by Gee, Maurice
‘Christchurch? You’re going there?’
‘Yeah.’ He gave a tentative smile. ‘Ferry and train. It’ll be a big demo, Ellie. I’ve got to be there.’
‘Of course you have.’ She could have worked his reasons out but did not bother.
‘I should be back in time to put the kids on the plane.’
‘I can do that.’
‘No, I’m their father. It’s my job.’
‘We’ll see. You can work tomorrow morning, Neil. I don’t mind. I don’t want you missing any words.’
He looked at her sharply, uncertain whether she was joking or not. She smiled at him.
‘You don’t know how much I want your novel to be good.’ Otherwise he was nothing; his life was wasted. And he would be too small to see.
She drove him to the ferry next day, kissed him goodbye.
‘See you, kids. Be good,’ he said to Kevin and Siobhan.
Ellie hoped there would be no fights on the boat. From the look of them, half the passengers were rugby fans and the other half protesters.
‘Where are we going now?’ Kevin said.
Ellie had run out of ideas. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Mount Victoria, Mum,’ John said. ‘We can watch the ferry go out.’
Ellie drove up the winding roads. They stood on the hilltop and watched the white ship make its steady curve round Point Halswell. She remembered standing on Brooklyn hill watching the Wanganella leave with Dolores on board – like walking round a corner and never coming back. Neil would be back. They had a final scene to play. It excited and perturbed her, and kept her on edge through the rest of that day and half the next. From time to time she was even afraid. Neil might be violent: she hadn’t found that out. Underneath it all she was calm. Leaving was a fact. She’d already left. And he could go on splashing around in the deep end of his life, where he belonged, where perhaps he made the only sense he would ever make; and she could get out of her shallow end – and do what? We’ll see, we’ll see, she told herself, elated and afraid.
She drove the children to the pictures, where the boys promised to take good care of Siobhan. Ellie went home. She poured a glass of beer and sat in a thin edge of sunshine in the yard, smiling at her garden and the slope she had half cleared. She fetched a cloth hat to shade her eyes but the sun dipped sharply and was gone.
If I was a real wife, she thought – and gave a laugh. A wife would be at the TV set watching protesters fight police, looking for her man. She no longer had to – and no longer cared whether Neil believe in what he was doing or was at the protest because Neil Higgs, the writer, had to be. It might be a bit of one and a bit of the other. That was his way of being whole. Ellie yawned. ‘Go for it, Neil,’ she said, and sipped her beer. She did not want to think about him any more.
She squinted up the slope, where the vanished sun backlit the trees at the top. She would not have kowhais and tuis now. Or sit in a bower. Or paint the roof.
Footsteps sounded, climbing from the road. Derek came round the corner. ‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Derek. I thought you’d given me up. Where’ve you been?’
‘Around. There’s absolutely no one in the streets. It must be the rugby.’
‘It is. I suppose you’re too young for a glass of beer?’
‘Yeah. I promised Dad.’
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘Coca-Cola then? I’ve got a house full of it.’
She brought him a bottle and he sat on the bench, drinking thirstily.
‘Mum’s had flu. I suppose I’ll be next.’
‘Have you been looking after her?’
‘Yeah. Dad’s not well either, so I’ve been, you know, home.’
‘Did you walk all the way here?’
‘Sure. I needed to get out.’
‘What are you going to do, Derek? I mean with your life.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘You can’t stay there too long. You’ll lose such a lot if you do.’
‘I’m all right.’
He smiled at her as though it were true – and perhaps it was. She understood him even less than she understood Neil.
A slower set of footsteps climbed. Derek said, ‘That’s Dad.’
George came round the corner and stopped. He looked at them sadly.
‘I thought this was where you came,’ he said.
Derek stood up and showed his bottle. ‘It’s only Coca-Cola, Dad.’
‘Put it down. Go and wait in the car.’
Ellie heard him panting after his climb. He supported himself with a hand on the weatherboards.
‘George,’ she said, ‘you’d better sit down. Let me get you a drink.’
‘No thank you. Derek, go on. Obey me, please.’
Derek put the bottle on his seat. ‘Come on, then. I’ll give you a hand.’
‘I want to talk to Ellie.’
Derek touched his shoulder in a friendly way. ‘Sing out when you’re ready. I’ll come up.’ He nodded at Ellie, almost formally. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said, and went down the steps.
‘George, please sit down. You don’t look well,’ Ellie said.
‘I can’t sit, Ellie. I can’t sit with you.’
‘Why not? We liked each other once, didn’t we?’ She tried to help him to the bench but he straightened, raised his palm to ward her off.
‘Do you think I’ll contaminate you? Do you think I’ve contaminated Derek?’
George shook his head. ‘No words, Ellie. No clever stuff. You reject and despise the love of God.’
‘Not at all. I just don’t think he exists. George, please, will you give Derek a chance? He’s a bright boy. He’s got a good mind. I haven’t tried to teach him anything. I don’t know what he believes. I just let him come because I like him, and so he can see there’s more to life …’ She shrugged.
‘Than what? The Divine Word? No one needs any more than that. The inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. You want to lead him the other way. Ellie, do you know what you are doing? We’ve got immortal souls, all of us, and we’re all sinners. But the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and every believer can be sanctified. You too –’
‘You think I’m wicked?’
‘I think the Devil has reached inside you. He’s got his hand gripped around your heart. There’s everlasting punishment waiting for you. Ellie, come to Christ. He’s standing on a cloud above the damned. They’re writhing in the flames and He turns his back –’
‘The poor man,’ Ellie said.
‘But He wants you. He died for you. Ellie, we loved you once, your mother and I, but that sort of love is not enough.’
‘Of course it is.’ Ellie was dazed as though from blows. She might be lying sideways and spinning in a void. His certainty seemed to lay down rules. She tried to remember who was important. ‘Derek is too young to know what he thinks …’ But that was wrong. Derek, in his way, knew more than she did. ‘He’s special, George. Have you talked with him?’
‘Are you asking me if I’ve talked with my son? You ask me that?’
‘I mean with more than religious stuff. Do you know who he is?’
‘I do. Yes, I do. He’s a sinner. He’s lied to me and disobeyed me. Derek is no longer pure in heart. You’ve done that –’
‘No.’
‘– and he’s in danger of losing his soul. No, Ellie, don’t touch me.’
‘Sit down, George. You’re going to fall over if you don’t.’
His poor head, she thought, looking down on its corrugations. Once he and she had been equal in height, but his sickness had eaten his flesh and shortened his bones. He was liver-marked and patched with bandaids where his skin had broken: a sick old man grieving for his son. I’ve got to let Derek go, she thought.
‘Wait there.’ She hurried down as far as the blue door, called Derek from the car parked at the gate, ran back.
‘He’s coming, George. I hope you’ll get well. George!’ she cried as he swayed and to
ok a sideways step to right himself. ‘Come inside and lie down. Please, you can’t drive the car.’
He smiled, almost in his old shy way. ‘I’ve been a professional driver most of my life.’ He turned to meet Derek, then turned back. ‘We still love you, Ellie. Your mother loves you. We pray for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Let me take your arm, son.’
‘Don’t let him drive, Derek,’ Ellie said.
‘He’s all right. You’re all right, Dad, aren’t you?’
She followed them down the steps, stood on the footpath and watched the car move off – professionally, as he’d said. His sureness might undermine her if it were based on anything sensible. And where, where did Derek stand? Where could he move on to? Yet he had a stillness that she could sense only as happiness and an instinctive knowledge of other people – and of himself-and-other-people. She should worry about her mother and George, their health and peace of mind and what would become of them, and let Derek be.
She climbed the steps, poured his Coca-Cola down the sink, rinsed her glass, then drove to the cinema for the children. At six o’clock they watched the news and saw the riots. Ellie could no longer connect them with apartheid and South Africa. They were about here and now, and Neil was right to be afraid. She did not see him among the protesters, who were, many of them, as armour-plated as the police. She hoped he had come through without being hurt.
He telephoned the following morning.
‘Ellie, I can’t get back. Not till Monday.’ He had been ‘roped into’ a strategy meeting. ‘Plus that’ he’d met a couple of writers and needed to talk.
‘So when exactly are you coming?’
‘Monday. I’m flying. I get in at 1.30. Meet me, eh? And look, Ellie, I’m sorry about the kids. You’ll have to put them on their plane. Can you do that?’
‘I think I can manage. Do you want to talk to them?’
‘Yeah. Kevin.’
Ellie went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. Now, so late, all she could be was amused. It made her fond of him – almost. She was glad she had not told him that the children would be pleased not to see him again. She laughed out loud. Had he really forgotten that she was flying to Nelson on Monday? Her flight went out half an hour after his got in. It was nice and neat. She could give him her keys.
‘What did he say?’ she asked Kevin.
‘Nothing much.’
‘Is he talking to Siobhan?’
‘No. He wants me to say we had a good time.’
‘To your mother? Did you?’
‘It wasn’t bad. He doesn’t want me to say he was down in Christchurch.’
‘Don’t tell lies, Kevin, if you don’t want to.’
She put them on their plane in the afternoon. ‘Presents,’ she said: an expensive box of watercolour paints for Siobhan, a T-shirt for Kevin. They had touched her for a moment, these children, and glanced off. She expected never to see them again.
She and John packed: two suitcases each, two boxes of books. The smallness of the pile on the living room floor alarmed Ellie. She must have collected more in her life than this.
When she added Fan’s painting, wrapped in cardboard, there was enough – enough when you added what she carried in herself. This time, this move, she wasn’t reaching out; she already had the thing she needed, although she wasn’t sure yet of its name. She helped John wrap his insect collection as cabin luggage.
Ellie slept her last night in Neil’s bed. She wished he was there to make love with one more time. Was that perverse? She had almost loved him – loved him in a come-and-go, a puzzled sort of way. She might have him with her for a long time – sore places that might catch her unexpectedly. Yet leaving did not hurt: it seemed like the first sip of a drink, like the pushing open of a door.
In the morning she telephoned her boss and told her she was not coming back – burning the library bridge. She telephoned her mother.
‘I’m ringing to say goodbye, Mum. I’m shifting back to Nelson.’
At once her mother began to cry.
‘No, Mum, it’s not you. It’s me and Neil. We’ve had enough of each other. And Nelson is kind of home to me.’
‘I’m sorry, Ellie,’ her mother wept. ‘George is sorry too.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset him the other day. Mum, I wish I could help you. I wanted to …’
So they talked, closer on the phone than they had been face to face since Ellie was a girl. She promised to call from Nelson, and promised to write, and wondered if she would ever meet her mother again. It seemed certain she would never meet George (heart was his trouble, he needed a bypass), and not meet Derek until he was grown up.
‘Goodbye, goodbye. I love you, Ellie. Give John a kiss for me,’ her mother said.
They had talked for almost an hour, and not once mentioned the beliefs that kept them apart.
Ellie locked the house. She collected the mail, which included a gold embossed invitation for Ellie Crowther and partner to a gathering to celebrate fifteen years of Angela and Barry Abbots’ marriage. She slipped it into her bag to reply to from Nelson and threw Neil’s bills on the back seat. Damn, she thought, I didn’t do a redirection order, and wondered what else she had forgotten. Breaking John’s school friendships worried her most but he only shrugged when she mentioned it.
They drove to the airport and checked in the luggage, then ate lunch in the cafe, waiting for Neil’s flight to arrive.
‘Do you want to say goodbye to him?’
‘No,’ John said.
‘Stay here, then. Get some more chips.’
What a good-looking man, delicious, she thought, as Neil walked down the long ramp to the glass doors. She grinned at him: I’m pleased to have had you, buster. Don’t crinkle your eyes at me.
‘Ellie, hi.’ He kissed her – missed her mouth, got her cheek. ‘Everything OK?’
‘They caught their plane all right, if that’s what you mean?’
‘Ah, the kids. They’re good kids, aren’t they? God, what a weekend I’ve had …’
He talked all the way to the car, where Ellie handed him the keys.
‘I’ve got my boarding call in twelve minutes.’
Neil blinked. ‘Nelson. Shit, I forgot. Do you have to go?’
‘Look at me, Neil. And just be quiet.’
He had the ability to focus, be savagely quick. His bag smacked on the asphalt, his hand with a sharpened thumb hooked on her arm.
‘No, Ellie, don’t. You’ll kill me, Ellie.’
‘Let go, Neil. I said, Let go.’
‘You can’t –’
‘Listen to me. It’s over. I don’t need you and you certainly don’t need me. You only need yourself, and sure, a woman now and then for bed and cooking. That’s not me.’
‘Ellie –’
‘I’m going now. I’m not sorry I met you. We had some good times. But another six months of you, I’d have nothing left.’
She turned and walked away, then stopped and said, ‘Everything’s all right at the house. I’ve even cooked some macaroni cheese.’ There was no need for that: she felt ashamed. Wanted some better thing to say. He looked so stricken and enraged – what a left-side/right-side man he was.
‘Your novel will be good, Neil. But if you’ve got someone new, don’t think you have to dedicate it to me.’ Was sorry for that too. Everything she tried would come out cruel, so she walked away. Did not want to hear or see – but was sorry for him saddled with his deficiencies, and proud of the way he turned them to account.
The plane flew out into a northerly. Ellie saw the wharves and the city, with ships and cranes, tiny beetling cars in the streets, one of which might be Neil’s – and tiny became right: it put him in proportion to the whole of her life which, up here, over the harbour, she was better able to grasp – although she felt a sudden sting, followed by an ache, in the part of her mind that kept to the smaller scale. Let go, she said, and the city slid behind. Ellie settled back in her seat
.
They flew over the coast, the strait and sounds, then over cloudy mountains, and sank with a gravitational pull down to Tasman Bay. The plane made a wide curve, banking so she looked into the mudflats, then righted itself; and she saw the black Doubles and the yellow Dun and thought, I’m home.
She thought, I want to paint them. How do I do that?
Between times
1982. Ellie worries about John sharing a house with a blind old woman who is dying and dotes on him, and another with her fussiness magnified and her temper quickened. Fan might be thinking ‘Fried with onions’. But John, when Ellie edges into the subject, says he likes old Audrey and old Paintbrush. Fan does not frighten him: he grins at her. Audrey turns him white and tearful several times, but that is mortality – John’s apprehension of it – and perhaps it’s love. The experience will do him good. Audrey is neither distressed nor afraid. Just before she slips into her final coma she whispers to Ellie, ‘Silverbeet water is best.’ She means for minerals, for John.
Audrey dies in midwinter, when it is dark and cold. Depressing times for Ellie, with Muldoon back in power and a puggy garden and grey seas and Fan not able to say, ‘I want you to stay’, and Ellie having nowhere to go. There seems to be nothing to paint or even draw. Audrey’s death has not freed Fan for her studio. It’s as if she has gone colour blind, she confesses one day; and Ellie wants to cry, ‘Teach me’, but cannot for it might seem that she agrees Fan is finished. It is plain that she will never go back to painting of the kind she once did. Teaching me, Ellie thinks: isn’t that a way of carrying on?
She does not rid herself of Neil as easily as she had hoped. In the cold winter her memories are warm. It’s delusional and she takes refuge in analysis, and when that fails in metaphor: the coupling of engine and carriage is one, mechanical; in another there’s a bony hand inside her, locked hard on some vital part. His fist is a piece of shrapnel and she lives with it lumpy under her skin, like a soldier home from the wars … Nonsense, Ellie says. Crap, she says. She tries to cure herself by being brutal. Perhaps all I need is a good fuck.
Spring sets her free, and sets Fan free, makes them generous. Ellie feels that she is growing new parts. Fan sees the fresh green in the grass and feels the sun. The warmth on her skin is golden; and Ellie will stay with her as companion and housekeeper, pupil too. It is arranged. Neil’s hand loosens and is gone, although Ellie thinks of him when she wakes in the night, with pity, affection, exasperation, respect for a part of him, contempt for another. A man in bits, she thinks as she goes back to sleep – his deeps too difficult, his shallows full of crawly things …