Etiquette for a Dinner Party (2 page)

He really needs to concentrate on the road, because he has arrived at the airport, and he doesn't remember driving there. .

The woman at the front of the queue is thirty, he guesses, and wears jeans and a blue, long-sleeved tee-shirt. She carries only a small red handbag. The absence of luggage is a good sign — a big fare downtown for a meeting, or lunch, Alan thinks. She squints into the sun as the taxi pulls up beside her.

'Hi there — the city please? Newmarket?'

'No problem.' Ladies' lunch, he decides.

Alan watches her in the rear-view mirror as he drives. He analyses her, rectangle by rectangle. She wears no makeup but her face shines and her eyes are brown and bright.

'Could we drive through Mangere Bridge?' she asks. She is staring out the window, smiling. Alan indicates and turns off at Bader Drive.

'Mum and Dad lived here years ago, just two streets over,' she says.

'Is that right?' Alan is not sure about this woman now; what to make of her.

'They were Irish, from Belfast. Must have been wonderful, turning up here. Imagine it.' She is leaning forward, craning for a glimpse of the side streets.

'It must have been a huge change for them.' Then he realises what it is about her. She is not judging poverty; she sees difference. Alan feels a sudden kindness towards her, a connection that he does not understand. 'Do you want to have a quick look at their place?'

'Yes, I would like that. Very much.'

Alan turns off the main road and drives down shabby streets. Many of the lawns are jungles — stripped car wrecks peer through the undergrowth like starving African predators. The windows frame grubby net curtains knotted halfway down: angry fists to the world. Alan drives slowly, already regretting his offer. But she asks him to stop outside a tidy brick bungalow with beautiful gardens. A new black fence sits close to the footpath. He is relieved for her that it is a nice place.

'This is it,' she says, stepping out of the taxi. For a moment, he thinks she is going to knock on the door, but she just stands, arms crossed, and takes it in. Then she walks a little further, stopping outside another house a few doors down. She stares hard at this house too, but Alan cannot read the expression on her face.

'Dad would've been pleased it's looking good,' she says, returning to the car.

There is the sound of Pacific Island music, a strong languid beat with layers of guitar and song over the top. It comes from nearby, but it is hard to say where. All the houses have their windows and doors wide open, life within pulsating.

'He would have loved those sounds,' she says. 'He once said he had lived two lives. One in black and white in Ireland, and one in full colour, here in Auckland.'

The car door slams shut again. 'I asked him once, which place was home.'

'And?'

'Well, he said both. He said you can live your life in different ways, and who's to say which way is the best?'

'So, do they come back to visit, your mum and dad?'

'No. They're both dead now, they've been gone five years or so. Mum died first, then Dad just a couple of months later. Funny how that happens.'

She is silent as Alan starts his car and pulls back out into the road. Then she speaks again, quietly. 'He had an affair, my dad. He and Mum were married for fifty years, and they were happy to the end. But I know he had a thing going for years with his neighbour. She was Samoan, and there's Dad all the way from Ireland. And Mum never knew. Imagine it. Back in those days.'

Alan doesn't know what to say. He has the feeling that the woman is thinking out loud, that an answer is not required.

He drives through the suburbs towards the city centre and watches his passenger relax back into the seat. Her name is Jennifer, she tells Alan, and she has flown up from Wellington to meet an old friend who is visiting from overseas. They will have lunch and spend the afternoon together, then she will catch a plane back in the early evening in time to put two pre-schoolers to bed. She is overwhelmed now by the extravagance of it all.

'I just couldn't believe it — first I hear she's coming over from the States, and next thing a ticket arrives for me. And I'm saying to John — that's my husband — "Jeepers, flying to Auckland for lunch".'

In the rear-view mirror Alan sees pieces of Jennifer's mouth giggling, shoulders jerking in time to the laughter.

'Well, why not, eh?' he smiles at her through the mirror. 'Why not?' .

'And so,' Shirley will continue, once the tea has been poured and teabags dealt with, 'we did go to a restaurant. Oh yes. But not the steakhouse. You wouldn't read about it, where he took me.'

She'll wait for you to ask, so you should.

'An
Italian
restaurant,' she'll reply, triumphant and hurt, as though it happened just last night. 'What a disaster. There we were, surrounded by Italians, and they're making one heck of a racket I can tell you. And there are noodles everywhere — no one using knives, as far as I could make out, no manners whatsoever — and there's me, looking at a menu with God knows what on it.

'I said to my Alan — I remember this, because I never usually blaspheme — I said, "What the hell is all this stuff?"
—
and he just looked at me, and smiled, and do you know what he said? Try something new. He said that if I didn't like it he would eat it. But just try something, please Shirley.

'I remember him saying that to me, him sitting there, all excited and squirming round like a kid. So I looked again, looked down at that menu. And I can remember this big feeling of panic coming over me, because I was looking for something — anything — that I knew. Like roast chicken, which I thought everyone ate on special occasions. Or steak and kidney. Even though I'm not that fond of kidney, I would have eaten it if I had to. Anything other than those tomato noodles, which would end up everywhere.

'But there was nothing. No normal food at all on that Italian menu. Not even a normal English description of what the food was like. And in the end I looked up at Alan and I was trying not to cry and I said: "Why have you brought me here?"

' He wasn't even looking at me. Oh no. Because the waiter had turned up and there he was kissing . . . yes,
kissing
. . . Alan. On his cheeks. One side. The other side. Then back to the first side. And I'm thinking:
Oh my Lord.
And then they started talking, just as if I didn't even see what had gone on between them.'

She might stop for a moment here, for a breath, or for some other reason that you are not sure about. You should pretend that it's for a breath, for Shirley's sake.

'The chap was handsome, I do remember that, about the same age as Alan I think. Anyway, he's got one hand on Alan's shoulder and some fancy bottle of expensive wine in the other. And they're looking at the label on it, talking about years and vintages and who knows what other rubbish. It was in Italian, all the writing, as if Alan would know what it meant.

'My head was thumping by then, and I felt sick to the stomach.
So I just got up and walked out. Past those big tables with arms waving everywhere
and everyone shouting over the top of each other.
Enough of this
, I
was thinking. I went outside and waited by the car. I was shaking and crying,
and thinking to myself,
Oh no, what have I got myself involved in, how
do I get home?

'But, you know, my Alan followed me out. I only waited a couple of minutes, and there he was. Standing next to me, his arm around me, helping me into the car. He made a choice, and that choice was me.' .

'I'm going to lunch too.' They are passing through Royal Oak when Alan speaks. He cannot believe he has said it, that the words have been aired openly, so casually. 'With an old friend too, as it happens.'

'Oh? Whereabouts?'

'Not far from Newmarket.'

She is quiet, listening. Inviting him to trust her.

'Yeah, well, once a month I have lunch with a bloke I've known for years. From before I got married. We meet up at this place that used to be a restaurant. The deal is, I pick up the food, and he brings the wine.'

He is watching her closely now in the little mirror. Waiting to see what her mouth and eyes and shoulders are making of this.

'Anyway. I get there and he's always already set up a table, with a white cloth on it, and nice cutlery, and good glasses. Hard case, eh? And, you know, I actually think he might live in this place, or nearby, because along one wall he has this sort of little camping kitchen setup. So we cook the food I bring, if it needs cooking, and then we eat.'

Alan is overwhelmed at how strange this all sounds now. But it is too late. It has been said.

'That's an amazing thing to happen,' she says. 'So what do you talk about over lunch? All sorts of stuff I guess . . .'

'Yes, all sorts, really. But mostly food and wine.'

'Your families too, I suppose?' she asks.

'No.' Alan joins the start-stop shopping traffic of Newmarket Broadway. 'Other things.'

She wants to know more, he can see it in her startled expression, the beginnings of the smile on her face. But they have arrived outside her restaurant, and traffic is already queuing behind the taxi.

'Here you go,' he says. 'You have a great lunch, Jennifer.'

'You too.' She collects her change from him, smiles, and is gone. .

Black and white floor tiles make the space feel much bigger than the cosy trattoria ever was. The bright red concrete walls are bare, but there are ghostly squares of darker, blood-coloured paint where the Italian landscape paintings used to hang.

Alan stands in the doorway, looking at each of the squares. He does this every time. He sees the old pictures. Venice. Rome. The crowded port of Brindisi. He blinks, and is surprised that the pictures are not there after all.

He closes the door to the street behind him, then shuts his eyes. He draws in a breath. Garlic and marsala and pizza and smoke from pungent, unfiltered cigarettes. He breathes out, then in again. The smell is always gone on the second breath.

Aberto is sitting in an old black leather armchair, reading the newspaper. The leather is cracked in many places and stretched at the seams, only just containing the stuffing. Behind the chair is a window that is nailed shut. There are no curtains and sunlight plays across the back of Aberto's striped green shirt, over his wide shoulders to the pages of newsprint.