She says, “I want to go to the bathroom.” And, “I’m cold.”
“Of course, you do.” It’s all right for me, I’ve had a piss on the road while she was sleeping. “Look here.” I tug at the bathroom door and shine the torch in. “All right?”
She pushes past me with the torch and shuts herself and the light inside the little room so that I’m outside in the dark again and I burn my fingers on my lighter flame — ouch. Serve me right the thoughts I’ve been having, and I can hear her little gush in the lavatory bowl.
I put my nose in the blankets on the bed; they pong a bit, but they’re all we’ve got apart from the car blanket and the sheepskin on the floor.
“I want to go to the beach,” Jania says when she gets back. “You said we’d go. Is there a fire-place at the beach? I want a hottie!”
“It’s too far” I tell her. “We’ll go there tomorrow. Here, you curl up in the bed and shut your eyes. It’s time little girls were asleep.”
“I haven’t got my jarmies.”
“You don’t need pyjamas here, just take your coat off.”
“Did Esther say it was all right?”
“Yes. We’ll get pyjamas at the beach. Give me the torch.”
I need the torch to have a proper look around the kitchen side of the room. The microwave has gone but the gas ring’s still there and the gas bottle, probably empty. I try the gas lever and give the jets a taste of my lighter. Amazing! The gas ring lights up and strongly, there’s still gas in the bottle although I can’t tell how much. Jania sits up in bed and looks at the bluish ring of light.
“There,” I say, pleased with myself. “At least we’ve got gas to make our tea.”
“I don’t drink tea,” she says, quite prim, then she lies down again. “I want a hottie.”
“There isn’t a hottie, I’m sorry.”
“Will you rub my feet? Daddy rubs my feet.”
“Does he now?” I don’t know whether to believe her. I’ve remembered that the box of kitchen stuff is still in the car and that I have to move the car pretty quick, but now I have to rub Jania’s feet. I can’t go and leave her anyway, not until she goes to sleep, she’d be frightened. I scrub my hands together to make them warm and then I feel under the covers for her feet. She giggles when I find them. Oh, Christ, I can’t have Claude coming into this, I hold one foot quite tight, trying to send Claude packing. Then I start to rub this one little foot between two hands, but she wriggles too much, liking it, and I can’t stand this.
“You need warm socks,” I say, but I can’t put my hand on the case where I’ve got my clothes, it’s still in the car perhaps. I tug at my shoes and peel off my own socks, I’ve already warmed these for her. I ask her to poke her feet out and I pull the socks on, fifty per cent wool, and give them a bit of a pat. “There. Now get to sleep.”
She stops giggling and lies down with her cushion and her thumb. I sit for a bit on the sofa alongside the bed and put my own head down in my hands; I’m done in. Before I know it, I’m falling asleep as well, pitching forward into my hands, and I have to save myself. Oops.
NOTHING. NO NEWS. She has vanished. The Rawleigh’s man has vanished with his lotions and potions. Esther was washing her hair in the shower this morning when she noticed she was using a Rawleigh’s product, the warm suds slid seductively down over her shoulders like a cape entrapping her. At breakfast she had come across the glow-in-the-dark rubber ball nestled in the fruit bowl beside a rotting lemon. She had picked up the clammy orb and handled it, squeezed it. It reminded her in a horrid way of the first time she had touched a boy’s penis, accidentally — she hadn’t known what he was offering her. Innocence. Esther innocent at eighteen; Jania innocent at six. She has noted Jania’s toothbrush missing; only a well brought up child takes her toothbrush when she runs away from home. Well brought up — the words sink into her brain like fish hooks. But the well brought up child hasn’t taken her pyjamas, they are under the pillow where she has been taught to fold them. It seems no matter how much house tidying Esther does — and she is guiltily doing more than is necessary, having taken this time off work — she will still find echoes of Jania all over the house. Who would have thought it? In this way children distribute themselves, insinuate themselves into the fabric of adult life, become adult life one day if they are lucky — but Jania isn’t lucky.
Rex is recovering, he isn’t going to die. Relief is tempered with a dusting of dread. There has to be a reckoning when he comes home, death hasn’t occurred but a post mortem will. Meanwhile Jania. It is easier to talk about Jania than to think about Jania, about the possibilities, about where blame can be attributed. She has an unwelcome flash of the child’s big eyes, puzzled then widening with horror, her mouth … Perhaps she will call out for her mother? Esther gulps, swallows the thought down and feels sick. Shouldn’t she have noticed what was going on? What the man was? She needs to talk, who can Esther talk to? She has talked to the police, they have talked to Esther. They want her to talk on television, to make a public appeal.
“What! I can’t. I can’t do that!”
“Why not? It doesn’t matter if you get a bit emotional — it’s natural, and the public respond to emotion.”
Esther can’t very well tell the policewoman she has got this wrong. Far from being afraid of showing emotion, Esther is afraid of showing none. She is expected to cry or at least tremble at the lip, what if she doesn’t? Can’t? She sees herself on the screen, stony faced, talking in flat tones, a bad actor. Her friends — correct that, acquaintances, workmates — will watch her self-contained coolness with the same distaste she herself felt when Jania failed to cry for her mother, for Prue. Only Donald will approve.
“Rex would do it much better.”
“He can’t do it from a hospital bed.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t the public ‘respond’ to a hospital bed?”
“You’re her grandmother, I’m sure you’ll do it very well.”
She does it. She is given briefly to the make-up woman who brushes dark powder on to the planes of her face, corrects her crooked lip with a wipe of red lip pencil and she is shunted out the door like a sales “product” on the news assembly line awaiting her turn.
The curious thing is — she cries. In the middle of appealing to Wallace — whose face she sees now, whose lisping voice she hears with hate — she conjures an image of Jania lying on her cushioned elbows, watching ‘The Cosby Show’ on the box, chewing a liquorice twist.
“If anyone — anyone out there can tell the police anything, please contact them —please.” She sobs as the cameras slide away. She had wanted to show emotion but now she feels a fool; the fool sobs gratefully into her sleeve and then the proffered tissue. The ordeal is over — what does she mean over? Who has seen her? She knows Rex will have been watching from his hospital bed, will she have affected his blood pressure? Supposing Jania has seen her? Supposing Wallace …? “There’s a mother,” the policewoman is saying to her.
“What? No — her mother’s dead …” More tears. Is this what the crying is about? She seems unable now to separate Jania from Prue in her mind, they are both missing (believed dead) like war-time casualties. She mustn’t believe Jania dead, it’s bad luck. And why hadn’t Jania cried for her mother? It’s so easy to cry after all. Esther’s eyes overflow again.
“Mr Wells’ mother. She lives in Auckland. She’s been contacted, an officer went to call on her, but she wasn’t helpful. She’s a bit dotty, I understand. No help at all, but they’ll try again, you never know. Here.” Another tissue.
Esther goes home. The telephone starts ringing.
WALLACE
THE BUDGIE STARTS to carry on when the torch flashes over his cage. Ssh! I don’t want Jania to wake up. She was well away when I backed down the steps in my shoes minus socks; she’s wearing my socks to keep her little feet cosy. The steps are like stepladder steps, so steep and narrow it’s safer to go backwards, holding on. Here at the bottom I’m plodding a
round in stuff from the car, but there’s still boxes and a case to come inside.
What am I doing here? How long can I keep this up? There’s this expression, “Don’t hold your breath.” I feel like I’m holding my breath, and Jania’s breath too. How much breath do we have between us?
It’s very quiet on the street, I’ve hardly heard another set of wheels and nothing passes me while I’m humping the rest of the gear. I have to risk Jania waking up while I’m away getting shot of the car — the cops don’t have to tie it to me specially, cars get nicked by the dozen every day of the week, but just the same. I hate to sneak away from Jania but I must. I lock the shop door, and while I’m doing it I fancy I hear a sound inside — what if she got out of bed and fell down the stairs? What if the old bugger’s there and he pushes her? I know what he’s capable of. He’s dead, well, I know he’s dead, but … I unlock the door again and place the torch on the counter, switched on but shining away from Joey, shining at the steps, just in case she wakes. It’s a bit reckless of me, the all-night service station might be closed and I might get back without any new batteries, to a flat torch — two flat torches if you count my father’s. Never mind, there’s the gas-ring — which might run out of gas while I’m away. Talk about a rock and a hard place. The thing is to get moving and back as snappy as possible, before she can miss me.
I fish under the dashboard for the wires and get the engine going; it roars on the night street like a clap of thunder — I’ve got my foot down too hard out of nervousness. I ease it off and I’m away. I hate leaving her alone with a wizard ghost, but what can I do? My hands slip like butter all over the wheel.
I’ve driven quite a distance to a different part of town and then I regret the distance, it’ll take too long to walk back. How much petrol? I glance at the gasometer and that reminds me of the all-night service station. They’ll sell batteries, maybe candles and bottled gas, I might have enough for a Gaz lamp — I milked a money machine before we left Wellington — I knew I couldn’t get money out up here, credit cards give you away, point the finger.
I don’t drive right up to the pumps, I don’t want the numberplate sticking out, the cops can’t be that clever, but you never know. I search along the back seat and in the glove box just on the off-chance the owner’s left a hat or jacket, something I could disguise myself with. A dirty old car manual, a map, nothing useful. But then I see something fallen down beside the gear shaft: a pair of cheap half-mast reading glasses like you get in a chemist shop. Just the job. I sit them on my nose, hearing my silly laugh kick out of me. All I need now is the false nose and moustache.
It’s a woman who serves me — what’s a woman doing working in an all-night service station, silly cow? … I’d rather a man, women see too much. But this one’s half asleep, a big dozy butch lady she is, with her eyes like snail shells, and the bloke up the end he’s got his nose in a comic.
The plastic bags are quite heavy: I thought I’d better get milk as well — a child needs milk — and bacon for my father’s frying pan, I’d seen it there hung belly to the wall in the kitchen. So now I have to drive some of the way back in the direction I came, otherwise I’d be all night walking and my bare feet are rubbing in my shoes. I ditch the car in a side street, in the company of other cars, it won’t stand out until they take off for work or wherever. I’m lost. Concentrate. I concentrate, sucking my tongue for inspiration, and then I’ve worked out where I am. Farther away than I’d intended but not an impossible walk to the shop. I set out with the gas bottle banging on my knee and my big toe rubbing in my shoe. After a while I think of Jania. I think of her pitching down the stairs and crying out and the bird squawking like a parrot. I think of my canary dream and the canary dream is having a fight with the squawking parrot nightmare in my head. I start to run, an awkward sort of run but no one can see me. I hope.
WALLACE
I HAVEN’T SLEPT very long and already I’m awake, the light’s beginning to pick out shapes in the kitchen; I’d had a feeling tomorrow morning was chasing me on the street and now it’s found me. I can’t have had more than an hour’s sleep. Jania’s eyes are shut. I think. I peer in the mucky light, it’s darker by the bed, and in the end I have to get up off my sofa — not a comfortable sofa — and bring my face down close to hers until I can hear her breathe, in, out. Supposing there had been no breath, supposing she had died in the night, anything’s possible. But she’s breathing; I give a deep sigh. I haven’t forgotten about AIDS. HIV is AIDS, isn’t it — or will be. I wish I’d listened to the guff on it while I had the chance, there was this programme on TV but it was so depressing I couldn’t stand to watch the whole of it. I’m not afraid of catching it, I don’t know why. They say you can’t catch it from ordinary daily contact, I do know that, only from venereal contact. Is my contact with Jania venereal? Venus is love, right? Blood is dangerous, I know, but I shan’t let her bleed, if she did — say she fell down the stairs — I’d bandage her carefully, but for her sake, not for me. I don’t care, you see. That’s the point. I’m lucky because I don’t care. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen next but I know there’s danger whatever I do. People like me, we have no right to live in the world, but how many ways are there out of it?
Jania’s starting to wake now, she can feel me looking at her, people do feel eyes on them, I’ve felt eyes on me often enough. I ask her if she slept all right, although I know perfectly well she’s slept or she’d have been in a panic when I came back with the supplies from the service station.
“Is it morning?”
“Just about.”
I check out the kitchen drawers for utensils, the cupboards for cups and plates, as if this is a holiday motel we’ve moved into. It’s all there, everything we need, there’s even some of Mother’s bottled fruit, he must have taken it from her pantry years ago, she wouldn’t give it to him — or would she? Some of his books have gone from the wall of shelves behind the empty TV trolley, there are gaps and the piles lean sideways. The fridge has gone, which is a real shame, the milk won’t last as long as it should, but we’ve got a Gaz lamp now and the ring for cooking and candles and batteries and the box of tins, mostly beans from my own kitchen. Suddenly I feel snug, it’s the feeling I used to get in the night when I was a kid and reached under the bed for my secret box of favourite things: the torch, playing cards, Enid Blyton, biscuits pinched from Mother’s bridge club. I feel this snugness again and I give her a happy smile, it’s working out so far.
“Are we going to the beach today?”
“We’ll see. I’m going to make us some breakfast first. Beans and bacon.”
I swing the heavy frying pan off the wall. “All right?”
“I didn’t clean my teeth. It’s in my bag.”
“Right!” I lower myself on to the stairs. “I’ll fetch your stuff up. And Joey. Joey will want his breakfast. Wait there!” I call. “These steps are too steep, you have to remember to hold on or you could slip.”
“I won’t slip.”
When she comes back from the bathroom she complains that the water’s cold. “The hot won’t come.”
“Oh dear! I hadn’t thought of that. Still, cold water’s good for you.”
She looks a bit down at this as if hot water’s an essential in her life, but then she smells the bacon and perks up. I try to keep her happy because I know I’m going to have to disappoint her again about the beach. Why does she want to go to some old beach and my made-up family, what’s so great about a woman and a nine-year-old girl? I’ve lied about these two so convincingly I nearly believe them myself. I’ve made Sharon/Janice into an older version of Jania, but we don’t need another Jania here and we certainly don’t need some slut of a wife, some slut of a mother fouling things up. I say, “I’m afraid we can’t go to the beach today, not today, I just looked out of the window and …”
Her round eyes fix on me, waiting. Is she expecting a hurricane, a tidal wave or what?
“Someone seems to have stolen
our car. It’s gone.”
“Our car?” she echoes, and I like the “our”, it has a friendly ring to it.
“Yes. Our car.” I say it again, sucking on the “our”. “Gone. Some cheeky car thief.”
“Have you phoned the policeman? You have to phone the police.”
“There’s not much chance of getting it back in a hurry. They’re too busy with other things down at the police station. Besides there’s no phone here. But we’re all right, aren’t we? They’ll come here, Janice and her mum, they’ll come looking when we don’t turn up — all we have to do is sit tight. She’s got the Landrover, my wife has; you’ll like the Landrover.”
Janice folds her hands in her lap. “I think I’d like to go home.”
“Now?”
“Yes, please. We could walk to the train station.” I think I hear a bit of a shake in her voice.
“We could. Don’t you want to go on holiday then?” I’m fighting a shake in my own voice, it’s important she doesn’t hear this.
“Well …”
“There’s a whole lot of stuff downstairs you might like to play with, clocks and toys.”
Of course, I don’t know if there’s anything left in the workroom at all. “They used to be my toys but I wasn’t allowed to play with them.”
“Why not?” She sees the silliness of this right away.
“My father made them for me but he said I didn’t deserve them, I was too stupid and too naughty.”
“Were you really naughty?”
“Not really naughty, but I was naughty enough, you know how grown-ups can be.” My voice gets stronger because she’s sounding like herself again.
“Did you chuck your dinner?”
“I can’t remember, I might have.”
“And run away?”
“Oh, yes. I ran away.”
“I’m naughty, but I’m allowed to play with my toys. You should have made up your own toys. I make things up; I made up a whole city. I’ve got some of it in my bag. Do you want to see? There’s a Rawleigh’s man, too, I told you, he’s a peg really, a green peg but I stuck this face on him, a paper face.”
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