The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (31 page)

I was going to have to get back to the unit. I looked at the toetoe grass at the edge of the sand. I had already missed the path and got lost in it once that week and, truly, it had imparted the sense of being lost in a jungle maze. I had no choice but to return by the track. Weighing up everything in my mind, I was seized by a great compassion for these two foolish lovers. They should be told that they were being observed. I would knock on the door, I decided, and stand there waiting for it to open, with downcast eyes, but when one of them opened the door (it would be the man I was sure), I would say, with a slight worldly faraway smile, that they may not have happened to notice, but in fact, their curtains were open. They would be embarrassed but grateful for my discreet and kindly intervention. I braced myself, feeling a trifle breathless, and started to get to my feet. But I sank back down on to the sand with a groan. It wouldn't do, of course.

My concern was replaced by anger. It was a public beach, it was a common access to and from the beach to the unit, there was no other. Why should the utterly egocentric and hedonistic copulation of these two people interfere with my evening? Why shouldn't I look at them fucking?

Ah, this was closer to it. I reminded myself with some severity, that I was not only a scriptwriter but a novelist as well.

It occurred to me in a rush, that as a writer who wrote, from time to time, about the sexuality of others, I may have an obligation to my art. For how often did the critics say, that all sex was the writer's own experience translated into the behaviour of others? As if we were the only peep-show in town. Now, I was being presented with the opportunity to undertake research. I had a duty to observe this couple.

I was very relieved when I came to this conclusion, and now I did stand up, brushing the sand off my trousers and generally preparing myself to work again.

To my astonishment, I saw that the Raj woman was approaching me along the sand. I had not seen her come to the beach, and I tried to remember when this might have occurred. I concluded, in the brief seconds it took me to consider the matter, that it must have been when I had my back to the sea and was contemplating the birds' eggshells on my windowsill. Now she was walking sturdily and purposefully, as if she was about to catch an elephant. She had donned a pair of dark glasses, and she still wore a sunhat, although the sun was starting to slide towards the sea.

Her presence disturbed me, yet I thought, with fortitude, that larger problems than this had conspired in the past to keep me from my job and so I turned towards the path, although this time I did give her a nod for I felt she might be lonely in this vast seascape. She returned the nod, her chin firm and resolute as if she too had tasks to accomplish.

At the crest of the path, facing the motel, I stopped. The room had assumed the proportions of a golden bowl of light. The couple on the bed were lying with their shining limbs entwined in that comfortable and affectionate contemplation of their lovemaking which people assume when it is over. The young woman's fingers caressed her lover's back and earlobes, as if he had given her a very nice time indeed.

I tingled with disappointment. Apparently it was over.

But my attention was drawn away from the window by an odd scratching noise. I looked over to where it was coming from, and saw that the
motel-keeper's
wife was hoeing the grass around the barbecue area. It seemed to be an odd thing to be doing, at that time of evening. (I am not sure why, it was as good a time as any I suppose, although I knew that it was the time when guests arrived, and besides she had been sitting out in the sun for most of the day.) She was a pleasant young woman who smoked rather a lot and became shrill with her two small sons when they became unruly, but to her guests she had a very civil tongue, and as New Zealanders inevitably do, we had discovered at least two people whom we knew in common.

Still, it was clear to my quick writer's eyes that she was here for a nefarious purpose, and she certainly did not have the excuse that I did, to exercise my powers of observation. She was hoeing the barbecue in order to watch the couple in the bedroom.

I was very shocked by this. How base is human nature.

She kept on hoeing the barbecue though, and I became nonplussed. She, in her turn, may not understand my legitimate sense of vocation, and might judge me, as I had already judged this interest of hers as prurience.

As I stood there hesitating, my problem was, for the moment, resolved. From behind me a man appeared and approached the motel-keeper's wife. At first I did not recognise him, but then I saw that it was the man in the party of driftwood gatherers. I do not know why he had come to see the
motel-keeper's
wife but it seemed that he had some transaction to make. I felt rather mortified. It might well have been that she had been waiting for the man to call on her, and that there was nothing sinister about her presence by the barbecue pit after all. Though why, I wondered, was she waiting for the driftwood gatherer out of the sight of her husband? I was beginning to sense corruption and vice all around me.

The driftwood gatherer was a sandy-complexioned man with wispy hair straggling over his collar. I wondered where the woman and child had gone. Away from them, the man looked less remote and romantic, a very ordinary sort of fellow in fact. He and the motel-keeper's wife were standing together now, and she appeared to have given him some money. It was all quite above
board, I conceded. He probably did odd jobs for her. She leaned on the handle of her hoe, and he leaned down over the edge of the barbecue, resting his arms on its concrete surrounds. They grinned at each other, and turned their attention towards the room. Neither of them took any notice of me, or seemed to find it strange that I had positioned myself against the fence, casually glancing around as I was, and gazing out to sea now and then.

It was in one of these backwards sweeps that I noted the advance of the Raj woman. Of course, she too had to traverse the path in order to return to her unit.

I became anxious again. Clearly it was most important that she should be spared any improper sights. I wondered if I should walk along beside her, befriending her, and with my presence, and of course my friendliness,
shielding
her from the sight of the naked couple on the bed.

She had acquired a long stick which she was using like a staff. She came on up the path towards me. I could not see her eyes behind the dark glasses. But when she was close to me she stopped. The ground was thick with
powdery
seed heads which seemed to be lying in wait for children to gather them and blow them away. The Raj woman stood still and very deliberately began to knock their heads and appeared to watch the feathering parachutes floating in the evening air. But I saw that her head turned to the window of the room.

Now the sun was flaming yellow gold and about level with where we stood. In the few moments that I had been standing by the Raj woman I had become lonely and ashamed. I had no business to be standing here. If I were to move, surely everyone else would too.

But this now seemed as churlish and high-handed a thing to do, as my previous behaviour had seemed voyeuristic. This is how I put it now, at any rate, for in a story like this, the central character (is that what I was? maybe not, but I am the central core of definition) must be seen to have some finer feelings; I cannot allow you to see her as totally unscrupulous.

The Raj woman had turned her attention to a collection of puffballs now, and was methodically breaking them open with her stick. Some of them were dried up inside and other fresher ones were full of vile squelchy pulp.

There was movement on the bed. The woman was getting up.

For a moment she turned to us, and it seemed that she must surely see us. We saw her smile to herself, that big full-lipped mouth parted over the white teeth. Perhaps she did not see any of us. Maybe she was so full of lust that she was blinded to all outside. Or maybe the gold sun was in her eyes as it set, blinding her.

Whatever it was, I can tell you that she stood there facing us for a moment so that we saw her quite exquisite breasts and her tapering waist
above the brown bush between her legs, and I for one was moved and touched by her beauty. Since the advent of the spa pool I have become much better acquainted with the sight of other women's bodies and I am often moved thus, that quite ordinary women with plain faces can have such magnificent breasts. I have become something of a connoisseur, and there are several women with whom I would gladly change my own rather slight appendages for their springy marble orbs and tender pink nipples. Such a woman was this.

She turned back to the bed, and the man rolled over on his back, welcoming her above him, his hands guiding her in the small of her back.

She had a small tattoo on her right shoulder-blade, carefully positioned as if someone had told her that the eye is drawn to the far side of the right-hand page when it reads, and that we must not be allowed to miss it. The tattoo was of a rose, and it was very pretty.

This was all most disturbing and even more so for the fact that that very afternoon I had been trying to write what I think film makers must generally acknowledge nowadays as the obligatory on-top fuck. I'd wrestled with the images for hours — Bergman's
Fanny
and
Alexander
(broken wood crying out to broken wood as the bed collapsed),
A
Question
of
Silence
(the Dutch do it too),
Coming
Home
(so do war veterans),
Dance
With
a
Stranger
(some women have been hung for less),
The
Ploughman's
Lunch
(blue skin and middle age in the midnight hours); oh it read like prizegiving night at the Oscars, who did it best? Yes, who, I asked myself.

And here it was, the tattooed lady giving a splendid performance all of her own, with fluttering shoulder-blades and her fingers making a tiny tepee on the coverlet behind her so that she had perfect balance and control, her head thrown back ever so slightly, this was all for her. We could imagine the curve of her throat.

I say we, for beside me the Raj woman's stick was poking at the puffballs and she said to me, ‘Nice, very nice isn't it? Isn't it nice?' but she wasn't looking at the ground, and on the seat by the barbecue the motel-keeper's wife was sitting on the driftwood gatherer's knee with her arms wound passionately around his neck. His hand was up her skirt.

Everyone around me was having such a lovely time, while I was wrestling with art. Surrounded by space, still, I was gasping for air as if I were in a hothouse. It is enough I thought, I cannot bear it any more. I could feel my fingers at work on the keyboard.

But at last the young woman was done, and quite suddenly she sank forward over her lover. The sun, too, had slipped below the horizon and the light began to bleach out of the sky. It was then that I was seized by tenderness
and compassion for the young woman, for I saw that despite her splendid performance, all could not have been easy for her.

Whereas her lover had such a perfect brown eye to present to the world she, I saw, had a little pocket of piles. And that, I thought, thinking of the song, was how one's brown eye turned to blue.

But whatever the anguish I felt for her, she seemed to be bearing up well, for now that it was really over, she and her spent lover (for he was much less sprightly in his actions than she) came to the window and bowed. We all clapped, and the curtains were drawn.

Then we, who were outside, shrugged, said good night to each other in a friendly kind of way, and ambled off in various directions, the motel-keeper's wife, unhanded now, to her motel office, the driftwood gatherer to the beach, the Raj woman and myself to our respective units, she no doubt to finish her novel, and I to eat avocados and the tongues of lambs, as others might partake of ambrosia and the tongues of sparrows.

No. This is not true.

Our destinations may have been resolved in such a manner, I do not remember, or I never knew what happened to the others, only what I did. Neither is it true that the couple came to the window, or that we applauded.

Let us reconstruct the scene from a certain point. The dark simply came upon us all. We came to our senses, or there was no more to see, and so we slunk away without looking at each other, not admitting our complicity. And when next I looked out, it was moonlight, and the curtains were drawn.

That is a possible scenario.

There are certain discrepancies in this story if you know where to look for them. Let me help you. I have, for instance, told you that the woman was blinded by the sun. I have also told you that the motel was on a north-eastern beach. You will see from this that it would not have been possible for her to have looked into the sun from this direction. This raises various possibilities. The motel is not where I told you it was after all. Which raises questions about its existence or not. Or, the woman was not blinded by the light, and knew that we were there all the time.

Well I have told you in my opposing scenario that they bowed. So, what I am telling you is that they might as well. Oh who is to know? You will have to decide these things for yourself. You may think I made it all up. Or you may wish to view this as a moral tale. Is it, for instance, immoral to view that which it is intended for us to see (always assuming that the young woman was not blinded by the light), if what we see is a source of delight and pleasure to all, including the participants, or is this in fact, god-like, an
excuse to invent new standards for our own viewing pleasure?

You see, as a fledgling film writer, I am having great difficulty with this.

Or, why write this at all? Already I can hear the critics saying, look at Ellen Scumbucket: she takes five thousand words to describe herself watching
someone
else away at it, and then makes excuses.

Well, what would they have done?