Owen Marshall Selected Stories (25 page)

‘Eh?' said Crealy. He tired quickly of poetry, even when seasoned with humiliation. ‘Had enough,' he said. His thoughts turned to Garfield. There were hours to go, years maybe, before it would be day again.

Blind Mr Lewin was guided by Mrs Munro to the sunroom in the east wing the next afternoon. Mr Lewin loved the warmth, and found that he could sleep easily during the day in full sunlight. Mrs Munro kindly led him down, and Lewin could feel the warmth even as they approached the end of the corridor. Mrs Munro's head nodded companionably as she pulled a cane chair close to the large window: so close that Lewin was able to put out his hands and feel the glass while sitting comfortably. And she gave him his talking clock to cradle, so that he would not be anxious about his meals. Mr Lewin thanked her, and listened to the departing footsteps.

He had never seen the sunroom, and instead of the meek, faded place that it was, poking out over the crocodile paving and lawns in front of the cottages, he imagined it cantilevered high into the sun's eye, and with only the yellow, benevolent furnace of the sun to be seen from the window. Lewin had known far worse times.

While Mr Lewin slept, Crealy elsewhere watched Mrs Halliday. Mrs Halliday was only in her sixties, but subject to Huntington's chorea in recurring spells during which she often came into the Totara Home to relieve her family. Crealy always took a considerable interest in her visits, for her breasts were large, she still had firm flesh and, caught at the right moment, she could be used without much recollection of it.

Towards the end of the long afternoon she was at her most confused, and Crealy watched from outside the television lounge
until he saw her talking to herself and constantly folding and unfolding her cardigan. He went in and firmly led her along the trail of mottled lino to the sunroom, which visitors or clergymen sometimes used to have their talks. ‘Has the family come? Has Elaine?' said Mrs Halliday. Crealy was quite pleased to see blind Lewin there, close to the window, for he could pass as a chaperone at a distance, but not act as one on the spot. Crealy sat Mrs Halliday with her back to the window.

‘Your family are coming soon,' he said, and opened the front of her dress.

‘Is that you, Mrs Munro?' asked Lewin.

‘Shut up,' said Crealy.

‘The family, you say,' said Mrs Halliday. She allowed Crealy to unclip her bra at the back, and he scooped out her breasts so they made two full fish-heads in the flounce of her dress.

Lewin was still groggy from his sleep, but he didn't wish to seem discourteous. ‘Where would we be without families,' he said gallantly, and fingered his talking clock for reassurance. Crealy stroked Mrs Halliday's breasts, and clumsily rolled the nipples between thumb and forefinger so that she pursed her lips and put her hands on his wrists.

‘You need to get changed for your family,' said Crealy absently.

‘What time is it then?' asked Mrs Halliday.

Lewin pressed his clock.

‘The time is four forty-two pm,' it said.

Crealy took another minute of satisfaction in the sun, then refilled Mrs Halliday's bra, and with some difficulty fastened it across her back. Matron Frew might come looking for her soon. ‘Stay here and talk to Lewin,' he said.

‘Am I changed for my family?'

‘Good enough,' said Crealy.

‘Who is that?' said Lewin, turning an ear rather than an eye for better comprehension.

‘Jenny Pen rules,' said Crealy as he left.

The impartial sun that Mr Lewin blindly enjoyed shone on Mortenson who sat in his wheelchair on a landscaped hillock which looked over the SRA — the safe recreation area. Within it the bewildered or fretful, the complacent and serene, could be left in security. Only the staff could manage the latch. Crealy called it the zoo, but it was pleasant enough, more like a kindergarten. There were seats with foam cushions for thin flesh, and raised garden plots which keen Totarans could work on without stooping or kneeling.

The SRA was overlooked by the wide windows of the dining room on one side, but to the warm north side there was a view across the grass and gardens towards the cottages and the spires of the great world. Mortenson could see the goldfish pond in the zoo, and George Oliphant dolefully shaking the back of his trousers because he was in trouble again.

The Matron and Dr Sullivan stopped beside Mortenson on their round, but finished their conversation before greeting him. ‘I've no idea how Mrs Joyce managed to leave the block in the first place,' said Matron.

‘It can't be helped.'

‘It's a puzzle, though.'

‘I haven't told her family the actual circumstances of the death, to minimise the trauma, you see. And how are you, Mr Mortenson?'

‘Mr Mortenson is brighter every day,' replied Matron. Mortenson gave his half-smile. He could see the exquisite glow on the sunlit tulips, feel the sun's goodwill on his faithful side, and hear Miss Hails practising her word for the day. The word was nell, or perhaps knell. How was anyone to know but her.

‘Nell, nell, nell, nell,' said Miss Hails. Like a prayer wheel she gave a benediction over all the zoo, the lawn, the cottages, the totality of Totara and beyond. ‘Nell, nell, nell, nell, knell.'

‘Well, nice talking to you,' said Dr Sullivan, and they went on
their way. Mortenson felt an itching tic begin at the corner of his eye. In all that ground of apparent pleasure he wondered what Crealy was up to. What time was it? It came to Mortenson that his karma had been assessed; that from the best of lives he was in a spiral descent of reincarnation from which he would emerge perhaps a six-spot ladybird, as counted by Mrs Munro, and would clamp the stem beneath the wine glow of the sunlit tulip blooms.

What time was it? Dr Sullivan and Matron were trying to wake Popanovich. ‘It's always the same. Ah, well, he seems healthy enough, and sleep can't hurt him.' Dr Sullivan smiled at the other three in the end room, while Matron moved Popanovich in the bed. The doctor was not a dour person. He believed in good spirits and optimism. He looked about for something that would provide an occasion for light-heartedness and rapport.

Matron sensed that the mood had abruptly changed, though at first she didn't see that behind her Dr Sullivan had taken Jenny Pen from Garfield's bed and mounted her on his hand. Garfield began to shiver, and put his hands out, palms uppermost, as if to play pata-cake. Crealy hung his head to one side like an old dog, while the whites of his eyes showed as he kept things in his view. Mortenson felt a sweat break out on his good thigh beneath the rug, and his smile was slow to form and slow to fade. He smiled as a Christian might smile who catches the Devil out walking in the daytime.

‘What a good life we lead at Totara,' said Dr Sullivan in falsetto for Jenny Pen, and he jiggled her to emphasise his humour. The only responses were those of Matron Frew's crêpe soles on the lino, and at a distance Miss Hails saying her catechism for the day. It drifted to them down the corridor.

‘Mi, mi, mi, mi mi, mi.'

‘Perhaps puppeteer isn't my calling,' said Dr Sullivan. He was disappointed by his reception and withdrew into professionalism. Matron knew how to keep that patter going.

Crealy's arthritis was giving him gyppo again. To appease it he walked the maze of corridors, and watched from window after window the sunshowers above the grounds. Dramatic clouds were towed across the sky, and when they met the sun they were lit with red and orange embers, which glowed and shifted in the deep perspectives. From the dining room Crealy saw a travelling shower fracture the surface of the zoo pond, so that the goldfish lost their shape, and became just carrots in the shallow weeds.

On his second circuit Crealy noticed that Nurse McMillan had left the office, and that the morning's mail lay partly sorted on the counter. He eased in, and his stiff hands found envelopes addressed to Mortenson, to Oliphant and Garfield. He pocketed them, and was cheered by the petty malice, even though he couldn't see Mrs Halliday in the TV room as he went past. For the life of him he could not remember when he last had a personal letter. Garfield, on the other hand, received far too much kind attention from outside, and Crealy decided to give him a hard time until the weather improved. He began a search for Garfield, but George Oliphant saw him checking the TV room, and afterwards went to the window that could be seen by Mortenson and gave a warning by semaphore, which Mortenson passed on to Garfield.

Garfield began his slow but urgent escape down the corridors of hours towards the bedding storeroom. The door there had a plunger and cylinder to draw it closed without slamming. To Garfield the mechanism seemed to take an eternity to work, and the cylinder hissed as his view of the corridor and bathrooms narrowed. Garfield sat in semi-darkness, content with the little light entering from a glass strip above the door.

The broad shelves had stacks of sheets and pillowcases, and on the floor were piled blankets which rose like wool bales. Garfield sat on a half-bale to wait it out. He didn't trouble himself with the metaphysics of his situation: what he had come to. The former Wellington fullback and general manager for Hentlings sat grinding
his teeth in the bedding store-room of Totara Eventide Home, and listening to the perpetual echoing orchestration which his tinnitus inflicted on him.

Crealy found him there.

It was nearly four. The showers had become less frequent, and a rainbow stood clearly behind the cottages, fading up towards the sun. Yet Mortenson couldn't concentrate on his history of Rome. He felt a helpless consideration for Garfield, and a fear of Crealy. He knew that where there are no lions, then hyenas rule.

His chair was very low-geared and, despite the busy noise of its motor, Mortenson moved only slowly along the corridors towards the bedding room. At alternate windows the day's strange weather was displayed as sunlit promise, then skirts of rain from fiery clouds, then blue sky once again. The door took all the thrust his chair could manage and sank closed behind him, so that the failing light and hiss half hid Crealy's torture of his friend.

‘Hello, Judge,' said Crealy. Once he found that Mortenson had come alone, he was pleased. He had become almost bored with Garfield. Yet an advantage can be gained or lost quite unexpectedly, and with such an absence of drama that it is easy to miss the significance. Crealy moved to get a better leverage, overbalanced on the soft surface and fell backwards just a couple of feet into the comfortable crevasse fashioned by Mrs Munro between the banded blankets. His old arms and legs moved silently in the shadows, as if he were a beetle on his back there. He was too stiff to turn easily.

Mortenson took a pillow with his better arm and pushed it across Crealy's face.

‘Come on,' he said to Garfield. It was more a delaying tactic at first, with neither of them having much hope of success. Even Crealy gave a sort of grin whenever he managed to free his face, as if he recognised his temporary difficulty, but would soon pay them back all right.

But the more Garfield and Mortenson pushed, and the more Crealy twisted, the deeper his shoulders sank between the blankets. He began to pant and jerk. The others saw a chance indeed and their lips drew back in the dark and they pressed for all their lives. Crealy's big arms and legs fell in harmless thuds against the embracing blankets. Mortenson felt strength and justice in his good arm, even though it trembled with exertion, and Garfield was on his knees to use his body weight upon the pillow.

‘Had enough. Had enough, Crealy old son,' he kept whispering. The competitive urge in Garfield revived one last time. Crealy's arms and legs moved less, but his body bucked.

‘Now let us play Othello,' slurred Mortenson.

‘Had enough,' sobbed Garfield.

For a good time after Crealy was still, they continued to hold the pillow over his face. Accustomed to such full tyranny as his, they could hardly believe that they had beaten him so completely. Even when they heard his sphincter muscles relax, and had the smell of him, they held the pillow down. ‘Had enough?' said Garfield tenderly.

‘Put the pillow back,' said Mortenson finally, and he wiped the tears from Garfield's face. They didn't look again at Dave Crealy, who was a big, stupid man lying well down among piles of blankets. Garfield opened the door a little and, when he saw that there was no one outside, he held it back for Mortenson's chair, and the snake hissed behind them in the dark.

As they went home they met Mrs Munro guiding Mr Lewin to the sunroom. Mrs Munro delighted in being useful, and was thinking also of a nice cup of tea. ‘There's a rainbow,' she said, nodding. Mortenson and Garfield could see its thick, childish bands behind the cottage. At the same time the sun was strong enough to cast shadows from the benches in the grounds. Who knows what Lewin saw, but he could hear with them the piping of Miss Hails at a distance.

‘Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.'

Mr Lewin pushed the button on his clock.

‘The time is four nineteen pm,' the clock said.

R
uth had an understanding with Gordon at Reception, and he rang and said there was this older guy in 309 who wanted company. Gordon knew her style, and Ruth knew the hotel. She placed a good deal of reliance on the type of hotel she dealt with, because it was a way of saving hassles. So she had a shower, and put on her new yellow. She was able to wear the slingbacks with higher heels. She wouldn't be on her feet much.

It's nice, the Hollandia. The reception area is in black and gold; there's black buttoned leather suites facing the second storey windows from which you can look down into the shopping mall. Guests at the Hollandia don't call out to each other just to draw attention to themselves, or laugh loudly. You can hear the businessmen folding their newspapers when they have finished reading, or when their clients and acquaintances have arrived. Gordon told her that a lot of those at the Hollandia were on delegations, or teams from government departments.

There was no embarrassment of hanging about in the corridor after knocking, or being turned away because of visitors in the room. Gordon would ring through first and Ruth would go on up if it was okay. It was okay right away for 309. So she stopped looking down at the people in Stabey's examining the silver bracelets, and sapphire and diamond cluster rings which are the thing right now, and she went up. There's a sense of discreet privilege at the Hollandia — private and select. After ten o'clock only guests with keys can
use the lifts to the accommodation floors. Ruth was of a mind to appreciate the bold hachures on the lift carpet, and the photographs of Leiden and Haarlem.

She was interested to see what her client was like, even if it was business. Many of them put themselves out to be pleasant and entertaining. The man in 309 was impressive to look at in an ordinary sort of way, but Ruth thought he became less ordinary as she noticed things about him, for he dressed well and spoke well. He had an ease of presence which she found relaxing. His name was Hamish Green, and he thanked her for coming and poured drinks. They sat by the drapes partly drawn across the window, and Ruth looked down at his shoes. She knew that a man's shoes spoke of his place in the world. A man might splash out on a shirt or a jacket, but shoes gave the consistent picture. Hamish Green's shoes were European, probably German she thought. The uppers had double stitching and leather toe caps with punched whorls.

‘I hope you don't have to dash off?' he said. Ruth warmed to that: the courtesy which made it sound as if their purpose was social, which perhaps it was, and her presence a favour, and that he would miss her company if she had reason to go.

Yet when they finished a second drink, sitting by the window with the Friday night passing below them, there were times when he didn't talk, as if he were thinking of some other place. Yet it was an easy silence, and he spoke well when he wanted to. He talked wryly of his fear of flying which never seemed to abate he said, and the petty humiliations it caused him, comparing the sensation to that he had in a dentist's chair. Even in his humour there was an unemotional tone which suggested a lack of affinity with the things he spoke of, or a belief in the final triviality of any subject that could be named.

‘Are you warm enough?' he said. ‘Would you like something to eat sent up?' The view was quite different to that which Ruth had in the reception area. The lights and the traffic made colours and angles
of competition, and as the shoppers came closer they seemed to dip below until briefly they were reduced to a bird's-eye view of heads, hair, parcels, before gaining a length of body again. Ruth had become accustomed to observation, to waiting, to her own thoughts during the time which could otherwise bring boredom. Most professional people develop the skill and habit of maintaining a social presence quite successfully while all the time another enquiry of experience or reflection is underway.

It suited Ruth to change in the bathroom. On the folded towels was an envelope with two hundred and fifty dollars inside: left privately there, with no need for either of them to mention it. She put in her bag also the small hotel pack of hair conditioner, for she knew men didn't bother with it, and she turned her head in the mirror's reflection as a check without vanity. She had a three pack of condoms for the hand-sewn pocket of her nightdress. She admired the small, well set tiles of the shower, the heated rail, the sheen of new fittings. She remembered her first flat in the city, with a scornful califont over a bath stained dark yellow like an old tusk. She had learnt how to live better.

‘Are you coming through, Ruth?' said Hamish Green, and as she did so he turned from the bedside table, and put down the hotel's black and gold biro. ‘Very glamorous,' he said. ‘I love to see lace on a woman's skin.' It was said with calm admiration, and as Green hung up his suit he talked about doilies as an extension of the topic of lace. He described them without knowing the name, and Ruth supplied it. He said he remembered in his grandmother's house all these things on dressers and polished wood tables. Ruth imagined him as a rather stolid, obedient boy, visiting his grandmother, and then leaving early so that he would be home in time to do his homework. He went into the bathroom in his turn to wash and change. He had large feet with expansive, milky nails on big toes. He came back in navy blue, with his large, soft feet like the paws of a bear across the
carpet. ‘It's not up to the lace is it,' he said.

‘Dark blue is nice.' Actually, he was too pale for it. It drained him.

‘I'll get it off soon enough,' he said.

‘So you're beginning to feel hot-blooded?'

He continued talking about clothes as he made himself comfortable in bed, saying that because of his work he wore suits almost all the time, and had few sports clothes. His hands smoothed her breasts, and then Ruth massaged the back of his neck. ‘That's it,' Hamish Green said. He took his navy blue top off. Their talk ambled from massage to tension to headaches to acupuncture. Ruth was interested in acupuncture after reading an article in which migraine sufferers had claimed relief with its use. Sometimes she had a bad head herself. While Green explained the theory behind acupuncture, Ruth thought of the times when her migraines had caused her embarrassment with men. Clients didn't expect a woman in her position to have a headache. There was even humour in it, although on each occasion neither she nor they could see it. Ruth imagined that Hamish Green would have enough detachment to appreciate such a situation, but she didn't mention it. She joined instead his game of finding improbable anatomical points for acupuncture.

A phone call interrupted them. It was about his work, for he listened for several minutes just saying yes, and hmm, with his eyes on the ceiling, and Ruth looked there also, noticed the nozzles of the automatic sprinkler system which marred the even surface. Each floor of the Hollandia had its own colour scheme, right down to the covers. The bed in 309 had a pattern in black, pink and lilac, and the pink was picked up in the drapes. Green said hmm once more, then he had his turn; talking of the next day and how he expected things to go, and it was the other person who did the listening. ‘We don't want to get into the question of funding at all tomorrow,' he said. ‘Surely at the moment we're concerned only with agreement
in principle. Discussion on funding is another thing again, and for another meeting.' And so on. Twice he made mention of paschal lamb, and Ruth didn't understand what he meant. He ended the conversation by laughing in his deliberate way and saying, ‘All right, but I wouldn't prepare the paschal lamb just yet.' Ruth lay beneath the black, pink and lilac and her lips shaped the syllables of paschal lamb so that she would remember to look it up in her son's dictionary.

Green had a good deal of grey chest hair, yet on his arms the hair was black and straight, lying the same way across his wrist and forearm. The cabinet above the small fridge was open, and the miniatures stood in ranks like the contents of a doll's cupboard — whisky, gin, brandy, liqueurs, red wine, all the things which didn't need to be chilled. ‘I wouldn't prepare the paschal lamb just yet,' Hamish Green said.

As he had talked, sitting half-turned towards the table and the phone, for a while she had knelt behind him, continuing to relax his neck and shoulders. Next to the phone was the envelope on which she had seen him write when she came to the bed. It was addressed to him, and she felt satisfaction that he had told her his real name. In the corner he had written her name — Ruth. She imagined he had done it to save the embarrassment of forgetting her name, having to ask again perhaps in the midst of their loving. There were things she liked about the man, not his middle-aged neck and bear paws, but there were things, she thought.

‘Sorry about that, Ruth,' he said when the call was over. Maybe he looked at her name on the corner of the envelope before saying that, maybe not. She herself never forgot a client's name until business was over, and never once had a man complimented her on that consideration. On the other hand she had been honey to a hundred men, darling or nothing to more. She had been Wilma, baby, hot pants, sister, Chattanooga Choo Choo even. For a weekend in Sydney it was an auctioneer's sense of humour to call her his opening bid.

Hamish Green talked of how tired he'd grown of staying in hotels, despite knowing that as he had no dependent family anymore it made sense that he was often his company's choice. But hotel room after hotel room, he said. ‘Well, there's no dishes to do,' Ruth said. She could find little reason to pity the life he led. She had to bite her tongue sometimes when men complained about such things.

‘That's true,' he said. ‘I suppose it sounds absurdly indulgent to complain about living in hotels. You're quite right.'

‘But I can see what you mean. A hotel's not a home.'

He moved a hand to her thigh. ‘Where's home?' he said.

‘Right here,' Ruth said. ‘You don't mind wearing a sheath? It's better these days.' He stroked her shoulder, and enjoyed slipping the strap of her night-dress up and down, and when he started he was content with the usual missionary position. It was fairly practiced and fairly long, but the earth didn't move for either of them. He then lay on his back with his eyes closed, and began to talk to her again. No confidences or revelations, just his half-serious complaints of the effects of travelling long distances, and how to work effectively despite them. He talked also about those interests and ambitions that he had been obliged to slight for the sake of his work and family. Commonplace topics in most respects. As Ruth listened she sensed that behind the even tone of his indifference, and despite his influence, education, his German shoes, he felt headed in a direction not of his own choosing. She responded to that feeling in two ways natural to her, a selfish satisfaction that he had his problems as she did, and a greater sympathy towards him because of it.

He asked her opinion about diets, said hmm and yes when she was talking, and soon fell asleep. He had moved while she was talking, and slept with his hand on the rise of her hip as if it was a posture he had been long used to. He snored, but not in a way exaggerated enough to disturb her as she lay thinking. She wondered if she could keep her son interested in school, so that he could go on and get a degree in law or accountancy. Then surely he would be able to have a job
like Harnish Green's: a job that allowed confidence, self-respect and freedom of choice in little, day to day things even though powerless against the general pattern of life. That way her son wouldn't have to be like her, and she didn't see that in the narrowest sense, for she knew from experience that there were plenty of people of both sexes in the same situation, even if their barter was not so direct or categorical. Later, quieter, when Green's light snoring was as regular as the noise of the sea at a distance, Ruth calculated her income and expenses for the week, and was comforted by the outcome. Yet at the back of her practical mind she posed a question as to how many years she could continue to make the sort of money she did, and how far away was the time when Gordon at Reception would begin to call her less and less.

Almost asleep herself, perhaps even woken by it, Ruth heard Green talking in his sleep. He slurred a few words, then clearer and louder through urgency he said, ‘Is that you, Dianne? It's you at last. Don't stand on ceremony.' The words were startling not for themselves, or because uttered in sleep, but rather that the voice was so apart from any tone he had used before. The voice was vibrant and full of sudden appeal, as if another man lay there. Green said nothing more, and continued sleeping, but without any snoring for a long time. Ruth was left to wonder. She thought that Dianne must have been his wife's name, and she moved her lips to remember, don't stand on ceremony, the way she had with paschal lamb. She wondered about his voice and what special world of imagination, memory or emotion was its source. Ruth was interested in patterns of speech, the individual differences helped her in her work to pass the time. When the subject of men's conversation was most predictable there was still the variety of expression. Words, like shoes, she considered useful clues, but the words had interest in their own right too. Thinking of Hamish Green's sleep-talking she smiled, and began to sleep herself.

Ruth woke first in the morning. She found that she didn't sleep in
when she was working. Green had moved away in the night towards his own side. He still lay on his back, his jaw dropped somewhat, and his breathing a small gasp on the indrawn air and a sigh on the outgoing. Ruth renewed acquaintance with his face, and noticed most the growth of bristles, so that what had seemed one piece the night before had become two faces; pale above, flint grey below the cheeks. A pirate combination. And on the angle of chest exposed, amongst the ash of curled hair was one incongruous nipple like the wasted kernel of a nut. Yet he had a good head. The face although not handsome suggested reason, and wasn't completely animal the way some men's faces were in sleep.