Some Here Among Us (16 page)

‘Well, that’s a bad start,’ said Morgan.

‘But he’d gone away,’ said Race. ‘He was on this ship that had gone to England. He was away six months. She was bored and a bit lonely and her flatmate invited me round to visit, I suppose to cheer her up. I didn’t care one way or the other. I went round because I had nothing else to do that night. Then this disaster happened.’

‘What disaster?’

‘I fell for her. I fell completely in love.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Morgan.

‘Maybe it was just that night, in that room – if someone else had been there maybe I’d have fallen in love with them instead.’

‘No,’ said Morgan firmly. ‘To hell with that!’

‘OK,’ said Race. ‘Maybe not. Anyway, it wasn’t someone else. It was her. And then I was obsessed. I was crazy about her. I went there every single night. Straight after lectures I would run right across town, I’d run all the way – down Courteney Place, up Kent Terrace. I couldn’t take the bus.’

‘Why not?’ said Morgan.

‘I couldn’t stand waiting at the bus stop,’ said Race.

‘No,’ said Morgan.

Race wanted to describe the feeling he had when he ran across town every night and reached Kent Terrace where the statue of the queen with her crown on stood among the trolley-bus wires in the dusk. Up the hill was the house where his girlfriend lived. Her name was Bonnie. The road went up the hill and curved round a corner towards her house and the trolley-wires went up too, curving round the corner, and when he saw the statue of the queen among the trolley-bus wires, he felt a shift in his heart as though, in the dusk, that curve in the road, and the trolley-wires on the way to Bonnie’s house were changing the shape of his heart for ever. But he couldn’t say this to Morgan.

‘So what happened?’ said Morgan.

‘She liked me,’ said Race. ‘She let me come back to see her every night. We’d play games. We played cards. But mostly we just talked. She told me all about her family and where she grew up and so on. She loved talking. She talked about her fiancé too – to fend me off, you see. I hated that, but still it was better than not being there with her. I let her talk. Sometimes she even kissed me a few times. I mean she let me kiss her. But I always had to leave. I’d catch the last bus home.’

‘So then what?’

‘Finally one night she let me stay. I was allowed to sleep in the bed!’

‘Really?’ said Morgan.

‘But not between the sheets,’ said Race.

‘Jesu Criste!’ said Morgan. ‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing,’ said Race. ‘She went to sleep and I went to sleep. I don’t think I really slept. I kind of just dreamed I was asleep all night. I was incredibly happy, you see. I was nearly there. I always thought I’d get her in the end and the fiancé would just never show up or something. Then that night there was a bang on the window. We were on the ground floor. The bed was in the bay-window. We were just about sleeping in the street. I sat up and pulled back the curtain. There’s this guy there, angry-looking guy about forty, red face, black combed hair, staring in at me. He’s a detective, he says. There’s been a murder across the street.’

‘A murder!’ said Morgan.

‘A girl across the street had had a party and everyone left except someone hid in her wardrobe and came out and killed her. I don’t know how they knew he’d been in the wardrobe. Well – we hadn’t seen anything. We hadn’t heard anything. We couldn’t help. But I thought: “Here I am, in bed with the girl I love, there’s been a murder across the street, and a plain-clothes man is looking in the window. This is it. Adulthood!” ’

‘Ha!’ said Morgan.

‘It was just before dawn. I saw the milkman at the end of the street. I even heard a cock crow. Imagine that – someone keeping hens in those old apartments on Mount Vic.’

‘Then what happened?’ said Morgan.

‘That was the end of it. The fiancé came back two days later.’

Morgan burst out laughing.

‘What’s the joke?’ said Race.

‘It’s not funny,’ said Morgan.

‘Now she’s married him, and I’ll never see her again.’

‘At least she let you sleep in her bed,’ said Morgan. ‘What did you say her name was?’

‘Bonnie,’ said Race.

‘Sexy old Bonnie,’ said Morgan. ‘Liddy – Lydia – never let me sleep in her bed.’

He stood up and began prowling round the room. ‘Probably that’s why I’m so incredibly fucked up,’ he said with aplomb. ‘But I happen to know she loved me. I was going to step right in and ask her to marry me. But she loved something else more. The social whirl she was in, with these rich red-neck farmers. Like what’s-his-name here.’

He did a neat scissor-leap over the sleeping Salmond Burns.

‘He’s not a red-neck,’ said Race.

‘Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t,’ said Morgan, still prowling round. They were now very drunk, Race realised drunkenly, on Rod Orr’s wine. The fire was blazing up. The music was on. Miles Davis was on. Who had put Miles on? The vines seemed to be curling down the wall in slow motion.

‘I have this cousin in love with me,’ said Morgan, ‘but she’s sixteen and my cousin and she’s none too bright, so that’s not much use, is it?’

He took a letter out of his pocket and then began to read aloud:

My dearest cousin Morgan,

Having the opportunity of relazing I thought of such a charming idea to write. Here’s the local gossip not that it’s plentiful. Johnny had a big gathering at Cape Runaway. My real parents were there and I was so glad to see them. Johnny was buried on a hill looking down to the old school and the church to be. The church will be named St Johns after him. I didn’t pass the army because I’m absolutely dumb and dreadfully sad. I went up to Gisborne for my interview stayed there for a week and of course got involved with a couple of nice looking boys. One mind you was a Pakeha with glasses but a fab Velox, the unknown I would presume, but the first one I went with was a Maori his name was Charlie Hirini he had a bomb I kind of liked him because he was one of the boys that was interviewed with me. At night I roamed the streets. There was the bogies all in tight skinned clothing waiting in uncivilized places and taking girls on their motorbikes. Just the sight of them made me shrink a little. Came back through the gorge, decided to stay the night at Opotiki then right to Charlie Tuhiwai’s wedding. There was Charlie Spoons, Rangi Koroheke, Richard and Gladys, Whata Wairua, Jimmy Rhodes and Jimmy Devereaux. We stayed there two nights so like a flirt I decided to go with Whata, that’s Johnny Wairua’s brother he’s quiet nice but incline to be shy. He called me doll all the way, of course I got the cheap thrills. Martha who is not a friend of mine any more went with Porgy. No doubt I got kisses, kisses that one and only night. Queenie Rolleston is getting married Labour weekend. Dardanelle is going nursing. Mary Cowan’s bull jumped the fence and chased Hubert round his truck three times. My photo album is piling up for you to have a look. Rita and Teia are naughty day after day and we still got Ricky and Motu. Well so long, dear cuz, time slips away for another day.

Long Live Love

Please write cousin

Count all mistakes as kisses

Rianora Kingi

‘See what a silly girl she is,’ said Morgan. ‘She wants to make me jealous.’

He folded the cheap lined paper and put it in the envelope and put the envelope back in his pocket.

‘Always to hand,’ said Race.

‘It reminds me of home, that’s all,’ said Morgan.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Race.

‘
Little boy blue, come blow your horn
,’ said Morgan. ‘
The something, the something the cow’s in the corn
.’

Race then remembered climbing up round the trunk of a tree, and Morgan climbing above him, but he said nothing. After all, he thought, it’s a damned cheek dreaming of other people. They have no say in the matter. It’s not something you mention.

‘Life in the country. You have no idea,’ said Morgan.

‘I have been there, remember,’ said Race.

Morgan looked at him. ‘Oh, you have too,’ he said.

He went to the window and stood on the chair and took down the other red curtain, then got down off the chair and put the curtain around his shoulders and went and lay on the sofa again with his feet up.

‘I was watching TV the other day,’ he said, ‘and these guys were doing a space-walk. They were tethered to the ship and walking around in space and behind them was the earth. But the earth was actually a cliff of blue water seven thousand miles high . . .’

He took the curtain off his shoulders and covered his body with it and then lay back again.

‘A blue cliff of water, thousands of miles high,’ he said. ‘And I was sitting down beside it, watching on TV.’

From his chair Race looked around the room. Burns was on the floor under one red curtain. Morgan was on the sofa under the other. The hall light and the kitchen light were off.

‘Where am I going to sleep?’ he said.

‘You’ll have to share,’ said Morgan.

Race got up and took off his shoes and lay down on the sofa in the other direction. Morgan’s shoes were in front of his face.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Morgan, ‘I’m going to this party in Brooklyn. I’ve met a girl who’s asked me to a party. Candy and Adam are coming. You can come as well. Just don’t cramp my style.’

‘OK,’ said Race.

There was a long silence.

‘Your shoes,’ said Race.

‘What about them?’

‘I don’t know. They’re kind of in my face.’

‘OK,’ said Morgan. His shoes disappeared, then his bare feet appeared.

‘That statue on Brooklyn hill,’ he said after a while.

‘Yeah?’ said Race.

‘I always kind of liked him. It reminds me of my uncle. Even though he’s not a darky.’

‘A
darky
?’ said Race. ‘
Who
isn’t?’ But then it seemed to him that he fell straight to sleep and never knew if Morgan gave any explanation.

In the morning he woke and saw two bare feet in front of his eyes. For a moment he didn’t know whose they were, or even to what species of creature they belonged – those sallow, fanned metatarsals. Then Candy and Adam came into the room and Morgan woke up. Salmond Burns had gone. His curtain was lying on the floor like an empty chrysalis. The others tidied the flat a bit, re-hung the curtains, took the bottles out, shut the windows, closed the door and went away. Race walked down to the station and took his bag from the left-luggage, changed his shirt in the men’s room and put his luggage back again. Then he phoned his parents.

‘Oh, how
wonderful
,’ said his mother. ‘You’re here, in
town
?’

Race explained what had happened. When she heard that he had missed a plane and been in town only a day, and by accident, his mother felt quite light-hearted.

‘Darling!’ she called out to her husband, while still holding the receiver. ‘Guess what! Race is in town.’

‘I know,’ said Race’s father. ‘You told me that yesterday.’

‘Shsh!’ she said, shaking her head and signalling with her free hand. He looked at her in wonder. Race vaguely overheard this far-off exchange but took no notice. He was used to such negotiations between his parents, between fact and feelings, which had been going on above his head since infancy.

‘Are you coming up to see us?’ said his mother.

‘I’ll come tonight,’ said Race. ‘I’m back on the train tomorrow.’

At six, Race met Candy and Adam and Morgan again and they took a cab up to Brooklyn to Morgan’s party. There was hardly anyone there: the hostess, a girl with long, pale blonde hair; two of her girl-friends; a cousin from Melbourne; a neighbour who mowed her lawn. There was a fire blazing on the grate and a white sheepskin rug in front of the fire. The hostess handed round drinks and snacks formally, in a way that didn’t happen at student parties.

‘I’m not staying,’ said Race to the others. ‘I have to see my folks. I’ll catch a cab.’

‘You’re leaving us,’ said Candy, wide-eyed.

‘I’m leaving you,’ said Race.

There was a patter on the roof, then a crash of rain. It had been dry and calm all day but now a second storm had arrived. Race called a cab and ran out through the driving rain and went home. That night he slept in his old bedroom. He had been away from home only a few months but all his belongings had been removed. There was no sign he had ever slept in the room, much less lived in it for nearly twenty years. Everything was in boxes in the basement, said his father.

‘You are not one of these sentimental fellows,’ he said, stating this as a fact. This made Race laugh.

‘I
tried
,’ said his mother. She rolled her eyes towards her husband. ‘I tried to save something from the wreckage but you know what he’s like.’

That night Race played chess with his father, who beat him, as usual, with despatch. He went to bed at midnight in his bare, stripped room. It rained heavily again in the night and he heard the sound of the rain on the roof. Then it stopped and later he dreamed that he got up and went outside and saw the full moon rising at the end of the yard where he used to play as a child. Then he saw that it was not the moon but the Earth, with its pelt of blue seas and continents and all its stories, rising on the full above the pines at the end of the yard where he had played as a child.