Drybread: A Novel (17 page)

The Family Court granted a stay in execution of the
warrant in the second week of June, pending a rehearing,
and Penny's exile at Drybread was over. She rang from
Alexandra to give Theo the news after talking to Zack
Heywood. 'That's bloody great, Penny,' he said. 'Jesus,
what a relief it must be. What happens now?'

'The hearing's set down for the eighteenth of next
month in Christchurch, and Erskine's coming out. We'll
make a joint submission stating we've come to agreement
regarding custody, access, the whole works.'

'Will you still have to go back to the States?'

'Probably. Just for the court there. It all starts and ends
with the Californian court. But hey, I'm not the mad bitch
on the run any more, and a favourable review here might
help over there. I can visit Mum, I'm not tied to this place,
I can give Ben some sort of decent life.'

'Are you coming up? Can I see you?' Theo asked. Penny
said she was going to wait a few more days at the bach,
finish there and travel up closer to the court date. There
was a lot of media interest and she didn't want to have to
cope with all that until she had to. 'It's my big story, isn't
it,' Theo said. 'I can be in court, though Zack reckons you
can only name parties at the judge's discretion.'

It should be the right ending, and the pay-off for the
paper, but Penny, Zack and Theo all knew it was best that
both his private and professional connection be played
down. No extra guy to complicate matters for the judge;
no triangle to give the story even more newsworthy angles;
no obvious embarrassment for Erskine that might threaten
his co-operation. And what was their relationship anyway?
What was the basis of their somewhat uneasy move towards
each other, apart from a mutual feeling of isolation and
need, and the urge of Theo's cock.

'Zack can keep you up with everything,' Penny said.
'I'm really looking forward to seeing you of course, but
everything's pretty hectic. As soon as Erskine arrives,
we'll have a final talk through things before the court
appearance.' Theo found it hard to imagine Erskine at
Drybread: a well-dressed, well-fleshed Yank on the old
church pew at the back door, looking up to the long-drop,
or awkward on the worn sofa in the combined kitchen and
sitting room.

'He'll come down there?'

'No,' said Penny. 'We'll come up to Christchurch closer
to the hearing.'

Ben would see his parents together for the first time in
a long while. Despite everything, Theo found that thought
surprisingly positive. The boy was the one most at risk, and
not aware of it, least able to influence an outcome. His
image came up in Theo's mind with surprising ease: the
dark hair with the gloss of childhood, the smooth, trusting
face unmarked by life, the utter relaxation of limbs when
in repose.

And the parson had been called off. No need for
domestic espionage now. He would have submitted a hefty
fees claim to his American client. Maybe one of the items
was for recompense because of a line of duty scuffle in a
darkened Christchurch carpark. Another may have been
for damage to his shoes in the coal shaft at Mount Somers.

The parson would close a file on Penny and Theo, and take
a professional interest in the less high-profile troubles of
some other poor bastards.

Theo heard nothing from Penny, or Zack, before the
eighteenth, but he made the necessary application to the
court to attend as an accredited journalist.

The morning of the hearing was a brooding one of low,
rolling cloud and occasional drifts of fine rain. The city
was nondescript and hunkered down. At the entrance to
the court Theo saw a television crew that had been denied
permission to film inside, and was waiting for shots of
the Maine-Kings and comments as well. The frontperson
was a young woman wearing an ankle-length blue coat
embroidered with flowers; the two others were males in
jeans and jackets. The lawyers they stalked were uniform in
dark, well-cut suits. Such antithesis between media and the
law is a conscious assertion on both sides.

Theo had to sign in, show photo ID, and was given
a lapel sticker that had 'Media' written on it in green felt
pen. The surroundings and proceedings were less formal
than other courts he'd experienced, but still subdued,
and rather solemn. Zack was there to represent Penny, a
second lawyer for Erskine, and a third specifically to act in
Ben's best interests. Theo couldn't see the boy anywhere
in court: some caregiver must have been entertaining him
while his happiness was in the balance.

It was all over in not much more than half an hour. The
judge had decided from the documents filed that he would
order a discharge of the warrant, and support the Maine-
Kings' application for a rehearing of custody matters in the
Californian court. He wanted just to have them before him,
to have the surety of their own statements and obvious
agreement to reach a compromise. Penny, Erskine and the
lawyers sat only a short distance from Theo, but they gave
no sign of recognition, even when the judge commented
on the high publicity caused by Penny's flight. It seemed to
Theo that Erskine was sensitive to the American stereotype,
and made special efforts to be attentive and obliging, yet
without obsequiousness. Even his voice was consciously
subdued, and he sat quite still for most of the time. It
wasn't that he lacked confidence, but rather that he was
resolved to do everything he could that would restore his
son to him.

Theo had a strong sense of exclusion, and it arose
from more than the formal grouping, or the judicious
concealment of his involvement with Penny. The causes of
the estrangement between Penny and Erskine had nothing
to do with Theo, yet sitting there in a public forum he
felt both pity for their son, and an odd guilt for his own
intention to supplant Ben's father. Who could know what
it meant to a child to lose a parent from the family?

And Penny had rejoined the free population: she was no
longer alone, no longer reliant on Theo as her only visitor
and champion. Outside the courtroom, Theo watched the
small group of journalists and television people gather
round Penny, her husband and Zack, heard her answer
clearly that she regretted the flight from California, heard
Erskine tactfully admitting to some insensitivity, heard the
three of them agree that Ben's welfare was the central issue.
Yes, it was all a long way from Drybread and what had
begun for Theo and Penny there. Back in society, she was
open to the persuasion of convention once again.

Over the following two days, Theo heard nothing from
Penny, so in the second evening he rang Zack at home. 'Do
you know where Penny's staying here?' he said casually
after some general chat. Zack thought he had a number
in his briefcase, and excused himself to go in search of it.
Theo could hear Zack's progress through the house, and
the voice of one of his daughters asking how long he was
going to be on the line.

'Not long, sweetheart,' he said, then, 'Okay, Theo,
I've got it now.' His daughter was amused at something,
and the warmth of her laughter made Theo aware of the
silence in his own house.

When he rang Penny, she said she'd been going to
call, that the hearing had gone well enough, though
there were new developments. She said she wanted to
see him, but her voice was subdued. 'I'd like that,' Theo
said. 'Where are you staying?'

'We're in a hotel.'

'Why don't you bring Ben round here tomorrow, and
I'll take some time off work?'

'Maybe it would be better if you and I meet somewhere
in town,' she said.

He knew right then that something important had
changed, some process of withdrawal had begun, although
he didn't admit it to himself. He felt that slight constriction
of breathing, that sense of colour leaching from the world,
which come as premonitions of disappointment. 'Sure,'
he said, 'sure, okay. You name a place.' The thing is to
soak up punishment, isn't it, and stay standing.

The café was quite close to the Bridge of Remembrance.

They sat outside with glass baffles between them and the
traffic, coats between them and the cool breeze, and
awkwardness between them as individuals. It was city
Penny who met him, not easy Penny of the sod house at
Drybread. She wore make-up, medium-heel black shoes,
her hair was loose almost to her shoulders. Her teeth were
as white and perfect as ever, and for the first time in his
experience she wore jewellery: a heavy gold chain, a large
diamond solitaire, and beside it a plain gold band. It was
city and winter Penny, but she still had the brown, country
skin of Central Otago.

'I've decided to go back to California almost straight
away,' she said. 'Judge Weallans says it's the best thing to
do in terms of showing respect for the court there and a
final outcome. He's going write a letter to the judge and
give a summary of what happened here.'

The sense of intimacy can be lost so quickly and
absolutely. It wasn't so much that they had kissed at
Drybread, stroked each other, that she had smoothed sweat
from Theo's face, taken his cock in her mouth, and he had
tongued her nipples. It was more that each of them had
been allowed to feel valued in the life of the other: slipped
beneath the barrier with which individuals hold back the
world. And here she was, telling him of her new plans,
and in a way she hoped wouldn't be unduly ungrateful, or
hurtful. No, she told him, it wasn't really a reconciliation,
and she and Erskine would probably live apart. But Ben had
to be safeguarded, have the opportunities he deserved.

'But Erskine agreed to give you money, plenty of money,'
Theo said.

She said a child needed more than money, and that
Erskine and she had to take greater responsibility. 'I can't
just please myself, Theo,' she said.

'You worked all this out at Drybread?'

'Pretty much,' she said.

'I thought you were going to stay here, that we'd keep
on seeing each other. Jesus, have you moved on.'

'I'm sorry. My life's been such a mess. I shouldn't have
gone back to Drybread with Ben, but I had nowhere else.
I went mad there, thinking about what I'd done, being
cooped up and worrying about Ben, worrying about the
court order. Raving mad some days. Sometimes you make
a decision that tips you into a headlong slide which you
can't seem to recover from. You just keep going down,
down, past people, without making contact.'

'I thought we were making contact. I took it all seriously:
took it to heart you could say.' The air was thinning,
yielding less oxygen. Subtle changes in everything he could
see gave a semblance of indifference.

'You were the only one I had. You were the only one
I trusted. The only one who really helped.'

A Chinese girl at the next table was talking to her
Chinese boyfriend about buying a present: evidently it was
important that the gift be exchangeable. Her accent was
completely New Zealand. This is how it is at a crisis point
in life. Something is collapsing, roads to travel are being
closed off, expectation is revealed as absurdity, and around
you the world presses on regardless with talk of footwear
sizes, the groin injury of a sports star, and the formation
of a tsunami watch organisation by Grey Power in coastal
communities. Misfortune is the corrective that teaches you
your place in the world.

What was the point of dragging it out with Penny,
forcing her to give some explanation for deciding her own
life, to make an apology that wouldn't assuage his own
hurt? He'd been there before, talking with Stella as their
marriage foundered, and found no relief in it. Those sudden
changes others make in their lives, as if something has been
stretched too far, then snaps, can never be reversed. 'Well,
I hope it works out for you,' he said.

'Don't be like that,' Penny said. Her face screwed up a
little, as if the traffic noise had suddenly intensified, or the
wind had blown grit into her eyes.

'I really do hope so. I know it must have been terrible
when the custody thing went against you, and you had to
come back home and hide out without friends, or much
money, or anything. I just had this feeling that perhaps
there was something for us, you know. We met in the
middle of all that grimness, and yet it felt special.'

'I did too, but all the uncertainty, the things that were
going wrong. Christ, I don't know. Maybe if we hadn't
been at Drybread it would've been different, but there
wasn't anywhere else. I'm not good with men, Theo, for
reasons that don't matter now. It's not as easy for me as it
is for other women.'

Although Penny still sat there, full size, he had a
sense of her receding, losing the lustre which made her so
different from the people who talked and walked around
them. Ben was with his father he assumed, and she'd go
back to them after talking to Theo.

'Anyway,' said Penny, 'I wanted to tell you this now,
as soon as I got it straight myself. And I want us to talk
again before I go. I think that's really important, because
everything's happening quickly, racing ahead. I've got to
get back, but I promise I'll ring soon.' The promise relieved
her, relieved them both, of any need to kiss, or touch each
other: any need to cope with the occasion as the final time
they'd see each other. So she didn't touch him, but passed
so close that Theo felt the faint disturbance she caused in
the air.

He was to pass that café by the Bridge of Remembrance
quite often: recognise precisely where they'd been sitting,
recall the Chinese New Zealand girl talking of gifts, and
Penny still with the tan from Drybread and dressed up
for the winter city. That's how it is when you live in the
same place for much of your life. Tableaux from the past
form in school assembly halls, hospital corridors, concrete
block motels, bus shelters and restaurants. He'd pass
a two-storeyed house inhabited by strangers, and have
in his mind for an instant the view from the top, east
bedroom in which a colleague lay dying. Spring, and his
eyes would drift from the decline within, to the massed,
red rhododendron flowers that bordered the unmown
lawn, and the pulse of sunset beyond. He'd read of the
desecration of a park monument, and be transported to a
night tryst there so long ago that the girl's name was lost,
and only the fragrance of her dark hair remained. In the
backyard next to his own he saw always, when he glanced
over, the sobbing and obscured figure of the fat woman
who used to live there. She was struggling to peg a sheet
up in the wind, and her rotund body was modelled loosely
by the flapping fabric, just her gumboots visible beneath.
He'd called out to ask if she was okay. She'd remained
hidden, her rubber toes lifting, but after a pause to gain
control of her voice she said, 'I'm at a loss, but thank you
for your concern.' Such formality and such pain. The place
you live in accumulates as a collage of experience, and the
selection isn't always comforting.

When Theo got back to the office, Nicholas told him
the editor wanted to see him. The editor wasn't a vain
man, though he always took care to comb his thin hair
evenly across his pate whenever he'd been outside. His
office was large, but not impressive, strewn with books,
folders and papers that he beat back from his desk with
desperate energy. He told Theo that Anna was leaving
to run a women's sports and fitness magazine, and that
he wanted him to be chief reporter. The first piece of
information wasn't a surprise. 'Don't pass it up this time,
Theo,' the editor said. 'I promise you'll have time to do
some feature stories that take your fancy. Okay? The work
on the Maine-King custody thing — first rate. Absolutely
first rate.'

It was a nice irony: a day earlier Theo would have
accepted the job to provide additional security for Penny,
Ben and himself. Maybe instead it would become a means
of filling up his time.

'Take a day or two to think it over anyway, but keep it
to yourself in the meantime,' said the editor. 'I think you're
the man for the job. I really do. You've got a lot of support
here, and I think you could pump up the administrative
side of the position.'

'No, I wasn't asked,' said Nicholas when Theo went
back out to the desks by the window. 'I'm too old, lack
obsequious tact. You should take it though, if only to stop
some useless fart here getting it, or worse, some useless fart
from another paper.'

'I've had a bugger of a day, Nick.'

'Isn't life a bugger all round,' he said. 'Sometimes you
eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.' He turned away
from his screen and gave Theo more attention. 'It's Penny
Maine-King, right?'

'Yeah. She won't come back after the Californian court
hearing. They're going to patch up something for the boy's
sake, so that's it for Penny and me, I reckon.'

'Jesus,' said Nicholas. 'It was something serious for you,
I know. But so much was hanging, undecided. So much
pressure and agony, and now she just wants some respite
I suppose, and to know the kid's okay.'

'I suppose so, but what's good news for every other
bugger is a real slap for me. No, no. I don't mean that
about Penny. It wasn't just convenience and calculation.
But Christ, she's just through the worst of it, and we
could've spent a lot more time together. Just when things
seem to be coming right is when old Murphy puts the boot
in.'

'Why don't we go out tonight?' said Nicholas. 'It can
either be a celebration for promotion, or a commiseration.
I suppose one thing is that you got a bloody good story
out of the whole business.' It wasn't a very convincing
effort to staunch emotion, and he briefly gripped Theo's
arm above the elbow.

'Yeah, great,' said Theo.

No matter how much you tidy things away in your mind,
life continues to make its own links, mostly unwelcome,
but sometimes surprisingly cathartic. Close to the Thai
restaurant where Nicholas and Theo parked independently
that night Theo recognised the parson's Honda Civic,
its maroon gloss glittering under the streetlights, and the
chrome tow-bar knob a luminous mushroom. He stood
close to the Honda's flank and scarred it with his door
key. He could feel the metal edge getting well into the
paint, and coughed to cover the sound. He moved to the
petrol flap and made a satisfactory gouge there. That's a
place proud car owners check often, fearful of careless,
or malicious, damage. The parson was just the man to
ensure he always filled his own tank. Theo imagined him
discovering the marks in the morning, even that night, and
felt a tide of satisfaction. He imagined the parson's heavy
face sag and the mouth turn down. Whatever job-related
success he came from wouldn't be enough to sustain him,
and if things hadn't gone well, Theo's actions would turn
the screw. Yes, how petty it all was, and the pleasure of
his vindictiveness was nothing to his general unhappiness.
But there was satisfaction: some small retribution for
the parson's attempt to abduct Ben, and his persistent
appearance in a chapter of Theo's life that was rapidly
losing appeal. A small pleasure, diminished by being
fleeting and ignoble.

Later, at the table, Theo said that misfortune maybe
turns you towards viciousness, and that he found spite
more often in his own responses after any disappointment.
Nicholas saw nothing unnatural in that at all, but claimed
that rational people should curb the impulse, and that
having murdered your aunt yesterday was no reason to
cheat the butcher today. Each action should have its own
moral justification. On another occasion Theo may have
been interested in the point, but not with Penny's decision
so raw. He ate and drank dutifully, rather than with
enjoyment: he recognised the effort Nicholas was making
to support him, but it wasn't enough. Maybe even within
his friend's concern was the unacknowledged satisfaction
that Theo's life wouldn't eclipse his own in an attainment
of love.

'I interviewed a murderer once,' said Nicholas. 'I call
him that because he admitted it and was convicted. Most
insist they're innocent. He murdered a neighbour he'd
been feuding with for forty-two years. It started when they
were at school together and fought in the playground,
continued when they drank and fought behind country
dance halls, and played against each other in rural rugby
teams, Catholic and Protestant. One seduced the other's
wife in a musty committee room after a Scottish pipe band
evening, and the other poisoned sheepdogs that strayed
onto his property. The final argument was over a maimai
possie — the guy I interviewed blew his neighbour's head
to pieces with a twelve gauge Hollis.'