Carnival Sky (28 page)

‘You wouldn’t mind me hanging around for a while?’ he asked.

‘Nope. Both of us could do with a bit of support.’

‘What about your girlfriend?’

‘She knows about you,’ said Jessica. ‘Maybe you could meet her sometime. It’s okay there.’

Sheff was surprised how little curiosity he felt about Jessica’s lover. He imagined that to meet her would only emphasise her greater importance in Jessica’s life, and there could be no effective competition. It wasn’t jealousy, just the preference to be unaware of another person more significant to Jessica than himself. Emma was example enough.

‘Do you know someone called Pamela Rudge?’ he asked.

‘She’s in the office at Emma’s school. A bit full of herself, but very friendly and obliging. She wanted to nominate me for the school board, but I didn’t have the time. She plays bridge too.’

‘She’s the one who got stuck into me about seeing you, and not just once. She turned up at the funeral – said if I didn’t stay away from you I’d end up in a concrete overcoat.’

‘You’re making this up. I don’t believe you’ve even met her.’

‘Have too, she was wearing a yellow dress. And she’s harangued me before, at the café and once on the bridge. I told you about it. She gave me a spray for being keen on you, and warned me off. She’s obviously taken it on herself to be your sexual guardian.’

‘Some story. And if it’s a ploy to find out who my partner is, then it won’t work. All in good time.’

‘I could do a piece on lesbianism in the provinces. Interviews with the two of you, and Pamela as a contrast.’ He almost felt sorry for Pamela Rudge – so protective of Jessica, who was so little aware of her. Maybe even as he and Jessica were together, Pamela was sitting in a car not far from the house, torturing herself with speculation as to their activity. ‘“Les Sex in Alex”, I could call the piece,’ he told Jessica. ‘Editors like a smart-arse, ambiguous title.’

‘Like hell you will,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough unofficial publicity about my life as it is. A professional woman bringing up her child on her own. That’s all people need to know.’

‘This Rudge woman, though,’ said Sheff. ‘I may have to take out a non-molestation order. I’m tired of getting knocked about one way and another.’

‘A persecution complex. That’s what it is.’

‘I’ve got the scars to prove it. This secret admirer of yours is no figment of the imagination.’

‘You told me a skateboarder crashed into you.’

‘Okay, but a small-town butch lesbian skateboarding assassin is something to conjure with, isn’t it? Wow.’

‘God, Sheff, you know nothing about it. You men have these fantasies. Pamela’s always seemed to me a rather ordinary sort of person. Maybe she’s gay, but we’ve never talked about it. She did offer to be my partner at the club.’

Sheff had almost forgotten the pleasure of relaxation with a woman. Within a few days he might well be gone, but the time felt special nevertheless. Something of value was there, important to them in
the present, and maybe not lost when they were apart. Just to like someone had become important to him, to feel affinity and a sense of understanding.

‘I still want to do the pieces on being a vet,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you all the copy you want, and you shout me a decent meal out on the proceeds.’

‘Done.’ There would be bugger-all left over, but he didn’t mention that. ‘Did I tell you I saw Albie Waltenberg?’

‘No, but he said at bridge that he was keen to get in touch. He’s been all over the world, but he says his health’s shot now.’

‘He’s become a bloody fanatic,’ and Sheff told her of the visit, with sufficient exaggeration to provide entertainment, following her into the kitchen when she went to make coffee, resisting the temptation to come close behind her when she stood at the bench.

Later Jessica asked him if he wanted to be dropped off when she went to collect Emma, but Sheff knew he’d taken enough of her day. He would go home and talk to his mother as she made a meal for them. ‘Let her fuss over you a bit,’ Georgie had said before leaving. ‘That’ll take her mind off Dad, and give her the reassurance of routine.’ Sheff didn’t see his mother as the fussing kind, but accepted Georgie’s counsel.

On his way home he passed the small park where he’d been struck with the cricket ball. He went across the grass and sat at the wooden picnic table again. All was as it had been when last he was there, except that no kids gathered behind the hedge to hassle him, no duck implored him. Even the breeze was of the same strength and from the same direction, so that the plume tops of the shimmering poplar trees nodded to the east, and a hawk drifted with fixed wings to the same compass point. Everything was the same, but not the same.

And closer to home, when he’d left the park, was the street that led to the pipe man’s house, with the twisted bike still leaning there perhaps by the small concrete wall with lavender spilling over it,
and inside the house old Gavin with the walrus moustache and unrecognisable bum, and the son manically up or down with the affliction of bipolar disorder. Even the great blue dome of the sky, and the pulsating gold sun within it, couldn’t heal everything.

As he crossed a quiet intersection he glanced to his left, and saw at the limit of recognition a street name, white on blue – Venice Avenue. A station in his rites of passage that even twenty-seven years afterwards was as sharp as yesterday and as meaningful as all between. Natalie Gorringe had lived in Venice Avenue, Number 33, and on a wet November Saturday they had had sex on her narrow bed, with algebra and calculus books on the small table alongside. Natalie was talented in maths and science, but more important she was lovely, and for a few weeks willing to be Sheff’s girlfriend in her giddy seventh form year. Maybe it was because he was allowed his father’s car, maybe it was his long hair, or the jokes he told, maybe she liked him, maybe it was merely boredom. It didn’t matter why. It mattered only that because it was raining her parents decided to stay longer in Dunedin instead of returning to play bowls, and Sheff went to her house and, after mucking around, she said they could do it if he wanted to.

It was the first full, easy fuck he ever had, quite different from the back-seat contesting that was the sum of his previous experience. Natalie had taken off her clothes with studied intent, folded them and put them on the floor by the head of the bed. She was smooth all over except for the hair on her head and at her crotch. It was a darker shade down there and springy. As he lay on her, his face was almost touching the net curtains of the window, and he could see quite clearly the garden and street outside Number 33. He had to remind himself that although he could see out, people on the street wouldn’t be able to see in: view Natalie and him naked and trembling slightly – with excitement, not cold. ‘Give it to me,’ she had said urgently. And he had. There were long, shallow puddles on the drive and the raindrops puckered the surfaces. The grass of lawn
and the flowers were slick and glistening beneath anointment. Grey clouds rolled inexorably in the sky, cars hissed on the wet street. All was perfect.

At seventeen to be so sure of her own need and so confident in control of its delivery. ‘Give it to me,’ she’d said with eager resolution, an invitation he thought then would never be surpassed. Lovely, generous Natalie Gorringe, who grew even more lovely and generous so that she was soon stolen from Sheff by an ex-head boy, and finally by a married solicitor who threw away his career and family to go with her to Melbourne. Everyone said what a despicable prick he was, but Sheff knew he’d made the right choice nevertheless. Principles of morality have no weight when in the balance with a woman of beauty who could say ‘Give it to me,’ in the way Natalie had, and look you in the face while saying it. That first loving was such an amelioration of rainy days that no matter how many had come afterwards, or what parades were ruined, they were tinged with a recollection of triumph. Yet had it always been so starry, or had he glossed it with joy and gratitude?

Mrs Gemmell had been and gone by the time Sheff returned home, and his mother said that Mr Fellows from the supermarket had rung to apologise for Bobby once more. The boy was very upset. Sheff and his mother sat at the kitchen table: just two people, whereas recently there had been a foursome that would never gather again. Belize had made a couscous salad with olives and pomegranate seeds, and the meat was shaved ham. ‘Georgie rang, too,’ she said. ‘She’s just home and sends love. They flew through a thunderstorm north of Kaikoura. She thinks I should go and stay with Cass for a while.’

‘It’s whatever you find best,’ he said.

‘I have this feeling that if I leave the house too soon after your father, I mightn’t be able to come back to it. Some time to get used to being here alone would be good, don’t you think?’

‘Makes sense, Mum.’

‘If you could just help with the tidy-up for a few more days, then
I feel I’ll be fine, but only if that’s okay?’ Belize was quite calm, but there was something different about her that Sheff couldn’t place, and then he realised that her long, white hair was brushed loose about her face for the first time since he’d come home.

‘Sure. Georgie said when everything’s settled you might go overseas?’

‘Maybe. Warwick and I loved Portugal, and always said we’d go back.’

‘You wouldn’t want to travel around by yourself, though,’ said Sheff.

‘No, no,’ said Belize. ‘I’m too old for that.’ With her fork she was picking the bright pomegranate seeds from her plate and biting them with pleasure. ‘I’ve friends who are keen to travel. Cass and Norman would come, but maybe it’s better not to be family.’ There was a small flock of finches in the garden, and she paused, watching them until they whirled together over the fence.

‘If you do go to Cass’s for a bit, I can finish doing stuff around the section here.’

‘Thanks for what you’ve done already. I suppose I’ll get interested again in time.’

After the meal Sheff and his mother went outside, and relaxed on the slatted outdoor chairs by the box hedge border of the garden. It was sprouting untidily, and he recognised yet another outdoor chore. For years Warwick had kept it so manicured that it resembled a raised track for a model railway, weaving its way through the section. He must have disciplined it hundreds of times, but the final victory went to the hedge. ‘What we must do,’ said Belize, ‘is go together to the solicitor, and get things sorted concerning the will. God knows when Georgie will be able to do that.’

‘I’ll ring the chap if you like. Georgie says not to wait for her.’

‘His wife’s very sick with diabetes. Did your father talk to you at all about his will?’

‘Not really, just some stuff about the house that didn’t make much sense.’

‘Everything’s pretty much left to me. And when I go the split will be fifty-fifty. That’s what we agreed on.’

‘You do whatever you want,’ said Sheff. ‘Georgie and I are happy with that.’

They sat in easy silence for time. A large, blue-grey cat with a flat face came towards them from the garage, and passed into the flower garden with hardly a glance. ‘It’s a British Blue,’ said Belize. ‘It belongs along the road a bit. The owner’s face is just the same. Odd that sort of thing, isn’t it?’ They both smiled. The evening was still warm despite a shifting and fitful breeze. There was the sound of a distant motor-mower, and the setting sun lit several narrow clouds basking low above the Dunstan hills. ‘I’d only say this to you, but in a way I’m glad he’s gone – for him more than anyone,’ said Belize. ‘So awful at the end and he just wanted it over. The whole house seemed to be tight with the pain. You can’t keep on like that for long, can you?’

‘No.’ What would be her reaction if she were told of the release Georgie had provided? The risk she’d been prepared to take for love. The decision she’d faced, and for which he also accepted responsibility.

‘The night he went he said he hoped it would be the last, and it was. “The organism is closing down,” he said. The last words I could make sense of. What a strange thing: the organism is closing down.’

‘Georgie said there wasn’t a lot of pain at the very end,’ said Sheff. He reached out and took his mother’s hand. Her white hair, unconfined, gave a little fullness to her face, and her voice was calm despite the tears undisturbed on her cheeks.

‘It’s so much easier to be in the house now despite the sadness,’ she said.

‘When I was walking home from Jessica’s this afternoon, I thought of Dad putting on the lawn, how he would go out sometimes, straight from work and still in his good clothes, and knock a few in. It made me feel better somehow. He sank an empty tin in for the hole, didn’t he? Baked beans or spaghetti probably – a pretty small target.’

It occurred to Sheff that love was strong in his family, but rarely
acknowledged, or discussed. Even his father’s death could not for long disrupt their shared emotional disposition. Surely he loved his mother, yet he couldn’t remember one striking confession, or confidence, between them. Nor could he recall any instance of malice, neglect or selfishness. She had packed a thousand and more school lunches for him, bought his clothes, sat dutifully before his teachers at parent evenings, been in audiences to see his spear-carrying theatrical roles, driven him to camps and sat by his bed to comfort him when he was sick, championed him against just accusation. And he’d never thought that she might have priorities and pleasures in her life greater than the responsibilities of a good mother.

Selfishly he’d always seen her as an adjunct to his own existence.

Sheff sat on in the garden after his mother went inside. There is a moment in the summer dusk, a brief cusp between night and day, when flowers seem to glow against the fading green and grey as if lit from within. The British Blue passed on its return, stopped and for a time regarded him, decided he was no threat, but no attraction either, and silently vanished into the shadows. Sheff remained focused on the point of its disappearance, but he was thinking of Jessica and Emma, the strength and naturalness of their bond, the pleasure he found in their company despite the little girl’s initial wariness. Common sense told him that many reasons precluded him from having any long-term part in their lives, but perhaps there existed also such a thing as uncommon sense.