Etiquette for a Dinner Party (25 page)

Bryce and Kingi decided there would be one more trip into the bush for Judith. They put her in the front of the truck between them, fastened her seatbelt, and they were off. The truck rumbled its way along the black ribbon of a road, the silhouettes of Kingi, Judith and Bryce clearly visible through the back window. You would have sworn they were a happy little family, on some kind of outing, if you'd been driving along behind them.

Judith nudged Bryce, who was driving, and nodded at the rear vision mirror in front of her. He reached up and swivelled it so Judith could see her face and neck.

'Thanks mate,' she said.

'No problem.'

They drove out of Coromandel, heading north over the hill towards the tiny settlement of Papa Aroha. Kingi lit a cigarette for Bryce, then one for himself. The men sat in silence, drawing hard on the tobacco and taking in the blue of the Pacific and the green islands. Judith nuzzled Kingi's shirt pocket until he passed her a cigarette too.

'You're costing me a fortune, girl,' he said.

They parked at the motor camp and locked the truck, then started the walk up the hill to the edge of the native reserve. Judith trotted along behind them, no longer on a chain. They reached the summit and sat for a moment listening to kaka calling through the canopy. Judith tilted her head to one side, her new appreciation of native birdcalls heightened by her recent reading. Bryce and Kingi had one more cigarette each, then farewelled her.

'Go on girl, in you go. You know what to do,' said Kingi. He smacked Judith on her behind.

Off she went into the bush. She could hear the two men talking as they wandered down the track. About her, no doubt. .

It was Bryce that took the call, mid-morning, towards the end of June. He was doing nothing at the time, which is what hunters do at times of heavy rain and poor visibility.

'Maitland Donovan here, Hamilton DOC office.'

'Yep.'

'You guys gotta Judas in the bush at Papa Aroha?'

'Yep.'

'Well go and pick her up, will ya? She's been hanging around that new resort building site for days, annoying the hell out of everyone.'

'What resort?'

'I don't bloody know, do I? How many can there be in Papa Aroha? Get up there and pick her up.'

Bryce took his rifle out of its case and a box of bullets from the drawer. He pulled on his waterproof gear and dashed through the downpour to the truck.

They didn't talk much during the drive up the coast. The cab kept fogging up; the demister had never worked properly. Their rifles sat hard against their shoulders on the back of the seat.

They arrived at Papa Aroha and pulled up at the only building
site in the village. It was going to become the Peninsula International Resort,
according to intermittent flashes of information through the windscreen.
Squeak,
thuck. Squeak, thuck.
The wipers could not outsprint the rain.

'You needa get those wipers fixed,' said Kingi.

'Yep.'

The Peninsula International Resort would, the signage further claimed, provide Exclusive Gated Living
squeak,thuck
and Luxury Unparalleled In
squeak, thuck
The Southern Hemisphere.

'Let's see what the story is.' Kingi pushed open his door.

They trundled through the rain and knocked on the door of a grey prefab building. Three men sat inside, drinking tea. The kettle had just boiled and steam rose from the spout. There was a large table covered in building plans.

'G'day,' said Bryce. 'Bryce Jones, and this is Kingi Walters. DOC.'

One of the builders stood up and held out his hand.

'G'day, mate. Trevor Jenkins, foreman. Bloody lousy weather eh? Come in, have a cuppa.'

'Ah thanks, but we won't, mate . . . in a bit of a hurry. I hear you guys gotta goat hangin' round here?'

Trevor laughed.

'Yeah, she's around the back,' he said.

As they walked, Bryce loaded his gun. .

The sparrow was sitting on Judith's back, lamenting the weather, when Bryce and Kingi appeared. It took little jumps along the ridge of Judith's spine until it sat close to her right ear.

'Oh dear,' the bird whispered. 'I don't like the look of this.'

Judith was munching on the trunk of the tree she was tied to. It had been kind of her new friends to tether her to her food source, she thought. She looked up, and saw Bryce and Kingi.

'Oh — how lovely!' she said. 'My ride home. And about time too!' Then she lifted her chin, and showed them how well she had looked after their necklace.

Ernest waits outside the restaurant. The woman walks towards him, smiles and says 'Excuse me, are you Ernest Wright?'

'Yes I am,' Ernest says.

'I'm Clare. Clare Bentworth.' Her voice is soft; Ernest hears a hint of an American accent.

Ernest shakes her hand. This a blind date, for want of a better phrase, although Ernest did specify 'companionship' on the agency form. They are both in their fifties. Ernest has been married before. He knows that she has not.

He is tall, too thin for his height. He has an air of anxiety, he knows; it comes across in the way he leans forward when he walks, accentuated too by his eyebrows forming a French circumflex above the frames of his glasses. Clare is shorter than him, slender, with shoulder-length brown wavy hair that shows streaks of grey. Her eyes are brown and her nose turns up at the end. She wears a black cardigan and a red skirt which flares out from her hips. On her feet are black flat shoes with little straps.

She carries a green handbag. It is made of some delicate fabric — possibly raw silk — and it is full. Ernest can see the outline of objects pressing from within. He carries nothing. His wallet is in his pocket.

Ernest takes her elbow in his hand, in the old-fashioned way, and they go into the restaurant. He pulls out her chair for her; she says, 'Thank you Ernest.' They put crisp white napkins in their laps.

'Would you like wine?' he asks her.

'That would be nice.'

'Red or white?'

'Oh, white, please, always white. Red gives me a migraine.'

'Shall I choose?' he says.

'Please do,' she replies. 'Something dry, if that's okay.'

While they wait for the wine, a waiter brings two menus. They pick them up and read silently, from top to bottom. Ernest finishes before her, but he keeps his eyes down until the waiter returns to take their orders.

She orders a tomato mozzarella salad to start, then veal. Ernest orders shrimp cocktail followed by fish of the day. The waiter says it's snapper.

'So,' Clare says. She folds the menu and hands it back to the waiter. 'It's nice to meet you, Ernest.' Her hands are clasped together in front of her, between them. Her nails are clipped and clean.

'Mmm,' he replies.

Everything in the restaurant is white. Ernest feels his face going red. He had things ready to say, but he's forgotten them. This is his first time and he already believes it to have been a mistake. It is too soon, he thinks.

'This feels kinda strange, doesn't it,' she says. It is Canadian, her accent, not American. She takes a sip from her glass. 'Why don't you tell me about yourself?'

Ernest coughs, clearing his throat. 'I'm not much of a talker,' he says.

'I know, they said already.'

'Who? Who said already?'

'The agency. They said you were a shy gentleman.'

'Mmm,' he says again. He can't think of the right words to express his annoyance at her unfair advantage.

'We can't sit here all night and say nothing, can we?' She is smiling at him, not unkindly. He thinks she might be a therapist.

'No,' he replies, just managing a laugh. 'Of course not.'

'Well then,' she says. 'What say we share one thing each about ourselves. Take turns.'

'That sounds fair,' he says, cringing at the concept. 'Okay.'

'You start,' she says.

Where to start? How far back? He really doesn't know. So instead he says: 'I like your bag.'

He looks down at the floor, at the rather beautiful overloaded handbag. There is movement within it: the sharp line pressing hard against the fabric slides away, the rounded curve of something else takes its place. He blinks, looks again. The bag is, of course, still.

Ernest and his wife had a lovely set of suitcases given to them as a wedding gift. Ernest believed that to call them a set of suitcases did not in fact adequately describe them. They were not a cheap collection of cardboard-interior bags, stapled together in a shoddy manner then painted over to conceal the defects. You could be seduced by such a set, in the window of a chain store, fooled by the unbelievably good price. Then you're in public somewhere and the confounded bags split open and all your personal belongings spill out in front of everyone. It might be the seams, or the cheap zips which pop at the first hint of pressure. Those around you snigger and stare at what you have and have not.

These bags were not that type. They were the finest quality bags. Luggage was a better word to describe them. When you ran your hands around them, they were sleek and cool and hard; seamless to the edges. It said on the labels they were made from a new product called polycarbonate which had been tested under extreme conditions. It had given Ernest comfort reading that. It was good to know that other people, experts in their field of science, had taken prototypes of this luggage away and given them the what-for. He had a degree of certainty in regard to these bags: they were going to last the distance.

Ernest had forgotten who'd given them the bags. But it was a group of people. Just one of these bags would have cost an enormous amount of money and there were seven of them — a bag for every occasion.

They were all a beautiful deep green, a colour very close to black. The largest bag was almost too big to manage. It was light, of course, being empty, but cumbersome. One person alone would never fill that bag; it was definitely a two-person suitcase or maybe even designed for a family. Then the sizes decreased — the next two suitcases were exactly the same, you could imagine heading off on a two-person holiday with them. After that there were two cabin bags — still hard and sleek, mind, durable enough to take the knocks — and the sixth bag that was shaped more like a briefcase. The seventh bag was tiny. How would you describe that little bag? Well, it was almost like a handbag — made of the same durable material as the rest of the set. But it had a slightly different shape; triangular, with a wide base and sides that tapered off to a narrow, elegant silver edge at the top clasp.

He and Esme were sitting in a sea of golden paper, unwrapping their gifts and exclaiming over their good fortune. Ernest leaped to his feet before his brand-new wife with that bag in his hand. He minced his way towards her in the fashion of a catwalk model.

It was not behaviour typical of him. She was nevertheless delighted by his tomfoolery. 'It's for make-up and toiletries, Ernest. It's a vanity bag,' she said. She opened the bag and showed him all the little compartments for bottles.

They'd laughed, marvelling how those bags, between them, could accommodate all their current and future possessions. .

'That doesn't count,' says Clare.

'Pardon me?' Ernest blinks again, startled to find himself in a restaurant, sitting opposite a woman.

'Liking my handbag. It doesn't count as something about yourself.'

'I suppose not,' Ernest says. He takes another look at her bag. It is still and he feels better.

'Do you have children?' Clare asks, and Ernest remembers this about North Americans, how they just come out and say things.

'No,' says Ernest. 'My marriage didn't last . . . it didn't last long. And you?' He knows the answer to this already, but he can't think of another appropriate question.

'Yes,' she says.

She must be tired, he thinks, not concentrating on the conversation. She has not been married. It said so on the form.

'Well, not married as such. But I was with Peter for a long time, nearly fifteen years. We had a son, Abe.'

The back of Ernest's neck begins to itch. He feels the prickle of sweat high on his forehead and he breathes deeply, slowly. He specifically asked, at the agency, for someone who had not been married. Specifically. Ernest thought it was a given that an unmarried person would be childless. He had not read on down the form. He had not seen the box pertaining to dependents. He realises now there would have been a tick in that box on the form of Clare Bentworth.

Ernest takes a handkerchief from his pocket and pats at his forehead. He looks up at her. Perhaps she lied to the agency? Maybe she purposely left the boxes unticked, so as to attract more interest? He searches her face for evidence of deceit. But it is calm, relaxed.

The entrées arrive. Her salad is an orderly affair, alternating rounds of cleanly cut tomato and mozzarella cheese. Tiny sprigs of basil, picked from the tips of the plant, sit equidistant down the rows of red and white circles. Ernest watches as she eats. She works her way down the lines without letting the red of the tomatoes bleed into the pure white cheese.

Ernest's cocktail is a mess, a tumbled heap of pink shrimps dripping in a matching sauce. He watches as a shrimp, teetering on the top of the pile, falls to one side. He wonders whether it could be alive.

When he looks at her again, there are tears in her eyes. He quickly returns to his food. Perhaps there had been an error at the agency. Quite possibly, the mismatch hadn't been her fault at all.

'You have a lovely voice, Ernest. You shouldn't be shy to talk. What do you do as a job?' .

It was 1958 and Ernest had just arrived in New Zealand from England with his family. He joined a class full of robust, tanned teenagers who spoke a version of English he barely recognised. They revelled in coercing him to speak, then ridiculing him for it.

Esme Robinson was the only one to refrain from taunting him. She would sit at her desk, her hands cupping her heartshaped face, and listen to him talk. Sometimes she closed her eyes — as though she had dozed off — and he would stare unashamedly at her, frantically maintaining his banter.

Ernest was delighted when, at the end of his schooling, his accent and advanced word stock (derived not from superior education, but from a loner's appetite for literature) led to an offer of employment at the telephone exchange.

'Operator. Number please.'

He would know when it was Esme. The little red light above 729 on the switchboard would flash.

'Is that you Ernest?'

'Yes, Ernest Wright speaking. How are you today, Esme?'

'Very well Ernest, all the better for talking to you.'

'Likewise, Esme, likewise. Who would you like to call?'

'Maureen Delaney thanks Ernest.'

'181. Putting you through now, Esme.'

One day, Ernest was slow to flick off the operator's switch. He overheard Esme telling Maureen how his voice turned her legs to jelly. He kept this information to himself for three days, then he put a call through to 729 and asked Esme to a movie.

Ernest was terrified at the thought of intimacy. Fortunately, Esme made no demands.

'Tell me a story, Ernest,' she would say, as he slowly drove her home in his father's car. 'Tell me a long, long story.' And she would close her eyes, rest her head back against the seat, and listen to his only asset. .