The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  And now tonight.

  ‘Fun and games all right,’ said Leonard. ‘None of them know what they want.’

  Valerie pushed her feet into her shoes and yawned without putting her hand up. Leonard shuddered. No really, it was impossible, the whole idea.

  ‘I’d better clear the Billingtons’ table,’ she said.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Vlado?’ Leonard asked the restaurateur while the girl was out. ‘You seem very depressed.’

  Vlado raised lacklustre eyes. ‘Tonight there is very bad news of trouble in my country. Can you see it? A young man at the prime of his life sets fire to himself. A burning flame in the city streets, a living torch. That is what he has called himself. Torch Number One.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You’ve heard of the trouble in my country?’

  ‘Oh yes, a little, but they’ve settled down now, haven’t they?’ asked Leonard uneasily.

  ‘Settled down! They’re just beginning. Me, I ran away. There would never be free spirits in my country again I told myself, I must be free. And then — almost — it looked as if they lived again, a whole nation, can you believe it, unfolding, waking in the spring. Saying, things will be different. But they are crushed. Troops come. The free spirits are crushed. Agreements, promises, they are only watching, say the troops. Watching! Pah! Watchdogs, waiting, subverting, waiting to strike again when anyone steps out of line. The young ones know it. As I would have known it. Tonight comes this news, this brave young man, Jan Palach, he has made the ultimate protest. And one after another in the cities, they will die, human torches, protesting the loss of freedom, telling the people, the world, that it is better this way — to be dead.’

  ‘Burning themselves to death. They must be crazy.’

  ‘Crazy! You call that crazy? Oh you know so little.’

  ‘Yes, well maybe I don’t know much about it, but I’ll bet you’re glad you’re out of it.’

  But Vlado didn’t hear him. He’d retreated back to where he couldn’t be reached.

  Valerie came through, balancing plates.

  ‘Well, what do you know?’ she said to Leonard. ‘The Billingtons have made up.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I’m not. I heard them. They’d settled that she’d have the children, and the house, and one of the cars, and he’d have all the rest, whatever that might be.’

  ‘Yes. And then what?’

  ‘They’ve got two spaniels. They decided they couldn’t be parted. She wouldn’t part with hers and he wouldn’t part with his, and they decided the two dogs would die if they were parted from each other. What d’you reckon about that, Vlado?’

  Vlado had heard this time. He said, ‘They make me sick in the stomach. They are worse than animals themselves.’

  Leonard said, ‘Can’t tell about some people. All appearances. Of course you can’t expect real breeding here in the provinces.’

  ‘Provinces is it?’ said Valerie. ‘And what’s wrong with us? Oh and by the way Vlado, Mrs Wallace, Madame Yvonne that is, would like Flaming Bombe Alaska for dessert. If you ask me they’re the ones that are heading for the rocks before the night’s out. He said, just go ahead, waste my money any way you like, when she ordered. Bombe Alaska Vlado, did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you.’ Deftly he split eggs, separating yolks from whites, started the beater whirring.

  Valerie had stacked the dishes by the time the sweet was ready. The meringue peaks stood up crisp and curling, gently browned on the tips, sparkling white on the undersides. Vlado handed it to Valerie with a look of love towards it, sensing its inner delights, full of surprises even to the initiated, the first time he had appeared to notice what he was doing that evening.

  ‘See that they’re ready for it, it must be served at exactly the right moment,’ he said, ladling out brandy to be warmed and lit at the table.

  The waitress peered through the slit in the wall. ‘I think they’re going,’ she cried.

  Leonard joined her. It certainly did look as if the Wallaces were leaving. Yvonne had lurched forward, face down on the table. Errol pulled her up roughly by the arm and she lolled against him, the lavishly coloured face had fallen in the sugar, her nose rimed with crystals, like frosting on a cake.

  As he drew her lurching towards the door, the Billingtons looked away.

  ‘Hope he left the money,’ said Valerie.

  Vlado looked down at the dish in his hands. In a few moments it would be completely ruined. The ice-cold filling would start to melt and the peaks of meringue crumble as the innards turned liquid.

  ‘Go home,’ he said to Valerie and Leonard. ‘Unless you want to eat this.’ They shook their heads.

  ‘What about the tables?’ Valerie said. ‘You look tired. We can’t leave you to do them.’

  Leonard looked at her with a touch of approval. She was good-hearted, you had to say that for her.

  Vlado shrugged. ‘Dishes, bottles of wine, spaniels. These are the things that change the world I suppose. No, do not worry. Go home.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Leonard. He and Valerie scuttled towards the door, his arm already on hers. ‘Good night, Vlado. Cheer up,’ Leonard called, and they were gone.

  Slowly Vlado walked out into his small kingdom, carrying the Bombe Alaska on its dish. Behind him there was another news broadcast on his transistor, and he knew that over there in his country, the streets of the cities would be running tears. Tears and ashes.

  He smelt death, cloying in his nostrils. His nerve ends reacted to pain, the pain of exile and loss. He had his papers at home which said he was a good New Zealander. Eileen kept them safe, and he had sworn an oath to this country at the naturalisation ceremony, and he would keep it all his life.

  But what about his heart? What could they do to that? How could it be changed? Ungrateful, they’d call him, if they could see inside him now. Oh, but he’d be good, he wouldn’t let them down. Heart, pain, loss. Who did you explain that to? Nobody. Not even Eileen. His son? The first one maybe, if he’d been alive. But he wasn’t, and the next one wouldn’t understand, and the third one wasn’t even born.

  Jan Palach, Jan Palach, you could have been my brother.

  The Bombe Alaska was a soggy mess on the plate. Vlado stared at it. Out tumbled the words. He would tell this to the ugly, spreading pool of goo. Words, sorrow, prayers.

  With shaking hands, he held the brandy above a still-burning candle and warmed it at the flame, then flung it over the defused Bombe.

  He lit a match and threw it on too, and it exploded. He held his face into the flames, laughing, crying, hands held out to the heat, supplication, love. His body burned with heat, flesh and fat oozing into pools, smelling foul stenches. He screamed in agony, glory.

  Leonard and Valerie had been kissing in the street. His hands were finding her warm and strong for him.

  ‘Let’s get some wine. Come to my room. We’ll make a night of it,’ she whispered in his ear.

  Everything was shut; all the bottle stores had closed for the night so he’d agreed to go back to the restaurant. They hadn’t gone very far, so it was no hardship.

  Leonard ran into the restaurant as he heard the scream inside. The flames in front of Vlado had died away, spluttered out on the wet mess in the dish.

  Vlado sat at the table.

  ‘What is it, Vlado? Are you all right?’

  His employer held out his hands dumbly in front of him. At last he said hoarsely, ‘I am burnt, look at me, my hands, my face, the flames they have burnt me.’

  ‘No,’ said Leonard. ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘I am burnt. I felt the flames, I felt the pain.’

  ‘No. No you’re not,’ said the waiter, torn between concern, and impatient to be with the girl again.

  ‘Not burnt?’ said Vlado, with the beginning of comprehension.

  ‘No — oh — maybe your hair just a little — it’s hard to tell, yes, maybe your eyebrows, it’s nothing serious.’
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  ‘Not burnt? Oh Jan Palach, Jan Palach, then what am I doing here?’

  Hot tears of pain and impotency coursed down his cheeks; fell; settled on his apron.

  Desert Fire

  THE SUN HAS UNCURLED ACROSS THE SKY. You can tell even now at around seven-thirty, going eight, that it’s going to be a brassy day. The hills, as you look down towards the desert, are that strange colour that might pass for gold at a distance, but close up are the harsh sere brown that comes after a hard summer. The trucks have been on the move since daybreak. If anyone has taken the trouble to count they will see that there are eighty-nine dead possums crushed on Highway One from Taupo down.

  Inside the Roadhouse the temperature is hard to guess, but if you are to ask Clarrie, as he stands over the vats of fat, he will probably tell you a hundred, but who would blame him for exaggerating a bit, with the thunder of the trucks going past, and the number of them that are stopping too, while the drivers come in for their breakfast. It’s a wonder the linings of their stomachs aren’t pure solid congealed fat, the amount of hamburgers and french fry they consume. That’s what some of those truckies must live on. What a life. He rubs an ankle, suddenly weary as he waits to turn a meat patty on the grill. He has a vein playing up there. A varicose vein to be exact, and there are signs that one might be coming up on the other leg too. It goes with being a bit overweight, as he is. That’s the trouble, you work here all the time, and you don’t feel like a feed of anything else when you get home. He supposes he has a bit in common with the truckies. Difference is, they don’t look fat, and he does. No, they look solid, like brick shithouses, the way they stand, hard and unyielding. Any of them who looked like he feels wouldn’t last long on the road. You made it out there or you found a job on your bum somewhere. And drink. They can spit and swear and tell about their hangover, but you can’t pick it from looking at them. Whereas him, well most people know when Clarrie has a hangover. Except the girl perhaps.

  He dashes an egg on the grill and the yolk splatters. He curses softly as he scoops it off and throws it in the slops bucket beside him. The girl looks at him sideways and says nothing. Blast her to hell, he thinks, why can’t she say something. But she never will, it isn’t her way. He has an idea to hit her across the face just to see what she’ll say. And he knows it will be nothing. Always nothing. That’s Margie.

  She bangs the chip basket down smartly on the steel slide.

  ‘Fifty cents chips?’ she says, turning to the customer.

  ‘Thank you,’ says the woman stiffly. There is something about her tone that warns Clarrie, he has a sudden edge down his spine. He hates premonitions, they’re something inside him he doesn’t understand, especially when they come right, which is pretty well always. He is glad the feeling doesn’t come over him too often. He looks the woman over, and she is a surprising sight at this hour in the morning. The older women might stop by later in the morning or around lunchtime, if they are feeling particularly girlish and adventurous, but not this early. Usually if they are travelling early, an older woman like this one will have had a sensible breakfast ‘for the road’ before she left her home, or her expensive motel in Taupo. But this one is standing here amongst the truckdrivers in the early morning, her hair in soft blue waves, her eyes like Wedgwood chinaware, and her hands well dressed in rings and pale shell-pink enamel.

  He watches out of the corner of his eye as Margie wraps the chips in paper.

  ‘No vinegar, I said no vinegar,’ says the woman.

  ‘No,’ says Margie. ‘I don’t reckon you said no vinegar.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ says the woman. ‘I distinctly said no vinegar.’

  ‘I don’t hear that you said no vinegar.’ Margie’s eyes have started to glaze with apprehension. No good arguing with her any more, he could tell the woman that, you might as well talk to the mountain, thinks Clarrie as he prepares to step in.

  ‘I heard her ask you,’ he says to the woman.

  ‘Yes and I said I didn’t want any.’

  ‘You said … as how you didn’t much care for vinegar,’ says Margie.

  The woman’s mouth for all its well chosen makeup has gone like a steel trap. ‘I would have thought I had made myself perfectly clear. To any normal person.’

  Clarrie sighs inwardly. ‘It’s all right lady,’ he says, ‘we’ll do you some more. They’ll only take a few minutes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says the woman, with heavy emphasis on the ‘you’. And, oh lady, thinks Clarrie, that’s no normal person, that’s Margie.

  The girl is filling the basket again with slivers of potato, as he assembles the hamburger he’s been making and hands it over to the truckie.

  He is putting the man’s money into the till when the woman speaks again. ‘Surely it would be perfectly clear. Don’t you think it would be perfectly clear what I said?’

  ‘Look,’ says Clarrie, ‘I said we’d do more chips for you. What d’you want, a bloody court martial?’

  The woman steps back.

  ‘I tell you, she dunno what you said, because I don’t reckon you know what you said yourself. Now can it, eh?’

  ‘I see.’ She stands, momentarily irresolute, as the stainless-steel flytrap door swings open and clangs shut again, and another driver comes in. The woman stands her ground.

  ‘Morning Clarrie.’

  ‘Morning.’ He can feel himself starting to tremble. They shouldn’t do this to him. God, how he needs a drag, just one quick drag, but the way his hands are shaking it would be his luck to drop a butt in the food. It would just be his luck, come to think of it, if Lady Muck was a health inspector. Not likely though, more like she’d know someone in that line. People like her always know someone. Why didn’t she go away? You’d think she’d go, with him being rude like that. What makes her go on just standing there watching them all, waiting for her chips? You can’t tell him that her type cares too much about fifty cents worth of chips, not when the service is bad. But she stands there. Just stands there and her eyes never leave either of them, flicking one way, now another, nothing pretty and sweet about them any more, sharp as little rat’s eyes. Not a big rat. He’s seen some big rats. It’s the thing about this place. There are some big rats hiding around this town. Came out of a rough raw little place sprung up out of nowhere, people hadn’t got to wrapping their rubbish no proper way … You can get some big rats, mean rats that have lived round these parts a long time and they’re smart.

  He remembers the time, oh it seems a long way back, but maybe it’s six, eight months, it’s hard to keep track of time round here, unending time, and he hadn’t worked in the Roadhouse very long, and that day Margie started to scream, out the back where they kept the potato sacks, and there were some slops, stuff that hadn’t been wrapped yet for taking away. He’d gone out to see what was with her, with Della Royal (the one some called Princess), the boss lady, hard on his heels, there’d just been the three of them there. And Margie had been cowering in a corner, and she’d screamed and screamed with her mouth hideous shapes in her strange lopsided face and the rat had stood its ground, deciding to attack rather than escape. The rat had been bigger than a cat, and as bald as an egg all over, with an old man’s wrinkled pink skin. Clarrie had taken the cleaver to it, and it would have bitten him too, only he was bigger and better armed and he killed it. He was sick afterwards and Margie kept on crying for hours after, in soft little whimpers, with Della standing guard over her like a worried mother hen. Margie was all right the next day but she has never let Clarrie out of sight since, not if she can help it.

  The woman’s eyes are like the rats’. Sharp, unwavering, cruel.

  ‘What’ll it be, Joe?’ he asks the truck driver.

  ‘Steakburger, make it a double and stick two eggs in.’

  ‘Hell, you want the Leaning Tower of Pisa in your tucker bag? Coming up.’

  He moves over to the girl. Why do they call her the girl? A way they have. Something to do with looking after her he supposes.
Nearly forty and it shows in the lines of her figure, thickening at the short waist, hips heavy under the flowered cotton dress, ankles thickening, just like most women that age. And the wrinkles starting to show round her eyes, stretching back to the ears adorned with huge hoop earrings. She dyes her hair jet black. He wonders if it is grey underneath.

  ‘Gee Margie, you’re a dumb broad,’ he mutters, as he splits yet another bun for his order.

  ‘I know, Clarrie.’

  ‘You wanna listen.’

  ‘Yes Clarrie.’

  ‘Yes Clarrie, no Clarrie, don’t you never say nothing else?’

  ‘I loves you Clarrie.’

  He sighs. ‘Yeah, I know. What’m I going to do about it eh?’

  ‘I’ll wash yer apron fer ya t’night.’

  ‘Oh Margie.’ His voice is full of grief.

  ‘And starch yer cap.’

  ‘It’s not enough, don’t you see.’ Though Clarrie is really talking to himself.

  ‘Then I’ll have to think of something else to do fer you, won’t I?’

  He shakes his head unhappily. ‘Na. It’s what I should be able to do for you. And there ain’t nothing. Is there?’

  ‘Dunno, Clarrie. Just never go away perhaps.’

  ‘Are you two going to talk all day?’ the woman calls.

  ‘Coming up!’ Clarrie calls. ‘She’s nearly got ’em ready.’

  The truck driver jangles coins, and drops one in the jukebox. The light comes on, the arm slowly picks its prey, and settles it down on the turntable. They keep some of the old ones here. Some of the old and some of the new. Round these parts they like songs they know, it’s too hard to pick out the words on all the new ones. The driver has picked an in betweener, ‘Delta Dawn’. Helen Reddy starts belting into the morning.