Drybread: A Novel (8 page)

'Well, thanks for calling, Theo,' Norman said calmly,
and rang off.

Angie was the hottest of the women reporters. Nicholas
and Theo agreed on that. So did the entire male editorial
staff, though no formal vote was taken. The consensus
was apparent in their jocular acceptance of her. No
doubt in the end she'd be overweight, but in her midtwenties
the fullness of figure was just contained by the
elasticity of youth. She had that confident disregard for
her own attractiveness that naturally good-looking women
can afford. Allure was second nature to her, as much a
part of who she was as the relaxed laugh and the love of
innuendo.

She could get anything out of Nicholas, and the others
would sometimes use her as emissary to tap his contacts
and his expertise. He knew, she knew, they knew, that
proximity to such buxom promise cheered him greatly,
and he was old enough to understand that simple and
healthy pleasure was as far as it went. Since his divorce
Theo had sometimes imagined a relationship with Angie
might be one of greater and more profitable ambiguity,
but she treated him in just the same way. Theo was never
quite sure how he had reached the age of thirty-eight, or
why. He wasn't conscious of growing older, but Angie
obviously placed him in the same category as Nicholas.

'You know the boat people stuff you did,' she said.
Standing at Theo's desk she looked out into the alley
and back entrances to the beautician and pet shop, as all
journalists from the dark side of the reporters' room tended
to do when they came over to the window. The reminder
of a world external to the baleful flicker of computer
screens was intriguing. 'Anna's asked me to do a story on
the women — their perspective, motives, how they cope
and all that.'

'How predictably inclusive,' said Nicholas.

'I know,' said Angie. She said it in a conspiratorial
whisper, and drew out the vowel in an exaggerated way.
She really was a good-looking woman. Even her hands
were perfectly formed and indefinably suggestive. Do such
women ever have feelings of inadequacy, fully realise their
power, and how are they reconciled to life when their
beauty fades? 'Anyway, I thought you might be able to
give me a couple of contacts from the refugee people you
spoke to for your piece.'

'He's still in touch with a few Philippine and Indonesian
women,' said Nicholas slyly. 'They look to him for
succour.'

'Really,' said Angie, and gave Nicholas the eye flash he
sought.

'He's offered to go down to the centre and help them
get orientated. I don't know which direction they'll end up
facing.'

'Really,' said Angie.

'Knock it off, you two,' said Theo. 'You'll end up
mud-wrestling together soon.' Nicholas made as if to
take off his shirt, and Angie wriggled slightly and pouted.
Nicholas then returned to his work, and Angie pulled a
stool to Theo's side. He found his file on the boat people
and suggested some contacts, especially an Indonesian
woman who spoke good English and whose reasons for
getting out seemed to be political rather than economic.
And there was a much older woman who had given her life
savings to some con man who promised fully authorised
and official admittance to the country. Angie was relaxed
and professional, flirtation done with at a stroke, unless of
course Theo chose to begin it afresh. He admired the ease
with which she altered her response so surely from one
mood to another, and without apparent calculation. He
felt the pleasure of being beside her, yet recognised how
instinctive it was, how little concerned with his knowledge
that she was intelligent, ambitious and good-natured.

His feelings for Penny were different weren't they? Or
rather they included the same response, but more besides.
There was something about Penny that discovered in
him an emotion he'd not felt before: not for Stella, not
for Melanie, not for women important in his life before
either of them. Some combination of sympathy and
apprehension: a protective concern for some recovery in
her life, and a wish to be part of that restitution. The closer
he came to her, the more he sensed in her something drawn
dangerously tight, something suppressed, which might
snap with immense consequence. Even as he talked with
Angie, even with the physical awareness of her presence,
in the quieter preserve of his mind he thought of Penny
and Ben, hidden and isolated in the Dunstan hills. Penny's
hands on the little boy's shoulders: her preoccupation with
his happiness, and his careless possession of it.

You could leave a woman, or have a woman leave you,
but you could never fully abandon the experience of the
relationship, for that isn't amenable to conscious choice.
Like the time of childhood, it may seem to have concerned
a different person, but it held its own power nevertheless,
and had an independent influence on all that followed.

When Angie went back to her desk, Theo returned to
his own work, but uppermost in his mind was an incident
of over two years before. He had come home early in the
afternoon, after saying he would be late. The politician he'd
arranged to interview had postponed his flight and was no
longer available. Theo didn't realise there was anyone in
the house at first. There were no cars in the drive, and
he used his key on the door. He left his jacket hung on
the back of a dining room chair, and went through to the
kitchen to make a corned beef sandwich. As he finished
that small task, he heard a man's voice and then Stella's
quick, subdued laugh from one of the bedrooms.

He could have left the house then, for everything except
the identity of her companion was in that laugh. He didn't,
of course. He stood indecisive at the kitchen door with the
sandwich on a white plate. The sun through the dining
room windows made bright geometrics on the carpet and
table; a circle of pale petals lay beneath the roses on the
table; Theo's jacket was unmoved. So the jester challenges
us to see the subjective and objective as distinct.

Had Theo been an innocent, as well as injured, husband,
he may have burst into the bedroom in the pantomime way.
Instead he walked quietly into the passage, glanced into the
empty main bedroom and passed on to the guest one, in
which Stella lay on her back. There was no movement. Her
eyes were closed, her hair spread on the sheeted mattress
from which the pillows had been tossed to the floor. Just
her head was visible above the pale shield of her lover's
back. He was partly bald, well muscled and had a patch of
dark hair at the top of his spine. Theo wasn't interested in
the man's identity, and surprised himself in that. Before
he could leave, however, he needed to have his presence
acknowledged by his wife. And so the three were quiet and
motionless together there for a moment — Theo at the
doorway, Stella and the other man on the bed. Theo had
time to recognise that post-coital hiatus of relaxation and
achievement; time for the thought that Stella had chosen
the spare room, as he had himself in similar circumstances,
then she opened her eyes and saw him at the doorway.

Their gaze met. Just for that instant the stark pain
registered for both, then she squeezed her eyes shut and
turned her head to the side. Nothing was said; nothing
external changed. The stranger's back remained relaxed,
and only as Theo was taking his jacket from the dining
room chair and preparing to leave, did he hear the murmur
of voices from the bedroom.

Theo had driven back to the paper and sat at his desk
overlooking the service alley. He wrote up a piece about
high country runs being bought by overseas buyers, and
the possible economic and political implications. He
did nearly a thousand words of serviceable copy before
he finished work for the day, and during the time it took,
one part of his mind was in a quite different, empty space,
considering what the afternoon had made inevitable.
Sadness it was, rather than indignant surprise, or anger. The
man in the spare bed was a consequence of failure between
himself and Stella, not the cause of it. Theo knew it, just as
he knew the mixture of guilt, remorse and justification that
Stella would be feeling.

He was about to leave when Anna asked him to come
into her office. She was alarmed at the standard of work
coming from Michael, a middle-aged reporter not long
over from a newspaper on the Coast. 'The stuff 's crap,' she
said. 'The subs are really struggling with it. I've talked to
him — I've tried him with all sorts of stories, and nothing
decent comes in. If he was a kid it would be bad enough,
but he's been a journo for years, for Christ's sake.'

Theo made an effort to bring Michael to mind, and
gradually assembled the image of a badly dressed guy
known in the office mainly for being able to imitate the
prime minister's voice and run an office sweepstake on
anything from rugby to the hip measurements of the
editor's wife. He also had the habit of ridiculing others,
then laughing so loudly that no rejoinder was audible. It
was a stupid, irritating and effective technique.

Theo saw Michael most working days, talked with
him, but didn't give a damn about him at that moment.

He felt glassed off from the rest of the world. He sat in
Anna's office as she asked him if he would take a mentor's
interest in Michael for everybody's sake, but the words
seemed to bounce away before they quite reached him.
'He nominated you as someone he was prepared to take
advice from,' said Anna. 'He's got some hang-up about
being told anything by a woman, I think, though he won't
admit that of course. It's funny, isn't it, the less ability
some guys have, the greater their conviction they know it
all. He doesn't seem to realise his job's on the line here.'
A woman less comfortable with her role may have insisted
that Michael be instructed by her, but Anna was looking
for a sensible solution.

Theo could have said he didn't give a fuck. He could
have recounted the story of his afternoon and taken note of
the chief reporter's response. He could have said Michael
was a useless prick and should be fired as soon as possible.
He could have said nothing, and concentrated on Anna's
competent netball hands as an anchor in the here and now.
'Yes, okay,' he said. 'I'll give it some thought over the next
few days and get back to you. It'll have to be something
reasonably formal, or he'll just arse around.' Anna seemed
quite happy with that. When Theo stood up to go, he felt
for a moment as if that normal propulsion would keep
him rising steadily until he was held, checked beneath the
ceiling, with unusual view upon Anna and the flat of her
desk, the framed awards on the wall behind her. But then
he steadied and was able to walk out, though very light on
his feet.

He knew that Stella would be there when he went
home. It wasn't in her nature to evade a meeting. She was
sitting in the sunroom, looking out to the brick barbecue
area and the plum tree on the boundary. She had no book,
which was unusual. Her face was blotchy, but her voice
steady. 'You told me you weren't going to be home during
the day,' she said. Was his inability to keep his word the
issue between them? It wasn't of course — her comment
was meant to indicate she'd been discreet. Theo felt better
standing by the French doors: sitting seemed to indicate a
complacency, a relationship, neither of them felt. 'It wasn't
to hurt you, you know that. You told me that about your
women.'

'It does fucking hurt though, doesn't it,' said Theo. Stella
had never been avid for sex in their marriage. That had
been one of the justifications for his own brief affairs. Theo
thought her concern was more to maintain attractiveness
than any joy in sex. 'So who is he?' he asked. It didn't really
matter. Theo wanted no biography that would provide for
his existence in their lives.

'An old friend. You wouldn't know him. We met up
again just recently. I haven't seen him much at all.'

'So it's serious?'

'I don't know. It's all just happened so quickly.'

'Well, it's the end of us, you realise,' said Theo.

The direct accusation, the bitterness of it, surprised
him, for he disliked any overflow of emotion. It was the
end of them. They talked for over an hour, Theo standing
all that time as the light gradually faded in the sunroom.
They arranged their separation with conscious, reined in
reasonableness, as if each were determined to escape the
clichés of passionate denunciation. What Theo suppressed
wasn't anger so much as the sense of bewildered failure
and futility. What was the use of talk, what was the use of
it when they realised that they were no longer essential in
each other's lives.

Whenever Theo thought of that night, he remembered
the brief awkwardness which arose when it was time for
bed. Stella came to the study door, her face with the soft
sheen of moisturiser she applied when she'd removed her
make-up, her eyes bright with tension. 'I'll use the spare
room,' she told him. Nothing more was said of it. Both
could appreciate there was too great an irony in Theo
going to lie in the spare bed alone. He half wished she'd
shown less sensitivity. He wished also that she had made
more apology, taken greater blame on herself, and so let
him escape it. 'I never felt cherished,' she told him before
she went away. She said it on the spur of the moment,
without much emphasis, as is so often the case with words
that matter. 'I never felt cherished.'

Theo found no evidence that the parson had entered his
home, despite the little placement traps he set. He didn't
sight him, or the immaculate Honda Civic, in the days
after the carpark confrontation, and thought maybe that
was the end of it. He was content to forget him, as we all
wish to forget those who are witness to our failings. But
the parson wouldn't be forgotten: he was being paid to
continue to feature.

There was another windfarm protest at Mount Somers,
which had been mooted as a site, and since Nicholas was
in Wellington researching his US story, Anna asked Theo
to cover it, with Linda along for the photographs. Anna
told him that Linda had said she didn't need a companion,
that she could cover the story as well as the pics, but Linda
said nothing of that to Theo as they set off. Nicholas called
Linda the sourpuss in her absence, and SP to her face. It
annoyed her, even though she never understood.

She was a lank, competent woman in whom feminist
principles had hardened to a habitual competition with,
and denigration of, men. Theo wasn't interested in the
value or otherwise of windfarms, and found Linda's
company a trial in any case. 'Hi, Linda,' he said when she
came to his desk.

'I need to be back before five,' she said.

She had a habit of looking away while talking, and a
flat weariness of tone that deflated enthusiasm in others.

'Sounds okay by me. Let's head away pronto then. Do
you want a hand down with your stuff?'

'It's at the bottom of the stairs,' she said.

'Would you like to drive?' said Theo, when they were
standing beside one of the staff Mazdas. Linda talked
slightly less when she drove, and Theo also thought his
offer demonstrated a non-macho disposition that might
ease the relationship for the afternoon.

Theo was never able to ignore the driving habits of
others, no matter how much he concentrated on conversation,
the passing world or his own thoughts. He
had trained himself not to actually watch the various
manoeuvres of hand and foot, but was aware of it all, and
slight, almost involuntary, movements of his arms and
legs betrayed the parallel simulation of driving. With a
good driver he would gradually relax; with a poor one his
exasperation would express itself in increasingly critical
views of politics, acquaintances, sport and the efficacy of the
major international aid agencies — whatever. It wasn't that
he feared for his life; it was the incompetence that rankled
with him: the lack of any feel for the vehicle, or awareness
of its susceptibilities. Someone with no appreciation for
mechanical function could have no sympathy for the
feelings of people either, no comprehension of the synthesis
necessary if the world is to turn smoothly.

He would never allow Linda to drive his own car. The
thought brought a quick grimace to his face. She drove as
if pushing a sofa about the living room: a series of violent
lunges and pawings at the carpet. She tended, on the open
road, to forget there was a fifth gear, and talked more loudly
to be heard above the crescendo of the engine. Theo at
these times made a small gesture with his hand to indicate
the change required, while trying not to seem obdurate.

Photography has its own skills and secrets, he was
sure, and Linda had won awards for it. She had a flair for
black and white night scenes — rain falling on silvered
puddles, the neon sign with a letter missing, an alley
dog with its arse above the rim of the garbage bin. She
fancied herself as a journalist also, and insisted on taking
part in the occasional editorial staff meetings, at which she
complained of a patriarchal bias in the paper's underlying
attitudes and choice of stories. Nicholas of course said that
she needed a good shagging, which would encourage a
mellow and balanced view of the world, but he didn't go
as far as offering his own ministrations. He was a stirrer,
and professed such simplistic prejudice to make life more
interesting for himself.

To Theo he admitted that Linda was the best
photographer they had, and a better reporter than most.
Talent is not personality, however, and Theo was glum as
they drove towards Methven. Stella had curated one of
Linda's photographic exhibitions, and Linda, who seemed
oblivious to the divorce, often talked admiringly of her
when with Theo. It wasn't that Theo wished his ex-wife to
be disparaged, but that too many regrets and memories were
resurrected. Linda tortured the gearbox, and told Theo of
meeting Stella not long before at an Arts Society function.
'She was with a surprisingly nice man. A successful man
— a solicitor I think.'

'I know,' said Theo.

'He's completely behind her having her own career.
Very supportive. I've been talking with some friends about
nominating her for president of the society. They've had
that witless old fool with a knighthood for years now. She's
highly thought of by her academic colleagues, I'm told.'

Linda was the sort of woman who baulks specific
physical description. Even seated beside her, Theo had only
a general impression, compounded of height, angularity,
wholesomeness and large-featured intensity. He trailed his
attention and one arm from the car window, watching the
farms of the plains pass by.

He wished to be in far poorer country; in the raddled,
sluice-despoiled gully at Drybread with the rabbits, the
paradise duck pair, the dun harrier hawk and the few merino,
their fleece grey with dust. Penny and her son would be
there — in the clay cottage, or on the rough slope around
it which was Ben's playground. Her hair would be pulled
back from her face and she would be displaying active
enthusiasm for her son's benefit, when confusion and
apprehension were her true feelings. Penny expected some
support from him, some exercise of ability and energy on
her behalf, and he was on a journey to a windfarm protest
with an opinionated woman who had some small fame
for photographing canine arses, and insisted on praising
his ex-wife. He could see exactly the absorption on Ben's
rather beautiful face as he played. He could see exactly the
way Penny's top teeth rested on her lip at the conclusion of
a smile, and the smooth base of her throat, yet had nothing
in his mind of Linda beside him.

Only when they had left the main south road at Rakaia,
and the traffic immediately thinned, did Theo notice the
car at a distance behind them. He watched in the side
mirror, and soon decided it was the parson's maroon
Civic. For a moment he felt some melodrama in it, and
thought of telling Linda to speed up, or stop around a
blind corner so that the parson would pass close by and
realise he'd been recognised. But then it came to Theo that
Penny's hiding place wasn't at risk, that nothing in fact was
required of him, and that the parson should be allowed
his professional perseverance. And Theo didn't want to
make any explanation to Linda — didn't want to talk about
Penny and Drybread to her at all.

Linda had moved on to a more negative aspect of the
sisterhood and was complaining about Anna. The chief
reporter was the most highly ranked woman at the paper,
but rather than taking satisfaction in that, Linda considered
she had become complicit in a male hierarchy. 'She's so
blokey,' said Linda, almost tearing the sunshade from its
fitting as she tried to lower it. 'She talks sport with the
guys, and loves to get into the bar with them on Fridays.
She lets Nick and you do what you like virtually — you get
away with hell. I can remember when she used to do great
stuff, challenging stuff.'

Why did she talk like that, when she knew he and
Nicholas were close friends, when she knew he was likely
to pass on her criticism to Anna? Was it a source of
pleasure for her to put out such challenges? Was defiance
of conventional subterfuge in relationships a matter of
principle for her? 'I think Anna does a bloody good job,'
he said. If Linda wanted something to chew on then he'd
oblige, but he wasn't interested except not to appear too
faint-hearted. He gave more attention to the parson's car
behind them, and to thoughts of Drybread and Penny.

'She should be giving more of a lead,' said Linda,
'should be making sure there's more on women's health
and equality in the workplace — even sport. She's supposed
to be shit hot on sport.'

'Angie's a damn good journo, I reckon,' said Theo.
He made a shifting motion with his hand: Linda hadn't
changed up into fifth after crossing a narrow wooden
bridge. The comment was such an obvious provocation
that Linda didn't reply, and they drove on in silence for a
time until she began to tell him of the last time she covered
one of the windfarm protests — how Nicholas had insisted
on picking up a hitchhiker who stank the car out by taking
off his shoes, and that she was sure he would steal some of
her expensive equipment.

'What did it smell like?'

'What smell like what?' said Linda.

'The hitchhiker's feet.'

'Like plum jam, actually,' said Linda. 'Just like homemade
plum jam.'

It was one of those small synchronicities which life
provides. Theo savoured it, then went back to thinking of
Penny and Drybread as Linda thrashed the Mazda towards
the hills, and the red car presumably driven by the parson
trailed after them at a respectful distance.

There was barely a Mount Somers settlement: a bunkerlike
electricity sub-station, the road lined with pale-leaved
eucalyptus trees, high, shaped windbreaks in the paddocks,
and a couple of old community buildings stark on their
rough lawn. Not far beyond, a hillside had been partly
excavated and there were small, semi-abandoned shafts
for low-grade coal. On the hill crest the protesters had
set up camp, claiming some connection between the
minor despoliation caused by the coal mining and the
environmental threat of the proposed windfarm in the
area. Sixty or seventy people milled about a makeshift
wooden and fabric wind turbine replica, and some rather
self-consciously held stick placards that read 'Peace Before
Power', 'Scenery Before Turbines', 'Natural Skylines'.

It was not entirely a homogeneous group: there were
representatives of the local iwi, some ill-defined supremacist
organisation and several buskers and impromptu players
from a polytechnic.

Linda's camera equipment identified her and Theo as
the media, and in the absence of the more favoured and
glamorous television crews, they became the focus of protest.
A furrowed man in a yellow anorak and a cheerful Chinese
woman introduced themselves as the spokesperson for
opposed local residents and the representative of the Kiwis
Against Windfarms organisation, respectively.

'Do you know if the TV is coming?' asked the man,
and when given a negative answer the lines on his face
deepened, until it resembled one of those historical
photographs of defeated Sioux chiefs. How does a twentyfirst
century New Zealander come to possess a visage of
such endemic suffering and exposure?

'Never mind,' said the Chinese woman, whose face was
as smooth as a flower bowl. 'We're pleased you're here. We
don't plan too much in the way of formalities, the weather
isn't that great. I'm going to talk briefly, and then Guthrie
will say a few words on behalf of local people opposed to
the turbines. Right, Guthrie?'

Guthrie nodded, but with the bitterness appropriate to
the receipt of a death sentence.

Linda wanted photographs before the speeches,
because she said the light was going, so the Chinese
woman used her bull-horn loudspeaker to round up the
protesters, and she and Guthrie stood in front of them.
The iwi representatives also claimed a central position, and
the polytechnic entertainers and leather-clad supremacists
formed a rather uneasy margin. Theo could see no sign
of the parson. Maybe he had remained close to the gate,
where cars were parked on the grass. Perhaps he was a
supporter of windfarms, and had no wish to appear within
the protest.

The young Chinese woman showed her organisational
instinct by beginning her speech immediately after the
photographs and before a dispersal could begin. A rising
wind tended to buffet and distort her words, but she made
her points clearly, briefly and even with humour. It was
Theo's practice on such occasions to alleviate boredom
by mentally grading each speaker while getting the gist in
shorthand. He gave her a B plus, but was more interested
in what Guthrie might have to say. His bitter zealot's face
held promise of profitable eccentricity.

The promise was fulfilled when Guthrie took the bullhorn
and stood in the flurried, shin-high dry grasses to
talk. He began with wind turbines, their inherent evils and
proximity to his own eighteen-hectare angora goat property,
which had fallen on hard times, but he worked back along
the timeline of his life, cataloguing injustice, misfortune
and betrayal at every point. For each tribulation some
external malice or discrimination was proclaimed, and
never a personal failing admitted. It was pre-ordained that
all the world, both living and inanimate, would conspire
against him: his haggard, generic face had been ritually
buried in Neolithic bogs, hung in stocks, lampooned in
broadsheets and captured in the grainy photographs of
soup kitchen queues and the death pits of genocide.

Nothing would deter Guthrie from a recital of injustice:
a captive audience was the balm he needed. But that, too,
let him down soon enough. People eased away, or began
their own conversations and activities. Guthrie stood on
the slope in the brown grass and the wind tossed his words
away, the polytechnic entertainers began small mimes and
gymnastic feats to instrumental music, the Maori group
started an action song, a placard bearer fell heavily at the
entrance to one of the small mines.

'Jesus,' said Linda, 'let's head back. We've got what we
need.'