Opportunity (10 page)

'Ug?' he asked. I had his jaw clamped between my fingers.

'Don't say anything.'

He looked at me.

'Just now,' I added, holding him.

He nodded. Co-operative.

'Less is more,' I murmured.

His eyes flicked up. Rolled around. He wrinkled his nose.

Lightning flashed. There was another roll of thunder. We
watched the rain, light at first, then big heavy drops, hissing
past the window. I thought, how I love the rain, the warm,
blind, melancholy.

He tried to speak again. 'No,' I said. I held him gently for
three more seconds. We were very close. Then I let him go.

'What do you mean "less is more"?' He cleared his throat
and spoke thickly.

'Oh, I don't know. It's true, though, don't you think?'

He lay back, puzzled but obedient.

'And bite gently down.'

His hair was stiff, spiked up at the front with a hint of
widow's peak. He looked like a hedgehog. I smiled. He moved.
I held him, let him go.

I said I would give him a quick clean, then we would look
at his X-rays on the computer. 'Do you have sensitive teeth?' I
asked, turning to my tools.

'Not that I know of,' he said gamely.

The storm had a kind of weight; it seemed to be right over
the building: thunder followed lightning in quick succession,
paper flew up into the air and whirled around and floated
down. From the street below came the mournful swishing
and tooting of stop-start cars.

'Auckland rain,' I said, and silenced his reply by inserting
my instrument, the one with the most powerful head, into his
mouth, and working it along a section of his lower front teeth.
He strained away from it, more sensitive than he'd let on.
Those neglected gums. I stopped. 'Too rough?' I changed the
head. 'Try this.' He nodded and settled against my arm.

I looked down at his face. I did my best not to hurt him, but
he flinched and his forehead was sweaty. I mopped it with a
paper towel. I let him rinse and spit. Bloody water swirled into
the plughole. Thunder cracked, the sound echoing in the deep
spaces between the buildings. He put up his hand; his many
tiny reflections slid across the rounded silver surfaces of the
instruments. I hummed as I worked. Quiet humming, the
buzz of the machine. I moved his big, boyish head this way
and that. He was calming down. But a corresponding hum
started, began high-pitched then droned lower and slower;
we looked at each other and heard the machinery dying, the
instruments letting out a last whine of exhausted momentum.
The device went silent in my hand. The lights flickered, the
neon tubes buzzed, and blinked off.

Roysmith's face was pale in the half light. He raised his
head. 'Goodness gracious . . .' I put my hand over his mouth,
gently. With a tissue, I pressed down on his bloody lips.

'It's a power cut,' I said. I left my fingers on his lower lip, just
for a second. He gazed up, wondering. The thunder cracked.
The rain streamed down. We were silent, looking at each
other.

'What do we do now?' he said.

'Shall we wait for a minute?'

'Well, I'm quite comfortable here!'

'I love the rain,' I said. Along the dark corridor people
scampered and laughed and chattered. Rowan looked in.

'It's all down the street,' she said.

'Blackout at noon,' Roysmith said absently. He put his hand
behind his head.

I leaned against the top of the chair, watching the clouds
moving, swelling, in the square of window.

He closed his eyes. 'So dark. It's like being in bed.'

I had a fancy that the sky, full of its own essence, was
pressing against the window, that it would burst through and
flow into the air of the room like ink in water, languorous
swirls of sky, of rain.

'I watch you on TV,' I said, murmured, in the quietness.
Swish and rush of the rain, the laden air.

'Oh yes,' he said, and yawned.

I yawned too.

He laughed. 'I don't get much sleep. Kids. Have you got
kids?'

'I have a baby who never sleeps.'

'Aaah. It's a bugger, isn't it?'

We heard a sudden blast of car horns.

When I blinked, particles in my eyes exploded, sprayed out
to a point, then began to sink through the darkness, rising,
falling with my eyes.

'We'll have to reschedule,' I said. The air seemed to bend
when I spoke, sensitive to sound.

His eyes were closed. 'Let's wait a bit longer. Goodness
gracious me, I've got . . .'

'Don't say that.'

He opened his eyes, jutted his chin and looked up at me.

'Those exclamations . . .' The air turned over on itself, spun,
swirled, flew out in all directions. 'They're too cute. On TV.'

'Exclamations?'

'Less is more.'

'Jesus!'

He was silent for a moment.

I said, 'I used to listen when you were on the radio. I liked
those long openers you did. On Afghanistan, on America.
Preachy but good.'

'Glad you approve of something.' But he said it dreamily.
'I liked radio. Now I see my face on billboards, on the back of
buses. My big face, riding away. Or I look at the back of the
bus and my face isn't there.'

'Must be strange.'

'I shouldn't be looking, should I? To check if I'm on the
back of the bus.'

'Why not?'

'Seems egocentric,' he said, vaguely anxious.

'It sounds normal to me.'

Lightning, another crump of thunder.

I told him, 'There was a big storm last year, up north. It was
night. The storm was right over the house, but the sky over the
sea was clear, and when the lightning flashed, the sky was lit
up — blue. Bright blue sky, in the middle of the night.'

'How surreal! Once, on a camping trip, my partner
Theodora Davis and I . . .'

But there was a great welling surge in the building, the
neon panels buzzed and flickered, the instruments jerked and
whined, and we were blinking at each other in the white glare.
We looked away: he at the ceiling, I at the floor.

I finished cleaning. Rowan told him he would have to come
back for his X-rays; the computers were down. He said he
would make an appointment. I saw him to the stairs. We
smiled at each other.

'Lovely to meet you,' he said.

'Yes,' I said, and meant it.

Later, as I stood out on the shiny wet street, buses surged
past, and I watched Roysmith's face borne away through the
curtains of rain; he was real and unreal too — part of the other
world that entered my waking days, the secret, the dreamtime
one.

That evening Matthew took up a lot of my attention. By the
time I'd got him properly settled it was late. I turned on the
news. Roysmith appeared. The room was dark; his face hung
in the square of bright light. I lay on my sofa. Outside the rain
had thinned into drifting showers, falling through the orange
streetlights. I dozed.

I dreamed someone was banging on the front door. I sat
up. Roysmith looked at me, blinked, gestured. The knock
started up again. I went to the door and opened it, not very
wide.

A thickset man with tattooed hands and wild hair stood on
the doorstep, the rain falling behind him.

I looked at him. He said, 'You need to come out and shift
your car. We're moving a house up your street. Your car's in
the way.'

I peered out. The street was empty. There was no one
around.

He said, impatient, 'You got a note in your box today.'

'I didn't.'

'Yeah, you did. You got to come and move your car.'

I rubbed my eyes. 'I don't know who you are. It's late. I can't
just come outside with you.'

He reared back, indignant, not believing I would argue.
'I'm from Farr. Farr's House Movers. You got a note.'

'I didn't.' Hadn't.

'Your car's going to get
crushed
. There's no way you can
leave it there.'

'I'm alone in here with my baby. I can't just come out.'

'You got a letter!'

'Where's your ID?'

'I don't need ID. I'm from . . .'

I closed the door.

He swore and walked away up the path. He slammed the
gate.

I watched him go off up the road. There were no trucks, no
workmen out there. Could they be moving a house up this
narrow street? I had seen them moving one along Remuera
Road recently. Amazing how they could put a whole wooden
bungalow on the back of a truck. I looked at Roysmith. A man
has come in the night. If I don't come outside he will squash
my car. You smile, you look down at the paper in your hands.
It does sound amusing, I know. But can I ignore him? I need,
I value my car! Roysmith shakes his head, looks grave. Indeed,
he acknowledges, something must be done.

I dithered. Then I thought of asking the police. I rang the
station, was put through to an orchestra, made a cup of tea
while it played. Finally a policeman answered. He asked for
my name. He told me my address.

'A strange man's come to my door . . .' I said.

'At eleven o'clock at night!'

I paused, surprised. I supposed I was being assessed.
Perhaps a drunk or mad person would begin to rant at this
point, encouraged by the expression of sympathy. I pressed
on, explaining. 'I'd just like to know,' I finished up, 'is it
possible they could be moving a house up the street? Will my
car be squashed?'

'He was threatening, you say?'

'Aggressive.' I paced on the wooden floor.

'What's that banging? Is he banging on the door?'

'No, he's gone away.'

'Good. One moment.' The orchestra again. He came back
on. 'I can't find anything about a house being moved. Don't go
outside with this man. I'll send someone to find out what's
going on.'

I thanked him and hung up. Outside the street was silent,
empty, the rain drifting. I went to bed, left the curtains open,
Roysmith watching the street.

I dreamed Roysmith was warning me of something, his
head framed by the TV. 'Don't go outside,' I begged him. 'I'm
alone. Stay in there. Stay with me.'

Someone was knocking on the door. I pulled on jeans and
a shirt. A voice said, 'Police.'

There were two cops, one young and handsome, the other
older, sallow, bored.

'You'll have to move your car,' the younger one said.

I swayed, dizzy. There was a film in front of my eyes.

He told me, 'Farr's are moving a house up the street.'

'I'll get my keys,' I said.

I went out into the drenched garden. I backed my car into
the neighbour's driveway. I passed the sitting-room windows.
Roysmith had gone. When I came back the young policeman
was feeling the glass panel in my front door. It moved when he
pressed it.

'That's not secure at all,' he said. 'It's not safe.'

I said, 'Want to stay the night then?'

'Sorry, I'm on duty.' He grinned.

The older cop fidgeted sourly. 'We gotta go,' he told me.

They left. I stood on my doorstep. I waited. The dripping
garden, the stormy sky. Something scurrying in the bushes.
Orange lights flashed in the branches of the trees, the wind
roared. Thunder over Mt Hobson. And then it came over the
crest of the hill, a wooden bungalow under tow, a large, slow,
stout vessel lit by blinking lights, struts creaking, planks
groaning; crewed by torch-lit men, it sailed by in the drifting
dark, cruised grandly on up the rain-slicked street, slid over
the swell of Upland Road and was gone, into the liquid night.

I saw my cousin Juliet last week. I hadn't seen her for years. She
came into the place where I work and we talked. It reminded
me of one holiday when I was eight, and we went to stay at
her brother's house in the country. She'd always lived out of
Auckland and I didn't know her very well. Her brother was
much older, grown up. His name was Stephen. He and his
wife Derryn lived near Gisborne, where he was working as a
fisherman.

We drove down with Juliet's parents, my aunt and uncle.
They were going to leave us there for a week while they went
on a trip by themselves. We got to the house in the evening.
Stephen was tall, with a beard. He talked in a low, mumbling
voice, shifting around on his feet, his smile baffled and
harassed — he was as shy as I was. Juliet went ahead into the
house. She had been there before.

The house was tiny, weatherboard, with peeling paint.
There was a rusty old truck on the grass outside, with weeds
growing up into the cab and a cat sitting on the roof. Derryn
drifted out, carrying a baby. She was thin and freckly, and her
mouth naturally turned down, which gave her a disappointed
look. She was wearing a floppy jersey and flared cotton
trousers, and her feet were bare. She shifted the baby on her
hip.

My aunt and uncle stayed for coffee, then we waved them
off. The baby started to grizzle. Derryn hitched him up higher
on her hip. She didn't say anything. Stephen gave us his
perplexed smile. We followed Derryn inside.

I was too shy to talk to Stephen and Derryn so I whispered
to Juliet.

She was fierce with me. She was two years older. She said,
'Why are you whispering?'

'Where should I put my bag?'

Juliet asked where we were going to sleep. Derryn said, 'I'll
show you.'

We followed her out the back door and down the garden
path. There was a stationwagon parked by some bushes. I
thought she was going to drive us somewhere, and I hoped it
would be nice.

'In there,' Derryn said. She pointed at the car. 'Did you
bring sleeping bags?'

'Oh goody,' Juliet said. She gave me a hard look.

'The seats fold down,' Derryn added. She gazed off across
the garden. Her eyes were bloodshot.

Juliet got in and started pushing down the seats. When I
turned around Derryn had gone.

I climbed into the car. The vinyl was warm and sticky, and
gave off a strong brownish reek; in the days that followed I
would spend many hours lying on those musty seats, tracing
lines in the vinyl with my fingers, the springs beneath me
letting out little excruciated squeaks and cracks, the windscreen
above, with its splattered blobs of dirt and leaves,
making patterns of jungly light on the ancient dashboard.

Juliet put her stereo on the seat and switched on her
favourite tape, the soundtrack of
Jesus Christ Superstar
. We
lay and listened for a while.

'What about a pillow?' I said.

Juliet had a round face and curly hair and gaps between her
teeth. 'A pillow?' she said in a dangerous voice.

'Oh, don't worry about it,' I said. There was a pungent
ashtray in the door, crammed with mashed and crooked
butts.

'Your Highness needs a pillow,' Juliet said. I said nothing.
She yawned.

I could see a clothesline with sheets blowing in the wind,
and beyond that a paddock stretching away to the rainy sky.
I wondered what the time was. I was hungry.

'Let's get out,' she said.

We went around the garden. The rain stopped and the sun
broke through the clouds. We looked at a couple of pigs in the
paddock and stroked the cat sitting on top of the old truck.
Behind the truck was an enclosure made of wooden stakes
stuck in the ground. Inside it was a bath. Juliet said it was
connected by a pipe to inside the house. There were melted
candles on a stand, a soap dish, a scattered array of shampoo
bottles. A path made of wooden boards led from the enclosure
to the back door. I walked on the slats — and stopped short.
Derryn was standing in the doorway.

'Dinnertime,' she said. She turned away. We followed.
Stephen was sitting at the table. The baby was in a highchair.

Derryn came slowly out of the kitchen. Everything she did
was slow. She smelled strongly of some kind of herb. She
shared the food around. The meat was tough and the vegetables
were raw in the middle.

Stephen looked up, sighing. His forehead wrinkled with
effort when he spoke, as if it was hard for him to frame the
words. When he got them half out he swallowed them. He
filled the spaces between the words with a breathy, humming
noise. His expression was kind but helpless. He asked Juliet
about the trip, and I noticed that some of the things she said
weren't true. It had been pouring when we stopped for lunch.
She said it was 'blazing hot and sunny'. The sea had been
rough, churned up by a spring storm, and no one had felt like
going in. She told him we'd had 'a long, lovely swim'. Stephen
looked at me. I ducked my head. She said we'd had three
icecreams, then she corrected it to two. Derryn fed the baby
and didn't say anything.

When dinner was over I whispered to Juliet.

'Talk properly,' she said. 'It's down the hall.'

I was glad the toilet wasn't out in the garden, like the bath.
Then I wasn't so happy — it meant we couldn't use it during
the night. The walls of the bathroom weren't lined. On the
exposed wooden frames were rows of spare toilet rolls, and
the toilet was one of those big old thrones with a wooden seat
and a metal chain; the flush roared and the pipes let out a
trumpeting moan, finishing off with a metallic shriek. A dog
barked in answer in the garden. I hurried out.

Juliet said ominously, 'We've cleared the table, Viola.'

The plates were piled up on the kitchen bench. Derryn and
Stephen, having given Juliet a torch and two pillows, had gone
away into another room. We went out into the garden. I could
hear the dog moving around on its chain. Behind a lighted
window Derryn was carrying the baby back and forth. We
went down to the car. Juliet brought out bags of sweets and
chips and turned her stereo on. The wind blew in the trees. I
saw a torch moving far away, across the paddock.

Juliet was restless. 'Let's get out,' she said.

We crept through the garden. The night was cloudy and
dark. A light was shining through the wooden stakes of the
enclosure. Stephen was sitting in the bath. Steam rose and
curled through the flickering light from the row of candles; he
held a small cigarette between his finger and thumb and drew
deeply on it, and a rich grassy smell blew through the garden.
The moon came out, riding between the black clouds. The top
of the old truck looked like a skull in the moonlight.

Back in the car I pulled out my pyjamas.

Juliet said, 'What are they for?'

She grabbed them and held them up. They were juvenile,
embarrassing yellow. Happy faces, flowers.

'Nice,' she said. She lay back and hitched her thumbs into
the belt of her shorts. She was wearing the clothes she always
had on: boy's shorts, a sleeveless checked top, and sandals. She
had strong brown arms. Her fingernails were bitten down to
the quick and her hands were broad and powerful.

I stuffed the pyjamas in my bag. A little squall of rain
drummed on the roof. Brief desolation. I thought of my
mother carefully packing my bag, fresh clothes for each day.
She'd said, 'You'll have a nice time. Juliet's almost your age.'

'Do you ever change your clothes?' I asked, politely.

'Why bother?'

We heard a weird, coughing, retching sound.

'Possums,' she said. I wriggled on the creaking vinyl. I
needed the loo. I climbed out and went behind a bush. Light
rain fell. Juliet turned the torch on in the car. I looked at the
small stationwagon, its back rammed up into the shrubbery, a
song from
Jesus Christ Superstar
floating tinnily out over the
garden.

Juliet wound down the window. 'Look,' she called. She was
shining the torch on a possum, its round dazzled eyes and
damp nose.

Juliet wound her window up and I ran back, afraid that she
would lock the door.

I slept. At dawn the pigs started making noises; a rooster
crowed along the road and I woke up, smelling the ashtray. A
cigarette butt had stuck to a strand of my hair. I removed it
and sniffed it, sat up and looked over the dashboard, past the
washing line, to the paddock. On the far side was a row of tall
thin trees that grew along the edge of the river. The sky was
white, the air mild and humid. It was strange to have slept in
my clothes. I prodded Juliet but she was lying on her back,
snoring, and she pushed me away.

I got out. There was a roaring of wind in the trees. Stephen
came out of the house. He looked in my direction, wrinkled
his forehead in his baffle d way, mumbled something to himself
and walked past me carrying a big plastic box. He was wearing
white gumboots. He loaded the box into his van and drove
away, and I had the sudden ghostly sense that I was not
physically present in the bright, windy morning, that if I had
been closer he might have walked right through me, feeling
no more than a ripple of air.

Juliet was awake. She said, 'Look what I've got.' There was
money in her hand.

'My mum gave me some money,' I said. I looked for my
purse and saw it on Juliet's lap.

I looked down. 'Is that my money?' I whispered. The
ghostly feeling again.

'Our money,' she said.

She tossed over my purse. It was pink. It was my best
possession; I hadn't thought of it as babyish — now, naturally,
it looked grotesque.

'Our money,' she said again. 'There's yours . . . and then
there's mine!' She produced a bigger note. 'Look how much
we've got altogether.'

I wiped my eyes. 'That's a real lot,' I said. Outside a beam of
sunlight shone down through the trees, full of insects and
dust. An involuntary sigh rose in my chest. My spirits lifted.
I'd never had so much money before.

'There's a shop near here.' Juliet waved the money. 'Now
we've got to hide it while we have breakfast.'

She decided to hide it in the engine. She opened the bonnet.
With manly grunts, wiping the sweat from her brow with the
inside of her forearm, she wedged the money down behind
some pipe or tube. She straightened up, nodding humourlessly,
her hands black with grease.

We trailed up to the house and put some toast on for
ourselves. Derryn had been staring out the window; now she
turned and peered, as though attempting to gauge just what
we were actually doing there. 'Do you want breakfast?' she
asked, with a pale, wondering little laugh.

I swallowed. I was already eating toast. 'Do you mean
there's something else?' I said.

'Something else?'

'I've got some toast,' I said desperately.

'You've gone really red, Viola,' Juliet said.

'Oh, yeah . . .' Derryn said. She stirred her fingers through
the baby's hair. There was a dreamy silence. A cow mooed
outside. I was still hungry. There were a couple of spotty
bananas on the bench. When no one was looking I took one
and put it down the back of my pants.

Derryn said, 'Come into my room, girls.'

We followed her into a bedroom with Indian material hung
around the walls and an unmade bed. Clothes and books were
scattered on the floor.

'Sit down,' Derryn said.

We sat. The banana broke apart in my trousers. I could
smell it.

'Look at these pictures,' Derryn said. 'We went to India.'
There were photos of Stephen, one of Derryn on a bed with
her eyes closed, looking dead, the skin of her face stretched
and waxy, faintly yellow. I feigned interest, desperately aware
of the smashed fruit welling up out of my waistband.

'Do you want this?' Derryn asked. She was holding a piece
of bright-coloured cloth. 'You'd look nice in it, Viola. With
your blonde hair.'

The baby tottered past the bed with no pants on. Outside
the dog barked and jumped on its chain. The baby peed on the
floor.

Juliet elbowed me. We got up.

'Thank you,' I said.

Derryn looked at me. 'Oh, yeah,' she said.

Back at the car, I secretly scooped bits of banana out of my
underpants and ate them; also secretly, I tried to clean my
trousers with a leaf. We got the money out of the engine and
set off to the shop.

The sun came out. The flax and the cabbage trees were
tossing in the strong wind and the bright light struck off the
leaves. Juliet walked on the gravel road in her bare feet. We
cut through the paddocks and Juliet walked in the cowpats,
her feet turning green.

The shop was cool and dark and musty. In the gloomy back
was a shelf with toys. We bought two plastic soldiers with
parachutes attached to them, and a bag of sweets. Outside we
inspected the plastic men. I liked them very much. We walked
back, eating lollies.

On the way back there was a tin barn and, behind it, a
paddock. We sat on the fence, and I noticed there was
something strange about the grass. Juliet got down to have a
look. There were lots of piles of something horrible and bloody
and meaty dotted about the paddock.

'It's afterbirth,' Juliet said. 'It comes out of sheep when
they've had lambs.' She picked some of it up with a stick. I
shrank away.

'That'll come out of you, if you have babies,' she said.

'Where are the sheep?' I asked.

'In another paddock.'

'Where are the lambs?'

'Cooked. That's what we had last night. Dead lamb!' Juliet
threw a piece of afterbirth up in the air.

'Give me another lolly,' I begged.

'There's only one left.'

'Can I have it?'

Juliet said cunningly, 'It's greedy to ask for the last one.'

I looked at her.

'I tidied up the car this morning,' she said. 'You were off
somewhere being lazy. And I washed your plate for you.'