Drowned Sprat and Other Stories

by Stephanie Johnson

  Maybe she’d find a little place somewhere, an old bach like this one, and settle in with the kids. Maybe she’d make things, pottery and clothes, and sell them to the summer crowds. She’d …

  But Mal breathes again, deeply. Red, oxygenated blood surges through his veins. Kirsty rubs her face against his shoulder. She brings his heavy, sleeping hand to her face and kisses it as she kissed Rosie’s. The coarse hair tickles her nose. She feels chilled, exhausted. It’s not the travelling or the kids, but the having to be alert the whole time, having to look out for signs from Mal that he’s returning. Or slipping further away.

  Through the uncurtained windows some clouds slide in front of the full moon. In his dark, dreamless depths Mal rolls over, pulling her arm with him. Before the accident he’d sense when she was sleepless and wake to talk to her.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he’d ask.

  Now he lies departed, his barrel chest thudding under her arm with a dull beat. At last Kirsty drifts, and dreams of Glennis’s bell. Lolling in the polished hollow, in place of the striker, is Mal’s tongue, a dolorous stem of mute flesh, moist and torpid. Above the bell, Glennis’s hair swings and swells, like a bright, luffing sail.

  Race

  Through the plate-glass window of the Tepid Baths crèche, Thomas watched his mother, parallel to him on the mezzanine floor above the pool. Her mouth was open, she was breathing hard. Her brightly coloured thighs pumped fast above the pedals below her outstretched arms. The hands that gripped the handlebars had white knuckles. Her golden ring flashed at him, like a headlight.

  It’s a funny sort of bike, thought Thomas. It doesn’t go anywhere. He wished it could. But if it could, where would it go? If it suddenly took off, his mother would go flying through the air above the pool of shining heads, foaming arms and legs. If she executed a wide arc mid-air she could fly through the door of the crèche, as long as it was open.

  Thomas had passed through the world out there, just before this and at many other times, quickly, holding fast to his mother’s hand. In her other arm she’d gripped the bundle that was his baby sister. Once or twice, as they’d climbed the stairs beside the pool to the crèche, his mother’s nylon bag had bumped against his head as it swung from her shoulder. It didn’t hurt — it was soft, probably her towel. Once or twice on the stairs on other visits he’d been collected by the end that carried the shampoo and moisturiser, her white-soled shoes.

  When they came in the lady in the crèche had been sitting on a low sofa, reading a story to some children. Thomas’s mother pushed him forward, laid Sinead in a cot and disappeared. Thomas had gone to stand on a low ledge below the window, to watch out for her.

  A man got out of the pool at the far end. Thomas supposed he was a man. He could be a monkey. His front and back gleamed with wet fur, right down to his black togs. His legs were furry, too. The monkey opened a door in the white wall. A puff of steam wafted out and he vanished through it. Thomas couldn’t be sure, but he might have seen a long tail slash through the mist with the closing door.

  His mother was still on the bike. Her eyes were burning, fixed on a point on the other side of the mezzanine. Thomas banged on the window. She looked grim; there was something wrong.

  ‘Mum!’ His fist banged harder, without even trying.

  ‘Stop that now!’ said the crèche lady. ‘Come and play with the blocks.’

  Thomas allowed himself to be led away to a low table, hillocky with Lego.

  Before Sinead was born, before Mum got a big tummy even, she used to put his buggy in the car, the three-wheeled speedster with the slung canvas seat and plastic bubble for if it rained. They’d drive down to the waterfront, park where there were sometimes trains and always lots of cars, the sea on one side, railway line and then the little white church on the other, and she’d run as if someone was chasing her, pushing him before her. He’d hear her soft, rapid rubber tread; the wind would rush in his ears. In winter he wore a red beanie, in summer a peaked cap and little round sunglasses. The footbridge would fly overhead, they’d pass the men fishing on the bridge, the lady in the strawberry van, the boats for sale, the yard where the canoes were. Mum’s pace never varied — steady, swift.

  Sometimes there was a big canoe pulled up on the first beach, with a beautiful neck like a sea dragon. If the tide was out, Mum would run him by it on the sand, and once — just once — she had stopped and let him get out from under all the straps and the little roof and plod around. He remembered it now, the hard, shelly sand, the smell of salt and seaweed and something else that reminded him of nappies; not that he wore them any more.

  At the pool crèche Lego table was a boy holding a red block in his hand, shiny and big. He was a brown boy, with gleaming black hair and sharp brown eyes that bored into Thomas. He was smiling, though.

  When they’d stopped at the canoe, which was just before Mum’s tummy popped completely through the gap between her yellow shiny top and black shiny bottoms, there were grown-up brown people. Where Thomas lived, all the people going in and out of the big houses were pink like him. One of the men by the canoe had picked him up, so that he could see all the wooden seats inside and the paddles laid up along the sides. It seemed that the man had drawn all over his face with greeny-black felttip and Thomas had found that more interesting than the canoe; he’d stretched out his finger and traced along the spiral on the man’s cheek. Mum had said ‘Thomas’ warningly, as if he was doing something naughty. The man didn’t think so. He’d laughed and put him down and patted him on his head.

  After that Mum had put him back in the buggy and they’d raced along to Mission Bay, where sometimes he was allowed to have a swing. In the buggy, cars rushed past in a straight line, flashes of coloured metal and glass. On the swing, the world went up and down, up and down. The tops of the tall trees jumped into the sky, the island called Rangitoto on the other side of the sea slipped and dipped. Sometimes he was glad of the chance to feel his feet on solid ground and have a little walk about, but his mother was always keen to run back to the car and get home to the phone.

  He beckoned now to the brown boy at the Lego table, the way grown-ups did when they wanted to show him something, and together they went over to the painting table. He selected a brush and dipped it into the green paint. It wasn’t the right kind of green — it was too bright and thick, as thick as the porridge he had at Gran’s house. The boy didn’t seem to mind the feel of it on his skin; he stood very still while Thomas did a spiral on his cheek and a line down the centre of his nose. Thomas could hear his breathing, soft and sweet, the faint flutter of a bogie just inside his nostril. When he closed his eyes to the brush, Thomas seized the moment and dabbed two green blobs on the boy’s eyelids.

  The boy remained motionless, like a doll. Thomas carried the brush over to a desk by the door, where there was a big book lying open. He’d only had time to make one wide, gloopy streak before the lady came over and took him by the arm.

  ‘Don’t do that, naughty boy. What’s your name?’ she asked him. ‘Your mother hasn’t signed you in.’

  Thomas, thought Thomas, but he didn’t say it. Didn’t she remember him? He remembered her. The lady at the mall crèche never remembered him either, but the lady at daycare did. This lady had big, red lips and hard, strong fingers.

  Behind them there was a wail and Thomas turned just enough to take in the spectacle of his ruined work: the green, smeared whirl over the boy’s cheeks, the offending hands writhing at his eyes.

  Maybe his name was in the book. He found a P, but his name began with a T. He lifted his face to begin explaining that he didn’t think his name was there, but he couldn’t be sure — because there was a T there, but it was in the middle of the word, not at the beginning of it — but the lady had hurried away to lead the boy to the handbasin on the far wall, where she wiped him up with wet paper. The paint had got into the boy’s eyes and he was yowling.

  His mother was gone from the stuck bike and was instead coming out
of a door at the back of the pool, changed into her togs with her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. At the edge of the pool she turned and went backwards down some metal steps, lowered herself into the water and stretched the funny pair of bulgy eyes over the front of her face. She pushed off, staying underwater for ages, then she surfaced, swimming towards him.

  Why wasn’t he there too? For a moment he’d thought he was — he had felt the water rise up his thighs, warm over his shoulders. Why wasn’t he down there, in the pool with his mother? He pressed his nose and lips against the glass, pushed the flat of his hands as hard as he could. His forehead wanted to press on the glass too, so he let it. Bang, bang, bang.

  The boy had run to stand beside him just as Thomas’s mother flipped upside down, vanished underwater and reappeared to swim away again. Thomas gazed at the boy, whose closer eye had a bead of green paint glistening on an eyelash. A faint pulse of green sheened his beige cheeks. The boy was watching someone walking below them, along the side of the pool. It was a lady with her clothes back on, with her towel wrapped up and in her bag. Her wet hair dripped thin, straight and dark into the collar of her pink shirt. She was just like Doctor Xu Xian, who gave Thomas injections and looked in his ears. Looking up towards them now, she smiled and waved before she passed out of sight to come up the stairs.

  Thomas leaned in closer to the boy and imagined him still painted, the way he’d made him look before, only better. It was all wrong, he could see now. The boy’s eyes were all wrong.

  Then the boy was running over to where the crèche lady was talking to the boy’s mother — Thomas heard her say ‘green paint’ and saw the mother turn to look at him. She was smiling again, shrugging her narrow shoulders and signing her name in the big book while the still slightly green boy was hugging her legs and rubbing his face on her trousers.

  Thomas’s mother said she was sorry to the crèche lady for forgetting to sign him in, and then asked if it would be all right if she sat down to give Sinead a bottle. He snuggled in beside her on the low couch, breathing in the smell of the pool still on her skin, the smell of Sinead’s milk. His eyelids felt heavy and downwards-drifting and he slept for a little while, dreaming of the boat-studded sea by the dragon. His mother pushed him along in his buggy — only it wasn’t his buggy, it was the stuck bike, which could work now — and he was on the handlebars, racing past the sea, which was foaming with swimmers who all lifted their carved, whorled faces to watch him go by.

  My Private Joy, My Comfort

  Last Monday my friend Lloyd took me out to dinner. I got there early, to make sure we had a smoker’s table. Lloyd’s a bit slack on that side of things: he’s organisationally impaired. I’d gone to Glengarry’s earlier in the day to get some wine — I was really looking forward to it, I’d been looking forward to it for days.

  Had a bath at six, a quiet drink on my own before I left the house. Lloyd had said a fortnight before, ‘Come out for dinner. My shout!’ He hadn’t mentioned Fran.

  So I was a tiny bit annoyed when I saw her swanning through the restaurant door, closely followed by the tall, slender shape of Lloyd. They’d come together. And I thought, of course — with his other wives he’d got out more; he could keep his women friends apart. Fran and I had met up only occasionally. Now that he’s married young Melissa, he has to put us together. She doesn’t let him out much. It’s happened a lot in the last year or so: nearly every time I’ve seen him Fran’s either been there or come later. I should have expected it.

  ‘Lloyd!’ and I jumped up brightly, sparkling, flung my fag into the ashtray and squeezed his arm. Lloyd is a true Pakeha of his generation, not big on kissing in public. Or in private, come to think of it, with me at least. I often end up squeezing his arm.

  Fran looked at me quickly, and away, hooking her fake fur over the back of her chair, her red mouth already open and prattling on about getting the wine opened. Lloyd sat down before either of us, unsheathing two bottles from their paper condoms. It’s not an original image, I know, wine bag as condom, but I remember I thought of it as the bags whizzed off and Lloyd plonked the bottles on the table. It was apt for what transpired: a large skeleton, with its pants down, fell out of a wardrobe. Nothing will ever be the same again.

  ‘How’s Melissa?’ I asked then, Fran and I both sitting down, looking at Lloyd.

  ‘Fine. Blooming!’ said Lloyd. He looked great himself. I have to remind myself Lloyd’s in his mid-forties. He looks about ten years younger with his healthy, taut skin, the grey negligible in his glossy black hair. And his lovely brown eyes: warm, happy, sane.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ Lloyd told me, kindly. I didn’t, of course. Great bags under my eyes, my face improving on its sultana imitation every day.

  ‘So do you, Fran,’ I said, completing the circle. Fran pursed her lips together and flashed a look at Lloyd as if to say, ‘We know she’s bullshitting.’

  The waiter brandished the corkscrew.

  ‘Thank fucking Christ!’ shouted Fran. ‘I was nearly fucking dead of thirst!’ She thrust the bottle at the waiter and stuck her tongue out, panting like a dog. The waiter, a bemused and gentlemanly Thai, smiled benignly, his eyes resting momentarily on her moist, flopping appendage.

  Fran always swears.

  While the waiter poured out for Lloyd, Fran said quietly to me, so that Lloyd wouldn’t hear, ‘We didn’t have a drink before we left home.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ I said, hating her. Could she smell it on my breath?

  But I was blushing. There’s a theory that people who blush are fundamentally dishonest. I think the opposite is true — we blush in the face of insincerity. Blushers are people who can very quickly discern the real meaning of a mean-spirited remark.

  In this case it seemed I was wrong. Fran went on to say, conspiratorially, ‘Melissa wouldn’t let us.’ Her eyebrows were waggling. Lloyd raised his glass to propose a toast.

  ‘To what?’ he asked.

  I couldn’t suggest anything because I was still trying to interpret those eyebrows. Fran erupted suddenly with a loud bark, startling me.

  ‘What a question!’ she shouted. ‘What a fucking question!’

  Lloyd bobbed his head, twisted his glass a quarter turn and took a sip. Fran obviously knew something I didn’t.

  ‘“To what?” he fucking says. As if we could fucking toast to anything else! This is a big one, Lloydie, this is really fucking big.’ She was laying it on so thickly with the expletives that I wondered if she was building up to one of her sudden rages. But she was grinning, excited.

  Melissa is pregnant. Having spawned itself in my stomach, the truth travelled onion-flavoured like an anaesthetic up my spine: Lloyd is having his inevitable late child. The stomach-voice reminded me how inevitable it was: he was an attractive man, young women found him attractive, young women often wanted to have babies. We’d never see him alone now. Melissa would be always there — she wouldn’t let him get away with as much as the ex-wife, the woman who had had his sons. It was as if Melissa was here now, suddenly, curled up against him like a pale, crop-haired cat, her green eyes creased with contentment in her silent, unnerving Madonna face.

  ‘Oh!’ Fran took a sudden, scouring breath as she lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve just realised! Bridgie doesn’t know! She doesn’t fucking know!’ She clamped a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘Or does she? Have you told her yet, Lloydie?’

  Lloyd, meeting my eyes, seemed to suffer a sudden bolt of empathy. It was as if he only just realised, in that moment, what this news would do to me. A hand shot out, across the table, surreptitiously among the cutlery. I thought he meant to lay it over mine — I could feel the dry warmth of its palm already — but he merely tapped me twice with his index finger, above my knuckles, before withdrawing. He wasn’t going to get involved with my pain.

  Lloydie, I thought you were my mate.

  ‘Well, go on, don’t piss about!’ shouted Fran.

  ‘I’m going to be a father again,’ Lloyd said q
uietly. ‘Due in March.’

  ‘Isn’t it fucking wonderful?’ Fran scarcely waited for him to finish. She held her glass at the full extent of her arm above her head. ‘To Lloydie, Melissa and the next Little Fucking Lloydie! Got any names yet?’

  ‘When did you find out?’ I asked, in an undertone I have perfected for use around Fran.

  ‘This morning. I went up the road and bought one of those test-kit things. Six weeks gone, we think.’

  Fran was still talking. ‘Glue would be a good name, don’t you think? Or Gluette if it’s a girl. Glue for the old relationship.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Lloyd sharply, picking up the menu, giving it a crack. Fran gave me a bruising nudge in the ribs.

  ‘Well, congratulations!’ I found it in me at last — the heart to say it. And mean it. ‘Melissa must be over the moon.’

  ‘We both are,’ Lloyd said primly.

  ‘Is it a surprise? For you, I mean … did you plan … or did it just …’ Too late I remembered — though how I could I have forgotten? — how much Lloyd hated those kind of questions.

  ‘Let’s order.’

  He’s regretting it, regretting taking us out to dinner. We’re a pair of old snakes. Fran, realising she’d overstepped Lloyd’s considerable bounds of decency, had her lips firmly pursed together and was studying the menu.

  ‘Mixed entrée? Tod man pla and spring rolls and money bags and all that?’ she suggested soothingly. Poor Lloyd, I could hear her thinking, Bridget could at least pretend to be pleased for him.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Lloyd as the waiter loomed.

  We talked about other things then. Through two and a half bottles of wine, the entrée and the main course — all of which were delicious — we talked about Fran’s difficult flatmate, whether or not Fran and I should get dogs, and how long it was since Fran had last gone out to dinner. We talked about Lloyd’s stressful job, his house renovations, a holiday he and Melissa had planned. Then, as he spooned up the last fiery morsels of Crying Tiger and Waterfall Beef, more relaxed now with two-thirds of a bottle of wine inside him, he asked, ‘And how about you, Bridgie? How’s your garden?’