All the Nice Girls Read online

  Three midshipmen arrived, their faces pinker than ever, their air of half-baked exuberance enhanced by exercise. Two of them were round-eyed and eager as Hewey and Dewey Duck. The third was tougher, his eyes already guarded.

  The Commodore entered on their heels, shiny about the face, his eyes bright. ‘Good heavens, you haven’t waited for me, have you. Benson?’ Steward Benson began pouring the tea which was cold as it had been ready for some time on the standby to standby principle.

  The Commodore shook the Padre’s wife by the hand and told her how delighted he was to have her on board if she would excuse the expression. Carol Bell’s hand lay in his. He shook it again and held his other hand over it as if reassuring a small frightened bird.

  He congratulated Padre Bell on his entry into the Royal New Zealand Navy. They discussed the Memorial Chapel of St Christopher and the good work done by naval padres both at sea and ashore. ‘No offence,’ said the navigator, whose name Sophie could never remember, ‘but I always found the Catholic padres more use at sea and I’m not a mick. Pragmatic lot, by and large. Condoms at the gangplank, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Have a meringue,’ said Sophie, shoving them at Kit who was standing beside her.

  ‘My teeth wouldn’t go in.’

  Sophie took one. He was right.

  Harold Pickett disinterred the story, ancient as a songline, about the upper set of false teeth trapped in a Royal Garden Party meringue. ‘The Queen was ropeable!’

  ‘I don’t believe that story,’ said Sophie.

  His eyebrows leaped at her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing people say. And I don’t think the Queen … I mean, who would tell her.’

  ‘Well, I can’t give you chapter and verse.’ Harold Pickett glanced angrily at his watch as if it was withholding the information. ‘You remember the chap, Celia? At New Zealand House.’

  ‘No,’ said his wife.

  The meringues were inspected once more. Victims of a design fault, they sat rocklike and uneaten.

  ‘We’ll have to send the cook back to requalify,’ said the Commodore. ‘I liked that business with “Eternal Father”, Padre. If it’s not good enough do it again.’

  The Padre was pleased. He had done the right thing. He had taken charge.

  The Commodore watched Sophie’s pink face as she attempted to dispose of the remains of her meringue. She hid the plate behind Steward Benson’s hot water jug. Steward Benson, his face expressionless, moved the jug to reveal it again.

  ‘Christ,’ said Harold, ‘I’ve broken a tooth.’ Everyone, beaten to the ground by the topic, laughed once more.

  ‘Sun’s over the yardarm,’ said the Commodore. ‘Bar open, Benson?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was a sense of wellbeing, a lifting. Things were going to improve.

  ‘Sophie,’ said the Commodore, his hair shining, his eyes kind, ‘what would you like to drink?’

  Her gin was refreshing and redemptive; the clink of ice therapeutic. The Commodore lifted his glass to hers.

  Conversation became general but no more interesting. Ladies were present. Shop talk, the thing which drove them, the passion of their commitment to their job, like smut, was not a subject for mixed company. Royal visits were. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were due early next year. There was also a buzz that the Duke planned a swing around the Pacific later for Wildlife. ‘Animals,’ said Harold Pickett. And the head of a friendly Asian power and his consort were coming soon. August wasn’t it. Yes, August.

  ‘Come, come, Sophie,’ said the Commodore taking her empty glass, ‘You can’t fly on one wing.’

  Sophie was firm. They left, smiling and waving. ‘Goodbye,’ they said. ‘Bye.’

  The winter sun sat on their heads as they walked home. Rebecca and Kit ran down Calliope Road, skipping and jumping as though they had invented this levitating release.

  Sophie joined them. Kit and Rebecca leaped higher.

  Someone was running behind her. A hand touched her shoulder in mid-leap. ‘Higher. You can do it, Soph. Higher, higher,’ exhorted her sister.

  They stared at each other laughing. Poles apart, oil to water, chalk to cheese and loving withal, Mary and Sophie were pleased to see each other.

  Sophie was breathing deeply. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  Mary flicked back the hair which hung loose beneath a small peaked cap, a gesture which irritated William. ‘Down the Coromandel. Ben’s still there.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  Mary was a good mimic, always had been, she caught the essence. The wide-apart legs, the flat-footed stance, the faint worry in the tone evoked her older more troubled sister. ‘Oh. Why?’ She flung her hands wide. ‘He likes it there, that’s why.’

  Mary’s lover Ben had appeared from nowhere last Christmas and moved in. He was American, a long lean lazy American. A combination which also irritated William. Americans were efficient, busy, on the ball, not elongated layabouts with eyelashes. ‘What does he do?’ he asked Sophie.

  ‘He’s an artist.’

  ‘Does he sell stuff?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then how does he live?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He likes the Coromandel.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s a bum, you know that. He’s just going to bum on Mary till her money’s gone and then he’s going to bum on the taxpayer.’ William slapped his chest. ‘Me. And look what’s happened to Mary. Why’s she given up her job?’

  ‘Ask her yourself.’

  ‘And they’re not going to get married, you know that.’

  ‘He’s got too many wives already. He told me.’

  ‘Total shit. Total. And who’s this Kerouac he’s on about?’

  ‘He’s written a book.’

  ‘Huh. And why the Coromandel? Plenty of good beaches on the North Shore.’

  Everything about the man was suspect. To William, Ben was licence, fornication, and not doing a stroke.

  Sophie found Ben interesting. Different but interesting.

  Mary, Ben and occasional visiting friends lived on the lower floor of an old house further down the road notable for the octagonal tower sprouting from an upstairs bedroom. Mary and Sophie were nieces of the owner. Aunty Bertha had ignored the advice of her own sister (as their mother reminded them frequently) in buying it. Mary and Ben paid a modest rent and appeared to enjoy life.

  Mary put an arm around her sister. ‘Dear old Soph.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Sophie. ‘There’s the Commodore.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Mary. ‘So it is.’

  The Commodore strode towards them along the sparkling road. ‘Ah, Sophie,’ he said.

  ‘Have you met my sister Mary, Commodore?’

  They shook hands, their eyes wary as sniffing dogs.

  ‘How nice to meet you.’

  Mary’s head lifted. ‘Hullo.’

  ‘I didn’t know Sophie had a sister.’

  ‘She has. Me.’

  He stopped smiling, nodded. ‘I didn’t know. Would you excuse us a moment?’

  Mary stood there, just stood there, hands hanging, face expressionless as Steward Benson’s, waiting for him to get on with it. To get on with it and shove off.

  Sophie, now smiling for two, leered at the man. Encouraged by one sibling, he continued, ‘You know Captain and Mrs Featherston, don’t you, Sophie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve asked me if you’d like to join them for a meal at their house with me. On Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ No babysitting caveats. Nothing. ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Great.’ He touched her arm, waved, an expansive gesture indicating the harbour, the bridge, a green hill far away, touched her arm again and walked on.

  ‘Oh Soph,’ said Mary.

  Sophie said nothing.

  Hands in pockets, the matter dismissed for things of importance, Mary stared down the empty Sunday road. ‘Have you seen Chester?’
r />   ‘No.’ Sophie’s voice rose. ‘Is he lost again?’

  ‘God, I hope not.’

  ‘They do wander, Burmese.’

  ‘What help’s that!’

  Chester’s endearing grace, the slink of his exits, his entrances, the sheen of his black copper coat hung before them.

  ‘He’ll turn up,’ said Sophie. ‘He always has.’

  TWO

  The grocer’s shop was closed. Arnold McNally’s eyes closed in brief despair. It’s Sunday you fool. Sunday. Should’ve thought of that first shouldn’t you. Should’ve thought of that before you come all the way down. You can think of it now. You can think of it every step up the bloody hill, Sunday Sunday Sunday. And she won’t let you have any at the dairy. Not eggs. They can orbit the earth but you can’t buy an egg on Sunday. Not in Devonport.

  No use even trying with tarpaulins over anything anyone would want and only open for sweets and rubbish. ‘I’m sorry dear, I wouldn’t dare. Not on a Sunday. They’ve got snoopers everywhere. They’d see you coming out with them.’

  He stood on the pavement blinking at the unexpected sunlight. His sniff was loud. They’d said it was going to rain. They weren’t as good now. They used to be world class, the forecasts, second to none and now look at it. Eyebrows locked in irritation, Arnie headed up the hill.

  How did you know the eggs were fresh anyhow? You didn’t. Not really. So why did he treat them like treasure, carry them up the hill in their brown paper bag as if they were something precious as well as fragile. Because they were easy, that was why. Even he could cook an egg. His irritation increased.

  Arnie slogged on, puzzled by his anger, his distrust. The eggs were a case in point. Why in the name of heaven would anyone want to do a fresh egg fiddle? The logistics rolled before his eyes, faceless deceitful men in white substituting, restowing, transporting. Arnie gave a short bark of self-disgust. He would have to watch it. It wasn’t a good idea, this creeping suspicion, this rage.

  He sighed. Accepted the real reason for his rage. He had lost the first ones. He had bought half a dozen yesterday at the dairy and by the time he’d got home they had disappeared. Disappeared, dropped through the hole in the world. Which was impossible. He had spent the day looking for them, rage and despair increasing as he rechecked the fridge, the empty safe, the cupboards, the fernery, the verandah. He had lain awake at night, seen the bag, its bulging shape, the tiny saw-tooth edge. He was going mad. He’d been a cheerful cove all his life, by and large. ‘He’s been fun to live with. Cross-grained yes, but fun,’ Win had told Cora next door when she had run in to pack Win’s night things for the operation.

  Which had gone wrong. An embolism, they said. Very rare nowadays.

  The brown suitcase returned with his receipt from Patient’s Effects remained unpacked, stowed deep in Win’s wardrobe behind unsorted clothes and the card table left over from euchre evenings. They hadn’t used it for years but might one day, she said. You never knew.

  Head down to the wind, jaw clamped like a snapping turtle’s with contempt for the whole sodding world, Arnie rounded the slow bend into Calliope Road.

  It was a year since she died. Each morning told him so and the day confirmed it. He glared at the pepper tree branch dangling in front of his gate. He was ridiculous and knew it.

  There were no children, no one duty bound to care, to be stuck with sharing. People had tried, but as Cora next door said to her husband, ‘You can only do so much.’

  Invasive as nicotine, Arnie’s tight-arsed grief hung in Cora and Bob’s airless lounge, got into the curtains and stayed there. You could hear the misery, feel its damp chill. It reminded Cora of one of those old films where the candle goes out for no apparent reason and you know it’s the ghostly presence, the aura of the unseen dead. And all the time the silly old bugger sat there muttering his way through her steak and kidney, moaning about Holyoake’s latest rip-off and refusing to mention Win’s name however hard Cora tried. ‘Mad,’ she said as Arnie left at nine o’clock on the dot. ‘You can only do so much,’ she said.

  Bob nodded. He had never done anything except attend the funeral and he didn’t mind those. Quite liked them in fact; the ritual, the tidiness, the well-organised finality of the process. The coming in and the sitting down, the standing up and the following out. All were pleasing to Bob. It was the least you could do, attend funerals. And be seen to be doing. Occasionally too, there was a bonus in the drama, the tragedy of loss. Not at Win’s though. They could have been burying the cat. No wake afterwards. Nothing.

  Arnie knew Bob’s reaction and was pleased by it. He carried it in his heart. Occasionally he took it out, inspected it, blew on the spark of bitterness required to keep it bright and restowed it.

  Arnie leaned on his gatepost gasping for breath. There was something wrong with him. It had happened a few times lately, this lurching thump of his heart as it flung itself about his chest like a beached trout. He clung onto his ancient tin letterbox and concentrated on the gate he had made years ago at metalwork. Arnie had taught upholstery at night classes at Takapuna Grammar for a thousand years, till just before Win died. He and the metalwork teacher had an unspoken arrangement—a swappage of skills, a usage of tools and equipment, a blind eye. A wrought-iron galleon tossed motionless, trapped for ever in the centre of Arnie’s gate, imprisoned in a circle of iron from which spokes radiated to each corner of the square. The centring had not been easy. Three smaller galleons beat across the top frieze. The whole thing was painted Aztec Gold. Win had been proud of it.

  ‘When I wake up,’ she told him, her hands reaching for her early morning cup, ‘I think something good’s happened. Then I remember the gate.’ Her thin pale hair trailed across the pillow. She put it up during the day.

  Arnie kicked the gate hard. It swung back grating. He groped in the letterbox before remembering. Sunday for Christ’s sake, Sunday. His hand felt something. It was his bag of eggs. He looked at them in horror. When had he put them there? He must’ve put them in there for safe keeping while he, while he … While he what? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t bloody remember.

  Granny bonnet seed heads were banging the bottom of the tin. She wouldn’t have liked that either. He stood trying to work out what to do. Cut them? They would grow again. Holding his bag of eggs to his chest like a begging dog, his eyes clouded with impossible decisions, Arnie slogged up the concrete path.

  At the verandah he swayed. Still careful, still remembering the fragility of his burden, he unlocked the door, felt his way down the wide corridor out through the fernery and onto the back porch. Sparrows racketed about in the sun, rose in a cloud from his scattered bread damped to defeat marauding dogs. Arnie placed his bag on the shining boards and sank down onto the old brown armchair. It was prickly and damp. He closed his eyes. It was not physical, this sudden weakness. It was despair at his egg-engendered panic. ‘I’m going mad, Jesus Christ, I’m going insane. I used to be all right I used to be …’ He thought back to that other country when he was all right, a seaman originally, a young thruster, a man on his way. He wanted to dash out, to leap onto the street (as if he could), to grab someone, anyone, make them tell him he had been all right. ‘I was all right, remember?’ Win had always told him he was an able man, a fixer, one who could turn his hand to anything. Look how he’d picked up upholstery and made a living from scratch when they first arrived.

  He didn’t believe it. Numb with despair, Arnie lifted a foot and kicked the eggs. Viscous yellow and pale slime oozed from the sodden bag. Breathing heavily, he watched as the brown paper disintegrated, became furry at the edges and yellowed, changed to a new substance entirely. Separate rivulets of yolk and white flowed across the painted boards. Arnie was shivering.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ said a voice behind him.

  He swung around, recognised her instantly. She lived in the house with the tower three doors up. People sat around on the steps, drinking beer in the sun, not laughing, not talking, usually more
men than women. The young women were ratty-looking little scraps of things. Too young. Too scrappy looking. Except for this one.

  Arnie was on his feet. ‘What are you doing here? Out. Out.’

  ‘I’ll get a cloth.’ She came back with a bucket of water, a cloth and newspaper, dropped to her heels beside him. ‘Yuck, what a daft thing to do.’

  Arnie heard his own voice. In the midst of outrage, deep inside his head he heard his voice, the snivelling whine of a daft old man. ‘That’s the wrong cloth,’ he said.

  She took no notice. Her long brown hair swung forward beneath a cheap copy of a French fisherman’s peaked cap. Her dungarees were men’s.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You’ll explode.’

  Breathless, his heart thudding, Arnie clutched the chair arms, felt the prickles. She was right. His heart was exploding. It couldn’t go on like this. He would die. Stop breathing and die.

  His shoulders sagged as the thought sank into his mind, seeped into the hollows of his brain. He could cease to be. Rage could get him dead. Could end this endless shoving through of days. Cunning, acceptance, joy almost at this solution flowed through him, pumped in the purple ropes of his hands, drummed in his ears.

  She was still at his feet, her hands in slimy water. ‘You’re smiling,’ she said, shaking them and rinsing them under the tap at the end of the porch.

  ‘I just thought of something.’

  She did not smile back. He stared at her eyes, her skin, the neat nose, moved his head against the unshaved roughness of the chair. He would have to get angry. He couldn’t go on sitting there drenched in calm, gazing benignly at the intruder.

  Rage was essential. But there was plenty of time. Even if she went now, even if she’d nicked something as she probably had, he could go up the road and demand to see her. He could stoke up his rage, keep it going like his spark of contempt for Bob next door.

  She was sniffing her hands. ‘I’ll go and wash them properly.’

  He was going to have to get it right. It was no use frittering his anger away in spurts. Her proprietorial attitude to his pink tongue-and-groove bathroom was irritating but nothing like the initial death-inducing violation of his house, the tearing of the silence in his fernery.