Drowned Sprat and Other Stories Read online

  At home my grandmother will talk to me of souls. She will talk of her immortality, then clasp my hand and tell me she is afraid of dying.

  The Irish are so afraid of death, having been at close quarters to it at its most violent for so many centuries. Its familiarity has bred terror. If only it had bred contempt, then perhaps the fighting would have stopped. Contempt is a narrower emotion than fear and eventually gives way to indifference. It could become more of a torture to keep one’s enemy alive.

  It’s quiet where you are. Have you gone? Perhaps to buy coffee, perhaps to escape me. I can never predict what you will do next.

  I open the door quickly and you turn from the window, my carryall in your hand.

  ‘I was looking for cigarettes.’

  She hands them to me from her pocket.

  ‘I have given you some money,’ I tell her. ‘Enough to get out, enough to get home at the other end.’

  She is staring at me, tapping her hairbrush against her thigh. She wants to ask me where I got it from.

  ‘It’s here.’ I touch the side pocket of the bag.

  She turns away from me, picking up pins and combs from the table and twisting her hair in the English-lady way she has. There are too many ironies about her for me to take her seriously.

  ‘I’m hungry.’ She looks up at me from under those white eyelids.

  ‘They will feed you on the plane.’

  ‘I’m hungry now.’

  ‘Too bad.’ Now she’ll cry.

  But I won’t. I will just pick up my bag and go through the door ahead of you. I won’t even look back to see of you are following me. Just this once I will trust you to be there.

  The cab stinks. Someone has vomited here in the early hours of the morning. Someone drunk and despairing. The driver notices her quell a retch, and smirks.

  I didn’t mean to give you more life than you already have. Sometimes among all the changes, running from city to city, I have almost felt sorry for you.

  This is the last time we will ride together. You and I have done rather well. But you would thank me afterwards, if you could, for this solitary flight. For the release, the ticket to a quiet place.

  People will look up between the buildings and see a knife flash in the sky, a red slash in the belly of God. That will be you.

  Later on dusty streets I will think of you and wonder if it is you between my toes.

  My brain is clogged with hormones that make me bovine. I can’t think clearly. Your face has a strange sheen to it, lilac through the brown, like the dark face of a stained-glass saint with the sun behind you.

  Your neck has the feel of steamed fish, a delicate meat. I would like to bite it, but we are surrounded by sweating bodies in cars. If we were alone I would do it, and you would scream. Women like you like pain, each spin of the clock to be a rimless wheel.

  I lift the coins from my pocket and pay the driver. They fall into his palm, disappear. I carry your bags, your glittering death.

  I am strapped in, numbed from the long wait. I ask a hostess for water. There is dust in my mouth.

  I will go home and stand in the rain, be polished by the tears of God. When the sun comes out I’ll watch the limpid hills, and wait for the fiery blast, the simoon.

  You will never come.

  You would not survive in my country with its mad, old war, and I would never survive in yours.

  Red Button

  My first client this morning arrives early, which irritates me. She’s already in the waiting room when I come in, which makes me hurry through the correspondence that usually occupies me for the first half hour or so. When finally I send through to reception for her, I feel as harassed as she seems to be, hurrying in on her sensible shoes, her navy skirt flapping around her thick calves.

  ‘I’ve never been to see anyone like you in my life,’ is her opening statement, before I even open my mouth. ‘I hope this will be entirely confidential.’

  ‘Of course,’ I assure her. ‘You don’t even have to use your real name.’

  She nods her short-haired grey head.

  ‘But I should perhaps tell you that I do recognise you — your face is familiar.’ I have to think for a moment. ‘I’ve seen your picture in the business section of the newspaper. And on television.’

  ‘Coral Bailey,’ she supplies. ‘I’m the CEO of Millennium Energy.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  She’d used her own name to book her appointment, but I hadn’t recognised it on my list.

  ‘I want to tell you about something that happened to me. Someone I met.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘During the summer.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  There’s a silence then, during which I avert my eyes, watch the trees in the park opposite flail in the March wind.

  ‘I always drive myself,’ Coral begins slowly. ‘On business trips in foreign countries I will sometimes permit a driver, but on all journeys, the one I want to tell you about included, I prefer to drive myself. I had Robert with me.’

  ‘Robert?’

  ‘My husband. As we headed out of town we talked a little about Samantha’s baby. Robert asked me if I thought she’d be awake when we got there. I said Samantha hadn’t got her into any kind of routine, so who was to know. Robert took this as a criticism of Sam, somehow, and told me to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble when we got there, giving instructions or whatever.’

  ‘Samantha is your daughter?’

  ‘Yes. He went on about how I’d always thought that Sam was hard or tough, when she was actually soft as butter, and nothing like me. His implication was that I’m a nasty bitch.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘He thinks I’m — what is the word he uses? Impercipient. Impercipient to his needs and desires. He sometimes says things about the “mannish carapace” of my business clothes, asks why I won’t let my hair grow a little.’

  ‘And what do you say in response to that?’ I ask her. There are only three tissues left in the box, which with some of my more tearful clients would already be little sodden mounds on the low coffee table between us. Coral doesn’t seem like a crier, although her voice is cracking a little.

  ‘I say nothing, because it would lead us nowhere,’ she says firmly.

  ‘Tell me the story, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It was like this: I required the Ladies. In the days I allowed Robert to drive I would sit with a bursting bladder for miles. He could never stop without plenty of warning: to lift his foot off the accelerator and apply the brake was anathema to his driving self. If I gave him a ten-minute warning he could manage it — a warning gleaned from my prior knowledge of the exact location of each convenience; something he called my mental crapper map. I expanded it on every family summer holiday. And believe me, there was a quarter of the number then, compared to now …

  ‘On the Pohuehue Viaduct a Rest Area sign flashed past — you know, that little man and little woman separated by a single line — and up ahead there was the building itself in a picnic spot, a gravel scallop scooping out at the side of the road, the bushy gully high around us. I swept in, took the car up onto the grass beside a vast macrocarpa and Robert lurched forward against his seatbelt only slightly. There was a wooden table of heavy slats, a rusting Ford Cortina and two toilet blocks — an old granite one boarded up with a bird nesting in one of the small ventilation grilles high under the iron roof; and a new one with plastic walls the colour of the purest, palest urine. I remember thinking it was the colour of baby pee, which must have been because I was on my way to visit a baby.’

  ‘Your granddaughter.’

  ‘Yes. The building had a red plastic cap, like a piece from a child’s garage set, or a Monopoly house. I told Robert I’d be back in a minute and he nodded and sighed, reclined in his seat and I knew for sure as I walked away from the car that he had closed his eyes. You can’t work as hard as he does at the age of sixty-three and not spend you
r domestic downtime exhausted. Robert is perpetually, tediously exhausted.’

  Emotionally absent husband, I note.

  ‘The toilet, it appeared, was electronically controlled, with a wide red button and automatic locks. Just as I reached the concrete-slab porch, the door began to slide open. Someone was on her way out. I paused and turned around to wait. Robert’s profile was in peaceful repose. Beside the picnic table was the Cortina which, I saw now, had grass growing up under its axle. The windows were smashed, all except the windscreen, which had a pattern of silvery cracks across it, like a cobweb.

  ‘Then, suddenly, just as I heard a step behind me, a chicken rushed out from under the car, with a huge wild cat in hot pursuit. They vanished into the long grass and I heard the impact — jaw on feathery rump — and the giant cat’s paws thudding away towards the bush gully. The alarm I felt expressed itself in my bladder, which stung and burned intolerably, so I turned around again, to pass my predecessor to the toilet. But there was no one there.

  ‘It didn’t concern me. I remember thinking I must have imagined hearing the step, and that it must have been some new sensor technology, something newly installed, that had made the door slide open. I went inside and the door slid shut after me.

  ‘There was a woman standing beside the hand-drying unit with a tube of lipstick extended in her hand. At least I thought it was a woman, until I looked more closely and saw that it was a transvestite, one of those poor devils that haunted K Road and Fort Street before Robert’s lot were elected to council and cleared them all out. She wore a green nylon dress that more closely resembled a petticoat, and huge sandals, her horny toenails long and painted orange. A small, glittery evening bag hung on a chain from her shoulder.

  ‘“Didn’t you hear me cooee?” she asked. “You in a hurry?”’

  Coral does a passable imitation. I can hear the tranny’s voice — soft, treacly, teasing.

  ‘“Could put this on in the car, but the rear-vision’s gone,” she said, bending to the narrow strip of greasy mirror in the wall and applying the lipstick. “But if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll just be a tick.”’

  ‘“Your car?” I said. I depressed the button on the wall, a red one to match the control on the other side, by now so desperate to pee I decided to go outside in the grass. Nothing happened. While she talked on I pressed the button at least twenty more times.

  ‘“My mother’s. On my way up north with it. She died and I’m taking it to my sister. Liar liar pants on fire! Stole it off a man I had in Albany who needed a pee as bad as you do now and left the keys in the ignition —” She paused to press her freshly coloured lips together.

  ‘She’s a nut, I realised, and the sooner I got out of there the better. I pressed the button again, to no response, only a faint whirring and clicking inside the wall, just audible under her voice.

  ‘“Go right ahead there, girl,” she said. “Don’t stand there with your legs crossed.” Still intent on the mirror, she dug into her shoulder bag and extracted a mascara wand.

  ‘“Go on. Don’t mind me.”

  ‘And God help me, I didn’t mind her at all because I couldn’t — my panties were damp and getting damper. I squeezed past and tore down my trousers and sat with a thud without even checking the seat, and it was a torrential, humiliating flow, throughout which I kept my head bowed. When I looked up at her again after I was back in order, she was dabbing on scent, watching me.

  ‘“Feel better now?” she asked. She had real concern in her voice. It touched me in spite of myself. I felt my heart constrict with it, told her yes thank you, and went to the button again, thinking that perhaps the lock was on a timer and that now it would respond. It didn’t.

  ‘The transvestite watched me, registered my rising panic, smiling kindly. She didn’t seem at all affected.

  ‘“You’ve really let yourself go, haven’t you, honey?” she said in the same concerned tone. She reached out then and touched me, stroked my arm, and her finger on my arm put a shiver down my spine. It wasn’t revulsion because she was a transvestite, some squeamishness or fear of disease or anything, it was because I knew suddenly that she was dangerous. As she took a step closer she had an intensely predatory expression in her big hooded eyes.

  ‘I kept pressing the button like mad, but nothing was happening. She started excavating her tiny evening bag again and lining up on the edge of the handbasin all manner of creams, perfumes, lipsticks and eye shadows, and a packet of blue Holiday. At the time I didn’t think about it, but later on, since then, I’ve marvelled that it could hold so much and realised that that should have been my first clue. Instead, I was calling for Robert. I just called out once or twice, maybe three times, but there was no grille like in the old toilets, no gappy door. The Monopoly house was entirely sealed and soundproofed, and my voice ricocheted around the little room.

  ‘“Who’s Robert?” the tranny asked me, giving a bottle of nail polish a vigorous shake.

  ‘“My husband.” I remember the words were whispered.

  ‘“He still want to fuck you?” she asked, taking a firm hold of one of my hands, the other still engaged in pushing at the wall. She was very strong — I couldn’t pull it away.

  ‘“Leave that button alone. You’ll wear it out, lovie. Does he?”

  ‘I leaned my forehead against the cool wall and immediately recoiled. It was damp, fetid with mutating microbes adhesive enough to cling to smooth plastic.

  ‘“Does he still want to fuck you?” she asked again, squeezing my hand rather painfully as she brushed on some colour. It was bright cerise. When she realised I wasn’t going to answer her no matter how hard she pulverised my knuckles, she said, “Course he doesn’t. But then you don’t want to fuck him any more either. Sex isn’t everything, is it?”

  ‘“Of course not,” I answered her then. It was finally dawning on me that I had to talk my way out of this situation and that my previous panicked state had been due to my desperate need to pee. Now that I could think clearly I must not continue to panic. I relaxed my body, let her take the other hand, brush at the nails.

  ‘“Love it myself,” she went on. “Always been my downfall.”

  ‘I focused on the fact that she knew how to open the door. It was obvious she did, because she didn’t care that it wouldn’t open now. All I had to do was to get her to tell me how to get out. And if that didn’t work, surely, in a few minutes, Robert would come and open it from the other side. He would wake up and realise I’d been gone for longer than it took to … but then again, he knew I’d had my little problem again recently, so he might leave me straining away for as long as half an hour before he came looking for me.

  ‘Christ, what could she do to me in half an hour? I remember thinking. She could kill me!’

  ‘Have a drink of water,’ I tell her, pouring some out. ‘Take a deep breath.’

  Coral does both, and gets the hiccups. She gets up to walk around, rubbing her stomach.

  Gastric personality type? I note.

  At the window she pauses, the autumn light falling across her lined and anxious face.

  ‘Usually I stop the story there,’ she says. ‘Afterwards, when I told my women friends, I stopped it there, said that the door opened miraculously and I made a lucky escape. But it’s not true—’ A giant hiccup cuts her off and she makes a gesture of exasperation.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I tell her. ‘When you’re ready. Take your time.’

  A few minutes pass before the hiccups slow enough for her to resume.

  ‘I began by asking her how long she’d been stopped at the rest area. She said she’d been there a long time, she’d lost track. I tried to examine her pupils to see if she was stoned, but I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I’ve never had anything to do with drugs, though I know they affect your internal clock, your sense of time passing. The whites of her eyes were yellow, that’s all I observed.

  ‘While my nail polish dried she smoked a cigarette, which half suf
focated me in the closed atmosphere, and selected some of the make-up, making a little group of the bottles. She told me she was going to take the car on to Ruakaka and park it by the beach and sleep the night. She said she’d gone there when she was a child many times, that her tribe came from up there. I let her chatter on, but a couple of times I asked her questions like, “Was the door playing up before I came along?” and also “Where is your car parked?”

  ‘It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen it, that it must have been behind the building, concealed to me when I came in, but she wouldn’t answer me. She just went on in her quiet, soothing way, smoothing make-up onto my skin, massaging my crow’s feet, using a dark liner around the edges of my lips before applying the lipstick. It made me feel oddly drowsy and I had to fight the desire, after the eye shadow went on, to leave my eyes closed.

  ‘I kept wondering when Robert would come and look for me, which distracted me from listening to her closely, and it was a while before I realised she had stopped telling me about her boyhood, but was talking about me.

  ‘“It’s hard, losing your femininity,” she was saying. “Women like you get to a stage in their lives when it’s easier to be male than female. Look at you — not a lick of paint when you came in, that horrible suit, those dreary shoes, ghastly haircut. No perfume, no jewellery except for your hand-crafted brooch. You’re a tragic case. D’you still turn it up? You don’t need to answer that, love, not if you don’t want to. I’m presuming you still give Robert a hand if he asks you. It’s important for a man. Use it or lose it, that’s what I tell my older men friends. Some of them require more of a pumping motion than a stroking one, if you get my meaning, though you can do both at the same time if you’re clever. Famous for it, I am.”

  ‘On and on and on she went! I can’t remember all of it; most of it was inutterably vile. I wanted her to stop but I couldn’t move. There was something in the make-up, maybe — some chemical I was absorbing through the skin that paralysed me. I couldn’t fight her off.’

  Coral is back on the sofa, picking up one of the cushions, laying it across her lap, picking it up again, holding it tight against her. Her cheeks are flushed.