The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (34 page)

But the stripes of sun on the mantelpiece were the same as when she had awoken, and the beans she had planted behind the shelter of the new fence were flourishing, the potted petunias and pelargoniums flowered along the verandah, and herbs by the steps were prolific. Baba would have known this house.

And maybe, after all, her meeting with George would be full of the unexpected pleasure the sound of his voice had first promised. It was enough that he wanted to see her.

Her spirits continued to rise as she walked to the bus stop. The sky was as blue as the dome of her Church Evangellisimos and the flowers behind the palings as colourful as ikons.

Aunt Pela, Baba's sister-in-law, was on the bus. Nellie hadn't seen her for weeks and felt guilty when she first caught sight of her, but Aunt Pela was so pleased to see her it didn't matter.

‘Are you keeping well, Aunt?' Aunt Pela was over eighty.

Aunt Pela brushed aside the subject of her health. ‘You know Emmanuel, number one grandson, he's passed his exams at the university?'

‘Ah good, he's a clever one, that boy. His father's clever.'

‘So is his mother, she has a good brain.'

Oh what it would have been like to have had a mother like Aunt Pela. Mother had never once said she was clever, though she often got better marks in composition than George.

‘And will you go to Greece?' Aunt Pela asks.

Nellie started, looked away. Aunt Pela was watching her with probing eyes. ‘If only Baba hadn't died,' Nellie said after a while.

‘Ah, but he did. A long time ago, Nellie.'

‘You know how it was with Mother … I think it's too late now.'

‘Do you really want a Greek husband, Nellie?'

Nellie glanced around to make sure there were no other Greeks aboard. ‘I don't know, Aunt. Sometimes I ask myself that. But who would have me?'

Nellie and Costa had gone to a re-run of
Sweet
Bird
of
Youth
at the Lido. It was their first date. ‘I bet he'll hold your hand,' Sophia said. Her boyfriends always did. Such dangerous living. ‘My father would kill me if he knew,' Sophia said.

Nellie would be ashamed if she couldn't tell Sophia that Costa had held her hand. But sure enough, as she watched the screen, his hand stole across the arm of the seat. Their fingers touched, linked, her palm enveloped by a moist insistent pressure. She sighed, melting beside him.

Then somehow his clasp had loosened. She could still, all these years later, feel what happened next, his fingers, so sinuous and insinuating, delicate and unhurried, her knees crooking sideways, as if she couldn't stop them, to make space for his hand. Without ever turning her head, she fixed her eyes on the young Paul Newman, composing what she would tell Sophia. We are almost engaged, she would say, nothing more, as if Sophia was not old enough to understand certain things.

Outside, in the light, she walked with her eyes downcast, and a blush on her face that wouldn't go away. Costa wore a startled triumphant smile,
glancing
sideways at her, and away. He loved her, she knew it. At Pigeon Park, a flock of birds, startled by their approach, flew straight up, the air whirring around them, and she felt as high as them, up in the treetops.

‘Wait for me a sec,' he said, and went into the Men's, not shy about telling her he had to go.

When he came out his face was white.

‘What is it, Costa?' She knew something was dreadfully wrong.

‘I have to go to the hospital.'

‘Why?'

‘Never mind.'

‘Are you ill? Please tell me.'

His eyes were hard. ‘Go away, Nellie Pagonis.'

He strode off, leaving her behind in the street.

After a few minutes, a Newtown tram came by; she ran down Courtenay Place and threw herself on board. It heaved itself slowly along the street, wheezing and clanking on the rails; she thought it would have been quicker to walk.

But as she got down from the tram, there was Costa, walking fast, his head down in the wind, his jacket collar pulled up round his cheeks, going up the steps of the hospital.

He was checking into Out Patients, as she came up behind him.

Now his mouth was mean and thin, his eyes fearful. ‘I told you to go away.'

But he had already begun his story to the young doctor who had greeted him, there was no turning back from it. His hand scrabbled at his crotch.

The doctor's eyes gleamed with unfriendly amusement. Turning, he called over his shoulder to a colleague. ‘Hey, guy here reckons he's got crabs.'

A ripple passed around the crowded waiting room.

‘Who do you reckon gave them to you?'

Costa turned to Nellie.

‘What are crabs?' Nellie asked.

The doctor barked with laughter this time. ‘Body lice,' he said. ‘Ointment for two?'

She didn't have crabs. Probably Costa didn't either, but she didn't stay to find out. Everybody knew the Lido was a fleapit. At least, so she heard years after, though she never spoke the word Lido again. Not ever. She heard some men talking about the theatre at work. That fleapit. You could pick up
anything
there, they said. And laughed, just the way the doctor had.

She's fast, Costa told the boys, and they told their fathers. The men at the club talked, and soon it was all over town, Nellie Pagonis is a bad girl. Baba asked her, tell me it's not true what they say. It is not as bad, she had whispered, but the truth was, she didn't know how bad bad was.

Costa's father, who might have been expected to help, simply spread his hands elaborately. He pitied Angelo, a man who had been made to look a fool. Nellie's behaviour could not be predicted, like that of good true Greek girls, his gesture implied.

If it hadn't been for Aunt Pela, Nellie might have lost touch with the Greeks altogether. But her aunt lay in wait for her after work and tempted her inside with promises of
baklava
and plied her with sweets in silver bowls. ‘Come to church, it's our saint's day this week,' she would say. And in spite of Mother's protestations, and her taking to bed with a headache, Nellie did go.

‘All things pass, Nellie,' Aunt Pela said, guiding her reluctant footsteps back into church one morning.

Oddly, it was since Mother died that she had almost stopped going. When she lay languidly in bed at the weekends, she told herself that the house had become her temple, but really she knew that it was the luxury of not having to take a stand any more.

‘I don't feel like a New Zealander, Aunt,' Nellie said. There, it was out, and it was true, but it was a truth she only half understood. Rather, she
understood the endless feeling that nothing would ever be whole. ‘I feel foreign.'

Her aunt sighed. ‘You might feel foreign in Greece,' she said.

Nellie couldn't believe she had heard her properly. Aunt Pela had always understood.

‘You must think what you'll do about it,' her aunt said. ‘Time's moving on. You have a good job, hnnnh?' As the bus neared Lambton Quay, she remembered to ask about George.

‘He's good, wonderful,' Nellie said. ‘I'm seeing him today.'

‘And Susan?'

Nellie rolled her eyes, and Aunt Pela laughed.

As the lift rose to the tenth floor, Nellie thought that Aunt Pela was right, after all. It was time she sorted herself out. It was a day of portents. She called out to Mr Hedges that it was a nice day even before he had time to say good morning.

‘Chirpy today. What's making you so happy? Friday, eh?'

‘Yes. This and that.'

‘Good weekend planned?'

‘I'm applying for three months' leave of absence.'

‘Really?'

‘I've been here over twenty years.'

‘What did you have in mind?'

‘I'm going to Greece.'

‘Well, well, Miss Pagonis. Next thing we'll have you married.'

‘That's possible,' she said, smiling.

At quarter to twelve the phone rang. It was George. ‘Sorry, can't make lunch, Sis.'

She hated him calling her that. ‘Why?' she shouted down the phone. ‘I altered everything for you.'

‘You said you weren't doing anything.'

‘I didn't say …' But she couldn't remember what she had said. ‘Are you sure you're all right, George?'

‘Yes, of course. It's just Susan …'

‘Is she all right? I'm sorry I didn't ask this morning. The children? Huh? They okay?'

‘They're all in good health.' His voice was exhausted. ‘Catch you later, Nellie.' He hung up before she could say another word.

The sun still blazed as she arrived home, but she hardly saw the dusty salmon
and gold light on the bay. The cat's meat, in the butcher's thin plastic grip, slapped coldly against her leg, her neck ached. She fumbled for the key, then froze, a warning in her blood. The door was already ajar.

Very quietly, she picked up the yard broom and sidled into the house. A man was seated in the living room with his back to her. Her bottle of Metaxa stood in front of him and he had already poured a drink.

It took her several seconds to recognise George. His shoulders were thin and hunched and the skin on the back of his neck had lost its tightness. But the strange thing was that, although he had never resembled their father, for a moment it could have been Angelo Pagonis sitting there.

‘Hullo,' he said, as if she might be expecting him.

‘How did you get in?' she asked, at the same time remembering that he had always kept a key. He didn't answer, and she saw then that he had been weeping.

‘What is it?' she cried, for she couldn't remember his tears, not since they were children.

‘Susan,' he said.

‘She's sick?'

‘No. Yes, it feels as if she is, but it's me who's ill. No sleep.' He rubbed his hands across his eyes. ‘She's left me, Nellie. Susan and the children, they're gone.'

‘Left you? No, of course she's sick. Nobody would want to leave you, she'll come back.'

He shook his head. ‘No, it's over, really it is. I wanted to tell you at lunchtime, but even then I couldn't believe it. But it's true, I have to face it. It was all work, work, work. I didn't see things when I should. Well, I'm not the first one. It'd been going on for a long time.'

‘Going on?'

‘She's in love with someone, she's gone away with him. It happens, Nellie, don't look like that. It's life.'

When he had recovered a little, she made some cheese sandwiches and they drank some brandy. The long evening light was clean on the surface of the bay; the air began to chill.

‘I'm going to Greece,' said Nellie. ‘It would be best if you came with me.'

He nodded, and it occurred to her that here, in their parents' home where he had taken refuge, he would do as she suggested, that Susan was already receding, dropping away to some distant point beyond that treacherous adult existence which had disillusioned them both.

‘You'll come then?'

‘I'll think about it. You always wanted to go, didn't you?'

‘Baba wanted it. He would have liked you to go too.'

George looked at his hands. ‘I hardly knew Baba.'

‘He was shy with you. You were …' She floundered.

‘Different. Like Mother.'

‘But you aren't. Tonight I came in, and it was as if he was sitting there.'

He stirred, restless. ‘I should go.'

‘Why? You can stay here.'

‘I still have a home. A house, anyway. I must think what to do with it. Sell it, I suppose.'

‘And then you can come back here, and we can go to Greece.'

‘Oh Nellie.' She sensed real regret, real sadness, when he spoke again. ‘Life is never simple. What's wrong with your neck?'

She had forgotten her neck, but supposed that she must hold it at an angle from habit.

‘It's nothing much, it just gets stiff at nights. A nuisance.'

‘Have you some ointment? I could rub it before I go.'

‘Oh yes, please.' In a minute, she was kneeling at his feet, her blouse pulled modestly to one side, his hands kneading her shoulder and the column of her throat. Oh this happiness. On the sea's dark surface, white caps shone under the first hard spearhead of stars, the ngaio rustled against the
windowpane
, the scent of menthol filled the room. The movement of George's thumb and forefinger travelled down her like a flame. He was her Greek boy. He was Mother and Baba.

‘Why is nothing simple, George?'

He paused, and she regretted having spoken, as he remembered that it was his sister whom he touched.

‘You should know' His voice was gentle, even as he screwed the cap back on the tube. ‘It hasn't been simple for you, eh? It didn't all come true, like Baba said.'

‘But it could, we could make it come true.'

He stood. ‘I've got to go now. You've been so good to me, I'm glad I came to you.'

‘You'll be lonely when you get home.'

He paused again, then answered carefully, ‘You must listen when I tell you that things are not simple.'

‘You'll come back tomorrow?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘And Greece?'

‘I said I'd think about it.'

‘
Saga po para
poli
,' she said softly. She didn't know whether he understood,
or heard. She said it again, in English: ‘George, I love you so much.'

But already he had closed the door behind him. His footsteps receded up the path into the quiet dark. She heard his car start, and drive off. Across the bay, the lights were shining.

No, life was not simple. Already, she supposed, some other woman waited for him somewhere. But even that was an odd comfort, signifying that he had no lasting commitments beyond this house. True he had wept, but that, she believed, was for the breakages and damage of life, and not for Susan. She realised how little she knew of these matters, but they were neither here nor there, and it puzzled her that he must create difficulties where, it seemed to her, none existed.