I do not wish to do this. Now come on Spiro, let’s get this straight. Sure I could but I won’t. You won’t mind, Spiro, will you? Fat chance. Not only mind—you’d be insulted, hurt and bloody well crushed. And I could. And who else is there. Oh bloody hell. ‘All right,’ said Robin.
The glass was lifted, the arms outstretched. ‘Good man. Good boy.’
Robin grabbed the letter from his pigeon-hole, took it to his room where nobody could see if the old man had died last week or merely refused to see him.
Like Wilfred’s previous letter this one was brief but the writing was in a different hand; large, blue and on the slant. Wilfred had died. He had died and Robin was too late. Died because he should have been contacted before you dumb prick.
Dear Robin Dromgoole,
The boss says any weekend is OK by him and me too. Let us know when and I’ll meet you with the dog truck. The airport is OK as I have to come down anyhow.
Best,
Shara Bow
PS. I live here.
‘Emmie, hey Em, I’ve had a letter from Wilfred Hughes.’
‘Who?’ She was unimpressed. He could see the hand fiddling with the hair, the bare foot on the lino. She was probably standing on one leg. He felt she had yawned in his face.
‘You know, Alice O’Leary’s husband. I’ve found him!’
‘Why can’t you leave the poor old guy in peace?’ said Emmie and replaced the receiver. He stared at the perfect patterning of the bee’s-eye mouthpiece, the neat curve of the earpiece, the ergonomic simplicity of the thing. Stared so hard he could draw it.
The ultimate put-down.
And Emmie had done this. He sat at his desk staring at a jellyfish chugging its way across the screen saver. Why had she done that? She should not have done that. She could not have meant it. She had been so friendly, so understanding, so … She must be unhappy, missing Aunt. He would go and see her. Take her some flowers if the shop on the corner had anything interesting.
They had lotuses, crisp blue-petalled things drooping from vivid stalks. Perfect for Emmie: funky flowers for lotus-eaters, sharp flowers for redheads.
‘For a lady, Robin?’ asked Mrs Vella holding them away from the counter to drip.
‘Yeah.’
‘Ladies get two sheets.’ Mrs Vella laid the flowers on one blue and one pink square and handed them over with a wink of her gold tooth. She was glad to see Robin was getting over it.
The rain was heavier in Seatoun. He drove up the drive past the dead harebells and narrowly missed the snail trike abandoned at the front step.
Emmie looked at the flowers thoughtfully, lifted her eyes to his. ‘That’s very kind,’ she said. ‘Why did you bring them?’
Because I did. That’s all.
‘I thought you might like them.’
She stared at them, touched a carved petal. ‘I do. A lot. The combo of that purple with that green. Thanks.’
He realised with a flick of self-disgust that he had been expecting more. Emmie usually went overboard about any gift, however small, however ridiculous.
‘Blue,’ he said. ‘They’re blue.’
She looked at him, her face serious. ‘Purple. Why have you come?’
‘To thank you for sending Wilfred’s letter.’ She shook her head, a red toss of dismissal, of no problem, of any time. ‘And why did you slam the receiver down?’
Her shoulders lifted, dropped again, encompassed all the boredom of the whole world. Emmeline was not herself. ‘Come into the kitchen.’
She trailed down the hall, one exhausted hand beneath the floating stripes of her sleeve brushing the wall at intervals. The carpet runner was on its last legs.
The kitchen table was covered with papers, notebooks, ledgers, a small calculator, five biros, two empty mugs and a tin of cat meat. She picked up the tin of cat meat, smiled at it with more affection than she had shown anything else so far. ‘Calvin bought it. Saved every cent, nagged a few. Now Mum buys the cat.’
She put the flowers in a straight-sided vase with an aspirin for luck.
‘I’m trying to work out the money. It’s odd. One of the things about not having any is it takes so much time. All that hunting for cheap stuff and checking op shops and skipping the large economy sizes because you can’t afford them so you have to go back next week. But I can see now.’
She propped her rump on the corner of the table and sat massaging a shoulder she’d graunched last week. ‘I can see now why rich people get mean. How you could get funny about it. Money takes time too.’
‘You could get an accountant. A chartered accountant.’
She looked at him as though he had been advocating the services of a gutless green gecko. ‘Oh, I don’t need one of those. I’m just working it out. City Mission, Women’s Refuge, Red Cross.’
He held on to the chair back, spoke slowly. ‘Emmie, Miss Bowman begged you to be careful with her money.’
Her voice was gentle. ‘It’s my money now, and there’s more than Calvin and I need.’ She lifted her face to his once more, stared into his eyes and smiled.
‘And Murray’ll need quite a lot,’ she said.
Eight
‘Murray!’
‘Yes Murray. The guy who mows my lawns. The guy with the La-Z-Boy who’s doing medicine. The guy who hogs the peanuts. Murray, Murray, Murray.’ Her face was inches from his, her nostrils wide. ‘And Maureen, what about Maureen your mother-in-law and her red-hot Bernina. Why don’t you do something to help Maureen?’
‘I don’t trust Murray, that’s why.’
‘You don’t have to trust him. Just do it. And anyway,’ she said, calming suddenly, ‘it’s a loan.’
‘You won’t get it back.’
They stood glaring at each other for a moment before she shook her head and turned to the stove and the coffee and the popping gas. ‘Sit down.’
He sat watching her shoulderblades move beneath the thin stuff, the percolator hissing as she turned to put the still fussing thing in front of him. ‘There are some things I want to say, so listen.’ The shadows beneath her eyes were dark, her mouth had gone wrong but her voice stayed gentle.
‘You think I’m flaky right?’
He examined the bear riding the sickle moon on his mug, noted how the water lilies on the table had darkened to purple. ‘In the sense that you’re erratic, yes, but I know you’re
‘We have two things here.’ She held up two fingers in an ambivalent gesture and moved one. ‘One. Who are you to judge me …’
‘You asked.’
She scarcely paused. ‘And two. Let’s examine our track records. Look at you.’ She lifted her hand. ‘I haven’t finished. In fact I’ve hardly started. You’ll get your turn so shut up. You wanted to study zoology, you gave that up. You were going to be an ornithologist. Up to your knees in spoonbills. When did you last even see a spoonbill?’
‘They’ve gone.’
She flung an exasperated palm at him. ‘Any bird!’
‘A pigeon. Last week. It had a feather on its claw.’
She was not interested in pigeons. ‘Then you gave all that up. English, English literature was the thing. Books. Wisdom of the ages. Then you were going to do Henry James and ditched him for poor dopey old Alice O’Leary. Any moment soon you’ll ditch her I bet. And cooking. When did you last cook anything decent? And what about the bush, tramping? The great outdoors, the call of the wild, man, the call of the wild. Where’s that gone?’
He looked at her. ‘Lisa.’
‘And you blame the bush?’
He hoped his voice sounded as dispassionate as hers. ‘You were the one who said to ditch guilt.’
‘I said to face it. There’s a difference. I know. No, not Aunt. There was a guy years ago when I was a kid.’ She propped her face in the heel of her palm.
‘Is this some bloody grief fest?’
‘She’s dead, Lisa! She’s dead.’
There was a book called Elephants among the pile on the table. Its cov
er showed a small eye surrounded by a square map of wrinkles. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I realise that.’
She closed in. ‘Then grow up! It’s you who are damaged. Erratic. Changeable. Not me. Not me at all.’ She paused, squeezed her eyes tight. ‘And leave that poor old guy alone. Leave him alone for God’s sake.’ She ran to the door and dropped suddenly onto her heels. ‘Calvin,’ she cooed. ‘How’d it go, hon? How’d it go?’
If members of a family become separated they appear anxious and try to keep in touch with long distant calls called ‘contact rumbles’. When they come together again they go through a special greeting ceremony which involves rumbling, trumpeting, urinating and defecating in a tight ring with heads and tails held high.
Christ in concrete, what a fool. He replaced the book and headed for the back door.
Calvin dived across the floor, wrapped himself around one leg and damn near felled him. ‘Look!’ he yelled. ‘Look Rob. Choice eh!’
Calvin had been transformed. Ruby’s birthday party had been held at McDonald’s and there had been face painting. Calvin had chosen Batman’s mask with extra spikes above which his recently cut crewcut bristled like lit stubble. He looked very odd indeed.
‘Hi Calvin. Have fun?’
Calvin disappeared beneath the table. His voice was muffled. ‘Yeah, neat.’
‘Sorry,’ said Emmie.
One of the water lilies wasn’t going to make it. Its droop was obviously terminal. Rob nodded, headed again for the door.
‘Forget it.’
Calvin was now on all fours, his arms straight, his drooping head weaving slowly from side to side. He gave a long anguished moan and lifted his painted face to explain that he was an elephant crying.
*
Robin sat in the bucket seats at the airport dredging up instances of unreliability and memories of flake. He wriggled into blue plastic, saw the skinny bunched figure pedalling behind Aunt on her upright bike, red hair dragged back, plaited too tight, the nose dripping in the wind beneath a crocheted woolly hat with bobbles. ‘Emmie O’Malley with the cast-iron belly,’ chanted the kids when Miss Bowman was not present. The Ramsay boys up the street (triple sons of widowed mother) waited for a clear run; chanting and pointing when Emmeline entered the dairy, springing from bare feet for a squizz through Bernie’s window, mobbing their prey like starlings when she came out.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said kicking whichever one was nearest. ‘If I had any chutty I’d give you some.’ She stepped over the writhing body on the pavement. ‘So lay off.’ They did, and soon laid off the chant as well. There didn’t seem much point when Emmeline sailed past them with her head in the air and her feet in the wide springing prance of a dancer. Who did she think she was anyhow?
She told them. Emmeline Frances O’Malley.
Why did she go to Strathmore Park?
‘Because it’s better,’ said the skite. She stood arms akimbo, legs braced for action as she socked it to them.
They attacked with the rat-pack drive of primary and she went home bloody. She let it run, turned at the gate. ‘Stare, stare, like a bear,’ she chanted. ‘Go jump in the lake, dumb-bums.’
Robin hopped the fence to help. ‘And you, small change,’ snapped Emmeline striding up the path with head high.
Yes, well. He tried again. Saw her draped over the fence in her wild period, the period which had excited Bernie but not Miss Bowman.
‘What I’d really like to do,’ she had confided at the fence one day, rolling a lemon verbena leaf between two fingers for the smell, ‘is get a job organising orgies. There are people who do. Guy knows a woman in the States.’
He kept his face blank. Which one was Guy. The greatcoat. The pea jacket. The berk with the pony tail.
‘I’d be good at that.’ Her eyes, he remembered, were far away, misted with visions. ‘I’d have pools, you’d need a pool don’t you reckon? And rich guys. That could be a problem. Nubile slaves I could handle. And we’d have half-naked guys holding poles with feathers like Aida. I saw a book in a New Age shop the other day. Anything goes. There wouldn’t be much point in hiring a coordinator otherwise, would there. It wouldn’t be down-home stuff. You’d have to cater for all tastes. I’ve got no background in SM but the research’d be interesting. And the logistics. I suppose you’d have sort of set menus on hand and you could offer them like caterers and the clients could take it from there with their own alternatives or additions or whatever, and you’d liaise later. What d’you reckon?’
Robin stirred in his form-fitting eggcup seat.
‘You got one of those sheepskin things on your bed?’ said the man beside him.
This happened too often nowadays. Total strangers questioned, confided, bent his ear. Last week a man had bailed him up in a bus and told him his firewood problem. He had the pine, had got it into the shed the year before, it was the only way, but now she was too dry, see. It burned too quick and he’d have to get something more dense to calm her down. Macrocarpa was useless. Good heat but sparked like buggery. Should he go for gum or manuka? Otherwise you’re just heating Wellington. All that money going straight up the chimney. What did Robin reckon?
He forced himself to turn to the sheepskin man who was small and sharp in a brown suit, brown hat and shiny shoes. An old guy.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I had one but I flagged it away. Electric blanket now. Got an electric blanket?’
‘No.’
The man puffed out his weathered cheeks, gave his considered opinion. ‘Good news electric blankets. I turn mine on full bore half an hour before I retire.’
Retire. Robin nodded. It was definitely happening too often. He took a quick glance at himself in the mirrored wall. Just the same: jeans, parka, glasses, hair. The answer came. You’re on your own, Robbo, you’re alone. People talk to people on their own. You haven’t gone nice. Relax.
The boarding signal was a relief nevertheless.
Shara Bow met him at the airport with the dog truck. Or at least he assumed it was her; a small wiry woman stood by a pick-up with a wire cage on the back, ripping into a startled-looking policeman. She had spiky blonde hair, bright eyes and a neat little beak of a nose. She looked like a chicken in boots. Or a roadrunner belting across a desert highway to avoid extinction. Robin stopped, put his pack down to watch. This one looked unlikely to be squashed by anything. She stood, arms bare in the morning frost, her boots unlaced below khaki shorts stained with oil, her breath hanging in the air.
The cop rallied. ‘Now look, lady …’
‘Look lady is not where we’re at. I’ve gotta meet this guy, this guy’s waiting on me. OK, OK.’ She glanced at a vast digital watch with knobs. ‘Three minutes! Three lousy minutes is all. How’s he gonna find me way over there, me and the dog truck? I told him the dog truck. How’s he gonna find an unknown dog truck way over?’ She gestured to the car park alongside. ‘How’s he gonna see it? So I stay here, right.’
The cop mumbled something.
Robin moved forward as she turned away happy. ‘Are you Shara?’
She glanced up from the boot-faced cop, smiling in victory. ‘Pardon me, officer. Hi. You must be Robin,’ she said, glad to share her triumph. ‘This officer was so kind, he let me park right here. First he says no way, over there, but I say maybe the guy don’t know dog trucks?’ She nodded. ‘I thought maybe not. Get in, get in. Bye officer, bye.’
She slammed the truck into gear. The cop lifted a hand through billows of blue smoke.
‘You’re American,’ said Robin.
‘Right on the button.’ She was driving fast. He sneaked a glance at her profile as she passed a bus, noted the lines at the eyes, the downward tug of her cheek. Her behind was propped on several old cushions for height. She drove with attack; weaving and diving, the custom-made dog pens rattling on the tray, they belted along the road to Dunedin.
It was a beautiful morning, a clear midwinter dazzler, a good day. The hills were rounded, the sky stone-washed. The p
lumes of breath expended during Shara’s disposal of the cop would have disappeared long before he and his chicken-headed chauffeur headed for the hills and the air like bloody wine. People talk about their surroundings as though awareness of them happens every day when it is as rare as a roadrunner’s tooth. Yeah, we enjoyed Otago. The terse directive—Enjoy. The last time he had felt as though every bone, cell, hair in his body was alive and well and present had been with Emmie at Chainsaw. After Chainsaw. Yes. He splayed his fingers, looked; still ten. He turned to the hills, the sweeps of blue.
‘It’s so clean here,’ he muttered.
‘Gets washed enough, doesn’t it?’
Well, yes. ‘Whereabouts in the States do you come from?’
‘Oklahoma.’
‘Ah.’ Oklahoma. Okies, dust bowl. Depression, Grapes of Wrath. Oklahoma, where the wind comes right behind the rain. He had taken Lisa to a revival of the film. The farmer and the cowman, he remembered, should be friends. But Shara would have known even less before she came here. Anti-nuclear policy. Scenic wonders. Racial tension. Unlikely. The world whittled to a green fruit and a purblind bird on a tin of polish.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Whereabouts?’
She was concentrating. ‘Sulphur.’
‘Sulphur. Oh. Do you like it here?’
‘Sure.’
Probably she didn’t like to talk while driving at this speed. She navigated Dunedin in minutes.
‘Small, isn’t it?’ he said as they shot out the other side.
The House Guest Page 17