From Under the Overcoat (15 page)

‘Were they rough?' he said quietly.

‘What?' I thought I hadn't heard him properly.

‘Were they rough?'

‘Were what rough?'

‘His hands. Michael Furey's hands.'

Gabriel was still holding my hand, but he stopped rubbing it. His head had not moved, his eyes fixed on the night sky.

Tears gathered in the back of my throat, choking me. I thought I might drown in their saltiness. For a moment, I wished for that. Then I swallowed hard, forced down the anger and sadness.

‘He worked in the gasworks, didn't you tell me that? His hands must have been rough, Gretta.'

I pulled my hand out from between his and turned away to the wall.

AT TIMES I LOST
my temper. It was not in my nature to be putting up with a moping man. I'd tell Gabriel to get over himself and get on with it. It being life.

In the middle of February, he disappeared. He was gone for a night. Again, he returned with no clear explanation for his absence. From then on, he came and went. O, he kept teaching — from the outside looking in, you'd not necessarily notice any difference in the man at all. Some people remarked from time to time that he seemed tired, or
Not his usual self
, meaning he was no longer shoving his opinions down everyone's throats. But the moment he crossed our doorway, the remnants of his old personality excused themselves and he got the beaten look again.

This went on. And on. I'm not talking months any more. I'm saying to you that it went on for years. Tiresome, isn't it, even reading about it. Imagine living it. But what do you do?

The children got used to their da being as he was; I believe they'd forgotten he'd ever been any other way. I'd got used to his physical and emotional absence. You can get used to most things, once you give up any notion of changing them.

IT WAS A WARM
Saturday morning at the end of spring in 1907. Tom and Eva had gone off somewhere. I was hanging the washing outside. Gabriel was in the garden, too, tinkering with his bicycle.

Ever since university, he'd taken a month's cycle tour somewhere in Europe over summer. He'd go with old friends. That year the destination was France. In the past, Gabriel's absence had been some source of aggravation to me, being that it precluded any other possibility of a family holiday for us all. But since the whole drama of the Morkans' Christmas party, I'd come to look forward to his departure as much as he did.

So yes. It was a warm Saturday and we were both as happy as circumstances would allow. The birds were chirping their little heads off. You could smell the scent of flowers growing along the garden wall.

Gabriel's bicycle was leaning against the side of the house, and he was crouched there beside it, working away. If you'd glanced over the wall, you might have been falsely envious at the picture of domestic serenity. Birds singing, washing flapping away, man whistling. All very lovely indeed.

The warm breeze caught the sheets and lifted them up
around my head. They flicked against my face. From within the whiteout, I listened hard. Between the birdsong, I made out a tune. As he worked away on his bicycle, Gabriel was whistling ‘The Lass of Aughrim'.

I couldn't move, not a single part of my body. What it might have looked like — a pair of legs protruding from a jumble of flapping white sheets — is anyone's guess.

The whistling stopped. I might have breathed then. I must have, at some point. I didn't look out. On it went, the whistling. Then Gabriel starting to sing in a soft voice:

I STOOD INSIDE THE
washing for a long time. I know it was a long time because the sky above me changed. There was brilliant blue, then cobwebs of cloud drifted across. They thickened to a white haze. I stayed still, just looking up. Grey replaced the haze and I got cold. Fat, cool drops of rain hit my face, just one or two at first, then more and more, like fists. I heard Gabriel picking up his tools and wheeling his bicycle into the shed. He kept on singing.

IT WAS POURING.
I
stayed entirely still until I was as sodden and cold as the washing hanging around me, as wet as Michael Furey had been under my window.

GABRIEL HAD BEEN GONE
two weeks when the news came. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Tom and Eva had finished their lunch and were reading in the front room. There was a knock at the door and I knew.

It was a police constable. I don't recall his name now but he was not much more than a lad; a downy hint of a moustache across his top lip. He took off his helmet and held it against his chest.

‘Mrs Conroy?' he said. His helmet looked enormous, too big for his little head.

‘Yes,' I replied.

‘Mrs Gretta Conroy?'

I nodded. He was holding an envelope in his hand. Get on with it, lad, I was thinking.

I'm afraid …' he started. His voice cracked.

‘I know.'

The constable looked confused. ‘I beg your pardon … you know?'

‘Yes. It's Gabriel.'

The poor lad, he didn't know where to put himself. He held out the envelope. There were tears in his eyes. Bless.

‘So, Mrs Conroy … excuse me … has someone already been? It only happened yesterday …'

He was staring at me, evidently not expecting this response to such terrible news. My eyes were dry, I was calm. His hand had been shaking as he handed me the envelope but my own was quite still, quite sure. It was all I could do to stop myself putting my arm around his shoulder and giving him a lovely big hug.

‘No one's been,' I said to him. ‘But thank you, constable, for the confirmation.'

‘Would you like me to contact someone? To come around, I mean …?'

‘No, no,' I said. ‘I'm alright. Thank you.'

The young policeman stepped backwards down the steps, putting his hat back on his head. He was nodding, bowing almost, staring at me with a confused frown.

‘Are you alright yourself?' I asked him.

‘O … yes, Mrs Conroy. And … my condolences. Such a tragedy.'

They had been cycling on a track along a bank, high above the Loire River. Gabriel had been at the back of the group. They had been calling out among themselves — there were five of them — and after a time someone noticed that Gabriel was not contributing to the banter. They stopped and turned back. He wasn't there.

The four retraced their route back to the last bend. Buried in the long grass was a little rock. Nearby, the grass had been torn away. The men looked down the steep ravine and saw Gabriel's bicycle on the rocks far below. Gabriel's body lay next to it.

Ever since that day he'd been singing away, fixing the
bike, I'd wondered how he'd do it. I was grateful, for the children and for the old aunties, that he'd made it so swift, so easy to explain.

THE FUNERAL WAS SUITABLY
mournful and everyone talked about Gabriel's fine attributes. A man cut down in his prime, a tragedy for the wife and those young children. On they went, the tributes, and I couldn't help but think how Gabriel would have just loved every word spoken about himself. My heart was full of grief, of course it was, but it was an old, comfortable grief, one that I had got accustomed to living with. Kate and Julia Morkan were devastated; I had to support them both through the service and at the graveside. They whispered to me that there'd never again be an annual Christmas dance, in respect of Gabriel's memory.

Eventually, I sold our home in Monkstown and we moved into Dublin, to a much smaller house. Years passed, Tom and Eva grew into fine young adults and made their own way in the world. They followed their father's footsteps to university, then on to teach.

Gabriel's will provided for us — there were his own savings, and on top of that he'd been left a sizeable inheritance from his own parents. We were alright, in the end.

O, THE FUN THE
scholars have had, in the absence of an alternative account of the fall-out from the Morkans' Christmas dance. The epiphany analysis — didn't that just take off! Once it was decided that my mention of Michael Furey constituted
an epiphany for Gabriel, then the academics crawled over
Dubliners
, finding similar such Moments of Revelation.

To be fair, I suppose it was an epiphany for Gabriel. He never recovered from it, after all. And I don't for one minute imagine my version of events will stop any of this discussion. But it's been nice, all the same, to share it. To point out that one man's epiphany was his woman's regrettable slip of the tongue.

Two or three years after Gabriel's death, I made the acquaintance of a man. I won't divulge his name now — I don't want to go dragging the poor fellow into the limelight — but he was a lovely fellow, himself on his own, having never found the right woman to marry.

We met at the Morkans' Christmas party — yes, I know, they were never going to have another. Well, they decided in the end that in spite of the sadness of death, life does go on and it requires some regular celebration, otherwise, really, what's the point of it all?

So yes. I met the chap at the party. He was an acquaintance of one of the aunties' piano students — someone I had never before laid eyes on, and he knew nothing about myself. He was rather handsome and was taking quite an interest in me, chatting on. Eventually the questions began.

No, I wasn't married. Yes, I had been married, widowed some years back. Yes, a cycling trip in France, a tragic accident, a terrible time for the whole family.

I watched his eyes well with tears as I told him my story — not the story about Michael Furey, but the one about Gabriel Conroy. Already this stranger was engaging in a terrible battle — a duel with the ghost of Gabriel Conroy,
a man he never knew.

I touched his arm, excused myself and went to help out with the supper.

RECREATION

I
t might have been fifty years ago when it happened. Fifty, or forty or sixty. Hei aha … doesn’t matter, time, but if you’re fussy, well, it was long before we had the fancy satellites bringing us the pānui on the sky’s business.

I was a weather presenter, one of the first when television started in New Zealand. I was the only one in the Auckland studio. Later on the other cities had their own television stations, but Auckland was first so it’s true I was
it
. I was young and not too bad-looking either — long time ago now! Charisma was the word they used, when they talked about Tāwhirimātea. Charisma and potential.

By chance, I’d bought a new suit earlier that particular day,
a lovely new suit and a tie to match. It had been a really beautiful morning — a breeze, a nice dry heat that played with washing on clotheslines and made the womenfolk happy. January, I think it might have been. So, at the end of this beautiful day, I was in the studio in my new clothes, feeling good about life, all set to go.

The picture of New Zealand was on the wall behind me, and I had my pointer in my hand. I stood before the camera, ready to read off my cue, and I pointed to the map. First, the kōrero on that day’s weather, that big bold word FINE printed in yellow boxes across the country. That’s how they did it then, yellow boxes and big simple words.

That all went okay. I mean, that bit was always hōhā, in my opinion. Everyone already knew they’d had a fine day. It was the next part people were interested in. What tomorrow would bring.

The markings on the map were complicated — highs and lows coming at us from all directions. I had just begun my commentary when, pae kare, everything failed. All the equipment.

My cues stopped rolling. The guys scrambled around, fiddling with the electric cables, smacking the sides of their cameras with the palms of their hands, trying to get things going. It had never happened before. We had no instructions on what to do in a situation like this. There was no picture going out, nothing on anyone’s television screens, just static.

While all the fuss was going on, I closed my eyes. Things ran through my head. They played themselves fast-forward, fast-backward, all over the show. The words were out of my
mouth before I knew it. There was just the sound of me telling people what the weather would be like the next day.

HEAVY RAIN WAY UP
north, hard, fast, flooding out the little bridge just outside of Kerikeri. Thunder, lightning.
I told the viewers all about that.
Steer clear of there tomorrow, kia tūpato. Dangerous, you better stay home. Dust stirring in big clouds further down the east coast, skinny cows pushing their heads through wire fences, mouths reaching for grass on the roadside. Drought
. Nothing new there, not worth a mention but I talked about it, all the same, talked about those skinny cows with nothing to eat. Down down down the coast, across the Cook Strait, view tilted in the wind. The coast again, then inland. A shiver. Wrong season. What’s this?
Crisp, crunchy frost touching the ripe stonefruit on the trees in Central Otago — kia tere, people, hurry up, get outside now, see to your crops. Cover them up
… and on I went, right to down to Stewart Island.

WHEN I OPENED MY
eyes, the lights were on. The studio was silent. Everyone was staring at me. The producer came in. He had a huge brown moustache and it quivered like a mouse under the paw of a cat.

‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled at me. He was straining at me; if the camera guys hadn’t stepped in he would have punched me, without a doubt.

‘The weather forecast,’ I told him.

‘Whose bloody forecast?’ he stormed on. ‘The viewing public … Jesus …’

‘There wasn’t a viewing public,’ I said. ‘No one could see me.’

I was only young, remember. Pretty cheeky, back then.

‘You’re fired,’ he said. ‘Get out.’ Then he turned to the crew. ‘How much of that shit went out?’

‘Not much,’ one of the camera guys said.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ said that producer.

The next day, it rained and rained up north. Flood waters broke through the banks of the Kerikeri River and washed right through the settlement, taking out a bridge on the edge of town. There was a car on it, a green Zephyr. The driver made it out okay, but the river took the car.

A freak frost spoiled acres of apricots in the deep south.

I sat at home, by my transistor, and listened to the reports of the chaos around the country. In between the bulletins, I worried about how I was going to pay the bills now that I was out of a job.

The next day, I got a call from someone at the station. Could I come and see the boss, this person wanted to know. I put on my new suit and a clean shirt, and went in.

It was quiet as I walked through the corridors. I’d never been in that part of the building before. The door to the boss’s office was open. I stood there and waited, there was nothing to knock on. The boss, I forget his name now (they came and went), was sitting behind his desk. He jumped up and came to the open door, holding out his hand for me to shake.

‘It’s Tar-ferry, isn’t it?’ he said, and I nodded. Back then no one made an effort with the reo. ‘Come in, come in. Take a seat.’

He was pretty nervous, I could see that, one hand shaking mine, the other not knowing where to put itself. It hovered over my back, nearly touching me but not quite. I think he feared a shock if he closed the circuit between our bodies.

The office was all dark wood panels, with a couch and matching armchair in the corner and two little round tables shaped like kidneys. We sat facing each other over one of the little tables.

‘What happened the other day, Tarferry.’

I wasn’t sure whether this was a question, it sounded more like the beginning of something. I thought he might be working out what to say next. I waited.

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘Well, what the hell did happen?’

‘There was a power failure …’

‘I know that. I know about the bloody power failure. I mean, how’d you do it? How’d you predict what was going to happen … with so much detail?’

The poor guy was hunched forward in his chair, hands clasped between his knees. The look on his face was somewhere between excitement and terror.

‘I’m sorry, I really can’t explain it.’ I wanted to laugh but I held back; I could see that it would upset him more.

‘Does it happen often?’ he asked.

‘It’s the first time there’s been a power failure when I’ve been on,’ I said.

‘No, no … I mean, can you do it all the time, predict with such accuracy?’

I shrugged my shoulders. These questions were a bit much. ‘It’s just something that happens.’

I forget exactly how the rest of the conversation went, but what it came down to was this: I had got the forecast right, but they couldn’t have me closing my eyes and
chanting
my predictions on television.

‘It’s not professional,’ the boss said. Science was marching on, worldwide, new gadgets being invented every day that would improve the accuracy of weather forecasting. My particular method wasn’t the future direction of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

‘That’s okay,’ I remember saying, standing up to leave.

‘I want to keep you,’ he said. ‘I want to keep you, but I don’t know what the hell to do with you.’

‘Kei te pai,’ I said, and he looked at me blankly. ‘That’s alright. Good on you.’

He wouldn’t let me walk out the door. I got up to leave, thinking our kōrero was over, and he’d get all anxious again: leaning forward, blocking my way. In the end, we came to an agreement. We agreed that I would be the back-up weather presenter in situations of extreme emergency. I would stay on full pay, come in every day as usual. Everything would be the same, except I wouldn’t go on camera. Unless it was an emergency. If that happened, I would step forward and repeat the performance of the previous day.

‘But, if you could just stick to the facts,’ said the boss. ‘Without the embellishments and the lingo. Just use words like
fine
and
wet
and
windy
. That would be good if you could do that, Tarferry.’

I wasn’t happy with this suggestion, but I had to accept it. It wasn’t just me I had to think about — I was also supporting my elderly father, who lived on his own, way out in the country.

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘That sounds okay to me.’

As far as these sorts of agreements go, it was a pretty good one. It outlasted his career, whoever he was, and several bosses
to follow. It outlasted entire changes of staff, changes in policies. Changes, even, in the weather patterns themselves.

It happened now and again that I was called on to present the weather. I managed to stick to the rules. No matter what was going on in my head, I kept to the script: fine, wet, windy, cyclone … these words were all okay.

Some time further down the track, the deal was altered. When was it? I can’t recall. But just as seasons had come and gone and returned, change caught up with me.

One day, the boss told me not to bother with the make-up. The new weather presenters were all trained as meteorologists, capable of winging it if the technology went pakaru. I could just stick to showing school groups around the studio.
You’ve got so much knowledge about the place, Tāwhiri
, she said. It was a she by then, and people were starting to make an effort with the reo.
More than anyone else here
. The look on her face was gentle, kind; she was doing me a favour.

NOW I’M AN INSTITUTION
; part of the PR. I’m the old fella who comes in every day, looking sharp in his suit and tie, kept on to entertain the cheeky schoolkids.
This is Tāwhiri! He was one of the original weather presenters! And he’s still with us!

My pay got dropped back ages ago. But I keep coming in. What else would an old weatherman do with his time?

CHILDREN IN THE CORRIDOR
— the
slap slap
of loose leather sandals against tough heels, a chicken-coop racket. They burst through the doors of the newsroom.

‘Shush, you’ve got to be quiet in here,’ their teacher says.

I watch them over the top of my newspaper, from my chair
in the corner. Rich kids, you can tell — little hands gripping i-things, all the expensive shirts and shoes and hats.

The teacher’s a young man, barely taller than some of the boys. His head’s shaved, he wears an earring. His students have infected him with the excitement of celebrity spotting. His eyes dart around the room. He glances my way, but my face is not one to know.

‘That’s what’s-her-name,’ he says, elbowing one of the fathers with the group. The teacher and the father-help ogle at Carole in the way men have looked at women since time began. ‘What’s-her-name, you know, the weather chick?’

The children have spotted Carole too; they nudge each other and point, then set about the business of checking that it really is her. Ticking off this flesh and blood female against the real Carole Joseph — the larger-than-life beauty on their big plasma screens.

Long blonde hair, parted on the side and layered to frame her face. Skinny as. I reckon you’ve got to look like that to be a weather presenter now. Immaculate make-up, sapphire earrings picking up the blue of her eyes.

The girls like Carole’s ruby-red shoes. ‘See, sir, she doesn’t wear her slippers on TV,’ they giggle.

Carole swivels in her chair, gives them a wave. ‘Welcome.’

The girls smile coyly, hands fluttering back like birds in a birdbath. The boys look down, scuff their expensive runners at invisible spots on the floor.

‘Looks like a good weekend coming up,’ says Carole, pointing at the big anti-cyclone on her computer screen. ‘Who’s got plans to do stuff outside?’

The children say nothing. They stare at each other and giggle.

‘Don’t be shy, guys,’ says the teacher. He’s a puff ed-up rooster now. ‘I have,’ he says to Carole. ‘Big beach party up at Orewa. My birthday.’

‘Well, you’re lucky, it should be fine,’ says Carole. ‘What school are you from?’

‘Crawford Intermediate,’ says a boy at the front, fists shoved hard in the pockets of his baggy jeans. One of his friends sniggers and the boy punches him in the arm.

‘Ouch. Fuck off.’

‘Ryan,’ the teacher says vaguely, still looking at Carole.

‘What’s the day looking like out there?’ Carole carries on with that beautiful white smile, ignoring the swearing, the gawking of the men.

‘You should know!’ the children chorus, giggling.

‘Oh yeah, suppose I should,’ says Carole, grinning. She uses that line every time a class visits.

A boy at the back of the group says ‘lame’. Three brisk steps, the teacher is next to him. He grabs the boy’s arm tightly, above his elbow. The boy does not pull away.

‘Ta-ferry, I warned you,’ the teacher says to the boy.

My namesake stands taller than his classmates, his arms folded across his chest. His clothes are hand-me-downs. His hair is cut short and his eyes are the same colour as mine, pounamu.