by Pat Rosier
When Ann asks, “Who’s your favourite New Zealand poet, Dad?” he’s disconcerted, then embarrassed and doesn’t think he has a favourite, really, “though that doctor chappie is all right, Colhoun is it, and Dinah Hawken, she knows a bit about the things that matter. She’s got the right ideas for the Green Party. I wonder if she’s …. ”
Denis Glover, it transpires, is Keith’s favourite. “Arawhata Bill,” he says, “I like that South Island country, he gets that, and—call me old-fashioned—some rhyme and a bit of humour go down a treat.”
Ann opens her mouth to speak, but her father hasn’t finished.
“And you know, that magpie poem of Denis’s, that’s a lot of history in a few lines. Very clever. And he catches the heartbreak, right there, in a word or two.”
“Dad, I didn’t know you ever read poetry. Why didn’t you ever say ….”
“Nothing to say, girl, just your old father dabbling his toes in your field.” He couldn’t get into her Romantics, she gathers, too many references to things he doesn’t know about, so he stays with the local crew.
She takes the Dinah Hawkins collections and the Glovers to bed with her and reads the magpie poem, thinking of her father’s father and grandfather and the little she knows of their history. Arawhata Bill, the man and the poems, irritate Ann, but she won’t say this to her father, and returns to Diary To A Woman. Near the end she comes across a seven-line poem, “The Two Flowers,” that speaks of the rose and the lily, that prick and stink respectively, and ends:
Take life with both hands
Take dark blood, take foul,
Then use a towel.
At the final line she laughs out loud and longs to quote it to Suzanna, who is surely an expert at wiping up. And at taking life with both hands.
*
Ann has agreed to dinner out with Ex and wishes she had made it a coffee. At least it’s at a low-key place in Newtown; Paula is minding her pennies what with a big mortgage and paying for everything on her own. Ann had stifled a sarcastic reply. She can’t leave for the dinner on time because her car won't start until her father comes out with jumper leads and moves his car nose to nose with hers.
“You'll have not shut the door properly when you came back this morning’” He says, “I noticed that door doesn't always close unless you give it a good bang.” He’d used her car every few days while she was away to keep it charged up.
“Thanks, Dad, I'll remember that.” She drives off, noticing that she’s glad he’s got the Greens to think about and trying not to be pleased they’re leaving on their camper van trip in a few days.
Paula is ahead of her, at a table in the window, bottle of pinot gris open, menus on the table.
“You're paying,” Paula says. “I bought the wine and I'm on a budget.”
“Hello to you, too.” She looks the same as ever. Ann recognises the jacket, but not the shirt, and is disconcerted at her own apparent lack of feeling towards this woman she lived with, intimately, for years.
“Oh, sorry. Hi.” Paula never looks flustered. “How was your trip?”
“Good, all of it. Family, cities with art museums.”
“Family? You don't have any.” But she does exaggerate.
“Mum set me up with cousins and stuff. It was good.” Her family is no longer any concern of Paula’s. “I wish you hadn't gone to see my parents,” she adds, “when I was in London, and asked them all those questions.” Maybe Paula can look flustered.
“Oh. You know, I’ve known them for a long time, I'm not going to drop them just because we ….”
A waiter comes for their orders.
“Shall we share?” They always shared dishes at Asian restaurants.
“I think I'll have tom yum soup,” says Ann.
“Oh. Okay.” If she cries, I'm walking out, Ann thinks. Paula orders an egg noodle soup.
It isn't that she doesn't have any feelings for Paula, it’s that those feelings are in the annoyed, irritated, angry range.
“You were checking out what I was doing in London.” She didn’t mean to accuse, not really.
“When Kate told me … well she was vague and I thought your mother would know for sure ….”
“Know what?” Damn, she wants to be calm and cool.
“Well, if you were …?”
“And that’s your business because …. ?” This meeting is not a good idea. The soups come. It's hard to talk when you’re slurping from a bowl of hot spicy liquid.
“Look.” Ann's chopsticks and spoon are at rest in the empty bowl. “You went off with Julie and then you wanted to know what—if—I was getting involved with anyone else and you went and asked my parents. That made me mad.” She feels less angry for having said it.
“Oops! The wheels were falling off Julie and I by then, and I ….”
“No.” Ann remembers the crumpled note in a waste-basket in Paris. “When you left and my job vanished, I decided to change everything, so I sold the house. Okay, so you bought it, that was your decision. Then I went away, and left you and the house and the job behind. Forever. I got over you. It's none of your business what I did or didn't do in London and going to see my parents about that was mean.” She holds up a hand to stop Ex talking. “We have too many friends in common to be not speaking to each other, so please, let's be civil, but that's all.”
“That's all forever?”
“How would I know? Maybe one day, we'll be friends. But not yet, not for now.”
“I still care about you, you know. Julie was a terrible mistake.” Paula is looking at the table.
“I can't talk to you about that. I've got to go now, I'm helping my parents get ready for a trip.” Hardly, but it will do for an excuse. “Friends are for talking to now, not me.” Ann pays for them both on the way out.
Before the motorway on-ramp she pulls over, rings Athena on her cell phone and tells her about the meal. “Am I a heartless bitch?” she asks?
“I dunno. You were straight up with her, that's good. Face to face, that's good. Unless you've missed something out, you didn't shout abuse or call her names, that's good. You didn't do what she wanted, that's not good from her point of view, good from yours. What did you expect? ‘It's all right Ann, I know I did wrong and I'm sorry I ran to your parents.’ You expect to break up—I know I know, it wasn't your idea—without getting mad and feeling bad? Get real, woman.”
“Thanks, Athena. I know why it was you I rang.”
“It's good to know I have my uses.”
Shirley is washing their dishes, Keith drying. They seldom use the dishwasher for the two of them.
“You're home early, dear, did that go badly?”
“Not exactly badly. I did get cross, but I behaved myself, I think. No yelling, no swearing. From either of us.”
“That's my girl.”
“Not so much the girl these days, Dad.”
Tossing sleeplessly in her childhood bedroom, Ann wants Suzanna. The room is not as it was when she was a child, or even a teenager. All pink has gone, all ruffles and frills banished. The single bed was long ago replaced by a double to accommodate visiting couples, not that there are many who stay. Ann wants someone, wants Suzanna, in the bed with her. For the sex and for the company, the grown-up company. She picks up Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy. She’s reading it as a children's classic, but thinks the children who appreciate it will be teenagers. It’s well-written though, and that’s what she’s after, classics, mythologies, histories, fantasies even, that are well-written, that have big themes. Tolkein has been rather taken over by the hobbit movies.
Ann will take the trip to Auckland with her parents to share driving up the North Island with her father. After a night in a hotel in Auckland, they will pick up the camper van and she’ll fly back to Wellington.
First though, there is Mo's fiftieth, upstairs at Thistle Hall. Ann and Athena are organising the food, Julie’s doing the drinks backup to the byo—punch and mixers and soft drinks and jugs of water with
ice. Frances and Kate are organising a sound system and decorations and Rewa will MC and sing. There might be additional entertainments; someone is rewriting the words of Rhinestone Cowboy for the occasion. Paula will no doubt be there, but has declined the option of being involved in the organising.
How many people to provide food—supper, in its New Zealand context—for? Nobody knows. Some will bring a plate. Who? How many? No-one has any idea. Are there enough chairs? Probably.
“We’ll have contingencies,” says Athena. “Extra things to get out if we need them.” The two of them spend the afternoon making sandwiches with helpers dropping in and out, including Frances, who Ann has not seen since she got back. She takes a break and they sit on the stairs together. Frances talks about her new round of cancer treatments.
“It's all right,” she said. “Work is being good, I can take off all the time I need and my friends are great. My family is not so great, they want me to go home to New Plymouth and be looked after and have got in a snit because I won't. They'll come round.”
“Poor you.” They hug. “Call on me, any time,” Ann said, “You know I'm not working.”
“Bless you. I will.”
Sausage rolls arrive. Mo's special request.
“Every celebration I ever went to growing up in Featherston,” she’d said, “had sausage rolls and lamingtons. I'm happy to give up the lamingtons.”
The decorating team turns up with boxes of stuff, then the sound equipment. Mo is in and out and round about and keeps saying this is more fun than the party.
“Just you wait,” someone calls out.
At seven o'clock they lock the hall and go off to get dressed up.
“Your best glad rags, mind,” Mo orders.
Athena and Ann have a good time getting dressed. Jeans, a silver lamé top and high heels are Athena's choices, black trousers, a multi-coloured shirt and low pumps are Ann's. She refuses lipstick but allows a black line on her top eyelid.
They are among the first back at the hall, but by eight-thirty it’s buzzing. Some kind of organised chaos seems to be working. At the first bars of I Am Woman everyone races onto to the floor, arms pumping the air as they dance and shout out the words.
Paula is there, somewhere, she has come in with a woman Ann doesn't know.
“They met on the Pink Sofa,” says someone.
Note to self, thinks Ann, at a quieter time find out what the Pink Sofa is. There’s too much noise for real conversation, but Ann is warmed by the number of women who welcome her back.
“No plans,” she has to say quite often, “no plans for three months.”
It takes a few minutes for Rewa to get everyone quiet, even with the music stopped. She takes Mo by the hand and leads her to a chair at the front of the room, singing in Maori. Then she teaches them all the chorus, a simple four lines about a strong woman who is loved and admired.
“I need some friends,” says Mo, “someone come and be with me.” So half a dozen of them do, including a man, who turns out to be one of four male relatives at the party, her gay brother.
Rewa talks about Mo's work in the health sector and her regular lesbian radio programmes and involvements with many lesbian projects over the years. Others add their stories and the laughter is as loud as the music had been. Ann's feet are tired, so she sits on the floor by Mo's chair and feels her friend's warm hand on her shoulder.
Out comes the cake with fifty lit candles and someone turns out the lights. “Soon we'll have to have a candle per decade,” says someone behind Ann. Rewa leads them in singing happy birthday.
“Speech! Speech!”
Mo stands up and takes the microphone. “You all know I'm not much of a talker,” she says, “but thank you, thank you all for coming, and especially I thank all you wonderful women today who got all this organised. I am very blessed in my friends,” she says, and passes the mic back to Rewa. Tears are running down her face. She wipes them off with the back of her hand, jumps up and says, “Let the wild rumpus start!”
“Again!” shouts someone. And it does. Ann waves across the room at Paula, who waves back.
“Come on, you.” Kate is pulling her onto the dance floor.
Most of the extra food goes. The music stops at twelve and the tail end of the partygoers drift off. After a quick consultation they decide to clean up now rather than in the morning and set to. Mo has been taken off by her relatives.
There is no way Ann is going to drive to Lower Hutt at 2.30 in the morning. She falls gratefully into the sofa bed at Athena's.
I too am blessed with my friends, she thinks as she drifts off to sleep.
*
In the event Ann does a lot of the driving to Auckland. Keith drives from Taihape to Taupo, the Desert Rd stretch, and she’s glad of that.
“This is my favourite road,” she says, “even when the mountains are shy.” Cloud cover reaches almost to the tussock.
“Not much snow, if any, at this time of year,” says her father.
“It's the tussock I love, Dad, the tawny colours and the waves the wind makes as it passes over.”
“Look. Ann, Keith, look.” Shirley is pointing to the other side of the road from the mountains, where a small group of wild horses are running.
“You don't usually see them here. What are they doing so far from home?” Keith knows where they should be, further off, into the Rangipo desert. No-one in the car knows why they are here, but Ann likes that they see them.
Shirley and Keith want to go to the Sky City Casino for dinner. It’s only a short walk from their hotel where the valet parking bothers Keith, he doesn't like handing over his car keys to a stranger.
“It'll be fine, Dad,” Ann says. “It would be very bad for business if they didn't look after their guests’ cars.”
She goes with them for dinner and finds it ghastly. Cheap, buffet style, mediocre food, crass surroundings.
“Seeing we're here,” says Keith after they have eaten, “we might as well go and have a look.” He gets them each some chips. Ann shakes her head, she doesn't want to gamble.
“Oh go on,” her father says, “be a sport.” So she takes her chips to the roulette table and watches for a few minutes then puts half of them on the table and loses them. Half of what she has left goes down the plug-hole too. She puts the remainder into play without any thought and doubles them.
“Here, Dad, you do mine.” All lost.
Shirley was at the pokies. She comes back as they turn away from the table with two plastic cups overflowing with chips.
“Look,” she says. “I can see how people get hooked on those machines. Where do I cash these in?” She’s delighted with the one hundred and twenty dollars the cashier hands over.
“Well, that's doubled the money I paid out,” says Keith. “Time to go, eh?”
Keith’s car is satisfactorily returned in the morning. Hugging her parents goodbye, Ann says, “I love you, Mum, I love you, Dad.”
“Now don't be making a joke, Keith,” says her mother. “We love you too, dear, and don't you ever forget it.”
Ann catches the bus to the airport for an easy flight to Wellington and a quick connection with the airport bus that runs through Lower Hutt. She buys some smoked salmon, crusty bread and marinated olives from the supermarket in the mall where the bus stops, and walks the ten minutes home.
Dropping the supermarket bag onto the kitchen bench, Ann gets her last year’s diary from her room, turning back for Oh There You Are Tui! from the bedside table for reading while she eats. Back in the kitchen she turns to the diary page where she wrote Suzanna’s address and tears it out, ripping it in half and in half again, and again. Small pieces of paper fall on the floor and she sweeps them up with her hand. “Fare thee well,” she says, and, “Fare thee well,” once more, scrunching the pieces together in her hand. Using her foot to raise the lid of the kitchen tidy, she drops the fragments in, releasing the lid with a swift movement that makes it clang.
With bits of a gen
erous sandwich falling out of the french bread onto her plate, she opens The Dinah Hawken volume, reading under her breath, taking hold of the poems.
She’s well into the book when she comes to “Can I do It?” and reads the last two lines out loud, so they echo around the empty kitchen,
can I make the swift break
To wherever, on this long coast, I am going?
REFERENCES
Lines from Edna St Vincent Millay poem, “Ashes of Life.” Copyright 1917, 1945 by Edna St Vincent Millay. Find the full poem in collections of her poetry or at http://www.poemhunter.com Quoted with permission. Return to text.
References are to Emily Dickinson, poems 249, 254, 1767 in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, (ed) Thomas H. Johnson, Faber & Faber 1970. Return to text.
Lines from William Wordsworth’s, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” often referred to as “Tintern Abbey”. Can be found in collections of his poems, anthologies of poems by the Romantics, and online by searching the poet’s name plus the poem title. Return to text.
All quotes are from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Work Without Hope.” It’s not widely anthologised but an online search of his name and the poem title will find it. Return to text.
Painting, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, Pablo Picasso, 1907. At the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York. Widely reproduced in art history books. Find images online by searching the artist’s name + the painting’s title. Return to text.
Wordsworth, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” Can be found in collections of his poems, anthologies of poems by the Romantics, and online by searching the poet’s name plus the poem title. Return to text.
Painting The Milkmaid by JohannesVermeer, around 1660. Owned by Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. On exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Sept - Nov 2009. Find images online by searching artist name + painting title. Painting examined in detail at http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/milkmaid.html Return to text
William Wordsworth, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge.” Can be found in collections of his poems, anthologies of poems by the Romantics, and online by searching the poet’s name plus the poem title. Return to text.