by Ian Wedde
I can tell that our friend Beardy’s one of those people who were all for tearing down ‘the old pile’, and most of them also get agitated by all the attention paid to heritage buildings at the expense of amenities, such as support for St John’s Ambulance in his case I imagine.
‘Modern?’ he says, still looking at me with those hard eyes above his ‘smile’. I find I’m squeezing Nigel’s ankle quite fiercely, and so I relax my grip. ‘I suppose I mean, is it still any use to anybody?’
Nigel closes his eyes and gives his foot a little wiggle inside my hand, as if we’re cheating at cards.
‘My brother lives in one of Martin Klepka’s houses,’ I say, looking the rude bugger in the eye and feeling a coup en passant opportunity presenting itself. ‘It’s alive.’
‘It’s?’ The teeth stay bared.
A nasty fart smell fills the back of the ambulance.
‘Sorry.’ Nigel’s whisper’s almost inaudible, and if you hadn’t heard him earlier you wouldn’t know his lips then make the little arse-puff shapes of ‘Polenta Pasticciata’. But then he raises his voice above a whisper and says, ‘Smells like something just died,’ and twitches his foot in my hand again.
Always my best partner, dear man, but too unpredictable for bridge, and really he liked the chit-chat and trying to find ways to cheat more than the game.
Then we’re in the ambulance bay by the Emergencies Department and Red Beard and Penis Head are getting Nigel on a gurney. His eyes are closed but I think he’s pretending. The expression on his face is like the one he gets when he’s looking at an object or a building he really doesn’t like.
‘Oh dear!’ he’ll say any minute now, but of course he doesn’t, and all at once I’m terrified he’s going to die right here, in this pale corridor that smells of floor cleaner, instead of in somewhere like Mil-aa-no, or out at the dear old Mission vineyard, eating the food he loves and having a few glasses of wine and a gossip. Or sitting on the little terrace of his nice unit with its big planters of blue-flowered rosemary for the bees, in summer, that is—please let Nigel have another summer here, when the sound of the sea is that chalky blue again, and the sound of the cards being shuffled is like little turquoise waves falling on the pebbles.
Off he’s going at a fair clip, pushed along by an orderly, and Penis Head puts his hand on my arm as I’m about to follow. Red Beard’s banging the rear door of the ambulance shut again. He’s not smiling anymore or whatever it was his teeth were doing inside that gross hedge.
‘Get a cup of coffee, mate,’ says Penis Head. He’s quite shiny and smells a bit like bergamot. ‘The triage nurse has to check your friend out. I mean in, sorry.’ His whole head goes beetroot-red. His hand turns me firmly in the direction of the café. ‘I’ll tell them where to find you,’ he says, quite kindly. But then he adds, ‘If you’re needed.’
Hospitals are places where everyone has a job to do except the patients and people waiting to see them—the doers and the hopers. The girl by the till in the café seems to be stranded somewhere between the two—it takes her a while to see me, even though I’m standing in front of her. It’s only nine in the morning and already she looks as though it’s time to go home. But then, maybe she’s been on a night shift. I want to tell her that she should unbutton the top of her uniform and ease the pressure there, then I realise it’s me that’s feeling cramped up.
‘How far have you come?’ she asks, checking out my walking gear.
‘From Napier,’ I say, without thinking. Then I hear myself and laugh, expecting the girl to get the joke, but she doesn’t. ‘In an ambulance,’ I say, knowing I’m about to start crying because of the laugh, and then I do. ‘With a friend,’ I say. ‘He had a heart attack.’
The girl’s got the loveliest complexion, old-fashioned peaches and cream, and the most beautiful big blue eyes that she’s spoiled with too much mascara. Her hair’s lovely, too, the palest of amber, and it matches a little spray of freckles across her cheeks. All at once that not-quite-here look disappears from her face and she comes around the counter and puts a big soft arm around my shoulders.
‘Just take it easy, girl,’ she says. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’ Then she does something quite wonderful. She knows that I’m going to say I haven’t got any money with me, so she gets in first. ‘Don’t worry about paying now,’ she says. ‘You’ll be in visiting your friend before you know it.’
She finds me a table by the window and goes back to the counter, only to return with some paper napkins for me to mop up with. She gives me a pat on the hand. She’s got a big diamond engagement ring on her marriage finger and a greenstone one on her thumb. Her nails have coral-pink nail polish with that glitter stuff included. It’s like she’s trying to work out how to be whoever she is.
How can some people be so kind and others so mean? What I can’t tell the lovely girl is that I wasn’t with my mother when she died. I felt so useless, just like now, nothing I could do, only that was well over twenty years ago while I was in Venice where the Italian side of Mum’s family came from, with wee Sophie, who was too young to know how to deal with me when we got the news about her gran.
‘Hang in there, girl,’ the girl says. I’m sixty-two and she’s, what, twenty at a pinch.
I’m off sugar but when the girl brings me my cup I put two good teaspoons in. The strong sweet stuff reaches all the way back to that misty place where a couple of old wooden jetty bollards gripped together by a black iron band with a length of orange rope hung over a rusty hook on the side stood up in front of the grey silk moiré expanse of sea with the towers and cupolas of Venice disappearing in the distance. It was all so clear, even though it was misty. I was seeing everything at once. The smell of the sea wasn’t quite fresh, nor was it unpleasant, it was just like the atmosphere, like breath after sleep. Sophie ran down after me from the hotel and found me by the edge of the grey breathing water. Of course it was evening back home and morning over where we were. Mick and Sandy had waited until they knew I’d be up before they made the phone call. I loved the sweet pistachio ice cream they had in Venice, and the morning pastries with shaved almonds and lemon icing, and the little coffees that a teaspoon of sugar thickened. I still had the taste of the morning pastry in my mouth where my tears were running into its corners. She was only seventy, my lovely little mother. I wasn’t there, and what was worse, she wasn’t here in Venice where she’d always said she’d take us one day.
First Dad, now Mum.
The lovely girl comes and sits down with me. ‘How’s it going?’ she says. ‘I’m off now, done the early opener. You going to be okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘You get a bit of a shock, is all. It’s brought back a few memories.’
‘Like what?’ she says.
‘Go home,’ I say. I pick up her hand, the one with the big diamond engagement ring on it. ‘He’s a lucky young man,’ I say.
She leans in close with those big blue over-mascaraed eyes. ‘He’s the sun, moon and stars,’ she says. She gives my hand a squeeze. ‘And he makes me yell my head off, if you know what I mean. Luck-y me.’
I watch her tired bottom push out through the cafeteria doors—her hem’s pulled round a bit crooked, the backs of her flatties are trodden down, and it’s only then that I notice one leg’s slightly withered and she walks with a bit of a gimp. But her hair catches the neon in the corridor and she turns the corner like a sunrise.
Because of that one thin leg next to the other nicely rounded one, the girl is like two people trying to work out how to be together in the same life-body. It’s not real to say you love someone you’ve only met across a café counter, but I feel choking love for the kind girl with the sun-moon-and-stars fiancé, mostly because I hope she’ll work out how to be a whole person. So far she’s making a good job of it.
Isn’t that what we’re here for—to ‘take care’? Isn’t that what the Volunteers are doing? What the hospital’s doing? What the ambulance jokers are doing, even that smar
t-aleck Red Beard with the smile-that-isn’t? What Mum and Dad were doing for Sampan years ago?
After Sandy broke the news on the phone he said, ‘She should have been there,’ and then stopped. There was a continuous crackling noise on the line as if the words he’d said were scraping themselves through a tunnel towards me. ‘She . . . there.’ What did he mean? The words scraped through me, they cut me in half, I couldn’t work out if I was the ‘she’ who should have been ‘there’ with Mum, or if the ‘she’ was Mum who should have been ‘there’ with me and her granddaughter Sophie.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. I had to push the words past a great swelling in my throat. The polite hotel man who’d called me from the dining room to the phone was tidying things on the reception counter and chatting to the young woman there, who was looking at him with a flirty you’ve-got-to-be-kidding expression. The man was very handsome and sleek, with the kind of skin tone that makes a white shirt look special, but he had the longest eyelashes which he was lowering with a quiver, and he was making a pout with his mouth, as a result of which he looked like a dick. The world just beyond me didn’t connect with where I was. ‘Do you mean I should have been there?’
‘No, Vero,’ Sandy said patiently, ‘though that would have been good. I mean, she’d have loved to be where you are.’ Even then he had that fruity voice that makes you feel talked down to.
‘When she died?’ I waited a moment. ‘She’d have loved to die in Venice?’
There was another long pause during which, as well as the crackling, I could hear those weird noises Sandy makes with his throat when he’s on the phone. Then they stopped.
‘Just let us know if you need a hand with anything.’ That was Mick’s voice, flat and a bit raspy as usual. ‘Just get on back here kiddo and take care of yourself.’ Then he hung up.
Unless he’s angry, you can never tell how Mick feels about anything from the sound of his voice. He might as well be talking over his shoulder to the pump attendant at a service station, saying something like, ‘Fill her up, regular,’ as he walks inside to the cashier to buy some smokes as well. But I like Mick’s voice a whole lot better than Sandy’s. Back then, what Mick had to say was fine: come home, take care. The only trouble was, I still couldn’t sort out the ‘She . . . there’ thing. Plus I was angry. Then I felt Sophie’s little head on my chest. I could smell the hotel shampoo in her hair, something a bit cinnamony, or maybe that was what they’d sprinkled on her morning hot chocolate. She was crying too. The poor kid was only nine going on ten. She still has that lovely fresh parting in her crazy hair, though it’s got a tiny bit of grey in it now.
‘Nanna should have been here,’ she said, though she hadn’t heard the phone conversation with Sandy. ‘She’d have loved to be here with us.’
Then things got back into focus, here. Of course it was simple. But Sandy’s words had made a little rip in me, they’d torn something. I’m feeling it again in the cafeteria where a few people with no job to do except hope are sitting around waiting for the moment when that might change, when they might be taking care of someone besides themselves.
Get on back here and take care of yourself.
Or did he mean, Take care of yourself and get on back here?
Not that it matters.
He’s a total ratbag, Micky, but at least you know where you are with him. Trouble is he doesn’t have a clue where he is with himself. Except perhaps in the place he likes to jeer at—the ‘haunted house’. His smoker’s laugh.
How can you forgive a father for putting that kind of a hold on one of his kids?
It seems I’m ‘not needed’ at the hospital after all, says the crisp girl at Reception who’s busy watering a potted palm with a little pink, long-spouted watering-can like a toy surgical implement—‘Thanks for your patience, Mrs?’—but I don’t bother to leave my name, and when the taxi driver tries to make sympathetic conversation it’s as though time has sped up and his words are gone before I can shape my mouth around an appropriate reply.
When I get home and go inside for money to pay for the taxi, Pete’s sitting at the kitchen table looking pretty much as I’d expected he would. Those blue eyes spoiled with pink, and a fair bit of blotchiness around the cheeks. He lifts his cup of coffee to his lips as if to delay what he has to say, which will be an apology. His lips quiver down to the hot coffee, and his cup’s none too steady either.
I find my purse and go out to the taxi before he can speak. When I come back he’s got to his feet and prepared his speech.
‘You all right, Ver? What’s up? You’re pretty late.’
Me late?
I can’t be bothered with what I know’s coming next. Pete’s got his charming puppy look on.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, before he can begin to find an elaborate way of saying he’s sorry without meaning it. ‘Nigel conked out by the Aquarium. I went with him to the hospital.’
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘How is the poor old . . . ?’
‘Believe it or not he looks a lot better than you right now, Peter.’ Peter is none-too-subtle code for shut up. When you’ve been together for thirty-seven years, you don’t need to spell such things out anymore.
Pete sits back down at the kitchen table with his coffee. I feel like saying, ‘So I don’t imagine you’ll be getting in to work today,’ but I don’t (a) because he never does after a bender, and (b) because then he’d have to explain that he’s feeling stressed about the business, he just lost the plot for a moment, and he’s very sorry, won’t happen again (in brackets, for a while anyway). Oh, and (c) we needed to rethink the business model (in brackets, in the bar at the Waiohiki Golf Club and, presumably, somewhere else for the rest of the night after they shut around six-thirtyish).
The Asians stopped coming to the Bay after 2008, the Germans don’t want to look at Art Deco buildings, the Americans always know better, the gannets are only interesting for half the year and three of those months are the dud season, there’s only two variations on a vineyard visit (drink/don’t drink), and look! Here comes the firm’s Co-Director, CEO and Marketing Manager, Peter ‘Bullseye’ Dartworth! Responding swiftly to yesterday’s fully expected phone call from the bank re cashflow and loan repayments with an urgently scheduled strategic meeting!
Shut up, Veronica! I say to the niggly voice in my head. Next thing it’ll start telling me all about what happened, when I wasn’t even there.
When the Co-Director and Accounts Manager wasn’t even there.
Shut up.
Pete’s in the spare room ensuite having a shower when I go out. He’s acting blasé by singing Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance’ in that nice karaoke impersonation voice he’s still got, and for a moment I want to go back in and either blow him a kiss through the steam and tell him not to worry, we’ll sort the business out, it was only a shot across the bows from the bank—or.
The or makes my heart do a giant thump, and something puffed-up rises into my throat. There’s a flush over my whole body, the like of which hasn’t happened for a few years.
Or what?
I get into the car and sit there pointing down the driveway at the road with my hands on the steering wheel. Then I have to wipe the perspiration off my top lip, so I get a tissue from the glove-box.
Or tell Peter about the fling I had in Venice back when Sophie and I went, the year Mum died, twenty-six years ago.
‘Twenty-six years,’ I say to the steering wheel, not with the making-it-up voice in my head, but with my own real voice, the one that tells the truth. Maybe now’s the time.
Poor old Pete, says the voice in my head.
‘Bugger poor old Pete,’ I say aloud, and start the car. Poor old Pete’s a damn fine salesman, he could sell wooden leg liniment as they say—he sold himself to me good and proper and no complaints then, and no complaints about Sophie, none about the fun times, which were many and lasted a while. But now the talent’s been pissed away and the charm’s something he has to tune up in the shower, where
he’s probably taking a leak down the plughole at the same time.
What makes people worth preserving?
The flip-side of that question is, What makes people worth calling in the wreckers to? When they’re ‘past their use-by date’?
It comes to me quickly, then, as if the thought’s been waiting quietly outside for me to answer the door. Of course I knew the thought was there. It’s been there for a while but I wasn’t quite ready for it.
It is: I can use my share of the Klepka Trust funds to buy Pete out. Then he can wreck himself if he wants to. But I’m not bailing the company out while he’s still pissing down its plughole. No matter how often he edges that suggestion carefully across the table at me, with his winning look. The full sensation in my throat and chest is still there—the or thing—and it’s why the door’s open now for my Plan A to walk in and for Pete to walk out if he wants to.
I open the door in my mind and watch what happens again.
I tell Pete about Venice, he does something or not, I buy him out of Bay Tours, I rebuild the business, or not, but I don’t chuck my only free capital at it while he’s clinging on.
Maybe it’s past its use-by date, ha ha.
Something like fresh air or sunshine comes in.
Who’s opened the door—in fact, who’s also just entered with neat, confident steps, the click of good leather shoes (a sexy sound), along with Plan A, is the man who said, in the hotel lift, with a courteous hand on the small of my back, ‘You don’t haff to if you don’t want to,’ and, ‘I’m sorry about the cigar. We Chermans.’ But I did haff to, and the cigar was fine.
Frankie looks up from her computer as I walk in and says, ‘Goodness me, Veronica!’ She pushes her glasses down her nose and gives me the once-over with those eyes that know how to keep looking patiently at the same old customer questions (‘How long does the tour take?’ ‘An afternoon.’ It’s in the brochure, read the fucking thing). ‘You’re looking refreshed,’ she says, a bit archly.
Actually, it didn’t take an afternoon, it took a fair bit of a night, while Sophie was asleep, I hope, in our room a couple of doors along.