Owen Marshall Selected Stories Read online

  Later Heather and Tinsley went out for a walk together. The girl took boots and parka from the porch, and Tinsley put on his coat. They looked in at the shearing-shed door. ‘Don’t hide in there all day, Uncle,’ Heather said. ‘Come up and help us with the dressmaking later on.’ George grumbled a reply, but his tone showed that he was pleased with the attention. Tinsley and Heather went down the steep track to the shingle beach. George was right; the mist was thickening into drizzle, drifting in from the sea, the drops so fine they rested unbroken like tiny bubbles on the fabric of Tinsley’s coat. The stones grated beneath their feet as they walked, and then Tinsley deliberately trod on the kelp pods, instead of bursting they squeaked and slid away. Each wave sprang fully formed through the fog and cast itself at the beach.

  ‘Tell me something honest now we’re alone,’ she said.

  ‘Did you think I’d come back to see you?’

  ‘I hoped you would.’

  ‘I felt absurd up there with Mrs Witham. As if I should make some declaration of intent.’

  ‘You’re a pessimist. Did you know that? And scratch a pessimist and you find an idealist underneath.’ Such glib generalisation in anyone else would have annoyed Tinsley. But she was probably right. He couldn’t remember anything in the last few years that had turned out better than he had expected. The wooden man, his wife had called him, because his temperament was so even. She had not recognised that polarity so characteristic of marriage: the more extravagant her own fluctuation of mood and experience, the more resigned and watchful he became, curbing in himself the qualities in her that disconcerted him.

  ‘Are you a moody person?’ he said.

  ‘Impulsive sometimes, but not moody. I’m not dependent on what happens outside as long as I’ve got my music.’

  Her fair hair was just beginning to cling in the dampness, and her face was smooth in its seriousness. He had the selfish idea that even if it didn’t work out between them, perhaps he could make love to her before it was over. That would be something, and he had grown accustomed to compromise, even in anticipation. But he wanted there to be trust. They talked out the things they felt they had to share, even his marriage, and Tinsley was surprised how shrewd the girl was in her comments, and how much blame she made him admit without blaming him herself. He complained half-seriously that their understanding was becoming very analytical, but she said firm ground was necessary to dance upon. Tinsley told her things he hadn’t told anyone for a long time, and felt better for it. They stood by the point where Tinsley and George Witham had seen the fishing-boat on his last visit to the peninsula. In the pearl light the rolling kelp beds weren’t brown, but a visceral mustard. ‘There’s always risk with honesty,’ she said without pretension, ‘but you’ve got to try don’t you? You’ve got to believe that you can really get to know people, and that it’s worthwhile to do so. Not much point otherwise.’ It was mundane the way she put it, but Tinsley knew she was right. There wasn’t much point otherwise, as she said.

  Tinsley met her often after that. He’d go down to the university when she had finished her lectures, or pick her up at the place where she boarded. They went to the movies sometimes. Neither of them seemed to feel any need to be in with a group. Sometimes Heather cooked for him in his flat, and sometimes he ran her out to Witham’s on Fridays, or back on Sundays. Having justified their love to himself Tinsley never thought there might be others who couldn’t accept it. He had grown out of the habit of considering other people’s personal feelings. In early winter Mrs Witham rang him up, and told him that he wasn’t welcome on the peninsula any more.

  Only a week or so later Heather’s parents came to see him.

  He was doing his washing, and thought at first they were clients that the insurance office had directed to his address. The concern that had driven them to come, plus the embarrassment they felt, was released in their anger. Mrs Preston’s hands twisted and worried at her handbag as she talked shrilly at Tinsley, letting out all the things she had been brooding on. Yet although the rush of words had an element of rehearsal, she couldn’t express herself as she wanted to, and her anger rose. Her husband stood grimly beside her, and in the few pauses that she allowed he repeated, ‘Just stop messing around with her. Understand?’ Although his wife was George Witham’s sister, Mr Preston bore the greater likeness; a brotherhood of farmers. His brown, seamed face was perplexed above the constriction of a tie, and the tops of his ears were scaly with repeated sunburn.

  Their anger depressed Tinsley. He tried to tell them how he felt about Heather, but it only brought on a greater shrillness and incoherence from Mrs Preston, and a more ominous emphasis from Heather’s father. Tinsley realized that as the threat to their daughter’s happiness he could have no right on his side, so he stood in the doorway of his flat still holding the soap packet, and listened in silence to all the reasons why Heather and he didn’t belong together. About his failed marriage, his age, his job, the effect on her musical career, even his motor-bike. Tinsley had considered most of these himself at one time or another, but he was unable to match the simple conviction of Heather’s parents.

  When Mrs Preston had finally spent herself, she stood panting, trying to think of anything she had not already repeated several times. It was the moment of greatest embarrassment for all three, for after such passion the platitudes of leavetaking were inappropriate; yet Tinsley didn’t wish to close the door in their faces without a word, and the Prestons groped for something on which to go.

  ‘Well then,’ Mrs Preston said, ‘Now you see.’

  ‘Just stop messing around with her. Understand,’ said Mr Preston again.

  They began to retreat awkwardly, Mrs Preston still half-facing him as if she regarded Tinsley as too dangerous to turn her back on.

  He took the company car down to meet Heather the next morning, and he watched the students on their way home, looking as withdrawn and harassed as any other group at the end of a working day. Heather stood out from the others, as one who is cherished always stands out. Her fair hair was bound back from her face, and the heavy material of her long skirt swirled from her hips.

  ‘Godowsky,’ she said, ‘I really love him.’

  ‘And Bruckner and Kodaly.’ Tinsley smiled as her aura filled the car. He knew the names of her favourites without any understanding; they might just as well have been the names of Italian foods that she loved and which he had never tried.

  In the flat he told her about the visit from her parents, trying to make it sound funny, to escape the hurt. First about Mrs Witham, then Mr and Mrs Preston. ‘Everybody seems so sure that they know what’s best. I wish I did.’

  ‘It’s time we went away,’ said Heather. She turned off the light. In the dull glow of the heater she began to undress, slipping the heavy skirt over her hips when the side zip was undone, and peeling off her jersey vigorously like a boy. Because she was broad-shouldered her breasts seemed small when she was clothed, but naked and with her arms in front of her body as she sat before the heater, they were full and tilted, the nipples stained like wine corks and the bra lines still traced on the pale skin. In contrast with her hair and skin, which seemed to gather in what light there was, Tinsley’s darkness was accentuated, and even the black hairs on his stomach lay close like pencil lines. His skin refused the heater’s light, and seemed all shadow, darkest over his shoulders and the muscles which flexed above his shoulder blade as he leant forward.

  ‘Let’s go away then,’ he said, and the glowing element caught the lines of his face in a pattern, a moko almost, of resignation.

  The next week Tinsley rode out along the headland one last time to get her; into the insolent pressure of the wind, and not wanting to look directly at the vacuum of the sea. The gulls whipped past with their wings locked, and though the helmet prevented him from hearing them, he knew their cynics’ cries.

  He was early at the top of the track, and he walked into the windbreak on George’s side of the road. The line was only a few t
rees thick, and most of them had branches, twisted and broken, which had wept resin onto the rough bark. Tinsley sat on the fallen pine-needles just far enough in to be hidden from the farmhouse below, and looked over the sloping paddocks of George Witham’s land. On the surface it was a reassuring sight, sheep and fences, earth and sky, all in their places; even the turnips right side up, the leaves with their veins exposed to the wind. But Tinsley had lost his boyhood trust in the benevolence of nature, and saw rather an isolating preoccupation with its own rotation of growth and decay. He was aware that as his powers of affection had lessened, he no longer had the conviction to sustain the existence of other people when he was alone.

  Yet she came. He saw her first just above the house, then she reappeared on the gully track much closer. She walked with a purpose, swinging an overnight bag. She didn’t seem consciously defiant, just convinced of her right to make her own way. Tinsley watched her smooth, round face, and the womanly curve of her hips as the wind blew her dress close. As they met and held hands neither could talk about the significance of what they were doing. ‘Tell me something honest,’ she said.

  ‘I hate the sea.’ Before they put on their helmets he looked once more directly out over the sea, and felt it yaw before him. ‘It’s the mockery of it,’ he said. ‘We won’t ever live by the sea.’

  ‘I always thought you people loved the ocean. Vikings of the sunrise and all that.’

  ‘Someday I’ll tell you what the sea really is,’ he said. He turned the bike around and swept along the summit road, and Heather behind him turned her face to one side and leant against his back. If Tinsley looked only ahead he could see the bulk of the land rise up before them.

  The Tsunami

  I remember it was the day of the tidal wave from Chile. ‘A tsunami,’ Peter had said again, angrily, as we stood by the bench at breakfast. ‘Nothing to do with the tide, nothing at all. A tsunami’s a shock wave.’

  Yet there it was in the paper of the night before; all about the Chilean tidal wave and how it was expected to be up to twentyfive feet high, and might sweep right over low-lying areas. Peter was doing a third unit of geography, and he took it as academic affront that even the newspaper talked about the tsunami as a tidal wave instead of a tsunami. Toby and I agreed, of course.

  ‘A tsunami, right,’ we said, but we still thought of it as the tidal wave. In all of us is the perversity to resist correction.

  We had tacitly decided that the tidal wave would be a big thing in our day. This wasn’t a compliment to Chile, or the wave. As students we found almost every day some preoccupation to shield us from our studies. Even now I have a fellow feeling when I read of prisoners who tamed cockroaches, or devised whole new political systems in their heads to pass the time. Thoreau knew that most of mankind understand a prisoner’s world.

  The newspaper said that the wave was expected between noon and two p. m., and over the radio there were warnings to farmers and property-owners to be prepared. It was a compelling notion: the great wave sweeping majestically across thousands of miles of ocean, to fall with thunderous devastation on our New Zealand. It quite captured the imagination of the city, and before midday the cars were streaming out to the coast.

  We bought pies and a half-gallon jar of apple wine on our way to the estuary. ‘A carafe, you mean,’ said the pale man in the bottle-store loftily. He still used hair cream and we mocked him as we went on.

  ‘A carafe, you mean. Oh quite, quite.’ We passed the jar of wine from one to another, regarding it quizzically and twisting our faces to suggest the features of the pale bottle-store man.

  By twelve-thirty the cars were parked in rows along the beach frontages, and their occupants belched comfortably and waited for something to happen. Many people were down on the beach, impatient for the tidal wave to come. Peter’s logical mind was outraged. ‘My God, look at these people,’ he said. ‘If the tsunami does come it’ll kill thousands, thousands of them.’ He gave a shrill laugh of exasperation and incredulity. But Toby and I were delighted; it accorded with the youthful cynicism we cultivated at the university. We drove up the hill and parked in a children’s play area, with swings, see-saws, and a humpty-dumpty among the grass. We took our apple wine and round pies, and sat with humpty-dumpty on his wall, looking down over the houses on to the crowds along the estuary and beach. Toby stuck out his corduroy legs in delight at the unsought demonstration of human nature acted out before him.

  ‘Look at them, Peter,’ he kept saying, and drew further joy from the resentment with which Peter watched the crowd press forward to the tsunami.

  Another car drove on to the playground, and a couple got out and stood with their backs supported by the grille, looking down upon the sea. Then the man wandered closer, and I recognised Leslie Foster. He sat on a swing with his hands hanging between his knees. He had a thin, Spanish face, with a beard to suit it, and his shoulders were slightly hunched in that typical way I recalled from the years we were at school together. At school at the same time would be a better description. He and I had mutual friends, but we never found any ease in each other’s company. I never trusted his sneering humour, and he considered me something of a milksop, I think. Yet at university we gave each other greater recognition, for there our common background, always taken for granted before, was something of a link.

  I went over and sat on the bleached, wooden seat of the other swing. I stretched my legs to pass the puddle in the rut beneath. ‘How are things?’ I said. He turned his head and gave his quirking, Spanish smile. ‘I don’t think that tidal wave’s coming,’ I said.

  ‘Bloody tidal wave. Who needs it?’ he said.

  We talked idly for a time, but every topic seemed to release the same bitterness, and he didn’t even pretend to listen to anything I said. He would screw up his eyes impatiently, and rock back on the swing. ‘She wanted to come out here today,’ he broke in. ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ We both looked over at the woman still standing at the front of the car and staring out to sea. As if she realised she was the topic of our conversation, she glanced back at us, then came over towards the swings. Les introduced her grudgingly as Mrs Elizabeth Reid, his landlady.

  ‘Nice to meet friends of Les,’ she said. I wouldn’t guess at her age, but she wasn’t a girl. She had a lot of flesh on her upper arms and shoulders, and her hips swept out like a harp. ‘I like a run in the car,’ she said. ‘Blows the cobwebs out and that, don’t you think?’ Les screwed up his eyes, and gave his mocking, lop-sided smile. ‘I wanted to go down by the beach with everyone else, but Les wouldn’t.’ She paused and then said, ‘It’s late,’ as if the tidal wave were a train or bus delayed by departmental inefficiency. ‘It’s a run out, though, isn’t it? A chance to have a breather.’ She had an unpleasant voice: ingratiating, but with a metallic edge.

  ‘Yes. Chance to have a breather,’ repeated Les, mocking the idiom, but she didn’t seem to realise it. She went off to sit in the car out of the breeze, and have a cigarette. Les and I were left swaying on the worn seats of the playground swings. ‘Chance to have a breather,’ said Les again, with morose emphasis. ‘Well, I suppose that’s fair enough. You’d laugh if I told you. If I told you what she’s sprung on me today.’ I didn’t ask. I wasn’t really interested in any of his confidences, but I knew he was going to tell me anyway. It was something to do with his loneliness, I suppose; picking on me just because I was there and we had been to the same school. ‘She’s pregnant, the lovely lady. She told me on the way out.’ He rocked back and forth, setting loose a distorted image in the water beneath the swing.

  ‘You could get something done, I suppose.’

  ‘Not easy,’ he said, with a sneer at my vagueness, and the ignorance of facts that it revealed. ‘Anyway, she feels that marriage is the best answer. She’s divorced, but thinks in terms of marriage.’ I made a feeble reply about how nice she seemed, and how things had a habit of working out. Les ignored it completely. ‘I’ll have to leave varsity. I can’t see myself g
etting by in fulltime study with her and a kid.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ It did seem a waste. Les was a clever student. Even at school he’d been a clever beggar, and he’d had straight As since then.

  ‘I can’t blame her for it happening.’ I admired him for saying that. In his own crabbed way he’d always seen things as they were. He was honest with himself. ‘She’s rather a passive person, really,’ he said. ‘Likes to talk more than anything else. It started last year. when she went on a citrus fruit diet. I used to go into the bathroom and joke about it when she stood on the scales with a towel round herself. Sometimes I’d put a foot deliberately on the scales, and she would laugh and jab back with her elbows.’ Les was going to say more, then he broke off with a barking laugh. ‘Funny how these things get started,’ he said, and he pushed out with his legs to get the swing going again as a sign he’d finished talking about the seduction of his landlady.

  I hadn’t wanted to hear about it, but personal revelations impose an obligation, and I asked him if he wanted some apple wine. ‘Love it,’ said Les, and he came with me back to the wall on which sat the patient humpty-dumpty, smiling in the face of his imminent fall and the tsunami. Les knew Toby, and I introduced him to Peter.

  ‘I don’t think the tsunami will persist across all that ocean,’ said Peter.

  ‘The what?’ said Les.

  ‘The tidal wave. He means the tidal wave,’ put in Toby and I.

  ‘That bloody thing,’ said Les with belittling contempt, looking not out to sea, but towards the car and his landlady. He tipped the apple wine down his throat without appearing to swallow. We could hear its unimpeded gurgle as it went down, and we began to drink more rapidly to keep up. Les cast a malaise over our group, interrupting the established pattern of our relationships. He was interested only in his own problems, and our wine.