The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  And still our eyes kept straying towards Danny. His eyes looked back not at us now, but rather, beyond. The hands, veins swelling along their backs in blue cords, quietly threaded finger over finger. Then he would stop and the stillness was frightening. But worse, as the motion began again, the fingers binding, binding together, faster, taking on a methodical rhythm.

  The hours in that room stretched ahead of us like forever.

  After about half an hour, Danny got up and walked towards us. Still the eyes looked beyond, but when he spoke it was in the quiet, courteous voice we had always known.

  ‘I cannot go on today,’ he said. ‘I cannot go on.’

  He left us, drifting aimlessly out into the morning. We sat on in uneasy silence, tense and mindful of the fact that the rules forbade us to leave the room during the examination. We just waited, waited for something to happen. Something big, something momentous, I suppose, maybe retribution.

  It didn’t. Not really. Soon the minister came over from the Manse to continue our supervision. The four of us looked at each other for long moments, until we could no longer bear it. I picked up my magnolia from the desk, and placed it in the ink bottle, watching as the slow process of osmosis began. The others nodded, following me, then came the release, hands and minds moving, really moving at last, pens racing, breaths fluttering with the effort to regain time; flying, nothing but clear space ahead of us.

  We never saw Rad Barclay again, and I have not presumed to judge him, because to do so might be, at once, both more and less than he deserved. As for all of us perhaps.

  But as for me, sometimes, in dreams, bad dreams, like last night after Phyllis had been here, I dream that I was the person who was responsible. In waking, I fear that it may be so.

  The Last Shot

  EVER SINCE HIS RETURN FROM VIETNAM, Murphy had been unhappy. It was an insidious thing. Sometimes he blamed the family, because it involved his conscience less. Other times, when he was being honest, he blamed himself.

  Heaven knew, that, except for his sister Rose, the family had tried to make his home-coming easy. Poor Rose. She had married the hired man who’d come to take Murphy’s place on the farm while he was away. Naturally she wanted the farm to be big enough for them all when he came back, but with Murphy and the old man, there wasn’t enough work for a third. Rose and her husband had had to go sharemilking inside a month of his return. There were some hard words said, and they stuck. Once his sister said to him with bitterness: ‘Why did you have to go away at all?’

  To which Murphy had looked hopefully back into their childish past and said: ‘Remember how we used to talk adventure talk, when we were kids?’

  But she’d only drawn herself tightly together, with a cold hostility which did not recognise the old games.

  You couldn’t altogether blame Rose though, Murphy thought. One had to respect her feelings a little. Then there was the old man, who was often bad-tempered, but who’d made the best of his going away. Even though it was hard on him at the time, he’d tried to see it Murphy’s way. The fact was, he was proud of the gaunt Sergeant who came home. And there was his mother, who fluttered round organising homecomings and making sure there were plenty of girls available at them. That was fair enough, too. If he got married it was a first-class insurance policy against his going away again. Certainly, at such gatherings, he was a hero and this was very pleasant. No need to make a speech about the nightmares.

  Later though, when nothing happened, his mother began to side with Rose, as mothers usually do with daughters in the long run, and they’d ring each other. ‘It’s not natural,’ she’d say.

  ‘I like a man to be married. It’s the decent thing.’ First to Rose, then later to her friends. But it was her way, he wouldn’t hold it against her. Women were so unpredictable about how they care for a man, that you could hear them say one thing and believe another, he thought.

  No, the trouble really lay in himself. He would lean over the gate at the milking shed in the early morning and think dourly about the spirit of adventure which had moved him to strange places without ever properly satisfying him. The jungles of Vietnam had been an experience. They should have brought an end to the old plaguing restlessness — but they hadn’t. It was over, that war, for him at any rate — but it had not served its purpose.

  So here he was, each morning, him and the old man and a herd of ninety cows. It was difficult to be involved. Butter fat figures and mastitis in a cow’s udder were small problems compared with the excitement he craved.

  Sometimes, later in the day, he would hurtle the tractor towards seemingly impossible heights, as if through frightening himself he would shake his lethargy. But it was as if the tractor knew every furrow in the valleys so well that it controlled itself of its own accord. Or, perhaps, in truth, his handling was trained so surely to meet any demand this familiar landscape might place in his path, that he could not falter.

  And so things continued until one morning after milking when his father said: ‘There’s a cow down in the swamp.’

  ‘Is she bad?’ Murphy asked.

  ‘Broken pelvis,’ his father said.

  ‘Want me to shoot her?’

  ‘If you would.’

  ‘Never did like it, did you?’ said Murphy.

  ‘Nobody likes shooting their cows. Money down the drain,’ his father answered in a gruff way.

  Before Murphy had gone away he’d shot a lot of cows; their own if need be — other people’s if they didn’t feel like doing the job. His job was always clean and he didn’t feel too much about it.

  On this morning he took his shotgun to the swamp, and was discomforted to find that it was a cow which, after all, he did care about. No matter what, like every farmer, Murphy knew each cow in the herd and some he had an extra feeling about. This cow was oldish and a hard one at calving time. He’d helped her through it every year since she was a heifer, except while he’d been overseas. Her pelvis was weak from the annual struggle; now she’d broken it when she went down in the swamp.

  Murphy shot her five times to be sure she was quite dead. But it was a long time since he had shot a cow and he felt badly about it. He went away quickly.

  Around ten o’clock his father came to tell him that the cow was not dead.

  Murphy took his shotgun and went back to the swamp. It was as his father had said. The cow was not dead, though not very alive either, except for one velvet eye. The other one was closed with blood, but this one eye looked solemnly at him and he didn’t like it at all. He didn’t want to shoot her again because when he had shot at her before she had been in agony but now she was peaceful. To conjure up her pain anew was unthinkable.

  He sat down and rolled himself a smoke. The place was thick with arum lilies. He didn’t care much for them but he’d heard folks from the city say that there was a goldmine there. ‘Airfreight them up to Auckland or further south where they’re really hard to grow,’ they would say. ‘These are worth money.’ Well, he could just see himself out picking lilies.

  Near midday the cow blinked at him with her one eye and writhed. Murphy flew into a great rage and started blasting shots around. He needed that cow to die because he didn’t want to watch her any more. But in his rage he didn’t hit her — and the cow lived. Now the heat of the day was upon them and Murphy knew the cow was suffering but did not have the strength to show it. He knew, too, what he should do, but he could not.

  ‘This is it,’ he thought. ‘I am at the crisis, the bursting point. Tomorrow will be another day and I will know.’

  He looked around the familiar landscape. ‘Either I stay or I go. It’s as simple as that.’

  As simple as that. The jungle hadn’t got him the first time. He’d let them have another go — maybe.

  It depended upon what he did with this beast. If she died on her own, if she could get on with her messy functions of breathing or not breathing; of her heart beating or not beating, without any help from him — then he wasn’t needed. If she c
ouldn’t do it on her own, well, he’d have to think about staying. A simple matter really. Whether or not one was needed.

  Around three, the old man came down to see what was happening. He stood for a long time looking at his son and at the cow and for a while he said nothing.

  ‘Son,’ he ventured at last. Murphy said nothing. ‘Son.’ Still Murphy said nothing.

  So this, the old man thought, is what it came down to: his son and a half dead beast. But at least, even if the terms were not clear to him, they had, finally, been laid down.

  So at last he said uncertainly, ‘Hope it turns out all right son.’ And he went away.

  After he’d gone, Murphy started to watch the cow more intently than ever. He was full of fear now, by turn wondering if he could bear the pain of leaving, then begging the joy of freedom. The animal’s flank would shudder and lie still for so long that the man, exultant, would believe her dead. Then a quiver would animate the carcass again — and with it his own doubts would be renewed.

  He looked around him. He would have liked to have drawn comfort from his surroundings, but they were nothing. Just this narrow gully he was in, green and steep, with a swampy stream along the bottom, today stagnating, as it did during the dry season; in the winter it would be a sullen muddy torrent. There were a few dead manuka trunks and everywhere the lilies, which he didn’t like. In fact, the more he looked at them the more heavy and cloying they seemed, like death.

  Death. He’d seen death — at close quarters. Never got him though. And that’s the way it ought to be, nothing arbitrary about death, just fate. Like this creature in front of him. Why should he decide?

  And if it were me? Yes, sure I’d like someone to take a decision then, to have done with me. But who? My mother? Rose? Ah no. The old man? Now there was something to wonder about.

  Afternoon wore inexorably on towards evening and he saw himself face to face with the man they called Murphy. Joseph, they had baptised him with the holy water, but it was a name he did not care for. Murphy they called him, like his father too. He looked awhile at this reflection and he didn’t much like what he saw — and he blamed the land he knew so well — for making him what he was, so that he longed for the cow to die of its own accord, so that he could be free and leave it all — quickly. But the cow regarded him with an implacable stare from one plum-coloured eye which would not close and as the sun, which that day had been their enemy, started to recede, the stakes became perilously fixed.

  Back at the house the old man was worrying; at five he knew that he could not endure the cow’s agony any longer, even if his son could. Besides, it was past milking time and he needed Murphy.

  When he returned to the swamp, he said: ‘How long are you going to sit there?’

  ‘Until six,’ his son replied.

  ‘That’s too long,’ said the old man. ‘The cow’s pain is worse. Shoot her.’

  ‘No,’ said Murphy.

  So the old man took the shotgun from him and shot at the cow. It discovered a last reserve of strength and thrashed around in terrible agony. Murphy’s father was near to tears (which was not like him at all) — so Murphy took the shotgun away from him and so to spare his father, he shot the cow.

  Now there was no doubt at all that the cow was quite dead.

  Murphy and his father walked back to the house together; as they went Murphy eyed the hills and planned the ploughing. Perhaps, before long, so that his mother might be pleased, there would be a woman, too.

  New Shoes and Old

  DAY AFTER DAY we’d waited for the rural delivery van, each of us pretending to the other that we weren’t. But you know how it is when you’re a real family and living close like we do at home, you notice what’s going on. The van came about half past eleven, and Dad and I would knock off on the farm around quarter to twelve, ‘to be in plenty of time for lunch’. ‘Well, I’ll bet Abe’s late today — old son of a gun’s never on time.’ We’d shake our heads in agreement, and know darn well he was always on time with the mail, unless there’d been a flood or a slip and then we would have known anyway.

  We’d wash our hands real slow at the tap outside as if we were taking our time, and saunter inside. In the first few months after my sister Queenie had left home for the big city, there’d been a few letters, so it didn’t matter when we said, very casual, ‘Any mail today Ma?’ because just sometimes there might have been.

  The last one we’d had had told us that a few of her mates were fed up with Auckland and that they’d heard Wellington wasn’t a bad place. They were going down to have a look around and she thought she might as well go along too, she could always come back if she didn’t like it, and in the meantime she was seeing more of the country wasn’t she? Ma wrote straight back and said stay where you are, you’ve got relations in Auckland, but the letter came back after a while with ‘Gone: No Address’ on it. I suppose she must have meant to write to us but just didn’t get round to it. Anyway, after a while we didn’t ask Ma any more.

  One look at her face and we knew right enough, though the lunch would be set up for us, and she wouldn’t have shed any tears. Maybe she did cry after lunch when we’d gone back to work, or maybe she did at night when she and Dad were in the big double bed together. Maybe she did, but I didn’t ask Dad and he didn’t tell me.

  Only on Friday when she caught the bus to town for shopping in Kaikohe she’d say sternly, ‘Don’t you fellas forget to pick up the mail.’ We never forgot.

  Saturdays, the little kids would be home and they didn’t have to pretend like we grown-ups did. They’d rush down to meet Abe, but after a while, as they were never lucky enough to run back to Ma waving an envelope and yelling, ‘It’s from Queenie, Ma,’ I think they went off meeting the van a bit, because going back to her without anything wasn’t so good.

  Sundays we would go to church; every second Sunday that is, because the minister could only come that often, and we’d kneel on the raupo mats in the hall, with the altar set up in front of it, cloth as white as purity itself and the cross bright gold. Ma would kneel there for a long time with her eyes squeezed tight together so that the creases looked as if they were round her eyes for good.

  It got so things were pretty quiet at home after a while. I’d had a few thoughts of my own but I didn’t say anything. Perhaps the old man could read my mind, or perhaps he’d been thinking along those lines himself for a while. Anyway, it just popped out one day when we were washing at the tap before lunch.

  ‘Reckon you could go to Wellington and look for Queenie, Heta?’

  ‘There might be a letter today,’ I said, putting off an answer. He looked grim. ‘I don’t reckon.’

  ‘You might do it better than me,’ I said. ‘They’d have more respect for you.’

  He looked at his big hands. ‘Nothing wrong with you, Heta boy,’ he said. ‘You’re respectable enough and you can talk to them better’n I can.’

  When we went inside he said to Ma, ‘Heta’s going to Wellington day after tomorrow.’

  The next day he and I took the old truck into Kaikohe, and we got my train tickets and a new suit of clothes. With the clothes went a squeaky, shiny pair of black shoes.

  We had to leave at seven the following morning so I could catch the train in good time. The cows had to be milked first before Dad drove me to the station, so we were up round four in the morning. Just before I left, Ma handed me a parcel.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Dad, feeling the paper. He looked at her as if she was clean out of her mind. ‘There’s shoes in here, we got him new shoes yesterday.’ And he pointed at my glossy feet.

  ‘They’re his old ones. He can use them to ease his feet. Could be he’ll have a lot of walking to do.’ And with that she turned away from me, hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, ‘Find my Queenie baby, Heta, find my little girl.’

  So I looked for her for a week. That’s how long Dad had said I was to stay. What he could afford. He pretended he meant in terms of money, which was partly tr
ue, but also he was afraid that the cities, having claimed one child, might claim another, and he couldn’t afford that either.

  I went to the police and I can’t complain about the way they treated me. They even found out for me that Queenie’s job in Wellington had been on the telephone exchange, but she’d left there a long time ago. They wished they could do something for me, the police, and told me to keep in touch for as long as I was in the city. I went to a welfare lady and she was very good and seemed just about as worried as I was. We got in her nice car and drove around miles of streets, stopping to knock on doors of old apartment buildings and I showed Queenie’s photo to the people who answered the doors. They all shook their heads.

  The rest of the time I just walked, looking, looking, into faces — Maori faces, Pakeha faces, men, women, children — not sure any more of exactly what I expected to find, just hoping that one of them might look like my sister, my little sister, Queenie.

  Little sister? Well, she was the first born, our Queenie, and once long ago, she had looked after me, guiding me past rushing streams, keeping me away from the drains, not letting me loose in the bull paddock, when I was a really little fella; all those sorts of things, and boxing my ears when I gave her cheek, telling me to shut up on the school bus when I interrupted her and her girlfriends, and telling them to shut up if they said it to me, adding, ‘Hey you dumb sheilas, leave my brother alone or I’ll thump you.’

  Now I’d come to look after her. Walking round and looking. Changing my shoes often, putting the good ones on for when I was talking to people. I went into the Maori meeting hall down the bottom of Lambton Quay one night and they were practising action songs. They were flash city Maoris come from work to their clubrooms, dressed in slick suits. They had lots of trophies for their good singing and I felt shy. Then one woman got up, not so smart as the rest, and I heard the throb, the waiata I knew, true and clear, and I nearly cried. After she stopped singing I showed her the photo, but she shook her head like all the rest. I went outside and she followed me, to find me sitting in the bus shelter across the road. I was crying good and hard. She was pretty good to me, said her name was Wai, and would I give her the photo and she’d ask around. I said no, because I needed it to help me in my search, but I’d send her one when I got home if I hadn’t found Queenie, so we exchanged addresses on the back of an envelope I had in my pocket. She said, ‘Come home, have kai at my place.’ I wanted to go, but it was the last night and I was frightened to stop looking.