The Great Fire (32 page)

The house is on a height, with mist in the mornings. I cannot say that anything is like Japan, though it may sound so. The rooms are fairly large, fairly sunless; elderly. A garden is shaded by trees, chiefly beech, and enclosed against the incessant wind by a hedge of yews. No flowerbeds, but many plants and bushes of the cool-flowering kind — fuchsia, hydrangea. Camellias have bloomed since we came, in streaks of colours such as I never saw. There are ferns, and bunchy groves where violets and lily of the valley will appear when September comes round.

Oh my dearest, will I still be here for that? How can this go on? And how can it change?

On the sheltered north, where some sun arrives, a wisteria, bare except for greenery, is strangling a derelict arbor. All this gets some attention from Jimsy Frazer, from Dumfries, who does the neighbourhood gardens; and also from Miss Fry, who occasionally comes to sew for my mother and to make expert repairs to the mouldered curtains, furniture, lace mats, and even the carpets of the absent owners.

Miss Fry brings a hush. Swift at her work, infinitely polite, she no doubt observes us; but of herself tells nothing. A dozen ready sources inform us, however, that her name is Elinor, that she speaks French (which makes her a prodigy in this land), and that she lost her fiancé late in 1914. Near sixty, she lives with widowed mum in Kelburn, a suburb adjoining ours. Miss Fry has such a good face — handsome yet somehow bare, perhaps from giving so much unreciprocated attention. Spare, also, in build, and well dressed always, in one or other of two 'costumes,' as they're called: jacket, skirt, and blouse of subdued and Fry-like tones.

What she brings is not 'hush' but calm. She's the best thing that happens. Also — forgive vanity — she notices me, and looks up from her work when I appear.

At evening in her room, writing her letter, Helen Driscoll was repossessed of her powers. It was the sole occasion of her exile: the hour preserved from, and for, another life. Distilled in that exercise, existence was emblematic in its materials: a pad of blue imported paper, a good black fountain pen, the envelopes marked
AIR,
for freedom, on which she wrote his name; and the tiny Florentine leather box with its flutter of New Zealand stamps. If the incidents of her days were weighed for possible recounting in the letter, that was less for their interest than as an opportunity for expression, even for artistry. A girl transported to the last curve of the globe might write what a great man would read at the self-sufficient northern heart of the world. The love that moved her then was nearly joyful, no longer victimised by distance.

Miss Fry's time was afternoon. It was Helen who prepared the tea tray and carried it to where Miss Fry, in an overall of ochre linen, sat at her work: always the small circular black tin tray, the white-and-gold Rockingham cup, and two ginger snaps poised like coins on the saucer. Miss Fry — who said, 'Thank you, how kind,' as the tray arrived, and 'Thank you, delicious,' when it was removed — one day looked up over a porcelain rim with delicate receptivity. Additional words came to be exchanged — though never, as days wore on, many words at a time; for Elinor Fry dealt with friendship as with some quick creature, lizard or leveret, that might dart from an obtrusive hand.

Miss Fry has invited me. Next Sunday at four, I make my way to Nightingale Road. Her mother is said to be a personality, though that, here at Wellington, might signify the least quiver of animation. Did I tell you that I wore my green coat in the town and was stared at? In these islands, virtue begins with self-effacement, and any sign of life is flashy. Decent persons are home by six, when they too, perhaps, like the streets of their capital, fall silent. Despite this, there is, maddeningly, enough genuine decency to make dislike impossible.

I hear from Tad Hill, whose green coat draws such disapproval. He's back in America, and leaving the army. He means to study Japanese in California — he says, 'At Berkeley.' When he goes there to be interviewed, he'll visit Ben, of whom I have otherwise only clinical news. I write, but never learn whether the letters are read to him. Tad will carry a letter to him from me. Remembrance of that day when he was taken away, and of my last sight of him, has grown bearable because of what you did — for him and for me. Your impulse to rescue, that is the more beautiful, yes, for being part of your reserve.

On the Sunday, Helen set out in small rain, wearing a mackintosh and stout shoes that could draw no glance. Devoid of glances, suburban streets rose and fell over Jurassic slopes. No car or person passed. There was the indoor bark of a bored dog and a crystal shake of drops from low cold branches. Weatherboard houses stood back from footpaths, insubstantial. Roofs of corrugated iron had been painted dark red. Behind low palings or a hedge of box, gardens laid out like military grids were unlikely to grow riotous with the seasons. Air of an uninhabited freshness rushed at crescents and inclines with its southern chill. There was, too, a southward vision of grey sea, and of the distant gorse-grown hills that shaped the bay. Across the strait, and beyond the flung skein of farther land, the matter of consequence was the South Pole, to whose white magnet the nation was irresistibly drawn, even while directing its yearnings elsewhere.

In the large setting, the city was small, rickety, irrelevant: unresponsive to destiny. And Helen saw herself creeping, Lilliputian, over that disregarded topography, walking to Kelburn without expectation of change.

Dreaming, once more, the only possible dream.

Near Nightingale Road, a cyclist saluted her. This waterproofed boy — who steadied a basket between handlebars — was Sid Briggs, whose parents helped with dinners. Cooking and serving, the Briggses also rented out for an evening not only tableware but, for a set fee, a centrepiece of hothouse fruit that could be returned next day with additional payments for items consumed by any inconsiderate or defiant guest. (The grapes, snipped and dusted, might do another round or two; while a softening of pears or peaches could be disguised by greenery.) As to parties, the father — in youth a boxer, and known yet as Tiger Briggs — would arrive early to set up drinks, while Sid, in the kitchen, deftly chopped and spread. However, it was Mrs Briggs who ran the show, gave tongue, and cultivated her legend. Of short, pouting build, her liveliness ever within bounds, she had sized up the situation and was content to be a character — who knew, at the grander gatherings, what the Prime Minister would drink, and was mindful of the ulcer of the High Commissioner; who rallied to the greetings of Sir Keith or Sir Patrick, but never quite took a liberty — liberty being, to her, of small importance. A measure of power, benign yet attestable, was what she was after, in her black rayon dress, apron scalloped in organdie, and cuffs white as the paws of an immaculate pet. At home she recounted to her men what she had heard and overheard, and reigned in consequence.

Helen had observed Mrs Briggs, as she was beginning to notice others who had exempted themselves from the national desire to belong elsewhere, even if this meant that they would never leave these shores. No one quite belonged here, not even the indigenous people, who were themselves invaders. The British experience was tentative, almost apologetic: successive generations remained, but as settlers. While Mrs Briggs had settled conclusively.
Fatalité des lieux.
Her example aroused respect; and filled the girl with terror.

At No. 12, Helen pushed a solid gate. Chimneys were visible above old trees. Shrubs, still sporadically in bloom, gave place to autumnal flowers. The roof was slate blue, and otherwise distinctive — being large and high with fretted woodwork about the eaves. Upstairs and down, bay windows shone like mirrors, displaying curtains of white gauze. Not gaiety, but airiness.

And Miss Fry was in the doorway, mildly smiling and extending her mild hand.

Helen gave up coat and umbrella. She had not opened the umbrella, and her hair hung flat and darker. She had no sense, these days, of her appearance. At such a moment, could forsake her adult life, and was shy. Miss Fry, however, would not take up the slack of authority — as people are apt to do on their own ground. And they were thus briefly immobilised.

The living room was warm and waxed, and reflected the care of Elinor Fry. Charcoal briquettes the size of duck eggs were burning in the grate. There was expansiveness, a simplicity quite free of that cut crystal and walnut veneer on which the neighbourhood liked to insist. Chairs, a desk, a sofa, aged and admirable, came clearly, from the great elsewhere beyond the seas. There was a large rug from the Indies. Glazed cases held the leather colours of old books. In a farther room, on open shelves, books lined a wall. Everything appeared to be in an agreeable state of use. On a table, a lamp was lit against the dark day. Overhead, a glass disc hung from three bright chains.

'You found Nightingale Road.' Mrs Fry had come, startling, out of a chair.

Her daughter explained: 'Mother tends to materialise.'

'So you've come to enliven us.'

Helen said, 'That wasn't made a condition of acceptance.'

'It is understood.' Mrs Fry was a straight stem, flowering into a nimbus of white hair. When she sat, her dark dress spread on sofa cushions that were the texture of fine sand.

Beauty, long since drained of erotic appeal, had remained a habit. 'Whoever comes here from the outer world brings novelty. Above all, a young person and pretty.'

'Mother, you're perhaps too personal.' Miss Fry had taken a workbasket on her lap. In becoming a daughter, she had not relinquished character. And began, herself, to be beautiful now — the grey hair in its coil, the thoughtful brow and pliant wrist.

'You have unusual eyes, which is lucky, because the eyes last.' Mrs Fry's own dark eyes, now soft, now bright, had lasted. 'I have my father's eyes. He was Bishop of Wellington, my parents came out by reason of his appointment. It was four months, then, from Britain on the sea. Whoever comes to these islands, even now, feels that it is forever. The distance is fateful.'

'Mother, you will frighten our guest.'

Helen said, 'I am frightened, yes.'

'Like your own parents, mine came for a fixed term. But life will not always abide by such arrangements.'

Both women had low, clear speech, unhesitating.

'My father had this house built to his taste — taste not being otherwise procurable. There were woods here then, we were in countryside. I recall, on our land, a great stand of kauri that was felled, when I was seven, to make houses. Buildings were all of wood at that time, even in the town, for fear of the earthquakes. Strangely, it was only after the great earthquake, at Napier not twenty years ago, that they started in earnest with their concrete and bricks. Men,' she said, 'feel compelled to test their fate: to learn, once and for all, who is master. The lesson is not always to their liking.'

'Where we are,' said the girl, 'it's mainly beech.'

'Native birch, as they call it. I don't know why.'

'Nothofagus
.' Miss Fry was stitching a geometrical design, blood red, into a fold of canvas.

'The road itself was made after we came. And named, of course, for the heroine rather than the bird. Miss Nightingale was then still living; but died, mercifully, just before the Great War. Elinor is named for her — Elinor Florence.'

Miss Fry observed that the name had been current in past ages but had lapsed for a time: 'It was revived in the last century by English travellers to Italy. Such gestures were in fashion. Shelley himself gave the name of Florence to a son born there.' She drew, with such elegance, new silk from a crimson twist.

'I was born upstairs,' said Mrs Fry, taking up her own thread. 'In the room over this. The house had been intended as a second residence for the bishop; but my father loved it, and when his term was out, he arranged to buy. We stayed on. My poor mother was dying of tuberculosis and could not undertake the journey home. After her death, my father and I set sail, and this house was rented for many years.' She said, 'Elinor's impatient, having heard it all.'

'She doesn't look impatient.'

'And am not,' said Miss Fry. 'But will bring the tea.'

'Sometimes she says, "Mother, don't start on the memories.'"

'Only when the theme is painful." The daughter laid down her work. 'There's Indian, of course, but we have excellent China.'

'Thank you, China.'

When Miss Fry had gone, her mother remarked, 'Why not tell one's story? There are so few stories here, or perhaps a fear of telling: the mere suggestion that one matters. I myself forget much of the forty years I spent in England after my marriage. In all that time I came here only twice. The voyage was so long, whether by the Red Sea or the Cape route. As it is still.'

Helen knew precisely: six weeks, or seven, depending on the ship, the route.

On the waterfront there was the office of the Shaw Savill line. In a window on the street, black hull and red funnels made their stately getaway. People went in to get brochures, to enquire, to embellish the fantasy. Durban, Cape Town, Las Palmas — the pilgrimage known by heart to all the nation. So long, so far. Young people set their hopes on it, then began the slow retreat into impossibility.

Had it not been Sunday, had she not been visiting — in the house of these two sybils — another century, she might have leapt up then and there, in her panic to sail.

Mrs Fry said, 'Don't grieve. You will change it all. Luck is always welcome, but you won't find it here. This is not a venturesome society. In any case, one must make the great changes for oneself or it doesn't amount to destiny.' On this word, the house fell profoundly silent, as it would one day without her. In the distant kitchen, Elinor Fry made no sign. The old woman said, 'Possibilities are open to you. What is terrible is to be entirely helpless under events, as in those wars.'

To be trapped, a world away from him, by war. The press spoke, now, of war as if it provided continuity.

Over the mantel, there was a tall seascape, mostly sky. Helen looked up at this with eyes that, at the sound of private kindness, gleamed with private tears.