Leather Wings (11 page)

“Rex would do it much better.”

“He can’t do it from a hospital bed.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t the public ‘respond’ to a hospital bed?”

“You’re her grandmother, I’m sure you’ll do it very well.”

She does it. She is given briefly to the make-up woman who brushes dark powder on to the planes of her face, corrects her crooked lip with a wipe of red lip pencil and she is shunted out the door like a sales “product” on the news assembly line awaiting her turn.

The curious thing is — she cries. In the middle of appealing to Wallace — whose face she sees now, whose lisping voice she hears with hate — she conjures an image of Jania lying on her cushioned elbows, watching ‘The Cosby Show’ on the box, chewing a liquorice twist.

“If anyone — anyone out there can tell the police anything, please contact them —please.” She sobs as the cameras slide away. She had wanted to show emotion but now she feels a fool; the fool sobs gratefully into her sleeve and then the proffered tissue. The ordeal is over — what does she mean over? Who has seen her? She knows Rex will have been watching from his hospital bed, will she have affected his blood pressure? Supposing Jania has seen her? Supposing Wallace …? “There’s a mother,” the policewoman is saying to her.

“What? No — her mother’s dead …” More tears. Is this what the crying is about? She seems unable now to separate Jania from Prue in her mind, they are both missing (believed
dead) like war-time casualties. She mustn’t believe Jania dead, it’s bad luck. And why hadn’t Jania cried for her mother? It’s so easy to cry after all. Esther’s eyes overflow again.

“Mr Wells’ mother. She lives in Auckland. She’s been contacted, an officer went to call on her, but she wasn’t helpful. She’s a bit dotty, I understand. No help at all, but they’ll try again, you never know. Here.” Another tissue.

Esther goes home. The telephone starts ringing.

T
HE BUDGIE STARTS
to carry on when the torch flashes over his cage. Ssh! I don’t want Jania to wake up. She was well away when I backed down the steps in my shoes minus socks; she’s wearing my socks to keep her little feet cosy. The steps are like stepladder steps, so steep and narrow it’s safer to go backwards, holding on. Here at the bottom I’m plodding around in stuff from the car, but there’s still boxes and a case to come inside.

What am I doing here? How long can I keep this up? There’s this expression, “Don’t hold your breath.” I feel like I’m holding my breath, and Jania’s breath too. How much breath do we have between us?

It’s very quiet on the street, I’ve hardly heard another set of wheels and nothing passes me while I’m humping the rest of the gear. I have to risk Jania waking up while I’m away getting shot of the car — the cops don’t have to tie it to me specially, cars get nicked by the dozen every day of the week, but just the same. I hate to sneak away from Jania but I must. I lock the shop door, and while I’m doing it I fancy I hear a sound inside — what if she got out of bed and fell down the stairs? What if the old bugger’s there and he pushes her? I know what he’s capable of. He’s dead, well, I know he’s dead, but … I unlock the door again and place the torch on the counter, switched on but shining away from Joey, shining at the steps, just in case she wakes. It’s a bit reckless of me, the all-night service station might be closed and I might get back without any new batteries, to a flat torch — two flat torches if you count my father’s. Never mind, there’s the gas-ring — which might run out of gas while I’m away. Talk about a rock and a hard place. The thing is to get moving and back as snappy as possible, before she can miss me.

I fish under the dashboard for the wires and get the engine going; it roars on the night street like a clap of thunder — I’ve got my foot down too hard out of nervousness. I ease it off and I’m away. I hate leaving her alone with a wizard ghost, but what can I do? My hands slip like butter all over the wheel.

I’ve driven quite a distance to a different part of town and
then I regret the distance, it’ll take too long to walk back. How much petrol? I glance at the gasometer and that reminds me of the all-night service station. They’ll sell batteries, maybe candles and bottled gas, I might have enough for a Gaz lamp — I milked a money machine before we left Wellington — I knew I couldn’t get money out up here, credit cards give you away, point the finger.

I don’t drive right up to the pumps, I don’t want the numberplate sticking out, the cops can’t be that clever, but you never know. I search along the back seat and in the glove box just on the off-chance the owner’s left a hat or jacket, something I could disguise myself with. A dirty old car manual, a map, nothing useful. But then I see something fallen down beside the gear shaft: a pair of cheap half-mast reading glasses like you get in a chemist shop. Just the job. I sit them on my nose, hearing my silly laugh kick out of me. All I need now is the false nose and moustache.

It’s a woman who serves me — what’s a woman doing working in an all-night service station, silly cow? … I’d rather a man, women see too much. But this one’s half asleep, a big dozy butch lady she is, with her eyes like snail shells, and the bloke up the end he’s got his nose in a comic.

The plastic bags are quite heavy: I thought I’d better get milk as well — a child needs milk — and bacon for my father’s frying pan, I’d seen it there hung belly to the wall in the kitchen. So now I have to drive some of the way back in the direction I came, otherwise I’d be all night walking and my bare feet are rubbing in my shoes. I ditch the car in a side street, in the company of other cars, it won’t stand out until they take off for work or wherever. I’m lost. Concentrate. I concentrate, sucking my tongue for inspiration, and then I’ve worked out where I am. Farther away than I’d intended but not an impossible walk to the shop. I set out with the gas bottle banging on my knee and my big toe rubbing in my shoe. After a while I think of Jania. I think of her pitching down the stairs and crying out and the bird squawking like a parrot. I think of my canary dream and the canary dream is having a fight with the squawking parrot nightmare in my head. I start to run, an awkward sort of run but no one can see me. I hope.

I
HAVEN’T SLEPT
very long and already I’m awake, the light’s beginning to pick out shapes in the kitchen; I’d had a feeling tomorrow morning was chasing me on the street and now it’s found me. I can’t have had more than an hour’s sleep. Jania’s eyes are shut. I think. I peer in the mucky light, it’s darker by the bed, and in the end I have to get up off my sofa — not a comfortable sofa — and bring my face down close to hers until I can hear her breathe, in, out. Supposing there had been no breath, supposing she had died in the night, anything’s possible. But she’s breathing; I give a deep sigh. I haven’t forgotten about AIDS. HIV is AIDS, isn’t it — or will be. I wish I’d listened to the guff on it while I had the chance, there was this programme on TV but it was so depressing I couldn’t stand to watch the whole of it. I’m not afraid of catching it, I don’t know why. They say you can’t catch it from ordinary daily contact, I do know that, only from venereal contact. Is my contact with Jania venereal? Venus is love, right? Blood is dangerous, I know, but I shan’t let her bleed, if she did — say she fell down the stairs — I’d bandage her carefully, but for her sake, not for me. I don’t care, you see. That’s the point. I’m lucky because I don’t care. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen next but I know there’s danger whatever I do. People like me, we have no right to live in the world, but how many ways are there out of it?

Jania’s starting to wake now, she can feel me looking at her, people do feel eyes on them, I’ve felt eyes on me often enough. I ask her if she slept all right, although I know perfectly well she’s slept or she’d have been in a panic when I came back with the supplies from the service station.

“Is it morning?”

“Just about.”

I check out the kitchen drawers for utensils, the cupboards for cups and plates, as if this is a holiday motel we’ve moved into. It’s all there, everything we need, there’s even some of Mother’s bottled fruit, he must have taken it from her pantry
years ago, she wouldn’t give it to him — or would she? Some of his books have gone from the wall of shelves behind the empty TV trolley, there are gaps and the piles lean sideways. The fridge has gone, which is a real shame, the milk won’t last as long as it should, but we’ve got a Gaz lamp now and the ring for cooking and candles and batteries and the box of tins, mostly beans from my own kitchen. Suddenly I feel snug, it’s the feeling I used to get in the night when I was a kid and reached under the bed for my secret box of favourite things: the torch, playing cards, Enid Blyton, biscuits pinched from Mother’s bridge club. I feel this snugness again and I give her a happy smile, it’s working out so far.

“Are we going to the beach today?”

“We’ll see. I’m going to make us some breakfast first. Beans and bacon.”

I swing the heavy frying pan off the wall. “All right?”

“I didn’t clean my teeth. It’s in my bag.”

“Right!” I lower myself on to the stairs. “I’ll fetch your stuff up. And Joey. Joey will want his breakfast. Wait there!” I call. “These steps are too steep, you have to remember to hold on or you could slip.”

“I won’t slip.”

When she comes back from the bathroom she complains that the water’s cold. “The hot won’t come.”

“Oh dear! I hadn’t thought of that. Still, cold water’s good for you.”

She looks a bit down at this as if hot water’s an essential in her life, but then she smells the bacon and perks up. I try to keep her happy because I know I’m going to have to disappoint her again about the beach. Why does she want to go to some old beach and my made-up family, what’s so great about a woman and a nine-year-old girl? I’ve lied about these two so convincingly I nearly believe them myself. I’ve made Sharon/Janice into an older version of Jania, but we don’t need another Jania here and we certainly don’t need some slut of a wife, some slut of a mother fouling things up. I say, “I’m afraid we can’t go to the beach today, not today, I just looked out of the window and …”

Her round eyes fix on me, waiting. Is she expecting a hurricane, a tidal wave or what?

“Someone seems to have stolen our car. It’s gone.”

“Our car?” she echoes, and I like the “our”, it has a friendly ring to it.

“Yes. Our car.” I say it again, sucking on the “our”. “Gone. Some cheeky car thief.”

“Have you phoned the policeman? You have to phone the police.”

“There’s not much chance of getting it back in a hurry. They’re too busy with other things down at the police station. Besides there’s no phone here. But we’re all right, aren’t we? They’ll come here, Janice and her mum, they’ll come looking when we don’t turn up — all we have to do is sit tight. She’s got the Landrover, my wife has; you’ll like the Landrover.”

Janice folds her hands in her lap. “I think I’d like to go home.”

“Now?”

“Yes, please. We could walk to the train station.” I think I hear a bit of a shake in her voice.

“We could. Don’t you want to go on holiday then?” I’m fighting a shake in my own voice, it’s important she doesn’t hear this.

“Well …”

“There’s a whole lot of stuff downstairs you might like to play with, clocks and toys.”

Of course, I don’t know if there’s anything left in the workroom at all. “They used to be my toys but I wasn’t allowed to play with them.”

“Why not?” She sees the silliness of this right away.

“My father made them for me but he said I didn’t deserve them, I was too stupid and too naughty.”

“Were you really naughty?”

“Not really naughty, but I was naughty enough, you know how grown-ups can be.” My voice gets stronger because she’s sounding like herself again.

“Did you chuck your dinner?”

“I can’t remember, I might have.”

“And run away?”

“Oh, yes. I ran away.”

“I’m naughty, but I’m allowed to play with my toys. You
should have made up your own toys. I make things up; I made up a whole city. I’ve got some of it in my bag. Do you want to see? There’s a Rawleigh’s man, too, I told you, he’s a peg really, a green peg but I stuck this face on him, a paper face.”

I pat my own face, laughing at her, crinkling up my paper skin, which needs a shave. I’m her Rawleigh’s man. She has me zipped up in her green bag. Jania, Jania.

S
LOW DOWN
. S
TART
again. What sort of person is Esther Ackersley? She needs to know this before the next thing begins to happen. When a person confronts death she is forced to confront the whole of her life. A terminally ill patient comes first to denial, then to negotiation, then to a resignation, which can be perversely exhilarating. Memory begins to rise up about her, like a sea of porpoises, quacking and resonating, white noise billowing in a cathedral of sky. Esther isn’t dying — or should she consider this? No, she is too much a coward. But confronting the terror of what could be happening to Jania slams Esther up against her own life in just this way. Forced up close to her own imperfect reflection she looks with dismay. Go on, look. What do you see?

Events could right now be sluicing what is left of normality out of Jania’s life. What events? No, don’t look.

At Jania’s age she remembers planning a family of six children. At least six. For variety she gave them different colours: eyes, green blue brown; hair, blond black auburn; skin didn’t come into it in those days when Esther was six, an only child in a South Island family. It hadn’t occurred to her either that she would need fathers for these children. The fantasy was outrageous, but no more outrageous than the adolescent fantasies she told her pillow later, fantasies her pillow has slyly given her back for her Mills and Boon attempt. She gave birth to only one child, in fact — reluctantly — and has been punished for her reluctance; firstly by Prue’s departure to live in Canada, then by her death, and then by the unwanted gift of Jania on indefinite loan. The next punishment is about to be imposed but the sentence isn’t clear, the judge’s decision has been deferred.

The love story that was to be Esther’s life is nearly as silly as her fiction. Sillier. She has been working on both with secret conviction, like a guilty Christian in an atheist household. A belief in happy ever after is a necessary part of the prescription for becoming a romance writer. The Mills and Boon
instruction tape she played secretly on her cassette player told her this. “Sink yourself into your heroine’s personality, fall in love with your hero …” The pep talk had concluded, “They made it — so can you!”

Except she can’t. While she waits for Rex to be discharged from the hospital, she rereads some of her typescript, just as she has begun to reread her life, and it makes her want to throw up. Her throat is squeezed by a constriction of self-loathing. She feeds the unfinished novel page by page into the incinerator, and as the flame eats it the sentences curl disdainfully back at her. They mock her relationship with Donald, her modern unsentimental “arrangement”. What else has driven her soppy novel if not Donald? Of course, she was writing of him, a transfigured Donald, and she recognises this with a belated disgust. Perhaps she was also writing of Rex? The young, hopeful, heart-sound Rex who played table tennis with his trousers slipping at half mast? She watches the last page falter and crack into dust particles. Begin again.

Women acquaintances from the Reading Group telephone now and sympathise with what she must be going through; they analyse her predicament cautiously, clumsily, as if she were just another novel passed around for discussion. Is it going to be a happy ending? They ooze optimism.

“We’re here if you need us.”

Whyever would she need them? She doesn’t know how to make use of friends, she has never been a friend, not a proper friend. More self-disgust.

On the laundry shelf a Rawleigh’s product shouts at her: “WILL POWER”. The name had appealed to her because she has always had so little of it. Can it wash the shame out of her knickers?

The thing is that Jania packed her bag. Her toothbrush and paste, her dolls, her cushion. She was following a deliberate plan, running away from home, again, and more efficiently than ever before. Why? Well, obviously because she knows she is unnecessary, she knows Esther is distracted and irritable and “You don’t like Daddy”. She was upset because her father wasn’t coming over as he’d promised he would. Of
course, she must love her father. But Esther remembers the bleak little girl in the hospital bed in Canada one evening when Martin had had to take his early leave of her.

“Wave to Daddy,” Esther had reminded her. And, “You didn’t wave to Daddy!”

Coldly the four year old had told her, “That’s all right, Daddy doesn’t wave.”

And it was true, Martin strode on past the glass window of the ward without raising an eyelid, never mind a hand. And Esther had thought her own family undemonstrative.

At Wellington Airport when Esther saw the child at the barrier and moved forward eager to register a response on the small face, the little girl had stepped neatly to one side and enquired cautiously, “Do you kiss?” before submitting stiffly to Esther’s greeting.

All this comes back to Esther now, the piping voice, at once sceptical and trusting. “You shouted at me!” she had accused her grandmother. Oh, no, Esther doesn’t want to think of that, just in case, just supposing …

“Fears are now held for the safety of …” The police must hear something soon. In the meantime the obvious person to share this with, Rex, must not be agitated, must be cossetted and spared, even while he has no good reason to spare Esther pain, and won’t. She must face the music, she must swallow her medicine. Or medication. All the phrases bring her back to Jania, but fail to bring Jania back to her.

The telephone rings. Martin is at the airport. He has arrived from Toronto and is on his way to assess the damage. Mechanically, she goes to the linen cupboard for clean sheets. She remembers the police are monitoring calls. At eleven o’clock she is collecting Rex from the hospital. In a few hours the house will be full of people.