Between My Father and the King (26 page)

When the woman's husband and two sons and two daughters returned home, the woman told them of the hedgehog.

‘It will probably die overnight,' they said comfortingly. The children were grown-up, working, out in the world with little time to think about hedgehogs.

‘And I haven't the time, either,' the woman thought. She hoped the thing would die overnight as the family predicted.

The next morning the hedgehog was still alive. It had not touched the saucer of milk the woman had put out late the night before. At least the grass protected it from the blowflies.

Two further days and nights passed, and the next morning, the woman found the hedgehog dead and at once covered it with the waiting heap of earth.

‘Well, that's over,' she said to herself.

She went inside to her desk and began to write her essay on Ancient History. She knew as she wrote that some signpost, some path in her mind, had been changed.

Ted Polson's suicide remains a mystery to me. Of all people I, one of his closest friends and his workmate for twenty years, should have been able to discover why he died. His wife was shocked and baffled, and his grown-up son and daughter, and the company, Despatch Concrete Limited, and this general bewilderment was reflected in the coroner's remarks at the inquest: there seemed to be no earthly reason why Ted Polson, fifty-three, happily married, happily employed, in sound financial circumstances, in good health, should have killed himself. I'm going to describe the facts and the events and I'll make a bet with you, for I'm a gambling man, that you also won't be able to solve the mystery.

The facts. First, his home life: as smooth as a dream, slippers by the fire, socks darned and shirts ironed, even the non-iron ones; two handsome children, the son in the sixth form at high school going on to university and a science degree, heading for the DSIR; a daughter engaged to the son of one of those Roslyn businessmen,
pots of money, a two-storeyed double-brick place overlooking the harbour, an alpine garden with plants flown specially from the Southern Alps — not in my line, but promising a good setup for the daughter. Ted was looking forward to hobnobbing with Frank and Gertie Molyneux at the wedding reception in the Alpine Garden — he didn't actually say so but I could tell it tickled him pink and only a week before he died he was joking about it; though now I come to think of it I did most of the joking for Ted was not really the lively sort — he could take jokes but not make them; you could try your jokes on him, like striking matches on the right surface, and then you and he would have a good old laugh, it all seemed so much funnier than when you first thought of it. Ted could take a joke anytime. He wasn't one of the moody sort you sometimes get; things didn't get him down easily. He'd be quiet, mind you, but that was because he'd often have nothing to say, and what's the point of speaking if you've got nothing to say?

His wife was better at finding things to say. What a wife! The house was neat but not so neat that Ted couldn't tramp inside in gardening boots, though being a neat chap himself he probably didn't tramp inside in gardening boots. The house was in order, but not too much in order. You were never frightened to sit down on the chairs or to tread on the carpets in the Polson house. You were made welcome, fed like a king. Ted's wife was a jokey sort, too, with a spark in her eye that no one had to strike, it was just there. Her father had been one of the old-style grocers who used to measure stuff out in scoops and weigh it before your eyes — not like now where it's all weighed in secret — and there was always something in the Polson household to remind you that Eva Polson was the daughter of a grocer; for one thing, she bought everything in bulk. ‘I buy in bulk,' she used to say, and it suited her; she could handle more than an ordinary woman, she could deal in bulk, feed in bulk, and the table was always topped with far too much food, and now I come to think of it it's funny that
Ted was so thin, in spite of the food; thin, wiry, but healthy.

Sometimes he'd have done better to have stayed in bed — running nose, germs, sneezes etc. that spread quickly round the works — but that was his way, he'd fight it and in a couple of days he'd be as right as rain. I never knew him crook for more than a couple of days. His wife was the healthy sort, too, as you'd expect, brought up in a grocer's home with plenty of food. She had legs and arms as thick as pine trees. Her old man died when the supermarkets came in. Don't get me wrong, he didn't die
because
the supermarkets came in, only
when
: he was old enough to die. There was no harking back to the past with Edmund Ward: he died because it was probably his time to die; and he had a big funeral, more cars than I've seen out here for years, all the way from Green Island to Andersons Bay and half the florists in Dunedin must have supplied flowers though it was No Flowers by Request, but who takes notice of that: those big orange and pink sunsetty gladdies, smooth as windshields. I remember that funeral because it wasn't long after my own father died.

I remember I saw Ted Polson in the first car, in a black suit with a white collar sticking up like a ruff, and his face was solemn as was proper and right, and his wife was beside him, all bouncy, now I remember it, in black, and the day was fine without a breath of wind — fine in the city, that is; I don't answer for out Andersons Bay; a chilly place to be buried, I should think.

Fifty-three, happily married, in sound financial circumstances — his pay at the works was fair, pretty good I should say, for he was a skilled worker, apprenticed straight from school and spending most of the thirty years he worked for the firm in looking after the furnace. For the last twenty years that has been my job, too, and there we were all day with our eye-shields being popped on and off, opening and shutting the door to inspect the flame, adjusting the pressure, the heat, according to our own judgment of the flame. Ted was better at it than I, he was a wizard with the
flame, I never knew anyone like him; he'd open the door, peer in, say quickly, It's the wrong colour, it's too hot, not hot enough, it's not burning as it should, and then he'd dart to the control panel and turn switches and pull levers until everything was right again; and all the judgment was in his eyes and his head. He knew, you see. He knew the flame. He and the flame were as close as close, like man and wife so to speak. I never knew the flame half as well as he did, and sometimes when I'd be on duty and I'd open the door I'd not be able to tell what was going on inside the furnace, just that it was a roaring flame, then I'd call Ted.

‘Nip over here Ted, is she right?'

And with one gecko Ted would be able to tell. And was he proud of himself, knowing the flame the way he did! He never talked about it, but you could see the shine in his face. When he got home he didn't plague his wife with talk of what he did at work, though sometimes she'd ask, maybe with a glint of jealousy in her eye, ‘How's the furnace today, Ted?' and he would grin, ‘Fine, fine.' And his wife would say, laughing,

‘That furnace is our bread and butter.'

Which it was.

And because the pay was pretty good the furnace was not only the Polsons' bread and butter — it was their washing-machine, their television, their car (Holden Special), their caravan and the observatory complete with telescope that Ted had set up in a room at the top of the house. He said he'd made it for his son but now I come to think of it he spent a lot of time there in the evenings, stargazing.

Flamegazing all day, stargazing at night; yet he was a practical man — Ted was no dreamer, he didn't want to change the world; or if he did he didn't mention it; and he came round to mentioning most things, including that dustup his daughter and her first boyfriend had with the police, playing chicken with the motorbike — chicken the way the mynahs play it on the roads up north.

So. Fifty-three, happily married, happily employed, in sound financial circumstances, in good health . . .

I think you'll agree that there's no earthly reason why Ted should have killed himself. I think that I win my bet and if we're making it a high stake I'll be able to make one of those jet trips to Aussie, skindiving, crocodile hunting — though maybe I'm not young enough for that now, you have to be in your teens to enjoy that sort of thing. In your teens or a retired American. Now I come to think of it that's what Ted said to me one day. You have to be in your teens to get anywhere. He knew he was getting on of course, ten years or so to retiring age, and he looked forward to it, time with the family and the house and the caravan, he'd say. So don't go thinking of his age as a reason for his suicide.

No, the whole thing just wasn't like Ted at all.

I've not much more to say. His death came as a terrible shock. Things were moving at the works that week. There'd been an inspection by one of the heads from Wellington and the next we knew it the works were ‘modernised'. Again, don't get me wrong. Ted didn't kill himself because we were modernised. Actually it didn't affect us much except that a new gauge panel that looked like the controls of a jetplane was installed to regulate the flame by instrumental control, and that meant our job became quite cushy, we didn't have to inspect the flame any more, we just had to read the panel and turn the right switches; though of course Ted, out of habit, kept opening the door and making his own judgment and then turning the levers, and his judgment didn't always agree with what the instruments said. But he knew the flame, you see. No man ever knew a furnace flame so thoroughly. The younger blokes and I had a bit of a laugh at Ted now and again and Ted took it all in good fun, and he even shared the joke when we told him how we'd found out the foreman had started sneaking round to adjust the pressure and the heat on the quiet, so as not to hurt Ted's feelings; for the new gauge, the foreman told us, was more
sensitive than the human eye and Ted was only making himself work by opening and shutting the door to inspect the flame. Ted seemed a bit glum when we told him but he cheered up and joined in the joke.

‘You're right,' he said, ‘I don't want to go making work for myself, do I?'

I was crook for a couple of days after that, and stayed home as I hadn't the good health Ted enjoyed, and it was while I was crook that I heard of his death. I'll not make a judgment on anyone but it was the messiest death a man could have chosen: he cut his throat with a razor.

And now, don't you think I have won my bet? There was really no earthly reason for his suicide. How about my cheque for the ten-day tour of Australia?

I hope you will forgive me but I wish to put you right on some matters. The first is, if you will again pardon me, that the thoughts you have said that I think are not my thoughts at all. When I took the flowers to my husband's grave I did not think what you said I thought. It was a mild day, yes, and naturally I was sad not to be able to get out more often to Ted's grave but I did not want to stay there and lie down in the grass as reported by you. Nor has this anything to do with the bath. It is true that I panicked one night when I couldn't get out of the bath, for my back and shoulder are painful as you rightly say and my wrists don't just seem to be able to grasp anything anymore. If you wanted to go on about this you should have said while you were at it that sometimes I fumble with the matches when I'm lighting the gas, and I find it hard to lift the saucepan and the kettle and the teapot. Opening the lid of the coal
bin is torture; I tell you that — privately of course for I'd rather that it were not aired to the world as you have done, though it was kind of you to feel for me. I must repeat that I definitely do not think the thoughts you made me think about graves and baths and my head under the earth with wheels going over it. That would be terrible! Finally I would like to point out that while it is agreed that I get dizzy when I look up at the sky I do not look up because the clouds have never interested me. Some people, I know, take a pleasure in clouds. I have never been one of these; they could be soap-suds or bolts of calico sheeting for all I care.

I hope that if you are going to write any more stories about me (and I'd rather you didn't) you will tell the truth and not invent things.

Phyllis Harroway

P.S. My parents' grave has grass growing on it because they preferred it this way, not because I am too mean to spare a few shillings from my pension to buy them flowers.

P.H.

Once upon a time pacts carried the certainty of a signature in blood, not the futility and pallor of ballpoint. Perhaps there are yet some signed in a kind of invisible blood, though not the one I am writing about here. It was a happy pact involving what often makes however for unhappiness — the territory of being. You see, Ewart Cuttle and Alf Reder were two middle-aged men who, finding the nature and ability of one could satisfy the needs of the other, decided to make . . . a pact.