by Fiona Kidman
She stifled a giggle. Catch a bite. Hmmm. But when his invitation had sunk in she was overwhelmed, scarcely believing she had got it right. ‘Oh yes, I’d like that. I have twelve to one as a rule, is that all right? I mean, I could change, well no, I couldn’t, it’s Friday, and Mr Hedges leaves early for the coast, he likes to get his dictation done early in the afternoon, so I can’t but … oh George, is twelve o’clock all right?’
‘It’ll be fine, I can go when I like.’
‘Of course. You accountants, you’re so rich. So independent. Where will we meet?’
‘Kirk’s okay? In their new tearooms.’
‘Kirkcaldie and Stains.’ She said it a shade too carefully. ‘That’ll be nice. Twelve o’clock then.’
She replaced the receiver and said, ‘Damn.’ Had he suggested Kirk’s to annoy her on purpose? There was that silly joke about getting a husband. He wouldn’t have liked that. He would tell Susan she was unbalanced. That Nellie, that sister of mine, she could hear him saying right at this moment, as Susan poured coffee and passed it over the breakfast bar, she’s a bit nuts you know, God knows what’s going to become of her.
In her imagination, Nellie saw Susan, dressed in tight jeans with a colourful sweatshirt hugging her hips, lace-up sneakers with thick silent soles. She cursed herself for having forgotten to ask after her sister-in-law and at the same time a nasty thought crossed her mind. Why did George want to see her? He always said he had enough money, that he didn’t need his share of the house. But maybe Susan had heard how prices were soaring in this suburb, you couldn’t be sure with Susan.
God might strike her down, but Nellie would take a chance on Him knowing the truth — she hated Susan. How she hated her, her casual prettiness, her children, her certainty.
Nellie glanced sideways at herself in the hall mirror. She had been briefly handsome, with a slant to her heavy-lidded eyes, and a surprising throat that rose as tenderly as a gannet’s from her Peter Pan collars. But those subtle tricks of youth had disappeared, giving way to sallowness and thickness, and an unmistakable dark shadow on her upper lip.
She moved quickly, the pattern of her morning altered from its routine. There was breakfast to down in a hurry, a carton of yoghurt and a banana, and the bed to make. Nellie had a habit of order in her life. Order made sense of things, kept dreams under control. It reassured the people next door that she was a harmless neighbour. More than that, it made it safe to come home. As she threw a dark patterned rug into place, she thought that perhaps she could look for a new pillow at Kirk’s. One of those triangular pillows to support her neck. Deciding that she was finished with the one on the bed, she took it to store in the linen cupboard. Straight away, the scent of Blue Grass atomiser overpowered her. Mother’s smell. It still clung in unexpected corners, in powder bowls with silver lids, in the writing bureau, or in drawers; you never knew where Mother’s smell lurked, waiting to catch you by the throat.
She would rather not go to Kirk’s. She didn’t feel smart enough.
And also, that was where Mother went, every week, when she grew old.
A year passed after Angelo’s death when Mother could hardly raise her head from the pillows each morning. ‘Look after me, Nellie,’ she whispered.
Costa had begun to go around with Sophia. ‘Those Greeks stick together,’ Mother said, quite civilly, one morning. It was almost enough to make you laugh, if that was how your sense of humour took you, that Mother might think Costa a problem.
But it was humour of the black and sombre kind. There were things that Baba had not told his wife before he died. Looking back, Nellie knows he would not have told her anyway. Death might have robbed him of the opportunity, but it was not one he would have taken.
Mother, soon after Costa’s marriage to Sophia, rose from her bed, and did not grow old gracefully in black widow’s weeds.
Instead, she sallied forth to town every day, dressed in a cinnamon suit with a cream lace blouse, ruffled at the throat. Her make-up was applied with a pancake stick, and finished with a dark slash of dahlia-red lipstick. On her head she placed a black fitting hat with a small froth of veil that came halfway down her forehead, before catching the No. 5 Hataitai bus. Everyone knew her, one of the regulars, those old women who talked loudly on the ride into town about the Royal family. Oh, the little Queen Mother, they said, she looked so sweet on television last night. What they meant was, tough old turkey, just like us, a survivor. At Kirk’s they mounted the stairs as if lifts had not been invented, and sat in the tearooms, eating cakes from a stand, and watching out for rich women.
When the developers decided to pull Kirk’s apart and remodel it behind the old façade, it knocked the heart out of the old women. Mother was one of the first to go.
And now, here was Nellie, in the house which Mother long ago stripped bare of Baba, of the old photographs with the dark frames, the heavy hand-painted vases, the soft flokati. If it had not been for George and his phone call, she might have got through another entire day without thinking about Mother.
But the stripes of sun on the mantelpiece were the same as when she had awoken, and the beans she had planted behind the shelter of the new fence were flourishing, the potted petunias and pelargoniums flowered along the verandah, and herbs by the steps were prolific. Baba would have known this house.
And maybe, after all, her meeting with George would be full of the unexpected pleasure the sound of his voice had first promised. It was enough that he wanted to see her.
Her spirits continued to rise as she walked to the bus stop. The sky was as blue as the dome of her Church Evangellisimos and the flowers behind the palings as colourful as ikons.
Aunt Pela, Baba’s sister-in-law, was on the bus. Nellie hadn’t seen her for weeks and felt guilty when she first caught sight of her, but Aunt Pela was so pleased to see her it didn’t matter.
‘Are you keeping well, Aunt?’ Aunt Pela was over eighty.
Aunt Pela brushed aside the subject of her health. ‘You know Emmanuel, number one grandson, he’s passed his exams at the university?’
‘Ah good, he’s a clever one, that boy. His father’s clever.’
‘So is his mother, she has a good brain.’
Oh what it would have been like to have had a mother like Aunt Pela. Mother had never once said she was clever, though she often got better marks in composition than George.
‘And will you go to Greece?’ Aunt Pela asks.
Nellie started, looked away. Aunt Pela was watching her with probing eyes. ‘If only Baba hadn’t died,’ Nellie said after a while.
‘Ah, but he did. A long time ago, Nellie.’
‘You know how it was with Mother … I think it’s too late now.’
‘Do you really want a Greek husband, Nellie?’
Nellie glanced around to make sure there were no other Greeks aboard. ‘I don’t know, Aunt. Sometimes I ask myself that. But who would have me?’
Nellie and Costa had gone to a re-run of Sweet Bird of Youth at the Lido. It was their first date. ‘I bet he’ll hold your hand,’ Sophia said. Her boyfriends always did. Such dangerous living. ‘My father would kill me if he knew,’ Sophia said.
Nellie would be ashamed if she couldn’t tell Sophia that Costa had held her hand. But sure enough, as she watched the screen, his hand stole across the arm of the seat. Their fingers touched, linked, her palm enveloped by a moist insistent pressure. She sighed, melting beside him.
Then somehow his clasp had loosened. She could still, all these years later, feel what happened next, his fingers, so sinuous and insinuating, delicate and unhurried, her knees crooking sideways, as if she couldn’t stop them, to make space for his hand. Without ever turning her head, she fixed her eyes on the young Paul Newman, composing what she would tell Sophia. We are almost engaged, she would say, nothing more, as if Sophia was not old enough to understand certain things.
Outside, in the light, she walked with her eyes downcast, and a blush on her face that wouldn’t go a
way. Costa wore a startled triumphant smile, glancing sideways at her, and away. He loved her, she knew it. At Pigeon Park, a flock of birds, startled by their approach, flew straight up, the air whirring around them, and she felt as high as them, up in the treetops.
‘Wait for me a sec,’ he said, and went into the Men’s, not shy about telling her he had to go.
When he came out his face was white.
‘What is it, Costa?’ She knew something was dreadfully wrong.
‘I have to go to the hospital.’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Are you ill? Please tell me.’
His eyes were hard. ‘Go away, Nellie Pagonis.’
He strode off, leaving her behind in the street.
After a few minutes, a Newtown tram came by; she ran down Courtenay Place and threw herself on board. It heaved itself slowly along the street, wheezing and clanking on the rails; she thought it would have been quicker to walk.
But as she got down from the tram, there was Costa, walking fast, his head down in the wind, his jacket collar pulled up round his cheeks, going up the steps of the hospital.
He was checking into Out Patients, as she came up behind him.
Now his mouth was mean and thin, his eyes fearful. ‘I told you to go away.’
But he had already begun his story to the young doctor who had greeted him, there was no turning back from it. His hand scrabbled at his crotch.
The doctor’s eyes gleamed with unfriendly amusement. Turning, he called over his shoulder to a colleague. ‘Hey, guy here reckons he’s got crabs.’
A ripple passed around the crowded waiting room.
‘Who do you reckon gave them to you?’
Costa turned to Nellie.
‘What are crabs?’ Nellie asked.
The doctor barked with laughter this time. ‘Body lice,’ he said. ‘Ointment for two?’
She didn’t have crabs. Probably Costa didn’t either, but she didn’t stay to find out. Everybody knew the Lido was a fleapit. At least, so she heard years after, though she never spoke the word Lido again. Not ever. She heard some men talking about the theatre at work. That fleapit. You could pick up anything there, they said. And laughed, just the way the doctor had.
She’s fast, Costa told the boys, and they told their fathers. The men at the club talked, and soon it was all over town, Nellie Pagonis is a bad girl. Baba asked her, tell me it’s not true what they say. It is not as bad, she had whispered, but the truth was, she didn’t know how bad bad was.
Costa’s father, who might have been expected to help, simply spread his hands elaborately. He pitied Angelo, a man who had been made to look a fool. Nellie’s behaviour could not be predicted, like that of good true Greek girls, his gesture implied.
If it hadn’t been for Aunt Pela, Nellie might have lost touch with the Greeks altogether. But her aunt lay in wait for her after work and tempted her inside with promises of baklava and plied her with sweets in silver bowls. ‘Come to church, it’s our saint’s day this week,’ she would say. And in spite of Mother’s protestations, and her taking to bed with a headache, Nellie did go.
‘All things pass, Nellie,’ Aunt Pela said, guiding her reluctant footsteps back into church one morning.
Oddly, it was since Mother died that she had almost stopped going. When she lay languidly in bed at the weekends, she told herself that the house had become her temple, but really she knew that it was the luxury of not having to take a stand any more.
‘I don’t feel like a New Zealander, Aunt,’ Nellie said. There, it was out, and it was true, but it was a truth she only half understood. Rather, she understood the endless feeling that nothing would ever be whole. ‘I feel foreign.’
Her aunt sighed. ‘You might feel foreign in Greece,’ she said.
Nellie couldn’t believe she had heard her properly. Aunt Pela had always understood.
‘You must think what you’ll do about it,’ her aunt said. ‘Time’s moving on. You have a good job, hnnnh?’ As the bus neared Lambton Quay, she remembered to ask about George.
‘He’s good, wonderful,’ Nellie said. ‘I’m seeing him today.’
‘And Susan?’
Nellie rolled her eyes, and Aunt Pela laughed.
As the lift rose to the tenth floor, Nellie thought that Aunt Pela was right, after all. It was time she sorted herself out. It was a day of portents. She called out to Mr Hedges that it was a nice day even before he had time to say good morning.
‘Chirpy today. What’s making you so happy? Friday, eh?’
‘Yes. This and that.’
‘Good weekend planned?’
‘I’m applying for three months’ leave of absence.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ve been here over twenty years.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I’m going to Greece.’
‘Well, well, Miss Pagonis. Next thing we’ll have you married.’
‘That’s possible,’ she said, smiling.
At quarter to twelve the phone rang. It was George. ‘Sorry, can’t make lunch, Sis.’
She hated him calling her that. ‘Why?’ she shouted down the phone. ‘I altered everything for you.’
‘You said you weren’t doing anything.’
‘I didn’t say …’ But she couldn’t remember what she had said. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, George?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s just Susan …’
‘Is she all right? I’m sorry I didn’t ask this morning. The children? Huh? They okay?’
‘They’re all in good health.’ His voice was exhausted. ‘Catch you later, Nellie.’ He hung up before she could say another word.
The sun still blazed as she arrived home, but she hardly saw the dusty salmon and gold light on the bay. The cat’s meat, in the butcher’s thin plastic grip, slapped coldly against her leg, her neck ached. She fumbled for the key, then froze, a warning in her blood. The door was already ajar.
Very quietly, she picked up the yard broom and sidled into the house. A man was seated in the living room with his back to her. Her bottle of Metaxa stood in front of him and he had already poured a drink.
It took her several seconds to recognise George. His shoulders were thin and hunched and the skin on the back of his neck had lost its tightness. But the strange thing was that, although he had never resembled their father, for a moment it could have been Angelo Pagonis sitting there.
‘Hullo,’ he said, as if she might be expecting him.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked, at the same time remembering that he had always kept a key. He didn’t answer, and she saw then that he had been weeping.
‘What is it?’ she cried, for she couldn’t remember his tears, not since they were children.
‘Susan,’ he said.
‘She’s sick?’
‘No. Yes, it feels as if she is, but it’s me who’s ill. No sleep.’ He rubbed his hands across his eyes. ‘She’s left me, Nellie. Susan and the children, they’re gone.’
‘Left you? No, of course she’s sick. Nobody would want to leave you, she’ll come back.’
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s over, really it is. I wanted to tell you at lunchtime, but even then I couldn’t believe it. But it’s true, I have to face it. It was all work, work, work. I didn’t see things when I should. Well, I’m not the first one. It’d been going on for a long time.’
‘Going on?’
‘She’s in love with someone, she’s gone away with him. It happens, Nellie, don’t look like that. It’s life.’
When he had recovered a little, she made some cheese sandwiches and they drank some brandy. The long evening light was clean on the surface of the bay; the air began to chill.
‘I’m going to Greece,’ said Nellie. ‘It would be best if you came with me.’
He nodded, and it occurred to her that here, in their parents’ home where he had taken refuge, he would do as she suggested, that Susan was already
receding, dropping away to some distant point beyond that treacherous adult existence which had disillusioned them both.
‘You’ll come then?’
‘I’ll think about it. You always wanted to go, didn’t you?’
‘Baba wanted it. He would have liked you to go too.’
George looked at his hands. ‘I hardly knew Baba.’
‘He was shy with you. You were …’ She floundered.
‘Different. Like Mother.’
‘But you aren’t. Tonight I came in, and it was as if he was sitting there.’
He stirred, restless. ‘I should go.’
‘Why? You can stay here.’
‘I still have a home. A house, anyway. I must think what to do with it. Sell it, I suppose.’
‘And then you can come back here, and we can go to Greece.’
‘Oh Nellie.’ She sensed real regret, real sadness, when he spoke again. ‘Life is never simple. What’s wrong with your neck?’
She had forgotten her neck, but supposed that she must hold it at an angle from habit.
‘It’s nothing much, it just gets stiff at nights. A nuisance.’
‘Have you some ointment? I could rub it before I go.’
‘Oh yes, please.’ In a minute, she was kneeling at his feet, her blouse pulled modestly to one side, his hands kneading her shoulder and the column of her throat. Oh this happiness. On the sea’s dark surface, white caps shone under the first hard spearhead of stars, the ngaio rustled against the windowpane, the scent of menthol filled the room. The movement of George’s thumb and forefinger travelled down her like a flame. He was her Greek boy. He was Mother and Baba.
‘Why is nothing simple, George?’
He paused, and she regretted having spoken, as he remembered that it was his sister whom he touched.
‘You should know’ His voice was gentle, even as he screwed the cap back on the tube. ‘It hasn’t been simple for you, eh? It didn’t all come true, like Baba said.’
‘But it could, we could make it come true.’
He stood. ‘I’ve got to go now. You’ve been so good to me, I’m glad I came to you.’