The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (20 page)

She said she had bought one of the jars but she did not need all the wine either. She asked me to share it with her, and that was how I came to join her.

Her name was Anneliese, a Dutch woman with long straight iron grey hair and wide cheekbones. Her face was clean of make-up. She spoke flawed but elegant English, and she asked me if I minded her smoking roll-
your-own
cigarettes. I reminded her that I was her guest.

She too travelled alone.

The waiter brought two meals although she had already eaten and I had ordered only one. I said I would buy her the fresh dinner if she would help me drink the jar of wine. She said she was still hungry and, like me, she had come here because her stomach needed a rest from oil.

We ate and drank and sat by the lapping water and the night submerged us.

I told Anneliese about my children and her face grew sad.

She smoked awhile, then said: ‘I would like to adopt a child.'

‘Why can't you?' I asked.

‘Because I am not married.'

‘Can you not have a child?' I asked.

‘I've thought about that, but I could not carry a child without love for the father. I could love a child for itself.'

‘Have you never loved a man?'

‘Oh yes,' she told me. ‘For twelve years, and I thought he didn't want a child, and neither did he think so then. Then he went away, and he had a child whom he loves with a woman that he does not love. He wants to come back to me.' Her voice was full of tears, but she did not seem to be a
self-pitying
kind of person.

‘Won't you take him back?'

‘No. Because I cannot take him from his child.' She shook her head, as if in disbelief.

‘It seems like a muddle,' I said. ‘But yes,' I added hurriedly, for she looked at me as if I had not understood. ‘I can see you're doing the right thing.'

‘It's no good, soon I will be too old to have a child and too old for the authorities to allow me to adopt one. I would take any child, any child in the world that has nowhere to go. I would take a black child, a brown one, a sick one, if it had no parents. It doesn't have to be like me, I don't seek my own image.'

I said that in my country adoptive parents were not always held in high regard, that there was a backlash towards women who took other people's children, that it was regarded as a political act against natural mothers, to take and adopt their children. I said this with a trace of bitterness.

She regarded me intently. ‘So there are no lonely or abandoned children in your country?' she marvelled.

We both smiled, relaxed from the wine, and a little lazy about following up absurdities, although not so much that we did not, mutually, remain inscrutable about our position in relation to the absurd.

‘Are you a feminist?' she asked.

‘I suppose so,' I said. ‘Aren't you?'

‘Well … I believe so. What else is there …?' She hesitated. ‘It's hard to know what one is here.'

She had long cat-like eyes. I thought she was beautiful. She made me think of my friend in New Zealand who wrote to me care of each poste restante, good, vigorous, loving letters. And other friends. Those of us who touched, trusted, moved up to each other and away, protected and protested on each other's behalf, in our own ways. I thought of the dark Greek woman with dancing feet and of the blue-eyed man at Omalos. Had she been
protecting
someone? Was she like us, after all? But if that was so, why had she not seen me as I wanted her to? Why had she sat in judgement upon me, and why had I failed?

‘What are you looking for in Greece?' I asked Anneliese.

‘I don't know,' she said, as if startled. ‘What are you?'

I shook my head. ‘I'm not certain. I see things and they go away.'

It was true, and even now it comes back to me only in flashes of brightness, and a whiteness in the mountains. There is little to hold on to. I thought I would write to my friend that night and tell her about this, and about my day. Only days before she had said in a letter that she had come to the conclusion that it is moments lived most intensely that are often soon
forgotten
,
or somehow erased. They leave their mark, she said, but the edges become blurred.

I did not write the letter and she will have to make do with this, after all. It is the nearest I can come — to holding on I suppose.

When I parted with Anneliese we looked searchingly at each other. I was going to give her an easy kiss on the cheek and I think that that was what she had in mind too, certainly I would have embraced her, if we had not, at the same moment, changed our minds and withdrawn from each other. I cannot be certain what she thought then, but I suppose she may have considered, as I did, that it was not as simple as that.

We shook hands, firmly and gravely, and looked at each other in order to remember, as best we could, what we saw. We walked separately into the Greek night on a Sunday that wasn't Easter.

‘W
E'VE BEEN TRYING
to get in somewhere decent all day,' the woman said at dinner. ‘And look where we've ended up. Isn't this revolting?'

There were six plain tables in the dining room of the Homestead Hotel, each covered with light plastic cloths patterned with a lace design. The tables were placed close together so that everyone in the dining room heard what she said. Other guests turned to nod their agreement and they were all so near to each other that they could take up the conversation from where they were sitting. Some commented on the old floral carpet underfoot, others on the quality of the meal, which though ample was of the roast and three vegetables variety; still others mentioned the small stuffy bedrooms they had been allocated and the mosquitoes that infested them, especially in the annexe where the ceilings were so low that the men could hardly stand up straight in them. And the Lord only knew what other bugs might be lurking in the woodwork.

The woman's husband looked vaguely embarrassed and glanced at his watch as if he had somewhere to go.

‘The view's nice. I wanted to come here,' said the young woman opposite them.

‘Oh. The view, yes.' The woman who had spoken first turned her head and looked at the landscape, and turned back to her meal, her face set.

The young woman, whose name was Cassie, continued to gaze into the distance. It was full of a dazed gold light. A long paddock, more like a rolling plain, stretched away from the hotel to a far belt of gum trees. The grass bent and shimmered before a light breeze, and the colour of the grass expanse was a delicate reflective blue green, changing as it moved. The gum trees were the same and even the sky appeared green around their outline, except for their white trunks. Closer, the dining room opened out on to a wide old verandah which ran right around the hotel at ground level. The garden beyond that
was flanked by thickets of bougainvillea and hibiscus, and planted here and there were dense unpruned citrus trees bearing late fruit which laid a sharp scent on the evening air. Cassie breathed deeply.

‘That's what I said,' the man commented. ‘I like the view. Why can't you make the most of it, Miriam?'

She said nothing, so that the man turned back to their companion and said, ‘You can get too used to chrome and shagpile motels, can't you? I mean, we've spent half the day waiting for the public relations people to ring around for us and missed out on a trip on the bay. Well, we could have been out sightseeing on the boat, but we've missed everything now.'

‘I think we should go home tomorrow,' said Miriam.

‘Where do you come from?' Cassie asked her, making her voice light and pleasant.

‘Auckland.' She turned back to her husband. ‘I told you we shouldn't have come in February. All the people who've been waiting for the school holidays to finish come in February and it's just as bad as January. We should have waited till March.'

‘I'm Alan Forbes, and this is the wife,' he said to Cassie.

‘How d'you do.' Cassie smiled at them both, but already she knew that her presence would be of no help, for it was clear that Alan liked her
appearance
, and Miriam had noticed this too. Cassie imagined they were wealthy, but while Miriam might have practised having money for a long time, Alan was barely aware of what was expected of him. His shirt was open at the neck over a greying thicket of hair, a gold pendant nestled in the base of his throat. There was a coarseness about him, conveyed through thick hands with heavy hairs along the fingers, hands which looked as if they had done manual work once, before success had overtaken him.

The conversation was hurrying on in the way of holidaymakers seeking faces for their albums, or at least for his part it was, and Cassie always found conversation irresistible. But there was an edge of danger in this one, as if the slightly drawn woman in beautiful casual clothes might suddenly snap, or bite one of them. She had very nice teeth, much better than Cassie's own. Cassie thought she could probably bite well.

‘You're a photographer, then?' said Alan. ‘What are you photographing?'

‘Nothing special,' Cassie told him. ‘Well, no, that's not quite true. I lived here when I was very young. But I'm on holiday now. I've always remembered the light here. I wanted to take pictures in this light. Of the light, in a way.'

‘You're taking pictures of the light?' Miriam's voice was incredulous.

‘Sort of. I know it sounds silly. Well it was something I wanted to try, and my mother offered to stay with the children.'

Miriam's eyes flicked over her. Cassie was round, a little overweight, with eyes like dark honey, and a bobbed brown fringe. ‘You don't look old enough … you don't look older than my children,' Miriam said.

At the end of the verandah there was a courtesy bar. Guests were able to serve themselves and put the money in a drawer under the counter. When Alan and Miriam walked past the open door, later, Cassie was sitting alone, drinking brandy and smoking a small cigar. She looked moody and tired.

‘Cheer up,' called Alan. ‘Look at the view.'

She smiled faintly. ‘It was a long trip today. I came up on the Road Services bus.'

Miriam had walked on ahead across the lawn, towards the car park.

He lingered. ‘Come with us, we're going for a drive.'

‘Where to?'

He named a bay. ‘Miriam's got it into her head that she'd like to buy a beach place round here. I expect we'd have to build it though … I guess we wouldn't find a place she liked that someone else had built. Lucky I'm in the building business. Anyway we've heard there's some places out at this bay, and there's still land to be bought there too. I thought we ought to go tonight. Just in case we do go back tomorrow.' He shifted on his feet and looked over his shoulder, but Miriam was already sitting in the car, staring straight ahead.

‘Won't she mind?' Cassie knew her voice carried complicity, but the bay was far beyond her walking range, and it was a place she wanted badly to visit.

‘Of course not, love to have you along.' She knew he had regretted asking her straight away, but he was committed, and so in a sense was she.

The light does not cease in the north until late on summer evenings. The orchards are bound by hakea hedges which are a pale sharp green tipped with red, like a light flush of fire amongst the leaves. The banks cut away at the edge of the roads are red clay, the dust lingers above the metalled highways. In the Forbes's car the air was close.

‘I can't breathe,' Miriam said once.

‘Do you want to turn back?' he asked.

‘Yes. No. Are we nearly there?'

‘I don't know, how should I know that?'

‘By the distance, didn't you take it? You're always talking about your
trip-meter
, as if it matters a damn except when you need it.'

But the bay was around the next corner. They came upon the settlement, a long line of houses built close to the shoreline. The sea was flat and glossy, like an ironed cloth, and the first lights being turned on in the houses were reflected on the water.

‘I can't believe it,' breathed Cassie.

‘You like it then?' said Alan.

‘Yes. But it's more than that. I used to come here when I was a child. When you said you were corning here I couldn't believe it, that you'd actually drive here. I used to come on school picnics on a barge — you could only get in by boat then. You see,' she added, by way of an apology to Miriam, ‘I really am older than you think.'

Miriam ignored her. ‘I want to go for a walk on my own.'

The car had barely pulled up when she opened the door and leapt out. Her shoes were low heeled but still not suitable for the beach. She held her purse over her arm and her scarf blew up in her face as she reached the waterline.

‘It's her age,' he said awkwardly.

‘Should we go for a walk too?' asked Cassie, not wishing to watch her from this distance. She knew that if Miriam were to look back they would look rigid and disapproving, sitting one in front and one at the back of the car, as if waiting for her to return, but it would be worse if she were to go and sit in the front with him.

She slipped her shoes off so that she could walk barefooted through the sand. Her feet were small and shapely and her toenails were painted bright red. He brushed her arm once with his as they walked along the beach, and steadied her with his hand when she leaned down to dislodge a sharp shell that had wedged itself between her big toe and the next one.

‘Are you married?'

‘I told you, I've got two kids.'

‘Yeah, sure. Doesn't mean anything these days.'

‘Yup. I'm married.' She held up her left hand with its thick shiny band.

‘Miriam didn't think you would be … Your husband doesn't mind you coming away like this?'

‘No, why should he?'

He shrugged. ‘So you used to come here?'

Cassie stopped, and thought.

‘Only once. Yes, I've been thinking about it. I only came here the one time. It was a most beautiful day. My parents came too. It was the school picnic, the big event. My parents were hard up you see, and we didn't go to many places. So I looked forward to this day. We took a lot of fruit and bacon and egg pies and tomatoes and orange cordial that had been made up, and a thermos of tea. It took, oh, an hour, maybe two, I forget now, sitting on a barge towed by one of Blackie's boats. Blackie, short for Blackwell you see, was a big man in these parts, he owned a lot of the boats in the district. When
we got here we put out a rug on the ground like everyone else. I'm trying to remember where, but there were no houses here at all. Not one. There was a lot of white shell on the beach. A blazing white, so bright and hot you could hardly walk barefoot across it. The children changed into their bathing suits and before long we were all in the water. There was one boy in my class who was a lot bigger than me … that wasn't hard of course, I've never been very big … but I thought he was my friend, because I helped him with his reading. I was sent to do it by the teacher. But he can't have liked me at all, perhaps he really hated me, thought I was superior, how can one tell? Anyway, that day, he nearly drowned me. He came from under the water and pulled me down and held me. At first the sea seemed green and frilly beneath the surface and then it began to turn black. I struggled and fought. When I thought my head would explode, and that I would die, he let me go.'

‘What did your parents say? Do?'

‘Nothing. They didn't see it happen. So I could have died.'

‘Didn't you tell them?'

‘No. Because it was their picnic too, you see.'

He was silent for a moment. ‘I want …' he began, and stopped.

‘Of course,' said Cassie. ‘Of course you do. Shouldn't we see if Miriam is all right?'

They turned to make their way back up the beach.

‘Cassie, I'm drowning.'

She reached out and touched his arm lightly. ‘Perhaps. People drown every summer.'

‘You should understand.'

‘I'd like to do underwater photography,' she said. ‘I'd forgotten until this very moment, telling you about it, that there was light shining through the water, the sun was actually bright even though I was surrounded by water.'

Miriam was standing outside a house close to the beach. The house was built of stained timber and it was long and low, moulded more into its
surroundings
than most of the neighbouring houses. Although it was new, it was like the Homestead Hotel in that it too had a wide verandah almost at ground level, with only glass to the floor dividing the interior from the landscape. This verandah was also festooned with bougainvillea, as well as passionfruit, and a tub of zinnias made a bold splash in a corner. Inside, a lamp had been lit, so that the room was plain for all to see. There were Persian rugs spread about, brass and pewter shone with a subdued gleam from the shelves of a splendid dresser, the light was soft on the coral-coloured walls. There was a large dark bowl of shaggy white daisies on a low table. A woman with thick
grey hair piled up on her head was seated at a piano, with her back towards them. She was a large person, but when she turned her profile slightly towards them, the features though prominent, even hawk-like, were finely drawn. Cassie guessed she might be Turkish.

The woman at the piano paused for a moment from her playing as if aware of their presence.

Miriam turned to Alan. ‘That is the house I want,' she said in a low voice.

‘I'll build it for you,' he said easily.

‘No. I want that one.'

He took her arm and steered her along the beach, for the woman in the house had begun to get up from the piano. Cassie followed along behind them.

‘I could come back tomorrow and ask her if it's for sale,' he said.