The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘Why are you going?’ she asks Tess, as she dials the taxi company. ‘How can you walk out on him on your last night?’

  Tess seems to measure the distance before her eyes, as if it is further than either of them can see. Her fingers pluck at the phone cord as if it is part of an instrument.

  ‘I’m going to get Sonny. You haven’t told him you’re leaving, have you?’ Natalie hates the slur she can’t control.

  Tess leans forward and kisses her cheek. ‘I’m sorry I’m not your sister,’ she says.

  Sonny is in the middle of a circle of very young actors and actresses in the kitchen. Somebody is cooking paella. ‘You can’t let her go,’ Natalie says, pulling at his sleeve. Nobody takes any notice. There is a whining tension in the air. Has anyone seen Victor, the actress who plays the counsellor asks. Surprised, Natalie looks around the room. Victor is supposed to be in Wellington.

  ‘He won’t come here,’ the lighting man says.

  ‘For sure.’ Agreement rustles amongst them.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he come?’ Natalie asks.

  There is a brief silence.

  ‘Don’t you know, you silly bitch,’ the actress says, ‘they’re going to pull the plug on the series? We’re folding.’

  When she goes back to the doorway, the lights of the taxi are receding through the fog. Natalie has lost her bearings, unable to tell in which direction the city lies. Behind her, people sit on the floor, eating paella off white Wedgewood dishes. Sonny comes to the door.

  ‘Come inside.’ He puts his arm over her, pinning her against the wall.

  ‘Whose house is this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are we supposed to be here?’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s as good as anywhere.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says. His breath is on her cheek, his wiry black beard brushes against her face. Behind his glasses his sad Jewish eyes are damp.

  ‘What will you do with your suitcase?’ he asks mockingly.

  ‘I’ve ordered a taxi,’ she lies.

  ‘We can send it away,’ he says.

  ‘I think I’m coming down with this bug that everyone’s got. I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t be sick on the carpet,’ he says, releasing her.

  She picks up the suitcase and walks outside. ‘Are you going to be okay?’ he calls.

  ‘Was it true? About you and Tess? Or did you both just make it up?’

  He follows her out, and she’s afraid of what he will do next. But he simply leans over and kisses her cheek. ‘Wait in the porch, I’ll make sure a cab comes soon.’

  Once in the car, she can’t remember what address she has given. She thinks they might end up at the Waverley, but the taxi pulls up at Sasha’s.

  There goes Natalie Soames, people would say, and he would wish that he was there beside her. Somewhere, years and years later, like Marius Goring thinking about Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes. When the crowd around her dispersed, he would catch up with her. ‘Why, how are you?’ she would say, as if she had just remembered who he was. ‘How are you?’ he would say, longingly, although it would be clear that she was wonderful.

  This is what she thought, after she got Stuart’s letter, some days later:

  ‘My dear,’ he wrote. ‘I was sitting on the roof fixing a sheet of iron that a storm had dislodged, when I heard a yell. It was Dulcie. She ran outside before I could climb down to see what the matter was. In her hand she waved a letter. I knew at once that it was one of yours. How could I do this to myself? To you? I’d left the letter in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Dulcie had decided to have it cleaned. As I scrambled over the roof, Dulcie shouted extracts, so that the neighbours could hear, and pulled the ladder down. Sort that out, she yelled, get your fancy woman to get you down. I was glad you had left Mountwood.

  ‘At last the phone rang and Dulcie went inside. I thought I’d fall off the roof, I felt so miserable. I decided that as soon as I got down I’d leave Dulcie for good.

  ‘After a while, she came back out, carrying an overnight bag. “Don’t leave me,” I heard myself calling. She looked awful and devastated and I suddenly knew that it was not to do with you. I had the most terrible premonition that something had happened to one of our children. She drove off and I inched along the guttering on hands and knees, aiming to shinny down the spouting.

  ‘Joan Lattimer came over and put the ladder back. Dulcie had rung her. “It’s her niece, there’s been a car accident,” she said. I was overwhelmed with relief that it wasn’t one of ours, and pity for Dulcie’s sister, this child is her only one.

  ‘I made a cup of tea and walked out with it to the garden. I saw that the grapevines needed pruning and wondered how I had missed them. I resolved to fix them next year. So it occurred to me that I would stay here, that I couldn’t walk away from this crisis, or the next one. I sent you a telegram, dear, care of Television, Marvellous Eight but the Post Office returned it. Joan had come over with some casserole for my evening meal. She picked up the phone, because I was feeding the cat, and they read the telegram back to her, with your name on it. “There’s no such thing as Section Eight,” she said, very suspicious, and of course longing to know (and I fear half-guessing) what it was all about. “Marvellous Eight,” I said, foolishly. “They’ve never heard of it,” she said, with that triumph that only neighbours like Joan can muster. I suppose she will tell Dulcie.

  ‘Anyway, I borrowed some money from her and caught the late bus over to Hamilton to join Dulcie and the family — maybe her niece will be all right, it’s too soon to tell.

  ‘I hope you weren’t too upset when I didn’t turn up yesterday. Perhaps we can meet some other time.

  With love, Stuart XXXX

  PS I think my banana palm, you know the one by the west fence, might fruit next year. I’ll send you a case (such optimism), I’m sure they’ll be sweet and nutty, just like you.’

  Natalie and Monty are at a Christmas party in Wellington. They have had a splendid year. Their lives haven’t always been splendid since they began to live with one another again in the late spring of 1974 but they have been better than they expected and improving still.

  Natalie didn’t go back to Monty straight away and by the time she had begun to consider the possibility he had almost gone off the idea. She sees their lives as tough and grainy then, black and white, like television before colour.

  ‘Why did you go back to him?’ her daughter asked her once. It is not that her daughter does not care for her father, indeed, they are very close. Rather, she remembers their separation, and considers herself damaged by it. Out of such pain and disruption, there has to be reason, she figures. Why did her mother know her own mind so little? Had she gone back because she was, at heart, simply conventional?

  ‘No,’ Natalie had answered at once, and somewhat stung. ‘It was because I had a second chance to choose. You don’t at the beginning, when you’re young. Or not when I was young. You got swept away by forces beyond your control. But I chose to come back. Actually,’ she added, ‘that was quite unconventional.’

  Sensing scepticism in her daughter’s expression, she said, with a flash of anger: ‘It was no easier than going, what I did.’ But that was where they left it. Love was too complicated to explain to one’s children, she decided. Choices, she suspects, are as hard-won as ever.

  In the wake of Marvellous Eight’s collapse, there was little work in the industry for Natalie. Victor didn’t return her calls. At first she took a regular job in an office and wrote plays for the stage at night. This time, she found a producer and the reviews were generally favourable. After a while, she was asked to work for television again.

  Victor and Sonny are dead, the industry has changed, Natalie works for independent film companies nowadays, and has as much work as she can handle. The party they are attending is given by a film producer; it is held in the reception area, at ground level, and someone has opened the doors and windows
so that the room is revealed to the street. Staff and guests sit squeezed up on steps around a staircase amongst life-sized puppets of politicians. At the end of the year, everyone looks tired and drawn, few are glamorous, survivors work hard these days. Most wear stretch Levis and Reeboks, as does Natalie. It is years since she thought of that day of abandonment and loss in Auckland.

  Beside her a young woman asks a question about her work. They fall into conversation. The woman stands out in the crowd, intense and beautiful, with a pale complexion and straight red hair falling to her waist. She wears a leather miniskirt, green stockings and yellow shoes that curve up at the toes. The conversation is passing her by, she has come with a cameraman, and people around her are talking shop; she is a violinist in the Symphony Orchestra.

  For a moment, when the violinist tells her this, Natalie is lost for words. Over the years, she has been to the orchestra many times, watching the musicians as they played, without thinking of Tess. Now, suddenly, she sees her hands clasped on the other side of the table from her. This young woman’s hands are just like hers.

  Before Natalie can think of anything more to say, there is a diversion in the street. Waiting at the intersection for the lights to change are eight Santa Clauses rollicking around in costume. They are red and loud and call out ho ho ho to bystanders. The lights move and they charge on down the street towards the party. A production secretary rushes out, calling with the offer of a drink.

  Chaos and merriment erupt, someone starts to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ and they all join in. The Santa Clauses cannot stay, they call out again, waving, and running on down the street.

  Monty turns to Natalie, alight with the fun of it. ‘How about that? A clutch of Clauses.’

  ‘Oh well done.’ The production secretary has overheard, and already people are calling it out, storing it away in their memories, a clutch of Clauses running down the street on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Marvellous eight,’ laughs Natalie. ‘Oh marvellous marvellous eight.’

  Monty looks at her, puzzled, and suddenly guarded.

  ‘There were eight of them,’ she says, faltering. ‘A marvellous eight.’ Only she wishes she hadn’t said this, it is a revelation of her subconscious that should have stayed hidden.

  Quickly she turns to introduce the violinist to Monty. He doesn’t mind the film crowd these days. His ginger hair has gone white and he looks like the kind of solid dependable person in whom people can confide.

  The violinist has gone. Across the street, Natalie sees her skipping between the cars, her bright hair like a flag. Then her eye is caught by another snatch of red, another Santa Claus running to catch up with the others; he is having trouble with his beard, and stops to adjust it. Nobody else except Monty notices him.

  ‘See,’ Monty says, ‘there were nine of them.’

  Natalie smiles, her heart lifting.

  Long ago, she had recognised and been grateful for the way that day had ended, how she had been saved from herself. She can see now that there is always an extra factor, the unknown, the wild card. A letter, an accident, a meeting with a stranger, some quirk of fate that will change the symmetry, deliver people from their expectations.

  Monty shakes his head, not wanting to remember that time. But he has seen the evidence, the ninth Santa Claus, the other dimension. It is impossible for her to explain that she has seen it too, and that it was, all of it, all right.

  Honor and La Jane

  THE 5.36 TRAIN IS DELAYED UNTIL 5.49. By the time Roy Turner gets off at his station, he is so hungry he feels as if his throat’s been cut. As he walks through the subway, he notes that MIDGE SUX and BUDDY SUX just the same as when he left on the 7.33 morning commuter, and the promise that GOD IS WAITING FOR U UP HERE still holds. He doesn’t believe this for one moment, but as he emerges from the tunnel’s gloom he is surprised to see the shopping centre bathed in an eerie golden glow. The streetlights are on, shining through banks of close-lying fog. Rain has flurried through the Hutt Valley all day. Roy steps into a puddle by the fish shop and by the time he draws alongside the Lotto shop his left sock has turned clammy.

  A couple run out of the shop. The woman, a thin blonde with the wispy remains of a perm flying around her shoulders, has just won fifty dollars on a scratchie. She hugs the man who bought her the ticket and bites his ear. ‘Money,’ she says. ‘Darling, your blood’s worth bottling.’

  The butcher is selling beef sausages for $2.99 a kilo and Roy wonders if he should take some home. La Jane might have cooked dinner, but she is more likely to have stuck one of Romano’s frozen pizzas in the oven again. The butcher is scouring his block and preparing to shut up shop. Roy decides to take a chance on dinner.

  Outside Alan Knowles the Jeweller, he stops to inspect his shoes. The jeweller stocks brass-eared elephants and china crocodiles that entrance his daughter, Victoria. The shop is secured with crisscross wires, making it look like a cage. Roy tests his shoe and the unthinkable happens. In his hand, the sole peels away from the upper, right back to the heel.

  When he hobbles into the kitchen in his bare feet, the smell of dinner hardly registers. The rain is pelting down in earnest. He shakes his hide, throwing the shoes in ahead of him.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to say nice to see ya, nice to see ya?’ his mother-in-law shouts. Paula is standing in front of the oven, hauling out stuffed frankfurters. The table is set with a clean cloth. A bowl of fresh coleslaw stands alongside a deep dish of mashed potato. His spirits might have risen were it not for the sight of Paula’s boyfriend Duane sitting in the corner jiggling Victoria on his lap.

  ‘Hi there, fella,’ says Duane.

  ‘Mum thought it was time I had a night off,’ La Jane says. She is curled up on the sofa, a magazine open on her knees at coming spring fashions.

  ‘Goodies night,’ says Paula. ‘Time you all had a bit of a treat.’

  In spite of himself, Roy grins. Paula has her good points. Even if her goodwill is not directed at him he’s pleased to collect the fallout.

  ‘My shoe came apart,’ he says.

  ‘You’ll have to get new ones. Won’t he dear?’ says Paula. La Jane doesn’t look up. Roy often feels that his conversations with his wife are conducted through Paula. She even rings her mother for answers to his questions when they’re on their own.

  ‘I can’t afford new ones,’ he says.

  La Jane finally looks up, raising her eyebrows in Duane’s direction.

  ‘He can’t afford new ones,’ she says.

  Paula leans down to get the heated plates out of the oven so she can start dealing out the frankfurters. Her black leather mini-skirt rides up her backside. She wears white knee-high boots and a sparkly mauve and blonde wig.

  ‘Why don’t you just sit up and eat your tea,’ she says to Roy. The others have begun arranging themselves around the table.

  ‘We haven’t any money,’ he persists, dropping into his seat. It’s urgent that La Jane understands this.

  ‘Why don’t you take Victoria?’ says La Jane. ‘You haven’t even said hullo to your own daughter.’

  Victoria is nearly asleep on Duane’s knee. She is dressed in yellow brushed-nylon pyjamas with blue giraffes scattered over them. Roy can’t see the point in disturbing her. She is a fretful little girl of eighteen months. As it is, he and La Jane have little enough peace.

  ‘Doesn’t Duane like children?’ he says.

  Paula settles herself in beside him, so that their knees touch under the table. ‘That’s a comment that does you no credit, Roy Turner,’ she says. ‘Give Victoria to me.’

  ‘You know Duane’s had a shock just recently. I don’t know why you can’t be nice to him,’ La Jane says. Duane’s brother was killed three months back. He was a traffic officer on point duty outside a rugby game. Blinded by the sun, the driver of a car travelling towards him swept him off his feet in front of two thousand people coming out of the gates. Somebody told Duane there were bits of his brother that looked like salami spread acro
ss the road. Duane said he forgave the driver, that if God had meant his brother to live his full three score and ten he would have made other arrangements. The sun rises and the sun sets, and in its passing it takes my brother with it, he said at the funeral, which still made Paula and La Jane cry when they remembered it. Duane is a lay preacher. He drives a white Sierra station-wagon and lives in a three-bedroom split level at Waterloo. His nuggety face is shaved very close, his mouth one of those invisible ones without a clear lip line that give the impression of being firm and straight. Sometimes Roy wonders how it must feel for Paula to kiss that trap.

  ‘Just get on with grace, Duane, and take no notice of Roy,’ Paula says. Victoria settles into her lap, sucking her thumb loudly in her sleep.

  Roy stares straight ahead through grace.

  ‘I don’t know what’s haunting you, boy,’ comments Duane when they begin to eat.

  ‘You are,’ says Roy. He has nearly finished the first course before he relents. His mother always said he was hopeless until he got food inside him — Just don’t talk to that lad until he’s filled his bread box, he’s got a mean temper on an empty stomach. He’s sure he wasn’t as bad as that, it’s just that he can’t concentrate without food.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asks La Jane. With his spoon he arranges his tinned peaches in petals around a mound of hokey-pokey ice cream.

  ‘I done housework, looked after the baby, same as every day. What do you expect?’

  ‘Did Katherine decide to go to the party?’ Some days, when her mood is right, she tells him what happened in The Young and the Restless though lately she hasn’t had much to say.

  ‘She is, but only for Philip’s sake,’ says Paula crisply. ‘She hopes she’ll get through the evening without throwing up.’

  Roy sighs. In the beginning he had fancied La Jane for her looks, though that wasn’t the reason they got married. They got married because La Jane was five months pregnant and Paula wouldn’t have it any other way. Not that it mattered because, by then, he loved her anyway. He remembers the day as clearly as yesterday.