must like the kitchen to herself, Kirsty thinks, putting down the teatowel.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Glennis is talking to the inside of the pot cupboard, ‘but I’ve had a hell of a year, so I’m treating my time here as a real holiday for myself, which means going to bed early.’ She sits up on her haunches and looks at Kirsty. ‘We don’t go to bed late.’

  ‘Which means,’ says Phil, ‘we don’t drink.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Kirsty. ‘Have you got a drinking problem?’

  ‘Of course not,’ says Glennis, pink again, vigorously wiping the bench. ‘Phil just means we don’t sit up drinking for the sake of it. We sometimes have wine with dinner.’

  ‘Mal used to drink,’ says Kirsty. ‘When I first met him. Beer and Bacardi. Gallons of it. And smoke heaps of dope. Pills, too. Anything, eh Mal?’

  Mal grins again.

  ‘Not any more, though,’ continu
es Kirsty. ‘Not a drop for three years.’ Proudly she puts an arm around him. Mal looks at the ground like a man modestly receiving an award. Phil and Glennis don’t smile or congratulate him, though. They just look quickly at each other and it makes Kirsty sad. Perhaps they’re nervous about us, she thinks. Perhaps they are wishing they hadn’t invited us back.

  ‘What stopped you, then?’ Phil is filling the kettle. ‘What stopped you drinking?’

  Mal’s smile fades and he looks at Kirsty.

  ‘I s’pose it was the accident,’ she says. ‘The car accident. He ended up in hospital for ten months.’

  ‘See?’ says Mal. He turns his head for them to see the scar, pink and rubbery, which extends from behind his ear, across his temple and disappears into his hair.

  ‘It’s so bloody hot in here,’ says Glennis, striding past and screeching open the ranchsliders. A sea breeze slithers in and lifts bits of paper pinned to the noticeboard. The tinsel on the Christmas tree flickers and shifts.

  ‘There’s a wind coming up,’ says Phil, following Glennis. ‘An easterly.’

  ‘Onshore,’ says Glennis. ‘You can still go fishing in the morning, if it doesn’t swing around.’

  ‘Mal likes fishing,’ says Kirsty.

  The kettle boils.

  ‘Tea,’ says Phil, heading back to the kitchen.

  ‘Can I give you a hand?’ says Kirsty. Mal pats her on the bottom as she leaves him, and sits down on the couch. Kirsty keeps an eye on him as she gets the cups, knowing that there is a way of sitting that is Mal’s and no one else’s — his back hunched, the feet splayed, the knees angling towards one another and his big hands clasped loosely between his thighs like a swingbridge.

  ‘Excuse me,’ says Phil.

  ‘I’ve already got the cups.’ Kirsty shows him, the mugs lined up along the bench.

  ‘They’re not the ones …’ begins Phil, then decides not to worry. He gets the milk from the fridge.

  ‘The children were really excited,’ Kirsty tells him. ‘Caleb was bouncing up and down. He wants to go swimming first thing.’

  ‘How old is Caleb?’

  Kirsty has already told Phil this, when they met in the shop, but of course he’s forgotten. It’s always like that with people who don’t have children of their own.

  ‘Just turned three. And Rosie is nearly two. They’re quite close together in age, but not in personality. Rosie —’

  ‘They must get very unsettled with all this moving around.’ Glennis is standing by the table. On it she has placed a bell. It’s a ship’s bell, old, brass, rotund. On one side is a paler, distorted patch that is Glennis’s grimly reflected face. She shakes the Brasso and eyes the smudged, dented surface.

  ‘This has to be done every time we come up,’ she says. The cloth rubs and squeaks.

  The rhythm of the bell polishing gets Mal humming. He picks up an old Listener and flicks through it, giving out a monotone, sounded breath. The humming started when he came out of the hospital. Kirsty doesn’t notice it any more, although it got on her nerves at first. She used to tell herself, as a kind of joke, to cheer herself up, that as a legacy of his years spent roadie-ing for punk bands he’d never known any songs with tunes.

  Phil hands Glennis her tea and she straightens up to take it. They both stare at Mal as he takes his cup from Kirsty. Suddenly Kirsty sees him through their eyes — his hair set with sweat and grime into feathers, the dark shadows of dirt on his face, his teeth like old hotel windows with the blinds half down. Mal gazes back at them and smiles uncertainly. Glennis blushes.

  ‘You doing the bell, Glennis?’ says Phil.

  Glennis bends back to her task. ‘Yes. Has to be done.’ Her voice comes in forced little puffs with each rub of the cloth.

  ‘Where did the bell come from?’ asks Kirsty, putting her hand on Mal’s shoulder for comfort.

  ‘My sister’s got a little bell,’ says Mal suddenly. ‘It’s white china with tiny roses. It used to be Gran’s. Gran never let us touch it. She kept it on her dressing table beside her hairbrush. My sister used to pick it up and we’d find long grey hairs wound round and round the ding-dong bit, in the middle. Once my sister rang me in Dunedin, years after Gran died, to tell me she’d found another one.’

  Kirsty loves it when Mal speaks like that. It’s as if somewhere inside him a damp, heavy curtain falls aside to reveal a memory never before recounted, the colours moistened and brightened by the clearing fog of his mind. They’re like hothouse flowers, those memories, their genesis is so brief. Just the other day she was thinking, on the Brynderwyns, of how she should write them down. They won’t be remembered again.

  ‘Well, this bell,’ says Glennis, blushing, ‘was found in a junk shop by my sister-in-law. No family history here.’ The striker lolls, like a dull tongue.

  ‘Lovely tea, Phil,’ says Kirsty.

  ‘So,’ says Phil, sitting opposite Mal, ‘where were you last night?’

  Mal looks blank.

  ‘Kerikeri,’ says Kirsty.

  ‘Where’d you stay there?’

  ‘Oh, in the car. We’re camping. Mal and I have got a mattress in the back and the kids are still little enough to top and tail in the front. We put all our stuff under the car for the night and hope for the best. You know — hope no one steals it or anything.’

  Glennis has stopped polishing the bell. Her hand holds the fluffy yellow cloth aloft, like a puppet. She’s frowning softly.

  ‘It’s quite nice in Kerikeri. We parked by the Stone Store, near the bridge. The kids saw ducks in the morning.’ Kirsty knows she’s prattling. She bites her lip to stop herself.

  But Mal is remembering now. He’s remembering Rosie’s soft, sleep-creased face appearing over the back of the seat, alight with wonder at the ducks, her little plump finger pointing, ‘Bird!’ He’d got up, unkinked himself from the uncomfortable bed and found some bread. Watching her feed the ducks, he’d thought his heart would burst.

  Glennis puts her hand inside the bell to still the striker and wipes the top of the dome with emphasis.

  ‘Amazing how dirty it gets in here, just from hanging on the wall.’ The bell gives out a muffled dong as she rolls it over. On the beach a bigger wave hisses up on the incoming tide. Kirsty takes Mal’s cup.

  ‘Come on, love. Bedtime.’ Mal stands obediently. ‘Thank you for having us,’ Kirsty says to Glennis. Phil is behind the newspaper.

  ‘Are you on some kind of benefit?’ he asks suddenly, lowering it.

  ‘Yes,’ says Kirsty. ‘Sickness. Since the accident.’

  ‘Just wondered.’ Phil retreats behind the paper again.

  ‘If you’d like a shower,’ says Glennis, replenishing the rag with Brasso, ‘there are clean towels in the bathroom.’

  ‘In the morning we’ll go for a swim,’ says Kirsty, taking Mal’s hand. ‘Goodnight.’

  Outside the night is clear and sparkling. They have a pee behind the boat and Kirsty looks at the stars. The sign of the Pot is the brightest. It’s the only one Kirsty knows. Mal used to know the Southern Cross. Kirsty can never find it. Mal’s piss hits the ground in a steady stream. ‘Have you been saving that up all day?’ she asks him.

  Mal giggles. ‘All that tea!’

  The sleep-out has a thick, heavy smell of children asleep. Caleb is hanging half off his bunk. Kirsty settles him in again, his thin brown limbs offering no resistance. He mutters something and turns his face to the wall. In the bunk below, Rosie has buried herself in a mound of blankets. Her round, curly head, when Kirsty finds it, is damp with sweat.

  ‘D’you think I should change Rosie’s nappy?’ Kirsty whispers at Mal, turning in the dark to find him. But he’s begun to snore, his jandals kicked off and his clothes still on. Even in sleep his face is different to how it used to be, slacker somehow, the mouth fuller, the skin around his eyes like tissue paper. He complains to her sometimes of a terrible pain in his head. It almost comes to anger, his response to it. These days he’s never angry with her, or the
kids. Just himself. Rage leaps up like a huge, blind fish from a sea of bewilderment.

  One of Rosie’s fists, curled like a seashell, rests on the pillow. Kirsty brushes her lips against it, tastes the salt from yet another fish and chip dinner, the plastic smell of the car seats, a trace of Mal picked up from his frequent embraces.

  Undressing in the dark Kirsty hopes, as she always does, for instant sleep. Then, with her arm across Mal’s chest, she knows, as she always does, that it won’t come for hours. She wonders what Phil and Glennis are doing. Talking, perhaps, about them. Perhaps Phil has gone to bed and Glennis is still up, cleaning something else. Kirsty wishes she and Glennis were still friends. Then she could go inside and chat, pour her heart out about Mal.

  But they were never really friends. They were just in the same year at school. Glennis had been a bright star at the centre of a constellation of cool girls. Kirsty was never one of them. She’d had to accept then that Glennis was out of reach, the same as she had to now. In that way, at least, nothing had changed. Everything else had. In those days Kirsty dreamed of drifting around India in a batik skirt, stoned out of her mind. Or of working in a pub in London, wooed by a famous poet. Or of picking oranges in Cuba, fuelling the revolution. Maybe she’d also dreamt briefly about a husband and kids, but a husband who fascinated and provided, and happy, robust kids. She wished it was true, what she’d told Phil inside, about Caleb being excited. At bedtime he’d looked at her, eye level from the top bunk, and said quietly, with conviction, ‘I don’t like this place.’

  In the morning, after their swim, Kirsty decides, they’ll pack the car and leave. Mal will want to, too. A vague kind of pride moves him sometimes. Sitting beside her as she drives, he feels as though they are going somewhere, achieving something. He rarely asks the destination and if he did Kirsty wouldn’t be able to tell him. The next bank, perhaps, to withdraw some money to fill the car with petrol. An orchard to buy the kids some fruit. Somewhere to park for the night.

  Mal’s snoring halts suddenly and in the absence of breath that follows a terrible desire wells in Kirsty’s heart. Would she want that? To be left without him?