The House Guest Read online

  The House Guest

  Barbara Anderson

  Victoria University Press

  For Jetta

  One

  He still wore her ring. He didn’t like them, never had, not for men. But she had wanted it. It gave her pleasure, the wide gold thing rolling around his third finger left hand. She had chosen it with care, loved the difference in sizes, compared his and hers endlessly, teased him and loved him and teased him again as she demonstrated cross-legged and solemn beside him—there is a vein that goes straight from this finger right to your heart, see.

  She traced the route up his arm, stabbed his chest. ‘Bong. Did you know that?’ Robin held the finger in mid-air. ‘I wonder who first found out. Did the dissection. Someone should have told us.’

  Smiles rewarded him.

  Everything about her enchanted him: her smallness, her tough fragility, her bounce. She had always been a bright kid, streetwise before the word hit Wellington, but now her quick alertness, her knowing innocence, her How, Wow, Do-it-again approach to bed and board and life itself astounded him, let alone in this day and age. Wouldn’t you think, said Miss Bowman next door who was politically informed and kept up, wouldn’t you think in this day and age politicians would have learned that people matter.

  ‘It’s funny you know,’ said Lisa, watching the old woman as she crept up the path bearing an egg-beater because she had two and would they like one. ‘It’s funny. She polishes her outdoor taps and yet she smells. You wouldn’t think they’d go together somehow, would you? I mean I don’t mind or anything, but it’s funny isn’t it?’

  Yes please, they would love an egg-beater, how kind. Robin’s one was completely shot, she said, stowing the gift in the cupboard beside Robin’s shining battery of beaters, straw and aluminium whisks and stainless steel bowls. Why he hadn’t thrown it out she would never know but that was men all over wasn’t it. She would keep a piece of wedding cake for Miss Bowman seeing she wasn’t well enough to come. Lisa knew it would be lovely. Yes, the wedding of course, but actually she meant the cake. Mum was scared it would all flow out when they cut it but they all liked it moist and Lisa knew it wouldn’t. Mum always washed the fruit first even though you don’t have to now but Lisa felt it was a fault on the right side, not that she could cook. None of the girls at the lab could, and anyway she had Robin.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said as Miss Bowman retreated down the concrete past the Phoenix palm and the cinerarias and the shrieking red geraniums. ‘I wonder sometimes about her and Emmie.’

  Robin sat on the back porch dubbining her boots, three fingers cramped into the bull-nosed toe. He straightened, looked thoughtful. The most unexpected thing will do it and his mother was out. He dropped the cloth, circled her ankle with his hand. ‘Lisa?’ he said. She was more than happy. She always was.

  ‘What did you mean,’ he said later, ‘about Emmeline?’

  ‘Who?’ murmured Lisa, her nose in the woven straw mat. She sat up, tugged, adjusted, reached for her pants. ‘Oh her. I don’t know. Nothing.’ She touched the bridge of his nose. ‘I must pluck out those hairs. It doesn’t matter like now when you’re not wearing your glasses but when you are they sort of bang about behind and it doesn’t look nice.’ She sat on his chest, hooked a child’s foot each side of his hand, leaned to kiss his bruised mouth. ‘And I like my Robbie to look nice.’

  Where had she came from. How had she happened. She was a throwback to a romantic age which had never existed, an anachronism in shifts that clung or twelve-inch black leather minis topped by crocheted tops the size of dishcloths. She wore heels and her hair shone, her lipsticks were pale or else plum which stained like a dye. She loved the whole world and what she could not love she did not see. All small snub-nosed creatures delighted her as how could they not, those flop-eared puppies in baskets, beribboned kittens and solemn wide-eyed infants dressed as bumble-bees. Meerkats on TV pleased her as did baby chimpanzees, wondering, nervous prehensile fingers to their chins, when they had last phoned their Mum. Her heart melted. Look! Look! She wanted things to be nice and did what she could to make them so. She was kind and loving. She could not understand how people could be so awful to each other. Those black babies. No. It was too much. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Sad movies made her cry. Old dogs and deathbeds and children at risk finished her, let alone violence or brutality. They were not for her. Strong meat was not her cup of tea. Robin could go alone if he must, but no, not Lisa. (He stopped going.) The world was cruel enough already in Lisa’s opinion, without paying to watch. She hid her eyes when it was famine.

  Her mother Maureen was a cheerful hard-working woman but by no means romantic. She had little reason to be. She was a splendid woman. Splendid. Look how she had coped when George disappeared and never a penny paid in maintenance for either Lisa or Murray then or ever; two babies rolling around on the kitchen floor and never a word of complaint. Amazing. Maureen Shield had rolled up her sleeves, oiled her Bernina and got on with life which was certainly no picnic but there you were. She put a notice on the board in the New World. (Dressmaker. Ladies and girls. Large sizes a speciality. Phone Maureen.) They phoned and kept phoning. They phoned in droves, they came clutching their lengths. Lengths for two-pieces and spring outfits, for change-of-season and jump suits and mother of the bride. Occasionally for a big wedding when things were rushed Maureen sewed all night. The well-oiled hum of the Bernina backed Lisa and Murray’s childhood dreams. Scraps of bridal satins, tulles, taffetas, velvets and double-weave brocades were hoarded by Lisa in a shoebox labelled Brides in red. Occasionally she wrapped her fabric treasures around Betty or the faceless Rhonda, but mostly she sat and stroked them, crooning to herself.

  Robin stared at the baby in the wicker pram with distaste; the mouth moved, made sucking motions, burped. There was a bubble of milk.

  ‘Lisa,’ said his mother Eileen. ‘That’s pretty. Where did you find that?’

  ‘Oops,’ said Maureen, one hand scrabbling down her leaking front. ‘Won’t stay in place these pads, will they? Judy Garland’s daughter. We thought it was nice, didn’t we George? Mind you hers has got a Z but I don’t like names with a Z, well not at the beginning except Zoë. I like Zoë, especially with the little dots. It’s not the same without the little dots. It means Life and that’s nice but we liked Lisa better, didn’t we George?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘It means Chosen of God and that’s nice too. But not with the Z. She’s Lisa with an S and we like it pronounced Leesa too, don’t we? She’ll have to explain, poor poppet.’ Infinitely gentle, Maureen touched the button nose with one finger. ‘Leesa with an S,’ she told it. She sat back on the sofa, fussed with her pads once more and lay back. ‘There’s lots of names like that,’ she said. ‘Cathleen say. It’s quite a different name with a C. Or Randall with two Ls. Isn’t it George?’

  ‘Aye.’ George sat on the sofa, the fingers of his right hand moving in rhythmic circles on his chest as he stared out the window. Aye was his answer to any question or statement. At any situation, at any time and in any place, the word eased his path through life. ‘Aye,’ he said as he slipped the Morris into gear and backed down the drive. ‘Aye,’ he said as the long day’s picnic ended, the shades lengthened and the wind dropped and the return drive to Seatoun was accomplished.

  ‘How did she get out?’ asked Robin as he and his mother walked up their drive next door, past the concrete bird bath and the blood-red petals of the Crown of Thorns splashed on the rockery below.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lisa.’

  Eileen Dromgoole, widowed by a freak accident on the building site ten years ago, looked at her son and sighed. His steel spectacles enhanced his air of concentration. He wished to know.
Presumably he had already picked up the basics from the boys’ toilets or the playground beneath the straggling pohutukawa of primary—though certainly the process of getting out was difficult to believe, let alone visualise. Oh dear. Eileen put on the kettle, tweaked the Venetians. ‘Get the little red teapot, Robin,’ she said, ‘and I’ll try.’

  Robin obeyed. He had always been a helpful child and facts were important.

  So he had known Lisa since she was born, before she ‘filled out’ and became human, had minded her since the days her arms had waved without volition as he pushed her pram along the waterfront past the changing sheds to the play area, though of course she was too little for any of that.

  Glimpses stay with him. George’s laconic Aye when they returned. The only thing which excited him was pigeons. ‘Have you ever kept pigeons, lad?’

  Robin continued to rock the pram. He didn’t want her to cry. He liked it best when he pushed and her eyes were wide and her hands moved. He liked her hands, the way the fingers grasped his outstretched one like a telly advertisement for a bank. A lifeline. Robin is a lifeline.

  ‘No,’ he said finally.

  ‘Why does no one have pigeons here? We all had pigeons in Skegness. Lofts we had.’ George glared at him, sandy eyebrows locked together. ‘Every man jack of us. All fanciers we were, took the magazine, races and all. Why not here, lad? Lovely pigeon country.’ His arms weaved about the quiet street, sketched updrafts, defined the beating of grey-black wings. ‘I had pouters and rollers as well but they were just for fun. Not racers.’

  ‘They might get blown away in the northerlies,’ said Robin, offering a finger as the eyes opened. ‘Cook Strait is windy.’

  ‘Aye, but you never know till you try, do you?’

  Lisa was two and Murray four when George left his family. He took the Morris and went and was never heard of again. No message delivered or sent. Robin took over Lisa’s pushchair on a permanent basis. He biked home each day from Rongotai, his legs pumping as the wind boomed in his anxious face. He knew she would be waiting. Arms out, bare feet bouncing on the wicker stool, Lisa and her curls waited in the glassed-in porch.

  ‘Robbie, Robbie!’

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ said his mother to Maureen, ‘why he doesn’t mind? I mean he’s fourth form now after all. You’d think … I mean don’t they laugh at him? The other boys.’ Quick anxious fingers plucked at her white cardigan which was inclined to pill. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know.’

  Maureen’s thumbnail was busy extracting a scrap of apple peel from between two molars. Royal Gala. ‘Well, he’s different, Robin,’ she said. ‘Always has been. I’ve said since he was tiny. Robin is his own person and he likes Lisa.’

  He had changed her nappy once.

  She climbed out of her pushchair, lay on her back on the stubby grass of the playground and flung round pink legs over her head in anticipation. ‘Damp,’ she said.

  Robin had never told her of this incident. He could see the bright eyes, hear the emphasis. ‘I like it.’ Why had he not? She would have loved it, this extra flick of happiness compounded by endless recall.

  ‘Robin changed me when I was two. No, I mean really changed me. My nappies and that when I was two, wasn’t it? On the playground. And I flung my legs back, didn’t I, Robbie?’

  Aye.

  ‘Only son of widowed mother.’ The phrase had pleased him when he met it as a child. It had leaped at him from The Home Fires Kept Burning. A Nation at War, 1914–18, one of the books trapped between brass horse heads on the mantelpiece in the front room. These were all that remained of Nana Dromgoole, who, his mother told him, had been a reader. Perhaps that was where Robin got it from. Terence hadn’t been but things do out. Eileen had kept only the ones with squashy red or blue leather covers and embossed gold titles. The Wide, Wide World was her favourite. Scrolled in gold leaves, it remained unread by either of them, but Robin enjoyed Home Fires and the photographs were interesting. Slim veiled nurses stood by lines of cheerful men in narrow beds, pushed smiling amputees in bath chairs, smiled themselves. Red Cross volunteers met trains, lit cigarettes, assisted the blind. There were photographs of casualty lists and reproductions of death notices from provincial papers which were more interesting because they told you more.

  Robin murmured the phrase to himself—only son of widowed mother. He was glad to have acquired definition. A phrase for himself alone. He did not know any other only sons of widowed mothers. Mr Ramsay down the road (car smash) had left three boys, but second or third son of widowed mother had not the same edge, the same plummeting sense of family demise. (Daughters were not mentioned.) Robin gave up hitching bike rides on the backs of speeding trucks for a few weeks, though he missed the blast, the hysterical pedals, the shouts tossed to the wind. He stopped playing chicken at the Coutt Street crossroads. Later he drove his mother’s aged car sedately. He had imagination, both as a driver and a son. He was aware of mortality. He had lived with it all his life.

  His mother’s grief, gentle but all pervading, a miasma of incompleteness, of lonely days and endless nights, changed in time to dreaminess. Eileen spoke little of Terence (Terry before the scaffolding collapsed). At first she had not wanted to upset Robin. He was only a baby after all, and a solemn one at that. Sometimes he smiled, but not often. ‘Funny kid,’ said Bernie at the dairy watching the multicoloured plastic strips sigh and resettle behind the skinny back. ‘Never know what he’s thinking. Deep I shouldn’t wonder. Not bubbly like some.’

  Later there seemed little point in going into it. It was a long time ago.

  He grew into his face, they said, and his hair darkened. ‘Hasn’t Robin grown,’ they said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eileen brushing the curved shelf of her bosom. ‘And he’s got a prize at college too. Overall Attainment.’

  The careers master advised the humanities. Not as an academic, he didn’t mean that, not for a moment. Teaching perhaps. Robin looked at the cadaver in front of him in horror.

  ‘No? You’re probably right,’ said Lawson. ‘How about social work? They give you time off from the Department to study.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘Do? There’s an enormous range.’ Lawson burrowed in drawers. ‘I had something somewhere. I’ll look it out,’ he continued, coming up breathless from the drawer and grabbing his inhaler. ‘Later. Later.’ He honked a couple of deep puffs. ‘Welfare, counselling, probation, there’s always a need for carers.’ Another honk. ‘It’s a growth industry.’

  A carer. Robin saw himself caring. He had always minded strays, had never hurried past featherless fledgelings or dumped kittens. The SPCA knew him by name. ‘You’ve got a lovely nature Robin,’ the one with the diamond in her nose had told him last week as he handed over the latest crippled seagull. ‘Any problems getting him into the sack?’

  ‘Emmie helped me.’

  ‘Good on her.’

  Lisa thought he had too. ‘Ooh Rob, you shouldn’t.’ ‘Ooh Rob, you are naughty.’ ‘Ooh Robbie,’ she said birthday after birthday as she unwrapped dolls, hugged bears, books or bright shining things to her chest. She always kept Rob’s present till last. When she was little he had given her an unyielding doll capped with nightmare yellow hair. Battery-operated, Betty crawled relentlessly onwards. When Lisa picked her up to love, Betty’s moulded pink arms and chubby legs swam against her as though struggling against an outgoing tide. Once he met Betty face to face at the front door, banging her smiling head against the other side of the glass in endless sorrow. Lisa had left her to her own devices for a moment and Betty, programmed as a battery-powered lemming, had motored on.

  When Lisa was twelve he gave her the best present of all. A music box with a tiny ballerina in a plastic tutu perched on one toe. ‘Though I say not / What I may not / Let you hear,’ tinkled and creaked through the sparsely furnished rooms and narrow hall as the ballerina revolved. ‘Turn the bloody thing off,’ yelled Murray who now had a desk of his own. He wa
s going to be a doctor. He said so, but how. You need money for medicine. Six years. More. Maureen sewed harder. Lengths and more lengths and remnants burst their wrappings throughout the house or lay heaped in corners awaiting transformation.

  ‘I’ll get a loan.’

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ worried Maureen.

  ‘I’ll get another one.’

  Lisa cut tiny squares from her favourite bridal fabrics and glued them to the base of the dancing lady’s plinth. She nicked a bottle of natural-coloured Cutex from Woolworths and applied it to the edges to prevent fraying. It worked quite well.

  There were few expeditions from Seatoun and little money. ‘Three in a row and not a man in sight,’ said Bernie at the store. ‘Funny isn’t it? You don’t often see it in a row like that. Four kids and not a father between them, if you count Emmie.’

  *

  The first time Robin went into the bush was a school trip to the Orongorongos before the Five Mile Track was tarted up. They had been to Butterfly Creek at Eastbourne on a day trip from primary but there were too many screaming kids. The best bit had been the kidney ferns, but all the birds, if there were any, had been scared songless. There were few in Seatoun except the gulls which he watched for hours. He went to the Central Library; they’d have more books there, wouldn’t they? More real books, not kids’ books; he wanted proper books, he wanted to find out. He saved up for a starling box. But never pigeons.

  The first time in the Orongorongos and the last remain with him. The first memory is shredded, munched bite by bite as the martyred Saint Veronica ate her spiders. Fragments only remain: the first sight of the tin hut buried in the bush, the macho feel of boots, their sweaty superman power. The waking to the strong socks of others in your face. To still mornings and the bird calls and the silence.