Owen Marshall Selected Stories (2 page)

For quite a long time as I read Marshall's stories, I knew there was an aspect to them that I could not quite find the word for. Then it occurred to me that he is one of those writers who makes you aware of the rich tradition of the genre he is writing in, even when what he does is very much his own. To think of writers as diverse as Hawthorne or O'Connor, H.E. Bates or Hemingway, as one comes to the end of Marshall, is not because his stories derive from theirs, but because of what they have in common: that same commitment to getting their time and their people right, with a rightness that is both moral perspective, and aesthetic choice. To be convincingly part of that tradition is also to extend it.

As legal counsel like to put it, I am happy, after calling sixty witnesses, to rest my case.

S
upper Waltz loved oysters, and in the season he had them for his tea whenever his mother was on the afternoon shift. About half-past four, after we'd been playing along the cliffs, or wandering in the town, he'd buy his oysters. He couldn't wait any longer. If the rest of us had any money we'd buy some too, and walk up to the shelters over-looking the bay. Winter is the time for oysters, and from the shelters we would watch the leaden waters of the harbour, and the heat from the oysters and chips would make our noses run. Pongo, Graeme, Supper Waltz, and I. Supper Waltz didn't just eat his oysters; he ravished them. First he would tear off the batter, then hold the steaming oyster by its frill and bite cruelly into its centre with his sharp teeth. Sometimes, as a conscious indulgence, he'd eat two at once, growling with pleasure deep in his throat. It was another occasion on which we realised that Supper Waltz had a heightened perception of the world.

Children take their own situation as the universal one when they're young. My father dominated our family as naturally as a pyramid does the sands. That's why I always found the Wilson household disconcerting, I suppose. Mr Wilson was a butcher, but years ago he'd had a revelation from the Lord telling him not to work anymore, and his religious conviction never wavered afterwards. He always seemed to be in his room. Scores of times I was at the Wilsons', and if Mr Wilson was mentioned he was almost always in his room. If he wasn't then he was in the lavatory singing hymns. He knew all
the words, and never had to go dum-de-dah or some-such in places. He didn't seem to have much of an ear, though, and it wasn't good to listen to. Once he was singing, and Supper Waltz's eldest brother was in the kitchen. ‘Arse arias again today, Mum,' he said, and Mrs Wilson threw down the carrot she was scraping into the sink, and began to laugh. The carrot splashed up water on to her face, and the drops ran like tears as she laughed. Supper Waltz laughed a lot too, and I joined in the way you do when you're not sure why.

Mrs Wilson worked in the woollen mills. She often seemed to be just coming, or just going. A very matter-of-fact woman, Mrs Wilson. Tall and strong, lacking any graces. When she cycled up the rise to the house, she didn't get off and wheel the bike the way other women did, but stood up on the pedals, using her weight and strength like a man, pushing right up to the gate. Pongo's and Graeme's mothers usually said hello to me, or asked about my parents, but I don't remember Mrs Wilson saying anything at all to me — except the once. A hard woman if she wanted to be I guess, Mrs Wilson. Wherever Supper Waltz got his looks it wasn't from his mother. They had the same eyes, though. The same restless, flickering eyes, like light through the wings of a bird in a cage.

Most grown-ups didn't like Supper Waltz. They were used to youngsters who were socially clumsy, and submissive to authority. The Reverend Mr Weir called him a smart aleck and barred him from the Boys' Brigade, and old Raymond detested him. Adults didn't understand the fierce vision of Supper Waltz's world, and they resented his unspoken contempt of their ways. The square of the hypotenuse, the 1832 Reform Act, were as dead leaves to Supper Waltz, and only art interested him. Old Raymond loved to ridicule him. ‘And how many, Wilson, did you say you got for the test? Speak up lad. You got nothing! Well, perhaps that explains why I couldn't hear anything, Wilson. I didn't hear any mark because you didn't get any mark. Not a one, lad.' Raymond with his broken teeth and first class honours degree, had to get his own back. I understand it better
now. Raymond hated Supper Waltz because he neither needed nor desired anything that Raymond had, and they both knew it.

Girls knew that Supper Waltz was different too. Supper Waltz seemed old in the ways of the world. As fifth formers it wasn't easy for most of us to be the ladies' man. Pongo had a face as round and as innocent as a child's. Baby Brother, the girls called him. Supper Waltz never missed out at a teenage dance; Supper Waltz was a parochial legend of our youth. He went home with sixth form girls, and some even that had left school. Girls came looking for Supper Waltz, some without knowing why and blushing because of it. Some girls hated Supper Waltz, they said — afterwards. Supper Waltz rarely danced in the early part of the evening. He'd hang around the door, smoking, talking, watching who went in and who went out. We'd nudge one another and snigger when the supper waltz was announced. I don't think I ever saw Supper Waltz refused by a girl.

Supper Waltz had an understanding of women all right. Like the time I wanted to go out with Alice Hume. She was at the private girls' school. She wore a short, green skirt in the hockey games, and the inside of her thighs was flat and smooth. It used to give me a headache just watching her. Supper Waltz and I waited for her as she went to church, and I asked her to see me the next weekend. I thought she was going to say yes, but finally she went off laughing with the others without giving an answer. She had a rather longer dress on that day but I still got a headache. Supper Waltz didn't joke about her or anything. We went into the golf course nearby and hunted for balls to sell. After a while I asked him why Alice Hume hadn't said she'd go out with me. Supper Waltz had no trouble with the answer. ‘It's the Fair Isle jersey,' he said. ‘No girl will make a date with you in a Fair Isle jersey' My mother had given me the jersey for my last birthday. I thought of it as part of my best clothes. ‘It's a kid's jersey, Hughie, see?' said Supper Waltz frankly ‘Girls think a lot about that sort of thing.' Supper Waltz was right of course. With some of my money from potato picking I bought a denim top, and I
did my hair without a part before I asked Alice Hume again. I never told Supper Waltz about her thighs and my headaches, but the day she agreed to go out with me Supper Waltz watched her walk away and said, ‘She has really good legs, you know, really good legs', and he seemed pleased for me in a brotherly way.

It might seem that Supper Waltz was always the leader, and that I was just tagging along all the time, but it wasn't really like that. There were ways in which Supper Waltz depended on me. With adults, for example, Supper Waltz let me do most of the talking. Even old Raymond said on my report that I was a straightforward, sensible boy. He meant predictable, I think. I was in the cricket team by the fifth form, and bigger than most of the others. I kicked Wilderborne in the back when he picked on Supper Waltz in the baths enclosure. Both Pongo and Graeme were better than Supper Waltz at some things too; Graeme was dux in the end. We all lacked the vision of Supper Waltz though. The world was sharper, brighter for him, and the meaning always clear. Once Supper Waltz, Graeme and I went camping in the Rangitata Gorge, and came down the rapids on lilos. The water was a good deal rougher than we thought. Graeme got thrown off his lilo and smashed two teeth out on the rocks. I went on only because I couldn't stop. I felt sure I was going to drown. Supper Waltz loved it. Each time he bobbed up from the spray and turmoil of the water, he laughed and stared about as if born anew. He wanted to go down again but Graeme and I wouldn't. That night, lying in the pup tent among the lupins, Supper Waltz told us that each time he'd come up from beneath the water the world seemed a different colour. Crimson the last time; after the longest spell under when his lilo capsized, everything was crimson he said. Graeme and I said nothing. The revelation rather embarrassed us and, besides, Graeme's mouth was too sore for him to speak.

Another time a group of us went into the reserve to do some geography fieldwork with Scotty, and at the edge of one of the gullies was a cast sheep. It lay on its side at the verge of some blackberry
bushes, and the flat circle of its rotation was stained with urine and droppings. The sheep's black rubber lip twitched, and its eyes bulged with mild perplexity at its own fate. Some of the class tried to stand it up, but each time it just swayed there a moment before falling stiffly on the same side, flattened like the underneath of a scone. Scotty told everybody to leave it alone, but even as we worked our way through the blackberry into the gully, we could hear the sheep's hoarse, strained breathing. Wilderborne said he was going to come back after school and give it the works.

Once out of the sight and sound of it most of us could forget the sheep, but it persisted in Supper Waltz's mind. He was very quiet, and when the others were looking at some shell fossils in the limestone, I saw him crying. That would have surprised old Raymond and Mr Weir; anyone who thought Supper Waltz was so tough. He had a lot of emotion in him, did Supper Waltz. He could stand up to old Raymond and the head without a change of expression, but train whistles and morepork calls in the dark would haunt him for hours.

When I think of what happened to his father, and about Supper Waltz going away, I think of the evening I heard Mr Wilson talking about his voices. That was months before, but I always imagine him going mad right after I saw him in the kitchen. Recollection is apt to sandwich such things up, and there's a type of logic in it, I suppose. I'd climbed into Supper Waltz's window, and was sitting on his bed reading until he finished his tea. Then I heard Mr Wilson talking, and I went along the passage and stood there, looking in on the angle to the lighted kitchen. I very rarely saw Mr Wilson, and with me in the dark and him in the light I got a good chance. He was younger and softer looking than his wife. He had a pale, smooth face like a schoolteacher's or a parson's. He had youthful, fair curls, and yet his fingers were stained with nicotine, and his stomach folded softly over his belt.

‘I heard the voice again today,' he said earnestly.

‘Did you?' said Mrs Wilson. Her tone was the mild encouragement
of a mother to her child, and she continued to iron rapidly from the cane basket on the table.

‘Prepare for leadership, it said. Keep yourself ready for the test.' Mr Wilson ran his hand through his bright, metallic curls, and as they sprang back I half expected them to jangle. He seemed to be addressing a larger audience than Supper Waltz and Mrs Wilson. Like Supper Waltz he was small, and he had the strut of a small man as he walked about the kitchen. ‘I will turn a righteous sword in the guts of this poor world before I'm finished,' he said. Despite the falseness of the words he said it with conviction. ‘It was the voice to the left of me. That's always the strongest voice, the one to the left of me, and it doesn't hurt, not that one. I've got a feeling my leadership is near, Melanie.' That had the strangest sound of all — Melanie, Mrs Wilson as Melanie — and although no one could see me I smiled sheepishly.

Mrs Wilson and Supper Waltz didn't find it remarkable however. ‘Good,' said Mrs Wilson. She ran over a shirt-collar quickly, her thumb anticipating the iron along its length with practised ease. Supper Waltz was eating bread and cold meat, his eyes turning upwards like a sheepdog's with satisfaction as he ate.

‘Everything will be sorted out then. I'll have my proper place then. I'm ready for the work.' The thought of his great work and its immediacy seemed to lift Mr Wilson. He went abruptly through to the lavatory, and there began to sing about the land of Canaan. In his absence, as in his presence, the kitchen went on as before: Mrs Wilson ironing urgently and Supper Waltz eating his meat sandwiches as if he would never stop.

The day months afterwards, the day after it happened, was a Wednesday and Supper Waltz wasn't at school. It was a hot day and I thought he'd probably bunked to be in the sun. Supper Waltz often took days off, and if the teachers checked up on him he'd produce notes that he'd written himself, but signed by his father. I imagined Mr Wilson signing them in his room, or on the toilet seat, as he
waited for his call. Supper Waltz never explained to me why that one duty was performed by his father, when all else had been resigned to Mrs Wilson. I suspected that his mother never knew when he hadn't been at class. She came up to the school once, though, summoned after Supper Waltz and old Raymond had a confrontation in the film room. We were in one of the front rooms, and I saw her arrive, pedalling right up the sweep of the drive, and she left her bike leaning on the hydrangeas by the steps to the school office. She blew her nose in a businesslike way on what looked like half an old teatowel, and strode up the steps like a man. One or two of the boys close to the window laughed, but Supper Waltz and I didn't let on we knew who it was.

But that Wednesday, after it must have happened, I was sitting in Raymond's room when the first assistant came in. Old Raymond always made a show of rapport with his boys when there was another master in the room. ‘Pop outside with Mr Haldane, Williams,' and he patted my shoulder as I passed. ‘When the door was closed Haldane stood in the corridor for a moment, gazing absently down at the worn lino, and then up at the paper pellets that had been chewed and flicked on to the yellow ceiling. Most boys respected Haldane, although he wore some of the worst clothes in the school, and caned with distant severity.

‘Stuart Wilson,' he said, and for just a moment I didn't think of Supper Waltz. None of us called him Stuart. ‘You're his best friend, I understand.' It made me feel rather good, that; to be singled out by Haldane as Supper Waltz's best friend. It was a form of recognition in its way. ‘You know the family quite well. You're there quite often?' I told him I was. Haldane looked at me as if he were wondering how much of me was still boy and how much had grown up. I think he decided to be cautious. ‘Stuart's father isn't well, and there's been a bit of an accident at their home. Mrs Wilson wants you to go round and see if you can help. Stuart's rather upset. Have you got a bike? You needn't be back before afternoon school.' As I started
off down the corridor he added, ‘And Williams, use your common sense, won't you, lad. Don't tittle-tattle other people's problems all round the school, will you.' That disappointed me a bit, for after all I was Supper Waltz's best friend.