Owen Marshall Selected Stories Read online

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m off up to Christchurch tonight. Danny’s got a job for me in Lyttelton. As soon as I can I’ll be on one of the big overseas ships. You know, European ports and all that.’ Supper Waltz’s brothers were all seamen, as if united in some quest. He had a period of bravado, and got carried away describing all the things he was going to do as a sailor, but I knew he was churned up inside. It showed in his restlessness, and the flickering eyes like light through the wings of a bird in a cage.

  Before he went I crept back upstairs, and got eleven shillings for him. It was all I had, but I gave him the two flat tins of Abdullah cooltip as well. I always kept them to smoke on weekend nights when I went out. I turned out the garage light, and went with Supper Waltz down the street a bit so we wouldn’t be heard outside the house. Supper Waltz kept talking urgently about all the things that lay before him. I think that, once started, he was more set on convincing himself than me. Although I was his best friend, and he’d come to me, I felt for the first time there in the dark street that Supper Waltz had already gone. He’d cast off from the rest of us, and was on his way. He’d made the break. The exhilaration of it seemed to separate us. ‘See you, Hughie. Wish me luck, Hughie.’ His fierce mood drove him running down the pavement, until he was lost in the shadows of the trees around the orphanage.

  If it had been me, or Graeme, or Pongo, they would soon have caught us, but I didn’t think they’d catch Supper Waltz if he didn’t want them to. Supper Waltz knew the way of the world. Supper Waltz would look after himself, you bet, I told myself.

  Keep running, Supper Waltz, don’t let the morepork get you.

  A Southland Girl

  The road to the Heads wound along the backbone of the land, and although the slope was not sheer on either side, green paddocks dipping over the flanks and trees around the solitary homesteads, yet Tinsley felt dizzy. The sea was three boundaries, and over its intensity his eyes slid without purchase. He felt that if he looked too long, he would be sucked from the peninsula into the flat horizon of the sea. The wind was only moderate by coastal standards, but it had that special momentum of wind unchecked across a thousand miles of ocean. Not a gusting, straining wind, but a constant and insolent pressure like the palm of a hand on his chest. Tinsley could feel it alter its point of pressure as he turned off the gravel road to the Heads, and began descending the track to Witham’s. He held the big Ariel in second, and the drag of the engine was sufficient to slow him. As he dropped lower, the small spurs of the peninsula rose up around him and the vertigo of the top road passed. The abstract totality of the ocean was hidden, and on the stony beach below Witham’s he could hear real waves, and see the swirling kelp beds at the point.

  Unlike most of the farmhouses of the peninsula, Witham’s was not weatherboard and red iron roof. It was a comparatively modern house made of small aggregate blocks, tinted unpleasant shades of blue and pink, it had a netting fence all round to keep out the stock, but there was no garden apart from residual ornamental firs, burnt on the seaward side by the salt winds. Farther away were the sheds, yards, and trucking ramp, all on such a slope that Tinsley had the impression that one good kick would send the lot on to the beach below.

  Tinsley couldn’t find an area flat enough to take the stand of the heavy motorbike, and so he leant it on the timber supports of the shearing shed. George Witham was fixing the fence at the creek above the beach. Tinsley made his way towards him over the sloping ground contoured with sheep tracks. The grass was a prosperous green, but Tinsley knew it was a sham. The peninsula country lacked necessary trace elements, leached by continual dampness. George had a post each side of the small creek, and was hanging a baton on netting between them. When the creek flooded, the baton and netting would swing back with the current and allow rubbish to pass underneath instead of building up on the fence and tearing it out. George was attaching the baton with staples and green baling twine when Tinsley arrived.

  ‘No fog today, George.’

  ‘Fog or bloody wind. We only have the two alternatives here. Today it’s wind.’ George put some more staples in his mouth, and lifted one foot out of the creek mud before the boot went under. He wore old, pin-stripe suit trousers and a sports coat with the pocket torn away. His face was weathered but not careworn, the lines of youth simply more deeply etched, and his hair stuck innocently up from the crown of his head as a schoolboy’s does, though he was fifty-odd. He was one of Tinsley’s original clients and Tinsley knew his nature.

  ‘I hear Godsall next door has sold up. Couldn’t make a go of it,’ said Tinsley. George’s lined face lightened. Misfortune was his only form of humour. ‘Left most of his money with the stock firm, they say. Didn’t come out of it with much.’ George nodded, and actually smiled, showing wet galvanised staples in the spaces where teeth were missing. ‘Have you seen the new chap yet? I thought I might call on him later.’

  George cupped his hand and emptied his mouth of staples. ‘Selwyn Hamilton,’ he said. ‘Comes from mid-Canterbury way. Doesn’t look a farmer’s arsehole to me.’ George smiled again, drew the other boot from the mud and sought firmer ground.

  ‘Th is fire of yours, George, I’d better take a look at it. The sooner the paper work’s done, the sooner we can pay out.’

  ‘The east side of the hay shed. I’ve left it just as it was when we put it out. I’d say the best part of a hundred bales. You have a look for yourself, and then go up to the house. The wife’s out but my niece is staying with us, a Southland girl, she’ll make us a cup of tea.’ As George turned back to the fence he noticed a fishing-boat setting cray-pots off the point. The small boat seemed to be having difficulty with its engine. ‘Might be in trouble,’ said George, brightening, but as they watched the engine caught, and the boat moved out again. The crewman leant on the cabin, smoking. George put staples in his mouth once more, and Tinsley walked back over the sloping paddock to the yards.

  He inspected the charring in the shed and agreed with George’s estimate. In his book he wrote some notes to use on the claim form, and then went uphill to the house. He didn’t hear the piano until he was inside the gate, for he was upwind and the sound was swept away towards the summit road. It was fluent and authoritative playing, and Tinsley thought it a record or cassette. He couldn’t imagine Mrs Witham playing the piano. Tinsley knew nothing of music; the only record he had ever bought was a collection of film themes, and he’d given that to his brother when he left home. But as he stood there by the pale pink and blue blocks of Witham’s house, seeing the waves surge up the beach, and the flat stones scuttle like crabs back to the sea, he felt the music sharp and fresh pass like a shiver through him.

  Tinsley’s knock at the door was answered by a call, and he went in, closing the door firmly against the pressure of the wind. There was no-one in the kitchen, but past the sliding doors to the living-room he could see a girl at the piano. She wore jeans and a yellow skivvy top, and her fair hair swung gently as she played. In the dulling conformity of that room, its two-tone tufted suite, nest of coffee-tables, and setter dogs in bas-relief on the fire-guard, she eclipsed her setting with natural individuality, and drove back banality to the corners of the room.

  She turned her head and told him to sit down. Tinsley didn’t go into the room, but took one of the kitchen chairs and sat by the sliding doors to listen. He was surprised how rapidly she played, and had the fancy that the girl was working quickly and skilfully like a juggler to keep it all in the air above them, dancing and colourful.

  ‘Godowsky,’ she said when the piece was finished. ‘I told myself that I was going to play it right through. I didn’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘It was great.’

  ‘What did it make you feel?’ The girl had a round face, and her eyebrows were thin and arched. Tinsley thought the jeans she was wearing were probably boys’, for they were very tight at the hips, but too big at the waist. She watched him seriously as though she valued his opinion. It m
ade him feel selfconscious, and he was annoyed with himself because of it.

  ‘I’m not much on music I’m afraid,’ he said.

  ‘What you mean is you’re shy about discussing it.’

  ‘What I mean is what I said. I don’t know enough about music to discuss it. It’s not one of my interests.’ Tinsley found himself ruffled, not so much at her question and his ignorance, as the situation of arguing with the girl before he had met her. It unsettled him.

  ‘I know quite a lot about music,’ she said. ‘I’m completing a music degree. Music’s so important to me, I expect everybody else to be just as interested. I think we’re all like that; each with our own obsession.

  Don’t you?’ Tinsley wasn’t going to answer that without returning to what should have been done first.

  ‘My name’s Wade Tinsley. I’m your uncle’s insurance rep. George said to come up to the house for morning tea.’

  ‘What’s your obsessive interest?’ she asked earnestly, and she leant forward on the swivel piano-stool to watch him.

  It was an odd and trivial stalemate, broken by George Witham’s arrival from the paddocks. George struggled on the doorstep for a time to get his boots off, then came through into the kitchen. ‘You’ve met Heather then,’ he said as a statement, and as the girl put on the jug for tea she smiled at Tinsley; nothing coquettish, but an open smile at the paradox of human relationships.

  As they drank the tea, and Tinsley prepared the claim form, George looked idly at the paper. ‘Another clothing firm gone phut,’ he said with mild satisfaction. ‘Three teenagers killed on the motorway. Nobody ever learns.’ Witham ran his finger around the inside of his mouth, as if suspecting that a last staple remained there, and then drained his cup with a gulp. ‘I can’t see things getting any better,’ he said, and brightened at the thought.

  Witham and Heather went down to the sheds when Tinsley left. George was on his way back to the fence, but the girl had no other reason than to watch Tinsley go. As he turned the motor-bike to face up the hill it overbalanced, pulling him with it so that he nearly fell. Heather and George laughed and for the first time Tinsley recognized a family similarity. ‘Is there any flat piece at all on this bloody farm of yours, George?’ he asked with mock bitterness.

  ‘None at all,’ said Witham contentedly and went off to his work.

  ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’ Her eyelashes were darker than her hair, and her upper arms were round and smooth. ‘Sorry I laughed but it looked quite funny. Why don’t you have a car? It seems strange to have a bike for business?’

  ‘Are you completing a degree in that too? Studying occupational transport patterns?’ For all her apparent forwardness she was easily rebuffed, but Tinsley watched her flush without a sense of victory.

  ‘No need to be nasty,’ she said.

  Tinsley felt compelled, as a form of oblique apology, to answer her question. ‘My family had an agency for British bikes,’ he said. ‘I’ve got used to having motor-bikes, I suppose; I don’t usually fall over them.’

  ‘I like all the chrome bits. Would you take me up to the turnoff?’ She clasped him firmly as they started off, and on the way up Tinsley left the track, sweeping up and down the grassy bank along the side, giving voice to the easy power of the four cylinders.

  At the top road he halted. The flat sea was a vacuum on three sides, and the insistent salt wind sucked away his breath. They sat overlooking Witham’s farm; so foreshortened by the incline that the house seemed to be set in the sea itself, and the sheds to have slipped to the beach as Tinsley had imagined. Heather told him she had no lectures on Fridays, and often came to Witham’s for weekends, to reduce boarding costs. The wind raised goose-pimples on her round arms, and blew the hair back from her face. She had broad shoulders to match her hips; small breasts, set rather low. Tinsley found himself looking often at girls’ breasts and legs since his marriage broke up.

  ‘I had a letter yesterday,’ she said, ‘from my boyfriend. Saying we were finished.’

  Tinsley accepted the almost impersonal frankness. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘He’s found someone else I suppose. He kept on about getting married, but I wasn’t sure. On and on all the time about getting married; now he’s found someone else.’

  ‘I used to be married,’ said Tinsley. It was as if another person was speaking. Tinsley could not believe he was telling a stranger about his life. ‘I was married for six years. I learnt the difference between men and women; men accept their isolation, women see the world as an extension of themselves.’

  ‘I don’t know much about people. My boyfriend and I never seemed to be honest with each other. When I saw you come today I made up my mind I was going to be honest with you, whoever you were.’ She smiled at him again, as if pleased with her resolution, and how she had stuck to it. They watched each other for a moment without speaking, both aware that the game grew harder not easier as they knew more of each other. ‘Will you come out and see me again?’ Ten years before he would have taken the invitation in only one way; he would have drawn her into the pines and kissed her as a prelude, but he had grown more cynical. He had suffered the outcome of such things blithely begun.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘I’m thirty-four. If I came out again what would we do? Talk of the intricacies of human relationships, or make love in one of George’s hedges?’

  ‘Tell me something honest before you go then,’ and she waited, looking up at him. Her eyes were grey, and her smile put two new-moon creases at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘I don’t like looking at the sea from up here. It makes me giddy.’

  She laughed and looked round the three sides of ocean as though to test his fear. ‘I love it,’ she said. ‘Tell me something else.’

  ‘I never knew a round face could be beautiful,’ and he wondered if he should kiss her after all.

  ‘No sexy stuff. If you come out again, I’ll play more Godowsky for you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be along the peninsula for a while.’ He put on his helmet, and she retreated a step or two as he started the bike.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she shouted over the engine noise, and Tinsley raised his hand. Through the tinted perspex of his full visor helmet the picture of her was subdued, and he felt sorry for her and for himself. Sorry that life doesn’t resemble thoughts about life, and that things change.

  Each return to his flat gave Tinsley the fleeting impression of having walked in a chronological circle, and caught up with his own past. It was one of the dangers of living alone. The paper was a pale tent on the carpet where he had dropped it, the open marmalade jar sat next to the toaster on the bench, and through the door to the bedroom the wrinkled sheets of his unmade bed caught the late afternoon sun. Even the vacant easy-chair and blank television set held their angles of the night before. Tinsley spent a few minutes not so much tidying as moving his belongings about to reassure himself that the day had passed.

  He grilled himself some sausages, leaving the oven light on in the darkened room so that he wouldn’t forget them as he made his phone calls. She was still in his mind though, the Southland girl. The people he had met later in the day were not substantial, but Heather and Witham’s farm, even the fearsome sea, were as clear as ever. He could see her thin, arched eyebrows, and feel her arms in casual embrace as they rode up to the turn-off. Tinsley told himself he should have taken what he could get. His wife would be amused to find him thinking of another woman. ‘Aren’t you a fine one?’ she would say. ‘The playboy of the western world.’ She prided herself on such literary allusions. She had attended a course on modern drama at the polytech, and had almost the full set of abridged novels from the Reader’s Digest. She liked the uniformity of height they made along the bookcase shelves.

  He watched the sausages spitting at the oven light, and even as he affirmed the conclusion not to go to Witham’s again, he knew he would.

  There was fog on th
e peninsula when he went back with George Witham’s cheque. Fog so heavy that the gravel on the road was wet, and the road materialised out of the mist only yards before him, and was lost only yards behind. Tinsley seemed to be travelling the same section with drooping grass verges again and again. Some sheep, the same colour as the fog, scampered in front of him before thinking to turn off, and stood stupidly pressing against the wire fence as he passed. The fog confused Tinsley’s sense of distance, and he was on the point of stopping, wondering if he had overshot, when he came to the turn-off. Mist billowed up the track, muffling the sound of his motor-bike, and cutting off any sight of the sea, although he could hear the waves on the beach below Witham’s sheds.

  George was making repairs on his woolpress, the wood waxy-brown from the oil of generations of fleeces. ‘Bloody top won’t swing away cleanly,’ said George, and he gave the press a warning kick.

  ‘How’s Selwyn Hamilton getting on next door?’

  ‘Struggling,’ said George with a pleasure devoid of malice. ‘Footrot’s giving him a real hammering.’

  ‘Fog’s thick today, George.’

  ‘You’ll see it’ll get worse. Then it will blow from the southeast for about three days. It’s either wind or fog on the peninsula, you know that, Wade.’

  Tinsley gave George the cheque, and they talked about the stubborn imperfections of the press. Tinsley said he might go up to the house and say hello to Heather. ‘I wouldn’t,’ said George. ‘They’re dressmaking up there; bits and pieces all over the place.’ But Tinsley went up all the same.

  Mrs Witham came to the door. She was a tall, calm woman whose apparent serenity may have been a reflection of inner contentment, or simply unresponsiveness. Behind her, amid the spread patterns and material in the living room, Heather was kneeling. It warmed him to see the welcoming pleasure in her face. Despite the feeling between them, Tinsley had to play the stranger and stand before Mrs Witham while they made talk so small that it disappeared altogether after a time.