The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (23 page)

He grabs at the bell tower and his foot skids. Suddenly it is a long way to the ground, and his feet do not seem to be connecting with the roof as well as they were. Gingerly, and still holding on to the slats supporting the bell tower, he sits down.

‘Lord God,' he says, ‘I am very nervous about being up here. I am not as good at being up on high as I imagined. I've done a good job, and I want to get down. Now don't scare me. Please.'

But God throws cold water in his face.

‘You are not helping,' he says. ‘I wonder sometimes if you and I are
incompatible
. Quite often think that. How, for instance, does one both defend the faith and pray for deliverance from wars? You see, I don't make the rules, dear Lord, you must forgive those of us who sometimes find it difficult to stick to them.'

His voice is torn away in the lashing gale that has risen around him. The hood of his oilskin is snatched from his face, exposing it to the rain. He begins again in what he hopes is a reasonable tone. ‘I know you're not up
above,
or out
there.
But you're around somewhere. I know. My good wife Sophie has told me so.'

‘Dear Lord, I provide a lot of things. Inspiration for polished silver, black brassieres for the mission box, and I'm sorry that I have not seen to the window in the church hall. Now will you please let me get down from here, because I have been filling the holes in the roof of your church. And I have become afraid. Now if I move a little …'

There is a crack, familiar now, but closer at hand. Tiles tipple across the roof, so many he cannot count them as they skate over the edge. Nor can he afford to look, for now his left leg hangs down the hole that has been left in the roof, swinging backwards and forwards above an exposed beam within, and his fingertips clasp the iron strut above.

‘We're thrilled to meet you, Mr Fleming,' says Sophie. ‘What a miracle your last campaign has been.'

He smoothes his hair with his hand. Forrest Fleming is not at all as either Sophie or Eunice have foreseen. Although neither have voiced their
expectations
, both know that in each other's imagination they would have looked for him in a dark suit and a tie; perhaps a touch of suaveness. Instead, he is dressed in canvas drill slacks and a cream open-necked shirt that reveals a tuft of delicate gold hair at the base of his throat. He wears thick-lensed stylishly rimmed glasses on the bridge of his prominent nose and his casual grace suggests a cross between an intellectual and a wind-surfer. When he smiles he reveals even teeth with a gold filling in the front.

‘I'm not sure about miracles,' he says. ‘Good business, I suppose.'

‘And prayer, surely?' says Sophie.

He gestures delicately, gives a deprecatory half-smile.

‘Well, there you have me,' he says.

Sophie shoots him a look, comprehends, straightens her back. ‘We must find Jeremy,' she says. ‘Do you know where he is, Eunice?'

But Eunice has just looked out the window again. She raises her knuckles to her mouth.

The strut has begun to bite into Jeremy's flesh. It has drawn blood. Water streams through the hole where his leg is trapped; he sees the puddles
collecting
under the roof, sliding through the lining, knows it is running down inside the church. He closes his eyes as if to allay his mental picture of the sullied altar linen beneath him. Though it makes better viewing than his own predicament.

Soon, soon he must let go. But, he thinks, maybe that is the way things have been heading for a while.

‘Hold on,' calls a voice. ‘We'll have you down in a tick.'

He opens his eyes and sees Forrest Fleming coming towards him across the roof, agile as a young fast-footed antelope. Tiles crumble and fall.

‘Bring more hymn books,' Jeremy calls in what he hopes is a jolly tone.

‘What?'

‘Oh never mind.'

His hand is prised from the strut by the capable young man, and a rope is lashed around his waist.

‘The miracle man,' says Jeremy as they inch across the roof. ‘So it is true.'

Dinner is a success; Sophie glows in the light of compliments. They scoop
bleu
de
Bresse
out of its slatted wooden tub and scoff it with unceremonious gusto at the conclusion of the meal; they have drunk three bottles of Mission wine (what fun the monks must have, remarks Jeremy), replenish their coffee cups, become excited, their eyes shine with story telling.

Only Eunice falls quiet. ‘You won't be in church on Sunday then?' she says, turning to Forrest Fleming.

‘Oh, if you would like me to be, that's fine,' he says.

‘It's part of the job?' says Eunice, with an edge.

Forrest leans across the table. ‘It is a matter of percentages,' he says. ‘What is yours, Miss Brown?'

She colours. ‘A Christian tithe,' she says.

‘Ten percent of all you earn?' he says mercilessly.

She winds her napkin around her fingers.

‘The campaign was Eunice's idea,' says Jeremy hastily. ‘She is a more than generous giver.'

I will raise my donation,' Eunice says, faltering.

‘No, that's impossible,' cries Jeremy, who knows that Eunice's ten percent
is derived from an income gleaned in painstaking alterations and mending of gym slips, from bridal gowns such as she has never worn, from ballet dresses for precocious children, and from fancy dress costumes for ungrateful
debutantes
whose mothers cheat her. And he sees her bending towards the sheet music above the organ each Sunday, pretending she does not need new glasses.

Forrest smiles understandingly, but there is something melancholy in the way he looks at Jeremy. Turning back to Eunice, he says, ‘That is over to you, Miss Brown.'

‘I have brought some vodka,' says Forrest, when he and Jeremy are alone by the fire. Outside, the storm has abated, the pounding wind died amongst the acacia, and the rain turned to a gentle patter on the vicarage roof. Sophie has run Eunice home, despite her protestations that she will cycle. I have a light; I have a coat, she has said, but nobody has listened to her. That is her fate, thinks Jeremy.

‘Sometimes at the end of a long day' says Forrest, explaining the vodka. ‘Well, not everyone is as generous a host as you.'

And, ‘Why not?' cries Jeremy. ‘Let's have a vodka. Or two, if your bottle's large enough.'

Which it is.

‘Can I ask you something?' Jeremy is into his third.

‘Try me.'

‘Would I be able to do your job?'

‘You?'

‘Ah, I thought not.'

‘You'd take things to heart,' says Forrest Fleming at last.

Jeremy leans forward, staring into the flames. ‘You cannot know,' he says, ‘how I have dreamed of some other life. Of going beyond the wall. At first, it seemed to me that I should be a man like my friend Dash McLeavey (now there's a man who will give us money), noble and natural. Or a man like Mortlock Crane, who will give us no money but may be prevailed upon to do the spouting for a discount on a Saturday morning, and makes women happy; but then, when I began to think about it, I thought that I should like to strike out on some other more original life of my own. For a long time I thought that I should like to be a lift attendant in a tall building, deciding how high and how low people should go, in the real and physical sense, listening to conversations that were not intended for my ears, instead of the careful
curse-free
ones that are prepared in my presence. Or a butcher. That shocks you? Cutting up dead creatures for people to eat? Oh well, it is just that I should like finding the grain of the meat, discovering the secret pleasure of taste.
And slicing salami. I could pretend I was an Italian. How I have always admired Mediterraneans. It is to do with their architecture, I suppose. What marvellous churches. Well, I am none of these things. How do you see me, Forrest? Tell me truthfully. Don't be afraid.'

When Forrest Fleming answers, his voice is so low that Jeremy strains to hear him.

‘A shadow boxer,' he says.

Jeremy nods his head backwards and forwards, sighs.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘I suppose that's true.'

‘With tenacity in the clinches.'

‘You think so? It is worth holding on?' He leans forward, grasps the vodka bottle by the neck and tips it towards his glass. He holds it out to Forrest.

‘I am glad there are miracle men,' he says. ‘And I'm not into takeovers. No.'

He smiles, pokes the fire; the log hisses. Tomorrow he and Eunice Brown will scrub the sodden altar carpet, and his wife Sophie will wash the stained cloth.

S
HE WATCHES
H
ARRY
from out of the kitchen window and knows when he is still halfway up the paddock that there is something wrong, and without being told, or even running through a list of possibilities in her mind, that the horse must be sick. It is hardly a surprise, for through the winter there have been many days when it seemed as if the old creature would never make it on to her feet. Sometimes they would have to coax her with pieces of sugar and other blandishments. But once she was up, the mare would set off without faltering for the house, and the window of the room where Nora's father lay. Then it seemed she might live forever.

This morning it is different, and when Harry walks in there is an edge of panic in his voice, as if the order of things is about to be changed; though they have expected and in a secret unspoken way, more than a little hoped for this, the reality is alarming.

When he spells it out to Nora she sits down at the table. The remains of their early breakfast is still strewn in front of her, along with yesterday's
Herald,
the accounts she cannot put off paying any longer, and her father's tray bearing a cup of tea, smoky with the skin of milk on it, and the remains of some thin porridge spread with melted butter and honey swimming on a plate.

She puts her reading glasses on, then takes them off again and rubs her eyes.

‘I thought she'd be better in the spring,' says Nora at last. ‘Won't she budge?'

He shakes his head. ‘You'll call the vet?' It is both question and answer.

‘You're sure it's that bad?'

For the farm is too small in these days to call an economic unit. They have to watch every cent. Harry once said to her that she might do all right if she changed to goats, that was the coming thing. Either that or bring in more land from the back, and put in new plant. By she, he had really meant them,
but it has not been possible for them to make decisions together about the farm, or to think about moving away from cows. Harry has built up the pig side of it, but he could only do that because the old man had had pigs before the accident. There'll be no newfangled ideas round here, he'd said.

The pigs have helped but still there's no spare cash. Nora's hand-knitted cardigans have leather patches on the elbows like a man's, and the ute breaks down often on the way to town, so that the neighbours in their new Japanese cars have to stop and give her a tow or send someone out from the garage to help her. She thinks that they must laugh to themselves, the way the old man used to carry on in the past, as if he were worth a fortune, and here they are now about the same as the alternative lifestyle people with eccentric houses up the valley, barely subsistence farmers.

‘I reckon you better get the vet,' Harry says.

They have talked about what they will do when the time comes, but it has always been difficult to imagine it exactly as it will happen.

No, that's not quite true, for she has seen it one way or another in her mind's eye a hundred times, and the variations are so small you could hardly pick between them. The scenario, as they call it on television, is that Harry would walk in one morning and tell her that Trixie is ill, and that they must get the vet if they are to save her life. Then she will tell her father, lying sick in his room, that the horse is not coming to the window that morning. Her mind always stops at this point, although sometimes she dreams of the
outcome
. It is a tortuous dream that leads her through many byways, but when she has woken from a dream like this, she has been panting, or even weeping guilty tears, and sometimes her body has been covered with sweat, and there is a damp painful ache where her hand is resting between her thighs — although that hasn't happened now for a very long time. Years maybe, but in the light of day she does not allow herself to think about it and so she cannot be sure.

Well, so far the first part has happened the way she has seen it, the strange part is seeing it unfold like that. It's just like television, like one of the shows where you know what's going to happen, but can't quite believe that they'd do anything so predictable, only then they do. So television is like real life after all.

When she rings the vet clinic she is told that no one is going out their way today, unless it's urgent. Of course that will cost more, though the girl on the other end doesn't say so, in fact she doesn't sound as if she cares much. Nora says that yes, it is urgent, the vet must come at once, or sooner, the matter is of the greatest possible urgency, it is the horse Trixie, as if she would know immediately that someone must come, but the girl continues unruffled, barely
remembering Nora, which is not surprising given how long it is since her last call. She agrees at last to send someone.

Nora looks at the door of her father's room. There is no sound behind it. He will sleep for another half-hour, then wake on time, as if to clockwork, to await the arrival of Trixie.

She clears the dishes from the table, quick and methodical now, half expecting the vet to materialise at the gate in moments, though it could be hours before he comes. Perhaps she is panicking too. She breathes deeply and evenly, willing herself to move steadily and sensibly through the day and to do each thing that has to be done in its proper order. The top of the heavy old table is cleared now and shines in the light through the windows. She has washed the flowered curtains the week before and the linoleum, though worn, is like a hospital floor, not a speck of dust anywhere, and that isn't bad for a farmhouse ninety years old with timber that snaps and shrinks at the seams on frosty nights. She has cleaned things, year after year, as if in preparation for something she cannot, or will not name. Nora finds she is listening to her own breathing, and walks out to the garden to listen to the movement of the grass instead.

Spring has unwrapped the buds on the plum tree, the river shines in the distance, the morning lies like golden wine about her, and the cat rubs itself against her legs. Ah so sensual, her breasts pain her, and there is a tugging at the base of her belly, a drawing down, so that she knows her period will come before the week is out. She is still alive, her body still functions. Her hands flutter to her tender breasts and she lets them rest there a moment feeling the nipples rise. It is so long since that has happened too, more often her breasts feel like scones. Her face reddens, shy and surprised. She glances around quickly but the empty paddocks stretch away before her. The cat rubs its bellyful of kittens against her legs. ‘This is disgusting,' she says in a loud firm voice, and straightens her back, so that it twinges too, to remind her of her body's impending condition.

The moment cannot be delayed any longer. The half hour has been a reprieve, but the time is passing, might already be up. Sure enough, her father's voice flutters from the bed when she opens the door. His fingers are clenched round the edge of the blankets and his eyes stare at her with violence in their depths.

‘Where've‘you been?'

‘In the garden. It's such a nice morning.' She sees there is a white scum round the sucked-in corners of his mouth and that it is beginning to bubble into a froth.

‘Where is she?'

Nora moves to straighten the covers on the bed but his hand shoots forth and grabs her wrist so hard she cries out. She knows the power in those scrawny fingers and usually she is better at avoiding them. She thinks, if she moved away forcibly enough, that her greater strength and weight would bear him along bodily behind her out of the bed, but that he would not release his hold.

‘Tell me, Nora, tell me.' Despite his anger, and his grip on her, his voice is pitiful. He farts loudly and having begun to pass wind he is unable to stop, his body racked with spasms. A foul smell envelops them.

‘We've sent for the vet,' she says faintly.

‘Have you seen her?'

‘No. I was waiting for you to wake.'

‘Go on down. She'll come for you.' He is quavering.

As she walks down the paddock she thinks that that will be the nearest her father ever comes to paying her a compliment.

But his faith is misplaced. Harry sits with the horse but it does not move. Only the tender pucker of the mouth and the erratic fluctuation of the faded roan flanks beneath the blanket are evidence that she is still alive.

‘How's he taken it?' Harry asks Nora when she kneels beside him.

‘Reckon he'll go clean off his head.' She talks to the horse, wheedling and prodding, producing sugar and a new carrot from her pocket. It is no use. Harry watches and listens and adds words of encouragement, and Nora
wonders
why, why are we doing this, what will become of us? For fifteen years this horse has visited her father's window, every day since he was scooped up in one dreadful movement by the baler from the field of hay. The animal is long past its time to die, for it was not a young horse even at the time of the accident. Yet in living on, it has given the old man something to look forward to each day, it has in its turn kept him alive.

But why that, Nora wonders now. Why Trixie the horse, when there could have been so much else that he's denied them, and could have shared with them. She is thinking of children she might have had. Come to think of it, now she doesn't know why they let him do it. There seemed to be reasons once, but it was all too long ago, and now they don't make sense any more. It is simply that the passing of the years has whittled their resistance away until there is nothing left but this rundown farm, and them. Her and Harry. Two odd people inhabiting a patch of land that neither can lay claim to, and no longer have the courage to leave.

She looks at Harry with his furrowed face and grizzled hair. When first she knew him it had lain in tight little curls all over his head, now they start halfway back on his head, and instead of copperiness they are an
indeterminate
brown streaked with grey; the bony forehead starts out more
prominently
over the deepset eyes, the funnels of reddish hair that cover his body jut out under the too short cuffs of his working shirt.

That is what she sees, and as the vet comes towards them across the paddock she tries to see what she must look like to him — a tall, too thin, ageing woman, a little stooped, with fair cropped hair, hands that look like Harry's, wearing a crumpled khaki overall, clean, note that, but crumpled, looks as if she's never used an iron in her life, and a cardigan with patches … all right, Young and Handsome, so what are you going to do about our horse?

‘Why don't you go back to the house?' says Harry. ‘I'll take care of things here.' He will too, that's Harry's role, taking care of things. Of her? Maybe. Maybe that's what he does.

The vet is even younger than he first appeared. He is new to the local practice. She supposes he knows what he is doing and leaves him in
consultation
with Harry.

Back at the house she enters the room with stealth. The old man pretends to be dozing but he doesn't fool her. From the smell she knows she will have to change the bed and supposes that's why he pretends. He is at her mercy. Indeed, his life has been in her hands every day for all the years he has lain here. Yet for all that, he is the one who has stayed on top, he is the boss. Only today he wants information. If, as he usually does, he makes out it is her fault for leaving him that he has messed himself, then she might withhold what he wants to know. Not that she would, surely dear God he knows that too, just goes to show how it matters, that he should even briefly fear her power.

A photograph of her mother in a heavy gilt frame stands on the dressing room table, and one of her brother alongside of it, the boy who should have had the farm but got himself killed instead. The men in the family haven't had much luck. As she regards the two faces, carefully composed for the camera, she catches her own dishevelled reflection in the mirror. Have any of them had luck? Faded blonde, the vet might say if he were describing her to anyone. Not original, but it fitted. Pleats under the chin, and pale today, oh God yes, but she was tired, so what about her bodily functions, just let them be over soon, they get in the way and don't make a scrap of difference to anyone.

‘Put your shoulders back, Nora Duthie.' Her father has stopped feigning sleep. ‘Nobody'll ever dance with you,' he says.

‘When has anyone ever danced with me?' she answers, without turning.

‘Never mind, you'll get a decent fella yet.'

‘Shut up, damn you.'

His barbs are not without point, of course. They always are. By the time
she met Harry she'd stopped going to dances. Chaps didn't like a woman who towered over them, and when she stopped that didn't seem to do much good either. Harry was the hired man. He never got past sitting in front of the fire with her in the evenings and listening to the hit parades on Saturday night. Hits. My God, now that was a long time ago. Long surpassed by television. She was taller than Harry too, but as they didn't dance what the hell. Hell. Yes, hell. All of it was hell.