by Gee, Maurice
John’s street is near the grammar school. He never went there, the poor devil had to go to Helensville District High. Some of the school bits in his memoir are wrong and I’ll have to see he gets them right in the biography. The teachers’ nicknames were, it’s true, Itchy, Slimy, Snarler, Butch, but the teachers themselves weren’t like that, not exclusively.
‘I should have asked Margot before I told your mother about Wells.’
‘It’s too late now. I like that – Wells Fargo.’
I wonder if she would like Sidgy bouncing down the steps with his penis out. It mustn’t be told – but one day must, when we are dead. When I am dead and Margot is dead. And what about Fiona and Sal, how will it affect them? Their children will be far enough removed to get some excitement, pleasure perhaps, from the knowledge that their grandfather committed a murder. Will it interest them more than his poetry?
But how it wrenches his life round when I say ‘murder’. It makes him face in another direction. I shiver as I look at John Dobbie’s house. How much will the little man find out?
There are bow windows, blind in the sun. There are two fresh-painted steps to a porch, where a stained-glass rose grows in a port hole. Everything is clean and clipped. The brass door-knocker is a lion with all his fierceness on display.
John Dobbie comes scuttling round the side of the house. He has a gnomish crookedness and lurch. Where is the Elf?
‘Jack, don’t knock. Come this way.’
‘Alice sent us, John. Are you -’
‘This way, quick. She’ll hear.’
He takes us, plucks us by our clothing, round the corner and down the side of the house. A wooden shed stands by a vegetable garden with straight rows of everything that grows in early summer. He peers along the back wall at the kitchen and we see a hand in there, polishing a window pane with a yellow cloth.
‘Inside. She can’t see anything in here.’
‘Who is it John? Alice has been phoning.’
‘1 phoned too,’ Fiona says. ‘Someone hung up on me.’
The shed makes us stand too close together. We breathe on each other, but John is so short his breath warms the base of my throat. He’s not the John, the Elf, I have known for thirty-five years. I have never seen him without a tie, or seen his hair disarranged. It is thin and elderly and does not add three inches to his height.
‘It’s my wife. They’ve sent her back.’
‘Where from?’
‘Carrington. She’s been in Carrington since 1973. They’re – it’s a new policy – they’re making them go and live outside.’
Like Rex’s his life is wrenched around. There has always been another Elf. I have been too lazy knowing him. Hair, tie, pouter chest, self-importance, pomposity – I’ve taken that as the whole of John and written him full of mistakes.
‘They shouldn’t do it, Jack, it’s not right. There’s a woman comes round and says how nicely she’s getting on. But she’s still mad. They don’t see. I think they must have told her that she had to help, so she polishes things. That’s all she does. She cleans the windows over and over, all the time. I can’t work. I haven’t done any work for more than a week. And I can’t get out. She might burn the house down, she might tear up all my books.’
‘John – ’
‘I can’t telephone. She comes and snatches it and polishes it. She’s big, Jack. She’s bigger than I am. She won’t let me answer.’
Fiona says, ‘I’m going to see her.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll be all right. I’ve been handling disturbed people all my life.’ She walks along the path to the back door. The yellow cloth stops circling on the pane.
‘Fiona knows what she’s doing,’ I say uncertainly.
‘But Eve’s so huge. She’s huge, Jack. She nearly punched my eye out once, before they put her in Carrington.’
‘They can’t send people out if they’re dangerous.’
‘Yes they can. It’s money. There’s no money to look after them.’
I hear Fiona’s voice, falsely cheerful; and listen so that I can run and fling my weight in there, against the woman I still see as tall and marble-throated, Artemis-like.
‘She never talks. She doesn’t hear voices except on the phone. They say I should introduce her to my friends. They’re mad, Jack. They’re as mad as she is. She eats flies.’
‘What?’
‘She hits them with the fly swat and picks them up and eats them. I told them. Do you know what they said? She’s cleaning up. They said she’d stop if 1… I can’t be patient, Jack. I’ve got my work. This book is the only thing I’ll ever do.’
‘Get someone to watch her. Hire a nurse.’
‘And pay with what? I haven’t been on a fat salary like some people I know. I’ve still got a mortgage on this house.’
I tell him that Alice will help. If she wants her book she’ll have to pay. She’ll pay for a private nursing home if that is what Eve needs. Stephen Wilkey has got money to burn. I make these promises to keep from thinking about flies. ‘When you’re ready I’ll come and talk to you. I’ve got all this stuff about his childhood you can have. But you’ll have to see Margot yourself.’
‘Do you really think she’ll pay for a nursing home?’
‘She will for the book. Get an agreement. Make it for the length of Eve’s life.’
‘John,’ Fiona calls from the back steps. He goes out with some of his old bounce. I follow him into the kitchen and we find Fiona and Eve at the table, polishing the cutlery with Silvo.
‘All she needs is company,’ Fiona says. ‘You’ve got to do things with her, then she’s all right.’
‘1 can’t -’
‘You don’t have to, I will.’
‘She shouldn’t have knives.’
‘I’m watching her. Do that spoon again Eve, you’ve missed some Silvo on the handle.’
The woman obeys. I can’t, for the moment, get closer than that. Her dress, her hair, say ‘woman’. I can’t see the farm girl, and can’t see John’s wife. There’s a person overflowing the kitchen chair. She turns her collapsed face at me and turns it back. The knives and spoons on the table are too small for her hands, which have ballooned and rounded on their backs. Her nails are swallowed in flesh – but I won’t go on: body, face. A catalogue of swellings and slidings-away and discolorations: no point. If she’s anything she’s more, she’s other, than these ruined parts. I must believe in a continuity for her mind; in the presence of Eve Dobbie in some vestigial form.
‘Hallo, Eve.’
She takes no notice, works on a spoon.
‘I’m going to stay a while, until you get something sorted out,’ Fiona says. ‘She’s OK at polishing but not at other things.’ She means the dishes in the sink, the grit and dust on the floor, the filthy stove.
‘She won’t let me do it.’
‘She will me.’
‘Jack said Alice might pay for a home.’
‘Is that what you want? How long has she been inside so far? She likes it here.’ Fiona grins. ‘She’s got her own kitchen.’
‘My book – ’
‘You can lock yourself in. The book must go on, after all. Or else you can take a taxi and work over at Mum’s. She’ll pay, don’t worry. She’ll hire a Rolls for you if you like.’
‘You’re not serious?’ I say to Fiona. ‘Staying here?’
She starts a smart answer, then sighs. ‘1 don’t know. For a while. I need something to do.’ Grins again. ‘We can’t have John going mad. One’s enough, eh Eve?’
The woman is watching a fly on the sink. She reaches for the swatter leaning on the table leg. Fiona doesn’t know about the flies yet.
‘I’m going,’ I say. ‘I’ll keep in touch. Bye, Fiona. Bye, John.’ I give a skimpy wave and get out the door. She probably wants me to fetch her stuff, but she can phone Alice and have it sent around by Rolls. I’ve done all the helping I can do. Must get away. Find ways of containing Eve, with her diet of flies; and J
ohn, whose book on Rex Petley is all he’ll ever do. Fiona too, who takes them on to cure herself, must be contained.
Although it takes me out of my way I drive through Verona Avenue. I’ve got my father and mother sorted out, they weren’t too hard. They should have tipped me upside down and cracked me at least; but here I am enlarged by Walter and Dorothy Skeat (although perhaps only in proportion to the shrinking they once caused). So I’ll manage these later ones without much trouble.
That leaves Rex.
Rex and Ralph Murdoch and Margot and Sal (and Harry and Jack)
Margot said: ‘Come this afternoon.’
I drove though Albany and Riverhead and through the forest backroads to Waimauku. The sea was half an hour away but when I wound my window down the smell of baked earth and dried-out ditches was mixed with salt. I wondered if Margot’s wine had a salt flavour and if the creek ran deep enough for Sal. Heat shimmered over the dunes at Muriwai. The vineyard, concave on its hill, was green and tender. The micro-climate seemed to make breezes of its own.
Margot opened the gate and waved me through. I stopped in the yard and looked at her dogs.
‘What are they?’
‘Ridgebacks. You can get out.’
‘I’m nervous of big dogs. I always expect them to attack.’
‘That’s how I feel about some men I have to pass.’
She was cheerful and hostile equally. It was up to me which would take control. I got out of the car and let the dogs sniff my trouser legs.
‘Ben. Mac.’ She snapped her fingers and sent them behind the house. We shook hands, looking at each other cautiously. She did not expect to please me or I to please her. She was brown, grey-blond, muscular. I liked the smell of sun and earth on her. I don’t think she liked my suburban moistness.
‘Come in, Jack. I want to talk before Sal gets home.’
‘Where is she?’
‘School. She’s in the third form. She’s thirteen.’
I had thought of the vineyard as not connecting with the world. School set me right. School blouses dried on the washing line.
‘Hold on, I brought you something.’ I reached into the car and took it from the seat. ‘Halva. For you both. I don’t know …’
‘Yes. That’s lovely. Sal’s never had it. She’s in for a treat.’
I walked behind her into the house. She wore shorts and a halter top and sandshoes. Her hair was cut level with the angle of her jaw. Nothing was designed for show. (I don’t say there’s virtue in it, just that she’s congruent with her way.) She took me into a room that was kitchen and living-room both – sink and bench, table, chairs, settee, mats on wood – and offered tea.
‘I’d rather have some of your wine. Just one glass.’
‘One’s all you’ll get if you’re driving.’ The bottle had no label. I hoped she saved her best for the guests, but was disappointed when I drank – too fresh, too grapy.
‘That’s good.’
‘It’s getting better. I’ll never be one of the great wine makers.’ She did not take any herself but ran a glass of water from the tap. I would have liked some water to thin my wine.
‘You’re using labour now, though,’ nodding up the hillside at a man working in the vines.
‘Yes.’ Flat. Dismissive. Not my business. I wondered if he replaced Rex with more than labour.
Margot slid her shoes off, using her big toe against each heel, and pushed them away. ‘You’re up in Auckland permanently.’ She leaned against the sink and crossed her ankles. ‘So I heard.’
‘Who from?’
‘Tony Jameson. He comes out for that.’ A nod at my wine. ‘He gets it cheap.’
‘Ah, Tony. I met him on the beach. He’s got – ‘But I wasn’t ready. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier. I’ve been writing some memoirs.’
‘About Rex.’
‘Mainly. Yes.’
‘I had a phone call from a man called Dobbie, who wrote that book. He wants to come out.’
‘When was that?’
‘A month ago. I told him no. He said he’d ring back but he hasn’t.’
‘He’s had a hiccup. He will soon. Margot …’
‘There’s all sorts of things to say. Take your time.’
‘Alice is behind John Dobbie. It’s a full-scale biography and she wants to make sure he writes it her way. Her Rex.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘So you’ll have to talk to him, and tell him you and Rex, out here …’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Otherwise they’re going to get it wrong.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You talk to him. Make sure they do his boyhood right.’
‘Margot, I told her. Alice. About Wells. I shouldn’t have. But not’ – seeing her face – ‘about Sidgy. I’ll never tell that.’
‘Is he in your memoir?’
‘Yes, he is. I had to, Margot. I’m not going to publish it. I had to get it down for myself. The whole thing.’
‘Will you let me see?’
‘If you like.’ I smiled and swallowed from my glass. The wine burned and was truthful. Perhaps it was just my enormous relief – to know I had been writing for her too, that it wasn’t solitary and wasted and turned in.
‘I’m sorry about Wells.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Someone would have found out one day.’
‘They can’t find Sidgy.’
‘He’s in a lot of Rex’s poetry.’ She turned and looked out the window, past the corrugated iron shed and the vines. She tipped her glass of water over her hands and let them drip into the sink. ‘So are you.’ She dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘He said you always wanted a poem, for Jack.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘But you were there so you didn’t need one, he said.’
‘Margot.’
She was smiling privately. ‘Mm?’
‘There’s something else they want to put in. Alice does.’
‘About me?’
‘It’s about you both, more or less. She thinks, they think, Rex meant to drown himself out there.’
Margot turned back to the sink. She put her hands on it and rested her weight. Her calmness seemed unnatural to me. ‘I can see how it would suit her,’ she said at last. She sighed and went to sit on a chair at the table. ‘I suppose you want to know too, Jack?’
‘No. Well – yes. If you can.’ I swallowed. ‘It’s my fault, all this. I told them I didn’t think Rex would ever get as careless as that, on the sea. And then, Lila and Tweet were hiding something. I don’t know. Rex had no need. I know how happy he was here. But there are things that don’t fit in.’
She listened gravely. She widened her eyes as if to see something she had not meant to look at again. ‘You’re right. He was never careless.’
‘No.’
‘Rex was a professional fisherman.’
‘Yes.’
‘He went out there to see if it would happen. To see if it had to, I mean.’
‘I don’t understand … I’m sorry, Margot. If you don’t want …’
‘He left me a letter. It’s mine’ – seeing me start – ‘no one can see. But he said, “Jack knew Tod. You can tell him if he wants to know.” I think he felt you knew about Sidgy, so this …’ She shrugged. ‘Everyone thought Rex was simple. They didn’t know how complicated he was.’
I said, ‘Tod? I remember Tod.’
‘Most people don’t. He’s a shape-shifter.’ We heard the squeal of a tap outside, and the sound of water. ‘Come here, Jack.’ She crossed the room to a side window and beckoned me. The man from the vines was at the rain-tank, letting water run into his hands. He was intent; and he was, somehow, breakable: bony in his shoulders and skewed in his neck. I saw his Adam’s apple work as he drank. He had enormous gravity. When he had finished drinking he washed his face. He turned off the tap and stayed bent, letting water drip into the puddle on the ground. He rubbed his palms on his shorts and pulled his skin dry, forehead to chin. Then h
e picked up a cloth hat from the edge of the stand and set it on his head. The sun-flap covered his neck. It was like a cupboard door shutting him in. The ridgebacks watched. They moved several steps after him as he walked into the vines.
‘That’s him,’ Margot said.
‘Tod?’
‘Ralph’s his proper name.’
‘He didn’t look …’ But that had been a skinny boy. I’d flipped him half a crown and taken little notice of his face. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He works. He lives over there, in Rex’s old shack.’
I watched him go up the hill and fit in among the vines and bend to his thinning. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
Margot had gone back to her chair. ‘We used to say a breakdown, didn’t we? I guess you could say he’s broken in bits. And he’s mine until … I inherited him. Until he puts himself together, if it ever happens. I wouldn’t have him here without the dogs. Not with Sal.’
‘You mean …?’
Margot laughed, without humour. ‘No, not after Sidgy. No little girls. Although I guess … You must know about him, Jack.’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Ralph Murdoch. It was in the papers.’
‘Tod’s name was Scahill.’
‘His mother married again. The kids changed to the new name. Don’t Alice and them know about it?’
‘He kept the two families apart. And Tod was never in Petleys anyway.’
‘Yeah, that’s true. I wasn’t going to talk about this, Jack. It was something else I wanted you for.’
1 went to the sink and ran water into my glass. I would have liked to wash my face, like Tod. My need to know had broken a sweat out on my cheekbones.
‘It isn’t just curiosity.’
‘Shall I make some tea?’
‘Is this rainwater?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s good. We had tanks. So did Rex.’ I tried to explain ‘Petleys’: how it was Rex’s affective world, which he must keep safe, and how his poetry came from there, even when it seemed to be about something else. I demonstrated my right to know – and perhaps went on too long, for Margot turned away. Her eyes – blue, have I said, and too small for ‘good looks’, in a face rounded overmuch in the forehead and cheeks – had a watery sparkle. She said with some spite, ‘He always said you talked too much.’