"High on beer, high on midnight, high on being an up-himself jerk": the Young and the Old at play by a Dunedin writer
1
It’s summer on the outskirts of Auckland with a breeze licking the grapevine. At one end of the lawn table there’s Fanta for Girl and Little Brother. At the other end is a pot of tea for Older Sister and Mum. Dad has made sure there’s some beer for the men, to break the ice, he said, get any awkwardness out of the way.
But the way Girl sees New Business Partner, he’s fat-cheeked and pleased with himself. His son must be twenty if he can drink beer, and he’s eyeing everything as if it’s a shop. It’s Older Sister who looks self-conscious, the fake angles she tilts her head and all that smiling. Girl doesn’t think it bodes well for Older Sister ever getting a serious boyfriend. Bode is like a warning from an owl, bode bode.
As a joke she whispers to Mum, “I am never going to be her bridesmaid.”
Mum whispers back with a laugh in her eyes, “Unnatural child, every girl wants to be a bridesmaid.”
That wasn’t what Girl meant but she is gratified by the word unnatural.
Little Brother pretends to pour beer for himself. Dad says, “Go and play in your room, you.”
Girl edges off around the house. Beneath the old bottlebrush tree she has left a book on a tartan rug. She sneaks under the branches into the hollow shade.
Just as she has stretched out and turned to her bookmark, the bottle-brush rustles and the branches part. She’s ready to yell at Little Brother but it’s Business Partner’s Son who is clambering in.
She sits up. He hunkers down on the mulch of dropped leaves with the shopping look still in his eyes. It’s uncomfortable, a stranger like him being so close.
“What’s the book?”
Girl’s embarrassed. She’s rereading Finn Family Moomintroll because she loves the characters especially the Hemulin, a philosopher who wears his Aunt’s dress. “It was a present. Two years ago.” She shows the cover and flips it open so he can see the message. The clear printing says: Happy Birthday 12 years old!
Son bends down as if to see better then she feels his tongue on her cheek.
Girl pulls away fast, prickling with shock. The back of her scalp has bashed into the bark.
Older Sister’s voice starts calling. Son gives a laugh and climbs out the other side of the bottlebrush. Older Sister pushes a branch down to see into the hollow and gives Girl a terrible look that scorches with blame.
The branch flicks back into place. The voices of Son and Older Sister start chatting, and fade away around the house.
If that was meant to be her first kiss she didn’t ask for it. She didn’t want it. She doesn’t really know what it was.
2
Young Woman is walking home alone in cool midnight, no whisper of wind, her bag heavy with library books. She’s near the duck pond, notorious hangout for rats. Now and then cars pass with the hush of tyres on the damp road.
A car brakes and reverses to stop just in front of her. A young man topples out of its back door, laughing, he’s a shadow with hair like Garfunkle, dark clothes, glints of eyes, and his shirt is half off, and his belt unbuckled. “Come on,” he yells, “get in,” high on beer, high on midnight, high on being an up-himself jerk.
The driver is shouting something too, a woman’s voice. A second guy has jumped from the car and is grabbing her sleeve. “Be friendly. Come to a party," Sally says.
They want to drag her into the car. Young Woman tries to wrench herself free. “Get off! Get off me.”
Another car comes by. Her free hand holds up the book bag to show she wants help. The car doesn’t stop. The men are laughing, now the driver is getting out too, yelling, “Jeez, for fuck-sake.”
Young Woman swings the bag hard. It makes her stagger but it clips the Garfunkle’s ear and he slips on the wet ground, he’s lying there shrieking and bawling. With any luck he’s pulled a groin muscle. The second guy bends down to him. “Bitch,” he roars.
The driver’s bending down too. In a flash of passing headlights Young Woman sees it’s a girl she knew at school, half-undressed as well, most likely half-drunk, who leaps up again and screams at her, “tight arsed bitch!”
She’s running, heart thumping, foul language yelled after her and the ducks in the pond quacking with outrage.
There’s no point in telling anyone. They’d make it her fault. On your own at midnight? Why did you go that way?
3
She’s Wife with Husband on the threshold of leaving her. He says she is too independent and also too needy. He says he might stay because of the children, though he might not.
She says he’s indecisive and manipulative. That makes him more difficult because he likes to be the marital accountant adding items to the balance sheet.
Though by now Wife’s heart’s desire is for the kids to have finished school and her to be in a small place of her own near the Parnell Rose Gardens.
In the Autumn, Husband goes to Australia chasing up leads or bad debts or who-the-hell-cares. It gives her two weeks of equilibrium, with only the stress of dealing with her boss in the backrooms of Social Development, handling three teenagers and doing her tax return.
On the Saturday a young friend of Husband’s presses the doorbell. He’s little and wiry, tanned to a crisp, in shorts that draw the eye to his bow legs. They’re unfortunate. They would work for brackets in an equation. She must get her mind off tax for a minute.
“Husband’s not back for another week,” she says, “squash game cancelled, he should have told you.”
Young Friend asks if the kids are home but no, not on Saturday afternoon. He’s lingering in the porch, smoothing his hair up to a peak. Thin black hair, overdone gel. Young men are funny.
“Cup of tea?” She did not want to ask, dammit. There might not be a single gingernut left in the cupboard. In a polite hint she adds, “I can afford a little break from sorting my tax.”
He perches on a bar stool at the kitchen counter. Wife drops tea bags into the mugs the teenagers fight over, the zebras for him, the skulls for herself. He says thank you but no to the last gingernut.
She moves to a dining chair and cradles the skull mug. Drink up and go, she thinks, go. Then she feels guilty because he’s hunching his back like a fledgling when it hopes parents will fly in and help. Poor young thing, is something up?
His shoulders hunch further then he swivels round and blurts out that he’s in love with her, has been since he first saw her. She’s the love of his life, his Gwinevere.
Wife can’t utter a word. Is this a joke? No, Young Friend looks lost. Truly he must have known there was nothing to gain here. Dear god, it would be unkind to tell him Gwinevere landed up in a convent, a peaceful refuge if you don’t mind praying.
He looks more and more hopeless, the poor awful young thing. Words still won’t come and she raises an arm in a sketch of sympathy like she does to her teenagers, and that’s enough, they never want to hoo hoo it out on a comforting shoulder.
But a smile lifts the despair from Young Friend’s face, he jumps from the stool, both arms wide and leaps towards her in those terrible shorts.
Her hand flies up like a stop sign. There is so much wrong with this. There must be an age limit, an out-of-season regulation. Throw it back, this disagreeable moment cannot be happening.
4
Older Woman is on her outdoor lounger with a yellow sunhat, cell phone and a book lying on her lap. She lives alone, all three children with their own offspring, and each grandchild with a separate and equal nest in her heart, which she is surprised to find big enough. Her small house, nowhere near the Rose Gardens, is five minutes’ stride to a good bus stop – or was, when she could stride about. Sometimes kereru gossip in the virgilia tree at next door’s boundary, Much Older Man’s place. Ooh, they coo, ooh, as if they spot a few scandals in the human world.
Much Older Man is mowing his lawn, singing Edelweiss. For some reason, he always does. It makes her laugh to herself, in a good way.
The mower stops. There’s what sounds like an oath. The shrubs keep over-the-fence private but he has probably run over the hose again.
He was married once; she knows because of the wedding photo inside his front door. The bride looked lovely, gown, flowers and a simple veil. Older Woman thought her very distinguished though perhaps oddly plain for a handsome man such as the groom.
The oath comes again. This time it’s more like choking. Older Woman is stumbling to her gate then round the side of Older Man’s house, calling out to him.
For the first instant she thinks it’s a friend of his lying half in the herb garden, half on the grass next to the lawn mower. There’s a multi-coloured silk robe, an arm weighted with bracelets, half a dozen or more glinting and gleaming. But in the next, she knows it’s his hairy wrist, from seeing him in his Kathmandu shirt when they wheel their bins to the curb at the same time.
She’s struggling down to her knees and finding his heartbeat, pulling him into recovery position, dialling Emergency on her cell phone, giving his address. He’s unconscious. Into his kitchen – she’s hobbling now – for a glass of water, back again, struggling down a second time, moistening his lips.
When he comes to, he’ll have to be told who discovered him. Much Older Man is such a private person, he’s sure to upset about being found like this. But she understands: her very nice neighbour might wear the clothes of his woman, the love of his life, as a way to be near her again, trying to do anything that might draw a moment of light into that pit of grief.
Or he might wear a green and gold robe to address something about himself that he’s always wanted to keep secret, maybe secret even from his wife. Older Woman feels it would be equally sad whatever it is. These days, after all.
Ungainly, who cares, she pushes to her feet again and manages to get to Much Older Man’s living room for a rug to spread over him. That done, she collapses in the comfortable, thank goodness, patio armchair.
There’s the flopping sound of a kereru’s wings and the thousands of tiny leaves on the virgilia begin whispering. A second kereru lands on another branch, and under the weight the whole tree sways like a conical merry-go-round. Ooh, the birds start to coo, ooh.
His chest is rising, falling in a regular pattern. He might be conscious by now. If so he’s not opening his eyes.
Older Woman starts feeling something in her own chest: the hundreds of times she has been embarrassed, frightened, appalled, made herself forget and never mention it. Times it would have been better to say aloud I am a fool, what the hell was I thinking? Times she should have said the others are the fools, what did they expect? Times she ought to have shouted you are a goliath of entitlement.
Somebody could have helped simply by listening, if she’d been brave enough. By this point, with the right person, she could even laugh at some of it, possibly. Because, maybe, nowadays.
