The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘Pride. Vanity.’

  ‘You? Oh I don’t believe that. I’m vain. Jeremy says I am. Look, how do I look, I say to him. Smooth? You like my hips, my skin, is my colour good? Vain, he says. Well, it is something to know one has sinned. It is worth knowing that one deserves forgiveness.’

  But Eunice has stopped listening to her. ‘After that last dress I made for Mrs Moreland, I went down to the city. Remember that time?’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember now. What did you do?’

  ‘First I went into a hotel.’

  ‘A hotel?’ Suddenly this game has gone far enough. The weight of what Sophie is about to hear oppresses her.

  ‘I felt a little faint. The crowd, you know. I had a little brandy. Well, I needed some courage.’

  Sophie holds the edge of the table.

  Eunice is inexorable. ‘I went into a shop and bought a set of underwear. A brassiere.’

  ‘Uh, a brassiere. You said a brassiere?’

  Eunice nods.

  ‘You are rather slight, but goodness everyone, well I would have thought. My dear Eunice, that is no sin.’

  ‘It was black lace, they were all black lace. French. They cost me a month’s rent. You see? When there are so many in need.’

  But if Sophie does see she cannot express herself except in hysterical laughter. She bends over the table wheezing and crying with laughter, Oh uh huh huh, she weeps, wiping her eyes and smudging her face with flour.

  Then she stops as if she had never begun. ‘Jeremy,’ she says, and looks at him standing in the doorway.

  Eunice swings around. ‘You heard?’ she says to him.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I heard.’

  ‘It is funny, really it is,’ Sophie remarks, as if to convince them all.

  Eunice has gone very pale. ‘Listen,’ she says urgently to Jeremy, ‘afterwards I was ashamed. I put them in the mission box. For the blacks, you know. To cover their nakedness.’

  ‘It is so funny, isn’t it, Jeremy?’ says Sophie.

  ‘No. It is not.’

  When Jeremy has gone, Eunice turns to Sophie. ‘Don’t you know why no one ever tells you things?’

  ‘Where are you going? Don’t leave me,’ wails Sophie, but it is too late.

  At the door Eunice relents a little. ‘Oh I’ll come back. And so will he. Don’t we always? But I cannot bear it in here. I cannot bear it.’

  They are all gone, and Sophie is alone. She begins to clean the kitchen with systematic care. She has a sauce to make. Then she is shaken with laughter again, but this time of the silent helpless variety. She recalls the black lace underwear she has discovered in the mission box. The set sits tastefully packed in tissue in her own bottom drawer. It is funnier than they think.

  There is a chord of thunder. The sky is electric with lightning. Jeremy struggles with the ladder against the wall.

  ‘Mr Ordway, Father Jeremy, what are you doing?’ cries Eunice. She tugs after him as he ascends the ladder, and succeeds only in untying his shoelace.

  He puts his hand tentatively over the guttering and pulls himself up level with the eaves. Everything holds. The rain has started in earnest.

  ‘You’ll slip,’ calls Eunice.

  ‘Be a good woman, dear Eunice, and go and collect some hymn books from inside,’ he replies as he swings his leg up on to the roof. He reaches hand over hand, inching towards the bell tower. When she stares back, without moving, he calls out impatiently. ‘Nine tiles today, you see, and four yesterday, two the day before. Fifteen, I need fifteen hymn books.’

  Now Eunice sees the abandoned pile of wood that he has been trying to saw, barely scratched from his exertions, and understands.

  ‘To fill the holes? You can’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry. They know it without the books. We must shore up the breaches. And hurry, the storm’s breaking.’

  Soon she is at the bottom of the ladder with an armful of books. He inches back across the roof, and comes halfway back down the ladder. ‘No, you must not try to climb up, here hand them to me, good, very good Eunice. Now … if you’d be kind enough to … hold the ladder. Splendid.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Ye-es. But things are getting a trifle slippery. Could you sit on the end of the ladder my dear while I climb up? Good, yes that is good.’

  ‘Shall I come up too?’

  ‘Good grief no, what should I tell the parishioners on Sunday if I had dropped their organist through the roof?’

  ‘I’ll wait for you to come down.’

  ‘No, it won’t take long. Go and keep the peace with my wife. And don’t tell her I’m up here. All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘They fit perfectly, I am mending the roof beautifully. Now go on out of the rain.’

  He sings in his light baritone worn smooth by years of intoning. The wind is lifting small objects on the ground, last spring’s fallen birds’ nests, and papers brought too late for the church drive, a gust of confetti from a recent wedding, and an armful of Michaelmas daisies which he has cut back in his search for the wasps’ nest. There is something exhilarating about being up here alone against the elements.

  ‘There you are, God,’ he remarks loudly, ‘that’s quite a nice job. Aren’t you pleased with that?’ For the hymn books are such a snug fit in the holes where the tiles have been that it is as if they had been made for the purpose of mending roofs alone. But at that moment a howl of wind whips across the sky, nearly knocking him from his feet.

  He grabs at the bell tower and his foot skids. Suddenly it is a long way to the ground, and his feet do not seem to be connecting with the roof as well as they were. Gingerly, and still holding on to the slats supporting the bell tower, he sits down.

  ‘Lord God,’ he says, ‘I am very nervous about being up here. I am not as good at being up on high as I imagined. I’ve done a good job, and I want to get down. Now don’t scare me. Please.’

  But God throws cold water in his face.

  ‘You are not helping,’ he says. ‘I wonder sometimes if you and I are incompatible. Quite often think that. How, for instance, does one both defend the faith and pray for deliverance from wars? You see, I don’t make the rules, dear Lord, you must forgive those of us who sometimes find it difficult to stick to them.’

  His voice is torn away in the lashing gale that has risen around him. The hood of his oilskin is snatched from his face, exposing it to the rain. He begins again in what he hopes is a reasonable tone. ‘I know you’re not up above, or out there. But you’re around somewhere. I know. My good wife Sophie has told me so.’

  ‘Dear Lord, I provide a lot of things. Inspiration for polished silver, black brassieres for the mission box, and I’m sorry that I have not seen to the window in the church hall. Now will you please let me get down from here, because I have been filling the holes in the roof of your church. And I have become afraid. Now if I move a little …’

  There is a crack, familiar now, but closer at hand. Tiles tipple across the roof, so many he cannot count them as they skate over the edge. Nor can he afford to look, for now his left leg hangs down the hole that has been left in the roof, swinging backwards and forwards above an exposed beam within, and his fingertips clasp the iron strut above.

  ‘We’re thrilled to meet you, Mr Fleming,’ says Sophie. ‘What a miracle your last campaign has been.’

  He smoothes his hair with his hand. Forrest Fleming is not at all as either Sophie or Eunice have foreseen. Although neither have voiced their expectations, both know that in each other’s imagination they would have looked for him in a dark suit and a tie; perhaps a touch of suaveness. Instead, he is dressed in canvas drill slacks and a cream open-necked shirt that reveals a tuft of delicate gold hair at the base of his throat. He wears thick-lensed stylishly rimmed glasses on the bridge of his prominent nose and his casual grace suggests a cross between an intellectual and a wind-surfer. When he smiles he reveals even teeth with a gold filling in the front.

&nbs
p; ‘I’m not sure about miracles,’ he says. ‘Good business, I suppose.’

  ‘And prayer, surely?’ says Sophie.

  He gestures delicately, gives a deprecatory half-smile.

  ‘Well, there you have me,’ he says.

  Sophie shoots him a look, comprehends, straightens her back. ‘We must find Jeremy,’ she says. ‘Do you know where he is, Eunice?’

  But Eunice has just looked out the window again. She raises her knuckles to her mouth.

  The strut has begun to bite into Jeremy’s flesh. It has drawn blood. Water streams through the hole where his leg is trapped; he sees the puddles collecting under the roof, sliding through the lining, knows it is running down inside the church. He closes his eyes as if to allay his mental picture of the sullied altar linen beneath him. Though it makes better viewing than his own predicament.

  Soon, soon he must let go. But, he thinks, maybe that is the way things have been heading for a while.

  ‘Hold on,’ calls a voice. ‘We’ll have you down in a tick.’

  He opens his eyes and sees Forrest Fleming coming towards him across the roof, agile as a young fast-footed antelope. Tiles crumble and fall.

  ‘Bring more hymn books,’ Jeremy calls in what he hopes is a jolly tone.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh never mind.’

  His hand is prised from the strut by the capable young man, and a rope is lashed around his waist.

  ‘The miracle man,’ says Jeremy as they inch across the roof. ‘So it is true.’

  Dinner is a success; Sophie glows in the light of compliments. They scoop bleu de Bresse out of its slatted wooden tub and scoff it with unceremonious gusto at the conclusion of the meal; they have drunk three bottles of Mission wine (what fun the monks must have, remarks Jeremy), replenish their coffee cups, become excited, their eyes shine with story telling.

  Only Eunice falls quiet. ‘You won’t be in church on Sunday then?’ she says, turning to Forrest Fleming.

  ‘Oh, if you would like me to be, that’s fine,’ he says.

  ‘It’s part of the job?’ says Eunice, with an edge.

  Forrest leans across the table. ‘It is a matter of percentages,’ he says. ‘What is yours, Miss Brown?’

  She colours. ‘A Christian tithe,’ she says.

  ‘Ten percent of all you earn?’ he says mercilessly.

  She winds her napkin around her fingers.

  ‘The campaign was Eunice’s idea,’ says Jeremy hastily. ‘She is a more than generous giver.’

  I will raise my donation,’ Eunice says, faltering.

  ‘No, that’s impossible,’ cries Jeremy, who knows that Eunice’s ten percent is derived from an income gleaned in painstaking alterations and mending of gym slips, from bridal gowns such as she has never worn, from ballet dresses for precocious children, and from fancy dress costumes for ungrateful debutantes whose mothers cheat her. And he sees her bending towards the sheet music above the organ each Sunday, pretending she does not need new glasses.

  Forrest smiles understandingly, but there is something melancholy in the way he looks at Jeremy. Turning back to Eunice, he says, ‘That is over to you, Miss Brown.’

  ‘I have brought some vodka,’ says Forrest, when he and Jeremy are alone by the fire. Outside, the storm has abated, the pounding wind died amongst the acacia, and the rain turned to a gentle patter on the vicarage roof. Sophie has run Eunice home, despite her protestations that she will cycle. I have a light; I have a coat, she has said, but nobody has listened to her. That is her fate, thinks Jeremy.

  ‘Sometimes at the end of a long day’ says Forrest, explaining the vodka. ‘Well, not everyone is as generous a host as you.’

  And, ‘Why not?’ cries Jeremy. ‘Let’s have a vodka. Or two, if your bottle’s large enough.’

  Which it is.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Jeremy is into his third.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Would I be able to do your job?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Ah, I thought not.’

  ‘You’d take things to heart,’ says Forrest Fleming at last.

  Jeremy leans forward, staring into the flames. ‘You cannot know,’ he says, ‘how I have dreamed of some other life. Of going beyond the wall. At first, it seemed to me that I should be a man like my friend Dash McLeavey (now there’s a man who will give us money), noble and natural. Or a man like Mortlock Crane, who will give us no money but may be prevailed upon to do the spouting for a discount on a Saturday morning, and makes women happy; but then, when I began to think about it, I thought that I should like to strike out on some other more original life of my own. For a long time I thought that I should like to be a lift attendant in a tall building, deciding how high and how low people should go, in the real and physical sense, listening to conversations that were not intended for my ears, instead of the careful curse-free ones that are prepared in my presence. Or a butcher. That shocks you? Cutting up dead creatures for people to eat? Oh well, it is just that I should like finding the grain of the meat, discovering the secret pleasure of taste. And slicing salami. I could pretend I was an Italian. How I have always admired Mediterraneans. It is to do with their architecture, I suppose. What marvellous churches. Well, I am none of these things. How do you see me, Forrest? Tell me truthfully. Don’t be afraid.’

  When Forrest Fleming answers, his voice is so low that Jeremy strains to hear him.

  ‘A shadow boxer,’ he says.

  Jeremy nods his head backwards and forwards, sighs.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘With tenacity in the clinches.’

  ‘You think so? It is worth holding on?’ He leans forward, grasps the vodka bottle by the neck and tips it towards his glass. He holds it out to Forrest.

  ‘I am glad there are miracle men,’ he says. ‘And I’m not into takeovers. No.’

  He smiles, pokes the fire; the log hisses. Tomorrow he and Eunice Brown will scrub the sodden altar carpet, and his wife Sophie will wash the stained cloth.

  The Courting of Nora

  SHE WATCHES HARRY from out of the kitchen window and knows when he is still halfway up the paddock that there is something wrong, and without being told, or even running through a list of possibilities in her mind, that the horse must be sick. It is hardly a surprise, for through the winter there have been many days when it seemed as if the old creature would never make it on to her feet. Sometimes they would have to coax her with pieces of sugar and other blandishments. But once she was up, the mare would set off without faltering for the house, and the window of the room where Nora’s father lay. Then it seemed she might live forever.

  This morning it is different, and when Harry walks in there is an edge of panic in his voice, as if the order of things is about to be changed; though they have expected and in a secret unspoken way, more than a little hoped for this, the reality is alarming.

  When he spells it out to Nora she sits down at the table. The remains of their early breakfast is still strewn in front of her, along with yesterday’s Herald, the accounts she cannot put off paying any longer, and her father’s tray bearing a cup of tea, smoky with the skin of milk on it, and the remains of some thin porridge spread with melted butter and honey swimming on a plate.

  She puts her reading glasses on, then takes them off again and rubs her eyes.

  ‘I thought she’d be better in the spring,’ says Nora at last. ‘Won’t she budge?’

  He shakes his head. ‘You’ll call the vet?’ It is both question and answer.

  ‘You’re sure it’s that bad?’

  For the farm is too small in these days to call an economic unit. They have to watch every cent. Harry once said to her that she might do all right if she changed to goats, that was the coming thing. Either that or bring in more land from the back, and put in new plant. By she, he had really meant them, but it has not been possible for them to make decisions together about the farm, or to think about moving away from
cows. Harry has built up the pig side of it, but he could only do that because the old man had had pigs before the accident. There’ll be no newfangled ideas round here, he’d said.

  The pigs have helped but still there’s no spare cash. Nora’s hand-knitted cardigans have leather patches on the elbows like a man’s, and the ute breaks down often on the way to town, so that the neighbours in their new Japanese cars have to stop and give her a tow or send someone out from the garage to help her. She thinks that they must laugh to themselves, the way the old man used to carry on in the past, as if he were worth a fortune, and here they are now about the same as the alternative lifestyle people with eccentric houses up the valley, barely subsistence farmers.

  ‘I reckon you better get the vet,’ Harry says.

  They have talked about what they will do when the time comes, but it has always been difficult to imagine it exactly as it will happen.

  No, that’s not quite true, for she has seen it one way or another in her mind’s eye a hundred times, and the variations are so small you could hardly pick between them. The scenario, as they call it on television, is that Harry would walk in one morning and tell her that Trixie is ill, and that they must get the vet if they are to save her life. Then she will tell her father, lying sick in his room, that the horse is not coming to the window that morning. Her mind always stops at this point, although sometimes she dreams of the outcome. It is a tortuous dream that leads her through many byways, but when she has woken from a dream like this, she has been panting, or even weeping guilty tears, and sometimes her body has been covered with sweat, and there is a damp painful ache where her hand is resting between her thighs — although that hasn’t happened now for a very long time. Years maybe, but in the light of day she does not allow herself to think about it and so she cannot be sure.

  Well, so far the first part has happened the way she has seen it, the strange part is seeing it unfold like that. It’s just like television, like one of the shows where you know what’s going to happen, but can’t quite believe that they’d do anything so predictable, only then they do. So television is like real life after all.