The House Guest Page 2

  The humanities went for a burton. ‘I want to study birds,’ Robin told Lawson.

  The man looked at him. Sick, riddled with stomach ulcers plus asthma, Lawson did his best.

  ‘Birds?’

  ‘Yes. I like birds.’

  ‘That will be more difficult. You can do a BA while you’re earning. It’s the lab work in science that employers jib at.’

  ‘I’ve got a job with a caterer, nights and weekends and I can live at home.’

  Lawson crawled away to die but his replacement was helpful. Robin enrolled at Victoria.

  A woman on the bus moved from her seat beside him on his way home from rat dissection. She had crashed down next to him, her behind working pink stretch knit into vinyl, then sniffed. Robin stared straight ahead. The rats were the worst, they made him gag, a smell like nothing else on earth; strong, sour and choking, it stayed with him for hours. The woman sniffed again. She levered herself upwards and swayed to the back muttering. Perhaps he had a bit of rat still on him. He gave a surreptitious sniff but was unconvinced.

  He kept his eyes on the neck of the bus driver. Enthroned and dignified, she sat high-rumped on her own bus, endlessly helpful, endlessly calm. ‘What you need lady is a forty-nine.’ ‘Over the road man, over the road.’ Black leather gloves sliced off at the tips frayed and flapped around brown fingers and ruby nails. She was in charge and had not smelled a thing.

  Lisa also had an acute sense of smell. ‘Betty hates it too, don’t you Betty?’ The curls bent to catch the answer as Rob lifted her ancient bike from the concrete with one foot. Miss Bowman had swapped Emmie’s Junior Girl’s with Maureen in exchange for running up three lengths of cotton, though what anyone would want with sleeveless in Seatoun Maureen would never know.

  ‘I’ll give you a practice on the road if you like,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  Lisa looked doubtful. The road was forbidden and she wasn’t all that struck on the bike.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘Betty’s hair’s falling out.’

  ‘Give us it.’ He put out his hand for a hank of yellow acrylic. ‘I’ll stick it back. And when you’re older,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you tramping in the Orongorongos.’

  ‘Orongorongos. Yeah!’ Lisa dumped Betty. Excitement always resulted in action. Hands clasped, legs working, she could jump for ever. Betty, still smiling serenely, was banging her head against the table leg.

  Young women liked him and had always done so. Years ago he had wondered why, had felt tempted to ask one or two of the more forthcoming for reasons, but there were no words, just a mystery he learned to accept. Angie told him in the sixth form he had neat ears and she liked the way his hair grew and how he looked sort of vulnerable and sexy at the same time if he knew what she meant. Guys with glasses did sometimes, she said, though not always. Later Nicole in physiology liked the way he sat. She couldn’t put her finger on it but she liked the angles, the way the top leg hung straight. His weird resigned smile was a relief, she said, after the leering hunks in biochem. It made him look contained, she said, as though there was something there and by the way Mum and Dad were going to Levin at the weekend.

  He was grateful but had always known he would marry Lisa. He was twelve years older but that worked out well if you thought about it. It would take him years to finish his degree, to get established.

  It did not work out like that. To his surprise he disliked zoology. To his bewildered astonishment he hated the whole thing. He had not thought it would be like this. It was not the smells. Everyone told him he’d get used to them and they were right, as the inhabitants of Rotorua become used to the cauldron blasts, the all-invasive subtleties of their thermal wonderlands. Become, if anything, attached to the hard-boiled eggs of home.

  The first-year labs were full, the students busy. Smelling of talcum powder or rank as goats, they hacked at the meticulously prepared specimens, the demonstrations, the recumbent rats. Scraps of mangled flesh littered the benches after they had finished with the nerves.

  But the smell was nothing. His dislike lay deeper and was more disturbing. Of course zoology must involve the study of dead animals, even in this day of conservation, distribution studies and the holistic approach to life upon planet Earth. What else could it possibly do? How could you understand flight unless you knew the mechanism, how appreciate economy of effort until you had traced ligaments, muscles, nerves?

  But everything in the place was so irredeemably dead. This limp bedraggled lice-ridden pigeon, how could it once have soared and swooped and returned to base, either in Seatoun or Skegness. It was impossible to visualise, as was the former attack, the rat-pack vigour of the rodents which now lay flat on their backs in hands-up capitulation, their claws locked in rigid appeal. It was not so bad once you started; finding out is always interesting, but the nonviable content was high.

  The freshly killed rats for muscle study and the raddled yellow of the preserved ones depressed him equally, as did the specimens in vast glass-stoppered jars; a scramble of pickled salamanders, a deep pile of toads, a preserved elephant fish fringed with purple gills which drifted sideways when disturbed. ‘Adrienne’s green gecko guts,’ said the reminder on the noticeboard. ‘Freezer under Bob’s stuff.’ Where else would they be. His mincing distaste depressed him further.

  And, Christ Almighty, the dropped gut stench of hens.

  He worked hard, though not at his own desk like Murray next door. He sat with a plank across his knees in his narrow room beneath school photographs Blu-tacked to the wall by his mother. He achieved good grades and made his decision. It was a momentous one. Other guys he knew dropped out, dropped in, changed courses at will or inclination. On impulse they abandoned psych, took up drama, ditched law, couldn’t stand the shit another minute. Not Robin. He had wanted to study birds and still did. But it was all too dead.

  He switched to arts.

  Lisa applied for a job in the medical laboratory at the hospital the minute she left school and was accepted though dozens were turned away. ‘Turned away,’ she said sadly, her hands clasped in sympathy for the failed. She loved the work, and everyone loved Lisa. She was on A Bench under Padma. A Bench was the best, everybody said so, well not to their faces but the doctors and everyone knew and Padma was marvellous. There was no one like Padma. Honestly, she meant it. Padma knew everything and never flapped even when they were flat out and things got really hairy. Padma didn’t know how to flap, you should see some of them on the other benches when it was nearly time to knock off and six specimens appeared out of nowhere. Six including a spinal fluid. Ask yourself. But Padma just kept calm, you should see her. She wouldn’t let any of the juniors flap either. She couldn’t handle people who flapped, she said. If the juniors were going to flap they could leave right now OK? She was that quick and she never made a mistake, and she knew where to look everything up if she didn’t know straight off, and she was never scared to go to Dr Biddle if she couldn’t find what she wanted because she knew, and he knew, that she would never ask him unless it was something impossible to find by herself, not like some of them. And you know everything grew for her? It was amazing. Even the anaerobes, if there was anything there in the first place of course. Some people couldn’t get anything anaerobic to grow it was that difficult, but with Padma if nothing grew you knew somehow there was nothing there anyway and the same with the blood cultures which were tricky as well. Blood cultures are boring everyone said so, but Padma didn’t mind. She just got on and did them straight off and her technique was perfect. One or two of the others seemed a tiny bit, well sort of sloppy, but Padma! And Padma had told her in the tearoom the other day when there was no one else there and they had rinsed their cups and left them upside down to drain on the bench by the window that she thought Lisa should think about trying for her exam, because you could always tell the juniors with potential. Imagine.

  She also loved the other two lab assistants, Janice and Sandy. Lost in his maze of love and longing, Robin learned a g
reat deal about both of them, how they laughed, the particular ways they perched on their high stools, their differing techniques as they planted pus swabs on blood agar. Their social lives, narrated in detail, rolled before him.

  We went to the Embassy last night, Jake and me.

  We didn’t. Si and I went to Parasite. Si likes horror.

  Jake doesn’t. We went for a coffee after at the Deluxe.

  We didn’t. We went straight home.

  I don’t like going home straight off, it’s boring.

  We do. We always go straight home. Always.

  We don’t.

  Robin met them frequently and had seen them in action. Neither appeared to listen to the other’s stream of consciousness except to snatch key words; names of new cafés, soaps, movies were pounced upon so that Sandy or Janice could give her own response and judgement as soon as possible.

  Sandy, he learned, couldn’t stand films about the Inquisition. She wouldn’t cross the road. She and Si had seen The Piano but Si thought it was crap. Janice sighed, waited for her turn to communicate. She and Jake had checked out that new café in Willis Street but her cappuccino went flat.

  He could never remember which was which but had been told too often to ask again. Janice was either the dark one or the one with yellow hair tufted either side and the engagement ring. They had both passed their exams recently and it was getting harder every year. Everyone said so and Lisa could see why.

  ‘It has to, doesn’t it, I mean,’ she said standing before him in parrot-pink shorts, ‘there are more and more bugs and more and more drugs; it stands to reason it’ll get harder. I was at primary with a girl from Greece. Marina her name was. She started school in Athens. She said it was awful, you had to go way back beyond BC, Greece has been going that long.’ Lisa scratched her leg, a long thoughtful slide up her brown thigh.

  ‘I’m going to see Dr Biddle on Monday. I’m going to train. Sit the exam.’ She held her bottom lip between her teeth in gentle recognition of her daring and stared at him. ‘What d’y’reckon?’

  It was the combination that did it. Sensual yet innocent, naive yet self-aware, Lisa stood waiting for answers from the guy next door. ‘What d’y’reckon?’ she said again.

  He shook his head, held out his empty hands. There was no answer. Just something that had to be said. ‘Lisa,’ he said.

  Lisa took a step back. ‘What?’

  An aircraft roared in to land at Rongotai drowning words, sense, giving him another chance. A chance to laugh, to fling it away, to get them both out of this frozen stare, this poised-for-flight stance. This error.

  ‘I love you,’ he said beneath the telephone wires and the Phoenix palm tossing in the wind.

  She stared for a moment then ran, bare feet slapping the concrete as she jumped the glue-eyed spaniel huffing its way down the street.

  How could she not have known? How could she be so interested, so passionate in her love of brides, babies and the whole of creation and not know how he felt about her? Everyone was lovely, except those who were weird or odd or toffee-nosed and even they couldn’t help it probably. She had no right to such ignorance. She was a seventies baby, in love with life and especially love. How could she not know about desire, sex, sheer bloody longing. She had known the mechanics at an earlier age than he had. ‘Robin,’ she’d said years ago, snuggling up beside him on the divan in the sunporch. ‘What’s the definition of a virgin?’ She watched him slyly, wriggling with the suspense of her rude joke.

  ‘OK. What’s a virgin?’ he asked the clear eyes.

  ‘The ugliest girl in Form Two.’

  His heart moved for a second. ‘Oh.’

  ‘That’s a lady who hasn’t been, you know.’

  He said it. He said it when he made love to Karen, an angular botany student who fancied him. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he gasped as he lunged against her. At first she thought it was kinky. It’s only words, he said. He didn’t know why he said it. He’d remember next time if she didn’t like it. He forgot, but Karen became used to it, quite liked it in fact, flung it back at him as they rolled together. She was a good girl Karen. He liked her.

  He never thought at such times of Lisa. Not then. It was about the only time he didn’t. So how could she not know?

  He began the long haul back to reason, working out what to do, arms hanging limp as he stood on the grass verge of the quiet street. An empty plastic bag tangled in a power line soared and leaped beside him, hung limp then filled again, snapping and crackling like a windsock above his head. A speckled thrush hunted a late worm at his feet. Ten, twenty times the spike hammered. Robin exhaled and ran up the next-door path calling her name.

  Maureen opened the door. Her double-ended pin cushion was around her mottled neck, her hands deep in gathers. ‘Rob?’

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to explain to Lisa.’

  He shoved past her, the pin cushion nudging his chest.

  She was sitting on her bed winding the music box. The ballerina began to turn, the halting tinny flicks of sound began. ‘Hullo,’ she said.

  ‘Lisa.’ He sat beside her, put his arm around her. She moved slightly. There was shyness, unprecedented shyness and silence. Robin cleared his throat. ‘Lisa,’ he said.

  He ‘had a word’ with Maureen.

  ‘But she’s just a baby, Rob.’

  Sixteen isn’t a baby. Not in this day and flaming age.

  ‘And she thinks of you as a brother.’

  Worse. Much worse. Oh shit.

  An uneasy truce was established after a few days. He was very gentle, he could wait. He took her to the movies. ‘You choose, Lisa.’ He had taken her hundreds of times; Indiana Jones to E. T., The Princess Bride to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had all been enjoyed. This time was different; their hands brushed over Jaffas, jumped away. (She had fed them to him once, sitting on his chest on Maureen’s lawn dropping them into his mouth till he nearly choked.) They sat silent while Fried Green Tomatoes lapped her in schmaltz and Robin thought about tide tables at Waikanae and the estuary and his chances of seeing the spoonbills before they left. He saw the thrust of the wing beats, the sudden downwards lurch, the surge of power regained. Poetry, you could say, in motion.

  ‘Would you like to come to Waikanae?’ he whispered. ‘On Saturday’

  Her eyes didn’t move from the screen. ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to check on the spoonbills. At the lagoon.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ll have a swim after. Get an ice cream at Lindale.’ He swallowed. Ice creams. Older men. Humbert Humbert. No one could think that. Certainly not Maureen, never read the book for starters. Not even Murray who had never liked him. Murray was a prick and would make a packet. Robin could see that a mile off.

  Her eyes turned to his, pale, moist and gleaming.

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘Would you like coffee?’ he said later.

  She hesitated, glanced inside the Deluxe. Rock blazed at them; the place was full, steaming, jumping with sound. The espresso hissed, importunate as a steam train in an old movie. There was little food left in the glass cabinet; a collapsed slice of quiche, a bagel, a hefty muffin with knobs. A man with a brimless hat danced alone, an anorexic-looking woman in a wide-brimmed one with a sunflower screamed at him. People argued across tables, held each other tight, kissed gentle as fishes. Lisa shook her head.

  Robin got it. In one swift jolt he got it. His jacket was wrong, his glasses, his hair. He was too old. Or not old enough.

  He must keep as calm as Padma; must woo the woman he loved, the child he planned to marry. The very word made him wince. Not marry; woo. Nobody wooed for God’s sake. They had it off or they didn’t. They fucked. They screwed. But he would have to woo Lisa like some moustachioed ex-creep of the silver screen. A where-are-they-now? A dead. In the midst of career decisions, statistics, spread sheets, graphs on tidal populations and private ornithological research viz-à-viz English Literature he must play the male. ‘Be o
f good comfort Master Ridley and play the man,’ said Bishop Latimer as the flames licked. There had been graffiti on the memorial plaque recently. He had seen a photo. Someone had tagged it.

  Maureen was on his side but it would take time. ‘Years maybe, as she seems determined about this exam thing, doesn’t she?’ Wide by now, generous to a fault, Maureen still spent the same impossible hours at her Bernina. Grey hair cropped, calves rounded above ankle sox and Murray’s outworn Reeboks, Maureen motored on, conditioned as the now motionless Betty had once been. Lisa did the cooking, Murray did nothing. He was studying.

  Rob’s mother knew nothing about his passion, but then she knew very little about him at all, or about anything else much except ‘my work’. Her wistfulness had found refuge in the local church, a no-nonsense building where Eileen spent as much time as possible.

  Robin’s faith in Eileen’s God had departed early. Eileen had been disappointed at the time but passive as ever. ‘He went to Sunday School,’ she told the new curate, ‘and was in plays, but there you are.’

  She overcame her shyness to become a hospital visitor, although each new patient was an alarming experience. How did you know they wanted to be visited. Some made their distaste obvious, which destroyed her for days until the next challenge. But like many soft women Eileen was persistent to the point of brutality. Her gentle manner made her welcome with the shut-ins and the olds. She liked to get round her widows once a week.

  Robin did the cooking. From earliest childhood Robin had cooked. Not with his mother who would not let him because it was dangerous and wasn’t it a bit sissy for boys and what would Terence have said. Robin retreated to Miss Bowman next door. That dour figure and her red-haired niece Emmeline made him welcome in the dark kitchen out the back. The children stood side by side on stools, beating and rolling and stamping with cookie cutters sent from Miss Bowman’s sister Martha in Cold Lake, Alberta. There was a set for Christmas; a reindeer, a bell, a tree and a star. Emmie, two years older, sang one of Aunt’s songs.