The House Guest

by Barbara Anderson

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Beautiful. Stone. Trees. Grass.’ He felt tempted to open the window, to explain to a father and his padded infant transfixed by heavy machinery tearing up a tree-lined square just how beautiful it was.

  ‘I came here as a child,’ he said. ‘With my mother.’ Silence. ‘We stayed with an aunt in St Kilda.’ He told her how cold the sea was and how a man had been attacked by a shark before they got there, not that that would have made any difference to the victim. He saw his aunt’s moist lips, heard her voice tolling. ‘Eat-en. Eat-en. Torn apart at the waist.’ ‘The guy wasn’t out deep,’ he said.

  A quick glance. ‘That’s nice.’

  He rubbed his hands together. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  He sank back wondering how on earth he had got into this conversation, cast another look at her and was silent. From this angle, beneath a squash of black fake-fur hat grabbed from the dashboard as they set off, she looked more like some small sharp-nosed marsupial which can survive extremes. A rat-tailed dunnart perhaps, an endangered bilby. The spiked hair had confused him.

  They drove past shining mudflats. He leaned out to peer.

  ‘A friend of mine did a thesis on Amphibola there,’ he said. ‘A mollusc.’

  ‘Mollusc, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, she wanted to find out whether its nerve loop was primitive or specialised.’ He was staring out the back window into the past as though Pam might still be seen upended in her search for truth.

  ‘Which was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I left.’

  ‘You could’ve found out. You could’ve given her a buzz.’

  ‘Yeah but …’

  Yeah but what? Yeah but I lost touch. Yeah but what’s it to you, chicko. That’s not where I’m at. Not where I’m coming from. I don’t give people buzzes. I don’t do keep-in-touch.

  ‘Tell me about your boss,’ he said.

  She expanded before his eyes. ‘He’s a great old guy. Sure, he’s got his weirdo bits but we get along. We get along good, me and him and the dogs. He’s the best dog man in Central. Over eighty and he can eat the rest. Eat them and spit out the pips.’

  ‘He’s a dog trialler then?’

  ‘Is he ever.’

  ‘How’d you get the job?’

  ‘He advertised.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know about that Alice lady.’ She gave the wheel a sudden tug with small brown hands then corrected. ‘I gather the locals thought she was a bit of a kook but I don’t know. But we get along, Wil and me.’

  They shot through Palmerston and headed up the Pigroot. The hills widened, stretched to the far white line of the horizon. The sky was infinite. He had never seen so much sky in his life but decided not to mention the fact.

  ‘It’s a long way. I should’ve caught a bus.’

  ‘Wil said no. He said go and meet the bugger and we’ll get shot of him sooner.’

  Robin flung back his head. He laughed with release, with delight in gallant old pots who survive and the pleasure of being up Central where the air is.

  For the first time Shara grinned back at him, the cheerful matey grin of a tough nut. Her arms were leather, she appeared to have no breasts at all, the crowsfeet at the corners of her eyes were deep cracks.

  ‘We needed some bulk stores, but yeah, we could’ve got that locally. But he’s the boss.’

  He glanced at her again. Legs above socks, arms below sleeves tanned to dark brown; the rest would be pearly white. Behinds, he remembered from long ago, are particularly improved by contrast.

  A lark lifted, a winged insect splattered tangerine against the windscreen. The wipers squirted in the silence. There was not another car in sight nor had been for miles. The old swingers from Chainsaw should be here, grey pony tails streaming beneath helmets, their Harley Davidson burning along the open road where the wind comes right behind the rain.

  Wil came to meet them at the shed with the quick swinging limp of an energetic old man in want of a hip replacement. Tall and thin, he was dressed in rough woollen trousers and faded workshirt, his arms ropes of sinew beneath rolled sleeves. His hair was a thatch of white hacked at the edges, its cut-off points blunt and sudden as a badly made wig. His nostrils and ears were also tufted, his eyes blue beneath individual stacks of eyebrow. Framed by the woolshed-red of the barn doors, hands waving to direct Shara to put the truck away now, why not, he was a powerful figure. This man did not look like some snivelling no-hoper who had destroyed the artistic creativity of his passionate wife. This was a forceful man, a man of presence. A man who belonged to the land and pitied those who didn’t. Perhaps he was a bully. A hectoring humourless sod in gumboots.

  He wrenched open the door to clench Robin’s hand as he climbed stiffly from the truck.

  ‘Hughes,’ he said. ‘Wil Hughes. Pleased to meet you. Bum gone on you, has it? Suspension’s shot. Stamp your feet. Harder. Like this.’ Stamping and snorting at each other they jigged on the concrete. An old black labrador lying alongside lifted a grizzled muzzle for a moment, waved a languid tail and replaced its head to yawn.

  ‘Right now?’ said Wil.

  ‘Yes thanks. And thanks to Shara. I should’ve caught a bus.’

  ‘No no. Gawd no. No. Come away in.’

  The implement barn, garage and toolshed were large and well maintained, much larger in total area than the house which was a small cottage surrounded on three sides by pines. A wire fence enclosed an ex-garden in the front. Two goats on long leads were munching, their white coats haloed by late-afternoon sun. The wide expanse of the Maniatoto plain was broken by occasional clumps of dark plantation and lines of skeleton poplars. Houses were few and far between.

  ‘Dogs,’ said Shara and disappeared. Wil and Robin set off across a wide stretch of concrete to the house.

  ‘Mind the crap,’ grunted Wil. It was much in evidence as were its originators. Another surprise. Why would a man as seemingly pragmatic—as, if you could stand it, earthy—as Wil, keep such birds? These were not market-oriented hens, deep-bottomed hybrids with plenty of egg room, prolific layers with asset potential. These birds were rare domestic fowl; pure-breds of striking design and little commercial return. Birds of detail and delight, these singular creatures looked like prints from an eighteenth-century library complete with spiral mahogany ladder, not something to be found crapping on concrete in Central.

  It would be Alice. Alice pining for the baroque, the extravagant. For something that wasn’t entirely for goddamn use.

  Robin admired, was introduced with Spiro-like courtesy to gold-lacing and spangling, to good comb and expressive eye, to silver hackles and well-barred wings. The man was an expert and a yarner as well.

  ‘There’s a bloke down south breeds them,’ he said, ‘but some breeds are choosy. Not for roughing it on farms. Nothing wrong with these girls though is there? A flock of well-laced Silver Laced Wynandottes in a paddock when it’s green is a sight for sore eyes, I can tell you.’

  ‘How long’ve you had them?’

  ‘Two years,’ said Wil lifting a blotched hand to his nose. ‘The crap’s a bind. I hose it down, the yard, but it’s sitting there looking at you again by morning. Still …’ His eyes searched the upper reaches of the pines. ‘Alice would’ve loved them,’ he said, ‘but Geoff hadn’t started then. She’d have gone for the names alone. White Silkies and Black Hamburgs, Plymouth Rocks and Silver Campines. I can hear her laugh. But you’ve got to keep your feet on the ground.’

  They walked through the back door into a narrow porch which acted as a buffer between the backyard and the kitchen. Gumboots of varying sizes littered the floor and sat upended on sills; a stray red one lay on a kauri chest beside two old kerosene lamps with mantels intact. Individual work boots lay jumbled together except for two sets placed neatly side by side at the door. There was much wet-weather gear. Oilskins lined one wall, old cracked ones alongside two more operational ones and three checked Swanndries. Ha
ts were in abundance; the usual sou’westers and woolly ones, three towelling, two straw and an army beret alongside khaki cottons and a dusty brown pork pie.

  Assorted seed packets brown with age, garden tools petrified with caked mud and an old chainsaw leaned against a bag of pine cones and a pile of kindling. A cardboard box full of unstained wooden eggcups sat beside a washing board below a window opaque with cobwebs and dead flies. There was a pleasant smell; a dry crispness of usage and old wood, of dried mud and lavender; the latter presumably from a cocooned-looking bunch swaying above them. The range of exhibits was wide. So wide it looked like a display in some one-roomed colonial museum, some neglected pit-stop on a heritage trail for tourists. But this lot must have deepened like the Maniatoto itself, have been formed from gradual accumulation of deposits through the ages.

  The kitchen was a large room with a table in the middle. Again negative space was at a premium. Horizontal surfaces were piled high with old newspapers, bills and letters had been opened and restowed in piles, used Lotto tickets were half hidden by an advertisement for sheep drench labelled Action in black felt-tip. The other side of the bench had been taken over by foodstuffs and painted tins. The Queen in majesty and Milford Sound sat cheek by jowl with tins labelled Weetbix, Cereal, Rice, Odds and Ends and God Knows. The refrigerator was an old rumbler with a rounded top. Wil opened the door for milk and the stench of uncooked overripe mutton hit the air. He closed the door without comment and sat down to pour tea from a brown earthenware pot. His voice was quiet, almost shy. ‘I clean it up you know, wash the floor and that. But …’ He lifted his arms in defeat. ‘I can’t keep up with it. Like the hens.’ He ladled spoons of sugar, stirred for some time. ‘And I can’t expect Shara … She’s an outdoor girl.’

  Robin coughed into his tea. The dated phrase conjured up bosomy bikini pin-ups bronzed and anointed and laid in the sun.

  There are no outdoor or indoor girls now. There are no girls. And they don’t get laid. They agree, or they decline, or they are raped and/or killed. Occasionally they welcome as Emmeline Frances O’Malley had done, stepping out of silk and kicking it aside with a pink and white foot.

  Robin blinked, shook his head. ‘When can we start talking?’ he said.

  Wil paused for a moment. ‘Tomorrow morning. In the front room. After I show you the frocks.’

  Robin sat bolt upright at the weight on his legs. He sniffed the fusty air, tried to move his feet and couldn’t as he fumbled for the switch on the rickety bedside light.

  Shara was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday; only her boots were missing and her fun-fur hat. The blast of air from the door was icy on his bare chest but there was no retreat. He was naked, freezing and not in charge.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he snapped.

  Shara looked at him with faint surprise which irritated him further. Her hair was wet and spikier than ever. A drop of water slid down her face and ran between the small mounds beneath her shirt which were separated by a leather thong and its pendant dog whistle.

  ‘And would you mind getting off my legs?’

  Shara put up one finger to wipe another drop of water and moved slightly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, ‘I should’ve told you yesterday but I forgot so I thought I’d get in early. I’m off soon. Wil’s memory’s on the blink.’

  ‘Whaat!’

  She pulled her feet up onto the bed, took her time, gazed thought fully at his panic.

  ‘He seemed OK last night,’ he said. ‘On the ball. Won the dominoes,’ he said punting up evidence.

  She looked at him with the contempt he was beginning to recognise. ‘You don’t need memory for dominoes. You count spots.’

  ‘But this is terrible …’

  ‘Yeah, it’s tough on the old guy. He knows too. That’s the saddest.’

  ‘I mean …’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. You’re just thinking of your research about that Alice.’ She was angry now. Her perky alertness was ruffled, her cheeks flushed. ‘But don’t you worry. He remembers every moment of every minute he ever spent with that … I won’t badmouth her. I didn’t know her anyhow, but from what I hear … But the old guy, now don’t you get him agitated. If you get him excited his memory goes right through the roof. I talked to the doctor and he said, Shara, now don’t you fret. It’s just age and it’s only short-term memory, names and that, and you’re there for his heart pills and there’s nothing to be done. It happens or it doesn’t happen and it happens to everyone to some extent and don’t you worry about it. That’s what he said. His very words. Don’t you worry, he said. So I don’t. It’s only names. He doesn’t like names. Names bother him.’ One hand flipped upwards. ‘He couldn’t remember Humphrey Bogart the other day. That shook him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, but that’s what gets him, see. He says he doesn’t mind forgetting names of people he’s known for ever like relatives. But Bogart worried him, the name was, like, all he had. No one would know who he meant otherwise. Or Gerald Ford. Sure, he’s easy to forget, that’s what I said. I said Wil forget it, nobody remembers that guy, and he said that wasn’t the point, but I said sure it was.

  ‘And he’s such a battler, the old guy. Know what he does? I find scraps of paper all over with “Shara” on them. There’ll be “Rob” too now, I bet.’

  ‘To remind him?’

  Again that look. ‘What do you reckon?’

  She was silent, her chin in her hand as she stared moodily at the pink ruffled lampshade on the light beside his bed. The whole room was pink. The bedspreads of the twin beds were pink on pink flowers, the eiderdowns covered in the same fabric. A mistake. Eiderdowns, Maureen had told him, must be down-proof. These ones leaked scraps of feathers, small white chopped bits drifted to the floor. The walls also were pink as was the large wardrobe. Another mistake surely; its loops and swirls and the brass teardrop handles looked like defaced Art Nouveau. Shara seemed to have settled in for a long haul. Rob sneezed and dragged on his guernsey.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said thoughtfully rubbing her nose. ‘I’ve only got a visitors visa.’

  He sneezed again. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  Her nose was still requiring attention.

  ‘Do you know if Alice O’Leary did the, er, decor?’ he said hurriedly. ‘All this pink?’

  ‘Naa. Most of this is Depression stuff, Wil said.’ She lifted the pink frill on the bedside table with one foot to reveal a naked apple box empty except for a large chamber pot ringed with roses. ‘This’ll be Doris. She was his first.’

  ‘How many’s he had?’

  ‘Three. Doris, Ivy, then Alice.’ Shara picked a feather off her shorts and dropped it on the ground. ‘And I just might be number four.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah yeah. He’s over eighty.’ She turned to him, pink and angry again. ‘Well I’m over forty and I’ll tell you something, I like it here, OK?’ She stood quickly. ‘Hens,’ she said and left.

  He stared at the white-painted door behind her. Three. Three’s quite a lot.

  The shower space was long and narrow and well-used; two or three discarded plastic bottles of shampoo lay on the flaking yellow concrete base beside a scrubbing brush. The walls were interesting; there were several varieties of mould present: ordinary greys, a finer black-speck one and an interesting streak of pink which he had not seen before. He dropped on his heels to touch it. More a slime than a mould. Karen would know but Karen was now preparing for the NZ Antarctic Summer Programme research into the genetic variability of Dry Valley mosses. Rob jumped up, skidded on the slippery paint and landed flat on his back on an empty discard, icy water pelting at his crotch. A Herbal Mild burped beneath him.

  ‘Hot water go on you?’ said Wil.

  ‘Well, yeah …’

  ‘Should’ve warned you. The hot goes dog on you if I turn her on in here.’

  The old man nodded, rubbed his hands together. ‘Great day
for the race,’ he said.

  There will always be riddles, jokes, kids on tiptoe. Of course there will. Get real Raab. Lisa is dead and all grief is self-pity and self-pity is crud.

  ‘I know that one,’ he said.

  But Wil, like all riddlers, was ruthless. ‘The human race!’ he cried, turning to the porridge heaving and thudding away to itself on the stove. Robin could feel the stretch of his smile.

  ‘Where’s Shara?’ he asked after the porridge and the eggs and the bacon and the tea and the toast.

  ‘Long gone.’ Wil waved a chapped hand. ‘Way out the back to fix the pump on the water race.’

  ‘Maybe we’d better tidy up then.’

  ‘No, no Bob, stack them up, just stack them. I want to show you the frocks.’

  There was no point in asking what frocks. Wil obviously thought he had explained and Robin must keep things easy. Nice and slow and easy. For you I do special job.

  The outside air hit them like a blast from a deep-freeze. Hoar frost framed trees in inch-high tinsel, furred upended buckets, transformed droppings to delicate filigreed maquettes. Wil glanced at his guest’s Reeboks.

  ‘Those things got a decent grip? This is arse-over-tip country mind.’ The old man’s face changed, the furrows from nose to mouth deepened, his eyes were troubled. ‘What’s your name again?’

  Robin stared across the plain. ‘Robin.’

  ‘Wait here a sec,’ said Wil and re-entered the cottage. He came back patting his pocket. ‘Got the runbacks,’ he said. ‘She’s just over here.’ He headed towards a corrugated iron shed beyond the dog kennels, his feet crunching frozen puddles to slivers of ice.

  The sheepdogs went mad, leaping and twisting from long chains beneath frilled macrocarpas. The noise was deafening, the yelping frenzy of hysterical finger-snapping young thrusters filmed at the stock exchange. Me. Here. Mine. Me!

  Wil paused in his swinging lope. ‘Get inside,’ he growled. The words came from deep within. It was not a roar. It was the voice of all authority Robin had ever known or seen or read, the voice of drill sergeants and crushers, of jackboots and power.