The Man in the Shed (16 page)

‘Here’s to happiness,’ she said.

‘Happiness,’ said my father’s friend, and he added, ‘because everything Ross said about you I see is true.’

My mother sipped her beer and went fishing with her sly eyes.

‘Does that mean nice things?’

‘Beautiful things,’ said my father’s friend. ‘Beautiful. Many times beautiful.’

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you can come back any time.’ She laughed and my father sat back relieved.

That night she sat with me in my bedroom trying to brush my eyelids shut and will me to sleep. It wasn’t working because of the laughter coming from the kitchen. My mother asked, ‘When did your father last laugh like that?’ She sat there thinking. ‘You know, Harry, I don’t remember him once mentioning the name of that man.’ She said the name over to herself—‘Sonny.’ We listened in the dark to them shouting names of other men they knew down at Manapouri. It was another world that neither I nor my mother knew about.

In the morning I noticed the door to the sitting room was closed. My mother came out to the hall and put a finger to her lip and I tiptoed past. The silence of the house felt heavier than normal. After my mother arrived home that afternoon
she found the door still shut. This time she knocked and hearing no reply she pushed on the door and entered the sitting room. A cushion stuck inside a white pillowslip sat at one end of the couch. There was a smell of tobacco. My mother was sure she could smell that coat. She walked across to the window, pulled back a curtain, then changed her mind.

Around teatime the two of them tramped in the door with Mr Reardon’s drawing materials, a bag, and a package wrapped in brown paper that turned out to be four cod.

‘Tonight I make special fish in coconut,’ he said.

My mother leant her elbows on the kitchen table and watched Mr Reardon cook. She said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten coconut. It’s not something that Ross would cook.’ Only she enjoyed the joke. My father never cooked. Mr Reardon, on the other hand, looked like he did it all the time. His hands moved quickly, quick as blades, and as he worked he talked to my mother. He had lived in the islands. When my mother asked him ‘doing what?’ he wiped his hands on a tea towel, looked around for his bag and pulled out a sheaf of drawings. We thumbed through sketches of small boys tumbling over waterfalls. Sketches of the marketplace and Apia’s rickety main street. The lush gardens. Villages. Portraits of billiard players, planters, Samoans. He said he’d worked in an ice factory but mostly he sold his sketches to day tourists off the cruise ships. There was one sketch of a beautiful girl with long braids. My mother held up the drawing. ‘Hello. Who’s this?’ she asked, and Mr Reardon went back to his frying pan.

‘Maia,’ he said softly. ‘That is Maia.’

My mother looked across to me to see if I had caught that.

‘Maia is still in Apia?’ asked my mother.

‘No, Maia is in heaven waiting for me. Waiting for her Sonny.’ He told of working in Apia’s ice factory, and how Maia had never known what it was to shiver. One day, without telling anyone, she walked inside the freezer at the ice works; the door closed after her and, as no one knew she was in there, she froze.

‘Oh, that is so sad,’ said my mother.

‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Mr Reardon.

‘Yes, but I mean, to die like that.’

Mr Reardon glanced up to the ceiling. ‘She is waiting for her old mate to show up,’ he said. ‘Of course, it is silly to hope. After all these years how would Maia possibly recognise me?’ He looked over to my mother to see that he had her attention. Then he said, ‘That is why I stay in this coat.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is true. Of course. It is so she will recognise me.’

He kept a straight face until her own expression fell into line with his. Then he burst out laughing.

‘You bugger,’ she said. ‘I am not going to believe another word you say.’

My father’s friend stayed with us for a week until he found a flat in town. We all missed him. My mother especially. She’d grown used to someone else cooking for us. The day he left we came home to a pile of sketches on the kitchen table. Some
were drawings of my mother gardening and cooking. Others of me wrestling with Dad on the lawn. One of me on my bike pedalling for all I was worth. I looked so much like a boy that I was both pleased and embarrassed. Another of Dad with his foot up on a sawhorse smiling back at the picture-maker caught my mother’s interest. She looked at the drawing for a long while. I couldn’t quite see what she had found, but there was definitely something in that drawing that disturbed her. Dad’s hair, the way he looked up from under his bushy eyebrows, his carpenter’s arms falling out of rolled-up shirt cuffs. It was the something else that she studied, a kind of understanding, or closeness; something that approached a knowledge that excluded her. When she glanced up from the drawing she looked puzzled by the world as though in some fundamental way it had gone and changed while her attention was elsewhere.

Mr Reardon’s place was in Montreal Street, a big old house with white-painted fire escapes—split into three flats. Mr Reardon’s was on the ground floor facing the street. Without my mother’s knowledge Dad put down two months’ rent to get his friend settled. From a Colombo Street trader he bought pots and pans, cutlery, crockery, a bed, a bookcase and a lamp. He took some towels and bedding from home. I went out shopping with Dad and Mr Reardon, and outside a butcher’s shopwindow the different cuts of meat caused Mr Reardon to stroke his jaw and wince.

‘Meat’s useless to me. It’s too bloody tough …’

Over dinner my father told Mum he was going to give
Mr Reardon some money to get his teeth fixed. As my mother was slow to answer, he said, ‘You’ve seen how bad they are.’

When my mother failed to answer, my father repeated what he’d just said.

‘I’m listening,’ she said.

‘You look like you’re eating to me,’ he said.

Without looking up she asked, ‘How much?’

He told her how much and this time she laid down her knife and fork and got up to take her plate across to the sink.

‘Don’t say anything, Marie,’ said my father. ‘I only mentioned it because you should know.’

‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

‘If we can afford to build a house out at Brighton we can afford to help out a friend with new teeth,’ he said.

My mother’s silence irritated my father more than anything she might have said.

‘The world has a strange tilt on it these days,’ he said. He stabbed angrily at a piece of potato but had not the heart for it, and threw down his fork.

‘Damn it, Marie. You’ve seen his teeth. The man can hardly eat. Jellies. Milk. It’s all he’s up to. His whole bloody mouth will fall out unless something is done about it.’

‘You didn’t hear me say no, did you?’

‘Oh no. Oh no,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to say anything.’

‘No,’ my mother said, looking right back. ‘I didn’t. And I’d like to think that’s something for you to think about.’

Several days after the argument over Mr Reardon’s teeth we found ourselves in Ormonds waiting in the usual
booth for Mr Windly to turn up. My mother took out a hand mirror and checked herself over. She patted her hair. She said casually, ‘I don’t think you need to mention this visit to your father, Harry.’ She looked at her watch. It was unlike Mr Windly to be late. She was thinking to leave him a note when he came in the door, shiny-faced, and full of apologies. He undid his coat and removed his hat and scarf before dropping into the booth.

‘You look agitated, Marie,’ he said. ‘Agitated, but still beautiful.’

She smiled weakly, and waited until the waitress put down our tray and left, before leaning across to say, ‘Now Ross is buying him new teeth.’

Mr Windly raised his eyebrows. He sat back, and I was sure I caught him sneak a look down at his wristwatch.

‘No, wait. I haven’t explained it properly,’ said my mother.

‘No, no,’ said Mr Windly. ‘I just wasn’t expecting to hear about teeth.’ He drew himself into the subject and asked why Dad hadn’t just taken Mr Reardon to hospital.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t know. There was some reason. His jaw’s infected. I don’t know, Dave. Talking about it now makes me wonder if I’m overreacting. Do you think I sound like a shrew?’ Mr Windly picked up his teaspoon and stirred. ‘Anyway, it’s not just the teeth. Ross has outlaid left, right and centre. Rent. Electricity. Furniture. Kitchen stuff. Food. Our savings,
Dave. What are we supposed to build out at Brighton with? Ross is just dipping in to support someone I never knew before. He’s not even a relative. He just came here out of the blue.’

‘Ross has a heart at least. I’ll give him that much,’ said Mr Windly.

‘So you think it’s me. I’m the one who’s being mean.’

‘Marie.’ Mr Windly reached over and rubbed her hand.

This time my mother didn’t take her hand away. She smiled down at the table, then kind of floated up to him, and said, ‘Dave, you should try to meet someone.’

‘I have,’ he said, and my mother waggled her head happily.

‘I meant someone else. It’s not too late, you know. A man like you. You should have children of your own.’

Mr Windly glanced around. As usual there was just the three of us in Ormonds at this hour. ‘You remember the German fellow whose cigarette case I took? Well, he had a girl and two boys. There was a photo of them. The youngest was sitting in a swing. Sweet young thing. What do you reckon, Marie? Is he the winner here?’

My mother thought for a bit then answered in a slow, measured way. ‘Not necessarily. Not yet,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

Mr Reardon was recovering from the job on his teeth, and after dinner I went around to Montreal Street with my father to bring him soups that my mother had made.

Propped up with pillows, he listened to the radio Dad had given him. That’s the first thing we heard out on the porch while Dad turned the key in the door. We tiptoed up the hall, my father calling ahead of us, ‘Oi, Sonny?’ In the entrance of the door we looked in the darkened bedroom where Mr Reardon lay like a dying monk. In the corner of the room the radio purred with orchestral sound. Dad whistled. Mr Reardon opened his eyes and raised a hand to his aching jaw. Dad dissolved some aspirin in a glass of water and helped Mr Reardon into a sitting position. My father looked back over his shoulder. ‘Harry, how about tackling the dishes?’ So I went out to the poky kitchen. Out the back the upstairs tenant was pegging out some washing. Rain began to fall and she slapped her hands on her hips. She didn’t know I was at the window watching her. I finished the dishes and went out to Mr Reardon’s sitting room. The walls were pinned with sketches he’d done on his travels since he left Manapouri. These were sketches of the people he had lived among. Shearers. Men in narrow singlets smoking and playing cards. Fence posts and straining fence wire. Smokers. Sun-filled days. Years filled with wind and rain. Sun again. Shearing quarters. Frying pans layered with rancid bacon fat. Maori laughter.

My father came in. He looked at the couch he’d bought Mr Reardon, and with his eyes measured the doorway. ‘Give us a hand with it, Harry.’ Together we got the couch through the door into the bedroom. Mr Reardon’s eyelids were closed; he was back to being the dead monk, and Dad pulled the
blanket up over his chest to his chin.

‘Come on, I’ll run you home, Harry.’

My father stayed there that night. He returned home the next day to collect some things, his shaver and some shirts. He spent the next four days at Mr Reardon’s. At home my mother made dinner in silence. She hardly spoke except to say it was time for bed. She asked me to take something for my father around to Mr Reardon’s. I knew where the key was kept and I let myself in. I could hear Mr Reardon in the toilet and it occurred to me that I could get in and out of there without his knowing if I was quick. I went through to the bedroom. Pinned to the wall was a sketch of my father sitting on the couch, a blanket drawn up over him, smoking a cigarette and smiling back at the artist. The room smelt of sleep. The yellow light in the wireless beep-beeped and the news announcer came on. One of Dad’s shirts hung off the back of the couch. It was like a scene from home. Only it wasn’t home.

Soon Mr Reardon was well enough to get up and look after himself and my father came home. That year Mr Reardon got a job at the Burnside abattoirs. On Sundays he came round for lunch. My mother made the lunch and set the table as if she was doing it for strangers. Dad tried to coax her out of her buttoned-up self. She said so little. Mr Reardon sat at the table grinning. Dad shrugged, and poured him a beer and Mr Reardon tossed his head back. He closed his eyes and for the time it took him to swallow it seemed he had left us for a place where he didn’t have to try so hard.

I shut up about things which would have given my mother fresh cause for concern. She didn’t know about those other times Dad met with Mr Reardon or his habit of turning up during our cricket matches. She didn’t know about our walks in the park with Mr Reardon. She couldn’t imagine what I saw one time after running ahead; I stopped to look back and was struck by the intimacy of their togetherness, the way their shoulders touched when they walked, my father with his hands in his pockets, Mr Reardon drawing a grass blade between his teeth, deep in thought. When my father glanced up it was clear that he had forgotten I was there. He looked at me for a brief moment. Then he called me over. He dug in his pocket to give me some money for an ice-cream. As I went to take the money he closed his hand.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Your mother will go off pop if she finds out you had ice-cream before dinner.’

‘I won’t tell her,’ I said, and smiling he opened his hand.

He called after me, ‘Take your time; there’s no hurry. And watch the traffic.’

I crossed Riccarton Road to the dairy and bought an orange-ripple cone. On my way back I would have run into my mother had I not looked up in time. My father and Mr Reardon were off in another direction, sitting on a bench, and my mother had just spotted them. They didn’t know she had seen them and my mother didn’t know that I had seen her. It was an unpleasant feeling. It felt like we were all trespassing on one another. I left the park to make a wide arc so that everyone would see me coming and there would be no
surprises, although my mother was gone by the time I approached my father and Mr Reardon.