The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘No no. No, no. Married women. Married women.’ He picks up a ruler from the desk and whips it backwards and forwards through the air. Fenella ducks.

  ‘On their backs,’ says Georgie.

  Brian closes his eyes for a moment, walks to the window, stares out, clenching his fingers around the ruler as if it were Georgie’s throat.

  ‘He has had an unfortunate experience,’ remarks Georgie, addressing Jimmy. ‘I’m sure he’ll tell you about it sometime when you have a few hours to spare.’ She bites the worrisome fingernail. Her teeth are exact and white, maybe a trifle large.

  ‘It is not my fault that I have never married,’ Fenella is saying with deep careful enunciation. ‘You can only love once. Deep in your heart. What a lot of unhappiness the world would be spared if more people understood that.’

  ‘She’s a strong caring woman,’ cries Jimmy. Everyone in the room, except Georgie, stares at him in a perplexed way. ‘The woman in the play.’ He feels the interview slipping from his grasp. ‘Like — like you, Fenella,’ he says, inspired with great daring.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Like you would be if you had children. I mean, if you were married.’

  Fenella picks up her purse. ‘I can see I’m not needed here.’

  ‘Oh heart,’ says Marlon. His voice is tired. ‘Do sit down. All this noise, I simply have such a raging headache.’ He gestures to Jimmy, pushes himself across the floor on the rollers of his chair, and for a moment Jimmy thinks he will take his hand. ‘I went to the pub last night and met an absolutely divine dancer. We won a competition. I won a bottle of brandy, wasn’t that clever? Did I tell you I won a bottle of brandy?’ He purses his lips and blows a kiss towards Fenella. She has subsided back into her chair, takes out a mirror and pats her nose vigorously with a powder puff as if the morning has already left its traces.

  ‘Now look,’ Marlon says in a reasonable way. ‘We seem to be talking around in circles. Fenella says the play is about a man and you say it’s about a woman?’

  ‘It’s about both. But the woman is a strong autonomous character who is a focal point to everyone in the play.’

  ‘But that is a matter of perspective?’

  We are getting somewhere, thinks Jimmy. His spirits begin to rise, and he and Marlon smile at each other.

  ‘Surely it is ideologically unsound for a man to be writing about a woman as a central character?’ says Brian.

  ‘Exactly, Brian,’ says Fenella. ‘Personally I would have thought that was one of the first things that would have occurred to you, Georgie.’

  ‘But you don’t believe in feminism,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘Of course I don’t, but we live in a world of political realities.’

  ‘Rule Number One. Look after yourself first, second and last,’ says Georgie. It looks as if she is about to be drawn.

  But the phone is ringing. Georgie picks it up, and answers with her name. The call is for her, she listens intently, swings her chair away into her corner of the room.

  ‘On the other hand,’ says Brian, ‘it is a perfect vehicle for a panel discussion on the sociological implications of land tenure through acquired wealth versus inheritance.’

  ‘True, true. A consideration,’ murmurs Fenella.

  ‘The nouveau riche versus the squattocracy. Is there anything to choose between the two?’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Marvin looks pained again.

  ‘It’s a local issue, of course,’ Fenella says. ‘Leave it to me to handle.’

  ‘Or, will the poor ever get rich,’ cries Brian, ignoring her, and full of sudden enthusiasm.

  In the corner, Georgie May has begun to cry, and Jimmy can see what a fragile little person she really is, even though she looks so tough and self-assured on the outside, dressed up in her gay tights and sweater, with her black hair falling like straight silk over her ears. She pushes it back and twines it round in her fingers. Her ring finger has a vulnerable white line around it, where a ring has recently been removed. Her tears are silent but they cover her face. Suddenly she leaps to her feet and rushes out of the room.

  Fenella raises her eyebrows. ‘Sports or newsroom?’

  ‘Probably both together,’ says Marlon.

  Fenella’s ample bosom quivers and she lets out a snort like a tidal wave.

  ‘That’s what happens to married women who play around,’ says Brian.

  ‘Divorce.’ Marlon is watching Jimmy’s stricken face. He cannot take his eyes from the doorway where Georgie has disappeared, as if through concentration he might will her reappearance. There is something regretful about the way Marlon looks at Jimmy.

  ‘Well, separated, so far. Unless she sees the light. Your Mrs May has a varied sort of life, Jimmy,’ Fenella comments. ‘But then you’ll know about that.’

  ‘They never do. Learn. Don’t want to.’ Brian is sinking into late morning depression. ‘You see, she’ll come out of it all right. They always get the money. Women do. It’s a scheme, they have it from the beginning.’

  ‘Brian’s been to his men’s group again,’ says Marlon.

  ‘So have you, haven’t you, darling?’ Fenella is enamoured of her own wit and snorts again. She glances from her watch to Jimmy and back again. She too has noticed his longing eyes follow Georgie out of the room.

  ‘So you are going to do it?’ Jimmy ventures, feeling that a resolution is in order. He knows he should be asking about the fee, and tries to remember what the Writers’ Guild has said about contracts — he won’t be able to face the meeting on Thursday night if he is not business-like straight away, sees his invitation to join the committee slipping through the cracks.

  He takes another deep breath, flexes his thumbs in a pattern like a cross between his knees. ‘I’m so glad you like it.’

  Marlon looks at him blankly.

  Jimmy laces all his fingers, working the palms rapidly backwards and forwards from the wrists, so that he pops out a noise like the awful underarm squelch that boys at primary school make to disgust girls, and blushes. ‘The play, I’m so glad you like the play.’

  Marlon wrinkles his nose. ‘Like it?’

  ‘I thought you did,’ Jimmy O’Flaherty murmurs without looking at him. ‘It’s a very important work to me. Seminal. It’s my life.’ He puts his hand on his breast, without thinking, without affectation, and is overcome with fresh and deeper embarrassment.

  ‘Darling heart, I’m sure it is. You’ve a great career in front of you.’

  ‘I do?’

  But there is foreboding in the air. Fenella and Marlon have drawn closer together, almost in a physical way, bound by the old unbreakable ties of knowledge, which pass for, might even be friendship, and anticipate the outsider.

  ‘Writing soapies, I think you’ll be exquisite.’ Marlon lights the cigarette Jimmy so badly needs and feels he has renounced.

  ‘They’ll love you in telly,’ murmurs Fenella.

  ‘Oh yes, lucky old chap, they will, won’t they.’ Marlon flicks ash with care and accuracy towards a distant ashtray.

  ‘But.’ Jimmy seeks words. He is in love with words. Like Georgie, they have eluded him.

  ‘Sorry, sweetness,’ says Fenella, ‘Coup de grâce. Mindbogglingly crapulous. Terrible shit.’ Her vowels are round and delicious, fluid behind her full red mouth. ‘We should have brought spoons to eat it with. Really, positively vulgar.’

  ‘All that sentiment. Sheer humanism, I’m afraid. In spite of the of.’ Marlon smiles with great warmth at Jimmy.

  Jimmy stands up, sure he is going to weep just like Georgie May. ‘A misunderstanding. I thought you were going to do it.’

  ‘But we are, ducks,’ says Marlon.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Fills a gap. Hole in the schedule,’ says Brian. He has taken a barley sugar which has gone sticky from out of his drawer and is delicately picking staples off it before he puts it in his mouth.

  Marlon removes a shred of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. ‘You’re not taking this person
ally, are you? Oh dear.’ He looks helplessly at Fenella, who shrugs, and sits up straight with her purse on her knees. ‘You know, I’ve no objection to giving people what they want. I don’t mind doing crap if it makes them happy.’

  ‘Makes who happy?’ Jimmy hears the note of pleading in his voice. It is a sound he knows will come back to haunt him.

  ‘The people, angel. They’ll love your Shadows on the Wall.’

  ‘Of the Earth.’

  ‘Oh. Earth. Yes. Of. See how confusing?’

  ‘You ain’t gunna do it.’

  Fenella rolls her eyes. ‘Standards. A university boy too.’

  ‘You’re … not … going … to … do … my … play’

  ‘Bless you, heart, you’ll never get on if you don’t get on top of all this subjective emotion,’ says Marlon. ‘It’s one thing for the soapies but it’ll never do in real life. Of course we’re going to do the play. Now run upstairs and tell them to fix you up with a contract. The money’s lovely, pet, it’s just gone up again.’

  There is a rushing in Jimmy’s ears. Far below, he hears the sound of traffic. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ says Brian, when Jimmy reaches the door.

  ‘Well,’ Marlon says, ‘what a consciousness-raising morning. Treat us to your memories, Brian.’

  ‘What about the Maoris?’

  ‘Maoris? What about the Maoris?’

  ‘There aren’t any. In the script.’

  ‘Oh dear. No. Neither there are.’ Marlon rubs his nose.

  ‘We don’t have to have them,’ says Fenella.

  ‘You ought to,’ says Brian. ‘With the land, and that.’

  ‘La, look who’s talking.’ But Marlon is worried. He turns to Jimmy. ‘Can you do us a Maori?’

  ‘I guess. I don’t know.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Brian’s voice is lugubrious, ‘maybe he’d better not. Ideologically unsound. From his point of view, that is. They’re bound to phone in and complain.’

  ‘But they’ll complain if he doesn’t.’ Marlon pulls his nose in genuine bafflement.

  ‘I could do you an Irishman,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘I’ll bet. No, let’s be devils, we’re in the business of taking risks. Make it a Maori, or even a couple if you can manage it, Jimmy my sweet.’

  Fenella sighs. ‘I can always get rid of them on the panel.’

  Jimmy closes the door behind him. Georgie May walks down the corridor towards him, her face composed, if a little pale. There is no trace of tears.

  ‘Well, that went all right, didn’t it,’ she says brightly.

  Jimmy O’Flaherty scowls. His heart is clenched with envy. ‘Sports or newsroom?’ he asks.

  She glances at him. Hesitates. ‘Newsroom. I’m going back to my husband, you know.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘You didn’t let them worry you, did you?’ She nods in the direction of the office he has just left.

  ‘Nah.’ His fingers curl round the cigarettes.

  ‘You shouldn’t, you know. You’re a real writer now.’ She plants a feathery kiss on his cheek. ‘You can take me to lunch when you get your cheque.’

  But her step is purposeful as she heads back towards the office.

  Jimmy leans on the lift button. He is uncertain whether or not he is supposed to be happy. He waits to be taken away.

  The Tennis Player

  1

  ON THE LEG FROM BOMBAY Ellen sat upright beside a cello which had had a seat booked for it because its owner said it was a Stradivarius. The cabin attendants seemed more gracious towards the cello than to the children who had joined the flight at Bombay. The lavatories were jammed with unflushed paper, service came less often than in the early part of the flight, and babies cried. Ellen offered to walk a child whose mother looked like a delicate Asian figurine.

  She and the child stood and looked down at Turkey for a long time through the domed glass at the rear of the plane.

  ‘Are you a missionary?’ asked a woman across the aisle, when she returned.

  Ellen shook her head and smiled politely. She had been travelling for nearly thirty hours. She had begun to think that she would like to be a cello.

  2

  In London she lugged her huge suitcase up five flights of stairs and found herself in a bedsit under the eaves of a building in Eccleston Square that looked elegant from the outside and was a dump on the inside. There was a fire escape out to the roof just like in The Girls of Slender Means.

  Only Ellen was forty-five and the war was over.

  3

  She walked down the street until she came to a Mr Wimpy food bar. She was still unhealthily full of airline food, yet the cardboard-and-onion smell of packaged hamburgers was irresistible. It was like Friday night in Newtown, close to home. The restaurant was full, with black faces and white in about equal proportion, and she was certain that the black faces were friendlier than the white.

  Afterwards, she went to the women’s lavatory at Victoria Station and queued behind the barrier. The large black woman in charge shouted out, ‘Which one of you ladies been and gonna done a wee wee on my floor?’ Nobody answered and Ellen knew she thought it was her.

  Her cheeks burned. She stepped over the puddle.

  4

  On the way home (for, for the moment there was no other, except Eccleston Square) she stopped to buy grapes from a fruit barrow, and fumbled with the unfamiliar coins.

  ‘Doesn’t know the bleeding time of day, does she?’ the man who ran the fruit barrow said to a group of schoolgirls with cheeks like beastly English apples. She gave him money, took what he said was her change, and fled without the grapes. She heard the laughter of the girls as she hurried down the street. Stung, she turned and walked back, shouting at the fruit vendor, fuck you, fuck you, ah fuck you.

  Then she ran for fear the bobbies would pick her up.

  She felt better until she got back to Eccleston Square.

  She spoke of herself as an ordinary woman. But she was used to living in a house with restored ceilings and pale walls that faced out to sea. She listened to classical music on the radio when she took her morning baths.

  In the room, she sat on the bed and wondered if there would be a nuclear attack before she got back to New Zealand and what were the chances of seeing her family again.

  5

  The best part of every day was saying fuck you to the fruit vendor when she passed. You could almost say they were on nodding terms. In Wellington, the city she came from, she had observed a woman dressed in a yellow and red cloak, who ran from behind a door at the railway station to feed pigeons. This activity was strictly forbidden. She did it when she thought no one was watching. Only someone always was. She got chased by a station attendant with a broom. Ellen could not stop thinking about her.

  6

  She went to a communion service in Westminster Abbey. It was Mothering Sunday and she began to cry. A woman in a good tweed suit and a slouched hat stood up in the middle of the service when the choir had just finished singing the Twenty-third Psalm. The woman shouted out to the congregation that they were all fools and hypocrites, and mistaken and misled. Ellen wanted to cheer when she was led away across the cold stones. Mostly because it might have been her getting caught but was not. Instead she drank the blood of Christ, and resolved to speak more forthrightly to the fruit vendor.

  7

  The next day she bought an Israeli avocado and a bottle of German wine at a corner store and took them back to the room. On a roof garden opposite to her, three men carried a garden up from the street, and she saw that it was full of flowering daffodils. In the square below, two men unlocked the gate and went inside to play tennis, locking the gate behind them, so that no one could get in.

  It amazed her that nobody shook the bars. Rally, they cried, game love set.

  On the day following that, she bought two cobs of bright gold corn. She had never eaten such sweet corn. It made her want to cry
again, it tasted so much of home, and childhood, only better.

  Outside snow had begun to fall, and the three men had appeared on the rooftop garden to take the daffodils away. She wondered how the corn had ripened in weather like this, and realised that of course it must have been imported. She rummaged through the rubbish tin and found the label on the packaging. The corn had been grown in South Africa.

  8

  She knew she was as nutty as a peanut slab when she got on the train at Charing Cross to go to Paris, but thought that maybe it wasn’t showing. The thing was, she was getting out of it. She opened her phrase book. She had passed School Certificate French. She had meant to refresh herself but hadn’t found the time. It felt as if it was thirty years since she had recited a French verb.

  It was.

  Exactly.

  9

  She sat for a long time watching the railyards turn to open fields, glimpsed grass and trees through mist. She was so afraid that now she would have been grateful for Eccleston Square. She had been running late and missed the bureau de change. Effectively, she was bound for Paris with no money. She passed her hand over her stomach where her travellers’ cheques were strapped in her money belt. The belt had worked round and the zip chafed her skin. The lack of money was something to worry about, and she supposed it would preoccupy her all the way to Paris. Her husband would have said, if you haven’t got something to worry about, you’ll invent something.

  Which was all very well.

  But if there was no bureau de change at the station, how would she get a taxi? She must also go to the lavatory on the train, or the boat, or somewhere, because if she did not, maybe she would have to pay to go at the station in Paris, and then if she had no money, and they would not let her in, how would she take off her money belt to get the travellers’ cheques out so she could change them anyway? There was so much to think about. Since she had been away she kept trying to cross things off lists she must do, if she was to survive alone in Europe, but instead she continually remembered more things to add. She did not know how she had ever looked after her children when it was so difficult to look after herself.