Drybread: A Novel (10 page)

'It's the numbness of trauma, I suppose,' said Theo.

He and Ben had a short tug-of-war with a paper napkin,
quite without words, but the boy smiled. Theo put his large
hand over the small one, and was surprised by the warmth
there. What is it that children take from the interaction
with adults outside the family, and how accurate is their
gauge of sincerity?

'How long is it since your divorce?' she asked. It was
one of the few personal things she had asked of him, and
her voice had an unaccustomed gentleness.

'We broke up a couple of years ago.'

'Do you still see her?'

'Oh, odd times,' said Theo. 'We don't stick pins into
effigies — well, I don't anyway.'

'Are you glad there are no kids?'

Theo nodded. 'That's the best thing about it.'

'And maybe the worst thing too,' she said. 'With a child
there's always something wonderful left of the love you
had.' She was right. How could that time together have
been wasted, how could marriage be futile, when a life had
been created as a result? 'The best thing that ever happened
to me was having a baby,' she said.

'Kids can suffer, though, can't they?'

'Sure they can, but mine won't.'

'Well, women have a natural love for children I suppose,'
said Theo. 'Maybe men are different.'

'Bullshit,' said Penny. 'I know some men who are
wonderful fathers. Some guys are better parents than their
wives. You learn that your own family situation isn't the
norm, thank God.'

'Well, what would I know?' said Theo. He was surprised
by Penny's sudden vehemence, and assumed she was
making a rare reference to her husband. He didn't want to
destroy the easy mood of the day.

They chose to return to the bay by way of the footbridge
that led over the cutting and onto the tiered concrete
seating facing the soundshell. Theo carried Ben down, and
when released on the lawn the boy ran ahead and into the
narrow pedestrian tunnel under the loop road. The tunnel
was dim, its tiled sides alive with the swooping, stylised
graffiti of taggers. Theo and Penny quickened their pace
so Ben wouldn't be too far ahead in the carpark, but when
they came out they saw a woman in jeans hustling him
towards one of the vehicles.

Instinctively realising the threat, Penny reacted more
quickly than Theo: he was at first merely puzzled. How
could a woman be a danger to a child? Penny started calling
out. The woman didn't turn to face them, but pulled Ben
on more urgently so that he began to cry. As both Theo
and Penny ran to catch up, Theo recognised the car the
woman was headed for: a maroon Civic in which a man
sat who was surely the parson. Theo could see his round,
balding head, his hands already on the wheel.

Perhaps the woman had time to reach the car with Ben
before she could be stopped, but the boy stumbled and
spun from her grip just before the open door. His face hit
the dry ground with a force that made his dark hair fly
forward, and he began a long, quavering cry. The woman
clambered into the front passenger seat and locked the
door just as Theo reached it. Penny knelt to her son. There
was a moment of anger and helplessness as Theo beat on
the window and the parson put the car into gear. Neither
the parson nor the woman would make eye contact with
Theo, or register his shouts. They stared ahead as if willing
the car to be already some way in the distance. It was just
a moment, but one stretched out by the intensity of what
it contained. Theo could see the woman clearly: she was
young and good-looking, and wore a gold chain at her
throat. He wanted to get a grip of her blonde hair and force
her to look out at Penny and the fallen Ben. He wanted
something long and solid in his hand with which to strike
the parson. But in seething anger and frustration all he
managed was a painful kick into the side panel of the car as
it accelerated away. 'That bastard,' he said.

'You know who it is?' said Penny sharply.

'It's a guy who's followed me before.'

'You stupid prick, Theo. You stupid, stupid prick.' Penny
was yelling, down on her knees to comfort her son, who
was still crying and had blood seeping from his nose. She
carried him to her car and began to put him into his seat.
Theo followed and stood close to her in the open door,
tried to put his arms around her, told her how sorry he was,
that there was no need to go right away, that the parson
wouldn't hang around after that. 'You should've told me
about him. You should've thought he might be following
you. Christ,' she said. She was shaking, and resisted Theo's
attempt to hold her around the shoulders. Ben stopped
crying, and to placate him she began some lie about what
had happened.

'How could a girl do something like that?' said Theo.

'Money, of course,' said Penny.

All that was left of the day was for them to part. Penny
no longer felt safe, and wanted to start back to Drybread.
Despite everything she had said, it was a bolt-hole after all.
Theo offered to follow her back to make sure the parson
didn't do the same, but Penny refused. There was no kiss,
no talk of the pleasures of the day, just a hurried goodbye,
and some effort by Penny to mitigate her accusations. He
watched them go; caught a second, brief glimpse of her
car as it did the first loop of the angled road, and then
was left alone in the carpark with the bright sun, a scented
breeze from the sea and an elderly man in a hand-knitted
cream cardigan with leather buttons who wished him good
afternoon in passing.

Theo's anger was turbulent and slow to subside. His
attitude towards the parson had always been tinged with
disdain, but the afternoon revealed him as someone
sinister and determined. Ben's fall, his anguish, the
bloodied nose, remained clearly with Theo on his return
drive to Christchurch, and he was pissed off with himself
for not taking care on the morning trip to ensure he was
unobserved.

He tried to express something of his feelings in an
email to Penny the next morning, and a day later she rang
from Alexandra when he was just home from work. 'It's
been just the same here,' she said. 'Nobody's been poking
around. The main thing is I've still got Ben and he's fine.
Nothing else really matters.'

'He's okay then?' said Theo.

'He's been sleeping and eating fine. I told him the nice
lady thought he was someone else.'

'I'm sorry how it turned out. You were absolutely right
— I should have been more careful.'

'It's not your fault. I just had to let rip at someone.'

'I feel like complaining to the police,' said Theo, 'but
of course they're after you too. Bizarre isn't it. There we
were having a quiet time together, and someone tries to
kidnap Ben, and all the time we're the ones going against
the law — officially, I mean. Jesus, though.'

'Yeah, well, the whole thing's a mess until we can get
some change in the court order.'

'You hang in there. Okay?' said Theo. Through his
living-room window he could see his garage, and realised
that he'd left the side door open again. What did it
matter? He didn't want to be standing there by himself:
he didn't want to be in his own house. Better by far to be
in Alexandra, in a phone booth with Penny, and then the
three of them could go back to Drybread together.

'There's no bloody choice any more, is there,' Penny
said.

She seemed more hopeful when she rang again a few days
later. Zack Heywood had been contacted by her husband
with what the Virginian lawyer termed conciliatory
approaches. Penny asked Theo if he could be a sort of gobetween
as well. 'You're the only one who knows anything
about how I feel,' she said.

Theo was surprised by the pleasure the compliment
gave him, but could only be prosaic in reply. 'What did
your husband say about the parson trying to kidnap
Ben?'

'Parson?'

'The guy with the woman,' said Theo.

'You know he's a parson?'

'It doesn't matter,' said Theo. 'You reckon your husband
didn't know anything about it?'

'I haven't talked to him — Zack Heywood did. I haven't
said anything to anyone about Timaru, so how would they
know?'

'That's right, of course. You're in Alex?'

'Yes, I'll take Ben to the park while I'm here and pick
up groceries. I'll email Zack before I go back and tell him
you're okay with being involved. I appreciate that.'

'I wish I was there with you,' said Theo.

'Me too,' she said. 'My language is reverting to that
of a three-year-old. My talk's all about tip-trucks and
engines with faces. Thank God for books and sometimes a
newspaper.' Theo hoped there were reasons for them being
together unrelated to her vocabulary, but didn't get into
that.

Four days before the Easter break, Zack rang, wanting
Theo to come in. When he asked him if it would cost
money, Zack just gave his relaxed laugh, so Theo assumed
that meant it wouldn't. The next afternoon he walked
from his office to Zack's, and was kept waiting on the red
buttoned leather of the foyer couch for less than twenty
minutes. Not bad.

'I liked your last piece,' Zack said. 'The background stuff
about the Californian judge and his conservative stance.
And the way you implied that judges here shouldn't just be
rubber-stamping decisions when at least one of the parties
has New Zealand nationality. Good angle about the little
boy too. All that confusion's bad enough for an adult, isn't
it? And I think you're right that the television appearances
back there are irrelevant really — nothing to do with Penny
Maine-King now.'

Zack's suit coat was on a hanger in a neat alcove off
his office. He wore a blue and white striped shirt with
silver cufflinks. In the shops Theo knew, the shirts didn't
have the holes for cufflinks any more. Zack must patronise
exclusive boutiques that catered for guys who remained
true to cufflinks and non-quartz watches.

'So what's up?' Theo asked.

'Erskine Maine-King has been in touch. He wants to
work out a compromise that suits both of them and the
boy. If that can be done, I think we could get a stay on the
warrant, and a Family Court rehearing.'

It was what Penny wanted: some way of reopening the
issue and so creating the chance of at least equal custody. It
gave Theo considerable satisfaction to know he might have
played some part in it.

'She won't meet him herself,' said Zack. 'She won't
come out of hiding until the warrant's lifted. She wants
you and me to talk to her husband on her behalf. God
knows what she thinks he's going to do.'

Theo, with knowledge of the parson and Timaru, could
have told him. 'Well, being hidden, being unable to be
found, that's her top card, and she won't jeopardise that,'
he said. 'Sure, I'll do anything I can, but this is all legal
stuff, isn't it?'

'I know about the law,' said Zack, 'but she thinks you
know what she wants from the situation. She's keen you
be involved.'

Again Theo felt pleasure that Penny put some trust in
him. When they'd been together she'd sometimes seemed
offhand, but now there was this sign of preference, despite
what had happened. And in accepting that preference he
allowed for greater possibility in their relationship. He
took care, of course, that Zack was aware of none of that.
He said he didn't see that he could contribute much, that
he'd need to talk to Penny before any meeting, that he
didn't feel he knew what it was she wanted.

'You'll have time for all that before we leave,' Zack
said.

'Leave?' said Theo.

'Erskine Maine-King wants to meet in Nice in a fortnight.
He's got business in Europe.'

That was a crunch point right there. It wasn't so much
the issue of getting agreement from the paper, or taking
so much time on it, or whether Theo could handle it. He
needed to understand why Penny wanted him as part of
something so important to her, and if his acceptance would
mark a final commitment to the whirlpool of her life.

When Theo said he needed to talk to Penny before
making any decision, Zack said that was fine provided he
had an answer soon after Easter. He offered Theo a mint
from a lidded jar, tinted light blue, which sat on the client
side of his desk. Maybe the sweets were for the infrequent
children who accompanied their parents into Zack's office,
but Theo took one anyway. So did the lawyer. They bulged
their cheeks at each other because the mints were landmine
size, but Zack didn't seem to feel incongruous even in his
crisp, striped shirt with silver cufflinks. There's a lot said
about the need for men to express their emotions, to talk
more about how they feel, but the Virginian and Theo
enjoyed the reassurance of reticence, and talked briefly
about one of the paper's other stories before Theo left, the
mint rattling against his teeth. Zack just nodded to him at
the door.

It was a long time since any woman had asked something
significant of Theo. He found it both affirming and yet
unsettling.

Theo finished the fourth article on Penny during the
morning that preceded Good Friday, with Nicholas complaining
of a sore throat and coughing often to prove it.
When he took his copy through to Anna, she said it was
easily the best story of the year. Theo thought it was just
that other journalists were shut out because Penny dealt
only with him, but he was pleased with it because he
considered he had kept the tone from being mawkish, and
built sympathy by mentioning the attempted kidnapping
of Ben without giving too much away. 'Take some credit,
Theo,' Anna said. 'You've given good legs to this story.
That stunt in Timaru reads as bloody good drama. So
much publicity in Penny Maine-King's favour must be
putting pressure on the court.' Normally he wouldn't take
his pieces to Anna, but she'd been supportive of the story
all along, and he was preparing the way for his request to
go to Nice with Zack Heywood.

He didn't feel like turning to any other writing that
afternoon, wanting to let his mind lie fallow for a time,
so after lunch he went to visit his parents, who lived in
a retirement village in New Brighton. It was a two bedroomed
brick home of strict conformity sanctioned by the
village ordinances, but they seemed quite happy with all
the strictures of the place and the various service charges
and community levies. Theo's recollection of his mother
and father when they lived in small towns was that they
were independent, with strong sources of individuality,
but in retirement they had morphed into city lemmings,
seeking security and the company of their own age group.
Bridge and bowls were the two poles of their world, and
television filled most of the space in between. His mother
had the slightly greater enthusiasm for bridge; the order
was reversed in regard to bowls.

Sometimes Theo thought that his infrequent visits
were an inconvenient interruption to their complacent
routines, though they never said so. He called out of filial
duty, and they received him with similar convention.
He talked of sport and his outward life, asked after their
health; they dutifully asked him about his work, and told
anecdotes about Mandy and Tom, their grandchildren by
Theo's sister, their only other child. The stories of infancy
arose in Sydney, but fed into the life of Theo's parents by
email, cards, phone calls, texts and small but uninhibited
artistic favours from Mandy and Tom. It was one of the
few aspects of a visit to the retirement compound that
Theo enjoyed: the tales made loving and humorous by
kinship, the unsteady kindergarten lions and hippos in
thick crayon on the door of the fridge, the reassuring
victories over croup and nappy rash.

Stella was rarely a topic of conversation, nor was
anything else from the time of Theo's marriage. His
parents didn't have the experience, or language, to grapple
with divorce at such close quarters. They would no more
enquire about his emotional life than they would question
his religious beliefs: probably thought both unnecessary, if
they existed within their son at all.

'Been reading your stuff about the Californian woman
who's hiding out with her little boy,' said Theo's mother.

'It's just so sad for everyone. Why can't they leave her
alone? Surely they couldn't send her to prison with a child
to look after.'

'She could be imprisoned for contempt of court,
though,' said Theo. 'She's actually a New Zealander who
married in California.'

Iris Esler was a spare woman with a long face. In the
photographs of her youth it was softened by the skin's
bloom and a frame of dark hair, but with age the heavy,
slightly mulish bone structure was coming through. It gave
her a disputatious appearance that was entirely false. 'Oh,
poor thing,' she said. 'I'm sure it will all work out. The
little boy must be about the age of our Tom.'

She had turned down the television, but it still flickered
across from the three of them in the small lounge, so that it
was difficult not to observe the silent action while talking
of other things. For Christ's sake, why couldn't people
turn the set off and give attention to each other. It became
an unacknowledged filler when conversation lapsed, sometimes
even a substitute. When talk lagged, his parents'
attention would be drawn back to the screen: sometimes
his father would give a little grunt of inappropriate amusement
during a conversation, because of some pratfall on
the television. Bridge and bowls weren't so bad, all things
considered. Direct experience at least, instead of hunched
obeisance before the screen.

Theo looked at his father carefully. Recently he'd had
some difficulty in recalling his appearance when they
weren't together. In memory Don Esler was small and
strong, like a lightweight boxer, springing in and out of
truck cabs, working twenty bales high on the haystack or
urging steers up the inclined race into the stock crates. He
had become even smaller, with a Punch face of oversized
features and a waist so slender that his trousers were bunched
there by the belt. Time exaggerated a certain unpromising
individuality of looks in Theo's mother, but had worn his
father to generic old age. In the street, or the supermarket,
Theo might well pass his father without recognition. And
if former appearance was lost, what else was there to act as
link between father and son except memories to which the
older man laid no claim.

Theo made an effort when his mother was in the
kitchen. 'So how are things?' he said.

'Not so bad. Not so bad,' said his father.

'How have the bowls been treating you?'

'We've been doing okay actually. We played yesterday
and it was that hot on the greens. There's this great bloody
hedge all round and the place gets like an oven.'

'Do you miss the business, the trucks and all that? You
know, the farms you used to go to and the people you
knew?'

'Eh?' his father said. Was he glancing at the television?

'I mean do you miss all the stuff you did before you
retired?'

'Never miss it. It wasn't any picnic, you know, keeping
trucks on the road, and trying to find steady guys and
enough business.'

'It was lovely country, though, Dad,' said Theo.

'Never miss it,' said his father emphatically. He sat like
a goblin Abe Lincoln, with both arms resting on the chair.

His hair was a grey stubble, his face slightly scaly from
constant exposure to the glaring, antipodean sun.

'One day I'd like to take you and Mum back to some of
those places for a day or two. Some of those lovely, quiet
beaches out from Cheviot perhaps.'

'Yeah, well, we're pretty busy until Christmas,' his
father said. 'And we're hoping to get over to Sydney to see
Lee and the kids.'

It's not uncommon for children, adult or otherwise,
to find the company of their parents an imposition, but
Theo hadn't thought much about the reverse being true.
The visits to his parents were dutiful on everyone's part.
He brought nothing that engaged their existing priorities:
nothing of bridge, or bowls, nothing of common ailments
of decline, above all no absorbing and spontaneous children
with handicrafts of love. He came with the shadow of a
failed relationship. His gift was a supermarket cardboard
basket of Easter eggs, their gaudy foil wrappings catching
light from the television when his mother placed them on
the tray table.

'Thanks for that,' she said matter-of-factly. If his personality
lacked sufficient charisma to enthuse even his own
mother and father, what chance did he have with Penny
Maine-King?

Theo tried again when his mother returned with three
buttered halves of apricot muffin, the exact number a
warning of individual allocation. 'I was saying to Dad
that you might like to have a trip back to some of the old
places.'

'It's just we seem to be so busy,' she said. 'Goodness
knows where the time goes.'

It went on assembling a losing hand of playing cards,
on bowling biased balls up towards the kitty, on finding
a Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirt for Tom, and a pink
plastic tiara and fairy wand for Mandy. It ticked by during
the chatter of teacups and vapid voices in cream-painted
clubrooms, and it advanced remorselessly as they watched
repeats that filled their small lounge with canned laughter
and stock imitations of life.

Theo told himself that his mother and father had a
more essential existence than was ever on view, or revealed
in their conversation. What was presented could not be
all they possessed of life. Such a belief was presumptuous
and judgemental, but he held to it. Surely when they
talked privately, his parents had topics and understandings
that were enriched by personal philosophies and subtle
epiphanies which arose from their own experience. That
they chose not to reveal themselves to him was a lesser
blow than the possibility that the banal drift of their lives
was really as it appeared.

'What do you hope for these days?' Theo enquired
recklessly.

'Hope for?' His father's tone was almost of derision,
and his mother gave a slight laugh as though to cover
inappropriateness.

'I mean your ambitions for yourselves — what you're
aiming for. Hopeful, special things.' Even as he spoke,
Theo winced at his own words. The television images
jiggled; the heavy, yellow sunlight of afternoon through
the Venetians tiger-striped the small lounge.

'Winning Lotto and not getting sick. That's what we
bloody hope for,' said Theo's father.

'And for the family,' added his mother piously. 'It's all
family, isn't it.'

When Theo had turned fifteen his father taught him
to drive. It was the one time that Theo felt Don had an
urgency to pass on something to him. Maybe behind the
value his father attached to the ability to drive well, was
the expectation that Theo would end up continuing the
family trucking business; perhaps he felt contributing to
such a practical skill absolved him of the need to offer
any emotional inheritance. There were four trucks, and the
biggest and best was an articulated Mack that his father
rarely let anyone else drive.

Theo didn't learn on the Mack, or any of the trucks,
of course, although he later drove them to earn money
in school and university holidays. In the end he could
back a stock crate to match a loading race within an inch
or two. No, he learnt in the family Ford, and even then
was surprised by the patience his father showed, and his
concern for the welfare of machinery. 'Listen to the engine,'
his father would say. 'The engine talks to you. Its tone of
voice tells you everything: when you need to change up or
down, when it's at ease and when it's straining.'

The driving sessions Theo had with Don were the
best times they shared when he was a boy. They started
just sitting in the car with the motor off, and his father
talking of how an engine worked, how all the controls
and instruments enabled the driver to get the best out of
it. They ended many weeks later driving over downland
and hill roads, with Theo behind the wheel, and his father
making brief comment sometimes beside him of trucks,
and farms, and stock, and the people concerned with that
life. Theo hadn't realised then that he was experiencing the
greatest closeness he and Don would ever have.

They came to the door to farewell him, his mother
glancing to the houses on either side to see if they were
observed, his father working his Punch features comically
in lieu of anything to say. His mother tall, with her long,
equine face angled to regard Theo; his father reduced, like
a jockey, at her side.

Theo felt a mixture of dissociation and baffled tenderness
as he gave a wave of farewell. He was conscious of the
soft movement of the air on his face as he walked to his
car, of the warmth of the sun, of the fragrance of cut grass,
and the hovering white butterflies in the garden strip. In
the grassed centre of the cul-de-sac turning circle was a
large kowhai tree, with contorted seed pods spread at its
feet like a swarm of dead bees. It was his time to be alive,
he reminded himself, and he shouldn't waste any of it. It
was the very short time when green life was allowed him in
the endless shuffle of people past, present and future. He
would run in the evening when the sun had slipped below
the horizon. He would admit to himself and Penny that he
wanted to be with her as a complete partner, and resolve
to attain a life that had something in it which was valiant
and purposeful in terms of the spirit. He would drink less
in the evenings, and give greater support to his colleagues
during the day. He would seek something of significant
value outside himself to acknowledge.