Drybread: A Novel (6 page)

Theo had nothing to do with art history before he met Stella.
Afterwards it still seemed to him a rather peculiar field.
He had tried to get interested, but found it a disembodied
discipline. Stella didn't practise art of any kind: there
were no studios, kilns, canvases, brushes, cutting tools,
chemically vivid concoctions, beaten copper, strung looms
or closely grained timber, no rich odours of creation and
no debris. Just books full of commentary and rumination,
with illustrations of the works that inspired them. And
the academic journals with articles of intense and lengthy
focus on increasingly specialised aspects of other people's
work: people spiralling in as if they could not only see the
world in a grain of sand, but live there.

Stella contributed articles. During the time they were
talking of divorce, she was working on the influence of
traditional Aboriginal art on Australian faux primitivism
at the end of the twentieth century. Sometimes, as
Theo stood at her shoulder by the desk, in the laundry
they had converted into her study, he would look at the
reproductions of Howellenson and Picoutt as they argued
about her refusal to shift when he got the Wellington
job offer, or the lack of work he did around the house.
'You think I like cleaning toilets, and coming home to
think of a meal every day?' she'd say. They were always
civilised, these discussions, carried on without abuse, or
raised voices, but with a painful disregard for feelings
nevertheless. Maybe there was something of transference
of discomfort: those works of art which were Stella's focus,
flat in his gaze as they talked in quiet tones of controlled
personal disappointment.

Theo knew that some friends, and more acquaintances,
thought the marriage failed because they didn't have
any children after twelve years. People can't resist a little
complacent interpretation at such times, and that must be
borne along with all the other bewilderments. But rather
than childlessness being the cause, it was more likely a
consequence. At first their careers were the given reason
for the precautions Stella took, but then came a mutual
unease at the prospects a child would have. They never
talked about it, never came clean about the sense of
separateness that grew between them, when the hope had
been a growing closeness and understanding.

It's absurd that you don't discuss something so
essential, but common nevertheless, despite the absurdity.
The risk is too great: too much turns on the outcome, in
the same way that a man with an obscure and certain sense
of illness refuses to get any medical opinion. It's better to
talk of trivial practicalities, better to discuss other people's
lives rather than your own.

Anyway, no children and nothing between them that
wasn't divisible. Everything they had made together could
be separated: house sold, assets apportioned. Like so much,
however, that was only partly true. There remained twelve
years of a shared life — ribs which can be split at the front,
but remain connected to the backbone.

When Theo thought of Stella, she was at her laundry
desk, or eating. Both characteristic recollections. Although
quite slim, she was always snacking on something — a piece
of toast and lime and orange marmalade, half a muffin,
a sliver of carrot, a plain wine biscuit, a nub of cheese,
mandarin segments, maybe one of those fruit and bran
twist things in foil. She would wander through the house
eating, or come out to the car, chewing, with other things
on her mind. Yet seated at a table with a meal as the priority,
she had little appetite. 'Not as much as that,' she'd say. 'I'm
passing on the meat today', or 'I've done just the one for
you'. She would sit patiently during the time it took Theo
to finish a full meal, talking a little of the trivial politics of
the university department, or of the plans for the barbecue
area.

No, no children, although occasionally Theo found
himself turning over names in his mind. Journalists need
to get the name right: they recognise the importance of
names and their pedigree. Hector is a name with a grand,
sad history. It is one of the names he might have given a
son, but perhaps it would have been an imposition. Theo
could imagine the boy being disgruntled, and then, after
Theo had told the story of the Trojans and Achaeans,
becoming enthusiastic about bearing the name of Hector.

For some time after they sold the house, Theo continued
to feel a certain amount of proprietorial responsibility.
There was a birch tree that overhung the front bedroom
and clogged the spouting there if you didn't get up with
the ladder three or four times a year. Driving past, he saw
that the new owners had neglected to do that, and the water
had backed up and flowed down the wall enough times to
encourage a green stain on the roughcast. At first he felt
the itch to fix the problem, or go in and instruct the new
people, then he became accustomed to it not being part
of his responsibility. For Stella too, he experienced a sense
of obligation that waned only gradually. He knew she'd
struggle with her tax return, but resisted the idea of offering
to do it, and rang with the name of an accountant. He sent
a card for her first birthday following the divorce, and the
first Christmas. He rang when her father became seriously
ill, and later warned her of a virulent new computer virus
when the IT guy at the paper got wind of it. Each of these
contacts was negotiated with civility, but was buffeting
all the same, at least for Theo. Afterwards he would be
for a time emotionally stunned. It was bewildering that
small changes of direction could in the end bring you to
an unsought destination. He still had dreams in which his
marriage was accepted and familiar fact, and woke to find
it was his real life that seemed imagination.

After the divorce, the recollections of good times shared
gained in lustre and significance, and the issues that had
led to separation became increasingly insubstantial. It was
the natural sentimentalism of a parting, Theo told himself,
and not proof they'd made the wrong decision, yet how
powerful sometimes was the evidence from their shared
past. Theo remembered Stella's surprise gift to him when
he'd been awarded the Wintermann Journalism Fellowship,
which took them to London for six months. She led him
to a narrow shop in Kings Cross, and insisted he try on
the long coats of Italian leather that were top of the range
there. Despite his protests at the cost, she bought for him a
shin-length, belted black coat, the leather of which was soft
as a flannel and as finely wrinkled as the face of an ageing
duchess. Stella called it his French gangster's coat, and
Theo would wear it as they went sightseeing in London.
They would clasp their hands within the pocket of the coat
and squeeze their fingers together in a sign of intimacy and
happiness as they walked. The coat ended up at the far end
of Theo's wardrobe: too opulent to wear, he might have
said, yet knowing its real failing was as witness to a lost
time of happiness.

Only once after their divorce did Theo meet Stella
with another man, although of course she had male
friends. Theo had been to the Coast for yet another story
on disputed mining rights, and came back over Arthur's
Pass on a hot, Canterbury afternoon, and stopped at
the Darfield pub for a drink. Stella and a tall guy with
a lot of floppy hair were at an outside table. Theo stood
by them briefly and talked. They also had been on the
Coast for several days. She introduced him without detail,
and the guy said that, as a lawyer, he had a bit to do with
forestry and mining issues. He would be interested to read
Theo's articles. Theo stood, and they sat, which made a
demarcation plain between them. She was eating more
substantially than he remembered. How many times he'd
sat beside her to constitute a couple, and they had talked
to someone outside that partnership, and now he was the
one excluded, passing by.

It was almost a physical dislocation, worst when Theo
left them. To walk to his car, to drive away without waving,
and see them talking together, caused a mixture of sadness
and anger. Logic is powerless against habitual things, and
failure is debilitating. Maybe she told the floppy-haired
guy a bit more about Theo. He's my ex, she might say. It
didn't work out. He's never fully grown up in some ways.

Maybe they had more personal things to talk about. Theo
and Stella had needed to part; they had agreed to part,
but life seeks continuity, and an end to love's endeavour is
always painful.

Nicholas and Theo went to a Thai restaurant together once
a week or so if it suited. Nicholas said Thai cooking had less
sodium something or other than Chinese cooking did. The
chemistry of the meal didn't interest Theo. What he did like
was that the Thai place was BYO, with a moderate corkage
charge. Theo knew that journalists have a reputation for
meanness, but being ripped off went against his professional
pride. At Thai Hai Nicholas and Theo could bring a decent
cab merlot, and not have to pay $35.

Nicholas was forty-six. Theo had been to most birthdays
he'd had in the last decade or so, several of them in the
Thai Hai where they were sitting, a couple of the earlier
ones at his home when Nicholas was still with Trish. For
some years he taught journalism at the university, but had
then come back to the paper. He said he'd given up the
varsity work because of the temptation of young women
there, the disclosure of the loose tops as they bent over
their notes, their willingness to be educated. Too many
tar-babies, he'd say: far too much entanglement. The real
reason was that he was by disposition a journalist, not a
teacher, and couldn't be happy without the investigative
challenge. For the same reason, Nicholas had turned down
offers of promotion. He was iconoclastic, and reluctant
to have any responsibility for other people. His talent
and seniority were recognised by the title of deputy chief
reporter, but the leadership he gave was by way of his
stories, not administration or pastoral care.

Nicholas seemed to wish he was doing the Maine-King
story. 'What does she look like?' he said.

'I've told you.'

'You're not screwing her, are you?' he said. 'Keep yourself
clear of that while you handle the story. Women are tarbabies,
you know that.' The tables were close together in
Thai Hai, and at his enquiry a small, overdressed woman
stared across at them. It seemed to Theo a warning, rather
than embarrassment expressed, but Nicholas lifted his
porcelain soup spoon in salute to her and went on. 'You
won't be able to handle it, you know, mixing work and your
sex life. And anyway, you've got Melanie to consider.'

'We're friends.'

'Yes, but you're screwing her, aren't you?'

'Oh, shut up about it,' Theo said. The small woman
looked at him, almost approvingly he thought.

Nicholas was both right and wrong about Melanie,
and Theo wasn't going to explain that over a meal at the
Thai Hai. Melanie and he were friends, and because they
were both journalists, they could unload on each other
knowing they would be understood. They did make love,
but not often, and although on those occasions she was an
active participant, Theo knew it was more for his sake than
any great need she felt. It was the quid pro quo of such
friendships, though never talked about as such.

'Anyway,' said Nicholas, 'tell me about this new Family
Law Act and what difference it's going to make in your
Maine-King case.'

'Not a hell of a lot, I imagine. I ploughed through
some of it and then gave up. Zack Heywood says the main
changes are procedural, making the sittings more open to
other parties, that sort of stuff.'

'Heywood's shit hot I'm told.'

'One quite important thing is that the court's been
given greater powers to enforce its orders. Maybe that's
going to make it more difficult for Penny.'

'I'll have extra steamed rice and some of that sweet
and sour,' Nicholas told the waitress. He enjoyed his food.
'Heywood acted for the council when that building assents
guy took a personal grievance case for wrongful dismissal.'
You could categorise Nicholas as crass and lacking concern
for others, but you'd be wrong. His often disconcerting
directness was not an entirely true representation. He
vacuumed up information, and recalled it, with impressive
ease. He took nothing at face value. As they went on to talk
more about family law and Zack, Theo knew that long after
the conversation Nicholas would retain the useful bones
of it. 'Two years ago I interviewed one of the founders
of that group set up by men who considered they were
discriminated against by the Family Court,' said Nicholas.
'He was an angry, disappointed guy all right. Does the new
law address that issue?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Like Dr Johnson he wasn't a fastidious man about his
linen. The inside of his shirt collar had a ring of grime like
candle smudge.'

'Who's this?'

'The leader of the discriminated men I interviewed.
I've just been talking about him. This stuff I'm doing at
the moment about the origin of party funds. It's not a
very interesting story. I have a feeling there's something
more significant going on in our relations with the States.
There's been undisclosed meetings right up to ministerial
level. I'm going to ask to go to Wellington for a few days,
and poke around. If we weren't run by useless tight-arses
I'd go to Washington.'

'Won't it just be the old nuclear-free waltz again?' Theo
asked.

'Nah, a fresh scent on the breeze, I think,' said
Nicholas.

The evening with Nicholas, his projects and opinions,
made Theo realise how preoccupied he'd become with
Penny and her circumstances: how closely focused on the
connection between their lives. Even the small woman
at the next table was a reminder that everyone has a life
going on, though it seems only shadow play to others. He
was half aware of her conversation with her nodding and
acquiescent female companion, even as he and Nicholas
talked and ate.

She was a dumpy woman, full of unnecessary movement
like a clucky hen. She had recently lost a husband named
Bruce, and expressed bitterness at his desertion. 'He
didn't put his affairs in order,' she said. 'Not at all, despite
the diagnosis. He left everything to me. I mean he left
everything for me to do, as well as everything to me. He
never could make decisions.' Her friend nodded over a
plate of noodles and cauliflower stalks.

Nicholas interrupted himself on diplomatic chicanery
to lean closer to Theo. 'What ever order his affairs were
in, I'd say, by the look of her, that each one was both a
necessity and a blessing.'

'People don't realise the pressures of being a carer at
the end,' she said. 'Bruce became a sad child, and petulant
too. People have no conception, no idea until it happens
to them. And they have a misplaced sympathy, don't you
think?' Nod, nod was the response at her table, a grimace
from Nicholas was the acknowledgement at his.

Theo glanced at his watch. It would be night at last in the
Drybread gully. There would be no strong lights in any of
the three huts, but if there was a moon the serrations of the
Dunstan tops would perhaps be clear on the skyline. The
wind would stream down the small valleys, and the rabbits
would appear in silence like target pop-ups on a fairground
range. Ben would be asleep, and Penny too perhaps, or she
might be sitting by herself with a Tilly lamp, wondering just
how she had ended up back at Drybread as a fugitive. At
night resolution is at its most precarious, and misfortune
the more naturally nocturnal creature. Sometimes there
was a wind in the dark which came directly north — a drop
in temperature as if a great door were opened somewhere
and the air moved in from above that long ocean between
Antarctica and the South Island.

When Nicholas got up to leave, he paused at the
widow's side. 'Our condolences for your loss,' he said,
and was rewarded with an affronted, yet impersonal, stare
and an agitated rustle of clothing. The woman's companion
nodded agreeably. Perhaps her mind was far away. Maybe
her body too. They say women of a certain age become
invisible to men as they cease to register sexually. A certain
agitation of matter particles occasioned by admiration and
lust in the regard of others might be necessary to maintain
their corporeal existence; otherwise they disappear, slipping
beneath the male radar.

As he paid his share of the bill, Nicholas spoke to
the slim Thai woman who very much existed. He used a
sentence of Thai which Theo knew from other visits meant
thank you and good fortune. It wasn't entirely affectation,
but also an expression of Nicholas's wide-ranging curiosity.
Theo was reminded again of his own limiting and selfish
preoccupations. Why didn't he give a rat's arse for the
Thai culture, the sorrows of Bruce's bantam widow, the
possibility of a change in our relationship with the USA?
Nicholas's personal life was as humdrum and as much a
failure as Theo's own, yet he was more active in observation
of the world. His sons were growing up in Australia with
his ex-wife. He sent them presents, visited occasionally,
tried not to think of his true obligation towards them. He
told Theo they never gave any outward show of missing
him, and he was grateful for that. Maybe they didn't miss
him, he admitted. No use deceiving yourself.

As they left the restaurant, Nicholas told Theo about the
windfarm protest story that Anna had pushed onto him.
Stories were his profession, and that's how he managed his
life also, packaging his experience as commodity: shaping
it from the raw until it was external to himself and so less
threatening.

'So how did it go?' asked Theo. 'They get worked up?'

'A bunch of country bigots who reckoned the turbines
would drive them all mad with noise not audible to
humans. They had a protest march along a goat track in
the Seaward Kaikouras. A day of follies really. Linda and
I drove ourselves up there. At Amberley we picked up a
hitchhiker who had a placard claiming the Americans were
building spy stations in the South Island. Linda didn't want
to give him a lift because of her cameras in the back, but I
said he'd be a useful addition to the protesters and be good
for some copy and photos. He never once looked us in
the face, and spoke as if he had a treble pipe in his throat.
When he wasn't talking about the worldwide conspiracies
of American capitalism, there was still this slight whistle
when he breathed. We were up by Cheviot when there was
this strong smell of plum jam in the car. You know the
smell of home-made plum jam?'

'Sure.'

'It's not entirely unpleasant. Anyway there was this
strong smell of it, and in the end I said something to
Linda, and she said the guy had taken his shoes off a way
back. That's just what it was. The guy can't have washed
his feet for weeks. We dropped him at Kaikoura, and Linda
wouldn't have anything to eat. She was pissed off with me
for most of the day, but the smell was exactly like that
— like plum jam.'

'You could do a story on that, about hitchhikers who
don't wash and smell like plum jam.'

'Exactly like,' said Nicholas. 'It's funny isn't it.'

'It's actually quite nice, plum jam.'

'Did you know that twenty-four wind turbines can
provide power for thirty thousand homes?' Nicholas asked.

Theo didn't answer: none was expected. Nicholas said such
things just to imbed them in his capacious memory.

As they neared the work carpark a tall boy in a tracksuit
loped past. 'Are you still running, Theo?' Nicholas asked.

Theo chose not to take it as a figurative summation of
his life. 'A couple of times a week at least.'

'You must be a fit bugger,' Nicholas said. 'I should be
doing it, but somehow I can't get into the routine. We
should try for a fishing trip soon. Blue cod in the Sounds
— what do you reckon?'

'Good idea, if Anna will let us off together. I've got
a fair bit on. This Maine-King story is taking up a hell of a
lot of time, what with the secrecy and everything.'

'You want to watch it there,' said Nicholas.

'They're not divorced yet.'

'Whatever. Anyway, you watch yourself, Theo. Catch
you later.'

Nicholas went into the building that housed the
paper; Theo wandered into the darkness of the carpark.

The distant artificial light glinted here and there on glass,
chrome or a polished bonnet, but wasn't strong enough
to cast definite shadows. The carpark was almost entirely
walled in by the high buildings around it. Traffic noise was
muted, and more insistent over it was retro ballad music
from the direction of the beauty shop. There seemed to
be plenty of overtime available for beauticians. The smells
were not of the cars, but of wood and lino corridors,
refuse skips, female potions and, faintly, the penned lesser
creatures of the pet shop.

A pace or two from his Audi, Theo used the remote to
unlock it, and in the quick flash that the park lights gave
in response, he glimpsed a figure standing close by. 'Theo
Esler?' the man said pleasantly. He came closer to the side
of the car. Even in that dim light Theo recognised the
parson, though standing near him he realised that he was
a bigger man than he'd appeared while driving.

'Nice car,' the parson said.

'Thanks.'

'Very nice cars these.' He nodded. 'You're the reporter
who's been dealing with the Maine-King custody business,
aren't you?'

'That's right, and you are?'

'My name's Hugo Doull.' The parson didn't extend a
hand. Hugo Doull was a good name for a private detective, the
carpark was a suitable place for him to materialise — slightly
noir in atmosphere. But Hugo didn't have a trenchcoat, or
a felt hat low over his face. He wasn't smoking.

'Ever been in holy orders, Mr Doull?' Theo said.

After the wine and meal with Nicholas, he couldn't see
that Hugo Doull's appearance was something to be taken
seriously.

'I'm a private investigator,' the parson said. 'Maybe we
could sit in your comfortable car for a while and talk.'

'I haven't got that much time,' Theo said.

'Okay, just a quick word here then.'

Was that the parson's life: attempting to get reluctant
strangers to talk to him, standing on the outside of doors
and gates and open friendship? A life of uninvited and
reluctant intercourse. A dispassionate professionalism
would be needed, otherwise you'd come to believe other
people found you personally unattractive. He tilted his
head back in the semi-darkness and worked his shoulders a
little. Maybe he'd been standing in the carpark a long time,
and was disappointed at not being able to sit in the car. He
seemed in no hurry to begin. His shirt had a soft collar, and
there was a monogram of some sort on his jacket pocket.