The Red Queen

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The Red Queen Page 16

by Gemma Bowker-Wright


  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Well, he eats out of her hand. He just stares at her while he’s eating. Then when he’s finished he kisses her hand and her arm and then they pash.’ Julia made a loud kissing sound. ‘It’s really weird.’

  ‘What was he eating?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Some kind of dessert, all creamy and chocolatey. It looked good.’

  At university Julia moved seamlessly from boys to men. Each relationship had a distinct set of phases. Rebecca could tell immediately when Julia met someone new. At first she tried to disguise it, pretending it was nothing—‘I had this funny conversation with a guy at a party last week’—and then she would tell Rebecca about the conversation, but nothing about the guy, as if he was merely a passive, faceless participant. Slowly she would begin to drop his name casually into conversations and when Rebecca asked, ‘Who was that?’ she would smile secretively, a light tone in her voice, a sly flutter, a slow grin. For the next phase, which could last up to several months, Julia would physically disappear, sometimes for weeks. When Rebecca managed to meet up with her for a quick coffee (takeaway, to be drunk while walking briskly to or from a particularly destination), Julia would talk incessantly about ‘him’. ‘His back,’ she would say. ‘He has a beautifully shaped spine.’ Following the period of ecstasy was a period of irritation. Small things annoyed her. The way he ate his toast: ‘He puts jam on first then butter—butter on the top, it’s disgusting.’ Or the way he kissed her. Or the brand of aftershave he used. After that came the inevitable break-up and Julia would turn up at Rebecca’s flat, red eyed, trembling. For the next two days she would lie on the couch, recounting all the good things that had happened as though he had, after all, been the love of her life. Finally came a period of calm but morose self-analysis.

  ‘Love always comes back to self-love, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It can do,’ Rebecca would say. ‘But not always.’ They would be sitting together in Fidel’s, usually: Julia sprawled across the padded wall seat, her coat in a tight bundle under the table, Rebecca facing her.

  ‘It’s nothing but the desire to see yourself reflected. You don’t want them; you want what you can get from them. It’s nothing but obsession and self-delusion.’

  ‘Not always,’ Rebecca would say and think of Graham. She would picture him walking into the café and standing there, behind her: the shape of him—tall, solid, compact. His calm presence. The smell of newly washed shirts.

  ‘That’s not always what love is.’

  In accordance with the pattern, Julia broke up with Paul seven months after the dinner at the Thai restaurant. But that was then.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Rebecca to Graham on finding out, a week ago, about the unforeseen reunion. ‘That’s not like her at all.’ She felt vaguely disappointed. There was something exhilarating about watching as Julia worked her way through man after man, each one generally a clone of the last—good-looking, fluffy, self-assured. It was exciting, from a safe distance.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Graham standing in the hallway wearing his early morning face. ‘Now I’m going to have to talk to him again. He’s someone I’ve got absolutely nothing to say to. I don’t mean that in a nasty way. I just have absolutely nothing to say to him.’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ says Julia.

  Rebecca sits down on the bed. ‘To Paul?’ She has that feeling of backwards motion she gets when Graham stops the car after a long trip, a feeling the road is still moving, continuously, and by not staying with it they are losing ground.

  Julia is looking at the ceiling. Rebecca follows her gaze. It is a low ceiling, comforting in its proximity. There is a cobweb in the far corner.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘Are you going to—you know—keep it?’

  ‘Yes. Paul thinks we can make it work. He says he still loves me.’

  ‘Does he know about the “maybe not”?’

  Julia sits on the bed again, the opposite side from Rebecca. ‘Yeah.’

  They both sit still and listen to the noises from the apartment below. Someone is watching television. The music swells dramatically. Through the window the evening darkens around the edges, like a dream.

  ‘That’s great news then. Congratulations.’ Rebecca realises she should, probably, have said this earlier. She crawls across the bed and puts her arm around Julia. ‘I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘But I’m so mean to him.’ Julia’s back is warm. Under Rebecca’s arm, she feels as though she’s made of a heavy liquid that’s in the process of draining from one point to another. ‘I don’t deserve him. But then look at me and look at him. If we judged this by looking in the mirror then he wouldn’t deserve me.’ She looks at Rebecca, almost pleadingly.

  Rebecca rubs her back. ‘Of course you deserve him.’

  Graham and Paul are waiting in the lounge.

  ‘Becky has started volunteering at the sanctuary.’ Graham looks up at Rebecca as he speaks, smiling. He’s wearing a striped apron. It looks comical but not out of place in the unselfconscious way he is wearing it. ‘She was up there today.’

  ‘Really?’ says Paul, turning to Rebecca.

  ‘I was.’ Rebecca takes the bowl of corn chips from Graham and passes it to Julia who puts her hand in and stirs them around but doesn’t take one.

  ‘I monitor two kaka nesting boxes. There are sixteen of them altogether but I only have two. When the chicks hatch I get to weigh them every week until they leave the nest.’

  ‘How long does that take?’ says Paul.

  ‘About a month. Sometimes longer.’

  Paul readjusts his leg, smoothing a crease in his shorts. ‘What a great thing to do. That’s really neat.’

  ‘Neat?’ says Julia, looking at him. ‘Who says neat? What kind of person says neat?’

  ‘Men can keep renewing themselves when they get older, get a younger lover or something.’ Julia is holding a wine glass. It has apple juice in it. The apple juice is honey-coloured. Rebecca says it several times inside her head: honey-coloured, coloured like honey, the colour of honey.

  Graham gathers the dessert bowls, placing them one inside the other. In a glass bowl on the table the remaining peach slices lie limply like dead goldfish.

  ‘That’s my problem with life,’ says Julia. ‘Everything, in the end, works against women. Women become less attractive with age. Men become more attractive. It’s not fair.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily true,’ says Graham. ‘Some men age terribly.’ He scrapes the leftovers from the last bowl into the one on top of the stack. ‘Anyway not all men are like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Graham glances at Rebecca who glances at Paul who is sitting by himself at the end of the couch. ‘Like, arseholes,’ says Graham. ‘Players. Alpha males with excess sperm.’

  Julia stands up and leaves the room. They hear the bathroom door close, and a tap is turned on. Winking at Rebecca, Graham picks up the bowls and carries them through to the kitchen. The click-clank of cutlery being dropped in the sink.

  ‘So,’ says Rebecca, feeling vaguely dizzy. She has drunk too much wine to compensate for Julia not drinking any. Paul is sitting forward on the couch, his hands clasping his kneecaps.

  ‘So,’ she says again.

  The bookshelf in the corner of the lounge is overfilled, books and magazines crammed in at odd angles.

  ‘Have you read any good books lately?’

  ‘No,’ says Paul. ‘I don’t read much.’

  ‘I’ve been reading Michael King’s biography of Janet Frame—Wrestling with the Angel.’ She looks at him and he smiles back at her, blankly. ‘I’m up to the bit where she’s working as a school teacher and the inspection people from the Ministry come to the school. She just walks out of the classroom and doesn’t go back. Ever. I love that idea: walking out and not going back. I feel like that at work sometimes. If I was a braver person, and didn’t need the money, that’s what I’d do.’

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p; ‘I like my job,’ says Paul. ‘I’m good at it. I’m reliable. You have to be reliable to do what I do.’ He smiles in a surprised way as though he has made an unintentional joke.

  Rebecca smiles back and contemplates how rude it would be to ask, ‘What do you do again?’ She decides it would be too rude. Silence seems to creep in from the hallway. It grows, lengthens, and settles around them.

  ‘Do you still feed the ducks?’

  ‘They’re not there any more,’ says Paul, scratching his nose. Rebecca thinks he looks sad, but then again she’s not sure what his sad look is.

  Julia strides back into the room. Her hair has been teased up. She looks wild, tall and striking. Rebecca watches Paul look up at her. The expression on his face—what is it? Quiet resignation. He closes his eyes; Rebecca can see his intake of breath. She is torn between a grim fascination in watching what will happen next and, at the same time, a desire to cheer him on—this small, brave, helpless man.

  ‘We should get going, Ju.’ Paul stands up slowly, taking the car keys out of his pocket and weaving them between his fingers.

  ‘But it’s so early still.’ Julia walks to the couch and sits beside Rebecca. ‘It’s not even nine. I’m twenty-six for God’s sake. I want to stay.’

  ‘We’ve got that doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning.’

  Julia loops her arm through Rebecca’s. ‘No we don’t.’

  ‘Yes we do. Your ultrasound appointment, remember?’ As Paul speaks Rebecca notices small lines forming around the base of his chin. His face is well proportioned—she hasn’t noticed this before—symmetrical, his mouth well shaped, a straight nose. ‘They’ll put that jelly stuff on your belly to see if everything’s going okay.’

  ‘I know what an ultrasound is,’ says Julia, rolling her eyes at Rebecca.

  Paul is undeterred. ‘Your belly gets all covered in jelly.’

  Julia jerks upright, struck off balance. ‘What did you say?’ A small splutter escapes from the side of her mouth. ‘Did you make a little joke?’

  He smiles again, his expression open. Julia gets up off the couch and straightens her skirt. ‘Did you hear that?’ she says, looking back at Rebecca. ‘Did you hear what he said?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Rebecca, ‘I did.’

  Graham comes back into the room. The apron has been removed. He brushes his hands together, twice.

  ‘Thanks for having us,’ says Paul. ‘But we should get going.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got an ultrasound appointment tomorrow,’ says Julia, rolling her eyes. ‘We’re going to have a baby.’

  One week later, Rebecca walks up the track slowly. She veers off at the marker, an orange tag tied to a kowhai tree. The climb up the small rise is difficult; she has to push through prickly shrubs, a mist of spider webs. She sits on the fallen tree and watches the nest box from a distance, waiting for the kaka to leave. It takes over an hour, the time passing in bursts that seem to change pace. Two minutes feels like twenty. Fifteen minutes feels like a matter of seconds. A robin watches her and she sits completely still. After a while it hops onto her sneaker, pecking gently at her laces. Finally the kaka leave, one after the other. The male doesn’t hang around to watch her this time; he knows she’s there, acknowledging her presence with a shake of his head. As he takes off she catches a glimpse of the orange feathers on the underside of his wings.

  The three larger eggs have hatched. The chicks lie in a trembling huddle, crouching over the two remaining eggs. Rebecca watches them for a few seconds. Quickly removing the shards of broken eggshell, she closes the lid and creeps away.

  On the walk back down through the sanctuary she takes her cellphone out of her pocket. There is a photo of her and Julia on the screen, taken at Julia’s twenty-sixth. They are sitting together in a restaurant, grinning, arms around each other. Rebecca dials and listens to it ring. Paul’s voice, when he finally answers, is vaguely surprised. ‘Hello, Paul speaking.’

  ‘Hi,’ says Rebecca, ‘it’s Rebecca. I’m at the sanctuary.’

  ‘Rebecca! Hi.’

  ‘I hope this isn’t weird,’ says Rebecca. ‘Well, I suppose it kind of is, but I just rang to tell you something. Um, the chicks in my second nest box have hatched. I was worried about them and thought they might not live.’ She pauses and looks out at the lake. ‘Anyway I just wanted to tell someone and the first person I thought of was you.’

  KATHERINE

  It is the first week in spring. The mornings are just beginning to have that clear, crystal sheen. At the bottom of the garden, the resident male tui defends the perimeter of his territory with renewed vigour. And the row of lacebarks along the side of the house are starting to breathe and whisper.

  ‘I’m going to get stuck into the garden today,’ says Katherine on Monday morning. She is standing in the hallway in her dressing gown, a green bath towel in a turban on the top of her head—coiled against the back of her neck, an escaped tendril of grey-blond hair.

  ‘Okay,’ says David, rubbing his forehead with his index finger. His leather briefcase is waiting at his feet.

  ‘It’s September, isn’t it?’ says Katherine.

  ‘Yes,’ says David, ‘it is.’

  She is silent for a while. Then she turns around on the spot, as if unwinding herself. As she moves, David catches a strong smell of jasmine and a touch of something else, maybe frangipani. He takes a step towards the front door. ‘I’ll be back around six,’ he says.

  Katherine looks at the hallway clock. ‘Six?’ she says and frowns.

  ‘Six.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  When David arrives at his office he closes the door and stands for a few seconds in the very centre of the room. Outside his office window is a magnolia tree with bowl-like flowers. Two blackbirds are perching on one of the branches, their feathers so black they look almost blue.

  The phone rings. It’s Allison, calling about Saturday. Her words come in little static pulses. ‘Are you still expecting us?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Great. We’ll bring the wine.’

  Outside the window, the blackbirds shuffle along the branch, one chasing the other. Beyond the magnolia, far below, David can see the harbour and the brilliant blue of the sea.

  ‘I was thinking that we could discuss our trip down south for this year,’ says Allison. ‘Simon and I have been talking about it and we think it’s time we all sat down and planned it.’

  David says nothing. Balancing the phone between his shoulder and his ear, he begins to align the stacks of paper on his desk.

  ‘And are you okay?’ says Allison. ‘David?’ Her voice is suddenly higher, softer, almost a whisper. ‘You know if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘Sorry, Allison,’ he says, ‘there’s someone at the door.’

  The phone makes a clicking sound as David puts it down. He stands still for a while, examining the index finger on his right hand; when he looks closely he can see the whorl pattern in the soft skin.

  In the hallway is a framed photograph of David and Katherine holding hands beside a rhododendron bush with frilly white flowers. It is late in the morning on a midsummer day—the sun dripping down. Katherine is wearing ivory and David a black suit. The colours are still bright, although the whole scene, over time, has acquired a sepia tinge. When David looks very closely at the photograph he can see every detail, even the feathery outline of Katherine’s eyelashes, projected in tiny shadows on her cheekbone.

  Tuesday morning is damp and grey. It has rained during the night, pounding against the corrugated iron roof.

  ‘Goodbye, Alex,’ says Katherine, as David is about to close the front door. ‘Have a nice day at school.’

  David arrives late and has to run from his office across the university to the lecture theatre. The students are already waiting in the dim auditorium.

  David sets up the PowerPoint quickly and begins to read from his lecture notes. But his speech is stilted, his voice wispy and far away, as if someo
ne else is speaking the words and he is simply opening and closing his mouth.

  ‘To measure evolutionary time,’ says David, ‘we need to employ techniques that can pinpoint events on vast timescales.’ He pauses for a few seconds and looks at the ground. ‘Fortunately for us, there are many techniques for doing this—we call these techniques evolutionary clocks.’ He falters and takes a step backwards.

  ‘Evolutionary clocks include technical things like isotope analyses, or relatively simple things like counting tree rings. We can use these clocks to date rocks or fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old.’

  He pauses again, suddenly forgetting what comes next. A student in the back row coughs and the sound reverberates up and up to the wooden ceiling high above.

  ‘That’s all for today,’ says David at twenty-five minutes past nine. ‘You can leave a little early.’ He turns back to the PowerPoint and begins picking up his notes, bundling them into a tidy pile. Behind him, the students pack up their things in a fog of chatter and walk out of the lecture theatre—their footfalls, on the hollow wooden floor, continue to echo long after they are gone.

  The phone is ringing again when David arrives back at his office.

  ‘Hello,’ says Katherine, ‘I’m Katherine.’

  ‘Yes I know.’

  The line goes silent.

  ‘I just don’t know what it says,’ says Katherine, finally.

  ‘What does what say?’ Outside it has begun to rain again. Drops of water paint grey streaks on David’s office window. A fine rain-mist rises off the sea.

  ‘You know. The one with the numbers. It’s on the bedside table.’

  ‘The clock?’

  ‘Yes. That’s it.’

  David can hear a door banging on the other end of the phone. ‘So tell me what the numbers on it say. Start on the left.’

  ‘It says nine. And then there’s a dot. And then a three. And then a five.’

  ‘And what does that tell you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Katherine.

  David met Katherine in 1974. On their second date, David arrived early. He parked, badly, on the curb outside Katherine’s apartment building and walked up the concrete stairs to the third floor. All the curtains were drawn in Katherine’s apartment when he got there. He knocked four times and waited. Knocked again, waited again. When Katherine finally opened the door she was wearing a white bathrobe. On her shin was a strip of flesh-coloured plaster, a drop of blood sliding down her leg below.

 

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