True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  ‘Stop.’ Katrina shook him. ‘Stop crying, you’re making yourself sick.’

  He burrowed his head against her. In the next room Sharna began to cry. Basil’s coughing subsided, but his breathing was loud and spasmodic.

  ‘Jealousy,’ said Minna. ‘Here, have something to eat.’

  Basil shook his head.

  ‘Okay. I don’t know why I bothered in the first place.’ She opened the rubbish tin.

  ‘Minna, don’t.’

  Minna’s foot paused on the pedal of the bin, her hand poised. Basil’s face was beseeching as his mother interceded.

  The child stretched out his hand, taking a sandwich, his throat working in small swallowing convulsions before he had bitten into it.

  ‘Did you give him some of the syrup I got?’

  ‘Of course. But it’s a bit early for it to do any good.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have sent him to school.’

  ‘The doctor didn’t say. Anyway, he’s home now.’ Katrina nuzzled into Basil’s neck smelling him, her mouth hovering over his skin in open-mouthed kisses. ‘He tastes like tears,’ she said. ‘Like salt.’

  Minna was still, her eyes glittered. She walked over to the chair where they sat and picked up Basil’s hand, licked it.

  ‘It’s somebody who knows me very well,’ Rose said. ‘Someone who’s known me for a long time.’

  ‘You’re saying that it’s someone in the Party.’

  ‘What’s left of it. Yes.’

  ‘It could be anyone in the electorate. Not necessarily a member at all.’

  ‘You mean one of the suffering masses? One of the marchers?’

  Morris Applebloom uncrossed his legs, and recrossed them, leaning his head back on the wall of the motel. ‘The march is off,’ he told her. The room smelled of both old and new disinfectant, and cigarette smoke; the television with the sound turned off stood winking in the yellowish embossed corner; outside the sign clinked on a chain that suspended it from a crossbar. Only one other unit in the motel appeared to be occupied and already its light was out; Rose’s unit glowed like an aquarium in its isolation.

  ‘Where have you been for the past two days?’

  She shook her head, looking around as if not quite believing what she saw, although it was she who had arranged the meeting here.

  ‘You know the police are out looking for you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be naïve. You make me angry when you behave like this. You’re living very dangerously and you want me to do the same. What do you think it’s cost me to come here?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about money.’

  ‘No. Does Sarah know you’re here?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t. She thinks I’m in Wellington … seeing Kit. I think.’

  ‘You’re playing double games, Morris. You’re a fucking hypocrite.’

  ‘So’s everybody who goes near this Government. But we still have to live. Rose, the economy’s stuffed, the regions are being squeezed to death. The Minister of Finance thinks they can survive without employment. Every damn thing that anyone’s tried to start round Weyville has been stymied by junk imports. I know, because the bank carries the can for them. How many unemployed do you know that could run a small business? Could you?

  ‘Shut up, I know. I bloody know.’

  ‘Okay, so what are you doing holed up in a plastic and candlewick motel this side of Taihape? Waiting to flag the trains through? Writing jokes for sweatshirts? I Spent the Afternoon in Taihape? They’ve done that, Rose, you’re too late.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Don’t shout. I don’t want the management in here.’

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t.’

  ‘I’ll stop them too, so don’t try it on with me, Rose. I don’t want to be here.’

  ‘Then why did you come?’

  He scratched his nose, examined a nylon carnation in a container, and appeared to consider the matter.

  She really did want to know. She supposed it was because she had put him on a spot. It seemed as absurd to her that she had rung him, now, as it must appear to him. The further she drove, the more she wished that she had not. All day she had driven this way and that, down the Desert Road, branching off at Waiouru, back towards Ohakune, then doubling back, always with Mt Ruapehu in sight. She had almost encompassed the mountain since she left home. When he arrived at the motel, she had tried to explain how frightened she had been in the hotel the night before when she had stood holding the dead phone. It was harder to explain why she had thought of him as the safe person whom she might call, a sort of old reflex. Perhaps he would know.

  By the time she arrived at the motel she had convinced herself that he would not come. Even so, as she waited, she could not help picturing him gliding through the countryside towards her at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour in his smooth and silent Renault Turbo.

  Eventually, almost jubilant, she had decided that it was definitely too late. When, finally, he did knock on her door, he had been angry.

  ‘What are you doing about the state of the nation?’ she asked now, to break the silence. ‘Playing the right hand off against the left? Or is it the other way round? You always liked to please everybody, Morris.’

  ‘Trying to work the system, what’s left of it. And if that means milking Kit Kendall, and paying him off, that’s too bad. I didn’t vote for Thatcher’s New Zealand, but that’s what we’ve got. And the rest of the Government sits and tells us it’ll be all right tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and it never is because they don’t know what to do. So I do what I can. I’m even sorry for people I don’t like. God help me, I’m sorry for Larry Verschoelt.’

  He got up and poured himself a glass of the wine Rose had chilled. She had offered to make a meal. ‘I can cook up a steak,’ she had said, knowing he wouldn’t want to be seen eating out with her even if there was anywhere to go, but he claimed, impatiently, that he had eaten. He walked over and poured wine into the motel tumbler she was holding.

  ‘And what does Kit do?’ He stared into the wine without expecting her to reply. ‘He sits on the backbench and wrings his hands and says how sad it is and jumps when the whips tell him to jump, and votes the way he’s told. And when caucus meets he moves whichever way will most easily save his hide.’

  ‘Is there a plan to stop him getting selected again?’

  ‘Does it matter? Yes, I suppose it does, you wouldn’t have any good works to do any more, would you Rose? Not that it matters, the Government’ll go down the tubes anyway.’

  ‘Well, that’ll be a relief for everybody.’

  ‘You know it won’t be. That’s not what we wanted. Or would it be for you?’

  ‘The only relief I’ll get is when these phone calls stop.’

  ‘Oh yes. Back to the subject of Rose.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t even begin to imagine. I’ve even wondered if it was you, Morris.’

  ‘Me? That’s ridiculous.’ For the first time since arriving at the Sparkle Inn he looked genuinely astonished.

  ‘The phone goes ping when I’m making dinner, just like it used to, that winter when I was seeing you. Only this time there’s no reason for the person at the other end to hang up. I don’t have to hide from Kit who’s thinking of me, because he’s not there. This person doesn’t want to talk to me, he only wants to frighten me.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a him?’

  ‘You sound like Toni … Did a woman slit my dog’s throat? What woman? Hortense? Is it Hortense? Belinda?’

  ‘It’s not Belinda.’

  ‘Oh, so you know something about Belinda? Have you got something going with her?’

  ‘No I haven’t. She’s got other things on her mind.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Lyle Warner.’

  ‘You’re kidding? Well … how about that. Poor old Toni.’ She considered the matter. ‘Then again, it could be Toni herse
lf… Is she that good an actress?’

  ‘That’s, oh, that’s stupid too. Preposterous.’

  ‘Why is it? She knows me well enough. In fact, Toni was the only person who even knew I’d left town. Well, there was a boy that came to the house.’ She broke off. She had forgotten Jason. Her head couldn’t accommodate so much confusion. Things had seemed clearer during the day; now the muddle was coming back, as bad as ever.

  Morris was watching her. He looked troubled, less angry. ‘I don’t think it’s Toni.’

  ‘Nor do I. Not really. Morris, nobody in the world knew I was at that hotel.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  She hesitated again. ‘Well … I don’t know. A man called Ellis Hannen saw me down the road. You don’t know him. He used to know us, my brother and sister and me, when we were young. He might have seen me go in there. But it wouldn’t have been him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because … oh, because I know Ellie Hannen.’

  ‘So do I. He runs a bank account.’

  ‘It’s too big a coincidence.’

  ‘Although I don’t know him well enough to call him Ellie.’

  ‘I haven’t talked to him in years. I hadn’t really talked to him since the night I met Kit. God knows how many years ago that was.’

  ‘So he does know Kit?’

  ‘Morris, it isn’t him.’

  ‘But it might have been, just that once. He might have seen you go in, and thought, I’d like to see Rose Kendall again, for whatever reason, though I must say he doesn’t seem your type Rose, and given it a shot just that once. You see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘That it doesn’t have to be one person all the time? But it was the person who rings me. I know.’

  ‘You know the silence he makes?’ He pushed his fingers into his forehead, tired. ‘Or Hannen could have told your brother he’d seen you. An innocent remark.’

  ‘It doesn’t add up. Not a random meeting like that.’

  ‘Maybe there are some people you just don’t want it to be.’

  ‘So you think it’s in my family? As simple as that?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve thought till I’m going crazy.’ The refrigerator’s motor lurched into life, startling them both. She saw him glance at the phone, as if it might ring. She half-wished it would. But somehow, tonight, she did not expect it to, as if the caller would know that she wanted to prove a point. She shivered, recognising that not far from the surface the thought floated that she was being watched, even now. But how could she be? This time nobody, except Morris, could possibly know where she was.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘Did you let Kit know where you were?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He knows the house was broken into.’

  ‘What break-in?’

  ‘Shit. This is too complicated for me.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, you should let the cops know where you are, anyway.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me my house had been broken into.’

  ‘I thought you’d know. Though I can see now … well, I didn’t think of it, that you wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Toni.’

  ‘Toni. Jesus, Morris. Did you hear what you just said?’

  He stood up. ‘Okay, it could be Toni, but maybe it’s not, maybe it’s not your brother, but it could be either of them, or any of a few hundred other people. I don’t know who it is. I grant you’ve got a problem.’

  He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry about all this. You could go unlisted.’

  ‘I can’t. The electorate.’

  ‘I’d better get going.’

  ‘I know it’s not Toni. You see what I mean, though?’

  ‘It’s okay.’ His hand had stiffened on the nape of her neck; she didn’t know why.

  ‘You’re not going back to Weyville tonight?’

  ‘You don’t want me to stay here?’

  She smiled, a wan glimmer in the motel room’s ugly light. ‘We’ve stayed in worse.’

  She could analyse the exact moment when their affair began to end. I want, he said, after reading The White Hotel, to go away with you to a place as beautiful as that and sleep with you all night. I want us to throw our rings away and pretend we were never married to anyone else. The trouble was she believed him. Love was an affliction, like dying, something sensible people never wanted to happen to them, but it had happened to her. Conniving and telling lies and making arrangements which he seemed increasingly reluctant to fall in with, she had planned a weekend when they could go away and stay in the same town together. They would stay by a real lake. Their business would be legitimate, thanks to the machinery of the Party. Afterwards she would see how odd it was that she had made all the arrangements without his contribution.

  When it happened, it was not at all like he said. He clung resolutely to his wedding ring, did not tell her that he loved her, and left her near dawn, creeping out into the thin light of morning like any other adulterer. They did not part then, but later when their lovemaking had become at once more energetic and less kind. She had joined him in Auckland where he had gone on business. This was before Kit was elected. She had gone to his room and they had ordered room service, eaten and had a great deal to drink, and it was she who had left by midnight. In the morning he had woken with a hangover and been appalled by the squalor they had left in their wake — trays, dirty plates, bottles, strewn glasses. He rang her at her hotel before she returned home to tell her that he could not handle the worry of it all for the moment, perhaps they should leave things for a little while. The guilt was palpable in his voice.

  Of course, as a lover, she did not see him again, although for a long time they saw each other almost every day, at meetings, at parties, or when she visited the bank. Saying goodbye was a pre-emptive strike in a town like theirs. It had been an aberration of the tour, she told herself, when people fell into each other’s arms because they were frightened and their lives were in chaos and because, at the same time, there was that dangerous edge of excitement always there, the feeling that anything could happen. She wrote herself lists to comfort herself, steps to get through each day; at first instructions to fill the day between breakfast and lunchtime. Later, lists to run an election campaign. Then lists to run the electorate. One day she wrote a list headed: Factors influencing crisis of guilt (the woman — Factor X — hereafter referred to as she)

  the hotel’s exit was not clearly enough marked

  she wanted to have his baby

  his wife had got him to promise they would be buried together

  his dick might fall off

  (and/or he might catch thrush)

  his wife had started vegetarian cooking

  he had claimed to have seen Citizen Kane four times at Film Society and his wife wouldn’t wear it a fifth time

  she still wanted to have his baby

  he’s sensitive to condoms

  his wife’s sister had married an influential stock market analyst (Rose had seen Maud’s marriage in the gossip columns)

  his wife wanted to have his baby

  she had told her best friend why she was so thin lately

  she could see how it was her fault

  They both led exemplary lives as far as she could tell, certainly she did. If anyone had asked her, and nobody, not even Toni, did, she would have said that their affair ended not when he woke ashamed in a hotel room, but when he had first promised her a glimpse of something lovely. Not just of pleasure, which was relatively simple, but of that certain danger. Of something Katrina had understood, but she could not.

  ‘We’ve been drinking and it’s late. There’re two beds.’ She indicated the twin beds in the long concrete-walled room.

  ‘There are three,’ he said walking to the door of the second room.

  She sat with her hands in her lap. She had already examined the double bed, turning the sheets back and running her fingers over the linen t
o make sure it had been aired.

  ‘You stayed in my head longer than you were meant to.’

  ‘You never left mine,’ he said.

  ‘I was never in it.’

  ‘Oh yes you were.’ They looked at each other. He looked away first.

  ‘Sex is a very moral concept for you, Morris.’

  ‘No, love is. You couldn’t share it, you’re not that kind of person. You want everything.’

  ‘You’re talking shit, Morris.’

  He was loosening his tie so she guessed he would stay. She continued to sit still. If love was an affliction it was beginning to seem like a pale one. It occurred to her that she could sleep in one of the single beds under the same roof with him. Great step forward for womankind. She tucked that away for future reference.

  ‘I’ve got a red in the car,’ he said.

  Not bad, if I can say no she thought while he fetched the wine. A pity the body felt more feeble, more full of longing, than the head. She wished she had given herself more time to decide what she wanted. As if all these years had not been enough.

  ‘We should be watching Casablanca,’ she commented on his return.

  He smiled without replying and opened the wine.

  She said, ‘Then you could say, Play it again, Sam or something like that.’ He had brought cheese and some grapes. Just like a travelling fucking deli she thought. Mind your language Rose Kendall it’s too much you’re just too tired for any more.

  ‘It’s a cult, did you know, like old-time Gothic, how many times you watch it. Some people see it hundreds of times, did you know?’ Her voice seemed to babble on from a long way off.

  As Morris handed her her glass, he said, ‘I have to ask Kit’s help to arrange something for me when I see him next. Oh it’s nothing much. A building permit, actually.’ He smiled, self-deprecating. ‘But you must see that I couldn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t what?’ She heard herself laugh. ‘Oh that. Whatever made you think? As if I would. A misunderstanding.’

  He sat on one of the twin beds unlacing his shoes. ‘God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Rose,’ he said.

  ‘He thought he was doing himself a favour but he did me one, Ellie.’