Drybread: A Novel (12 page)

'I like you a lot,' she said. 'I don't think I can get
through all this without your help. It means a hell of a lot
to have someone on my side at the moment.' She reached
out towards his face, and for a moment Theo thought she
was about to stroke his cheek, but she gripped the Band-aid
strip and removed it without comment.

She stood briefly at the window as he left, and gave a
quick wave. Even the solid macrocarpa hedge was swaying
slightly and the clear hill facings higher up were an
undulation of tussock. The wind pressure made Theo's hair
uncomfortable on his scalp and he was glad to close himself
in the car. Was he going to get out of his depth in the whole
thing about Penny and the boy? Who could say how much
selfish calculation, how much selfless concern, lay in their
attitudes? What passes between a man and a woman is a
fluctuating charge, and never fully decipherable.

At the back door was a hard rubber and metal-studded doormat
on a folded sack. The dirt from her father's boots would fall to the
sack, and her mother would shake it out on the lawn every other
day. On the concrete beneath the overhang he'd leave his boots
when he came inside. She would glance there when she came home
from school, up the unsealed track from the road gate where the
bus dropped her. The road, too, was unsealed, the gravel ploughed
into furrows and mounds by occasional traffic. The back window
of the bus was always dusty, and Dylan Churcher would write
'Fuck Me', or 'Okker Sucks Pussy', and make sure the others
noticed. Okker was their headmaster. He came from Dubbo in
Australia. By the time the bus reached her place there weren't
many kids left. Dylan Churcher always went further than any of
the others.

The kitchen window of the farmhouse had been enlarged.
She could remember when it was done. Her father had taken
out the old sash windows by sawing around the frames, but his
skills weren't up to fitting the replacement window, and a young
carpenter who was working on McFedrons' new house came over
and spent a Saturday doing the job. Her mother liked to say it
was a conservatory window, but didn't explain the term.

It was her third form year, and she liked the smooth, brown
skin of the carpenter's face, and the way that sawdust caught in
the fair hairs of his forearms. She liked the agility with which
he could squat down to measure, or cut, and then bob up again
like a cork, even if he had something heavy in his hands, and his
breathing didn't alter. He talked to her while he worked, facing
the window. He asked her if old Okker was still the same, and told
her the only thing he'd enjoyed about school was playing in the
first fifteen. He was planning to go to Australia where builders'
wages were just about double what he was getting. 'Nothing much
happens around here, does it?' he said. From the back he was
pretty ordinary, with ears that weren't quite level, and a double
crown that made his hair stick up.

The enlarged window gave an even better view of the yards
and the woolshed. That's probably why she took no pleasure in
the renovation. When she did the dishes she looked at the yards
and the old concrete dip, or the disused pigpen, the pine shelter belt
on the hill behind, or her mother's lavenders and climbing roses so
much closer. She didn't need sight to evoke the woolshed: the smell
of dags and sweat and new wool, the heat from the exposed tin of
the roof, the mixture of awkward shame and abrupt determination
with which her father would push her face down in the soft, open
bale. He was never so unnaturally far away as when he was so
unnaturally close. In the year of the kitchen renovations he never
penetrated her. He would push between her thighs from behind
and say, 'Okay, okay, it's all right, okay', over and over until he
spurted. He'd wipe her thighs with the slightly yellow skin end of
fleece wool and say, 'It's nothing, is it, nothing, okay. You know
I'd never do anything to hurt you,' he'd say — and the thing was
she knew they both believed it then.

As it happened, Zack and Theo flew into Nice on Anzac
Day, though that meant nothing to Europeans. They
didn't need any historical instance of bonding to confuse
Kiwis and Aussies. Nice has a large, busy airport, but there
was no direct connection from New Zealand. Theo and
the Virginian flew through Singapore to Paris, and then
down to the Côte d'Azur. Theo had been to the place once
before: as a twenty-two-year-old following the completion
of his degree. As Zack and he came into central Nice by
taxi, he recognised the long sweep of the beach on which
he'd sat for two days because he didn't have enough money
to do much else. The fountains he recognised too, and
the old quarter rising up the hill beyond the bus station.
He told Zack about the ancient fortress on the summit,
and the maritime curio shops close to the sea with brass
navigational instruments, slave chains, ships in bottles and
authentic scrimshaw. 'I think you'd find that anything
bone, or ivory, would be prohibited by Customs,' Zack
said.

Zack wasn't intrigued by Nice as a repository of history
or art. He just wanted to do the business and go home. He
was more interested in assessing the comforts of their hotel
in Rue Gioffredo than the Chagall gallery, or the desperate
zoo of the Algerian quarter. He didn't relax until he'd made
contact with Erskine Maine-King and confirmed a meeting
for the next day. 'Let me assure you we're committed to
finding a way through,' Theo heard him say. 'I know, I
know, but she didn't feel she could, and that's not a sign
she doesn't want a solution. It's just that she doesn't feel
up to a face-to-face meeting right now.' With his free hand
Zack checked the quality of the linen on the bed on which
he sat. 'We look forward to meeting you too,' he said. 'It's
on for ten o'clock tomorrow at his hotel,' he told Theo. 'I
thought he sounded a regular enough guy. I never could
get Mrs Maine-King to say much about him, so it's not
easy to know what line to take. Did she say much to you?'

'Not a lot. She's afraid of the way he uses his money
I think.'

'We'll have to play it by ear,' said Zack. Money
didn't frighten him. He'd found it a useful partner and
companion.

In the dusk Zack and Theo walked from Rue Gioffredo
to a couscous restaurant in the old town which had been
recommended by the woman at hotel reception. The place
was in a steep, cobbled street, and quite unpretentious:
simple checked cloths on the wooden tables, and walls
free of any decoration. The meal looked like something
prepared in a musterers' hut, all meat chunks, and the
gravy it was cooked in poured over the heaped couscous in
a large bowl. It cost a musterer's weekly wage too, but that
wasn't Theo's concern. He enjoyed it. He half expected
Zack to be a wine bore, to go on about the vintages of some
preferred Bordeaux
vin rouge
, or some local treasure he'd
stumbled on while touring in Languedoc, but Zack drank
what the Algerian waiter recommended without comment,
and talked of family. In appearance Zack could have been
that typical sort of Frenchman who is finely built and neat,
yet masculine as well. Only when he spoke did he assume
his nationality.

'Break-ups are so much more difficult if there's children,'
said Zack. 'I see it again and again. You can separate out
property, money, even citizenship, but children and memories
always live on as the evidence of a relationship.'

'But you wouldn't put off having kids because you
thought you might split up, would you?' said Theo. 'I
mean you've got to have faith, surely?'

'Faith, yes I suppose so.' Zack sounded unconvinced,
however, as if it were a point needing judicial scrutiny. 'I
tell you what, the more marital and custody work I do,
the more attention I pay to my own wife and family. Sad,
unhappy people, Theo — I see plenty of those. Some of
them achievers and bright as hell, some of them born
losers, but sad, unhappy people because they're not right
together. Some of the stories I hear, well, Jesus . . . as I say,
I go home and feel like a lucky man.'

'I like stories,' said Theo. 'Stories are a journo's business.'
But he didn't want to hear too many on that topic, or tell
his own to the lawyer.

'Ah, professional confidentiality,' said Zack lightly, as
if he had been pressed just a little.

'Of course.'

'There are times when things turn out well too,' the
lawyer said, 'when common sense and respect provide a
way through. It's the kids that matter most.'

Towards the end of the meal there was sudden, heavy
rain. It surprised Theo because he hadn't been outside to
see it building, and because he had no experience of rain in
Nice. The weather you remember in a place is the weather
it experiences forever. Through the open door of the
small restaurant they could see the water gush down the
narrow, sloping street, the uneven cobbles creating small
turbulences. The proprietor took the opportunity to empty
several ashtrays and a small container of rubbish into the
stream. It was all over in twenty minutes, and Theo and
Zack were able to walk back to the hotel. The market area
at the edge of the old town, close to the bus station, full of
food and flower stalls, soaps and hand-painted postcards
during the day, was bare and glistening after the rain. There
was a slight smell of engine oil, citrus soaps and vegetables,
and an even fainter one of lavender.

It released in Theo a recollection of his time there years
ago, when he'd met up with a South African boy at the
railway station, and been best friends for a night during
which neither of them could afford accommodation.
There'd been nothing sexual whatsoever, just their common
situation and the spontaneity of youth, and they'd
walked and talked and drunk the night through before
taking separate trains the next day. And in knowledge of
the necessary transience of their friendship, they'd been
quite candid with each other. Theo couldn't remember a
name, but the guy told him he'd been attacked by two
Algerians the night before and had stabbed one of them in
the face. He showed Theo the knife he carried, which had
a handle of bound cord, and stains on his clothes which
he hadn't been able to wash out. They'd been sitting in
the bus terminal, and as Theo passed there with Zack, he
thought the dingy concrete bays, the litter, the few figures
in dark corners, looked much the same.

Erskine Maine-King's hotel was more opulent than Theo's,
and his room looked out towards the Promenade des
Anglais and the sea. There was a low, glass-topped table
surrounded by four black leather chairs. Close to the
window was a large brass elephant, bearing a spidery plant
instead of a howdah. Erskine introduced himself, and then
his lawyer whose first name was Oliver. They were both
tall men with similar and pronounced Californian accents.
Zack's own nationality was a temporary point of interest,
and Theo was aware of being the only non-American.

Theo had wondered often enough about the motivations
and character of Penny's husband, but not his appearance,
and found it oddly unsettling to have a physical presence
finally before him: to notice that Erskine's thick hair was
already greying at the sides of his head, that his visible teeth
were almost as pristine yet unoriginal as his wife's, that
he had no tan at all. Erskine bore no resemblance to any
brash, beach-boy Californian stereotype. He looked like a
man who, rather than playing sport, did some gym work to
hold back incipient bulk, and on the pale bridge of his nose
were two slightly pink indentations made by his glasses,
which lay on the table. There he was, a complete stranger in
appearance, yet Theo had been writing newspaper articles
that concerned him, had attempted to make love to his
wife, had bought sweets for his child. Erskine and Theo had
no history, yet both knew Penny's body fragrance, the high
arch of her blonde eyebrows, a certain brittleness beneath
her assertive manner. Erskine had greater possession of her
past, and Theo, surely, more understanding of her present.
The future was a ground of contest.

'You've come a long way,' said Erskine, 'and I appreciate
that. I would've come to New Zealand myself if Penny was
willing to meet me, but we won't go over that again. The
whole thing for me is wanting Ben back again. I don't hate
Penny, and I hope she doesn't hate me, but I need my son
and I think he needs me. I've never said Penny can't see
him. It's what the court back home decided, that he live
with me, and she have visiting rights.' He paused and took
several regular breaths to ensure he was fully in control of
his emotions, that he wasn't too partisan. 'I thought that
was okay by both of us, and then wham, Penny took off.'
He tipped his head back a little as he recalled it. 'I guess I
wasn't paying enough attention to things,' he said.

'I think she was overwhelmed by a sense of the
inequality in your situations,' said Zack. 'In a country not
her own, not working, no financial security, her marriage
disintegrating, her friends mainly yours . . . she must have
felt powerless. So she went away with the child: the only
really important thing she had left.'

'It's no long-term answer, though, is it?' said Erskine.

He was right. Even Penny had come to recognise that.
Theo was surprised by the reasonableness of his manner
and his views. He barely mentioned Penny's defiance of
the Family Court order, her secrecy, her willingness to
discredit him. He was obviously a man used to meetings
and negotiation, to finding ground of agreement, yet his
real concern for Ben was equally apparent. He must have
wondered about Theo's connection with Penny, but it
wasn't until almost half an hour of discussion had gone
by, and coffee had been brought up, that he asked Theo to
talk with him alone.

They left the two American lawyers in their chairs by
the low, glass table, and went into Erskine's bedroom. A
laptop computer was set up on the bed with the screensaver
swirling and some papers alongside, but all else was tidy.
Erskine and Theo stood at the window, looking out over
the bustling street, the promenade, the long sweep of the
glamorous beach and the Mediterranean beyond. Aircraft
vapour trails formed and gradually dissipated in the blue,
slightly hazy sky. It was all a long way from Drybread with
its empty hills and sharp horizons, its gold tailings in the
gully scabbed with broom and gorse, the old sod house
with a church pew at the back door.

'I don't want to sound rude,' Erskine said, 'but I'm not
sure where you fit into all this. I know you've written those
newspaper articles. I've read them and I could say a hell of
a lot from my point of view, but she wanted you here as
well as her lawyer so you must be close?'

'She's afraid she's going to be squeezed out of Ben's
life.'

'Well, Jesus, I know the feeling.' Erskine looked appraisingly
at him, then, tall and solid, watched the people
beneath the hotel window. Theo thought perhaps he was
going to ask directly if Penny and he were lovers. Maybe he
was going to say something that would be appropriate for
such a situation in a television drama, like, are you getting
laid by my wife? But maybe Theo was imposing his own
priority, and Penny's husband was worried that he was after
money in some way.

'You see her? They're okay?' Erskine said.

'Not really. Penny's beside herself with worry a good
deal of the time.'

'She should've come herself. We're still a family,'
Erskine said. 'She must really trust you. It's almost like a
death, you know, when your child's taken away from you.'
His voice was steady, but one hand gave a brief flutter at
his side.

'Did you think of that when your private detective or
whatever tried to grab Ben back?' said Theo. He remembered
the boy falling, the blood from his nose, and the
parson and the young woman in the car refusing to face
what had happened. 'Do you blame Penny for not coming
or saying where she is?'

'I don't know anything about any snatch. Nothing
at all. Ben wasn't hurt, or upset?' Erskine's concern was
evident: he came a step closer to Theo as if to be certain of
gauging his answer.

'Not too badly,' said Theo.

'You're sure of that? And Penny's okay?'

'They've coped pretty well from what little I've seen.
You've got someone there looking for them, though,
haven't you?'

'Of course I have, but I wouldn't do anything to hurt
either of them. You think I'm not just as worried? I'll ring
the guy and see what the hell's going on. He's supposed to
find them, that's all. I'm entitled to know where my son is.
Your police seem useless.'

Erskine wasn't someone who aroused immediate
dislike. Theo could understand his situation rather more
than he wished. 'You need to ease up,' he told him. 'Both
of you need to ease up and get things sorted out. It's too
important to leave to lawyers.'

'Does she talk to you much about her father, or mother,
about when she was a kid?' Erskine said. That came out of
the blue.

'Hardly anything at all. Her mother's in care and I think
her father's dead.'

'Dead, but not gone,' said Erskine. He still wore his
wedding ring, and Theo, quite close beside him at the
window, was aware of the fragrance of aftershave. He also
noticed that Erskine had no lobes to his ears. The laptop
screensaver showed characters from the Simpsons surfing —
waves tumbling, boards bobbing, comic mouths open — but
no noise at all. Maybe California was determined to have
some presence on the Côte d'Azur, however marginal.

'I'm not with you,' Theo said.

'Penny's got a whole bunch of issues from when she was
a kid on the farm. Some of it pretty screwed up stuff, which
makes things difficult for her at times.' Erskine seemed
relieved Theo wasn't familiar with her childhood, as if that
were evidence enough that he wasn't Penny's confidant,
hadn't been given the intimacy of mind which would
follow nakedness together. 'I suppose I seem the bastard
in all of this, but all I want is to be a part of Ben's life, and
for him to be happy. I think Penny knows that. I'm not
saying we all have to live together, for Christ's sake. You
know? The marriage is gone, I guess, but we need some
way to carry on as parents. Maybe you can help explain
to Penny.'

'I don't think she wants to leave New Zealand again,'
Theo said. 'Not permanently anyway.'

'Okay, sure, but I need to know where they are, and
be able to have time with Ben. We can get the lawyers
to sort out all the Family Court stuff, as long as Penny
stops messing around. She'll have to come back to the
Californian court for a while to get any change anyway.
You know that: you know how the Hague Convention
works.'

'She needs money too, a fair settlement, if she's to have
a life for them both until she can go back to work.'

'There's no problem there, Theo, as long as she — as
long as I'm able to be part of my son's life. That's what
it's all about for me. There's no one to punish here. It's
all gotten somehow out of hand. Zack tells me you're
divorced, so you understand that a marriage is too complex
and personal for the law. The law gives no redress for the
things that matter. And it's not just mothers who love their
kids, you know. If you can get Penny to talk to me tonight,
I reckon the legal eagles will have something your courts
will be happy with by the end of tomorrow. Okay?'

Theo said he would do what he could, despite having
no telephone link, and they shook hands. Erskine asked
how Ben was looking and stood in a slight stoop of
concentration to listen. As Theo talked about the boy, a
faint, quite unselfconscious smile appeared on Erskine's
face, as if the image of his son were coming up more clearly
before him. 'I hear your country is an ideal place to bring
up kids,' he said.

Erskine's laptop was the easiest and quickest way to get
in touch with Penny, but Theo thought it better, even after
what Erskine had said, that he leave no record of her email
address, so he sought out an internet café from which he
could send Penny his hotel phone number. It would be
late at night over there, but he knew she was expecting
something from him and would go into Alexandra when
she could.

Two or three blocks from Erskine's hotel, chance
presented one of those glimpses of the life of others that
seems to cry out for relevance. A blue Renault backed
up to get enough space to swing forward and drive away
from the kerb, and in backing nudged the bumper of the
campervan behind. The van barely moved, but as if a switch
was activated, the blind on the window close to Theo went
up with a flurry, and revealed a naked couple lying on their
blankets. Both were on their backs, the man with his head
on her stomach, and her thighs on each side of his face,
as if he had been carrying her on his shoulders and just
fallen back onto the bed. The woman was olive-skinned.
Her short hair was cast back from her face and her full
breasts angled away on each side of her lover's head. The
man was pale, round faced, the greying hair at the centre
of his chest like the smudge from a cigar in a white ceramic
ashtray. Theo and the couple looked at each other steadily
for a second, the surprise and candour too complete for
any reaction, then he stepped on again down the street
with fully clothed and fully closed people as usual about
him. It was a long time since he had been party to such
relaxed nakedness, and the close, personal satisfaction of
two ordinary people emphasised his exclusion.

A Scottish backpacker with a dirty collar sat at the
computer next to him in the email café, his legs over
his pack for security and taking some of Theo's space.
He wanted help with access to hotmail, and Theo felt
resentment rather than sympathy: convinced that nothing
in the young guy's life was of any significance at all in
comparison with his own priorities. Theo didn't give a
bugger for his ferrety girlfriend in Aberdeen, if he had
one, or his dying ex-merchant-navy father in a Glasgow
tenement. He was at once close enough for Theo to see
the ginger glint of his eyelashes, and so far away that he
signified nothing at all. What Theo thought about was
Penny and the boy, waiting on the other side of the world
to find out what was going to happen to them. And the
couple in the van.

Penny rang late that night, and Theo was glad Zack had
his own room. 'What time is it?' she said, and apologised
when he told her. As they talked about the morning's
meeting with her husband, Theo was surprised by the
emotion in his voice, and sensed warmth in hers. Maybe
it was just relief that at last there was a good chance she
could be released from limbo, and have some sort of life.
She wanted to talk with Theo before contacting Erskine,
and that reliance on his opinion was gratifying too. He
asked her if she wanted him to wake Zack, but she said all
the legal stuff could wait until she spoke to her husband.
She was ringing from a public phone booth in Alexandra.
The call was costing an arm and a leg she said, and laughed
when Theo told her to add it to her expenses claim. 'It's so
sunny here,' she said, and then she was interrupted by Ben
wanting to talk.

'I got new shoes,' he said clearly, then lost interest. He
didn't use Theo's name, no doubt had no idea to whom he
was talking, no idea how important the day was in his life,
but Theo could picture him clearly, and his mother too,
in the open sunlight of the Central Otago town. Blonde
Penny, who moved with a sort of grace that mastered
desperate agitation, and dark-haired Ben, always looking
up at the world.

'Okay then, I'd better ring Erskine,' she said. 'Anyway,
I think you're right. We can't go on in this sort of standoff.'

'No.'

'I'm looking forward to you coming back,' she said.

'So am I.'

Theo didn't go back to bed for while. He wanted to
be awake during the time Penny would be talking to her
husband. Theo had the mean-spirited, but very satisfying,
thought that she wouldn't be telling Erskine she was
looking forward to him coming back. He thought also
of what Erskine had said about Penny's problems, and
wondered if he had created, or exaggerated, them to lessen
any responsibility he felt for the failure of their marriage.
The marriage is gone, I guess, he'd said to Theo at the
window of his bedroom that morning. There was a halfhidden
bewilderment in his tone that found an echo in
Theo: marriages are there, and then they're gone, although
the people remain. You paddle one side of the canoe for a
straight line, then you find you have to paddle both sides
to get ahead. You have to find within yourself a fellow
conversationalist.