The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘Oh yeah, what did you wake me up for?’

  ‘School. Remember? The house of learning.’

  ‘I’ve got study leave. Have you forgotten?’

  She had. He had told her the night before, chatty and amiable while she was preparing dinner, the sort of moment she enjoyed with him.

  ‘I mean …’ She faltered. ‘If you don’t get up you’ll have wasted your day. You won’t get any study done.’

  He turned on her, shouting. ‘Shove off and leave me alone.’ His voice broke on the end of his words, so that they turned to a scream.

  Anita picked up her coat and threw it over her arm, reaching for her briefcase. ‘We’d better hurry,’ she said to Brian.

  ‘I’ve been telling you that for ten minutes.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Simon asked as she walked out the door.

  ‘I told you. Have you forgotten?’ She closed the door behind her, hating her cheap parting shot.

  In the car Brian said, ‘Why don’t you start potting again?’

  ‘I don’t have the time,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I’m much good. I don’t know that I ever have been.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘It’s all very well being in these organisations, and running things, but if you don’t do it yourself …’ He shrugged.

  ‘I do a good job. It’s a useful way to earn my keep.’

  ‘Administration. It’s not the same as doing it yourself, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s rich. Coming from you.’ She knew they were close to some kind of quarrel, the kind that she suppressed these days. The sort that on no account she wanted to have before she boarded the plane this morning.

  ‘That’s different. I’m a trained administrator. That’s all I know how to do. As you know.’

  ‘A trained public servant.’ She gazed away from him out the window, watching the coastline as they passed it.

  ‘If you like. But at least I know what I am.’

  ‘I’m not a trained anything,’ she said. ‘I do the best I can. You know what that means, picking up here and there.’

  ‘You don’t know whether you’re a good potter or not,’ he insisted. ‘You never gave it a fair try. The kiln, your shed, all the equipment, you don’t use it any more … You don’t have to be the best, do you?’

  Her hands, lying in her lap, looked large and heavy knuckled to her. She turned them over, and wondered if they could make things or not. In her head she always could, but when she really tried to do certain things they didn’t satisfy her, were never as good as she hoped. Secretly, she knew that it was the best that she wanted, that it was perfection itself that was out of her grasp. Love and art were inextricably twined. They were one and the same. Their pursuit was a common goal. Somehow she could never get quite near enough.

  Brian turned his attention to the traffic, and it was banked up at the intersection. As she glanced at her watch she saw that it was close to check-in.

  ‘I’ll get you there on time. I told you we should have left earlier.’ His voice was weary and slanted with anger.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to bring me.’

  They continued in silence, Brian accelerating through the traffic at speed now. Outside the terminal building he said, ‘What time am I picking you up?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find my own way home.’

  He sighed, clenching his jaw over the need to be held responsible for her. ‘What time are we due at the Corbetts’ for dinner, then?’

  ‘Oh … sevenish, seven-thirty.’ As she closed the door she relented. ‘My plane’s due at six.’ She remembered that Ellen was cooking Italian these days. Brian had never cared for pasta.

  In the queue at the check-in counter a television interviewer whom Anita and Brian had met with her husband at a dinner party was arguing with a Government Member of Parliament. The interviewer had sharp yellow hair and was wearing a Stetson with green feathers in the band.

  She said, ‘I do love you, you know.’

  ‘You love power,’ the politician said, as if it was a revelation.

  ‘You say that to me?’ Her voice was rising on a dangerous note.

  ‘Keep your voice down. Please.’

  She smiled. She had beautiful glittering teeth. ‘I could bring the Government down, you know.’

  They moved forward and collected their seat numbers. Anita found they had got the last non-smoking seats.

  When she was seated on the plane she realised she was shaking. She strapped herself in and accepted a magazine, starting at once to read an article about de Lorean. The rise and fall of a man. His wife appeared beautiful in her photographs. To say nothing then of the fall of a woman. The pilot announced that due to mechanical fault in the plane they would not take off. In fact, they would actually have to get off the plane and wait for another one to arrive from somewhere else. Or they might have to be re-ticketed on to other flights. The yellow-haired interviewer was crying when they got off the plane. Her mascara was collecting in the otherwise indiscernible folds under her eyes. The sea shone with blinding azure clarity to the side of the runway as they all walked off the tarmac.

  It was ten-thirty when the flight took off, which meant that by the time they landed and she had made her way into town, Anita’s meeting would be almost over. She knew that she had no right to be on the plane. Her mind revolved around ways of paying for her own flight and refunding the money for the ticket while at the same time explaining to Brian, or her colleagues, or whoever might care, why she had gone ahead with the flight anyway. At the airport, as she waited, she had been similarly confused. She could not decide whether she should ring the committee and tell them that she was unable to make it to the meeting, so that they were not expecting her in Auckland even though she still intended to go. Then she was afraid that if she did, someone (anyone, Brian, one of the children, her office in town) might ring with messages and find that she had not left — or appeared not to have gone. Or, when she arrived in Auckland, that some disaster might befall the evening flight so that she could not return, and that too would reveal her deceptions. And so on. She had read stories like that. And she had once had a lover who imagined earthquakes when they were in hotel rooms, car accidents when they went on a picnic, and worst, that they might be caught in a street scene by a television camera and shown on the news together to the whole country that night. She had loved him with a passion so intense that she recalled once standing gazing out to sea at dawn and thinking of him and being certain that every day for the rest of her life she would wake thinking of him. Now she remembered that moment more clearly than she could recollect his face.

  Yet for a time his fears had infected her. Now, although he belonged so far in her past, she recognised his mark.

  In the end she did nothing. It would be easier to plead ignorance of times, or show zealous concern for an arrival, even a late one, than to invent excuses. Her colleagues would be displeased but they would understand. Anita has ideas, they would say, but she doesn’t think ahead. And Brian knew that she was good at buying lettuces and detergents but never remembered to buy theatre tickets until a show was booked out. In a situation like this he would have hoped she would do better, of course.

  There were no taxis when they landed. The television interviewer took the last one. The politician had already left the airport building by the time the woman walked through and claimed the taxi. Anita ran after her, making little gasping noises to attract her attention and couldn’t remember her name to call out to her. She should have paid more attention and taken note of who she was. On screen, in the den where they watched television, she would have summoned her name as easily as those of her children.

  She took the bus rather than wait for the stand to fill again. In the city, Conrad, the man she was in love with now, would be gathering up his papers and books after delivering his last lecture for the morning, and returning to his office to put them away before he set off to meet her.

  She stare
d out the window across the flat sad waterway of Mangere. She had read in the paper, not long ago, that someone had staked a dog up in the scrub that jutted out there into the water where the tide came in. The dog was very thin when it was discovered and near to death. It was thought that the tide had covered it many times, and that each time it had survived by reaching its nose up just above the waterline until the tide receded. After it was released it died. Anita wondered what the significance of that was. Freedom is death. Huh. Deeply aware political statement, Ma, as Jane would have said when she first went to university, and before she met her boyfriend.

  Anita and Conrad ate their meal too fast and she drank more than she had intended. He had been annoyed that in the end she had kept him waiting while she made phone calls to explain her absence from the meeting and exaggerated the difficulties (making it sound as if she had been trapped aboard a stationary aircraft on the tarmac, which was not a bad story, really quite credible, and had only occurred to her as she dialled), smoothed things over and salvaged something of the meeting by agreeing to call in and go through the rough draft minutes, which would be ready at four. This meant that she would have to catch a later plane, so that then she had to ring Brian to explain what had happened (or what by now she believed had happened), and that she would be a bit late but it didn’t matter if they didn’t make it to the Corbetts’ until eight. He responded easily, as if she was at home and they hadn’t been sharp with each other as they parted, asking her what the temperature was up there, and if it was today that he had seen a dentist appointment written up on the kitchen calendar for Simon, and if so should he ring to remind him, also had she remembered that there was an office party for Mollie Levett’s retirement on Friday, and would he say that she was coming? She was standing in an open phone booth at Downtown with Conrad standing beside her; she was stretching towards some terrible point of tension, trying to match Brian’s comfortable voice, yet aware of Conrad’s increasing anger, and of the appalling, overwhelming strength of her desire for him.

  ‘Where will we go?’ she asked Conrad. His hair was floppy and soft, but styled so that the grey fell evenly in line with his cheekbone. Anita wanted to reach out and stroke his bones with the back of her crooked finger but they were in a smart fast-moving seafood restaurant where many people knew him. The fish was freshly caught and the wine light and pleasant. They were near the waterfront, filtered light spilled through the branches of a tree that had been preserved in the midst of the city. Its branches scraped against the window.

  Conrad looked at his watch. ‘What do you want to do?’

  Even without replying, Anita had an unpleasant feeling that she had been caught begging.

  ‘Well?’ He smoked too carefully. He knew she hated smoking, usually didn’t when he was with her, and always cleaned his teeth before they made love. Once he had used her toothbrush. At the time she saw it as some ultimate act of love.

  She leaned forward, pushing aside the unfinished plate of flounder. ‘I …’ It was a whole sentence.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s been five months,’ she whispered.

  He had been telling her gossip about the university. Some of it had been funny, some malicious. It was like a slightly more spicy summary of one of Brian’s days at the office. He had brought her a book of poems as a gift. He always brought her a gift. Last time it had been the dark blue pottery vase. She had kept it filled with flowers during the summer.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Pity we couldn’t do something about it. Went through my mind — nice if we could. Pretty hopeless when you’re not staying.’

  ‘I couldn’t. Not this time. But I had to … I don’t know when I’ll get up again. It’s all gone wrong. I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know why she apologised, only that she was profoundly tired, and she recalled how little sleep she had had.

  ‘Perhaps we could take a drive somewhere?’ Anita said.

  He gave a slight smile. ‘Not quite our style, is it? Long grass and all that sort of thing. Look, I’ve got a lecture at three, I’ll have to be heading back soon. Can I drop you off?’

  ‘Thank you, Conrad.’ Her voice was faint.

  In the car she asked him to stop. They were on an incline in a small back street. The only place to park was between two sets of workmen. She reached out her hand so that he took it as of habit; the habit of taking a woman’s hand rather than hers in particular.

  ‘I don’t know when I’ll see you again,’ she said.

  ‘Oh we’ll sort something out. Take it as it comes,’ he said.

  ‘You do want to see me again then?’

  He scratched his head with his little finger and smiled. ‘Well of course I do. You get too upset.’

  ‘I wanted you. I mean, I want you. Now.’

  ‘I know. But it’s too fast, too rushed. What good will that do us?’

  She wanted to tell him that it was everything but instead she said, ‘I want to tell you something. It’s got nothing to do with you, but I thought that if you heard … well, you might think it was strange if I hadn’t told you.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I’m thinking of leaving. Leaving home, that is. I mean, well, Brian of course.’

  A workman peered into the car. In a moment he would ask Conrad to move the car on, as they shifted their drilling down the street.

  ‘You’ll find it pretty lonely,’ Conrad said. He had once left his wife for a while, before he met Anita.

  ‘I could bear it,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know for sure until you try.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you ever do it again?’ She regretted asking him immediately.

  ‘Never,’ he said, as she expected.

  They were silent. A pneumatic drill started close by.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ said Anita again. ‘I just thought you should know.’

  His eyes flicked down to his watch again. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and she could see he was planning how to get out of the spot they were in without running over any of the square-cut gashes in the street’s sealing.

  ‘Well. Thanks. Yes, I’m pleased you told me.’

  ‘I haven’t absolutely decided yet. But, that I’m thinking of it, you see?’

  ‘Well you should think it through, that’s right. I mean, you really should.’ His voice held a touch of melancholy now. Once he had been a chorister.

  ‘I’d better get going, then,’ Anita said.

  ‘Always on the move, aren’t you?’ he said, flattering her. He eased the car round the roped-off section of the road and down towards Queen Street.

  ‘That’s what it’s all about.’ She sounded so bright and efficient that she thought it unfortunate that she had not been at the meeting after all. ‘Keeping on the move, that’s what I like.’ He had stopped at a set of lights and she prepared to slide out of the car.

  ‘Good of you to let me know you were in town. Take care,’ he called, his voice expressing urgency as the traffic around them began to move.

  He missed the change and she had to stand on the edge of the street waiting for a pedestrian signal while he, at the same time, sat waiting for the traffic to flow in his direction again. They exchanged small smiles and waves, and she wished that he would disappear. After a time the lights changed in his favour.

  She had never had a flight quite like this before. The plane appeared to follow the sinking sun and then small clouds picked up a bright crimson glow, a reflection from objects at the level of the earth or the sea. She saw that it was the oil rigs standing off the Taranaki coastline, flaming turrets abroad on the water.

  It occurred to Anita that men had never been much attracted to her. But that was self-pitying and not true. Men had been tremendously, overwhelmingly attracted to her, had pursued her with great sexual ardour. It was the strength of her responses that invariably turned them away in the end. When she was much younger her mother and her aunts advised her against wearing her heart
on her sleeve. That was what they called it. Your heart on your sleeve, as if a great pulsing organ could be safety-pinned to the arm of her cousin’s hand-me-down dyed forest-green flannel coat that she wore in winter over her dance frock when she went out to meet boys.

  What they really meant was that they would never wear their faces bare as she did, never show their true selves unadorned. They had designed reserves in which they could shelter and never be altogether found. This was something Anita had not learned or discovered, how to fashion a disguise for her nakedness or her greed. So much pain and foolishness in the name of love. Or what sometimes passed as love.

  The politician was on the half-empty plane. The television interviewer was not. From the headlines in the evening paper Anita deduced that the Government remained intact. She opened her briefcase as if to work, but it was a gesture. The case was a beautiful burgundy leather one which Brian had bought her overseas. Inside, it contained two sheets of blank paper, a spare pair of clean panties, her toothbrush and the new book of poems. She thought about weeping but remembered in time that they were going to the Corbetts’. She hoped that Ellen would not be too late with her dishes of antipasto and pasta, aubergine, olives and sauces. She hoped that there would be a lot of wine, and then she hoped that there would not.

  Bunches of stars appeared in the still not-quite-dark sky, close to the wingtip of the plane. They seemed to move. Seemed. Within the plane she felt stationary, as if it were the stars rather than her that were being propelled. Up here, above the earth, she was for a moment less sorry than usual that she behaved as she did.

  At the airport Brian said, ‘So the weather did stay fine all day.’ She saw that his hair needed cutting.

  The Whiteness

  WHEN IT IS EASTER SUNDAY somewhere in the world but not in the country where you are, a mile down into the ravine at Samaria does not seem a bad place to contemplate one’s spirituality.

  Or for that matter, one’s mortality. The Samaria Gorge is the longest and deepest in the world, running between the White Mountains. To get to the Mountains one must go by bus, then for those who are fit enough there is a walk through the Gorge, a distance of nine miles. The traveller who makes this walk emerges on the other side of Crete to catch a boat back to Chania.