Drybread: A Novel (4 page)

She was still there, but had been joined by a tall,
loose-jointed old man with a collarless white shirt and
Shakespearian eyebrows. 'Walter's one of the co-operative,'
Nadine said, 'He's a woodturner and sculptor.' Theo wasn't
interested in Walter, woodturning or sculpture.

'Nice to meet you,' he said. 'As a matter of fact Nadine
and I are just off. I've been held up in there.' He remained
standing until Nadine stood as well, and they said goodbye
to Walter, who was still in the process of rising politely
as they walked to the door. 'Enough of art speak for one
night,' said Theo, and he and Nadine escaped into the
coolness of the street.

It was relaxing at the Mad Hatter's. They talked easily
and with an openness that chance meetings sometimes
invite. Nadine seemed to find him amusing, whereas Stella
often accused him of exaggeration. Theo was able to use
some of his best anecdotes on a new audience without any
nagging concern that he was repeating himself. They didn't
touch, they didn't kiss, when Theo walked with Nadine to
her car, but there was just that pleasant charge of awareness
between them. Nadine said she was interested in the world
of journalism, and Theo said why didn't she come in to
the paper and look around with him some time.

She did come. She rang a week later and came in the
same afternoon, which was cold, with a southerly on the
way. Theo took her on a tour of the building, and she was
interested in how much of the paper's production had been
computerised, especially the imaging. She said it made her
realise how primitive screenprinting was: how physical and
tactile. So many of the old handcrafts were giving way, she
said. In an annex to the cavenous printing room was a pile
of cardboard cylinders. Nadine wondered if there were any
spare, and Theo said he'd drop a dozen or so off at her
place after work. 'I'm always looking for them to use when
I'm sending prints out,' she said.

'You're not screwing her, are you?' asked Nicholas
when Nadine had gone, and Theo went back to his desk.
To himself, Theo admitted that was exactly his intention,
and the thought gave him a sort of eagerness he hadn't felt
for a long time. Anticipation of sex, justified or otherwise,
rids the world of a paunchy ennui, outlines became more
sharply defined, colours more vibrant. He had a shower
at work and left a little early, carrying a double armful of
cylinders down to the carpark.

Nadine lived in a white, weatherboard home in Hornby:
a house almost in nurse's garb itself. With the cardboard
cylinders clutched to him, Theo could barely see his way
to the door, and while he was still wondering how he could
manage to knock without dropping them, Nadine opened
it. Theo went in without invitation, without any query
regarding her husband: all the talk at the paper had carried
additional communication of which they were both aware.
As Nadine began to make coffee at the bench, Theo came
behind her and pressed in, feeling the excitement of a new
woman's body. They never had the coffee. They went into
a very small, white room with a single bed and cartons of
domestic surfeit along one wall, they stripped each other
without lingering and without much to say, and enjoyed
each other without any reserve whatsoever. Theo hadn't
been so hard for a long time. 'I don't know what you're
doing,' said Nadine, 'but you're really hitting the spot.'
Her large, pale breasts trembled with each stroke and the
eroticism of that drove him into a sort of delirium.

He went back the next day, and the day after that, as if
living in a junkie daze. Each time less was said, though the
lovemaking was of almost unbearable intensity, and he left
immediately afterwards. On the fourth day, Nadine burst
into tears when she came to the door. She felt so guilty,
she said, and her husband was coming back from his work
trip in two days. 'We don't even know each other, do we,'
she said. That was true in a way, but in another sense had
little to do with what was happening. 'We've just got to
finish it right now,' she said. 'Over, once and for all.' They
did finish, and it was rather like waking up, shaken, after a
feverish dream.

Theo thought that was it, but such things rarely have a
soft landing. Nadine must have felt the need for expiation,
because not long after she went round to see Stella and
told her everything. She'd told her husband too. 'I actually
admire her guts for getting it all out like that,' Stella said,
but Theo couldn't understand why you'd do that, unless
you wanted to get back at someone. He said it was all
his fault, that he wanted the marriage to work out, that
he'd try harder, but he felt nevertheless that somehow
he'd been done an injustice: that some fraternity of women
had been active against him. 'Well, we'll jog along,' Stella
said bitterly, 'jog along and see how things go between us.'

He didn't change his dentist, but when he went after
that, Nadine was never on duty. She must have worked
the roster to avoid him, or perhaps left the job completely
and spent her time screenprinting. At exhibitions and art
functions afterwards, he at first expected to see her, but she
was never there, and the brief affair faded until the only
memory that sometimes came, unbidden, with a small
jolt, was of the white room with storage cartons, and the
trembling of her breasts as he worked over her. Even that
seemed a long time ago.

Penny Maine-King left a message on Theo's answerphone.
She said that if he wanted more for the story, she'd be
home all day next Wednesday. She didn't say where home
was, and she didn't ask for any confirmation of the visit.
Her voice sounded quite offhand. Maybe she was calling
from a public booth in Alexandra, and there was a florid
man with sandals within earshot, or a sun-baked thin
woman with Trade Aid bracelets, maybe a teenage girl with
green tints in her hair and a silver ring in her belly button.
It was tough for Penny, surely, stuck at Drybread without
support, and trying from there to influence the ponderous
apparatus of the law.

Theo could have signed for one of the company cars,
but didn't want to have to give any reason for going away,
so on the Wednesday went south in his Audi. Also, he
liked to drive a well-serviced, quiet vehicle that didn't
have dockets strewn on the floor, coffee stains on the
seats and ash-trays crammed with barley sugar papers and
tissues. Communal things are always misused and abused
— cinema foyers, public toilets, telephone kiosks, honesty
boxes and company cars. No one gives a bugger about
anything unless it's a personal belonging: rather there's a
strange satisfaction in adding to the dilapidation of things
that aren't your own.

For Theo a decent car was a necessity of life. Power
in reserve; something there if you had the need, the urge
even, to put your foot down. He was impatient with the
heavy traffic, especially the milk tankers, which seemed to
come out in flotillas at certain times of the day.

He had an early lunch in the Saltwater Creek diner
at the south end of Timaru, sitting close to a bikie with
fringed black leather and a pale, poet's face. 'So what are
you doing?' Theo asked Nicholas on the cellphone.

'Anna's been asking about you,' he said.

'Tell her I'm doing the investigative journalism I'm
paid for.'

'You're not going to screw someone, are you?' said
Nicholas wistfully.

'Chance would be a fine thing.'

'You are, aren't you,' Nicholas said. 'People all over the
world are on their way to get well fucked, and I'm at work
looking up the arse of a pet shop. Jesus. We're having a
union meeting this afternoon: we'll all get indignant about
not being duly recognised and recompensed, determine to
stick out for eight per cent and cave in for four as usual.'

'So what are you doing now?'

'I'm cobbling together a quick piece on student loans.
Very exciting. I'm pissing myself about it. There's a guy here
today from the computer place supposed to be explaining
the proposed new set-up, and he's spent the time so far
hanging about Angie's desk with a hard on.'

'Would you check my emails for me?' asked Theo.
'Ring me in the next hour or so in case I get out of range if
there's anything important.'

'Okay. I can see a kid down here at the back of the pet
shop. He's taking dead guinea pigs or whatever out of the
bin. Jesus. You know, the more I think about it, the more
I'm convinced students shouldn't get any loans at all.
Idle, ignorant little pricks. No bastard gave us any loans,
did they? They just piss off overseas when they graduate
anyway.'

'Hang in there, Nick,' said Theo. As he finished his
coffee he wondered why the bikie had no tattoos and the
gaze of a poet. Happy baccy maybe, and a middle-class
upbringing.

The traffic on the main highway was a bore, but once
Theo turned off to go up the Waitaki Valley the congestion
eased, and he could set his own pace. It was a warm day
with low, even cloud given a pearly luminosity by the
sun behind it. Like Penny, he had a country upbringing,
unlike her he hadn't come full circle. Yet these trips to
Central gave him a certain lift, and he realised that despite
all the subsequent years in cities, his natural inclination
was still to drive away from them, and that such progress
usually gave him a satisfaction quite unconnected with any
intention, or destination. And both his Canterbury and
her Central were rain shadow regions bleached to wheat
colours in summer by drought and sun. The sociologists
say people are naturally gregarious, but that doesn't mean
you always feel at home in the great rat heaps that develop.
There's a saturation point to fellowship, and after it the
spirit aches to be alone.

On the second visit he seemed to come more quickly to
Penny's old house in the Dunstan Range gully, dust from
the gravel road a drifting plume behind him, and again
no sign of life in either of the other two baches. A scatter
of tattered willows followed the creek, and the flats were
patched with gorse and broom through which stock forced
a few narrow trails. Penny's blue hatchback was parked
behind the overgrown macrocarpa hedge, but Ben's trike
had gone. Absent also was the blazing sun of his first visit,
though the temperature was high enough. 'It's supposed to
blow,' said Penny at the door, 'and that'll soon get rid of
the cloud.' He remembered looking through the window
on his first visit to see both of them asleep: the absolute
relaxation of their bodies, the peacefulness of the boy as
he slept.

She looked different — of course she did, but somehow,
illogically, the way someone is the first time you see them
is a strong image, and only gradually do the subsequent
and multiple exposures reconcile you to variation and
complexity. She wore jeans, but perhaps the same pale top.
Theo was struck again by the whiteness and symmetry of
her teeth in a face free of any make-up. The teeth suggested
an American emphasis on enhancement of appearance
which she couldn't entirely put aside. Ben was beside
her at the door, barefoot and clutching a pink plastic and
chrome potato masher. 'You remember Theo, don't you?'
Penny said, bending to encourage his attention. He said
nothing, but he pointed the masher at Theo, who wished
he'd thought to get a lolly for him to make the meeting a
little easier.

'Theo's an unusual name, isn't it,' said Penny, as if to
excuse her son's refusal to respond to it.

They went to the back of the house again, to the
church pew and a kitchen chair carried out by Penny.
That's where Ben's trike was, though the hillside sloped
up so quickly from the house, and the grass was so rough,
that he couldn't have pedalled far. Penny told Theo that
Zack Heywood hadn't managed to get a stay of the Family
Court warrant, but that the sustained publicity was making
the case politically sensitive, and also putting pressure
on Penny's husband. Theo said that the public interest
would move on to someone else soon if nothing in her
situation changed, that a certain amount of progression
was necessary if a story was to remain newsworthy. Rape,
murder, insolent fraud, deceit by the mighty, exaggerated
protest by the marginalised, and the cancer scares of the
famous, were as common as turnips.

'So you're not interested any more?' said Penny.

'It's not my interest that's driving it. I'm just saying
that time does matter and, as Zack says, if you can reach
some compromise with your husband, get some agreement
to renegotiate, then the sooner the better. And the police
could find you any time while the warrant's still in force.'

Penny didn't reply for a time. She sat looking up the
slope beyond the stunted plum tree, then allowed her head
to flop back in a brief revelation of helplessness. 'I know,'
she said, 'and it's awful for Ben cooped up here with just
me. Christ, sometimes we hardly know what day it is. We
eat crap food and watch the occasional sheep.' The boy was
playing on the small patch of ground worn bare of grass
beside the back door. He seemed absorbed in squeezing
toothpaste into the cab of a small, plastic truck.

'Crap food,' he said.

'Don't say that,' said Penny.

There was something dislocating about the place and
the situation, some quality of latent significance that
threatened realism despite it being so closely bound to
nature. The half sod house with a large front hedge, and
little visible boundary besides, the dry hills rising up, the
church pew at the door and Penny sitting on a kitchen
chair in the rough grass with her head tilted back again.
There was a metal plaque on the back of the pew to record
its donation by Randall and Elizabeth Nottage 'Of This
Parish'.

'Everything gets so mixed up, doesn't it,' Penny said.

'You think you've got a handle on stuff, you're set up
nicely in life, and then it all turns to crap.'

'Crap,' said Ben with satisfaction. The toothpaste on
his fingers had picked up dirt and tufts of dry grass and
thistledown.

'Don't say crap,' said Penny.

'How long were you in the States?' Theo asked.

'Six years.'

'How did you end up in that television thing?'

'Erskine had some business connection with the guy
who was producing the show, or co-producing it anyway.

It was about ordinary couples hosting a dinner party for
celebrities and being judged on how well they handled it.'

'Who did it?'

'Did what?' she asked.

'Did the judging?' Ben came over and wanted him to
get the toothpaste out of his toy. It was a messy job, but
Theo didn't like to refuse.

'Oh, the live audience did. They were there throughout
the dinner, on tiered seating. The dining table was on a
sort of stage. You did all the preparations, and then were
on camera for fifteen minutes serving the meal and making
conversation with the celebrities and the series host Saul
Vries. You wouldn't know him, or any of the celebrities,
here. We lasted only two episodes. The audience the
second time didn't like the choice of dessert, or our views
on Californian politics.'

'Jesus.'

'I think we did it as an attempt to keep the marriage
going, but we never admitted that to each other. Erskine
hated it. You make decisions which seem sensible at the
time, don't you, and then later you wonder what the hell
you were thinking. It's so easy to see how other people
bugger up their lives, but you're sure you yourself always
act for the best.'

Ben wanted to sit on the pew and he watched as Theo
worked on the truck with a handkerchief. 'He likes you,'
said Penny. Poor little bugger would probably have taken
to the devil himself for variety. He had no sense of changed
circumstances, of course, of having come down in the
world from an expensive home in Sacramento to a gold
miner's hut in Central Otago. Probably the only thing he
missed was his father. That was something Theo hadn't
got into much in the newspaper articles, or with Penny:
why she thought her husband wasn't fit to have custody
of their son. Even after years of journalism he didn't like
asking a woman about the details of a relationship. Going
on a television show to help your marriage sounded very
American.

'He needs more people, more kids, around him,' Penny
said.

'I thought the phone message you left me sounded a
bit odd,' Theo said.

'Well there's probably a bug on your phone. I'm hardly
likely to say anything that gives this place away, or anything
about my intentions.'

'I suppose not.'

'You're making sure you're not followed, I hope?'

'Sure.' Theo had kept a casual lookout because of the
parson. Penny could be quite sharp, almost dismissive, but
he let it pass. 'Is any cloak and dagger stuff really likely do
you think?' he said. Why add to Penny's concern?

'I'd say Erskine's almost certainly got someone looking
for us. He'll be pissed off the police here haven't been able
to find me. He won't want to rely on just them: he'll be
trying to find us.'

'He loves the boy a lot, I suppose.'

Penny just looked at him. She looked at him as if he
wasn't on her side, then folded her arms and watched Ben
go up the slope a bit through the rough, cropped grass.

'The thing is,' Theo said, 'I'd like to be able to give some
better reasons in my articles why you're so determined to
have Ben with you — why the little guy should live with
you, and why you've done all this to evade the decision of
the Californian court. People will be sympathetic if they
think the boy's in some sort of jeopardy, and that it's not
just you being bloody-minded to punish your husband.
Does that make sense?'

'You've been married. Could you make any sense of it
to a few thousand strangers?'

It wasn't the same, though, was it? Once you decide
to use publicity to strengthen your case, there's a sort
of contract formed by which you provide a confessional
feast, and hope to receive sympathy and support in return.
Nicholas had a saying — publicity is the bear: sometimes
you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you. Theo
could see that Penny wasn't going to say any more about
her marriage than she had to, and he could understand
that. Maybe, too, she didn't want to tell him, didn't feel
easy enough.

'My life must seem a mess,' she said. 'It is a fucking
mess,' she continued more emphatically, 'and I can hardly
believe it myself. I wake up some mornings feeling okay,
and then I look around this place, realise what's happened
and start crying. Christ, I've gone from corporate cocktail
parties, shopping trips to Europe, to this dump in just a
few crap months. I used to come here sometimes as a kid,
and I didn't much like it then either.'

'What's actually at Drybread? It's even marked on the
map.'

'Nothing,' said Penny.

'Nothing at all?'

'Well, there's a graveyard sitting in the paddocks, with a
few huge macrocarpa, or pines. That's about it. All vanished
with the gold. I feel like some bloody relic myself.'

'How did the name come about?'

'They say a disappointed miner cursed it as a place of
dry bread only.'
Theo told her she was at the bottom of the swing, and
things would improve, that transitions in life were often
especially painful and yet essential. Such stuff is true, but
very little consolation when the ground is breaking up
around you. They should go for one more hard-hitting
article and then sound out the court, and her husband.
He asked her why she wouldn't share custody and let Ben
live mainly with his father.