Authors: Owen Marshall
The traffic noise was surprisingly loud so early in the
day, and Theo lay in the warm darkness of the hotel room
for some time before falling asleep. He dreamt not of
Penny and Erskine, or of himself and Stella, but of the
middle-aged lovers in the campervan, both on their backs
and entwined. There was about them the indolent ease of
mutual satisfaction. More even — the accomplishment of
having for a moment wrested happiness from the tight fist
of everyday life.
In the morning Theo talked to Zack about Penny's call,
and her willingness to co-operate with Erskine as long as
Ben was able to live mainly with her. As they came away
from the thin French breakfast, the desk clerk gave them
a message from Erskine, asking them to come to his hotel
again at ten. 'Their talk must have gone okay then,' said
Zack. 'Rather odd, don't you think. You and I come all this
way and it's effectively settled by the Maine-Kings with a
late night phone call.'
'Being hidden and having the boy with her were what
gave her security I suppose. Will Ben have to become a
ward of the court, or something, for a while?'
'I don't imagine so,' said Zack. 'As long as the parents
have an amicable agreement our Family Court will want
to assist a settlement. It just has to be done with the
Californian court in mind, so that the judge there doesn't
feel his jurisdiction has been disrespected. That particular
judge is very sensitive as to his dignity and that of the law.
It's really all about that central provision of the convention
that children should be returned to their country of origin
for disputes to be resolved. Penny Maine-King will almost
certainly have to go back there and eat humble pie.'
At Erskine's hotel the four of them sat again in the
dark, comfortable chairs around the see-through tabletop,
and with a view of the promenade and the shifting blue
glitter on the sea as if from broken glass. It had all been
decided, really: the two lawyers remained to work through
the legalities of the application for a stay of the warrant, a
rehearing and a separate financial settlement confidential
to the Maine-Kings, while Erskine and Theo left the hotel
and dodged through the traffic to the beachfront.
Even the road noise was different in Nice, with a high-pitched
component from the scooter traffic so typical of
France and Italy. They sat on seats above a fresh water
sluice point for swimmers on the long, postcard beach,
and Erskine flinched in the glare of the sun. 'Damn,' he
said. 'I've left my sunglasses in the room. I've inherited a
reduced tolerance to direct sunlight.' He faced away from
the sun, yet still frequently put his hand above his eyes as
they talked.
'You'll have to be careful when you come to New
Zealand then,' Theo said. 'It's supposed to be at its most
dangerous there.'
'I hear it's a beautiful country,' he said. The mantra of
the foreigner to Kiwis abroad.
'When do you think you'll come out?'
'As soon as the legal stuff 's sorted, and as soon as
Penny's comfortable with it. It breaks me up, you know,
not to be able to see Ben.'
'You need to rein in that private detective guy then,'
said Theo.
'I'll get that done today too.'
Why should Theo dislike such a reasonable man,
who said things Theo imagined he would say in the same
circumstances? He had come to Nice prepared to face a
nasty bastard, and found someone trying to do the best
he could in painful and bewildering circumstances. There
weren't many swimmers in April, but the bright day brought
out a variety of people to sit on the sand. Close below
were a middle-aged couple with their arms companionably
about each other, and a backpacker with 'Argentina' on the
back of his jacket. He had the good looks of youth, and
sorted carefully through his limited possessions, almost as
if he were taking inventory. A grubby bandage swathed his
left hand. The isolation of proximity seems more evident
when you travel. The compatible couple, the young guy,
and Erskine and Theo: all with their paths in life and their
own imperatives, randomly sitting quite close in Nice, with
absolutely no connection.
'Penny never talked much about her own country,' said
Erskine. 'I had no idea she wanted to go home, yet from
what she said last night I think you're right — a place in
New Zealand as well as California might be the way to
go.'
'When things are tough you think of home,' said
Theo.
'They tell me it's a good place to bring up kids,' said
Erskine again. 'The space, the education system and all.'
'But you said she was unhappy growing up.'
'I'd better not say anything more about that — I never
really got a handle on it all. Another thing she told me last
night was that I wasn't to gossip to you.' It was perhaps an
admonition, but Theo rather liked it. He took it as a sign
that she cared what he thought about her, what people
might tell him. 'She's a very private person,' her husband
said. 'There's a bunch of stuff there she holds in and hasn't
come to terms with.'
They took refuge in discussing Erskine's work — his firm
made special fibre items, mainly strapping. The sort of stuff
used for seatbelts, alpine gear, haulage restraints. His father
began the business in California and there was a factory
in Nice as well. He asked a bit about Theo's journalism,
and then both felt they'd done all they needed to part on
terms that wouldn't cause awkwardness if they met again.
'Maybe I'll see you in New Zealand, Theo,' he said. He
squinted past the couple and the backpacker on the beach,
put out his hand. 'You tell Penny,' he said, 'I sure as hell
want everything to work out.'
Theo watched Erskine walk away, fully the large,
successful American he was, but not arrogant, not loud.
The couple on the beach strolled away soon after, and
Theo followed on the promenade above. The backpacker
remained, with no one close, but paid no heed to that.
He reminded Theo of his own visit years before. Maybe
he was deciding if he could afford the cheapest
plat de jour
in a backstreet café, or must join the French teenagers at
McDonald's. Maybe he would become a notable politician
in his own country, or a criminal of equal distinction. In
either case the small piece of his life on the beach in Nice
would be some part of that progress.
When Zack and Theo left from the Nice airport four
hours later, the beach lay like a bright scimitar far below,
pale outcrops on the Alpes-Maritimes caught the low sun.
Erskine and Oliver were at the strapping factory perhaps,
concentrating once again on making money.
At the end of her fifth form year she went to a school dance in
Alexandra. She wore the first full-length dress of her life, apart
from the bridesmaid's one she had worn at her cousin Sandra's
wedding in Dunedin earlier in the same year. She hardly knew
Sandra, and couldn't work out why she'd been asked. Her mother
said weddings were all about family, and bridesmaids were better
to be younger than the bride. The ball dress was blue and had the
bra cups sewn into the bodice. A shimmer of blue from her bust
to the floor, and her shoulders quite bare. Her mother said blue
suited her eyes and hair, but Penny thought that her arms were too
brown for the white of her exposed shoulders.
Like a good many of her classmates she didn't go with a
special boy, but she danced with Shane Taylor several times, who
everybody said was going to be head boy next year, and she twice
told Dylan Churcher that she'd rather not thanks. Dylan had
a pudding face and still smelled considerably of himself, while
Shane knew something of toiletries, perhaps because his father
was a doctor. Shane's clean hair lapped over his collar a little,
and she would have liked to touch it. He had a habit of raising his
eyebrows and pulling a face when people said something that was
supposed to be funny. His Adam's apple stuck out in his smooth
neck, but even that was somehow attractive.
She went in on a special bus that came all the way through
from Ranfurly, bringing some seniors she didn't know, and it left
again at eleven thirty, dropping people singly, or in small groups,
all the way back. Her father was waiting for her at the turn-off to
Drybread. She recognised the Holden even in the dark. 'Don't be
a stranger round school,' said Shane. Suave — was he ever.
'See ya, Penny. Grow those tits,' called Dylan, as she went
down the steps. A creep — as ever.
She didn't talk much about the dance on the drive home, and
her father didn't seem that interested. 'I suppose there was a good
turnout?' he said. He didn't repeat the question after her silence.
After a whole hall full of young, tight-skinned people he seemed
old, even in the dimness of the car. His hands on the wheel were
old, his hair had no gloss and the slope of his shoulders was old.
In two months she would give him a photo frame for his fortyninth
birthday: eleven different indigenous woods represented.
Her mother was in bed, and they talked in the bedroom briefly
while her father locked up. Her mother was always interested
in the suppers at any formal occasion. Whether there were hot
savouries as well as club sandwiches, and furthermore were they
home-made, or bought; whether there were chocolate éclairs with
real whipped cream, or just lemon and pineapple cheesecakes;
whether the punch was alcoholic maybe. Was there a white cloth
on the trestle tables, or just taped paper? And she asked if the
blue dress had become sweat stained. Her mother was three years
older than her father: it seemed a lot more. Both of them were
older than the parents of her friends.
Her father came through to her room when she was putting on
her pyjamas. 'Everything okay then?' he said. She put her hands
between her legs to stop him going there. She stood close to the bed,
facing it, but he put arms around her and pressed himself to her
side. 'You know how much I care about you,' he said. He was
always a loud breather, even when at rest.
When she had sessions with the therapist years later in
Sacramento, that was one of the things she talked about: the heavy
insistent breathing. She continued to hear it for years after leaving
home. She would hear it during a pause at a dinner party, hear
it emanating from the poor reception of a television set, or as a
background to the change in the weather as she drove. Most of all
she heard it when she slept.
'Don't,' she said. 'Don't do it, or I'll call out to Mum.'
She could never bear to call him Dad in those moments of
greatest and most unnatural intimacy. 'I will. I'll yell.'
'Don't be silly. It's just play. You know I love you.'
'Mum,' she said loudly.
'What is it?'
Her father moved away, leaving her with what he intended as
a paternal pat on the shoulder.
'Should I sponge the sweat stains?'
Her father left the room.
'Good idea,' her mother said sleepily. It was an undramatic,
but final, victory.
Frottage with my father, she joked to the counsellor. She had the
terminology by then to discuss sexual relationships and practices.
The counsellor laughed on professional grounds — laughter is
a healthy, cathartic response — but both were aware there was
little humour in it. Even the account of Penny's final undramatic
assumption of the power of refusal didn't assuage the damage
much, or mitigate the enduring contradiction between natural
love and natural hate — for the same person.
For some reason she told the counsellor that as her father had
stood clasping her, she'd seen a bird flapping soundlessly at the
darkened window, palest light through the splayed feathers of the
wings, but there'd been no bird. The curtains had been drawn
in her bedroom, the blue dress empty and spread on the bed.
There'd been no bird, and she had no idea why she'd created it.
Did she crave symbolism for the occasion? She never talked about
it again, and the counsellor showed no curiosity concerning it,
yet on the rare, unpleasant occasions the scene returned, at the
window, outlined against a luminous sky, was a bird with wings
outstretched.
All seen in the intense, coruscating glare of past emotion.
Theo didn't see Penny during the first week back. Anna
and the editor seemed to regard Nice as something of a
junket, despite Erskine Maine-King paying for the trip,
and the value of the exclusive article Theo would be able
to write when Zack Heywood had made his submission
to the Family Court. There was a good deal for Theo to
catch up on, Anna said. Her strongly developed team ethic
made her suspicious of too much individual play. Theo
couldn't drive down to Drybread, and Penny still didn't
feel secure enough to leave the place until she knew the
court's response. She left a message on his answerphone
saying she hoped to see him soon and thanking him for
making the trip to France.
Before going south, Theo called Zack, who said Penny
had been in touch, but it was way too soon to expect
anything from the court. 'Come on, Zack,' Theo said,
'you must be getting some insider vibes.' Theo imagined
Zack's easy smile as he sat with a freshly laundered, quality
shirt in his well-ordered office, the light catching the blue
peppermint jar perhaps and the metal burnish of the
frame that held the photograph of his family. Zack was
accustomed to dealing with importunate people.
'Well, I think we made a good case for a rehearing, and
it doesn't do the court any good to have an outstanding
order either. This new willingness of the Maine-Kings to
compromise and work together is positive stuff, but a
judge will make the decision, and then of course there's
the response of the Californian court. Whatever happens
here, that original decision can only be addressed at source.
We're dealing with a lot of variables in all this you know.
Maybe it would be better if you didn't write much in the
meantime — the judiciary's very sensitive about media
pressure. Is that possible?'
'I can talk to the editor.'
'Are you planning to see Mrs Maine-King soon?' asked
Zack.
'Probably.'
'If the warrant's withdrawn, Penny and the boy can
have a more normal life. And her husband wants to come
out almost immediately if that happens. It'll strengthen
their case if both parents are in the country and willing to
appear before the court.'
'Sure.'
'I've told her most of this,' said Zack.
'Is Penny okay for money now?'
'A financial settlement is going through. I don't really
think I can be more specific than that, Theo.'
'No, that's fine,' Theo said.
'You look after yourself now,' the lawyer said. 'You've
made a considerable contribution. Erskine Maine-King told
me he had no complaints about you being in Nice, and that
could've been tricky considering the stuff you wrote here
in New Zealand.' Did Zack really feel there was no more
ambiguity than that in the meeting, or was he exercising
professional discretion? There could be fireworks there if
things go wrong, he might say to his wife. Someone's going
to be hurt pretty badly, he might say.
Theo thought about the Nice visit as he drove to
Drybread, and about why Penny and Erskine, who seemed
so competent as individuals, should have failed as a
couple. If she were asked, maybe Penny would say marriage
restricted her growth as a person, or her opportunity to
have a career. She might say she wasn't valued sufficiently,
or that her husband demanded an open relationship, which
was contrary to her beliefs. She might say she had left too
many friends and memories behind in New Zealand, or
that she had a vision of the risen Lord while doing pilates in
a mirrored former ballet training studio above a whiteware
showroom in downtown Sacramento. She might say that
only when she had a son did she understand the meaning
of love. She might talk about her father.
Penny's bach in the gully slumped under a strong sun,
even though it was May. The pale yellow-grey sod of the
original walls by the front door was warm to the touch,
and she had both doors open to air the place. She and Ben
had been waiting, and for a brief time she and Theo stood
there talking, with brightness at two ends of the short hall
through the house. It made the bach seem like one of those
false fronts of a movie set, lacking the dimension of depth.
Penny was in a mood new to Theo: less guarded, infused
with relief. She thanked him again. Relaxation suited her,
gave her an added attractiveness. For the first time he had
a true sense of the fearsome pressure she had been under,
and the willpower and stubbornness she had needed to
withstand it. He hoped she hadn't assumed too much, and
reminded her that the court hadn't made any ruling, but
she was convinced the agreement with Erskine was the key.
'Everywhere the law recognises the good of the child is the
main thing,' she said.
'Come in to the cake,' said the little boy beside them,
impatient with adult talk. He took hold of the pocket of
Theo's trousers and pulled him into the main room. On
the small wooden table was a rectangle of chocolate cake,
still sitting on its supermarket wrapper. 'Cake,' Ben said,
looking up for Theo's affirmation of the treat.
'Great,' he said. 'I like cake.'
'We can eat it.' He still held on with a small hand.
Theo noticed how much he had tanned since he first saw
him through the window, asleep. He was an attractive kid,
endearing even, but Theo felt a slight uneasiness, as if he
were in some way an imposter. Maybe it was just the feelings
he had for Penny, his recent conviction of Erskine's love
for the boy.
'I told him he had to wait until you came,' said Penny.
'I knew you wouldn't have had anything to eat.' She had
three filled rolls on a plate as well.
'Until Theo,' said Ben loudly.
'And now he's here,' said Penny. She and Ben had a
brief contest of wills over the sequence in which the food
was to be eaten, but she was firm, and Ben sat up at the
table, his head not much above it, and ate half a roll while
eyeing the cake as if he feared it might disappear.
Penny said they should be able to move from the place
soon. 'Erskine accepts that the marriage is over and that
Ben's first home should be with me. I've phoned him
twice since you've come back. We've sorted a lot of things.
Sorted stuff that I should have talked with him about
instead of just taking off. It seems so obvious now, and so
impossible then. But then you see things differently after
a few months like I've had here. I feel at last I'm climbing
out of the pit.'
Drybread was the sort of place in which it was difficult
to maintain self-deceit. There was a basic, stripped quality
to the landscape and existence that made evident lessons
which were elsewhere able to be evaded because of the
press of people with varied, plausible opinions, and the
deliberately false and noisy march of trivial entertainment,
received values and distraction. People complained that
they couldn't hear themselves think, and were intent on
maintaining just that protection.
Theo was determined to reflect Penny's optimism
and not bring her down. 'So hopefully I'll have one last
exclusive article for the paper, with a happy ending to it
all,' he said. 'I had a talk with the editor about not printing
any more until the court's made a decision, and he agreed.
Zack thought it would be advisable not to be seen to be
putting any pressure on.'
'A scoop,' said Penny. 'Christ, you'll have a genuine
scoop, and your editor and everyone will be chuffed.
Doesn't everyone love a happy ending, next to heartbreak
and tragedy of course. And I hope this isn't just any old
story for you, is it?'
'A story of immense personal significance,' said Theo.
He meant it, but used a tone which disguised sincerity.
'You must have to disengage from stories, though, in
your job, I mean. You spend time working to get close to
people and what's going on, and then it's over and you
move on.'
'You do, but you take something with you. If you're
half a journalist you learn as you go.'
'And you must meet some real weirdos,' said Penny.
Ben, permitted at last, was concentrating on his cake,
so Theo told Penny of a story he did while on his London
fellowship.
There was a one-armed man living in King's Cross
who claimed to be a descendant of Philip Stanhope,
fourth Earl of Chesterfield. He had a three-rung, wooden
library ladder and would mount it outside hotels and tube
stations, read from Lord Chesterfield's published letters
and seek donations with a green, fabric-covered hatbox.
He was adamant in protestation, but had no evidence of
aristocratic origins whatsoever. And no proof, either, of
having lost his arm in the service of Queen and country.
He was happy to harangue Theo, and delighted with any
publicity, but refused to give an address, or be interviewed
at his home. After three attempts as sleuth, Theo tracked
him to a forgotten orange portaloo behind a builder's
yard, and saw him creep in at nightfall, as a border collie
would to its kennel. He must have hung his one neat, grey
suit above him, the useless left sleeve folded with a large
stainless steel safety pin, and then slept curled on the floor.
Theo had said nothing of that discovery in the published
story. The guy could be dismissed as mad, Theo told Penny,
but maybe it was profitable delusion. The conviction of
noble lineage sustained him when he had nothing else on
which to base esteem: it even gave some sort of living, and
a role to distinguish him. 'I am of this blue blood,' he'd say
at every pause in his readings, swaying on the ladder stool
and as testimony holding high with his one arm the book
of the Earl of Chesterfield's letters.
'It's sad and funny at the same time,' said Penny.
'The best stories always are,' said Theo. 'My friend Nick
reckons people love to read about what they fear most for
themselves happening to someone else.'
Theo, Ben and Penny took their pieces of cake to the
back door, all three sitting on the Randall and Elizabeth
Nottage church pew. The day was very still, and the faint
smell of sheep and warm ground was in the air just as
it had been on Theo's first visit several months before,
though the oppressive heat of summer was gone. It was
almost as if they had never left the gully, and yet all the
subsequent developments had happened nevertheless.
Back then Penny had seemed to him selfishly absorbed in
her own problems, but he had come to realise something
of the isolation, the sense of disintegration, she had fought
against. Let nothing go wrong, Theo thought: just let
nothing go wrong for her.
They had some of Penny's beer, and Ben drank water
with a little juice added. Penny said that undiluted juice
rotted kids' teeth: good teeth were obviously something of
a priority for her. They talked about Nice, for Penny had
been there several times with Erskine to visit the business,
and knew the hotel in which he always stayed. 'I like the
antique shops close to that big monument by the sea,'
Penny said, and Theo felt a throb of identification with her
recollection. He thought of the Argentinean backpacker by
himself on the sand, making an inventory of his limited
possessions. 'I like the way it's both a very modern city and
an ancient one at the same time,' she said. 'The old doesn't
inhibit the new, and today's Nice hasn't obliterated the
past.' Theo thought of the dingy railway station, and the
people he had seen years ago from the train dossing down
under the bridge ends. He had an image of the South
African showing him his knife and the bloodstains, and
being his best friend for one night of their lives. 'Erskine
just spent his time at the factory whenever we were there,'
she said. 'Nothing about the city, or its history, interests
him at all.' Theo attempted to visualise Erskine seated with
them on the pew at Drybread with the sod wall behind
them and a view of the stubborn plum tree and the longdrop
dunny, but the incongruity was too great.
In the middle of the afternoon Penny took Ben into
the one bedroom, hoping he'd sleep. For a while he talked
to himself, but didn't come out, and then he was quiet.
Penny sat on the pew with Theo, and he began again with
something Zack had said about the American judge, but
she stopped him. 'We're always talking about me and the
awful crap that's happened,' she said. 'I realise that. Always
on about me and Ben and custody as if there's nothing
else in the world. You get like that when you're in trouble.
That's something I found out years ago. You get into a sort
of spiral of selfish preoccupation and misery. I bet you've
had a gutsful of listening to my problems.'
'Doesn't trouble make you more sympathetic to others,
though?' Theo asked.
'Did you find that? Did you find the failure of your
marriage made you more sympathetic — or more bitter?
When you're in the shit your emotions contract, it seems
to me.'
'Maybe at the time,' Theo said, 'but later, yes, I think
you can understand better what people go through. Not
everything of course, but understand better. You have a
sense of people hurting when they're talking about quite
harmless things. You know? Maybe they're on about
something that sounds stupid, or trivial, but there's a certain
suppressed agony in their voice which you recognise, a
hollowness which mocks what they say.'
This was going to be the time they talked about his
marriage, his feelings, he thought. Penny had shown little
curiosity before. Theo, she might say, we've been through
a lot of the same testing experience, and can understand
what it's like for each other. But Penny didn't have that in
mind. 'Sometime we should get into all the serious stuff,'
she said, 'but not today. I hope we'll still see each other
when things are sorted?'
'Me too.'
'What I'd like right now is for us to be able to take a
walk in the hills. There's great walks round here, even an
old gold sluicing pond at the top of the gully. With Ben I
haven't been able to do any of that, but I remember it all
from when I used to come here as a kid myself.'