by Fiona Kidman
‘All right then,’ said Jessie, pulling out a ten-shilling note, all the money she had to last her the week. Suddenly she craved to read again, and already she had chosen a pile of books: Sholokov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, a book of poems by T.S. Eliot, A Beginner’s Guide to Classical Mythology. She would finish the letter to her mother when she got back to the boarding house. Or the next morning, because had decided that tonight she really would tackle Violet about going home one long weekend. Violet must let her have some time off sooner or later. When she got back to her room, Marianne was packing her bags.
‘You’re leaving now?’ she said.
Marianne hesitated. ‘Kevin’s been transferred,’ she said. ‘I’m taking his room.’
‘Marianne, you said you were going to be an actress.’
‘What’s it to you? You’ve got a room to yourself, isn’t that enough?’
‘I don’t see how you can go on the way you are, that’s all.’
‘So you’re the expert on how one goes on. I heard how you and John had all your vital organs glued to each other at the wedding. That’s not fucking, Jessie, that’s making an exhibition of yourself.’
‘Where were you that night?’ said Jessie, flushing. ‘With Lou Messenger? Was it him who took your photographs?’
‘You snooping bitch.’
Marianne looked so angry, Jessie thought she might hit her. She put the books on her bed and edged towards the door. Marianne slumped down on her bed, her fingers knotting a small embroidered handkerchief.
‘He’s your married man, isn’t he?’ Jessie said.
‘He was.’ Marianne’s voice was miserable and small. ‘I see him all the time and he’s driving me crazy, or I don’t see him and that’s driving me crazier still. You don’t know what it’s like. I go and visit Evelyn because she still expects me to, asks me why I don’t come, and I make excuses, then I do go there and he’s not there. We sit round and make small talk, the three of us, Evelyn’s mother looking as miserable as sin, and me wanting to say, me too, I want to know where he is too, and Evelyn with that long face of hers, and her head that’s already left home. Evelyn wants me to go flatting with her in Auckland — she’s supposed to go and live in a women’s hostel but she’s not that keen. You know what she’s like, she can’t stand people near her, although she tries. She’d never have got through sharing a room like you and I have this summer. Besides, I can’t do that — it’s just another way of getting close to him. It would make me feel ashamed.’
‘It’s him that should be ashamed.’
‘Ashamed. Oh, Jessie, you don’t know half of it. He was one of my mother’s boyfriends, before she got her hooks into Derek.’
‘Marianne.’
‘There you go, shocked again. There’s nothing really shocking about sex, it’s just the way it messes up your head. You’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘I know that already.’
‘You’re kidding yourself. Still, I guess it’s nice to keep oneself for marriage, as Hester would say.’
‘I miss Hester. Do you think she’s all right?’
‘Hester? Of course she is. She’s got her heart’s desire. Lucky old Hester.’
‘I’ll miss you too.’
‘Like bloomers. I’ll just be along the passage.’
‘I still think you should leave.’
‘What about you? Do you really want to live at the Violet Café for the rest of your life?’ Marianne indicated the pile of books on the bed.
Jessie shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Oh well, Violet’s got you earmarked for John. Do you mind that he’s Chinese?’
‘It part of the attraction, I guess. He’s different. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with Violet. I’m in love with him.’
Marianne sighed. ‘Sure, you are. By the way, your stepfather rang. He sounds like a bit of an arsehole.’
‘Jock? Are you sure?’ A pit in the bottom of Jessie’s stomach was opening up. ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing much. You’re to ring him. Just do it.’
‘She’ll kill me.’ Meaning the landlady.
‘She’s out, she won’t get the bill for a month.’
The phone rang and rang in the house at Island Bay in Wellington, but nobody answered. Jessie had a quick image of wild sea thrown high in the air above black rocks, and remembered the rush of cooling air that followed the waves. Later in the day, she went to the Post Office and rang again, but still there was no answer.
Outside, the street was full of blinding light, the heat so intense that the edges of the street bled tar.
‘You need photographs, darling,’ Freda said, ‘you know, to put on your wall, to make you think of home.’
‘I’m not going that far away, Mum,’ said Evelyn, putting another pile of neatly folded cotton underwear in her suitcase. She was leaving the next day.
Freda slipped a pair of blue-strapped sandals in a paper bag and handed them to her daughter. ‘Oh look,’ cried Freda, pulling out a box of photographs. ‘Here you are with Daddy when you were just a wee thing and he was home on leave. It was just before he sailed back up to the Pacific.’
The child in the picture had dark hollow eyes and tight black curls. The man holding her hand wore a sailor’s cap tilted over his eyes. He had a cigarette in his mouth, a cavalier boyish stance. It was one of those matchbox-sized photographs, sharp and particular in its detail.
‘Did you take the photograph?’
‘I must have done, although there’s another one here of the three of us together, so someone else must have taken that.’ Freda handed Evelyn the second picture, and there she was at the end of the row, a woman wearing a hat like a porridge plate, white gloves and a tailored suit. She looked like the man’s mother. The child was holding herself against the mother’s skirt.
‘Would you like that one, darling? The three of us.’
‘I don’t know that I want to put my baby photos up at the hostel,’ Evelyn said, and then seeing the way her mother’s eyes clouded, she added, ‘Well, perhaps it would be nice. Thank you.’ She slipped the photograph into her shoulder bag. ‘I think I’ve done just about enough for now. There’s not much left to do.’
‘You’re not working tonight are you?’
‘I said I would. It’s extra money, you know. Did you have something planned?’
‘Not really,’ said Freda. ‘I just thought. Oh well, never mind. I’ll see you later.’
Thinking, of course, how she’d brought Evelyn this far, and how her life depended on her being there, and how this was the very hardest thing she had ever done, letting her go, sending her away. And it couldn’t be soon enough, because there was nothing here for a girl like her. Her father was no help, and the girl Marianne had outlived her usefulness as Evelyn’s only friend, now that she drooped all over the place mooning about her broken engagement. And that was not all, of course, but she could hardly hold the mother’s sins against the girl. Freda had thought that she and Evelyn would spend this last evening together, chatting and remembering, and looking forward. Somewhere, there lurked a small treacherous idea that one day when the moment was right, and Evelyn had become successful, she would slip out of town and join her, leaving all of this behind. ‘Are you seeing David?’ she asked, as Evelyn prepared to leave.
‘I said I’d have a coffee with him at the café, just to say goodbye.’
Freda wanted to ask if it that meant goodbye for good, but decided to leave it. Part of her wanted Evelyn to have a reason to come back on a regular basis, but another voice reminded her firmly that David, with his light transparent eyes, was too much like Evelyn to be good for her, and she had a suspicion that he might not be good for any woman.
Freda sighed as she picked up the photographs and began stacking them in the box again. She paused over one she hadn’t seen before, a recent picture, judging by the newness of the paper it was printed on. Her hands trembled as she sat and studied it.
Freda was not the on
ly mother worrying about her daughter. Across town the chill shiver of loneliness was scurrying around Ruth Hagley’s empty house. She hadn’t long come in from her day at the shop, and now she stood in the hallway, her hand poised above the phone. Why not ring Hester? She was her only daughter after all, and they had shared a home for twenty-nine years until that man took her away. This house would belong to Hester some day when she was gone. She pictured Hester in her white farm cottage with its silly small rooms, the old-fashioned coal range which, however Hester cleaned and shone it, it was still just a coal range, an instrument of inconvenience. The way Hester had all the curtains and shades pulled up, it was a bit hard to miss its imperfections. And didn’t she know that the new couch she’d bought would soon fade if it was left exposed to light? She had things to learn, that daughter of hers. Not that there was anything she wanted to be told. The last time Ruth rang, just that morning, she had heard a sigh of exasperation when she reminded Hester to boil all the drinking water out there on the farm. It was one thing to run a house in town, another for an innocent creature like Hester to look after a place in the country. Ruth thought of it as a dump, a rural slum, with hens pecking round the dusty backyard, and horse droppings along the fenceline that made her think of zoos. If she rang now, Owen would still be cleaning the shed, mucking out he called it, which filled her with distaste. He made excuses when Ruth rang. Just yesterday, he’d had the effrontery to tell her that Hester was lying down, and couldn’t come to the phone. You know how it is, he’d said, in quite an insolent way. Ruth supposed Hester was having one of her bad periods. Well, for that she was thankful, the worst thing she could think of, next to Hester leaving home, and her being all alone, was that that man, the uncouth fellow who was now her son-in-law, would impregnate her daughter at the very first go. The first go. Oh. The thought made her dizzy. All the arms and legs and bits that went into it, her poor child pinned down in those absurd rituals and embraces. No wonder she had to lie down.
Ruth’s hand hovered over the phone uncertainly and then she allowed it to fall on the receiver while she turned the handle and asked for Hester’s number.
Hester had actually had to lie down after a fit of weeping because, more than a month after the wedding, she had still not been totally deflowered by Owen. There was much sweating and straining on his part, and attempts at stoicism and not screaming on hers, but they had been unable to make all the parts fit together. A visit to Dr Adam was scheduled for the end of the week.
When Ruth rang, she said in a dispirited voice: ‘What do you want, Mother?’
‘Just thought I’d see how your day went, dear.’
‘It was fine thanks, Mother.’
‘I guess it takes a bit of getting used to, out there.’
‘It does.’
‘What are you having for dinner?’
‘I’ve made a chicken casserole.’
‘That sounds lovely. The one with cider and apple in it?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘My favourite.’
‘I know, mother. What are you having?’
‘Oh, I might open a little can of sardines.’
‘You need more than that. Have you got some salad greens?’
‘I didn’t think to get any.’
‘Bread?’
‘There’s some of that bread you brought in last week that’s still in the cupboard.’
‘Mother, I can’t feed you now. You have to do it for yourself.’
Ruth gave a small wail. ‘It’s all right, dear, you don’t have to worry about me now,’ she said. This was her moment to put the phone down firmly in its cradle.
A northbound bus passed Hester and Owen’s gate every evening around six. Hester had begun driving lessons in Owen’s pick-up truck, but what with one thing and another, they hadn’t been going well. Perhaps if she asked him when he came in from the shed, he would take her to town. If she pleaded with him, she knew he would, but she didn’t really want to ask anything of him. She hadn’t fallen out of love with him, not yet anyway, but she felt indebted to him in a way she couldn’t explain. Besides, he’d already taken her to town on three rescue missions since their wedding day, such a few weeks ago. She took off her apron and filled a bag with groceries. Outside, the stifling air crackled with sheet lightning. When she hailed the bus, it stopped for her. It was nearly empty and with relief she eased herself into a seat near the front. She remembered, too late, that she hadn’t left a note for Owen.
Wallace said Belle was a fallen woman and he didn’t know whether praying together would do any good at all. First, Hal came in and beat her with his belt until she was black and blue. Then Wallace put her across his knee and spanked her, but it didn’t make any difference. She had another man’s smell all over her and even Hal wouldn’t try to persuade Wallace to marry her, now that she’d been unfaithful, although it was clear that he’d like him to get her off his hands. Wallace realised now that there was something about Belle that had made him suspicious from the beginning; flirting was what came to mind. It felt now as if he’d been betrayed from the start.
Banks of cumulus cloud were building over the lake, each a collapsing catastrophe of swirling air and vapour. The water had turned purple and sullen as evening fell. It seemed dark, even for a late summer evening. Jessie had phoned again from the Post Office, got through to the house and spoken to her half-sister Belinda. The children were alone on the house. Why? Jessie had demanded. Where’s Mum?
And then Belinda had started to cry and said that their mother was at the hospital and Dad was there too.
‘Listen, Belinda,’ Jessie said, you must listen to what I say. Get a pencil and paper, all right? Now this is the number that Dad’s to ring when he comes home.’ She gave Belinda the number at the Violet Café and made Belinda read it back to her twice. ‘You have to give it to Dad,’ she said. ‘You have to tell him to ring me there.’
Evening at the Violet Café. The tables were full. The soup of the day was tomato, the fish terakihi and the special Steak Flambé, served straight from a sizzling pan and set alight with hot brandy at the table. Marianne and Evelyn were trying to teach the menu to Debbie, who would replace Evelyn as a waitress. Debbie was a sultry girl with astonishing ripe lips, the third of four daughters who lived with their father out in the western suburbs. Not a first choice for Violet but there seemed to be plenty of work going for young women that year — filing clerks, shop assistants, stenographers for those who had ‘done commercial’ at school, meter maids, veterinary office jobs (the young women loved those), library staff (for those who’d ‘done academic’), tourist guides, boat hands, forestry research workers (for those who’d ‘done science’) — so who could blame the young women of the town for taking jobs that offered more regular hours of freedom? Violet had a feeling Debbie might be lazy and would have to be shown that she was not allowed an idle moment in her employment.
All the same, when the café opened, Violet’s mood was still light, following her encounter with the butcher that morning. By way of entertainment she would have liked to tell John and Jessie that she was being courted because now she viewed them as a couple in whom she could confide, established senior partners in her enterprise. But while she was still turning over the wisdom of such intimacy, Jessie told her that she was expecting a phone call.
‘You can’t take calls here,’ Violet said. ‘You know that, Jessie.’
‘I have to. Please. My mother’s in hospital and I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’
‘You should have attended to the problem during the day.’
‘I couldn’t. I’ve tried.’
‘Really Jessie, I thought I could depend on you.’
‘But you’ll let me speak to my stepfather when he rings? You must.’
‘Well, I’ll have to see.’
Belle had come in, off song and out of sorts as well. Violet could see it was going to take all her will to manage this evening.
Earlier, Belle had met L
ouis Messenger in the pergola by the bowling pavilion in the gardens. She rang him at work — twelve-thirty, please come. She knew that Wallace was supposed to help his future brother-in-law out in his menswear shop over the lunch hour, because he was short-staffed too. She counted down the hours until lunch time, worrying that Wallace might not go, because she was being watched. But some sort of calm, a sense of resignation, seemed to have settled over the house, as if something had been decided. At twelve, he nodded briefly to her and closed the door behind him.
‘I can’t see you any more,’ she told Lou, when they stood squeezed in the pergola behind a screen of leaves. ‘He’ll kill me. You don’t know what he’s like.’
‘Then come away with me,’ Lou said. ‘You’re the first girl I’ve ever really fancied. I’m in love with you, honest.’
‘Lou, you’ve been with lots of girls.’
‘Of course I have, that’s how I know. I’ve never told a girl I loved her. Not until this minute, I swear. Look, my daughter’s leaving home tomorrow, so I can go now, I don’t have to stay with Freda, I never meant to.’
‘They’d find me, Lou,’ she said, trying to keep her voice low because a group of bowlers were going into the pavilion for lunch.
‘Who, who would find you?’
‘My father. Wallace. The Church of Twenty.’
‘You don’t believe any of that? It’s rubbish, they talk rubbish, they make up their own rules.’
‘Maybe, Lou, but if they got me … I can’t tell you. Can’t take the risk.’
‘You don’t know what you’re missing, how our lives could be. You’ve never had anyone else but that weird guy you’re with. Mad Wallace.’
‘Yes, I have,’ she said, ‘yes I have.’
‘I don’t believe it? Who?’
‘I can’t tell you.’ Her face on fire. And then, because he really didn’t believe her, she whispered a name in his ear. He shuddered and cried out in the hot summer afternoon.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not that. Jesus, Belle. I’ve got to take you away. You have to come away with me. Save you from all this.’