The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘What are you doing?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Having a holiday,’ said Joyce, feeling foolish and frightened. She picked her purse up and placed it in her lap, holding it firmly round the clasp. Of course, she realised that what she was doing was offensive, but they were so close to her and there were so many of them that it was all she could think of. Her passport was in there, and two hundred American dollars, and half a million dongs and a lock of Donelle’s baby hair slipped under the plastic cover that held her photograph.

  ‘How old are you?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Forty-three,’ said Joyce.

  The girls shrieked with laughter. One of them pinched her arm, feeling a fold of flesh.

  ‘Forty-three?’ She turned and translated the figure to the others.

  Joyce, relaxing her grip on the purse, signalled to the barman, the way she had seen other people do when they wanted a drink. She almost poked one of the girls in the eye. The others laughed and mimicked her, poking at each other’s eyes. The barman took out a comb and began to slick his black wing of hair over his bony skull.

  After a moment, the girls left, laughing and waving. ‘Goodbye,’ they said. ‘Goodbye.’

  Joyce felt a blush rising up her throat and spreading over her cheeks. It had just occurred to her that the girls had wanted to make friends.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the orchards and the gardens,’ said Shaun. ‘The grapefruit were like pumpkins, and the marigolds were up to my shoulder. You’d have really liked it, love. And the river, it was so wide, it was like setting out to sea in a flat-bottomed boat. Like the owl and the pussycat.’ He laughed out loud at his cleverness. ‘We used to say that when we were kids,’ he said, more soberly.

  The river, and rice paddies mile after mile, Evan had written. It’s all right in the daytime, it’s just boring looking out at all that water and stuff. But I’ve got scared of the dark. The gooks sneak up on us, shooting from the other side of the river. I’ve got ants in my pants and blisters and wet socks. We’re heading into tunnel territory tomorrow, fucken little bastards hide underground and jump out at you any old how. I’ve heard they live down there, inside the tunnels, and they’ve got steel traps and six-foot stakes for us to fall on. Great, isn’t it?

  ‘Did you get me some lozenges?’ said Joyce.

  Shaun looked embarrassed. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I went looking for the chemist’s shop, but it didn’t have anything in it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s true. It’s just a kind of grey concrete place with empty shelves. I ran into that Pommie joker that came in on the plane. He says all the drugs are second-hand here, unless we go to he hospital, and then don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘Aspirin?’

  Shaun shook his head. ‘C’mon, buck up old girl,’ he said. ‘I’ve put us down for another tour tomorrow.’

  ‘Not for me, I’m too sick.’

  ‘No, you’re not. I’ve booked us a limo, with a guide. You’ll be better off out there than hanging about here on your own.’

  Joyce turned her face to the wall.

  ‘I talked to the chef up in the restaurant,’ said Shaun. ‘They’ve got an English menu too, you know. He said they could make you some macaroni cheese. How about it, Joycie, bit of smackers? Something to eat, that’s what you need.’

  That night, a piano and violin duo played ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’. They ate their dinner at tables decorated with gladioli, and between mouthfuls they rested their knives on the backs of china ducks. Joyce ate a dragon fruit for dessert; inside its pink hide the flesh was starry white and speckled with hundreds of tiny seeds. The windows of the restaurant were covered by bamboo curtains with the Mona Lisa painted on them. Her smile rippled as the fans moved the air. Shaun clapped loudly when the musicians rested, so that they would come back and play again.

  As Shaun had planned, they set off in the hired car, in the morning, bound for the tunnels at Cu Chi. As they approached the entrance, Mrs Pham, their guide, showed them where bombs had fallen, also a crashed aeroplane with jungle growth curling through its fuselage, and pointed out men labouring under the baking sun, building an endless line of memorials to their dead. She was dressed in a neat uniform, and held a cloth over her face whenever Joyce sneezed. She showed them where to climb down into the earthen rooms where the Viet Cong had lived year after year, conducting their guerrilla warfare; they put on Viet Cong hats and had their photographs taken, they marvelled at the way the cooking fires had been concealed. The Englishman and his Australian wife, who they now knew were called Patrick and Alison, appeared with another tour guide. ‘Like an Asian Belsen, isn’t it, really, don’t you think?’ Patrick said.

  When they got back in the car, Shaun said with excitement, ‘Patrick tells me that if you pay the guides some extra they’ll take you into the countryside.’

  ‘No,’ protested Joyce. She fanned herself with her hand, although the air in the car was quite cool.

  ‘Dollars,’ said Shaun, leaning forward, his eyes shining. ‘I give you dollars.’

  ‘American dollar?’

  ‘Boom boom.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Pham, her eyes enraged. The driver, a solidly built man who appeared to speak no English at all, suddenly scowled at them.

  ‘What have I done?’ said Shaun.

  ‘No fuck,’ said the guide.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Shaun. ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’ He waved his hands.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just a saying.’ Though suddenly, of course, he knew where the saying had come from. He laughed uncertainly. ‘I don’t want boom boom, I’ve got the missus with me. Wife, you understand? Just a ride in the country, okay? Fifty dollars, okay?’

  ‘Fifty?’

  ‘Yep. Upfront.’

  The guide turned to the driver and spoke rapidly, then turned back to Shaun. ‘Sixty dollar?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll take you to very nice temple.’

  Joyce sat in silence as they rolled through the countryside. They were in Tay Ninh province, Mrs Pham told them. Smoking dome-shaped brick kilns dotted a wide plain, rice was laid out on the roads to dry, children rode buffaloes.

  ‘Ten kilometres from Kampuchean border,’ said Mrs Pham. ‘Our driver was tank driver there in the war.’

  ‘Will you take us there?’ asked Shaun.

  ‘To the border?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Fifty dollars,’ said Shaun.

  ‘Another fifty dollar?’

  ‘Shaun, we won’t have enough money to get home. I promised Donelle I’d get her a watch in Bangkok on the way back,’ said Joyce.

  ‘Sixty,’ said Shaun.

  The car slowed down while another rapid conversation followed.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mrs Pham. ‘You are two crazy foreigners.’

  The ducks and buffaloes and children gave way to a steady stream of cyclists. The bicycles were not ordinary vehicles; they consisted mostly of two bikes lashed together and laden with such huge bundles that they teetered from side to side. Perhaps two thousand of them filled the road in steady streams travelling each way.

  ‘They are smugglers, going to the smugglers’ camp,’ said Mrs Pham.

  And, indeed, they had pulled up in front of an encampment with a rickety arch at its entrance. The words CHO HUU NGHI were written on it. ‘It means the Friendship Market,’ Mrs Pham said, with a strained smile.

  The car pulled up and Shaun got out, his camera clicking even as he walked into the marketplace. The market was littered with filthy straw, insects hovered above dirty pools of water. The black market goods were a strange assortment of seemingly unrelated items: toilet soap and cosmetics, liquor, hardware. Some, the guide explained, had been brought overland across Cambodia from Thailand to trade into Vietnam; Marine Saigon Brandy and other cheap liquors were moving back over the border. Cambodian men, bare-chested and wearing cotton trousers, hurriedly loaded their bikes, women in flowing yellow and red h
eadscarves watched the military border patrol, fewer than two hundred metres away.

  Shaun moved quickly down the stalls. A man with the tattooed stump of one arm walked towards him, showing stained teeth when he grinned. He spoke to Mrs Pham.

  ‘His tattoo says that Pol Pot took his arm. He will let you take his photograph for ten dollars.’

  Shaun put his hand in his pocket, turning it inside out to show that it was empty. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I think you have taken enough photos,’ said Mrs Pham, a sudden new urgency in her voice. Shaun didn’t hear her.

  It was then Joyce noticed that the engine of the car was running; all the doors hung open and the vehicle was beginning to move slowly forward.

  ‘Move,’ said Mrs Pham, fierce and intense. She began to walk quickly away from them, towards the car.

  Shaun was smiling, looking in his other pocket. A group of people had moved between him and Joyce.

  ‘Shaun,’ called Joyce, her voice high. He heard her, across the growing crowd, turning his head, and blinking in the sunlight. She thought of all the times she had tried to speak and been unable to tell him what it was they ought to do next, when her throat had closed over, and she had let him take the lead. ‘Move,’ she said. ‘Shaun, move.’

  In a second, it seemed, they had leapt into the car as it gathered speed, the doors swinging wildly while they careered down the road. A shot rang out behind them. They had covered perhaps half a kilometre when a barrier crashed down. The car ground to a halt as a military policeman stepped forward.

  ‘Of course,’ said Shaun. ‘They’ll be part of the rackets too.’

  The driver stepped out of the car on a command. A conversation began, the driver putting his hands on his head while he talked. Beside the road stood bullet-riddled road signs. Joyce looked at Shaun; his eyes were moist and frightened. He clutched the hidden money belt. ‘I’m sorry, old girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll offer them some money, shall I?’

  ‘No,’ said Joyce. ‘You’ll just sit still.’

  That was what Evan had done, when he lost his mind. He sat still for ten years, picking at the spots on his face and pulling the hair on the backs of his hands, waiting for his mind to come back to him, and then he died. All this crap, he had written, in his last letter home, but I guess it’ll be worth it when I get back. I’ve got so many things to tell. Only nobody had listened. People had crossed the street to avoid him, and his voice had faltered into silence.

  Glancing sideways at his wife, Shaun saw that her lips were moving lightly up and down, not in a prayer, but just with the big shallow breaths she was taking. Her hands were quite steady in her lap and her eyes stared ahead. Another policeman appeared and, through the car window, levelled a gun between Shaun’s eyes. Summoning up his courage, he met the policeman’s gaze. What he saw was a tired and bothered man who looked as if he might have too many daughters, or a bad debt, or, from the way he twisted his tongue round his gums, an abscessed tooth. Shaun guessed that he might play a good game of cards, or whatever the equivalent was in Vietnam. Almost certainly, he should be avoided in a game of poker. So that’s what it was about, Shaun thought, that’s what Evan saw, people just like him and me. Well. And then he began to tremble violently beside his motionless wife.

  After a few minutes, the gun was lowered, the driver got back in the car, and the barrier arm lifted. They moved off into the deepening shadows of late afternoon, travelling quickly towards the city.

  ‘They could have thrown our bodies over the border,’ said Shaun.

  ‘We were more trouble than we were worth,’ said Joyce. ‘You’ve spent all our money.’

  ‘You did real good, Joycie,’ he said, when they were having dinner that night. Outside, on the rooftop, the great crown of the Rex revolved on its pedestal, lights twinkling.

  ‘I know,’ she said. She was looking forward to going downstairs and packing.

  Shaun had his wallet stolen in Bangkok, they lost their coats in the airport and they had a row on the plane before it took off, about nothing in particular.

  ‘What a disaster,’ said Shaun.

  ‘It’s culture shock, that’s what it is,’ Joyce explained to the woman seated beside her. ‘It was my first time, you see, my first time away’ She hadn’t worked out what she would tell Donelle about the watch. As they flew on and on over skies and oceans and the sleeping continent of Australia, Shaun’s head slipped against her shoulder in sleep. Although stiff and sore, she continued to sit still, resting inside herself.

  Again at Batu Ferringhi

  OLYMPIA SOMERVILLE sang as she descended the staircase of the Eastern & Oriental Hotel. The windows had been opened to allow the breeze off the Andaman Sea to filter inside. The light of Penang hovered like golden motes in the air. She wore a batik sundress, caught in casual knots at her bony shoulders, her scrawny neck revealed for all the world to see, and she didn’t care. She stopped for an instant and stretched her throat. La la la la la la. This was happiness, here beside the sea, with the children coming.

  ‘Seb, where are you, my darling?’ she called as she arrived in the lobby, its dome studded with eight whirling fans. ‘I knew I would beat you, I told you the stairs were faster than the lift.’ Her voice was lost against the whirr of the fans.

  The lift, an ancient gilded cage, decorated with curlicues, had stuck again between the second and third floors. Olympia was sure she could hear Sebastian calling for her.

  ‘Come, come,’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘Hurry. My grandson is in the lift, you must help him quickly. He’s only a little boy.’

  But Sebastian was not in the lift. Already he had reached the sea wall, where the occasional shower of spray broke across an old cannon pointing towards the sea. Above him, ripe coconuts hung poised to fall into the garden, banana palms had been trained into huge and perfect fans, jasmine grew in pots around a smooth, empty swimming pool that matched the colour of the sea. Sebastian had reached the enclosure where six blood-red parakeets, with green wings like lacerations of emeralds, walked slowly backwards and forwards on their perches. They looked at him and he looked at them. He heard his grandmother calling, and didn’t answer.

  ‘Where can the child have got to?’ he heard her say through the trellis at the end of the courtyard. ‘Doesn’t he know, we’re going over to Batu Ferringhi to check that the hotel bookings are all in order?’

  Of course Sebastian knew. Again and again and again he had gone to Batu Ferringhi. Today, he was simply going earlier than expected.

  For ten years, Olympia had made her annual pilgrimage to this place that she called her other home. Each year, when winter came, she closed up her sprawling farmhouse in New Zealand’s cool foothills and travelled to the island of Penang. Every year, she had issued invitations to her children and their children to follow her. None of them ever thought of refusing. One by one, from wherever they were, they would pick up the ticket she sent, and catch an aeroplane. The ritual was that Olympia stayed for a week at the E & O, in Georgetown, while they arrived in threes and fours from around the world. When they were all assembled, they left for a fortnight by the beach at Batu Ferringhi.

  ‘I must have spent a million on their holidays over the years,’ she told guests at the poolside. ‘But it’s good for them. To experience some other culture, you understand. It’s easy to become narrow in the place where we come from.’

  Sebastian, who was ten, was not sure whether he wanted to be done good or not. His best friend, Martin, at his prep school in the Wairarapa, had asked him to stay for mid-term break. There wouldn’t be a lot to do, though his parents had promised trips to the movies, and some neat videos and, as a special treat, they said they could have a go at the spacies. Martin was on a scholarship, which was why his family had different sorts of holiday treats. Sebastian, of course, took an extra fortnight at mid-term, in order to come to Penang.

  He had looked forward to the trip, ever since the last enchanted summer when it was clear that, as the
youngest grandson, he was Olympia’s favourite child of the moment, and yet, suddenly, he longed to go with Martin. The long journey to the East daunted him. He had gone often enough to know just how long it took. This year he would travel with his grandmother. His parents lived abroad for the moment, his father a consultant in the Middle East.

  ‘Of course, they, of all the family, can afford to come at their own expense,’ Olympia told her companions. ‘But why should they? The others can’t afford it and I pay for them, so it wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

  Of course, there had been no contest. It was decided, the ticket bought. There hadn’t been any point in even mentioning the subject of going to Martin’s place to stay. As he had known would happen all along, he was ensconced on the opposite side of a huge bedroom with varnished beams and parchment cream walls, while his grandmother snored gently through the night. When his cousins came, he would share a room with them.

  ‘When will my parents come?’ asked Sebastian, as they were driven to Batu Ferringhi.

  Just for a moment, Olympia hesitated, but it was long enough for Sebastian to notice. ‘Your father will be here tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘And Mum?’

  ‘Soon, my darling, soon.’ She laid her arm around his shoulders. He wished she wouldn’t do this, but there was nowhere in the car for him to move away. ‘I’m so lucky to have my little man to look after me until everyone gets here.’

  They were coming to a beach. The driver pointed ahead at a woman kneeling in the sand.

  ‘Can we stop?’ asked Sebastian.

  ‘Of course.’

  Sebastian had always liked watching the fisherwomen drawing sea worms for bait. At first he couldn’t see how they knew where to dig for them, but over the years his eyes had become trained to some almost imperceptible shift in the sand that signified the worms’ presence.