The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  Hence the hours between late afternoon, when it feels as if I should be at home preparing a meal, and the time when it is dark can be difficult to navigate. I walk along the beach then, watching with a certain wonder the growing accumulation of footprints which turn outwards at the toes, threading backwards and forwards along the sand, tracing and retracing the way they have come; these splay-footed feet wearing sneakers are my feet.

  It is relevant here to give a little of the layout of this motel and its surroundings. The setting is a lonely landscape with only two or three houses to be seen in the far distance. They are of the very large cedarwood variety, and their owners are rarely seen, if indeed they are in them at all. These brooding livery-looking houses may well be the cottages of the rich for all I know.

  The motel units run parallel to the beach, separated from the sand by a narrow strip of kikuyu grass and then a band of very tall grass which is quite impenetrable. You would cut yourself on the whiplike grass if you were to attempt to walk through it. The only route from the motel to the sea, then, is down a narrow track in the dunes at the far end of the units. If one stays in any but the end unit it is necessary to pass the windows of all the other units in the row in order to reach the track. The windows are all floor-to-ceiling-length glass. Essential of course; the view is magnificent. As they say in the guidebooks. Straight out from the window of my unit (I always have the same one, its window is angled best for morning light where I have my typewriter) there is a barbecue area. I have never seen anyone using it, but then, as I said, I do not come in the season.

  That is the time and the location. Add to this, the cast. So far, there is only me, and a suggestion, as you will have noted, that the motel-keeper’s wife is to have a walk-on part. There is also about to be a guest appearance by a thin woman of indeterminate years and pale grey hair. She arrived at lunchtime, driving a sedate and well-cared-for Austin, gleaming with fresh polish. She struck me as the kind of woman who would not buy a Japanese car on principle. I, unfortunately, am the kind of woman who cannot afford to have principles. Not in this business anyway.

  I had seen the thin woman sitting in a deck chair on the balcony of the unit at the farthest end away from the track. Twice she had got up and picked her way past my window, but when she came to the track it seemed to intimidate her. She looked round furtively to see whether I was watching this failure of nerve, and when she observed that I had my head down and wasn’t looking, or at least, that I wasn’t going to show that I was looking, she returned the way she had come, passing close by me, her head shaded by a large sunhat tied in place by a scarf knotted under her chin, and her hands encased in fingerless gloves made of white muslin. I thought of giving her a fright and saying hullo, but that seemed silly, like breaking the rules on the beach at Brighton. For I suspected her of Englishness. Or an escapee from the Raj. Oh the far, the far far pavilions.

  By five o’clock she had given up all pretence of going to the beach and was sitting quietly in her deck chair. She looked pensive and refined.

  Another carload of people arrived, and this car told me a great deal about the people who rode in it, a sharp white Cordia Turbo. Middle-range young executive, I thought. Or a computer salesman (maybe both). Doing well anyway. Consumer goodies. If I were putting a young upwardly mobile executive and his wife in my film I would appoint them a Cordia Turbo. Unfortunately this was not possible. My film was to be period history.

  Having, as I thought, summed up the man and the woman in the car, and suspecting momentarily that they might not be married to each other, I did not think much more about them. I was restless and it was time to go to the beach again.

  I walked for a long time. I wanted to get away from the motel for it was beginning to feel crowded. I realised that I had been short-changing the virtue of solitude. I didn’t have the beach to myself either. Several people passed me, and then a boy on a trail-bike. In the distance there was a truck parked on the sand, and a man and a woman and a child were gathering driftwood and stacking it on the back of the truck. I could see that they looked poor, and the woman wore a scarf knotted under her chin, though not in the manner of the pensive English woman. Rather like a peasant in jeans. This was a new scenario, and as set pieces went, quite perfect in its way. Vintage Bergman.

  As I came back level with the motel, I saw that the couple whom I identified as the pair in the Cordia Turbo had come down to the beach. The man had taken off his tie, and was swinging the jacket of his three-piece suit in one hand. He was a heavily built man, perhaps in his forties, certainly older than his companion, a woman whom I took to be thirty or so. She had taken off her high-heeled sandals, and was drawing a pattern in the sand with one varnished little toe. Her legs were the colour of pale buffed teak, shown off to good advantage by a white linen suit. If she was fractionally plump it was not to her discredit, for everything about her shone with health and an attention to the details of her appearance. I could not help but admire her, and the tilt of her head as she looked up at her companion and smiled at him, with all her bright white teeth surrounded by a glossy smile. Still, they looked awkward on the sand, in their expensive clothing, and I saw them turn back to the motel. Relieved, I decided to wait a few minutes until they were back inside. I had noted that they were in the end unit, facing the track. Soon I too would go inside and eat the food out of the tins, and expensive fruit, have a drink, ring home, and prepare to listen to the sea all night long. For I find it hard to sleep when I am at the beach.

  The sun was dropping over the sea. If you looked out over the water it was blinding, but the air was still tremendously yellow and bright. I made my way towards the motel. When I was half-way across the grass I stopped, embarrassed.

  There, in front of the window of the end unit, was a man bending over with his back towards me. I thought he was’ taking off his socks. He had taken off everything else. I was confronted by what, in our vulgar New Zealand way, we describe as a brown-eye.

  I would agree, if it were suggested to me, that my imagination was overheated, but I swear, at that moment, the man’s arsehole looked as big as a saucer. I looked away, afraid that he would stand up and catch me looking. Anyone can get caught with their pants down. So I have often heard it said. But something about the way he moved drew my eye back again.

  The man was not taking off his socks at all. He was bending over the woman in white who was lying on the end of the bed. The polished brown legs flicked up around his waist, and I caught, out of the corner of my eye, the action of a deep diver taking the plunge.

  Again, I have to admit to a certain admiration for their style.

  I moved around inside my unit with exaggerated care. I found that my hands were shaking. I felt a deep consternation for the couple from the Cordia Turbo. How desperate they must have been to make love that they had not pulled the curtains, I thought. How terrible they will feel if they look out and find someone peering in.

  Of course there is no one to peer in at them except me, I told myself. The people on the beach do not come up here. The motel-keeper and his wife will not look; they are used to such impatience, hands which shake when they sign the register, such a surfeit of civility and normalcy from people who will pay with cash instead of cheques or credit cards in the morning; they have been trained to look the other way. And the woman from the Raj will have already locked her door and hidden the key even from herself.

  So why should I, so full of concern and love for them (for overwhelming passion is attractive, you must admit, it is the stuff of movies after all), be so undone?

  I opened a tin of meat, and cut open some tomatoes. Ritualistically, I set the table. But I was not hungry. I opened a wine cooler. When I am at the beach it is my habit to sit on the balcony and drink something light, and watch the setting sun. Tonight I realised that this was not possible, if the couple did not close their curtains. The balcony looked across to their window and while, in fact, I could not see into their unit from my balcony, they could see m
e if they looked up and not be certain whether or not they were within my range of vision. I drank some of the wine beverage rather quickly, standing at the sink, looking through the window that faced the back of the motel complex, trying to take pleasure from the assortment of debris I had collected from the beach and the grass outside and placed on the windowsill: half a thrush egg, its turquoise colour like pure light on the dark wood; another piece of eggshell, which I could not identify, white with pale brown speckling and a soft matt finish; a piece of wood with a regular even grain worn smooth; the skeleton of a fish with a stone in its eye; the thrown head of a spinifex; and a handful of goose barnacles.

  I cannot stay in here, I thought. The place was driving me crazy. I was certain they must be finished by now. Long enough had elapsed for the act to be completed, certainly given the urgency I had witnessed, and now they must realise that the curtains were open.

  Feeling resolute, as if it required a significant act of courage on my part, I walked outside, and back towards the sea. When I came level with the end unit I kept my head down, but with a quick neighbourly concern to ensure that everything was now in order, I flicked my eyes sideways.

  The curtains were open.

  The brown eye was disappearing in and out of the folds of its own cheeks with increasing rapidity, and the bright petal-pointed toes were twinkling in the air a very considerable distance from each other.

  I walked on down to the beach. I felt I was being watched, but dared not look over my shoulder. I sat down on the sand and my heart was pounding. I was gripped by a quite extraordinary agitation, as if I had been caught in some discreditable act. I put my head down on my knees and tried to think. Now that I had come back to the beach I had placed myself in a terrible position.

  I was going to have to get back to the unit. I looked at the toetoe grass at the edge of the sand. I had already missed the path and got lost in it once that week and, truly, it had imparted the sense of being lost in a jungle maze. I had no choice but to return by the track. Weighing up everything in my mind, I was seized by a great compassion for these two foolish lovers. They should be told that they were being observed. I would knock on the door, I decided, and stand there waiting for it to open, with downcast eyes, but when one of them opened the door (it would be the man I was sure), I would say, with a slight worldly faraway smile, that they may not have happened to notice, but in fact, their curtains were open. They would be embarrassed but grateful for my discreet and kindly intervention. I braced myself, feeling a trifle breathless, and started to get to my feet. But I sank back down on to the sand with a groan. It wouldn’t do, of course.

  My concern was replaced by anger. It was a public beach, it was a common access to and from the beach to the unit, there was no other. Why should the utterly egocentric and hedonistic copulation of these two people interfere with my evening? Why shouldn’t I look at them fucking?

  Ah, this was closer to it. I reminded myself with some severity, that I was not only a scriptwriter but a novelist as well.

  It occurred to me in a rush, that as a writer who wrote, from time to time, about the sexuality of others, I may have an obligation to my art. For how often did the critics say, that all sex was the writer’s own experience translated into the behaviour of others? As if we were the only peep-show in town. Now, I was being presented with the opportunity to undertake research. I had a duty to observe this couple.

  I was very relieved when I came to this conclusion, and now I did stand up, brushing the sand off my trousers and generally preparing myself to work again.

  To my astonishment, I saw that the Raj woman was approaching me along the sand. I had not seen her come to the beach, and I tried to remember when this might have occurred. I concluded, in the brief seconds it took me to consider the matter, that it must have been when I had my back to the sea and was contemplating the birds’ eggshells on my windowsill. Now she was walking sturdily and purposefully, as if she was about to catch an elephant. She had donned a pair of dark glasses, and she still wore a sunhat, although the sun was starting to slide towards the sea.

  Her presence disturbed me, yet I thought, with fortitude, that larger problems than this had conspired in the past to keep me from my job and so I turned towards the path, although this time I did give her a nod for I felt she might be lonely in this vast seascape. She returned the nod, her chin firm and resolute as if she too had tasks to accomplish.

  At the crest of the path, facing the motel, I stopped. The room had assumed the proportions of a golden bowl of light. The couple on the bed were lying with their shining limbs entwined in that comfortable and affectionate contemplation of their lovemaking which people assume when it is over. The young woman’s fingers caressed her lover’s back and earlobes, as if he had given her a very nice time indeed.

  I tingled with disappointment. Apparently it was over.

  But my attention was drawn away from the window by an odd scratching noise. I looked over to where it was coming from, and saw that the motel-keeper’s wife was hoeing the grass around the barbecue area. It seemed to be an odd thing to be doing, at that time of evening. (I am not sure why, it was as good a time as any I suppose, although I knew that it was the time when guests arrived, and besides she had been sitting out in the sun for most of the day.) She was a pleasant young woman who smoked rather a lot and became shrill with her two small sons when they became unruly, but to her guests she had a very civil tongue, and as New Zealanders inevitably do, we had discovered at least two people whom we knew in common.

  Still, it was clear to my quick writer’s eyes that she was here for a nefarious purpose, and she certainly did not have the excuse that I did, to exercise my powers of observation. She was hoeing the barbecue in order to watch the couple in the bedroom.

  I was very shocked by this. How base is human nature.

  She kept on hoeing the barbecue though, and I became nonplussed. She, in her turn, may not understand my legitimate sense of vocation, and might judge me, as I had already judged this interest of hers as prurience.

  As I stood there hesitating, my problem was, for the moment, resolved. From behind me a man appeared and approached the motel-keeper’s wife. At first I did not recognise him, but then I saw that it was the man in the party of driftwood gatherers. I do not know why he had come to see the motel-keeper’s wife but it seemed that he had some transaction to make. I felt rather mortified. It might well have been that she had been waiting for the man to call on her, and that there was nothing sinister about her presence by the barbecue pit after all. Though why, I wondered, was she waiting for the driftwood gatherer out of the sight of her husband? I was beginning to sense corruption and vice all around me.

  The driftwood gatherer was a sandy-complexioned man with wispy hair straggling over his collar. I wondered where the woman and child had gone. Away from them, the man looked less remote and romantic, a very ordinary sort of fellow in fact. He and the motel-keeper’s wife were standing together now, and she appeared to have given him some money. It was all quite above board, I conceded. He probably did odd jobs for her. She leaned on the handle of her hoe, and he leaned down over the edge of the barbecue, resting his arms on its concrete surrounds. They grinned at each other, and turned their attention towards the room. Neither of them took any notice of me, or seemed to find it strange that I had positioned myself against the fence, casually glancing around as I was, and gazing out to sea now and then.

  It was in one of these backwards sweeps that I noted the advance of the Raj woman. Of course, she too had to traverse the path in order to return to her unit.

  I became anxious again. Clearly it was most important that she should be spared any improper sights. I wondered if I should walk along beside her, befriending her, and with my presence, and of course my friendliness, shielding her from the sight of the naked couple on the bed.

  She had acquired a long stick which she was using like a staff. She came on up the path towards me. I could not see her eyes behi
nd the dark glasses. But when she was close to me she stopped. The ground was thick with powdery seed heads which seemed to be lying in wait for children to gather them and blow them away. The Raj woman stood still and very deliberately began to knock their heads and appeared to watch the feathering parachutes floating in the evening air. But I saw that her head turned to the window of the room.

  Now the sun was flaming yellow gold and about level with where we stood. In the few moments that I had been standing by the Raj woman I had become lonely and ashamed. I had no business to be standing here. If I were to move, surely everyone else would too.

  But this now seemed as churlish and high-handed a thing to do, as my previous behaviour had seemed voyeuristic. This is how I put it now, at any rate, for in a story like this, the central character (is that what I was? maybe not, but I am the central core of definition) must be seen to have some finer feelings; I cannot allow you to see her as totally unscrupulous.

  The Raj woman had turned her attention to a collection of puffballs now, and was methodically breaking them open with her stick. Some of them were dried up inside and other fresher ones were full of vile squelchy pulp.

  There was movement on the bed. The woman was getting up.

  For a moment she turned to us, and it seemed that she must surely see us. We saw her smile to herself, that big full-lipped mouth parted over the white teeth. Perhaps she did not see any of us. Maybe she was so full of lust that she was blinded to all outside. Or maybe the gold sun was in her eyes as it set, blinding her.