Drybread: A Novel (2 page)

As Theo drove north he had an image of sex with Penny
Maine-King on the church pew. It came without conscious
inclination. The irreligious incongruity was the attraction
perhaps, rather than her yellow shorts, perfect teeth or the
untidy pony-tail. His friend Nicholas held that if a woman
succumbs in imagination, it's a sign of her inclination.
The subconscious is open to such vibes, he said. But then,
Nicholas was a divorced man like Theo himself, and wistful
in matters of the heart, and groin.

Because Penny Maine-King's New Zealand lawyer was
American, Theo assumed there was some connection
between his origin and the years Penny had spent in
California. 'Pure coincidence,' Zack Heywood told him.
'Absolutely. Mrs Maine-King came to me because the firm
has experience in custody cases.'

'But it must make it easier to get a handle on what's
happened at the American end?'

'Sure, sure. I worked in Richmond, Virginia, however,
which is a long way from California. Family law varies
dramatically from one state to another. Everything does,
in fact. There's not the uniform jurisprudence you have
here. It sure makes a difference what state you're in when it
comes to what's against the law, and what sort of walloping
you get if you're found guilty.'

Theo didn't ask how a Virginian lawyer ended up in
Christchurch, but, accustomed to the curiosity of others,
Zack Heywood provided a quick resumé anyway. It was
much what you would guess — a Kiwi girl on her big OE
had been quite enough to bring Zack to a country he'd
barely heard of, and to an income considerably reduced.

Lawyers are unpopular as a breed, and the generalisation
suited most of the individuals Theo had met. He'd come to
Penny's lawyer expecting to find him greedy, conceited and
assured — and found him able, good-natured and assured.
He was well groomed and well dressed too, and Theo was
conscious of his own scuffed, brown shoes and trousers
that pouched a little at the knees. There were sharp creases
on Zack's pink shirt, freshly ironed perhaps, or straight
from the box.

'I don't want to know where Mrs Maine-King is,' Zack
said. 'I don't want to know if you know where she is. She's
asked me to work with you and I'll do all I can.' He didn't
have that much of an accent and didn't look much like
an American, being small, olive-skinned and quite finely
built. Maybe there were things of interest in that long
Virginian past.

Zack told Theo there were precedents for getting a
stay in execution of a warrant, and then a rehearing, if the
Family Court felt circumstances had materially changed.
There would need to be some sign of compromise from
both sides, though, he said; a reasonable chance of the
parties working together. What they had to do was provide
substantial reason for a rehearing. 'Are you in touch with
Penny's husband?' Theo asked.

'Through his attorney, yes,' said Zack.

Theo told him Penny thought she'd have a better chance
if she got sympathetic publicity: once she was back overseas,
or if the boy were taken away, she reckoned she'd get done.
Zack said the husband was pushing things vigorously from
the States, and that the courts and police here had become
quite active in custody disputes originating overseas. There
were international agreements, he said, specifically the
Hague Convention, and of course the father's anxiety to
be considered.

Theo felt a passing sense of guilt that the lawyer was
more aware of the diffuse emotional impact than he was
himself. But then again he was in it for the story wasn't he,
irrespective of where the rights and wrongs lay. He hadn't
warmed especially to Penny, yet it suited him to support
her.

'Have you known Penny Maine-King long?' Zack
asked.

'No, I've just been covering the story really.'

'Having public opinion on her side is a plus for sure, but
I'd go easy on making the Family Court a target if I were
you. Doesn't pay to alienate those making the decisions.'
'Fair enough,' Theo said.

'Anything I can help with I will. These cases have so
much unhappiness.'

'I've got a few things you could help me with, but we
need to clear up who's paying for your time first, I suppose.
You know what papers are like. My editor will allow bugger
all for legal consultation.'

'I think at this stage we just do what's necessary in the
best interest of Mrs Maine-King,' Zack said. It had the
ring of sentiments expressed by comfortable, professional
people to whom money flows naturally, as if downhill.

'But someone always pays in the end, don't they.' Theo
was thinking of his own divorce, but the consequent surge
of sadness, guilt, anger even, had little to do with fees.

'If you want me to be mercenary, I can say that
Erskine Maine-King is very well set up, and whatever
the matrimonial outcome his wife will have a significant
share.' Theo was glad for Penny that at least there was
money somewhere. 'He's loaded,' said Zack Heywood,
with sudden, colloquial indiscretion. 'But of course that,
too, becomes a bargaining chip and leverage to get what
he wants.'

They talked for another few minutes, and Theo made
notes. Zack was easy to like, and they agreed on how best to
co-operate for Penny's benefit. Yet Theo felt how close to
indecency was discussion by strangers of the relationship
of a husband, a wife and a child. He knew the sense of
bewildered violation when things most personal were
bandied about with routine matter-of-factness by people
who understood nothing of the marriage they dissected.
Now it was Penny and Erskine Maine-King's turn, and
a Kiwi newspaperman and a lawyer from Virginia sat in
a Christchurch office with a view of a one-block grass
square, Easter bunned with crossed asphalt walking paths,
and talked of infidelity, incompatibility and unreasonable
expectations; applied their complacent rationality to things
so intimate at inception that neither marriage partner ever
imagined they could go beyond their own knowledge.

As he returned to work, Theo resolved that not
everything would appear in the articles. Enough in his view
for a balanced understanding, the arousal of sympathy, but
stopping short of the titillation in which the magazines
specialised. Both the editor and the chief reporter were keen
on the story being kept alive. 'Pump it up, pump it up,'
said the editor, shoving clumps of paper about on his desk
in a minor agitation of journalistic enthusiasm. 'It's good
that she's gone to earth somewhere in the South Island,
and that she's talking exclusively to us.' It was always 'us' in
such circumstances. 'How does she get in touch? Do you
go somewhere?'

'No, she sends a note, or phones,' Theo said. It was a
half lie.

'Well, pump it up as long as we don't incur any legal
difficulties, or significant expense. She's not asking for
money, is she?' Costs were a constant concern. His eyebrows
fluctuated in apprehension when he considered any
chance of financial liability. 'Is she?' The editor's abilities
were almost certainly the equal of Zack Heywood's, but
journalism lacks the strong self-regulatory codes that
provide lawyers with the confidence of affluence.

Theo reassured his boss, but what was Penny asking
for? Theo assumed she wanted to have her child to herself,
to protect him, to keep him from a man she was no
longer in love with. But what qualities, apart from being
unlovable after once being lovable, made Erskine Maine-
King unfit to have access to his only child? When Stella
and Theo divorced, they had comforted themselves with
the thought there were no others close to be hurt. No kids
to go through the uncomprehending misery of the breakup,
no subtle continuation of warfare waged through the
next generation, no complication if either partner found
someone else — as Stella had.

Theo knew the editor was still talking — he recognised
the rise and fall of heavy, almost ginger eyebrows, the self-affirming
nodding, the extension occasionally of his left
palm uppermost, as if like a conjuror he wished to show he
had nothing to hide — but he heard nothing his superior
said. The backdrop of the untidy office was replaced by a
view of bare hills in perfect perspective. Where had they
come from, those dry hills? Were they the foothills of his
North Canterbury boyhood, or were they the steep slopes
he'd seen behind Drybread as he drove to the gully where
Penny Maine-King was holed up?

'Anyway,' said the editor, breaking through suddenly
again, and proffering another palm against trickery, 'you'll
know how to go about it in the best way. I'm certain of
that.'

'Okay, sure, thanks,' said Theo.

A plain clothes detective sought Theo out not long after
his second article. He came to the newspaper, and Anna
suggested her office for the interview. 'Better than sitting at
your desk in the open reporters' room,' she said to Theo.

'And I can stay if you like. I can be your sort of whanau
representative.'

'Why not.' The gesture was well meant enough, even
if motivated by curiosity, and concern for the paper's
interests.

The detective was young, blond and of only middling
height. What happened to the old rule of having big guys in
the police? Maybe brains were becoming more of a factor
in selection; maybe there were just fewer to choose from.
Anna stayed at her desk, and Paul Talleon, the detective,
and Theo sat together on the other side. The interview was
humdrum rather than inquisitorial. The detective retold
what they all knew: that there was a court warrant for the
child to be sent back to California, and that if journalists,
or anybody else, connived in her evasion they could be
committing an offence.

'I'm just reporting the story from her point of view,'
Theo told him. 'I think she just wants more time to find
out what will happen if she goes back.'

'Do you know where she's staying?' asked the detective.

'No,' Theo lied.

'What's the method of contact then?'

'She rings me, or sends a note here.'

'If you know where she is, you're obliged to tell us. You
realise that?'

'As a journalist I have to protect my contacts.'

'That's right,' said Anna firmly. 'That's journalistic
ethics.'

'Not the law, though,' said the short detective mildly.
'Full co-operation is expected.'

'I'll bear it in mind,' Theo said, 'but actually on the
specific matter of this confidentiality the law's ambiguous.'
He had done some checking of his own with Zack
Heywood.

'We're always aware of our obligations to all parties in
such a sensitive and difficult issue,' said Anna.

She was a very tall, rangy woman, and the competitiveness
she had shown as a provincial netball player had
carried over into her journalistic ambitions. The editor
had several times praised her team ethic to Theo, perhaps
as a spur to his cultivation of the same virtue. 'We'd like
you to feel free to keep in touch, Paul,' she said. 'We'd
appreciate word of any developments at your end so that
our reporting is balanced.' Her eyebrows were so fair as to
be invisible, and her whole face had a peeled look — pale
lipstick was her only make-up. She wore flat, black shoes on
her competent feet. Rumour among the reporters claimed
that she'd had a torrid affair with a city councillor when
her round was local bodies, but the humour may well have
originated from professional jealousy, and Theo couldn't
imagine her inquisitive face buried long in a pillow.

He went down in the lift to street level with the
detective. It gave him the chance to ask some questions
without Anna's presence. How vigorously were the police
looking for Penny? What did he know about her husband
in California? What information had been before the court
there? 'I don't think there are any real baddies in this case,'
was Paul Talleon's final comment, 'but the law's the law,
isn't it?'

On his way back to his desk Theo poked his head into
Anna's office and thanked her for the help. 'Good story.

Stick with it,' she said, having clearly enjoyed the mild
joust with the detective.

'You think I should pump it up?' he said. Anna grinned,
but was too loyal to make a comment.

As a senior journalist, Theo had one of the two best
desks in the large reporters' room — at the window, with a
view of a tin can alley and the backs of a beauty parlour and
a pet shop. He sat down at the other desk, which belonged
to Nicholas, who had the largely nominal title of deputy
chief reporter.

'So when do you go to prison?' Nicholas said.

'When Anna ceases to protect me from the police.'

'Have you been to see this Maine-King woman again?'

'No,' Theo said.

'What's she like?'

'Small tits, assertive, preoccupied with herself and the
kid as you'd expect.'

'Why would you expect her to have small tits?' said
Nicholas.

'Actually she does have bloody nice legs.'

'Just don't end up screwing her,' said Nicholas. 'You
screw her and you're done for, drawn into the whole mess
— you become some man she can take it all
out on. Screwing
is how women attach themselves and create obligation.'

'It's wonderful the way you find the romantic element
in everything, Nick,' Theo told him.

At his own desk Theo checked emails. Most were spam
from such computer-generated creations as Warbles P.

Burents, Judith Fhlth, Terrell Sozlly, Tib Uimeuzzc and
Guilermo Shinholster. Two messages related to a story he
was doing on the possibility of a new wave of boat people
from Indonesia and the Philippines, so he settled to do
some work on that. The Maine-King custody matter could
peter out just as quickly as it had arisen. It didn't pay, he
knew, to have any role other than commentator: the real
parties would act quite according to their interests.

What disturbed Theo most, of course, about Penny's
story was that it reminded him of his own failed marriage,
despite almost all the details being quite different: no court
drama, no publicity, no ongoing contest or vilification. At
the core, though, was surely the same pain that love and
commitment had failed, the same bewildered anger, the
same barely acknowledged guilt.

Theo worked on the boat people story, avoiding the
sensationalism that was its obvious temptation, and
exchanged nonsense with Nicholas from time to time.
Birds perched, bickered and fouled on the guttering of
the building opposite. Nicholas said he was developing
a universal theory of incompatibility in life, and that the
behaviour of birds was evidence of it: When you painted
a house white, they shat dark on it, when you painted it
dark, they shat white on it. 'Everything conspires against
you,' he said. 'All the forces active in nature are ultimately
malicious.'

Theo told him his theory was just a subset of Murphy's
Law.

'Murphy's Law is the clockspring of the universe,' said
Nicholas, 'and immutable. It proved itself again just this
morning.' He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and
turned away from his computer screen, stimulated by the
recollection. 'I was trying to pull the hose across to the
wall, and it twisted itself so that the metal mount fell and
smashed the big, blue ceramic pot that my mother gave
us. Hoses are real bastards of things. You can't let them get
away with it.'

At the back of Theo's mind a memory was spooling
unbidden — Stella and he with their lawyer, in the house
they had decided to sell.

The silver birches had been stark, June etchings, but
the plum tree behind still had a few caramel leaves at the
ends of its most slender branches, and as the wind blew,
the remaining leaves were strung out and flipped urgently
like lures trolling in swift, cold water. Theo half expected
the passing magpie to swoop in flight, to be hooked, to
be drawn up through the heavy wind to some surface
unknown.

'Well, you'll be satisfied now,' Stella said. 'It's a funny
business in many ways.' She wore her observed expression:
half humorous, half cautious. I know you're looking at me,
her face surely said, but you don't know what I think. True.

After twelve years of marriage, true. Theo wondered what
her face was like when she was alone; if it was the same as
he could observe when she was asleep.

'I'm glad we came. Thanks, I appreciate it.' As he
spoke came the immediate conviction that the visit would
achieve nothing. It came like a gust from deep within, and
passed through chest, neck, face, causing barely a tremor,
hissed from his eyes as the clean nothingness that made
streamers of the tufted plum leaves. How often could such
spirit keep passing away.

'If he mentioned matrimonial home once, he mentioned
it a hundred times,' Stella continued. 'I said all
along I was willing for the house to be sold. But that's what
lawyers are like.'

'I suppose they have to deal with a lot of upset and
unreasonable people. They want to make sure there aren't
any comebacks.'

'No comebacks?' she said. They were standing on
the brick barbecue area that was never used much. It was
too shaded, and they weren't a barbecue sort of couple
anyway.

'You've made it easier to sort it all out. I want to say
that, whatever else happens.'

'Why should we hurt each other any more?' Stella said.

'Why should we be any more hurt or ashamed or angry
than we have to be. We don't hate each other, do we?'

'No,' he said.

'We had a nice home. We had some good times,' she
said. 'Maybe we were just disappointed.'

'Maybe.'

'We don't hate each other, but we're disappointed,
aren't we. Isn't that it?'

'Everyone has disappointment,' Theo replied.

'Yes, but I'd hoped for less of it,' Stella said with flat
finality.

Everything around them spoke of common ground
and a mutual past. Even the lawyer just departed had
become an acquaintance, almost a friend, over the years
of marriage. Theo had noticed his slight embarrassment
as he gave advice, as he pointed out he couldn't act for
both of them and that if things went ahead, each of them
should be independently represented.

The barbecue area was the last of their major do-it-yourself
projects: after that they had been able to afford
tradespeople. Standing in the cold tide of winter wind,
Theo had perfectly recollected the construction over a
long summer. They spent hours in weekends and evenings
after work, chipping mortar from the stack of used bricks,
digging out the lawn to a fastidious level surface, finally
laying each brick in the base of sand. How often they
discussed the positioning of the barbecue itself — he'd
placed tiny home-made pennants to gauge the prevailing
wind. The sense of achievement in the construction was
greater than the pleasure of subsequent use. Perhaps
they weren't informal enough as a couple, perhaps the
pennants hadn't been a true augury of smoke drift, maybe
they just couldn't be bothered. The lawyer had liked it
though, particularly the low brick wall that could be used
to sit on.

Neither of them had been to the house for several
weeks. They made coffee and Stella took a fan heater into
the sunroom, which was small and easiest to heat, even in
winter. The house had the bone coldness that came from
being unlived in.

'I was in Auckland last week, and it rained every day,'
Theo told her.

'Did you see Graham and Yvonne?'

'It didn't work out, but I gave them a ring.' He knew
she was wondering how much he was telling their friends.
Both of them shied away from a discussion that would
result in some agreed new way for friends to view them.
'They send their love,' he said. 'I didn't want to get into
any stuff about us on the phone.'

'I've told Melanie how things are now,' Stella said.

'Sure, that's okay.' Melanie was a close friend to both
of them.

The indoor plants needed attention. Stella took off some
of the dead leaves with her free hand. She didn't sit down
as they talked, but roamed the small room with her mug
of coffee close to her face for warmth. What do you tell
friends? He thought with a pang of their own reaction to the
differing separations of various acquaintances: the mixture
of concern, curiosity and complacency. The apportioning
of responsibility, and that fierce, but unacknowledged,
relief that anyone's life but your own is shaken down. But
then they were splitting; they were being shaken down.

He sensed that each of them was close to offering
support to the other, yet knew that being together wouldn't
work any more. And so they talked of offers on the house,
and her father's health, as the room grew warmer and
the winter day outside grew colder, the wind blowing the
magpies past the birches and plum tree, and towing on
long clouds with pale bellies, which glided like sharks in
the sky.

Theo did a story once about a shark woman: an
Australian of Italian descent who had lost most of her
right thigh in an attack while swimming from a launch in
Allot Bay. She said it was like being in a washing machine
and that she felt the blood draining away from her heart.
After that, like women lawyers who fall in love with the
murderers they represent, her whole life became devoted
to sharks: she wrote a thesis on their migratory patterns,
did oceanic field work for a combined universities research
team and featured in documentaries that sought to dispel
fear and ignorance regarding the shark family. She was
damn lucky to be alive. He interviewed her before a talk
she gave at the Viaduct Basin, and she lifted her skirt so
that the photographers could snap what was left of her
thigh. Just bone and the great sunken scar, like the pursed
mouth of an old man with no teeth. The shark had teeth
all right, though. She must have been in her fifties by the
time she came to Auckland, but she flipped her skirt up
like a teenager to show the damage. She said the more
you learn about the shark, the more you realise what a
wonderful creature it is, so perfect in its adaptation to its
role. She said there have been sharks for millions of years,
long before the first ancestors of man.

The shock of the attack had led to a fixation, Theo
reckoned. The trauma must have been so great that the
only way she could deal with surviving the shark was to
give the rest of her life to it.