Drybread: A Novel (7 page)

'The thing is,' he said. 'The thing is Mrs Maine-King's
in defiance of a legitimate court order. She's in hiding
despite that court order and warrant to enforce it, and the
authorities and other parties concerned are entitled to know
where she and the boy are.' There was nothing threatening
in the parson's tone, rather it was one of gentle reproof.
'And your articles, Theo, although perfectly justifiable in
themselves, indicate you know where Mrs Maine-King is.
You know where to contact her.'

Theo told the parson about journalistic freedoms, about
the protection of sources and so on, and the parson nodded
slightly in the dark, even worked his shoulders. It was late
enough for them both, and the novelty of the encounter
was wearing thin for Theo. 'I'd better be off,' he said.

'The thing is,' said the parson, not moving from the
car door, 'that my client's willing to pay for information.
How to get in touch with Mrs Maine-King, I mean. Her
whereabouts in fact.'

'Not interested,' Theo said.

'Willing to pay quite a lot. Remember that Mrs Maine-
King's in the wrong here. Breaking the law in fact, Theo.'

Being called Theo by the parson irritated him. It was
the talkback host's unjustified assumption of familiarity.
And Theo didn't like to have Penny classified as a law
breaker when he was aware of her suffering. He told the
parson he didn't want to talk any more, and without much
thought put the flat of his hand on the parson's chest to
move him from the car door. He wasn't thinking all that
clearly. The parson took his wrist with a markedly firm
grip and suggested they didn't need to get physical. 'Fuck
off,' Theo said.

Having had a few wines and feeling morally superior,
Theo assumed that dealing with the parson would play out
according to their respective just deserts. He was wrong.
Theo hit the parson's long face with his free hand, but
thereafter it was all parson. He slammed Theo into the
side of the car and kneed him in the hip, catching a nerve.
He put a hand behind Theo's head and pushed him into
the outside mirror. The mirror unit came away from the
connection as it was designed to do after such trauma, and
bounced on the carpark seal. 'Maybe you need to do more
than just the running, Theo,' the parson said, trying to
keep his breathing even. 'I don't like to be pushed. Sorry
about the mirror. They're excellent cars these — hold their
resale value well, I'm told.'

He walked away quickly, already regretting what had
happened. There would be no repercussions: he was disappointed
in a lapse of professionalism, and Theo was
humiliated at being so easily bested one on one. Theo
was left alone in the dim carpark and glad of it. He retrieved
the plastic mirror unit and sat in the car for a while to
calm down. He told myself that if he hadn't been drinking
he'd have had the bastard. He decided he wouldn't worry
Penny by saying anything about it.

In the morning he noticed a bruise on his cheek, the
fractures on the glass of his watch face and the scratches on
the door of the car. That pissed him more than anything.
The Audi's colour was a metallic blue of deep iridescence,
and any touch-up from the bottle was always obvious.
He would be on the lookout for the parson in the future,
feeling a playground determination to get his own back.

Stella used to tell him that he could be very unforgiving.

'You can be so proud, can't you,' she'd say. 'You find it
so hard to let things go.' He never understood what she
meant by it.

Melanie was the editor of the leading local community
newspaper. It wasn't cutting-edge journalism by any
means, but she didn't care about that any more. She'd
been on the main newspaper with Theo, Nicholas and
Anna, but the community newspaper gave more regular
hours and was less rigorous regarding copy: mainly feel-
good Christchurch stories and thinly disguised advertising.
She had an acknowledged flair for computers, and her
male colleagues were sexist enough to be impressed. She
was good at friendship too, without the exclusiveness that
marks some women's affection. 'Come round for pasta
tomorrow,' she said on the phone, the day after the parson
and the carpark.

'What have you done to your face?' she asked Theo
on his arrival, and with the misdirection that truth allows
he told her that he had hit his head on the outside mirror
of the car. 'Looks sore, Theo,' she said. 'You should take
better care of yourself.'

More than usual he was aware of her appearance, perhaps
because it was Penny who had been on his mind. Melanie
was small, and when they lay together her head almost
tucked under his chin. Her height was less noticeable when
she was upright because of the great, springy fan of her
brown hair. The exaggerated, cheerful hair seen in a child's
picture book, but quite her own, and although she used
the brush often, it remained recalcitrant. Sometimes, when
they were quiet together, Theo would rest his hand on that
abundance of hair and feel his slight pressure returned by
natural resilience.

They ate with trays on their knees and watched the
television news. An easy domesticity although Melanie
was unmarried, and Theo lived alone. She carried on a
sort of derisive interrogation of the newsreaders, reporters
and interviewees which required no response from him,
and surely would be just the same if she were alone. 'Christ
almighty, call that national news,' she would say of an item
in which a spaniel was rescued from a sewer after three days,
a Lithuanian woman won a newt-eating competition, or a
potato looking like the Duomo in Florence was dug up in
the Weka Weka. 'How do you think she feels, you cretin,'
she would say when a dead boy's mother was invited to
elaborate on her state of mind. 'And they call this headline
news,' she would say. 'I can't stand to watch it. I just can't.'
But the deficiencies, and her vehement criticism of them,
kept her before the television.

Only when the news was over and the screen dead did
they begin to settle to talk. First she wanted Theo to tell
her about the colleagues they both knew, and the trivial
yet absorbing politics of the workplace which is so much
of life, then she shared her own experience of a personal
grievance case arising from the sacking of a journalist, and
the commercial resistance to the hike in advertising rates
she felt obliged to introduce. The childish mass of her
springy hair, her round face, the overall smallness of her
person, were all in constant, startling juxtaposition to the
shrewd and mature understanding of her conversation.

Later she talked about Stella, and that too was a usual, if
passing, topic of their evenings together. Melanie remained
a friend to them both, and was one of the few intermediaries
equally trusted. She had had no part whatsoever in the
collapse of the marriage, and only months later had she
agreed to have sex with Theo, who never asked if she later
told Stella they were occasional lovers.

'Stella's father isn't well,' Melanie said. 'He's been
having blackouts, and now he has to go for a brain scan.
Stella thinks he won't be able to live by himself for much
longer, and yet he swears he won't go into a home. You
know what he's like. She thought you might like to call
him.' Theo thought of Mrs Bell in the Malahide Home:
the slowing of time there, the lizards and the one-bed
rooms, the drift of the past behind the eyes. Norman was
right not to go gentle into such a place.

Theo liked Stella's dad. He'd never interfered in their
marriage, and never accused Theo of destroying it. He was
a quiet man who spent his professional life drilling people's
teeth, and his private life absorbed with the geological
formations of Banks Peninsula. He published papers on
the drowned calderas of the peninsula, and discovered
several volcanic dikes. He never asked Theo if he could
keep Stella in the manner to which he'd accustomed her,
or why there'd been no children. Theo admired the way
he could sit still, relaxed, for long periods of time, and his
thinning, grey hair immaculately harrowed into lines by
the comb. Of course Theo would call, but what annoyed
him was being pushed towards it by Stella, and indirectly
at that. It was a sort of exemplary manipulation that was
difficult to criticise, but which he resented all the same.

'Stella could have told me herself, couldn't she?'

'We happened to meet in Merivale, and I said you were
coming round. "Tell Theo about Dad," she said.'

'I like Norman.'

'Why don't you ring from here?' said Melanie.

There it was again, the disposition of other people's
lives. Theo waited a bit to let the small irritation subside.
'It's okay,' he said.

'She's going to Melbourne soon for an art historians'
conference. The head of department chose her over more
senior people, apparently.'

Theo knew the head of the university faculty. He was
an intellectual bore who specialised in kinetic sculpture
and hung his glasses on his chest by a blue ribbon. Most
of Stella's university colleagues had spent too much time,
mole-like, in libraries and study cubicles. Each seemed to
have cultivated some small but determined idiosyncrasy of
appearance — a goatee beard, a Mexican silver medallion,
striped winter stockings, or a green corduroy suit — which
served as a signal of academic and personal freedom.
Stella said his mockery of her work friends arose from
insecurity. 'Theo,' she'd say, 'no one cares if you haven't
got a doctorate, just be yourself. You're good at what you
do. You've had a fellowship in London, for Christ's sake.
You've won awards.' She'd enjoy the Melbourne trip, even
if in the company of the intellectual bore.

'She always asks after you,' said Melanie. 'You guys
have managed a split as well as anyone I know.'

'What is it they say — We Are Still The Best Of Friends.'
The truth was that Theo believed pain a form of anaesthetic,
and so you learn to touch and talk with a detached and
mutual sympathy, your other feelings reduced.

Later, Melanie and he got onto the Maine-King case
and his articles. She thought it was some of his best writing.
Nicholas had told her that the pieces were being run even in
competing papers and magazines. It was the best exclusive
story for Theo since the Flowerday audit fraud, and he'd
won a prize for that. Because he was the only one with
access to Penny, and because she trusted him, he could
shape and develop the story as he wished, with plenty
of personal stuff and parallels with other cases. A couple of
other journalists had made contact with Erskine's lawyers,
but he didn't open up his side of things, and just pushed
the line that he wanted the custody orders enforced.

'You get the sympathy vote, don't you,' said Melanie.
'She's a Kiwi, she's a mother come home with her child,
she's a victim of foreign judicial processes, she's attractive
and she did that trash television thing. It's all there as a
magazine package.'

'I've had approaches from other papers — bribes really.
And there are people sniffing around to find out where
Penny's hiding. A detective came and interviewed me at
the paper.' Theo decided not to go into detail about the
parson — not to mention him at all.

'What's she like?'

'I think she's quite gutsy really,' he said. 'I didn't like
how self-centred she was at first, but now I realise the
pressure she's under: holed up with a kid and everything
stacked against you. In a way, I suppose, she's fighting for
her life.'

'Nick says you see her quite often.'

'No, I've only met her a couple of times.'

'He says you've hit it off.'

'You know Nick: close a door on any man and woman
and they're shagging.'

'And are you?' said Melanie.

'No.'

'But you like her, I can tell.'

'I like her okay now I've got to know her a bit better.
She's been in a hell of a situation.'

Theo thought of Penny right then. No phone to ring
anybody, no neighbour, and if she went to the curtainless
window, or the door, there would be just the country
darkness with no lights at all. Just the far removed stars in
a plush, shadowed sky, and the massed hills even darker;
just the occasional sheep in its stupid sleep; just the wild
briar with no sun to show its burnished orange and red
rose hips; just the oily flow of the dark creek.

Melanie liked beer, but had no interest in sport, which
in some ways was a bit odd. On the other hand she was
a very direct person, completely without snobbery, and
accustomed to working with men. Theo preferred wine with
meals, but brought export lager when he came to Melanie's
place. They drank it after the meal too, when the trays and
pasta bowls had been taken back to her small kitchen and
they sat talking on the sofa facing the blank television.
She was having a disagreement with her proprietors
about the space given to obituaries. She was opposed
to extended eulogistic accounts of locals who achieved
nothing of significance except old age, extended service
to fatuous organisations and a multitude of children and
grandchildren. The owners believed those children were
her readership. 'So help me God, Theo, is there anything
more crassly commercial than a community newspaper?'

Theo, running his hands over her warm breasts, of
course agreed: a flat earth apologist would have had his
endorsement at the time. 'Let's go through to the bed,' he
said. It was a large bed, the cover of which had Christmas
trees of different colours on it. Whenever they lay across it,
he could see through the screen of Melanie's springy hair
a narrow strip of carpet between bed and wall. The carpet
had a haze of pale fluff, and on it, sealed in green and
blue foil, was a cough lolly. He had seen it occasionally
over the months, but never mentioned it to Melanie. She
may not have understood that such conscious observation
was no indication he was less than fully involved in
lovemaking: she may have taken disclosure as a criticism
of her housekeeping.

That night he was to see nothing of Christmas trees, or
cough lollies. 'No, I don't think so,' Melanie said. 'I don't
think we should shag while there might be something
developing between you and Penny Maine-King. It
doesn't feel right, Theo. I'm happy enough with our style
of friendship, but not while there's someone else in the
picture.'

Theo's first response was a purely selfish one: he told
himself he was a fool to have said anything about Penny
until after Melanie and he had sex. He knew her well enough
to have anticipated both her intuitive sense of Penny's
significance and her reaction. She was right, of course,
but his cock was aggrieved. A cock has ancient wisdom,
but little awareness of what is politic in the contemporary
world. The cock is an equal opportunity employer, yet has
no deeper motivation than mere opportunity. Melanie
didn't demand marriage, or any proprietal relationship
that involved living together, but she did insist on being
the one lover in a man's life. Absolutely right and wholly
admirable, but cock thought bugger to all that.

'You understand,' she said.

'Sure,' he said.

She was relaxed on the sofa, leaning on his shoulder.
'Tell me how things work out,' she said. 'We go back a long
way, Theo.'

'That's right.' They did go back a long way. She was a
good friend, a good person.

'You won't forget about Stella's dad, will you?' she
said. A good friend, but not perfect of course: capable of
arousing irritation as well as desire.

In the office the next morning Theo was checking
Reuters reports when he thought of Stella's father. Maybe
Norman came to mind because the editor passed by, with
his thin hair combed forward as the weed aligns in the
current of a shallow stream. Maybe it was the report of
how many people had died at a wedding in Hyderabad
because of illicit booze made from refrigeration fluid.

Theo rang Norman, who answered with the courteous
professionalism of the dentist he'd once been. 'I heard you
haven't been so well,' Theo said. 'I'm sorry about that.
Hope they can get to the bottom of what's causing the
turns.' Norman told him he was having both brain and
chest scans, and a raft of other tests. He said he was finally
getting something back for being overcharged by his private
health insurers for years. He made a joke of it in his typical,
wry way. He'd still be waiting to see a specialist if he'd
relied on public health, he said. 'Anyway, you take care of
yourself. If there's anything heavy to do around the place
don't hesitate to give me a ring,' Theo said.

Norman didn't say anything at all about Stella. Her
mother had been dead for a long time, but perhaps
Norman still remembered how private a thing a marriage
was, and could imagine the complex pain of its deliberate
dissolution. Maybe that pain was not so different from
the grief Norman had felt at the separation forced upon
him. Theo wanted Norman to call him by name, say
he shouldn't feel blame for what had happened, that
relationships collapse of some subtle and external volition
rather than at the instigation of those concerned. Theo
wanted Norman to absolve him of some offence to the
family. He might say, Theo, don't beat yourself up about
such things. He might say, I know there was no cruelty in
it all, no intention to hurt. He might say, personal growth
is achieved by accepting the inevitable, and that human
personality is intractable.