Beneath the Blonde (21 page)

Saz shrugged, “Yeah, look, it seems churlish to say I told you so …”

“But?”

“Well … I did.”

Saz put the flowers down and put her arm around Siobhan, sitting her down on the bed. Knowing that the last thing they needed at one in the morning was another tantrum, she decided that lying was likely to do the least harm and chose to reassure Siobhan, all the while desperate to run out and shake their landlady awake, demanding she reveal the identity of today’s floral deliverer and how she could get her hands on her. She smiled, hoping that what felt like a tight-drawn grimace and sharp baring of the teeth would inspire comfort and ease, “Look Siobhan, we’re all right tonight. You stay here for a few minutes. You can lock the door after me and I’ll go and get Greg for you, ok? Then I’ll have a word with the landlady, ask about the delivery. I’ll get her to check that all the doors and windows downstairs are locked and we can all get to bed. In the morning I’ll find out who left these.” And here she added a relieved chuckle to her theatrical repertoire, “I mean, really, there really can’t be that many bloody florists in this little town.”

Siobhan looked properly at the flowers for the first time. “There’s a card.”

She took the small envelope from the cellophane encasing the roses and ripped it open. Saz saw her hand start to shake as she read it. Siobhan held the card out to Saz who read: “Welcome to New Zealand! Now it’s just all us girls together. How nice! PS—tell Greg that Gaelene misses him.”

Saz turned the card and envelope over; neither had a florist’s address on them. “I don’t get it. Who’s Gaelene?”

Siobhan shook her head, “Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Well what about the ‘all girls together’ bit? What’s that?”

Siobhan’s whole body was shaking and she started to cry, “I don’t know, ok? I don’t know what any of this is about. I just want it all to go away. Make it go away.”

Saz’s right arm was around Siobhan’s shoulders, her left hand holding both of Siobhan’s shaking hands in hers. She really wasn’t thinking of anything other than making Siobhan feel better, feel safe, of looking after Siobhan—simply thinking about the best way to do her job.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, their height difference was marginal, their eyes level, Siobhan’s extra long legs reaching out across the thick carpeted floor. Saz poured all the reassurance and calm she could cram into one fabricated stare. Their eyes held and then Siobhan’s lips were on hers and Siobhan’s left leg had swung up and around, was smooth and low across her hips and they lay long on the bed together, Siobhan leaning over her, breathing hot, tired margarita breath into Saz’s eyes, ears, mouth, breasts. Siobhan and Saz pulling each other’s clothes off, light clothes, thin clothes, the easily removed clothes of an almost summer evening. Siobhan locking the door. Saz and Siobhan kissing and touching, Siobhan’s fingers prying, trying the new scars, unseen by anyone other than Molly, anyone other than the many, many doctors. New skin untouched, unloved by any other than Molly. Saz’s hands running fast over Siobhan’s long limbs, straight waist, full breasts. Saz’s mind choosing not to look at the difference, not to register a difference. Not to register that there was anyone to be different from. Saz’s cowardly mind retreating, shutting off and letting her subversive physical self take over. Only Saz’s hands noting the difference between this new body and Molly’s, noting and revelling in each fresh sensation, fingertips
and lips with minds of their own craving virgin sensations and untouched body to satisfy impatient, easily bored lusts.

When Saz and Siobhan fucked it was not as if Siobhan had not done it before. She did not wait, a lesbian virgin to be taken and saved by Saz’s knowledge. She held Saz tight as she fucked her, Saz’s body deliriously surrendering to wide-awake dreams of fantasy finally made flesh, her mouth open to kiss Siobhan, her body wide open to take her in.

Saz woke the next morning to a bed littered with broken roses, petal yellow smeared against the sheets, ripped green leaves staining white linen pillow cases and her back rose-thorn scratched. She ached the bruised ache of the hour’s incessant unexpected passion until Siobhan had left her, half sleeping and returned to her own bed where Greg dreamt quietly, so many pints down that even his dreams poured slow as Dublin Guiness.

Saz had fucked Siobhan with all her body, most of her heart and some of her soul. Unfortunately, with sharp daylight, her tardy conscience had finally decided to join the party.

I haven’t been here before. Not as a grown-up anyway. Once we came here, very early in the morning, a long way from home, driving south, even further south than this. I was a small child. I sent you a postcard and Mummy had to write the big words, put the stamp on, lift me up to put it in the box. I did the licking part myself. I never liked it here though. Never even liked the idea of it. The mountains are too big, they ring the sky and don’t let you see behind. There is not enough sky here, too much earth, too much rock. I like the edge of the sea, the depth of sky. I want to see far out into the distance. The straight and curving line that defines the horizon parameters of our future.

I’ve been so far to find you, been to all those places you’ve visited. And now we’re here. So very far. Little crisscross lines scarring the world map, gouging lines out of the globe. Noughts and crosses all over Europe. Backwards and forwards from town to city. Some you went to more often. Some places you really laid claim to. I followed the scent, sniffed you out though you tried to cover your tracks. And now I’ve followed you all the way back.

Home again home again jiggety jog. To buy a fat hog. Or pig. Maybe it’s pig. But do they eat meat? Well, who doesn’t these days? Even the cows eat meat now. How much meat can this cow eat?

I watched them. Kissing and fondling. Both so public and unashamed. I hated her then. Weaving herself around that table, that room. She thinks she’s Pygmalion, looks at what
she’s made, plays with herself, with them, with her creation. Plays with me. I should never have let you take it this far. I should have told the truth from the beginning. You’ve got away with far too much.

But she is beautiful. They are beautiful. You are beautiful. A conjugation of loveliness.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Does she have any idea just how beholden she is to me? Don’t worry, I won’t forget the debt.

This place used to be much nicer, I’m sure. Smaller. More real. Now it’s full of Americans and Japanese and the tourists with their bloody tourist dollars and their bloodier tourist minds. I would expect that in London, in New York. Somehow I’d hoped for better from here. I’d hoped that this little piece of the world wouldn’t change. I believe in the sanctity of stasis. But you can see it has started already. The small towns are all decaying—those that aren’t dead already. Shutting off shops and whole streets in an attempt to beat the gangrene of poverty, to stem the flow of dollars that props up the economies of the fat greedy cities. I lived years in a small town, they are the same the world over. I loved it. But its life blood has been siphoned by Auckland and Wellington and Sydney and LA and Tokyo and Paris and London. Spirit killed off to feed the names on a plastic carrier bag, a T-shirt. You’ll see them as you drive north from here, follow the spine up the islands where the mountains turn into white-crossed roads, all those little towns slaughtered, sacrificial cows to feed the rampant drive, the empassioned “we can be as big as the rest of the world”. Yes, we can be that big. We can be big and bad and beautiful and deny the little people too. We can forget our pasts. Pretend it never happened. We can turn our land inside out and change it all. We can be brand new. And no doubt she thinks it’s worth it. After all, she did the same to herself.

Can you imagine how hard it is to find yellow roses in
Queenstown at this time of year? It was the devil’s own job to get enough to make a bouquet. But, as always, it was well worth the effort. “Must try harder” they used to say on my school report. Term after term. Not these days. These days I can’t try hard enough. I really am a great success. In my own way. Just like her.

It was a sober and embarrassed Saz that greeted Greg and Siobhan at breakfast the next morning. Saz felt sick and confused, Siobhan was bright and strangely excited, given her unhappiness of the night before. Saz assumed it was to cover up what had happened between them and arranged her breakfast with little appetite, avoiding Siobhan’s eyes as much as she could. Greg was subdued, fielding questions with “Don’t no’s” and “maybes”. Dan hadn’t made it down to breakfast, nursing his hangover and the late-sleeping waiter in his bedroom with a tray of dry toast and two vast glasses of orange juice retrieved an hour earlier from the breakfast table.

Saz waited until Siobhan had eaten her third piece of toast before she told Greg about the flowers, acting as if Siobhan didn’t know about them either. He looked concerned enough until she told him about the card when he jumped up from the table, spilling lightly poached egg all over the polished wood.

“Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough of this shit. We’re leaving. Now. Siobhan, you can get your bags, I’m transferring the flights, we’re going straight to Auckland and then getting out of here.”

Surprisingly, Siobhan didn’t argue with him. She merely ignored him.

Greg continued, “Siobhan? Did you hear me?”

Siobhan smiled at him, her mouth full of toast and boysenberry
jam, “Yep. But we can’t go just yet. The flight’s not till four this afternoon.”

“I know that. We’ll go on to Auckland instead of changing at Rotorua. I’ll call Aunty Pat and tell her we’re not coming. We’ll just go to a hotel in Auckland, book in under someone else’s name—Saz, you’ll do. We’ll just be the Martin party, then get the first flight out. There must be one tomorrow. I don’t care what airline it is, we’ll just go. Ok, Saz?”

Saz nodded, unnerved by Siobhan’s disinterest, “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want. I mean, I think there’s probably more I can do to find this person while we’re still here though. I plan to go downtown and check later, as soon as the shops open. They’ll know if the flowers were ordered here or by phone. At least then we’ll know a bit more. Um, and about this Gaelene …?”

He ignored her question, watching as Siobhan stood up and crossed to the dresser, picked up a thin china bowl and spooned homemade muesli into it, topping it with slices of peach and apricot and a dollop of plain yoghurt.

Greg stood with his fists clenched, glaring at her, “Siobhan, what are you doing? This is hardly the time to develop an appetite.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.” She slowly returned to her seat at the table. Greg and Saz both watched each deliberate move, neither convinced that she wasn’t about to pick up the bowl and throw it at them, Saz terrified of what it could be that Siobhan was gearing herself up to say. When Siobhan finally picked up her spoon and pointed it at Greg, Saz could have sworn she saw him flinch.

Siobhan’s voice came out, just above a low whisper, “Greg, my darling, I’d love to do just as you say. In fact, in three hours’ time I won’t have any choice. But just for now, until I make that rash promise to obey, you’ll have to excuse me for not doing what you want. We’re not going direct to Auckland tonight because Aunty Pat will have spent all day
making ham sandwiches and tiny sausage rolls and we don’t want to upset her. Uncle Dennis is probably polishing the family silver as we talk. Anyway, you don’t really have time to spend the morning on the phone to Auckland, you probably ought to pop into town and do a little shopping.”

“What are you talking about?”

Saz had no idea either and while she was wondering whether she should get a cloth to wipe up the congealing egg yoke or just run away then and there, Siobhan spooned up another mouthful of muesli and fruit and held it out to Greg, “Marry me?”

Greg, confused by the contrary action and words, looked at the cereal and at the woman offering it, “I don’t like mue … I mean … what … I can’t, you know … I’d love to, we’ve both said that … what?”

Saz stood up, desperately wanting to get out of the room, away from the bizarre scene, away from the vomit she felt rising through her stomach, away from the eyes fixed on her, but Siobhan had already put down her spoon and grabbed Saz’s hand, “See, my darling, we’ll have Saz and Dan for our witnesses. Won’t we, Saz?”

Siobhan looked at Saz and her eyes were both hard and pleading, “I’ve checked it all out. I took our passports in yesterday when you were looking in the ski shop, it took no time at all. I filled out the forms …”

Greg shook his head, “I must have to sign something?”

“Forged it. Told the nice lady you were taking a photo, went outside and forged your signature. Been doing it for years, you know that. What a wonderful country this is! Normally you have to wait at least a couple of days but when I explained who we were to the woman on the desk—you see, darling, we are a little bit famous here after all—she said she’d see what she could do. I told her we wanted to avoid the English press. Seemed perfectly plausible.”

Greg seemed to come to his senses for a moment but
Siobhan didn’t give him a chance to jump in, “So then the nice lady came back and said we were in luck, her boss had agreed that they’d process the forms fast for us. All we had to do was bring ourselves and a couple of witnesses. Isn’t this just so cool? We’re fitted in right between a couple of Americans who only decided to get married on Friday and this Japanese couple who’ve come to New Zealand just for the ceremony. Apparently they do it all the time. The Japanese, that is.”

Saz managed to extricate herself from Siobhan’s hand, rubbing her fingers where her rings had been squashed together, her skin pinched from the strength of Siobhan’s grip. She forced herself to sit calmly beside Dan who had arrived at the table during Siobhan’s speech and was immediately wishing he hadn’t.

Saz stuttered, “But Siobhan, it’s so soon.”

Siobhan shook her head, “No. Greg and I have been talking about getting married for years. We just didn’t know we could do it, that’s all.”